Thursday Thoughts
Dancing Through Grief
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 05/30/24
I spent this past weekend at Kripalu (a yoga
retreat center in the Berkshires), where I participated in a weekend of yoga,
rest, and dance at the “Dance Your Heart Out/Shake Your Soul” retreat. While I rarely let anyone but my daughter see
my dance moves, at Kripalu I found myself in a room of people, sometimes
dancing together while the instructor led, sometimes on my own in a room of
joyous dancing people, sometimes in partners or triads. I went because the
director of the somatic therapy training program I participated in for the past
few years was leading and in large part because I want to bring more embodied
spiritual practices to our own community.
We Western Christians are good at praying with our brains, but we forget that God also created our breath and our bodies and we can pray with those too. In the second creation story we read that God made a human from the fertile topsoil and then “breathed into [his] nostrils the breath of life, and the [man] became a living creature” (Gen. 2:7). This text kept coming to mind as I did yoga and danced - my breath is God’s breath and my body part of God’s good and joyous creation.
As someone who loves intellectual pursuits, it is a challenge to drop out of my mind and into the rest of me - into my hands and arms and legs and feet and heart that beats and lungs that breathe. But, having spent a weekend exploring prayer and connection to God’s creation through breath and movement, I came home with a feeling of calm that was palpable.
I also arrived home to discover that while I was away and off my phone (Kripalu policy!), Israel had attacked Rafah and women and children already fleeing violence were burned to death in their tents. How does someone look at another human and believe that person should be dead? How does someone forget that the other person is also part of God’s good creation, that their bodies were also given life by the breath of God?
All of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures can be summed up in this way: Love God and love one another. While Jesus proclaimed this to be a new commandment in John 13:34 (I give you a new commandment: Love one another), this was already a teaching in Judaism. Leviticus 19:18 similarly exhorts people to love one another, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge…but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus showed what loving one another looked like, but God had always expected this of God’s people.
Who here has experienced this imbalance of joy and grief, of peace and turmoil? Who here has been discouraged when the world is so violent and wondered what difference their own peacemaking faith and life can even make? Oh – I’m not alone?!
I won’t be trite and say “just dance your way to joy!” But, I might say that when the news of people hurting people weighs you down, don’t give up your journey toward being someone who brings God’s radically inclusive love to the world. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says there is a time to weep and a time to dance - sometimes we have to do both things at once. And if what you need to do to keep the course of faith is to dance through the grief, then turn up the music and let your muscles, bones, connective tissues, heart, and lungs that God created move in rhythm with the tunes and let your heart break, heal, and connect with the Spirit who enlivens you. Because God knows that this world needs a few more people connected to the movements of the Spirit, able to love the world around them with an overflow of joy.
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
PS - Michael Franti & Spearhead’s “Show Me Your Peace Sign” is a good song to dance to when the violence of the world breaks our heart once again.
The Next Big Thing
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 05/23/24
June is a month of transitions - especially
for students and teachers. The preschool children at Little Shepherd have been
going to and from the sanctuary all week to practice for their upcoming
graduation. I spent the other evening at the Honor Society awards night for my
own daughter, who is graduating highschool in just a few weeks. Our teachers
are finishing up an academic year and starting their much deserved summer break
before they return next year to a fresh crop of students.
Life is full of transitions, from our first breath to our last. Some of them are large transitions - moves, graduations, marriages, divorces, job changes - and some of them are small - outgrowing your favorite shoes or pants (for kids or adults!). Growing up programs us to ask and expect that there will be a NEXT BIG THING, a graduation, a job change, a move. I don’t know about you, but I find it easy to get caught in trying to figure out and control what that NEXT BIG THING is.
Even Jesus worried about the next big thing. Remember the time he knew his end was near and he spent the night praying in the garden with his sleepy friends who couldn’t stay awake with him in his own dark night of the soul? That night he was “distressed and agitated,” “deeply grieved” and begged God to change what he was facing (Mark 14:32-36).
What I want to suggest is that when we are facing the NEXT BIG THING we might lower our gaze from the hoped for or feared future to what is right in front of us. Are there things we need to do now, today, to live out our faith in this world? Are there people who need to be loved now with a kind word or small act of service? And are there moments now that we might pause in prayer, much like Jesus did?
In Philippians 4, Paul encouraged his readers to substitute worry for prayer. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (4:6-7).
So, during this month of transitions for our students and educators and during lifetimes full of transitions, I encourage you to find some moments in your day to take your eyes off the NEXT BIG THING and look around you. How can you love and serve and pray now?
And, when you get a moment, send some prayers up for our students and educators that they will finish this year strong and that the Spirit might guide them into whatever is next!
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
Let the Little Children
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 05/16/24
This time of year leaves those who have
children in their lives in a state of shock - how is the school year already
over? And, how are these kids already old enough to finish this grade?! I’m
reeling a bit over the fact that my daughter is about to graduate from
highschool and a week later will be at college orientation. HOW DID THIS
HAPPEN?! Children really do pull us into the future at a breakneck speed.
