Rest!

Gathering Music
Jim Pearce, piano

Chiming of the Singing Bowl 
Rev. Misha Sanders

Singing Hymn #118 This Little Light of Mine
Director of Music, Dr.Philip Rogers

Words of Welcome and Announcements  
Chloe Morgen

Good morning! My name is Chloe Morgen, and I am your Worship Associate today! 

Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation seeks to create loving community, inspire joy and spiritual growth, and support courageous action. All are welcome, as together we journey towards justice and equity by learning, caring, and acting together.

We especially welcome any newcomers and visitors we have today.  I hope you’ll join us after worship for coffee hour… from the comfort of your own homes.  The link to our Coffee Hour Zoom room will appear in the chat box toward the end of worship, and we will remind you about it again there. When you click the link to join coffee hour, please remember that the password is “coffee”. Again, you will be reminded in the chat, toward the end of our worship service.

If you haven’t already, now is a great time to grab whatever materials you’ll need to light your own chalice if you’d like that to be part of your worship experience today.

As always, kindly set your phones to worship mode; we won’t know but I think you might enjoy the hour free from distractions.  And feel free to check in on your social media of choice to let your friends and family know about this place of caring you’ve found today. Our congregation is an exciting place to be, and we love it when you share the good news. 

And although we cannot be physically together to greet each other today with hugs, high-fives, smiles, and words of love, we are all together in spirit and each and every one of us is welcome.  

And now our senior minister, Rev. Misha Sanders will call us to worship.  

Call to Worship 
Rev. Misha Sanders

Good morning.  Our Call to Worship this morning is a litany by Rev. Dan Lambert:

Because the daily pressure of life weighs heavy on our minds, on our bodies, and on our spirits, we need a time of sabbath rest.

Because the stresses of our culture often leave us feeling burdened and looking for hope, we need a time of sabbath rest.

Because rest, fun, leisure, and naps help us cope and feel refreshed, we need a time of sabbath rest.

Because we think more clearly, love more freely, and share more joyfully when we are well rested, we need a time of sabbath rest.

Giver of Life, help us recognize when we need to stop and care for ourselves. Allow us to enjoy a sabbath as often as we need one. Allow us to rest without guilt so that we may work with more joy. We are thankful for the gift of sabbath rest.

Rev Dan Lambert

We are so lucky to have Josie Miller lighting our chalice this morning! Josie, go right ahead when you are ready! 

Lighting of the Chalice  
Josie Miller

Balance 

Find a point that is centered
That makes your life complete
As you encounter challenge
Don’t think about retreat
It depends not on others
You find it there inside
When you can look at yourself
And feel a sense of pride
Love may seem elusive
But it needs to start with you
As you turn your focus inward
You will learn what you must do
It is there you discover balance
The key to being free
This time of self discovery
You’ll learn who you can be

Robert Langley

Story Wisdom 
Director of Religious Education, Adia Fields-Udofia

Interlude “Spirit of Life”
Traci Montgomery

Poem   
Chloe Morgen

For One Who is Exhausted, A Blessing

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.
You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

John O’Donohue

And now, Rev. Joan Armstrong will lead us in the sharing of Joys and Sorrows. 

Joys and Sorrows
Rev. Joan Armstrong

Prayer  
Rev. Joan Armstrong

Music “Be Still My Soul”
Sally Mitchell video

Sermon 
Rev. Misha Sanders

Our beloveds of the Islamic faith will begin their holy month of Ramadan this coming Thursday evening. And Ramadan is a holy time for me, too, of course not in the same way. For the past five years, I have made it my spiritual practice during the month of Ramadan to read the entirety of the Q’ran, the holy scriptures of Islam, on a schedule I found on the internet, along with my Muslim siblings of faith. I look forward to it every year, and maybe especially this year, which is of course different in nearly every imaginable way from every other year.  

One of the things I love about reading the Q’ran is that it feels familiar to me although it is not, because it is written in such a way that I can nearly froget I am not reading Hebrew, or Old Testament scripture in the King James version, which IS as familiar to me as anything I have ever read in my life. But one of the other thing I love about the Q’ran which is different from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, is that it can be downright sarcastic in ways that surprise and delight me every time.   

Let me read you a particular passage. If we were the kind of tradition where the minister preaches from a specific passage of holy text, this would be our scripture base for today.  

Holy Q’ran, Sura 62:9 

“When the call is proclaimed to prayer on the day of Jamu’ah (that’s our Friday), hasten earnestly to the Remembrance of Allah, and leave off business: That is best for you if you only knew.”

The writer of the Q’ran was saying in no uncertain terms, listen, people, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll take a weekly day of rest.  

A weekly Sabbath. All the Abrahamic faiths do it; Islam, Judiasm, and Christianity.  

Pagan traditions, earth-based traditions, Goddess-revering faiths do it too, paying close attention to the cycles of the moon. 

