Pastoral Thought--September 8

As I wanted Emma walk down the driveway toward our mailbox, I sighed and ’shushed’ the dogs as they pleaded with her to come back. She hasn’t done this since March!! 

The Annual "first day of school” picture was taken in the living room. Emma was beaming with a smile prepared to meet ‘her people’ again. She misses them, and they miss her. Virtual connections are just that—virtual. They can only take us so far or connect us so much. She, like most people that I know, needs the physical presence of humanity. She needs to walk down the hall listening to whatever music is popular with her friends—even though they will be 6 feet apart. 

So there she goes. . . out to wait for the bus. As it lumbers down the road, I think, “my baby is growing too fast.” Another year begins, and I hope it will be a safe year. But I cannot control that any longer and I am a bit anxious. . . 

To top it off, my head is killing me. . . I slept wrong last night. The alignment in my back was off and so, at 5:00am, I needed three Advil, an ice pack, and to breath slowly and gently. By the time that Emma is finishing shuffling through her music on her phone for the bus ride to SV, my mind is mixture of anxiety and hope. 

Whether you have children going off to school or not, I suspect that you know what it feels like taste that mixture of anxiety and hope. To be gripped by it. To be held in a place that you don’t want to be in. If that is something that you are working through right now, let me offer you the words of Anselm Grün. He wrote: 

"The demand to always be perfect creates anxiety. It makes me live in constant fear: I can't do it. My project is not good enough. So I create a better and better public image, I have to present myself that way. Anxiety reveals the excessive demands I make on life. My project need not be the best. But many cling to the idea that their project has to be the best. They want to push down their anxiety, either by psychopharmacological means or spiritual suppression. But it doesn't work. I can only transform anxiety if I transform my own attitude: I need not be the best project on earth."

I agree with Anselm, we need to ‘be the best project on earth” and thereby living fully into who God is calling us to be. 

Blessings

Rev. Derek