Seven Types of Rest

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Are you getting enough rest? Which of the Seven Types of Rest might you need more of?

1. Physical Rest

Active: examples include light walking, yoga, or getting a massage

Passive: sleeping; being still

2. Mental Rest

Active: doing puzzles, games, or light mental exercise

Passive: stop thinking

3. Social Rest

Active: time with people who restore energy

Passive: alone time

4. Sensory Rest

Active: engage the senses in restorative activities (cooking, gardening, playing with a pet)

Passive: unplugging, putting down the phone, shutting off the noise

5. Emotional Rest

Active: express built up emotions

Passive: take a break from big emotions

6. Creative Rest

Active: play; create something new or different that feels fun, light, energizing (Legos, creating food, writing a poem)

Passive: cease or stop productivity

7. Spiritual Rest

Active: pray, contemplate, worship, attending church

Passive: take a break from religious practices; skip church

As we think about rest, it’s important to understand just how much of our access to adequate rest depends on social equality and justice. Here’s a comparison that writers of the Bible often use to highlight the need for a just society in which all humans flourish:

Pharaoh’s Economy vs. Torah, God’s Economy

Hands on Faith Volunteering

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About a dozen volunteers from Sanctuary participated in a Hands On Faith service opportunity this past weekend. We joined the Catherine McAuley Center in Cedar Rapids with a move in to assist refugees from Afghanistan. The move in consisted of hauling furniture and household items and setting up a couple different apartments to make them move-in ready. We set up bedrooms, living rooms, and the kitchen and dining areas. The families will move in this week.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered!

Stay tuned for more volunteer opportunities in the coming weeks!

Jesus Endorses Deconstructing Faith

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Recently some prominent pastors have issued critiques of “deconstruction,” the process of questioning traditional Christian beliefs and practices. David offered this counter perspective: Jesus endorses deconstructing faith. Drawing from the story in Mark 2:1-12, David provided this chart that contrasts four friends deconstructing a house with the religious authorities who enjoy the prime spots within the house.

How comfortable are we with “deconstruction” for the sake of faith, liberation, and healing?

Are we, like Jesus, okay with the destruction of personal property when it gets in the way of God’s gifts?

Tom's Prayer Practices

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This past Sunday, Tom shared about some of his current prayer practices. One of them included this extended version of the traditional Jesus Prayer. What other phrases would you add to make this prayer your own?

Tom’s Jesus Prayer

Jesus of Nazareth,

Anointed One

Son of the Living God

Walking on the Water

Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner

Jesus of Nazareth,

Anointed One

God from God

Attuned to the Cosmos

Have Mercy on Me

Jesus of Nazareth,

Anointed One

God God God

Calling Me Up Into the Cleft

Grant me Peace

Seminar on God and Gender

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Exec. Pastor David BG hosted a Zoom Seminar on God & Gender. You can watch an edited version of the recording below.

Main Takeaways

  1. Ideas of gender are socially constructed and very complicated.

  2. God has no gender. God is all genders.  

  3. The Bible includes the full range of masculine and feminine images for God. 

  4. Feminine images of God have been used throughout Christian history.

Cancelling Sunday Services - beginning March 15, 2020

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Dear Sanctuary Community,

We have an important announcement. For the rest of March, we are cancelling Sunday services at Sanctuary. While the Iowa Department of Public Health has not (yet) announced any limits on large social gatherings, other cities and states have done so. We’ve consulted personally with public health experts within and outside of our congregation who have recommended we take this action to help limit close social contact. Also, we see this as a gesture of supporting the common good and extending love to all our neighbors. We’re doing our small part to limit the spread of coronavirus in order to protect ourselves or others who are most at risk of serious illness.  