The Bahai, the Zoroastrians, the Buddhists, the Shinto… I’m not sure one can find a faith tradition in which a regularly-scheduled time of rest is not one of the tenets of faithful living. Are you familiar with the Ten Commandments? My goodness, it still cracks me up that our Jewish and Christian faith siblings have Mandatory Rest Day it right up there on their top ten list, chiseled in STONE, along with not murdering or stealing. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”    

I know that Unitarian Universalists are non-creedal and we don’t take kindly to people handing us a list of rules, but this is one I think most of us could get on board with if we added it to our list of principles right about now, couldn’t we. We affirm and promote our right and responsibility to REST!  

Do you all know about our Atlanta neighbor and activist, Tricia Hersey, and The Nap Ministry? Let me tell you a little bit about The Nap Ministry.  

Straight from the ‘about’ page on their website: 

“The Nap Ministry was founded in 2016 by Tricia Hersey and is an organization that examines the liberating power of naps. We engage with the power of performance art, site-specific installations, and community organizing to install sacred and safe spaces for the community to rest together. We facilitate immersive workshops and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing.  We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue.”

About The Nap Ministry

Here’s more, from a USA Today article published in August of last year:

“With dim lights and soft music playing, 16 people lay on yoga mats covered with blankets as Tricia Hersey slowly paced the room reading a poetic manifesto.

“This is a resistance,” Hersey said in a commanding voice. “This is our protest.”

Within a few minutes, most had drifted off to sleep. Hersey allowed the group to rest for 40 minutes before gradually turning the music up until everyone was awake. 

The early August nap session was one of many hosted in Atlanta by Hersey’s Nap Ministry – an organization that promotes naps as a form of social justice. 

Hersey said too many people are falling victim to a “burnout culture” that makes them feel they should always be busy. 

“We are trying to push back on the idea that your productivity determines your worth,” Hersey said. “I think it’s really powerful for someone to say that it’s OK to rest, it’s OK to take a break.”

The Nap Ministry also strives to create a safe space for people who are struggling to process traumatic events such as mass shootings and racism. Naps, Hersey said, help people to heal from that trauma and can empower them to find ways to fight social injustice. 

Attendees come to the napping events for a variety of reasons. Hersey said some are single moms working multiple jobs to pay rent, some are self-employed and exhausted, others are coping with emotions from traumatizing life events. 

“They go, go, go … from working to children to school,” Hersey said. “They have really been pushed to (the) edge.”

Vikas Jain, a sleep medicine doctor at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said most working adults don’t make time for naps. But he recommends midafternoon naps, especially for people who get less than seven hours of sleep at night.

“The communal napping is a newer idea but I like the idea of trying to eliminate the stigma that surrounds sleep,” Jain said. “People don’t want to come forward and let anyone know they are tired … and we are trying to cram so much into our day that we’re not taking care of ourselves.”

Hersey came up with the idea for Nap Ministry after graduating with a master’s of divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. 

She said the program was exhausting. Her classes were rigorous, she worked two internships and struggled to fit in as a black woman at an institution of predominantly  conservative, white men, she said. Hersey also was distressed after being robbed while walking with her son at a suburban Atlanta gas station in 2013. 

“I wasn’t engaged in class,” Hersey said. “So I started sleeping anywhere I could. I napped outside and in buildings all over campus.”

Hersey said those naps helped her achieve better grades, and she felt healthier and more energized each day. After graduate school, Hersey decided she wanted to spread the form of self-care and counsel sleep-deprived people on the power of naps.

She used her experience as a community organizer and her seminary training to launch the Nap Ministry. 

In May 2017, she hosted her first collective napping session. 

Dominique Holloman of Atlanta said she was able to decompress and tune everything out during an Aug. 4 nap session.

She slept for most of the 40 minutes and decided after the nap that she would focus only on things that were a priority that week. 

“I’m working on saying ‘no’ so I can reclaim some of my time and rest better and not feel so stressed,” said Holloman, 39. “When we don’t rest, we aren’t well. We make bad decisions, we are cranky, we have bad attitudes and we just don’t perform as well as we should, whether that’s at work or at school.” 

Constance Collier-Mercado said, “I can come here and I can rest and I can feel like I still did something today,” Collier-Mercado said. 

Hersey said she ultimately wants to open up her own facility in Atlanta to host Nap Ministry events. 

Naps are “pushing back against the toxic systems that we live under,” Hersey said. “It’s a movement, and it’s a reaction and it’s a disruption.” 

USA Today

Thus ends the article.  

Please remember The Nap Ministry and Tricia Hersey and her dream of opening up a brick-and-mortar location in the upcoming church year if they come up as a Share the Plate recipient.  

Beloveds, I can’t think of a better time for us to reconnect with the power of rest.I think the earth is telling us it’s time in a rather dramatic way, honestly. And, since some of you are still in your pajamas anyway, and some of you are lounging on your couch, or the floor, or in bed right now attending worship, would you consider just giving in to the urge to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths right now? Maybe don’t fall all the way asleep, but honestly, who’s gonna know if you do? I invite you to close your eyes, if that’s works for you, and if you can hear my voice when you do that.   

