Barbara Brown Taylor was once asked to speak at a church, and when she asked what the pastor wanted her to speak about, he simply said, “Come tell us about what is saving your life now.”
She writes, “It was as if he had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground…all I had to do was figure out what my life depended on. All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about it that helped my listeners figure out those same things for themselves.
The answers I gave all those years ago are not the same answers I would give today – that is the beauty of the question—but the principle is the same. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all the touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”
So, what is saving your life right now? What are the practices, activities, and experiences that your life depends upon, and do you make space for them in your day-to-day life? Or, do your to-do lists, busy schedules, and the stressors of modern life take charge on most days? Maybe it’s time for us to rediscover what our lives truly depend upon – and what they don’t.
Many of our Bible Study classes will be using Hard & Holy Work as a guide throughout the season of Lent. We will certainly reference the book in worship as well, but we’d like to dig a little deeper and ask ourselves, how are we sustaining ourselves to do hard and holy work for the long haul? What are the life-saving practices that make this hard and holy work possible? When the work begins to feel more “hard” than “holy,” how do we replenish ourselves along the way?