You Respond: What has Shaped or Is Shaping Your Life?
Many of you may have heard bloggers or podcasters ask the question, "What's saving your life right now?" Barbara Brown Taylor first popularized the phrase, and some have a habit of bringing the question out around February 2, the midpoint of winter when we need some inspiration.
Usually people answer with a mix of mundane or massive things that are either helping with day-to-day life or providing significant help.
I reached out to the community at Immanuel to hear from you all and to share the wisdom and wonder you carry with you. What follows here are the responses. I love how varied and beautiful they are. Hopefully, reading them through can help you also answer these questions:
“-Was there a practice, resource or voice or event that had an impact on your life during 2022? In what ways did it/they shape you?
-Starting the new year, is there a practice you’re beginning, a voice you’re listening to, a topic you’re learning about that you anticipate will shape you in the coming months?
-During this season of your life, right now, how would you answer the question of what is shaping your life? Is it in surprising ways? Encouraging ways? Difficult ways? ”
Reflections from Sharon:
A resource that I found to be very helpful for me is a book entitled, Good News About Prodigals by Tom Bisset. In parenting-in-a-different-way our adult children, I have at times cowered at the "valley of the shadow of death" I sometimes felt I was facing. This wasn't always fear of physical death as much as spiritual death of loved ones. This book, as well as Psalm 23, have aided me in dropping the burden of responsibility and guilt for my childrens' spiritual welfare, etc… Bisset has a way of leading me into trusting that God sees a far bigger picture than I do; that sometimes my words or actions can be walls that God has not asked me to erect; that I can lay my burden down and trust far beyond my own capabilities and not feel shame about that. This is a concept I've long known intellectually, but I keep having to fine-tune it over and over. The concepts are applicable to so many areas of life—to the life and work of Immanuel Mennonite (for example TUTT)— we plant the seeds then trust God for results as God works behind the scenes.
A practice that is shaping my life this new year is getting back to reading the Bible. I've been doing my own spiritual "constructive deconstruction" over the last dozen or so years. I've been reading and processing for over a dozen years, but, shortly before 2016, I began writing somewhat prolifically and informally (on a personal basis). My relatively conservative Christian and Mennonite background, exposure to Charismatic influence and practice, extended family involvement in extreme Word Faith/Prosperity Gospel, extended family agnosticism, current family's multiple moves living inside and outside the U.S., exposure and involvement in multiple non-Mennonite churches, extended family cultural and racial diversity on multiples levels, and acquiring a Master of Social Work all blessed and "cursed" me simultaneously. I have sought to define and redefine a thick, rather than a thin, Christianity. I now find myself yearning to read the Bible in a more nuanced way. I still have many questions, but I feel more settled now than I might have a few months ago.
As for now, certainly the constant news feed continues to shape my life. What I'm finding more recently is what I've been searching for a long time - the middle place that marries the fullness of the Good News of Jesus beyond the extremes now seen so clearly in the news. What I'm beginning to relax into and find more challenging is what that middle place, that Third Way, looks like in real life. My challenge is to not get caught up in the insanity and sense of hopelessness I can easily fall into. That cesspool of hopelessness is where Hope is found. It's not found by avoiding and denying hopelessness and false hope all around me. The difficulty for me is in feeling more comfortable and confident to sensitively use my voice to counter what close family members might overtly and covertly "spew" (what I feel as spewed) without ending our relationships. I wish I could strike a better balance between sharing what I believe to be true, without totally ruining precious relationships.
Reflections from Patrick:
A new practice I'm beginning this year is meeting monthly with a friend as a Spiritual Friend. This is different from a mentor, mentee, or counselor. This is a friend who is in a similar season and stage of life and our families are similar. We hope to talk about joys and challenges we are facing and ask questions about what we believe and why. I anticipate that this will be a time to test and challenge myself and this friend in what we believe and to have someone to share about what is going on in our lives.
A resource I have appreciated recently is the Bible Project website and app. Pastor Matthew shares videos from the Bible Project often. The videos from the Bible Project often explain broader overarching themes in certain books and passages and show the importance of how context and literary devices are used to shape the way we understand the Bible. It's given me a new appreciation for scripture.