Announcing similar changes, the president of Haverford College put this beautifully:

If humankind is going to defeat this virus, we must do all we can to avoid becoming its carriers. And so our obligation means more than keeping ourselves healthy; it includes minimizing the possibilities for us each to become a carrier and, with that, a vector for later transmission to others, particularly those at risk for serious complications or death due to COVID-19…. Being a responsible citizen routinely means thinking beyond one’s own welfare; at this challenging moment, I ask that we embrace a broader definition of community, one that aligns with our mission and extends our values of trust, concern, and respect to include doing our individual part for the benefit of all humanity.

Amen!

Live Stream and Alternate Content

We love our Sunday gatherings so much, and we will certainly miss them! We are, however, planning to offer a simple, live streamed service that will include prayer, scripture, and stories from Adey, Tom, and David alongside some type of devotional. It will start at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning on our YouTube channel. If you can’t join at 10 a.m., the video will be permanently available on YouTube anytime following Sunday morning.  (We’ll provide a link to the live stream on our website and on Facebook as well.) 

We’re also planning to provide a song playlist of our planned worship set. We’ll share that on our Facebook page. Anyone can access it; you do not need a Facebook account to access the church’s public Facebook page.  

Finally, Lianna Cornally and Amy Kraber are putting together stories and resources for kids that they will share on our church’s blog.

How do we stay connected?

  • Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, where we will be posting updates. We’ll also be sending regular updates via email. 

  • As long we do not have Sunday services, we’ll offer live streaming or some web-based content.

  • Our current Small Groups may or may not continue. It will be up to each leader who organizes the group. But we’re working towards creating alternate online small group meetings. We will send more information soon about how to sign up and join an online group. 

  • We want to strongly encourage everyone to stay connected with one another as much as possible. Stay in touch, ask how people and those they care about are facing illness or anxiety or challenge, and pray for one another. If you are at all ill, have been exposed to someone who is ill, or have your own health risk factors, stay home, but stay connected. 

  • We’re organizing a response team to provide assistance in the event that community members are affected by COVID-19.  Assistance may include food, medicine, financial assistance, or other support. We will share a sign up form for those able to help in providing assistance.

  • We also wish to provide pastoral support and prayer wherever possible. If you become impacted - physically, emotionally, or spiritually - by the spread of COVID-19, you can fill out this simple form or send a direct email to this email address (communications@sanctuaryic.org) or any of the staff. You can also share the assistance form with others impacted locally. 

The Opportunities of this Moment

There’s no way to diminish the severe impacts of our current events. None of this is easy. At the same time, we want to name some opportunities we see: 

  • Opportunities to practice love of neighbor by doing what we can to protect our communities’ health.

  • Opportunities to be here for each other, even when we can’t always be there in person. Again, we strongly encourage everyone to reach out with your needs and reach out to others to ask how they are doing. We are in this together! Or to use the language of the moment, practice “social distancing” without being socially distant!

  • Opportunities to learn some things about how to do and be church that isn’t centered around in-person Sunday worship gatherings. 

  • Opportunities to lean into faith in the God who has become one of us, to bear our burdens and anxieties, to be with us in our joys and sorrows and all of our weakness. 

With love and gratitude for you all,

Sanctuary Staff

P.S. If you’re not sure where to find updated news and preparedness information, the national Center for Disease Control is providing regular updates. 

Closing Blessing from "Coming Out and Coming Home: A Celebration of National Coming Out Day"

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In her teaching on Coming Out and Coming Home: A Celebration of National Coming Out Day, Katie Imborek closed the service with the following blessing:

Blessed are the boys who wear their mama’s high heels and paint their fingernails.  

Blessed are the girls who play football and hate wearing dresses.   

IMG_8162.JPG

Blessed are those who refuse to conform to society’s rules around gender.  

Blessed are those who were born intersex.  

Blessed are those whose parents refuse to use the correct name.  Or pronouns. You have been made in God’s image and Jesus blesses you.  

Blessed are those who have been rejected by friends or family when they have come out.  

Blessed are those who are closeted. 

Blessed are those who identify as lesbian or gay but choose to be celibate. 

