Spending Time with Friends: a Faithful Use of Time

friends take epic road trips

During my retreat - which I described in a previous post - I was able to name the top priority for my current stage of life: engage in practices that create space for me to experience the present and commune with God.  Maybe this sounds odd to you.  Some can't imagine how anyone could struggle to 'experience the present.'  But I do struggle with this.

After much consternation, many conversations and considerations (that was alliteration back there), I discovered that I am a '3' on the Enneagram.  If you aren't familiar with the Enneagram, there are many resources that can describe and explain the details of how knowing your number assists you as you relate to the world, God and yourself, but one of the more helpful things I read about being a '3' from Using the Enneagram in Prayer by Suzanne Zuercher was that, "[3's] rarely take the time to stop and discover their own experiences."  My immediate response to this was, "I don't understand what that even means.  At all.  Why would I need to 'discover' my own experience?  Just experience it!"  But then came a line that made sense of it all... "for 3's, the present seems to have no reality; it is only a small crack that separates past from future."

Yep.  That's me.

I'm always either dwelling on the past or planning for the future.  The present is indeed a tiny crack in time when I typically put my head down and get stuff done.  Chauffeur the kids.  Lead this or that meeting.  Write this article, sermon, e-mail, or memo.  Create this lesson plan.  Buy that gift.  Attend that game.  And while driving, leading, writing or creating, my mind's eye is looking ahead to an hour from now (will I be late?) or a week from now (am I booked that evening already?) or even a year from now.  I don't particularly care how a moment feels; only whether things are getting done.  Part of how I cope with disappointment, boredom or fear is ignoring it by planning for the next opportunity.  An exceptionally happy moment gets immediately tempered in my mind by remembering that failure from the other day.  A difficult time gets smoothed over by hope in the future.  This makes other people see me as calm, patient, undramatic or even-keeled.  And this serves me well most of the time.  But it also means feelings accumulate in me that are left completely unattended.  Frustrations, anger, joy and relief have no space in my reality.  Because my reality is a "small crack that separates past from future."  After reflection on my retreat, it turns out I don't want to pretend my way through life, being emotionally blind.  This inattentiveness to the present doesn't just harm me or my relationships with those I love.  It makes my relationship with God much less vibrant.  It distances me from the God who blesses my life with pleasures, pain and everything in-between.  

How do I widen that crack between past and future?  I tried to remember those times of my life when I FELT most alive; closest to God; excited to become, and aware of the present moment... Some of those times required a frame of mind that I would like to reclaim.  Others are practices I simply need to do more often.  Retreating (alone), journaling, being in nature, and physically using my body (get away from my desk/couch/bed) are all important.  Taking long drives in my car and going to the movies are also ways that open my present up.  Doing new things and maintaining friendships are also great ways for me to experience the present, notice my emotions, and notice my place in God's world.

Baptism(s)

After my retreat, my next sabbatical experience then, immersed me in one of these practices: spending time with friends.  I grew up with an older sister and no brothers, but by the end of seminary my two best friends and I were each gifted with a framed photo that explained the brotherly bond we had formed.   In the picture we are singing karaoke in the seminary basement.  Below the photo is a small rope.  Below the rope are the words from Ecclesiastes 4: 12, "A threefold cord is not quickly broken."  Seminary is an intense experience which the three of us did in our 20s which is an intense time of life.  We lived in the same house, traveled across the country together to visit each other's hometowns and shared the successes and failures of seminary life.  Vulnerabilities were exposed and tolerated.  Support was offered and received.  But as much as anything, we had fun.  We had fun talking about God and the church.  We had fun getting to know each other's families.  And we had fun playing foosball, disc golf, basketball, and creating skits to lampoon our professors.  (This was all on the up and up, of course.  We had an annual "Feast of Fools".  We were the chief fools, I think.)

The brood

Upon graduation from seminary the three of us were dispersed to Helena, Montana, Cashton, Wisconsin and Pittsburgh.  Marriages started happening.  Babies were born.  The three of us are now the sixteen of us.  We are godparents for each other's kids.  We are the first people to hear each other's good and bad news of life.  We made a commitment long ago that we have kept.  We choose to maintain the friendships.  We used to do this through typed snail mail letters.  Now we do this through Facebook, Messenger, FaceTime, and as always an annual weeklong trip together.  As one of us said a few years ago, "this week feels more real than the other 51 weeks in the year."  It is a time when the crack between past and future opens up beautifully.

