By Callie J. Smith | Like yeast, weeds and mustard seeds, things sometimes spread and grow in remarkable ways. I remember years ago, a man across the office hall from me would go on long walks. “Need to take it for a stroll,” he’d say as he left for the afternoon, referring to whatever project he was working on. I found the idea attractive, and I started trying out lunch hour walks.
By Callie J. Smith | The concept of a three- to four-month clergy renewal leave can seem foreign when congregations first consider it. Planning for a pastor to be away (and, in some cases, unreachable) for that long can mean planning for a major disruption of leadership patterns. As intimidating as that sounds, such disruption could very well be a gift.
By Callie J. Smith | Valuable as the concept of sabbath time may be, I’ve been paying a great deal of attention lately to another metaphor: that of space. Sabbath days and renewal leaves set apart a certain kind of time in the rhythm of our lives. They also set apart a certain kind of space. “One of the most precious gifts we can offer is to be a place of refuge, to be Sabbath for one another,” writes Wayne Muller in Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives (119).
By Callie J. Smith | Rest, renewal, and sabbath have suffered immensely at the hands of Western individualism. In some spiritual traditions, these related practices had the ethical gravitas of not killing, not stealing and not lying (e.g. note the presence of sabbath practice in the Ten Commandments). Yet, many of us now actually feel guilty about making time for them.
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