My spouse rarely remembers his dreams. Unless they are about bugs or snakes, he'll wake up completely oblivious to that alternate life he's lead overnight. Sometimes, I'm envious of his dream-amnesia. I regularly wake up foggy from dreams, their wisps interfering with my morning routine, disturbing my sense of the present. My dreams are often emotionally-charged, peppered with characters who feel like real people, and it takes effort--like wiping sleep from my eyes--to move from the dream world to reality. My dreams instruct me, help me solve problems, let me know where my relationships need work, and at the least, signal where my major stressors lie.
But recently, JT had a dream that he remembered. It's such a rare event, that I was really excited to hear about it. I propped myself up on an elbow, thrilled for this view into his psyche, his ambitions, his dreams. I expected tales of flying or fighting robots or a fantastic meal that he ate in a beautiful locale with ingredients that we may be able to mimic in real life.
"Well," he started. "We were in bed in the morning, and Jo [our daughter] woke up. You brought her into bed with us, but she wouldn't go back to sleep. So, she started naming us, pointing and saying, 'Mommy. Daddy.'"
So far, this dream was unimpressive. In fact, it the exact scene we had experienced only an hour or so before, when Jo actually did wake up, come into our bed, and proceed to name us all. I continued to wait for the moment when reality would blur and Jo would sprout wings or start singing opera or something.
"So, then I said to her, 'Who are you?'" he continued. "And then--this is the weird part--she pointed to herself and said, 'Jo. I am Jo.'" He had been silent for a few minutes before I realized he had related the entirety of his dream. Yes, his dream had departed from reality: or daughter had never said her name. Much less put together a short sentence to accompany her self-introduction. But it seemed like there should be more. If he was remembering it, there must be something remarkable.
"Really?" I said. "That's what you dreamed?" "Yep," he said, rolling out of bed. And that was that.
It's make me think a lot about dreams. Me? I put a lot of stock in them and enjoy trying to stretch out that space between dreaming and awake so that I can remember the things my mind is working on when I'm not exactly there to run the show. And so often, they are impossible imaginings, wild and exciting, and I'm left dizzy trying to figure out how to translate the to life. But JT's dream was so simple, so small, so possible. And suddenly, his dream felt more like prophecy than my own.
I'm preaching this week at a classmate's church. He uses the lectionary, and he typically uses three readings: from the Hebrew Scriptures, Psalms or Epistle, and Gospels. I was intimidated by this task at first, unsure how I would handle navigating three texts during worship, and how I might craft a sermon that was harmonious. I assumed I would be simply picking one passage and lightly brushing upon (or perhaps even ignoring) the others in my message. But last week, as I read the passages again, I understood: these are about dreams. All of them are about dreams.
Check them out: Genesis 37: 1-28, Psalm 105 1-6, 16-22, 43-45, and Matthew 14: 22-33.
I'm not sure where this message is headed yet. I'm not entirely sure I can wrap it all up with a bow. But I do think that there's something here worth exploring: something about the dreams God has for us, about our own dreams and how we follow them, and how it's possible, even in reality, to live out our dreams.
Showing posts with label sermon prep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sermon prep. Show all posts
Monday, August 4, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Unwinding
So. It is July. Eleven Sundays have come and gone since I was a weekly preacher. About seven weeks have passed since I wrote anything about the practice of preaching. And I'm going to be honest--it feels good.
It feels good not to be under the gun right now, not be constantly checking the status of that 168 hour countdown that a weekly preacher does, not to be desperately trying to squeeze something, anything out of that lectionary passage this week. There are a few reasons for this, some complicated, some not so complicated, but I think it's fair to classify all of them under the "I Was Burned Out" category. So, I decided to become un-burned out by letting go of weekly preaching.
A few weeks ago, though, I was invited to preach at a mentor's church when she had to go out of town. It was an easy gig--all I had to do was show up with a sermon and preach it. No prayer-writing, no music-picking, no children-sermon winging, just focusing on the Scripture (which was requested to be from the lectionary...easy-peasy). And so, I worked on the text, touched base with the worship leaders, liaised with the pastor to make sure my direction would jive with her preaching and the congregation's experience. It was a smooth, leisurely experience of sermon prep. Until about 18 hours before I would be preaching when I actually sat down to write.
This has always been a problem for me: a 18-paper is due on Monday morning? I'll research it for a few weeks, then write the whole thing the Sunday evening before it's due. My 500 words on the city council meeting is due at midnight? I'll sit down to write at 11:03pm. My sermon is to be preached at 9:30am? Saturday at 5pm seems as good a time as any to be writing.
It's not that I don't prepare...I spend weeks researching, mulling over, and conversing. But when it comes time to sit down and actually write? I'm terrified. I just can't get myself to do it. Or, at least that's what I thought.