Between storms

These friendships help me experience my present, notice how I am truly feeling and generate a level of gratitude I rarely have otherwise.  And so after my retreat at St. Joseph's we three 'boyz' gathered without kids or wives in Salt Lake City for a skiing trip to celebrate a 40th birthday.  (Not mine...yet.  May 30th for those who feel the need to gift...)

We've still got it

From the moment my plane landed, it felt - as always - like a homecoming.  Conversations about family, work, hopes and fears flowed immediately.  And so did the fun!  We were not together even a full three days (not everyone can be on sabbatical) but were able in that amount of time to eat the best Mexican food in town, watch a movie in Swedish (accidentally... but it pulled us in), get trapped at our ski resort for an afternoon while authorities attended to avalanche controls, taste test some craft beer(s), play indoor tennis for an afternoon and laugh a lot.


It's a quote that gets attributed to a couple different people, but years ago I heard the saying, "friends are the family you choose."  Friendships, like any relationship, require an investment of time, emotion and in many cases money.  These are all rare commodities in our lives.  Over the last 15 years we 'boyz' could easily have allowed the busyness of our lives to swallow our friendships whole.  It's hard to carve out a week together with all our schedules.  It's hard to attend each other's milestones.  It's hard to budget for the travel, remember all the birthdays/baptism anniversaries and stay up to date.  But knowing and being known by others is as worthwhile a spiritual practice as I can think of.  And so I keep choosing these friendships that can feel 'optional'.  Every time I do, I find it was a faithful use of time.

Retreating: A Faithful Use of Time

During my senior year at seminary in Columbia, South Carolina, my newlywed bride, Carla, went on a silent retreat to an Episcopal Center with a number of other 'novices'.  I don't recall the specifics of who or what drew her into that experience.  But I remember thinking it sounded fantastic.  You'd have to ask her for the details of how the days were shaped, but I think they included time for worship & prayer in a chapel and meals were taken together... in silence.  The days started early but in between the 'structured' moments, Carla was left alone with God.

Since then, for sixteen years, I've made myself too busy to seek out a big chunk of alone time with God.  The craving in my soul only became more pronounced as Carla fulfilled a requirement for her Spiritual Direction certification last Fall.  She spent six days at a retreat center in Iowa where she was left alone with God... remembering that she is in fact never actually alone.  One of my coping mechanisms as I coveted my own alone time with God was looking forward to sabbatical.

Pastors are strange souls.  Although the best ones know the wisdom of Sabbath - they teach the Commandments for crying out loud! - they can be very bad at resting.  It would be like a dentist who doesn't brush her teeth.  Or a mechanic who refuses to change the oil in his car.  Many of the colleagues I have spoken with in my preparations for sabbatical told me they had a difficult time 'disconnecting'.  This seems to be a problem that is not unique to pastors, of course.  I have known many small business owners, farmers and others who say it takes three or four days or even a full week on vacation before they can start to relax.  But a significant percentage of pastors, at least in my small sample size, were never able to experience true rest, even after three months away from their desk.  I have a number of theories for this which I won't detail here but these stories moved me to devise a 'disconnection plan' for myself.

The plan was this: January 1 would be my last Sunday at First.  January 2 would be my special college football feast (Go Badgers!).  January 3 - 7 would be my first spiritually directed retreat at a hermitage on St. Jospeh's Ridge.  Those five days would hopefully be a time to disengage from parish ministry and enter into an intentional time of personal re-connection with all those things I too easily neglect.  I would sleep whenever I was tired.  No alarm!  I would eat whenever I was hungry.  (I was on my own for meals.)  And I would read or walk through the hills, or stay up all night or... whatever the Spirit moved me to do.  The only constriction on all this freedom of time was a daily spiritual direction appointment at 3:00 in the villa.

