August 31, 2008:  THE RE-BOOK (WHAT I LEARNED ON SABBATICAL) 
Exodus 3:1-15; Romans 12:9-21; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c
Eileen Parfrey --- Springwater Presbyterian Church

Definitions are adapted from the Oxford American Desk Dictionary and the online resource, www.Dictionary.com. 

            Springwater has been busy.  The kids have grown like weeds, wonderful things happened with sabbatical interim Beverly Crow and the three artists-in-residence, and then there are the changes afoot in the sanctuary.  It’s been hard to talk about, because I just don’t know what to call the sanctuary changes.  It’s a silly concern, but so many of the possible words are identical with the words I’d been using to think about my sabbatical experience.  Restore, remodel, renovate.

            The word “redecorate” was used to describe the sanctuary project before I left, but that apparently disappeared early in the summer when both Beverly Crow and liturgical artist Kathleen Brown, helped session and the committees to understand that what we are contemplating is about more than finishing touches. As folks began to see that the reason we love this room is because it is where we meet God, what we sit on and the colors we paint the walls begins to serve something greater than aesthetics.   Redecorating didn’t seem to cover everything that was at stake.

            But “remodel” doesn’t either, implying as it does three dimensions.  This room is in the service of God, so there are more than three dimensions involved, once we’re talking about spiritual matters.  Today’s story about Moses is a perfect illustration.  We’re talking about a bush-that-burns-but-isn’t-consumed, a Voice speaking out of the bush saying, “This is holy ground.  Take off your shoes.”  We like to believe that something similar happens to us when we gather on Sunday mornings.  So “remodeling” isn’t big enough.  Nor “restore.”  To restore would imply going back to an original state, which in our case means huddling around a wood-burning stove, not daring take off our shoes for fear of frostbite.
 
            “Renovate” might be more appropriate.  It certainly makes more sense in terms of my sabbatical, given that the word implies invigorating, refreshing, reviving.  If renovating is the aim for our sanctuary, that was certainly the aim for sabbatical.  The idea was to come back not just repaired but reinvigorated.  When I left last May, I was experiencing what the apostle Paul warns against today in Romans (according to The Message).  He tells the early church, “Don’t burn out.” 
  
           My first sabbatical stop was Mendocino, California to work with artist Nancy Chinn.  Nancy encouraged me to think visually and taught me to draw.  I experienced firsthand the physiology of thinking.  You may have learned about the two hemispheres of our brains, each with different work.  My left brain—word-oriented, analytical, linear in thinking—was worn out from problem-solving and strategizing.  My right brain—visually oriented, creative, intuitive—was flabby and atrophied from lack of use.
 
           After exercising my right brain and resting my left brain, it was time for the two halves to reconcile and become friends again.  That literally happened in early July as I took a class at Gruenewald Guild in Washington.  The class was called “Beautiful Words:  Lettering for the Calligraphically Challenged.”  Words and art together!  Sell my clothes, I’ve gone to heaven!  No longer either words or art, it became possible to embrace the gift that both types of thinking offer to make me a whole human being.  For me, it was an experience like that of Moses and the burning bush.  The bush-that-burns-without-being-consumed is creative activity—ours as well as God’s.  In that creative activity is encounter with the Divine.

           Refreshed by renovation in my ways of thinking—embracing both word and image, both left and right hemispheres—I was so refreshed by my second week at Gruenewald, people began to wonder if I was experiencing a second childhood.  The energy I experienced illustrates what the word “rejuvenate” means—make younger and more vital.  Talk about youthful vigor!  They certified me in it.  Are you familiar with the titles being applied to the various generations?  The generation that came of age during the Great Depression and World War II is “the greatest generation.”  I’m a Baby Boomer, the generation born from after the war until about 1963.  My children are Generation Xers, the 30-somethings.  The young people coming after them—the ones born after 1979—are called “the Millennials.”  These are the 20-somethings who don’t remember music recorded on vinyl, who think video recorders are quaint.  I was made an honorary Millennial by the folks at Gruenewald.  I’m telling you this, not to brag, but in testimony of the powerful and rejuvenating effects of creative activity and the blessing of time to rest in God.
 
          We were in my third class at Gruenewald, the one called “Exploring the Creative Landscape.”  The teachers, artists Chuck and Peg Hoffman have, for the last 10 years or so, taken their vacations from Hallmark and Pixar to go to Northern Ireland and use art to do reconciliation work between the Catholics and Protestants.  To reconcile is a relational thing, about bringing into harmony or settling or agreement, usually after a dispute or estrangement.  That’s what Peg and Chuck do in Belfast with people who, for generations, have blown each other up over the means of reconciliation to God.  Chuck and Peg work in a community center which is literally built into one of the 27 miles of walls in Belfast that separate the Catholic and Protestant parts of town.  Catholics enter through one door and the Protestants through another, and they most certainly do not depart through the other’s door!  Generations grow up in Belfast, never having set foot outside their walled section of town. 

           As Peg and Chuck demonstrated with us the art process they use in Ireland, the generational polarization in our class became evident.  Our project was to work in silence painting the paper covering four folding tables.  At the tone of a bell, artists moved to the right, paint pots and brushes to the left.  From the beginning, the Greatest Generation and the Boomers painted only directly in front of their own area, keeping their work separate and distinct from what had gone before.  No brush marks touched another’s.  The Millennials, on the other hand, painted as far as their arms could reach, whether covering someone else’s work or not, their work blending with and smearing what had gone before.  We worked in silence, but resentments and suspicions built as we imputed motives to the other generations.  Chuck and Peg sent us away to meditate with our journals about the process, and then brought us back together to talk.  It took two days of talking to reconcile.  The experience also clinched my status as a Millennial.  You can guess how I painted.

           Sabbatical gave me another “re-“ word:  resurrect.  My poor brain’s right hemisphere rose from decay and disuse, restoring me to life.  All the words that define “resurrect” are “re-“ words—reintroduce, restore, renew, resuscitate, reincarnate, reawaken.  Richard Caemmerer, my art and faith mentor at Gruenewald reminded me that Lilly’s sabbatical grant had bought me time.  And time is what we all need.  It takes time to be creative.  To rejuvenate and resurrect, to reconcile and renovate—they take time.
 
          This is why one of the most important “re-“ words from sabbatical is recommit.  Commit again.  Entrust or consign for safekeeping again; perpetrate or do again; pledge or bind again.  My recommitment—and maybe this applies to you, too—is to time. Time for Sabbath.  Time for creativity.  Time for God.

           Those three things—Sabbath rest, creativity, God—are not things we have to invent.  We don’t make them or even conquer them.  We only need to reclaim them.  Reclaim, as in recover, redeem, retrieve, restore.  Take what is already ours.  Our creating God, in whose image and likeness we are, honored both work and rest in the Genesis creation story.  When Moses brought the Ten Words down the mountain, they gave the people of God the rhythm of work and rest, activity and Sabbath.  We can choose to reclaim and recommit to those rhythms.  When we embrace the practices of both Sabbath and work, we allow their activity in our lives to resurrect and rejuvenate us.  As we renovate this sanctuary, we can also renovate our lives to make room for sacred space.  It is in that sacred space of Sabbath and creative activity, friends, that we encounter God.  Remove your shoes:  you are on sacred ground.