Lenten Journey: Aspects of Spirituality – Recreation

This next aspect of our spirituality offers a little word play. Recreation, what do you do for fun? I like to play with the word by pronouncing recreation as RE-Creation. Recreation is about doing things you enjoy. Re-creation is about finding things that rejuvenate you, that give you energy, and feed your spirit.

Life is full of tasks, to do lists, and life events that can sap our energy. So, our spirits need a break from the drudgery, not just in distractions which can be an energy sucker themselves (Hello, Facebook). But truly rejuvenating, inspiring re-creation.

Of course, this can be very different things to different people. For my wife, she re-creates by hiking in the mountains. I enjoy hiking in the mountains also but for me that joy is mostly about being with her. My re-creational activities include sitting in the sun at a baseball park (any park, I even stopped off on a road trip in Atlanta, Georgia and watched a little league game one time) and singing. (Not necessarily combined although I have sung the National Anthem at a few ballparks.)

This might be my bias but I would caution that “checking something off the ‘to do’ list,” while gratifying, is not what I’m talking about. There’s a place for that, to be sure. Cleaning out the garage comes with enormous gratification and relief but I’m really trying to get to the heart of what brings you joy. What provides you with bliss and maybe even contributes to the energy you’ll need to clean that garage or finish that scrapbooking project you’ve been working on?

What have you done to re-create yourself lately? Are you aware of something that fits that bill but which you haven’t done in a long time? What can you do to give yourself permission to care for yourself in this most intentional way?

We often find plenty of excuses for not giving ourselves permission to care for ourselves. Everything from "we don’t have time for that" to, the truly soul-crushing, "we don’t deserve it." Whether you come from a Puritan lineage or not, there are a lot of “shoulds” and “shame” in human nature that tell us that "we must ALWAYS be productive” in a certain way or that "we have done something that we must constantly be paying the price for" and self-care violates that spirit of constant repentance and shame.

But that takes us into the next topic: self-esteem. I was going to write about that today but I didn’t have the energy for it. So, I gave myself permission to try again tomorrow. Self-care, my friends.

-------------------------

You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Loving Your Enemies, Serving Your Loved Ones

If I were to sum up my theology in a single sentence, it would be “We are all children of God, worthy of Love, Forgiveness, and Grace.” So, you would think that the sermon series that my pastors have been preaching for the past five weeks would not be a challenge. Their topic has been Loving Your Enemies which, in theory, should be simple. If we are all children of a loving God than those who are my enemies are recipients of God’s love just as much as me. But this has not been an easy topic. Yes, in theory, I have no problem with seeing my enemies as children of God and loving them as God loves them. But, as is so often case, things get tough when the rubber meets the road. The primary passage that is the source of this commandment comes from Matthew 5:43-48. 43  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you , 45  that you may be children of
Read more

Names and Labels (Top Posted)

Welcome! I’m going to start by talking about Names and Labels and explaining the Name I have given to this blog. Names and Labels can be so constraining and revealing at the same time. They put us in boxes of assumptions that go along with those names and labels. They can lead us astray by setting up expectations that any of us can be fully defined by our labels and names. At the same time, they can offer a glimpse into our identities that, as long as they are understood to be simply a beginning, can offer some insights into how we see ourselves. As author Bill Bryson wrote in The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way , “…there must be some conventions of usage. We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one’s lap and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceedingly difficult to housebreak.” So, yes, Names and Labels have meanings
Read more

Hell and Damnation

According to my mother, my grandmother whom I called Nana, was obsessed with whether or not she would go to Heaven or Hell as her life came closer to its end. I’ll bet some of you had a Nana. Someone who cared for you when you were sick, ate the burnt pork chop while she served you the one that was perfectly cooked, went to church every Sunday, treated the people around her kindly. She wasn’t perfect. I’m sure she had her flaws. I’m sure I don’t know what they were. But at the end of her life, she was consumed by fear that she wasn’t good enough. Not good enough for Heaven… so, bad enough for Hell. “No truly accomplished New Testament scholar, for instance, believes that later Christianity’s opulent mythology of God’s eternal torture chamber is clearly present in the scriptural texts. It’s entirely absent from St. Paul’s writings; the only eschatological fire he ever mentions brings salvation to those whom it tries (1 Corinthians 3:15). Neither is it found in the other New Testamen
Read more