Most Sunday evenings, members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship with internet access gather for an online worship service. We are exploring ways to bring the spirit of those services to our many members who do not have regular internet access. The following is an abbreviated outline of a CLF worship service that can be read through or shared out loud in a gathering. Please feel free to make it your own, adding whatever music, ritual elements, and readings are most meaningful to you.

Opening Words & Chalice Lighting

We light our flaming chalice and enter into our worship service together with these words from Atena O. Danner, from her book, Incantations for Rest.

Storyteller’s Invocation

Honor our Ancestors
Stories tucked into our hearts

Bless the stories reaching back
To when the Word began

Blessings to my siblings
As we break the Word apart

Touch the soul inside of it
And build the Word again.

Sharing of Joys & Sorrows

Every time we gather, we share what is most present in our lives. Whether you are arriving to this service full of excitement or with a heavy heart, take a moment to name that which you are carrying. You may write your joy or sorrow down, or share out loud with those in your gathering. We know that every joy shared is multiplied, and every sorrow shared is halved.

We hold these joys and sorrows with you, and say in response:

May we all be held in the heart of love

Sermon

JeKaren Olaoya
Learning Fellow, Church of the Larger Fellowship

We have likely all heard some version of the Biblical creation story, which says it took God seven days to create the heavens and earth. On the first day, God separated the light from the dark, creating day and night. On the second day, God created an expanse to separate the water above and below, to separate the sky from the oceans. On the third day, God separated the land from the water and created vegetation. On the fourth day, God created the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The fifth day was the day of living creatures, birds, sea creatures, and fish. And that work of creating creatures continued on the sixth day with creatures that creep. Personally, I think we could do without some of the creepy crawlies, but I wasn’t there to consult.

And so, it seems that the heavens and earth were created in six days. Why do we count the seventh? We often assume that rest is the absence of doing. Rest is nothingness. Rest is inaction. Take a moment and think about something you did for pleasure recently. Something that was absolutely fun and engaging. Got it? Was it related to work? A hobby? How did you feel before, during, and after? Did you feel like it was a waste of time? Did you regret it?

It’s hard to imagine anyone would regret things that make them feel good and even harder to imagine it could be labeled as an absence or nothing. So I imagine God, on this seventh day, looking at the fish swimming in the ocean, watching the flowers bloom and the tall grass growing. Looking at the waves as they lap against the edge of the land. I imagine God hanging over the edge, laying down on their belly, feet crossed in the air, so pleased with themselves. God’s probably a bit tired after expending so much of their own energy to create, and I imagine them drifting off to sleep as they watch life unfold.

And unfold it does. We are in this constant state of creation and destruction, life and death. There is only one starting line, with no end. Physics as we understand it now is a process of constant movement and transformation, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. And so, this story of how the world began fits into this model. Creating and pausing. Creating and resting. Over and over again.

This process probably sounds super familiar to anyone who has ever had a job. We exist in a culture that is ‘living for the weekend’. I can’t tell you how much small talk I’ve personally engaged in about hating Mondays, Celebrating Fridays, and Sunday nights dreading the next day.

I imagine my ancestors waking up before the sun rose to make a fire, to cobble together a meal. Going out to milk the cows, collect eggs from the chickens if they had them, and working until the heat of the day at noon was above them, oppressive and staggering. The water they carry with them is warm, ice doesn’t last long in the Georgia heat if there is any. Picking cotton. Harvesting peanuts and tobacco. Every single day of their lives, this cycle of the day continues. And they teach their children, and also, pray that it will be better for them. Over and over again, generation after generation until we get to a generation where gardening is a hobby. My grandmother grows plants for their beauty, to exercise her skills. Succulents grow in the dirt patches that scatter the floor of her porch. I grow plants for my mental health. And also because they are pretty. I kill them in equal measure, but that is a different sermon.

Are there other stories from our own personal history that prioritize rest? What did rest look like for your grandparents? Great grandparents? I come from a long line of people who worked the land. Enslaved. Sharecroppers. Farmers. Pleasure Gardeners. Each generation takes back its freedom and choice. Slowly. What did rest look like for my ancestors in Nigeria? In Denmark? In Benin and Togo? What about when they made their way to Virginia? What did rest look like?

