Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Weekend One Word

Weekend One Word: Deep

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I told my husband recently that if I didn’t write consistently, I would turn into the most shallow person in the universe. “Writing is a contemplative practice for me, and it forces me to go deep,” I admitted. “Without writing I would just skate on the surface of everything.”

I don’t think I’m alone in this. I suspect a large majority of us would be content to skim the surface, because the truth is, going deep is hard work. It takes time, space, commitment, and energy. It’s far easier to focus on the minutiae of life than it is to “listen with the ear of our heart,” as St. Benedict once said.

Neuroscience reveals, however, that it’s not good for us to be so constantly preoccupied with the busyness of our lives that we don’t allow ourselves to dive deep. Our brains are actually wired for both shallow and deep thinking, but too often, we don’t give ourselves the ample time and space needed for mindful contemplation.

As neuroscientist Caroline Leaf observes in her book Switch on Your Brain, “When we don’t frequently slow down and enter this rest state, this Sabbath in the brain, we disrupt natural functions in the brain.” This, in turn, can lead to anxiety, distraction, and a sense of restlessness and agitation, as well as serious health problems like depression.

Leaf takes her theory one step further, suggesting that we need to access this deeper, more restful contemplative state regularly in order to “keep connected to our spirits and to be able to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit…Our minds need time to understand what our spirits already know.”

I thought about Leaf’s theory when I read these verses from Proverbs recently:

My child, pay attention to what I say.
    Listen carefully to my words.
Don’t lose sight of them.
    Let them penetrate deep into your heart,
for they bring life to those who find them,
    and healing to their whole body. (40:20-22)

King Solomon doesn’t merely advise us to read Scripture; he suggests we take this reading one step further and “listen carefully” to the words, letting them “penetrate deep into your heart.”

This kind of Scripture reading requires deep thinking – sitting with the words, letting them soak into your mind, body, and soul, and giving the Holy Spirit the time and space to do his work in you.

Too often I find myself rushing through my daily Bible study. I’ll read a handful of verses, consider them for a minute or two, and then move on. More often than not, I try to get through the Bible, rather than let the Bible get through to me. In doing this, I am cheating myself out of something life-giving and beautiful: authentic connection and intimacy with God.

King Solomon obviously wrote Proverbs long before the dawn of modern neuroscience. But he understood, even then, what scientific research is proving today: in order to live the fullest, most abundant life and enjoy healing in our brains, bodies, and souls, we need to allow ourselves the time and space to go deep.

Weekend One Word: Glory

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This week has been hard. I’ve felt weary and downtrodden by all the noise, by the executive orders and the alternative facts, by the fakes news and real news and everything in between. Maybe you have, too?

Thursday afternoon, as I walked Josie along the perimeter of the golf course, I noticed they’d cut down several trees. All that remained were jagged stumps, scattered branches, sawdust, and tire tracks ground deep into the mud and frozen grass.

Even though rationally I knew the management had every right to remove the trees, I felt betrayed. I’d come to think of the golf course as my own personal winter nature sanctuary, and now it was ravaged, ugly, the earth scarred, the landscape bare.

I worried about the owls who call back and forth from the white pine trees at dusk. I wondered about the fox we’ve seen trotting jauntily from green to green, bushy orange tail swinging.

The ravaged golf course seemed like a perfect metaphor for the state of my heart and my soul.

Our walk done, Josie and I stepped from the golf course back onto my neighborhood street, and that’s when I felt the Glory Be prayer rise up with my breath.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

I’ve been repeating this prayer to myself a lot lately. I started reciting it multiple times a day after hearing it at the end of the daily prayer on the Pray-as-You-Go app I listen to each morning. The more often I hear it, the more often I find myself repeating it under my breath throughout the day.

It grounds me, gives me something to dig my roots into.

In that moment, as I stood with my dog on the edge of the muddy golf course, I understood the wisdom of this prayer as if for the first time, and it comforted me.

God in three Persons has been here long before what we know as the beginning.

He is here with us now.