Reflections from Lydia:
MUSIC has always been a life-shaper for me. I listen to lyrics that flow from Scripture and speak Truth and Hope into the world. My favorite songs are those that teach me theology: about a loving God who draws us all together into community. I am especially fond of artists such as Bryan Sirchio, Rich Mullins, Ken Medema, and Michael Card.
During the Christmas season, I was able to attend several concerts which brought me so much joy, especially the one put on by The Soil and Seed Project. There are so many aspects that I love about concerts: Sitting next to others - sometimes strangers, sometimes friends - and having a shared experience. Closing my eyes to let my ears take control to focus on the beautiful harmonies and instrumentation even better. Letting my body respond to the music through laughter and tears and relaxing and head-nodding and clapping. I hope to continue to attend concerts in the coming year as a practice of finding joy.
Salt Dough Advent Spiral-Reflections and Practice by Tessa
For me, the season of Advent has always been a meaningful time of reflection and wonder. As a deep thinker, I sometimes struggle a little bit with wanting to share meaning and depth with Naomi, knowing she is capable of wonder, but also keeping it understandable and engaging for her age too. It's a growing edge I am grateful for.
As I hold and feel close to the painful realities that come with being human and the longing for wholeness among family and within our broader community and world, I have found the longing and waiting of Advent to hold deep meaning. The image of the light in the darkness continues to be one that is profound and beautiful for me. So sharing the mingled longing, wonder, and joy of this season with my child(ren) is something that I desire, but haven't had many concrete ideas for what that would look like. Since expecting and now parenting Naomi, I have been saving different ideas to mark the season of Advent... One such idea from the cyberworld was for a salt dough Advent spiral, with indentations to add a treasure to each day of Christmas (there are many variations of this!) and marked with a candle to light every seventh day.
You may remember this summer I did a children's story about treasures in clay jars and handed out brown play dough and gems for children to make their own jars to hold treasures. And a certain toddler (Naomi) knew that I had gems in my clay teapot and only wanted the gems, making the storytelling a little disrupted... Well, that love and fascination with the beauty of gems has continued for Naomi, so I decided to use gems as the treasure to add to our Advent spiral each day as we counted down to Christmas. I had hoped to make the spiral together, but she ended up napping through that process, so next year.
Our spiral had four candles embedded in it and 27 indentations for gems. At the middle sat a while pillar candle to be the Christ light we would light on Christmas day. Our ritual was simple, and sometimes I wondered if it needed more, but decided doing it was better than waiting to do it until it was perfect. This is what it looked like:
We started our spiral with lighting the first candle on the first Sunday of advent. Each day, in the evening, usually after supper, but sometimes in the morning or afternoon depending on our work schedules, we would sing O Come O Come Emmanuel and light how ever many candles were called for that week. Then Naomi would be invited to pick a gem and place it in the indentation to count down to Christmas. We used the weekly readings from The Soil and The Seed Project and read them together and ended with a simple prayer, "Christ we are waiting for you". We also had a chocolate advent calendar that we would let Naomi open a window to after finishing this ritual, and she thought that was pretty great. Each window of the advent calendar told a small, simple piece of the Christmas story.
In an ideal world, we would gather around this spiral, which sat in the middle of our dining room table, around the same time each night and share in the pause, the singing, the reading, the anticipating, together. But some evenings it was just one of us with Naomi. Other days we did it earlier in the day so we could do it together as a family before one parent went off to work for the night. But even with this reality, we found taking the moment to pause together around candle light, sharing in song, reading simple words of waiting and longing for Christ that Naomi could repeat and soon recite with us, to be deeply special for our family. We have been learning this year that there is something so sacred in taking a pause as a family.