Now, when I do sermon prep, I count on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. A mundane chore becomes a sermon illustration? Spirit. I stumble upon research that delves into the exact word I have been wrestling with and it's not 35 years old? Spirit. But for some reason, I was surprised to find the Spirit show up when I was procrastinating from actually writing the sermon. But it did, in the form of a link on social media to a post by Kate Baer. "When You Are Tightly Wound," was the title, and so obviously, I clicked on it. Because, have you met me? Tightly wound is a pretty accurate description of my resting state.
I read the article, but more importantly, I actually heard it. (Thank you, Spirit.) And so, at 4pm on the Saturday before preaching, I actually took 5 minutes to unwind. At that moment, it meant closing my eyes and sitting in my own silence, imagining a bubble of calm surrounding me in the busy coffee shop I had parked myself in. I listened to myself. I released my anxiety about the message. And then, when the 5 minutes was up, I wrote the 2500 word sermon in about an hour.
I'm not saying that every experience of sermon writing is going to pop out that easily, that all the words will be waiting there like apples to be plucked off the tree. But I did realize that I often tried to wedge my writing time into spaces that didn't allow for me to unwind. And it was impossible to allow the Spirit to speak when I was still reverberating from a bedtime battle with my toddler, or the discussion in class about pneumatology. It wouldn't speak if I was counting down the minutes to the next meeing, next class, next place I needed to rush off to.
So, I'm working on the art of unwinding. I think part of my unwinding process is not preaching every week for now, which makes it easier to swallow. But I'm also learning how to unwind in smaller ways, in simple ways, in ways that keep me lose and half-listening, ready at any moment to catch the whisper of the Spirit I know is there, that I know is waiting to be preached.
It feels good not to be under the gun right now, not be constantly checking the status of that 168 hour countdown that a weekly preacher does, not to be desperately trying to squeeze something, anything out of that lectionary passage this week. There are a few reasons for this, some complicated, some not so complicated, but I think it's fair to classify all of them under the "I Was Burned Out" category. So, I decided to become un-burned out by letting go of weekly preaching.
A few weeks ago, though, I was invited to preach at a mentor's church when she had to go out of town. It was an easy gig--all I had to do was show up with a sermon and preach it. No prayer-writing, no music-picking, no children-sermon winging, just focusing on the Scripture (which was requested to be from the lectionary...easy-peasy). And so, I worked on the text, touched base with the worship leaders, liaised with the pastor to make sure my direction would jive with her preaching and the congregation's experience. It was a smooth, leisurely experience of sermon prep. Until about 18 hours before I would be preaching when I actually sat down to write.
This has always been a problem for me: a 18-paper is due on Monday morning? I'll research it for a few weeks, then write the whole thing the Sunday evening before it's due. My 500 words on the city council meeting is due at midnight? I'll sit down to write at 11:03pm. My sermon is to be preached at 9:30am? Saturday at 5pm seems as good a time as any to be writing.
It's not that I don't prepare...I spend weeks researching, mulling over, and conversing. But when it comes time to sit down and actually write? I'm terrified. I just can't get myself to do it. Or, at least that's what I thought.
Now, when I do sermon prep, I count on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. A mundane chore becomes a sermon illustration? Spirit. I stumble upon research that delves into the exact word I have been wrestling with and it's not 35 years old? Spirit. But for some reason, I was surprised to find the Spirit show up when I was procrastinating from actually writing the sermon. But it did, in the form of a link on social media to a post by Kate Baer. "When You Are Tightly Wound," was the title, and so obviously, I clicked on it. Because, have you met me? Tightly wound is a pretty accurate description of my resting state.
I read the article, but more importantly, I actually heard it. (Thank you, Spirit.) And so, at 4pm on the Saturday before preaching, I actually took 5 minutes to unwind. At that moment, it meant closing my eyes and sitting in my own silence, imagining a bubble of calm surrounding me in the busy coffee shop I had parked myself in. I listened to myself. I released my anxiety about the message. And then, when the 5 minutes was up, I wrote the 2500 word sermon in about an hour.
I'm not saying that every experience of sermon writing is going to pop out that easily, that all the words will be waiting there like apples to be plucked off the tree. But I did realize that I often tried to wedge my writing time into spaces that didn't allow for me to unwind. And it was impossible to allow the Spirit to speak when I was still reverberating from a bedtime battle with my toddler, or the discussion in class about pneumatology. It wouldn't speak if I was counting down the minutes to the next meeing, next class, next place I needed to rush off to.
So, I'm working on the art of unwinding. I think part of my unwinding process is not preaching every week for now, which makes it easier to swallow. But I'm also learning how to unwind in smaller ways, in simple ways, in ways that keep me lose and half-listening, ready at any moment to catch the whisper of the Spirit I know is there, that I know is waiting to be preached.
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