He will be with us forever, long into the future as we understand it and beyond.

There’s a stabilizing comfort in that, a certain unshakeable solidity that gives me both hope and perspective.

God is bigger than this, whatever our “this” may be. He’s here with us in it, but at the same time, he’s bigger than whatever it is that’s ravaging the landscape of our souls.

God transcends past, present, and future. He simply has been, is, and will always be.

Glory be.

Weekend One Word: Work

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Here’s the question that naturally springs from this verse: how does God work?

I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I don’t have any answers. But I will tell you what I think I know, which is this:

God works in grand, sweeping, universal ways and in the most subtle, personal ways. He is broad brush strokes and painstaking detail work. He works whether we notice his work or not. He is particular and personal and intimate and small. He is awesome, powerful, and universal. And through it all, in the small and intimate and in the grand and sweeping, God is love. His work is love.

God is love. His work is love. And thus, that’s our work too. Created in his image, God in us, we are called to love.

I’ve learned this one the hard way, friends, and it’s taken me most of my life. But here’s the truth: God is the foundation for everything, and every aspect of your life begins with him.

You can’t start with your work and move toward God.

You can’t start with your marriage and move toward God.

You can’t start with your children and move toward God.

You can’t start with your passion or your calling and move toward God.

You have to start with God; everything in your life flows out from your relationship with him. Knowing that in your heart, mind, soul, muscles, sinews, and bones changes everything, from the way you relate to friends, strangers, and loved ones to the way you do your work.

Weekend One Word: Awaken

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Weekend One Word: Awaken

So often we see what’s right in front of us — the dirty dishes stacked in the sink; the laundry piled on the floor; the unopened emails in our inbox; the baby’s hair, sleep tousled; the glaze of frost glistening on the maple leaves — but are we really awake to it all?

Seeing is passive. We see what passes in front of our eyes, but we are not aware. We look, but we are not awake. Life unfurls, and we miss most of it.

A few nights ago at bedtime, Rowan lamented that his life was going by too fast (this, from an eleven-year-old). “I want to slow it down,” he said.

Rowan, like me, is prone to living ahead of himself. He’s either worrying about what’s coming down the line — usually the next math test — or eagerly anticipating the next fun thing – the vacation, the birthday party, the movie night.

“The key to slowing it down is to live in the present moment,” I told him that night, speaking to him but preaching to myself. “Not regretting what happened yesterday, not anticipating what’s coming tomorrow, but being aware of where you are right now.”

There is beauty all around us – in the tousled bed head and the glistening frost, but also, if you are awake to it, in the dirty dishes and the laundry.

Let’s not only look at it and see it, but awaken to the holiness of everyday, ordinary life.

Weekend One Word: Help

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help

As I wrote in my monthly newsletter this week, I’ve been feeling a little volatile these last ten days. In the wake of the election and the subsequent unrest in America, I’ve found myself fluctuating wildly, one moment declaring I will become a vocal activist in support of marginalized people, the next moment yearning for my coziest socks, my grandmother’s afgan, and a stack of romance novels.

The truth is, I don’t really know what to do, and I suspect I’m not alone in that. The feelings of anger, fear, isolation, and misunderstanding are very real and very powerful among Americans across all political, social, and racial spectrums right now. The problems our country is facing feel too big — certainly much too big for any one person.

I tend to get a little myopic during times of great stress. I turn inward. I think a lot about myself – how I’ve been wronged, how I feel. That’s why I like the message in this verse from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. It simplifies the issue for me; it redirects my attention away from myself and brings everything that feels big and burdensome and overwhelming down to scale.

My foremost job, Paul reminds me, is simply to help others live well — and that’s a practice I can apply to the people living under my own roof, to my neighbor next door, to my co-worker in the next cubicle, to the homeless man on the corner.

So that’s what I will be doing today and tomorrow and the next day after that: I’ll be doing my best to help others live well.

When we put it like that, it doesn’t sound so difficult, does it?

Peace for your weekend, friends…