Rest for Your Soul

NOTE: This is the first of what I hope will be a weekly series of reflections. I'd love your input, and this blog format makes that easy, whether you write something in response or just check one of the little comment options at the bottom to let me know you stopped by... and cared!

New semester, new year, new life... welcome to it! Plenty of stuff to keep you busy, without a doubt: Social life, work, MU groups (PROWL, anyone?), not to mention classes and the various reading, writing, and agonizing that go along with them. So I have a question for you: Where you gonna find rest? I don't mean sleep (although that tends to get pushed to the bottom of the priority list, too!). In the Christian tradition, that's part of what the whole idea of "Sabbath" is about. Trouble is, we've tended to confine that to Sundays. It's really a much bigger concept, having to do with both something we offer to God and also something we receive. You might say in some ways it's really a "state of mind."

One of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner described it this way: “The room is quiet. You're not feeling tired enough to sleep or energetic enough to go out. For the moment there is nowhere else you'd rather go, no one else you'd rather be. You feel at home in your body. You feel at peace in your mind. For no particular reason, you let the palms of your hands come together and close your eyes. Sometimes it is only when you happen to taste a crumb of it that you dimly realize what it is that you're so hungry for you can hardly bear it.”

I hope you get at least a taste of that this semester, because even a taste can sustain us for a long time. Maybe these reflections can even help a little. Let me know if there is a topic or idea you'd enjoy reading more about... In the mean time, may you find "rest for your soul" in whatever ways seem good to you.

Faith, Hope, Love,

Dana