About two weeks before Christmas, we set up our manger scene in the dining room, not too far from our spiral. It is one my grandparents made and is fragile and so often I would ask Naomi not to touch it. Yet, I'd still find her, with a chair pulled up to our hutch, just staring at the manger scene. The cows and the sheep were just too tempting not to move. And that baby Jesus, she just loved to pick him up and cradle him in her hands when (she thought) I wasn't looking. Nothing got broken (thankfully), and as we watched our spiral fill up with gems, we talked about waiting for this baby to be born. A favorite Christmas book was "Who is Coming to Our House?" and this went along well with our manger too.
As a family, we celebrated Christmas together on Christmas Eve, and my favorite part was sharing supper together and then moving to our pause around our advent spiral. It looked so beautiful with almost all the gems in place and the candles lit. We allowed Naomi to go to our manger scene and bring baby Jesus over to our spiral and hold him as we shared in our pause. I loved when she looked at us, baby Jesus cupped in her tiny hands, and said, "See Baby Jesus in his nest?" in the most tender voice. (I mean, the manger with hay around the baby does look a lot like a nest.) We sang O Come O Come Emmanuel and then Naomi added the last gem. We lit all the candles, including the Christ light in the middle, shared in The Seed and the Soil Project reading for that week and sang a few more Christmas songs together. It was simple, but so special and tender. It was also special to realize that even though for us Advent may have layers of meaning that are above a two-year old's head, the words we shared in this simple ritual impacted Naomi too and she can grasp the wonder of this season. And indeed, I loved how she pulled us into her wonder (ie: See baby Jesus in his nest? Also, some otters of hers came to see the new baby in his manger…She still loves to light the Christ light and sing O Come O Come Emmanuel each night.
For instructions on how to make your own Advent spiral, click here for Tessa’s notes.
Family Sabbaths-Brian and Tessa
Having two nurses as parents in our home has blessed us with schedule flexibility and contract options that make it possible for one parent to always be home and not need to depend on outside childcare. However, working primarily 12 hour shifts, varying between days and nights, means that the number of days we have off, home together, where one of us isn't needing a pre or post-work nap during the day, sometimes feel few and far between. On top of that, the need for nurses to pick up shifts sometimes meant that those free days got filled with requests to pick up extra time that we would say yes to.
Feeling the strain of this in 2021, we stumbled upon the idea for a "family sabbath" practice when Naomi was diagnosed with Hand, Foot, and Mouth on 12/23/21, cancelling our travel plans to be in PA with Tessa's family for Christmas. The house was clean in preparation for our trip (we prefer to come home to a clean house if possible) and Naomi's symptoms were improved enough on Christmas Day that we had a special Christmas as a family of three here at home together. We opened a few gifts, ate a delicious brunch, and went on a family hike in SNP. As we reflected on this unexpected Christmas, the word Sabbath came to mind. It felt like a true sabbath—we rested, we rejuvenated, we enjoyed company as a family, we celebrated the coming of Jesus in our midst. There weren't tasks hanging over our head AND we were home together. It was beautiful and we wanted more of this in our life!
So, for 2022, we decided to set aside one day each month for a family "Sabbath" and marked it in our calendar as such. It was a day to rest and recreate as a family. We committed to not picking up any extra work time on these days, no matter how good the incentive was. We strove to do daily cleaning tasks on the days leading up to our Sabbath so the house was in a tidied state and we didn't feel pressure to "catch up" on a day we were committed to resting and being together as a family. We experimented with the timing of our Sabbath being from sundown to sundown, similar to the tradition of Shabbat, but in the summer months found we stuck a little less to that with sunset being so late. Changes to our work schedules this fall has also made sticking to sundown to sundown sabbaths a little more challenging.
We strived to be intentional to either have a meal going in the crockpot or pre-made to pop in the oven or warm up or have a simple meal plan so that our time wouldn't be spent with meal prep and clean up (this is also a growing edge in our Sabbath practice). We primarily sing Lord Bless the Hands (# 93 in HWB) as a grace before our meals and do this on our Sabbaths together along with sharing a poem or blessing and lighting a candle on our table to represent the presence of Christ with our meals.
