Sep 14th: Sacred Stories, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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Rev. Dr. Steven Koski
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Sacred Stories with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Spacious Christianity, Spacious Hearts A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Mark 1.35, Matthew 11.28.
Feeling breathless? Overwhelmed? Join us this Sunday as Steven shares a powerful message about finding rest, breathing deeply, and rediscovering your worth beyond the hustle. Whether online or in-person, come take a moment to pause and breathe with us.
Transcript:
This weekend is what we call our kickoff, where we celebrate and get ready for another year of ministry and mission. You know, showing up with the fullness of our hearts, the fullness of love, is needed right now, perhaps more than ever. So I was tempted to do my best to inspire you to step up. Show up. You know, do more, give more, pray more, work harder, resist louder, love more boldly. And then I realized, you know that already, you already know how critical it is right now to stand up for what is right and just and good. You don’t need a pep talk or a motivational speech from me. You don’t need me to encourage you to do more or make you feel guilty for not doing enough. I’m not sure I know anyone right now who isn’t to some degree overwhelmed, tired, stressed, anxious. The world just keeps knocking the breath out of us, the endless Scroll of bad news, grief, heartbreak, the ache of injustice and cruelty, the challenges of parenting, doctor’s appointments, caregiving, the pressure to keep up, the demands on our time and energy, it can just leave us gasping for air, and when we’re breathless, the temptation is to push harder, run Faster, do more, do it better. That’s the story our culture teaches us. We’re trained to respond with with urgency, with striving, with constant motion. We’re trained that we can finally breathe when the work is done, when the problems overcome, when the conflict is resolved, when the mess is cleaned up. I remember when my son was really little, one of his favorite activities was running in the backyard, chasing bubbles. You would run with such determination, you know, arms flailing, little legs pumping, eyes locked on those shimmering circles floating away. I remember once, after just a few minutes of all of that, he collapsed in the grass, gasping for air. He looked up at me between breaths, and he said, I just forgot to breathe. How often do we do the same? We chase, we chase after work, justice, healing, the next responsibility, and somewhere along the way, we forget to breathe. What if there’s another way, a different rhythm, a more sacred story to orient our lives around. There’s a beautiful story of a tribe that went on a long journey accompanying a medical mission to bring vital medicine to another tribe. Day after day, they walked, covering many miles one day, after only going a short distance, the tribes suddenly stopped walking. They set up camp, refusing to go another step, even though it was still morning. This confused the medical mission team, because they knew they were almost to their destination. They knew that they would arrive before nightfall, you know, if they just push themselves a little harder, if they just walk just a little faster, and the leader of the tribe told them, No, today, we will rest. We need to let our souls catch up with our bodies. I love that concept, letting your soul catch up with your body. What’s that look like for you? You know, while a while back, I was I was tired, exhausted, really so tired, but not the tired that required more sleep. I traveled to Santa Sabina retreat center for for a silent retreat, I scheduled spiritual director, direction with one of the nuns, you know, I was hoping to be given spiritual work, you know, spiritual work that would rejuvenate my tired soul, reinvigorate my passion for my work. And Sister Helen, you know, just seemed to have these super powers. Just looking into my eyes, she could see. That I I was trying to convince the world, convince myself of my competence and my worth. Sister Helen looked at me with with the kindest eyes that held no judgment, and she gently said, Stephen, I know you’ve come to accomplish and achieve spiritual renewal. My suggestion is for you to do absolutely nothing while you are here. Just be, breathe, walk the grounds, eat nourishing meals, drink tea, slowly, reverently, sit in silence until you are silenced, until your anxious mind is silenced, be present To the love from which you can never be separated. Know that you are loved apart from any work that you do. You are loved apart from anything you can accomplish. Now that was a novel idea for me to be loved, apart from any work that I can do or from what I can accomplish. And then Sister Helen said, breathe. Rest. Rest in that love I learned a lot about myself on that retreat, because honestly, it was impossible for me to simply be and breathe over and over again in the gospels, before Jesus heals the sick, before he feeds the 5000 before he confronts injustice, before he walks on water, Jesus pauses, he withdraws to a quiet place to breathe, to be still, to pray in Mark 135 after a whirlwind of healing and preaching, we read very early in the morning. While it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and he went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Notice that Jesus doesn’t run breathless into the work of healing and resisting and restoring this broken world. He pauses first. He roots himself in belovedness before he moves into the world’s brokenness. Jesus took the time to set himself apart so that he wouldn’t fall apart. This is not avoidance. This is not weakness. This this is preparation, this is wisdom. This is spiritual oxygen. Our cultural story. Have you noticed our cultural story glorifies exhaustion, as if the busiest and most stressed out person wins the prize we’re taught to wear exhaustion and overwhelm as as badges of honor, to pause, to catch our breath, it is really counter cultural. Everything around us screams. Don’t stop. Keep running, keep scrolling, keep grasping, keep hustling, keep reacting. What did Jesus say? Come to me. All of you who are weary, all of you who are carrying such heavy burdens, come to me, and I will give you rest. He didn’t say, come to me and I will tell you to try harder, or come to me. You know, I’m going to make you feel guilty because you’re not doing enough. He didn’t say, come to me and I’ll put you on a committee. No, the first thing Jesus offers, interestingly, is space to breathe, to rest, to let our souls catch up with our bodies. Rest in. Pausing.
Breathing is not wasted time. Rest is not a reward for finishing the work. Rest is the holy space so that we might be reminded that we are loved even when the work is unfinished. And here’s the paradox, when we pause, catch our breath, let our souls catch up with our bodies, we don’t just find relief for ourselves. We become breath for others. Rest. Self care isn’t selfish. Self care is good stewardship of the of the one gift you are put on this earth to offer others, and that is the gift of your presence any time that you give yourself the soul care that it requires you do it, not only for yourself, but for the many others that your life touches, Jesus shows us another way, the rhythm of retreat before Return of rest, before resistance, of pausing, before pushing, Jesus withdrew, not to escape, but so that he would return with compassion, clarity, courage, Jesus caught His breath so that he could give breath to others. You know my prayer as we kick off another year of ministry and mission, my prayer is that First Presbyterian will really be a space to help you breathe, to let your soul catch up with your body, to remind you of your belovedness. My prayer is that we will be the kind of community that breathes life into one another at a time when we are we got front row seats. We’re witnessing so much cruelty, witnessing the worst of humanity, we need to show the world the very best of our humanity. So friends, here’s the invitation, breathe. Begin each day with a breath before rushing. Pause, pause before the email, pause before the protest, pause before the response. When angry, pause when tired, pause when stressed. Pause, pause. Take one Holy Breath, retreat. Find a quiet space each day, even if just for a few minutes, where you can let your soul catch up where you remember your belovedness rest, not as an escape, But as resistance to the tyranny of never enough return. From that place of breath, step into the world with strength that is not frantic but rooted, not anxious, but spacious, not reactive, but courageous. Let me finish with this poem that I absolutely love by Rosemary watolatramer called inviting spaciousness. Today, when the heart is a small, tight knot, I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings in a desperate attempt to unravel it. I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled. Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it with my hands like. Something precious, something wounded, a bird with a broken wing, I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is. I imagine all the other frightened hearts, and I imagine them all being held in love. And I breathe, I breathe, and I feel how the breathing invites a spaciousness. I breathe and I let myself be moved by the breathing as I open and soften, open and soften, and nothing changes and everything changes. The heart still a knot, remembers it, knows how to love it, knows it is not alone. Breathe, my friends, breathe. May it be so.
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