The Practice Of Saying No

The Practice Of Saying No

For a while now, spiritual leaders have been saying that the greatest spiritual problem of our time is busyness. Some have pointed out that the Chinese character for being busy is made up of two elements: heart and killing. Busyness kills the heart. That is a violent image...busyness kills the heart. Thomas Merton says that our overwork is a pervasive form of violence today.

Busyness is causing harm to ourselves and our world.

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence...activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

- Thomas Merton

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Video used during sermon:

Encountering Others

We are the ones to see and treat each person and each encounter as holy, to go out of our way to love our neighbors as ourselves, we are all connected. Do you hear Christ even now? 

I am being bullied, stand up for me.

I am separated from my children, help me.

I am failing in school, tutor me.

I am Muslim, welcome me. 

I am homeless, listen to my story.

There is no such thing as those people. There is no such thing as other people or other people’s children or other people’s problems.

Watch the video used during the sermon:

Paying Attention

When Moses notices the burning bush he could have said, “oh wow look at that,” and just kept going with his sheep. Or “that’s interesting but I don’t have time to check that out, I have an agenda to keep, I’ll come back later.” Or he could have been busy looking down at his phone and glanced up and thought, meh, and gone back to the captivating cat video he was watching.

The point is if he had decided to just keep on going with his sheep or if he had decided to come back later, he wouldn’t have been Moses. He would have just been another guy, just another shepherd. Instead, he is paying attention and turns aside to see the great sight of God and because he does, he becomes this great partner with God who gets to work with God to set people free.

Practicing The Presence Podcast with Diane Bricker

Practicing The Presence is a podcast from Arapaho United Methodist Church. This episode (Episode 1!) features Pastor Blair Thompson-White and Spiritual Director Diane Bricker in a conversation about how to experience the presence of God through life and spiritual practice.

Walking The Earth

Walking is an act of disconnecting and reconnecting. As we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we remember the walks of the civil rights movement - they walked to disconnect us from a system that was designed to keep one part of us separated from another.  They disconnected themselves from thoughts of their own safety, because many of them were beaten and some of them died.  

They walked disconnected from a destination but reconnected to a purpose.  

They reconnected to each other and found courage in struggling together.  They reconnected to a sense of dignity and worth as people created in God’s image. And they walked with God, the God who executes justice for the orphan and the widow.  The God who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. The God who requires of us that we walk in those ways.

Waking Up To The Presence Of God

If I could summarize what the spiritual life is, I would say it is learning to see. It is earning to see the holy in the ordinary - learning to see that everything is spiritual.

The Bible is a collection of stories, poems, letters, written by people who experienced God, people who saw God and were so transformed by what they saw that they wrote about it, they passed it on to help generations that followed to see God too, to learn how to see God’s presence in our world, in our lives every moment.

Because the Biblical witness and experience and reason all point to the truth that everything is sacred and that our journey towards becoming our best selves is really about learning to see the holy everywhere. Learning to see.