I love that each May we celebrate the PMBC kiddos with our Children and Youth Sunday. This year it coincides with Pentecost (May 19th). I cannot imagine a better text than Acts 2:17-18 for the Sunday on which our young people will lead us in worship.
In the days to
come–it is our God who speaks–I will pour out my Spirit on all humankind. Your
daughters and sons will prophesy, your young people will see visions, and your
elders will dream dreams. Even on the most insignificant of my people, both
women and men, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.[1]
There aren’t a lot of references to children in the Bible, especially not in the New Testament. The childhood death rate was high and children had little social power. But, we do have that little story in Matthew 19:13-15 in which the disciples try to shoo the clamoring kids away and Jesus stops them from doing so and blesses the kids. I guess they didn’t hear Jesus tell them they had to become like children to enter the kingdom, had to welcome children, and had better not harm a child (Matthew 18:1-7)!
We love our kids and youth here at PMBC. But, what if beyond just being thankful they are here and enjoying the children’s story we also remembered that when the Spirit came upon the church on its day of birth, the promise was that young people would also be God’s spokespeople? If we remembered that, we might seek out their wisdom more often or look around at how they are making themselves heard nationally and globally and ask ourselves how God is speaking through them. Youth are often the folx who are not yet encumbered by social norms and more bravely speak out the truth of what they see.
So, on this Pentecost, remember that the children were always part of the Spirit’s promise. Perhaps look around at the young people in your life and ask yourself how you can be more like them. And definitely come and be led by them in worship this Sunday!
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
Mothering
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 05/09/24
Mother’s Day is one of those Sundays that
promises to be a whole lot of fun and oftentimes turns out to be complicated
for a whole lot of folks. When I was a kid my church would have “contests”
during service and give prizes away to moms. They changed the categories each
year, but they would ask things like “Who has the most kids?” (always my mom,
of course), “which mom came from the furthest away?,” etc. But, not all of the
women in our church who wanted to be moms could be moms. So, for some women in
our congregation Mother’s Day was painful. And I imagine that some of the women
without children didn’t want to be moms and had to answer a lot of questions
about when they were going to get married or have kids.
The mothers of the Bible show us all kinds of ways of being a mother. Some of them desperately wanted children and couldn’t have them easily (e.g., Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, Elizabeth), many of them lost their children (e.g., Bathsheba and Rizpah), some of them taught their children (the mother of Proverbs 31), some had to resort to desperate means to have children (e.g., Lot’s daughters and Tamar), some had children who fought (e.g., Eve, Rachel, and Rebecca),and some of them raised their children in poverty (e.g., the widow of Zarephath). While we have some stories of women who just couldn’t have children, we can safely assume that those stories happened then just as they do now. There have always been many ways to be a woman and a mother.
What we don’t have in Scripture are clear teachings telling women to be mothers. What we do have in Scripture are maternal images used to describe God as both nurturing and fighting for the safety of God’s children. Even God has many ways of being a mother to creation! (Want to hear more? Come to service this Sunday!)
So, where am I going with this? This weekend, as we celebrate Mother’s Day, I encourage you to expand your definition of a “mother.” Who in your life has been like God, who has nurtured and fought for you? No matter their gender or relationship to you, if they did those things they “mothered” you. Perhaps, in addition to spending time with your own mothers or children, reach out to all who have mothered you and thank them for being God’s presence in your life.
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
Blessing the Mothers
By Jan Richardson
Who are our
first sanctuary.
Who fashion
a space of blessing
with their own being:
with the belly
the bone and
the blood
or,
if not with these,
then with the
durable heart
that offers itself
to break
and grow wide,
to gather itself
around another
as refuge,
as home
Who lean into
the wonder and terror
of loving what
they can hold
but cannot contain.
Who remain
in some part of themselves
always awake,
a corner of consciousness
keeping perpetual vigil.
Who know
that the story
is what endures
is what binds us
is what runs deeper
even than blood
and so they spin them
in celebration
of what abides
and benediction
on what remains:
a simple gladness
that latch onto us
and graces us
on our way.
A Prayer for Play
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 04/25/24
As I am away for a time of rest and renewal with a gathering of other clergy women, I leave you this prayer.
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
God of levity,
Grant us a rest that permeates our waking hours. Mark our days with the recreation and playfulness of our youth. Restore to us the energy for mischief and creativity and competition that we’ve lost as we’ve gotten older. Put people in our lives who inspire us in our play. Game nights, karaoke, gardening, film – we want more than the binary of work and sleep. We want delight in the in-between, those moments of interior rest that can happen while we’re awake. Show us what forms of entertainment and what hobbies lead us into peace. And protect us from the lie that if we are awake, we should be working. Remind us that a light heart is not a heart that lacks depth. That our play does not negate our grief. Let us rest in the way we need to today. Amen.
From Cole Arthur Riley’s Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human. New York: Convergent, 2024: 159-160.
