Away.

Freely and Lightly series, #5.

 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

~ Matthew 11:28-30 msg

“Away” has changed my life.

Almost exactly 22 years ago, I took my first sabbatical. I was a 34-year-old pastor, and the staff was getting our first-ever round of extended time off. I was supposed to get a month; I got two weeks. (Thanks to the professional pastor Gerbil Wheel ;) But it actually only took one week alone at the beach to change the trajectory of my life forever.

Have you figured out that we carry dissonance in our bodies? Misalignments of value, calling, and identity show up as hidden stress fractures on the soul, and often take time to show up in our awareness. We can actually run for years, carrying the pain of those fractures but clueless to their origin…or solution. Often, we can only come to terms with the dissonance by getting Away. And quiet.

Interesting that Jesus had the same idea…slightly ahead of me. When was the last time you accepted his invitation? Really detached—for even a day—to let all the noise subside and get still enough to hear the message of your heart? And the message of God’s heart for you?

Sometimes we intuit the dissonance…and actually avoid the silence and solitude precisely because we don’t want to know! Something inside of us understands that, once we name it, it will require something of us. Change. Realignment. Healing. The things our true hearts crave…but our anxious minds sometimes resist.

I think I’ve become a professional Retreater. Not because I’m brave, but because I’ve tasted the sweet elixir of the realignment and, well, these experiences really have changed my life. Multiple times. In beautiful, necessary ways. The first was two weeks. The next was two years! (Well, not exactly. But it did involve a two-year move to Colorado.) These days, I shoot for one weekend a month and several weeks a year.

Sound extreme? Might be. I think I’m a hard case and very susceptible to getting sucked back onto the Gerbil Wheel of frantic activity and subsequent soul fractures. Which of course is why this passage with its message of Freely and Lightly is so crucial to my calling. To my survival even.

So let’s assume that you’re a more balanced individual and don’t require such Draconian measures. I hope so! Still, I doubt you have a more healthy soul than Jesus—who prioritized his own recurring rhythms of withdrawal! Slipping away in the night to climb a mountain and be alone with God became a habit for him. And a value he actively impressed upon his disciples: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6:31).

I hope that you too have come to savor the gifts of solitude and refreshment. We are meant for a rhythm of engagement and withdrawal, engagement and withdrawal. Just like the cycles and movements of creation all around us. Ebb and flow. Dormancy and bloom.

Where are you in the cycle? Is this a season of engagement or withdrawal for you? If you’re engaging, what does withdrawal look like…and when does it occur? We are hardwired to need soul-rest daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Do you have mechanisms in place for this? Our culture doesn’t cooperate readily with such vision; you have to be exceedingly intentional to take hold of it.

The thing about Jesus’ offer is that it is exceptionally personal: He doesn’t just tell us to stop working; He invites us to get away…with him! So in withdrawal, we’re not leaving activity for a vacuum. We’re leaving activity for Presence. “Only in God is my soul at rest,” says the Psalmist (Ps. 62:2). To retreat is to enter into special intimacy. “Make every effort,” Hebrews says, “to enter that rest” (Heb. 4:10,11). Rest is the gift we don’t always want, but it’s always on offer.

Allow me to conclude with this thought. As I was writing this post, I happened upon a quote by Walker Percy, a medical doctor turned award-winning novelist turned oblate monastic, that speaks powerfully to this conversation…

In these times everyone is an apostle of sorts, ringing doorbells and bidding his neighbor to believe this and do that. In such times, when everyone is saying “Come!” when radio and television say nothing else but “Come!” it may be that the best way to say “Come!” is to remain silent. Sometimes silence itself is a “Come!”

Contemplate

If you know your Enneagram center (body, heart, mind), you might appreciate that each center has its own contemplative priority. Body types thrive particularly in the practice of stillness…heart types in solitude…and head types in silence. How might you lean into your contemplative priority this week?

You might also appreciate reading the larger story of how a sabbatical changed everything for me and my family…in my first book Soul Space. It’s all about getting off the Gerbil Wheel and finding renewal.

Takeaway

What is your soul telling you?