How did the plan go?  January 1 included a great worship service at First where I was formally blessed on my way.  January 2 saw my Badgers win.  During commercials, I packed up four suppers' worth of food, lots of salad fixin's and fruit for the rest of the week and Tuesday made my way to St. Joe's.  It had rained over the weekend and then frozen hard soon thereafter.  Roads were slick.  This is significant because upon my arrival at the villa at St. Joseph, I was forced to keep my vehicle in the 'upper lot'.  The quarter mile road that ends at the hermitages - they have three - begins with a sharp downhill slope.  This meant my backpack full of books, suitcase full of clothes, grocery bags and all other supplies had to be carried.  Did I mention it was 9 degrees?  With a 20 mph wind?  That's as warm as it would get throughout my time, by the way.  The windchill Friday afternoon was more than 30... below.

The hermitages at St. Joseph's are simple, yet complete.  Each has one room with a bed, a bath
room, a reclining chair, a full kitchen, a writing desk and a view of the woods and valley beyond.  I was assigned the 'Sophia' hermitage.  For real.  (You may know my eldest daughter was also named for holy wisdom.)  A coincidence?

It took me almost an hour to carefully slide my belongings along the skating rink/road to 'Sophia'.  It took another hour to unpack and thaw out my fingers and toes.  Once the books had been placed neatly in the window sill, my clothes had been tucked away in drawers, my food organized in the mini-fridge and shaving kit hung from the inside of the bathroom door, I sat down in the reclining chair which received me like a very old friend.  

All my preparations had been made.  My family were already in the Bahamas beginning their adventure.  I had no 'work' to do at First for three months.  There was NOTHING left for me to plan, figure out or organize.  The quiet was deafening.  The absence of a to-do list was bewildering.  But almost immediately, I could feel my soul exhale.  And then I fell asleep.

Spiritual directors will tell you that it is not uncommon for those on retreat to sleep a lot.  Most of us don't sleep enough and so our bodies oftentimes take advantage of retreats like these to catch up.  This first nap of mine lasted almost two hours.  I then had supper, read for a bit and went to bed around 10:00.  I woke up the next day at noon.  Seriously.  There are only two other times in my life when I remember physically shutting down like that: 1) in high school after a National Youth Gathering in New Orleans when I think I averaged 3 hours of sleep per night for a week.  As our 6 person youth group made our way home in a Dad's RV, I fell asleep in Baton Rouge and didn't wake up until the next day as we rolled past Stevens Point.  2) after the greatest three months of my life studying abroad in England, traveling throughout Europe and meeting Carla (it was like a 100 day adrenaline rush) I came home to Medford instead of taking a J-term class at Augsburg and mostly slept for two weeks.  The first three days of my retreat at St. Joseph's felt a lot like that.  My body heard the quiet as my mind received the release from responsibilities and my soul opened to the presence of God through deep sleep.

In my waking hours, I was becoming reacquainted with feelings, dreams and disappointments from the whole of my life.  I was remembering people and events that had slipped away.  It was not easy to read, reflect, journal, pray, wonder and confront MYSELF.  I do these things for and with other people, a whole congregation of people, actually, every day.  But I had not flexed my spiritual muscles and focused these practices on me much for the last fifteen years.  It was about time.

My primary resources for this sabbath work were all the photographs I've uploaded to Shutterfly for 16 years plus two books: 1) Using the Enneagram in Prayer by Suzanne Zuercher and 2) Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor.  I could spend thousands of words recounting the many insights, discoveries and questions these two books brought out of me.  But I'd rather simply say this: by being on retreat I had the time and space to slowly digest my thoughts, pray through questions and hear God's response through the bits of wisdom I've been taught my whole life, through Scripture stories that seemed to address me personally and through the spiritual director to whom God gave helpful words.  My train of thought was never interrupted by a phone call, kids calling, "Dad, Dad, Dad..." or a screen of any kind.  And so I am now able to name my greatest desire.  I have thoughtfully concluded what I am most thankful for in this life.  I am more aware than ever of how my preferences and personality build obstacles between myself and God.  That awareness has led to a list of strategies and tactics that I know are able to overcome those obstacles.
But most of all, my time on retreat reminded me that prayer is not something to be 'done'.  In my experience prayer is being in the presence of the holy which may or may not happen when I want it to.  It may or may not happen on a Sunday morning, before a meal, before bed, or upon waking up.  During my retreat I remembered that prayer happens unexpectedly and to be prayerful, I simply need to put myself in an abundance of situations where I may hear God more often.  Or as Jesus says, "Stay alert!"  The noise of my life, and my unwillingness to push back against my busyness had all but crushed my prayer life.  On retreat, I remembered how to pray.

