This soul's garden

It's holidays - time for gardening and relaxing and doing assessments...and enjoying the confluence.

Garden wise it's time to mulch - as I've pulled weeds from the beds the earth has turned to dust in my hands - so first it will require a good soaking - a cradling with nutritious mulch - and only then it can be left to the elements of the summer.

Like me really - I have found myself relaxed and ready to read the spirituality and leadership material for the (over)due essay - i feel the soaking of the watering wisdom (how did the soil dry out so badly?) but am also aware of the need for the mulch - the water maintaining parts of life that unlike the garden cannot be simply applied and then left..a mulch for the soul is much more like the practices which i have allowed to lapse...contemplation and silence...walking and direction...intimacy

how to weave these into the days ahead as we approach summer...to keep the precious moistness of the soul in this parching life - this is the challenge....would it be easier to find the rhythm if i stopped trying to combine quite so many roles? is this a call?

For Kaz – Regaining Creativity

Jesus calls religious leaders to childlikeness that they may learn to allow God to carry them through the tough places, to teach them the lessons they need to learn, and to imbue them with the playful creativity needed to lead the congregation into an unknown, and often uncertain, future.
(Shawchuck, N & Heuser, R.  1993 Leading the congregation: Caring for yourself while serving the people, Abingdon, Nashville. P. 31)

Ministry as reminder

Ministry as reminder
When we no longer walk in the presence of the Lord, we cannot be living reminders of his divine presence in our lives.  Then we quickly become strangers in an alien land who have forgotten where we come from and where we are going.  Then we are no longer the way to the experience of God, but rather in the way of the experience of God,  Then instead of walking in God’s presence we start walking in a vicious circle, and pulling others into it.   Henri Nouwen (The living reminder: Service and prayer in memory of Jesus Christ.  Seabury, New York.  P. 29)

To be living reminders of God we must be concerned first of all with our own intimacy with God.  Once we have heard, seen, watched, and touched the Word who is life, we cannot do other than be living reminders… In order for this response to be lasting and oriented to the felt needs of those to whom we minister, we need discipline, formation, and training.  But these can do little more than offer channels for the lived experience of God.  (p. 33)