What is Saving Your Life?

Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

Last week was the annual Midwinter Conference of the Covenant Church, which I spoke about a little during yesterday’s sermon. It’s a big conference, which means big plenary sessions, and this year one of the speakers was Ruth Haley Barton, who led us through a session on sabbath-keeping (one of my favorite topics).

Now, there are many, many blog posts I could happily write about the practice of keeping sabbath, but what struck me about Ruth’s talk wasn’t just the content – it was the way she started it, telling a story about Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor.

Barbara had been invited to preach at a church, and she asked the minister who invited her: “what should I preach about?”

And he said something like this: tell us what is saving your life right now.

I can think of no better reflection point for this, the 512th day of January. A time of the year when the holidays are long gone, spring is still far away, and everything that involves getting up and leaving home feels a little too hard to comprehend.

So what is saving my life right now?

First of all, the sun.

I stood outside in the sun for an hour this afternoon while my dog played with one of her neighborhood buddies, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t help me re-evaluate all of my former funk. Over the last ten or so days of bitter cold, then gray skies, pouring rain, heavy fog and slush and mud, I have sunk deeper and deeper into the winter blues. But even just a taste of sun and mild breezes today reminded me that this won’t last forever. I’ll sit on my porch again in short-sleeves, drinking cold seltzers.

Sometimes that reminder is all I need.

The next thing saving my life right now is reading. I’m knee-deep in a novel by Richard Russo which follows the life of a diner owner in small-town Maine, and it’s tender and beautiful and painful and compelling. But it communicates all those things through the lives of very ordinary people in a very ordinary place, and exactly because of that it keeps reminding me that ordinary is beautiful and powerful.

Getting into the kitchen is also saving my life: getting out of my head and into chopping and mixing and stirring and folding. I tried chocolate granola last night, and tonight I’m baking for the start of Bible Study tomorrow. These aren’t “project bakes” or “showstoppers,” but they’re a way of nourishing myself and those I love. They’re a dance around the kitchen that helps me feel sure of my body when it’s still hard to drown out the diet-talk-blitz of January. They’re a reminder of what is holy and sacramental: God feeding us. Us feeding each other.

So that’s me. Not even to mention the clean sheets I put on my bed today, or the dog snuggling next to me, who saves my life every day.

What is saving your life today?

-Pastor Jen