Beside words and meals, what else did our Sabbaths hold? We often filled our Sabbaths with lots of outside time as family, be it a long walk with playground stops, a hike, or a family bike ride. For our first Sabbath in January 2022 we made bird feeders with peanut butter, pinecones and bird seed and had fun decorating our trees with them and then watching various birds come to visit in the days and weeks afterwards. One rainy sabbath we spent time playing guitar and piano and singing hymns together-very imperfectly but enjoyed by all three of us! In the warmer months we loved biking to the VMRC Farm at Willow Run and having a picnic supper there, running around on the hill at the top of the lane while soaking in mountain views and the sunset and then biking home again. In June, we spontaneously spent our Sabbath camping in a cabin at Lost River State Park, which was one of our favorites. Sometimes it meant being able to invite friends over to share a meal with us, other times we just needed time as a family. Naomi dropped her consistent nap schedule this summer, but on the Sabbath afternoons she would nap, Brian and I enjoyed time to play games together, something we have not done as much of since becoming parents. On days Naomi didn't nap, she delighted in having two parents who would engage in play with her that followed her lead (and allowed us to remember how to be child-like again—muscles that are stiffer than I care to admit).
At times, as we have tried to implement this family practice, it has felt clunky and awkward or at least missing some structure that we weren't quite sure how to build. It was far from perfect, but we quickly came to treasure these days together and having some boundaries that kept our family time the central focus, something easily lost in our culture. It is a practice we want to hold and grow but also not be so rigid that at some point it doesn't serve our family well-so not holding too tightly while also maintaining boundaries. We also anticipate this is something that will morph and change and grow as our children (and we) do, and look forward to seeing what ideas and contributions they will bring forward in the years to come (I'm personally hoping for a family poetry writing block of time in a future Sabbath years down the road ).
As we start 2023 and reflect on our sabbath days this past year, these are some considerations we are holding to continue cultivating and growing this family tradition:
- We are hoping to get back to the sunset to sunset pattern for our Sabbaths.
-Perhaps identifying a specific meal that we would make each Sabbath (either the meal to mark its beginning or ending) would be meaningful for us. So, considering some simple, staple recipes.
-We are hoping to identify a blessing to memorize and share as a family to mark the beginning and end of each Sabbath.
-Sharing a reading from Sally Lloyd-Webber's book Thoughts to Make My Heart Sing at each Sabbath breakfast
We would like to continue:
-Spending time outside as a family and incorporating some camping into our Sabbaths in the warmer months
-Limiting screen use and NOT using social media on our Sabbath days
-Being intentional about having a tidied house to start our Sabbaths
-Sharing family meals and acknowledging the presence of Christ at each meal during our Sabbath
-Inviting friends to share a sabbath meal with us sometimes too
Thoughts from Missy:
A few things on my bullet journal page represent what has shaped my life in the last year and continues to resonate with me into this one.
I appreciate the steadiness of daily rhythms, having a specific chore I do each day, no matter the season. I’m hoping to also add some rhythms like a Sabbath (I’m inspired by Tessa’s beautiful account) and even meals that have a regular rhythm to ease the mental load and live like the rest of the world with some degree of repetition when it’s not a feast season. The UP/IN/OUT triangle reminds me to move through my day or week like Jesus did.
The C list: Centered with Christ and Within, Connect, Cardio, Chore, Cultivate/Create/Champion, Cook, Corral Chaos, Cuddle and Calm have given me a poetic way to think about an ideal day, one that would include most of these things in mostly this order.
Finally, the 8 Cs and 5 Ps of Internal Family Systems are posted wherever I can. We have them near our dining room table, in journals and in our family vocabulary.
If I am operating with curiosity, calm, compassion, clarity, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness or when I exhibit presence, perspective, patience, playfulness, and persistence, I know I am most wholly myself and most in the Image of God. These words have been really helpful markers for me to evaluate my relationships and motivations and to know when to pause when I stray. They are also helpful for taking a look at our family culture, projects, organizational goals, and places of influence, aiming to bring our whole Imago Dei instead of lopsided leadership or an atmosphere of fear, control or anger.
In the comments, feel free to add anything that shaped you this year or that you believe will shape you in 2023!