And so I commend retreating to you as it is a very faithful use of time.  'Leaving' your loved ones for 3-7 days may seem selfish or at least some level of crazy to our hyper-productive world which does not value quiet, being or prayerfulness.  But I believe these 5 cold days in January may become the cornerstone for an entirely new prayer life for me which will transform every other part of my journey.  It was not 'fun' or easy.  I was happy to return home.  But it was as faithful a use of time as I can imagine.  

Saying Good Bye: A Faithful Use of Time

This past Sunday, February 5th, I completed the first month of my sabbatical.  Thus far, my time away from work has been spent 1) tending to my relationship with God as I took 5 days for a silent retreat at a hermitage outside St. Joseph, 2) tending to my deepest friendships as I spent time in Salt Lake City with my best friends skiing - and other stuff, 3) tending to my relationship with family as I shared special meals with my parents, and many consecutive meals with my wife and kids...  "Dad doesn't have any evening meetings this week... or next week... or the week after that!"  4) and tending to my marriage as Carla and I spent her pre-birthday week in Mexico -  without the aforementioned kids.  Blissful.  And speaking of bliss... I have also been spending my time acclimating to our sabbatical home in Hopetown, Elbow Cay, Abaco - in the Bahamas.  (It's actually not that hard to get used to Abaco in January!)

Perhaps all this travel and transition explains why I have neglected to blog during the first month.  Or maybe I should just admit... I didn't really feel like blogging.  And yet I have much to share!  I hope this blog will be a way to celebrate the gifts God gives when we human do-ers take time to be.
Already, I have remembered things about myself, re-discovered things about God, and fallen in deeper love with those people and interests that have become too distant over the course of my overactive life.  Each week - or perhaps twice a week - I will share a couple pictures, and a few thoughts about the theme of my sabbatical: 'The Faithful Use of Time'. 

#1: Saying Goodbye is a Faithful Use of Time

My sabbatical may have officially started January 5, but my physical absence from work was not the only way to measure the beginning of the experience.  Preparations for our living situation began more than a year ago.  Shifting the kids out of their schools and completing the enrollment paperwork in Abaco brought a dose of reality this past Fall.  But more than anything, what made me feel like my sabbatical was truly beginning were the many goodbyes I received throughout the month of December.

At each 'last' meeting I had, members of teams offered words of encouragement, asked great questions about my own expectations and thanked me for another year of service at First.  At each of the four funerals that month family members and luncheon servers shared their genuine excitement for my time of rest.  Whether it was worship on a Sunday morning or Wednesday evening, the kids' Christmas program or Christmas Eve, there were so many hardy handshakes given followed by a smile and more words of love.  That's what I especially noticed about these goodbyes.  In the special notes and gifts I received; in the drop-in visits to my office; in the 'out-of-the-blue' e-mails and phone calls, I heard many forms of "we love you and your family."  That's what a goodbye is for, after all: a last chance to share love with someone you care about before a time of separation.

I hadn't felt the love of goodbyes like this since Christmas of 2007 when I left my first call in Cashton for First Lutheran in Onalaska.  That December - nine years ago - was the most painful month of my life because those goodbyes were not said with a return in mind.  They were said with finality.  A cherished part of my life was passing away.  A new chapter was being born.  And as in all deaths and births, there was grief and pain before the peace and joy.  Then, as now, goodbyes included stories and thoughts that are never otherwise said.  One could bemoan the fact that we typically don't say these words of thanks and love and encouragement other than before a time of separation.  But I am simply thankful that these moments happen at all.  I'm not too picky about when, exactly.

The best part, of course, about this time of 'goodbyes' is that there is no finality behind the well-wishing.  The mutual love-sharing that preceded my sabbatical was not a period at the end of a chapter.  Instead, it was a comma in the middle of a much longer story.  For however long I serve First Lutheran, the goodbyes of December 2016 will hold a special place in my soul.
Thank you to the many who went out of their way to say goodbye.  It was a faithful use of your time!