Pastoral Thought--July 1

 This morning I altered from my traditional morning regime, and by doing so, I re-affirmed something important.

As the rain came down in a constant stream, I headed down to the basement and ‘clipped into’ my spin bike. After scrolling through the cycling workouts on my iPhone, I settled on a 20 minute Recovery Ride. On the surface this was not a hard choice to make. My legs and hips were sore from a long week of rinding and walking. I wanted to workout, but didn’t want the endure the strain and heat of a burning spin workout where I would burn 500 calories in 30 minutes. 

Onto the screen my trainer appeared—Matt. He was a Division I cross country runner and cyclist. Training with Matt is more technical and more detail oriented than training with other instructors. Pedal stroke rate, heart rate monitoring, even how I press down on the peddles are become necessary metics to pay attention to as I ride or run with Matt. But not today. We left all of that go . . Today we were going on a ride to help our muscles recover from the strain of past workouts. 

Now for some people these feel like wasted workouts or wasted days of training. They seem negative when considering the desire to improve and press on toward physical training goals. But even in the negative workouts, the ones where you don’t work aggressively something happens. 

While I was riding with Matt I thought about the work of Carl Jung. 

In the 1940s Carl was skeptical of Christianity because he did not see consistent transformation or growth from the church or its members. Instead he witnessed in his family of ministers and teachers, people who were burned out, unhappy, frustrated by the work that God called them to do. There was no joy only fatigue and cynicism. "Why would God want people to be unhappy like this," he wondered. As I rode I remembered this words: 

“The full journey toward wholeness must always include negative experiences (the ‘cross’) that we usually reject.”

No one likes a negative experience. We taught from an early age to press on toward perfection, toward greatness, to work harder and longer in order to achieve success. My morning trainer Matt would agree with this. We want to push as hard and as long as we can. But then, as we work this hard for such a long period of time, we wonder why we are burned out, fatigued. . . Why do our muscles hurt so much and our souls ache? 

It is because we have not taken the time to embrace, to use Jung’s concept, the negative—the thing that we don’t want to do because it seems contrary to our normal. But when we realize the role the cross that the cross played for humanity and our redemption, why wouldn’t we accept it? To use my example from today, why wouldn’t we clip in, ride gently, in order to grow? Why not spent some time along our journey of wholeness embracing truths that are necessary? 

I wonder what might happen in our walks as Christians if we allowed ourselves to ‘breath’ and ‘rest’ at the times when we need it? 

Blessings

Rev. Derek