The poet Sarah Harvey wrote this piece, entitled:

If You Need Permission to Rest, Here it is

Stop it.
Stop running around like that, you beautiful soul.
Stop pushing yourself past the point of utter exhaustion.
Stop blatantly ignoring what your body is telling you.
Stop being everything to everyone else; but no one to yourself.
Stop trying to do it all. And have it all. And be it all.
Stop.
Get off the hamster wheel of to-do lists and events you “should” attend, people you “should” call, things you “should” do, and achievements and expectations and worries.
Oh, sweet soul—when is the last time you took a full breath, a break?
Aren’t your lungs just dying for the sweet, spacious nectar of oxygen?
Aren’t your muscles weary, sore, tense—begging for silent release?
You can rest. You can set it all down.
Yes, you sweet soul—you do so much, you do too much—and I promise the world can go on without you for a moment, an hour, a day, a weekend.
It will have to.
Set it all down. Set everything down.
That load you’ve been carrying is heavy, the crushing weight you bear on your shoulders alone. You’re so strong to carry it so bravely. But you can’t carry it all the time. And you need not carry it all on your own.
Let go all the brittle pieces of everything you’ve been holding tightly together—
I know it hurts.
So let it go.
Let those exhausting pieces fly to the breeze, to the grass, to the trees, let them spread into the air like seeds.
You heart needs you. Your soul cries out for you.
Reach inside.
Hear the ruby whispers from deep within. Meet yourself in the misty places that speak softly.
Set it all down. Set everything down.
You can rest.
You have complete and utter permission to rest—oh, you always do—
To savor.
To lick the sapphire blue sky.
To climb an invisible rope to the stars.
To close your eyes and weep rivers, if you need to.
To daydream.
To create.
To expand and grow.
To do absolutely nothing.
To laugh and play.
To be alone.
You have permission—but hell, it’s more than permission—it’s about fiercely meeting your needs.
It’s about giving yourself what you give to everyone else all the time—
Love. Gentleness. Healing. The tender space to blossom.
So, give yourself what you give to everyone else.
Oh sweet soul, unwrap a thousand flower petal drops of softness and hand it to your own heart.
You can rest.
So stop it.
Stop trying to be everything to everyone.
Be everything to yourself instead.
Be all you ever needed.
Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Replenish that pulsating well of great thirst inside you, melt into the warm arms of this moment like golden honey
And just be.
You don’t need to do more or be more.
Doing more isn’t always helpful or necessary—doing less is sometimes the golden ticket we’d never consider.
Set it all down. Set everything down.
And just be.
You are not lazy, you are wise.
Be extraordinarily gentle with yourself.
And see how that gentleness feeds you.
Exist sweetly in the wild palms of silence, like a sunbeam, shining in the divine dappled beauty of all you are.
Unfold whimsically into simplicity, into the glistening truth of it all—the glistening truth of who you really are.
Rest. Replenish.
Surrender, sweet soul, surrender.
Claim this moment, just for you.
It’s just for you.
Perch here.
Close your eyes.
There is nothing you need to do.
Just breathe.
Just.
Be.”

Sarah Harvey

In nearly every great faith tradition our ancient human ancestors dreamed up, they cast a supreme being as the one who created it all and then took a whole day off for nothing but rest. They thought REST was so important that they put it in their rule books.  

I am so thankful for our these wondrous, amazing bodies that can do so much, and which also require regular rest. 

I am so thankful for OUR faith tradition which calls us to set aside shame in all of our natural humanness with all the needs and desires that come along with it.  

May we rest unashamed.  May we rest often. May we offer rest to other weary beings whenever we can.  May we our love for each other. May we rest in the Love that is greater than us all and will never let us go. May it be so.   

Singing Hymn #352 Find A Stillness
Dr. Philip Rogers

Offering
Rev. Misha Sanders

Benediction 

I met Tomo Iwase Hillbo at Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary, where she is the Director of Communications, and I knew immediately that I loved her.  Tomo has become a cherished friend, and she has been generous enough to let me come to know and love her family as well. Her husaband, Chaplain Wolf Hillbo, is a hospital chaplain, a Mennonite minister, and the Director of Music at Reba Place, a Mennonite congregation in Evanston, Illinois.   One of the greatest joys of my life was singing an old gospel choir song last summer- a song that had been precious to me in MY youth- in a small but mighty choir, directed by Wolf, while standing between my dear Tomo and my newly-baritone son Kyle, at the first queer wedding performed at the Reba Place Mennonite Church.  

Tomo and Wolf have been our guests in worship today, and we are so honored to welcome them.  

And so today, friends, it is my great joy to introduce you to Chaplain Wolf Hillbo, who will share with us today’s benediction.  

Postlude
Jim Pearce