Rest. What used to be a skill needed for survival is now a hobby for pleasure. I’m in constant awe. Our relationship with the earth changes, but our need for rest doesn’t.

Rest is more than just naps. Naps matter, but they are one element of rest. I believe that rest is all the things that are counter to our cultural narrative of work and labor and capitalism. It is the space where we are free of expectations and demands of our bodies and minds, where we can be in our natural state. Where we can breathe freely, and really connect deeply to each other, to the community of beings around us.

There is so much work to be done. We sit here, as individuals, wondering too often what we can do, what action we can take to make the world a better place. We wear ourselves out running from this group to that committee to that job to meetings. And what we really need at this moment is a little bit of what we had in those early days of the pandemic. As terrible as it is and was, there were bits of hope for our global climate crisis in those weeks in solitude. Pollution decreased, plants started to grow more vibrantly, and animals started to stretch their legs in places that became quiet after so much of the noise pollution died down.

We were forced to rest. To slow down. To just be. As with any other major disaster, there is a recovery period, one we have yet to start as we still live through this. It would be so easy for us to go back to all the old ways of the before times, working nonstop, chasing the promise of more, and never resting. I don’t want that for any of us. The systems we have created over time want that for us. They want us to be tired. To be overworked. To not speak up and make demands of the people who have sworn to both protect us and represent us.

We don’t have to live this way. We can choose a different path. We can prioritize rest for ourselves in so many small ways that allow us to feel renewed every single day of the week. Not just on Saturday afternoon.

Even God rested. Back to the time of creation according to Biblical traditions, at the end of each day, God paused to take stock of what was created. After approval, God moves on to the next part. There is rest in pausing. In taking a moment to appreciate where you are before moving on to the next thing.

I have to say, this particular message is more for me than anyone. I am so guilty of moving from one thing to the next, hardly mourning or celebrating, just moving towards the next achievement. One is not enough, I had to always be thinking about the next few steps before I could finish my current one. I will graduate from Starr King School for the Ministry in May 2023, a semester earlier than I expected, and I am already planning my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) options, thinking about ordination and where my work might take me. I have a whole year to think about this process, and I have been consumed by the work of it in the last few weeks. I realized while reading and starting a book club for Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer that I am spiraling into the behavior of the before times. I am not taking time to really think about the current moment. I’m not mourning the things that need to be mourned. I’m not rejoicing over the things I should be excited about. I’m looking ahead and anticipating things that I can’t change, that I can’t yet enjoy.

And so, this message is for me. A reminder in the words of Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry, that rest is resistance. She reminds us over and over again that rest is our birthright, and that we don’t have to earn rest. Octavia Raheem, author of Pause, Rest, Be, says, “My ancestors don’t only rejoice at the external show of success, ladders climbed, or work I’ve done. They rejoice when I rest. Because that means I’m safe enough. Whole enough. Warm enough. Nourished enough. Free enough. Present enough. Loved enough. Aware enough. Healed enough to release the trauma of endlessly laboring and being defined by what I’ve produced.”

There is no end goal that matters more than this moment right now than knowing that the rest your body needs to thrive, to heal, is yours. If God could rest, so can you.

Closing Words & Chalice Extinguishing

We extinguish our flaming chalice and close our worship service with these words from Atena O. Danner, from her book, Incantations for Rest.

Generational Wealth

My grandmother was so tired
that my mother was born tired.
My Mama’s so tired
that I’m tired right now. And I see
my children getting tired,
so it’s time to put this to bed.
I will gift time to my children;
they will inherit a legacy of resting:
Leisure time and vacation days taken,
sick time used to nap and renew.
I’ll steal time and show them how to eat it raw,
I’ll say “Yes!” to my babies, on the clock,
show them how to tuck joy and stillness
into the pockets of reclaimed life.
When I accrue time: I let them see how I use it.
When I take time: I give it to them and let them play.
I save time in their names, for them to practice how to protect it
and spend it on rest.
It has been said that the best things in life are free;
untrue!
The high cost of the best things in life is time!
My progeny will know that time seeds restoration,
how creativity is nurtured by time to play,
how love is deepened by time together,
how revolution needs time to imagine,
how healing and growing are possible and what it takes
to rebuild broken skin and bone.
That wellness is rest is time is wealth.