Ritual
We believe we need a recovery of sorts. Contemporary culture has pushed us to think that public life is mostly structured (show up on time, fulfill your obligations, do your job), but private life is mostly unstructured (free time to use as you see fit). But what happens then when spiritual life is relegated to the unstructured part of life, to our private“off work” world where there are few obligations? Well, it tends to exist in emotional spurts, through momentary impulses. It tends to lose focus. You know what I am talking about.
And so the recovery we need is the wisdom of basic spiritual ritual. Grace is not only a gift, grace is also a way of being. Grace is the life we are called to enter, the life of form and formation.
It’s been said that we don’t so much think our way into new life but instead live our way into new thinking. In this way, our spiritual identities are shaped through sustained commitments to gracious practices: practices of time like honouring sabbath, practices of stewardship like generous giving, practices of self-forgetfulness like service.
This is a series about some of our central rituals: work, rest and play.
The Ritual of Work - Jeremy Duncan
If what drives our imagination of work is hoping we won’t have to, that’s a problem— because work was created by God to be holy. In fact, the very beginning of Genesis starts with God doing work. And then humanity is tasked with doing more of the same— more work. They are instructed to take care of the land around them, and be fruitful, and to reproduce. Work wasn’t originally supposed to be just about surviving. It was (and is) the way we participate with God in the ongoing creation of the world.
The Ritual of Rest - Jeremy Duncan
This week we spoke about how work and rest depend on one another— all rest without work isn’t healthy, nor is all work and no rest. Sometimes rest is actually harder than work; while work tends to have tangible outcomes, rest can feel unproductive. We may think that sabbath rest is something God wants from us… but it was actually something God wanted to give to us. Sabbath shows us that while we are loved for what we offer, we are equally loved for what we don’t.
The Ritual of Play - Jeremy Duncan
Play is the space where we can give ourselves what we need to be who we are, and where we can give to something outside of ourselves. Giving time to that hobby you never seem to have time for, investing in the relationships that matter to you, and serving those in your community… this is all play. It is where we create and contribute and participate in the stories that sit somewhere firmly between work and rest.