Disruptive Rest

Today is the 13th day of my sabbatical. I’m nearly two weeks into this eight-week time away from my Quaker community. I didn’t go into this time with any intention of further withdrawing from things like facebook or instagram, but I have unintentionally done so. I likely spend two to three minutes a day on facebook, and a handful more on instagram. I have taken many naps.

I still find that I need to give myself permission to take those naps. Only a few times have I felt like I deserved them. Most of them make me feel guilty. I have looked at my kitchen cabinets and said, “I’m going to paint you during my sabbatical.” I haven’t done it. I’ve looked at my garden and said, “I’m going to get you all spiffed up before the spring.” I haven’t done it. I’ve dreamed of building a fire pit and working on my book. Nada.

I have the demon on my shoulder, whispering suggestions of my unworthiness for this prolonged period of rest. It teases me with accusations of laziness. It guilts me into feeling that I've squandered something.

Photo of the Nap Ministry credit: https://charlottewattsphotography.com/

Then the Nap Ministry entered my life. I don’t know how, but they squirmed their way into my Twitter feed with a prophetic and prescriptive demand for rest. From their website:

The Nap Ministry was founded in 2016 by Tricia Hersey and is an organization that examines the liberating power of naps. Our “REST IS RESISTANCE” framework and practice engages with the power of performance art, site-specific installations, and community organizing to install sacred and safe spaces for the community to rest together. We facilitate immersive workshops and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing. We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue.

Rest is resistance. This reminder has helped me settle into this sabbatical with my dignity intact. But it also puts me on the spot.

You see, I haven’t been preaching rest to my Quaker community. In fact, I’ve wanted to resist a narrative that we are a community of rest. During the search process for our next released minister, one of the candidates withdrew their application, partly because she felt like our website showed that we “aren’t a very active community.” I felt embarrassed about that.

It has been true that many in our community find our meetings for worship to be opportunities to rest and restore themselves for the work week ahead. And there are many folks in our community who are doing powerful and incredible work in our city throughout the week. It does feel like a ministry, of sorts, to provide this rest stop for people.

But I admit that I’ve had visions in my head of our community being a social justice hub in our city. I wished it be full and active throughout the week, providing services and opportunities for people in need. Compared to that vision, our community does seem quite sleepy.

In fact, just a few weeks before the start of my sabbatical I gave a message about “staying woke.” I’ll admit that I’ve struggled to see a vision of us being both a community of restoration and a community of activism.

And that is where dualistic thinking can rob us of imagination. What if I saw “we are a community that is committed to the work of rest and restoration as a way to strengthen us for the heart work loving and showing up for our neighbors” as a legitimate calling on our ministry? What is more, what if we hosted opportunities for communities where there is a rest disparity? What would rest look like for others?

It is remarkable how often I need to be reminded of outside influences on my ministry. Recently, a Mennonite pastor, Melissa Florer-Bixler wrote a piece called My Church is a Beautiful Waste of Money in it she says…

What we do will look like a waste of time and money to the broader order of utilitarianism. We sing together, we share bread, we tell stories. We form people in the church to be very bad at capitalism…

…As it is, my church may not produce results that work well for an end-of-year board report. We certainly won’t make people better citizens or more productive workers. I don’t know that I can say we’re giving people “bang for their buck” or branding ourselves in a way that makes us essential for meaning-making.

But I do hope that we are carving out space to rest our lives in the care of the living God. I hope that meeting this God forges the way into the forgotten places among the forgotten people where God is already at work. I hope that I can be a pastor who helps us set down our lives here, among God’s good news to the poor.

I have felt this pressure, as a person whose salary is paid by the generosity of individuals in my community, to make sure their tithes feel worth it. I often worry I am not doing enough to honor those tithes. I want my salary to make absolute sense for them. But, as Melissa points out above, the fruit of ministry often fails to be quantified in an “end-of-year board report” or to be appreciated by the metrics of capitalism.

This is also true when it comes to the embarrassment I felt when that candidate withdrew their application because we were too sleepy for them. While I know that certain church leaders thrive in congregations that are, indeed social justice hubs, I need not look at their decision to decline our community as an insult, or a judgment about who we are (or aren’t), but as an appreciation of them knowing where they will fit. I need to be cautious of my drive to urge our community to be something that it may not be called into being right now and see the gifts we are currently offering as legitimate and worth offering to others in need of it.

Of course, we will still need volunteers to keep the work of our community afloat. We will need Sunday School teachers so that we can offer rest to weary parents. We will need beloved people who are ready to help our elderly folx get to appointments or simply be with them through hard times. Appreciating the gift of rest does not need to be some kind of embrace of complacency, but it can be a radical pushing back against the pressures to perform, to impress, and to make a product.

It may just take a loving embrace of what it is we have to offer and to frame up the structure of our community around it. Stepping into a calling with intention and naming is a powerful move into defining purpose. It is also a loving movement into shaping a world we, and so many others are desperate for.