Blessed are those whose LGBTQ identity is invisible.  Or questioned. Or made into political footballs. You are of God and Jesus blesses you. 

Blessed are those who have been kicked out of their homes for coming out.  

Blessed are those who have been forced out of their church for coming out.  

Blessed are those who have lost jobs when they have come out.  

Blessed are those whose parents refused to attend their weddings.  You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.  

Blessed are those who have fought for gender neutral bathrooms.  And for options other than male or female. And for marriage equality.  

Blessed are those children who have a mommy and a mama.  

Blessed are those children with two daddies.  

Blessed are those who have stood up to systems and organizations with anti-LGBTQ policies.  Even if it meant losing friends. Or jobs. Or community. Yours is the kindom of God and Jesus blesses you.  

Blessed are those who have lived with a secret.  Those who have been told that they are wrong. Or perverse.  Or shameful.  

Blessed are those who have felt they had to choose between falling in love and being loved by God.  

Blessed are those who have been lost and have been found.  You are children of God and Jesus loves you.  

Amen.  

Solar Theology vs Lunar Theology

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In a teaching last Sunday, David borrowed from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Learning to Walk in the Dark to explore solar theology vs. lunar theology. Here’s the chart David used during that teaching:

solar vs lunar.png

And here’s a short list of just some of the events in the Bible that happen in the dark:

  • Creation account begins in darkness, and days begin with the nighttime (Gen 1)

  • God’s covenant renewed with Abraham (Genesis 15)

  • Jacob’s stairway to heaven dream + God’s covenant with Jacob (Genesis 28)

  • Jacob wrestling with God (Genesis 32)

  • Moses receiving the 10 Commandments and the Torah (Exodus 19)

  • Jonah’s prayer - 3 days in the belly of the sea monster (Jonah 2)

  • Jesus walks on water (Mark 6)

  • Jesus’ resurrection (Luke 24)

Love

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In the teaching last Sunday, Tom used some projection slides with text we thought was worth sharing. The first is a quote:

Our denomination has long-defined itself as a diverse, capacious movement that holds in tension a radical welcome of all people into the infinite love of Jesus and a radical obedience to Christ’s moral demands that flow from the infinite holiness of Jesus. Neither can we adopt theologies that elevate certain biblical themes and denigrate others, or select certain attributes of God while suppressing other attributes. We cannot elevate the love of God over the kingship of God. - from one Christian denomination website

all-you-need.png

Tom’s response:

Of course we can! That’s exactly what we’re doing. It’s what we all do all the time. Here at Sanctuary, we are privileging a theology upon which inclusion comfortably rests and diminishing a theology that gives rise to exclusion as an acceptable practice. We believe that God, through Jesus, is leading the human community away from its projection onto God of all our impulses to control and oppose, and into love, into I no longer call you slaves, but friends.

And then Tom read from David Bentley Hart’s translation of John 13. Here is that text:

Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come—that he might pass from this cosmos to the Father—having loved his own in the cosmos, he loved them to the end: And, as the evening meal was taking place—now that the Slanderer had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, that he should betray him—Knowing that the Father had placed all things in his hands, and that he came forth from God and is under way to God, He rises from the supper, and places his mantle aside and, taking up a towel, wrapped it around his loins; Then he pours water into the basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and began to wipe them off with the towel wrapped about his loins.

Thus he comes to Simon Peter; he says to him, “Lord, are you washing my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “You do not yet understand what I am doing, but hereafter you will understand.” Peter says to him, “Most surely, throughout the age,y you will not wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you have no portion with me.”

Therefore, when he had washed their feet and taken up his mantle and again reclined at table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done for you? You address me as ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and well you speak, for such I am. So if I, the Lord and the teacher, have washed your feet, you are obliged to wash one another’s feet; For I have given you an example so that, just as I have done for you, you may do as well. Amen, amen, I tell you, a slave is not superior to his lord, nor is a messenger superior to the one sending him. If you know these things, how blessed you are if you do them.”