Radical Rest

Besides emotionally-intensive pre-service training (2 months of language, culture, and teacher-training), most of my time so far in Peace Corps Armenia has been spent observing, learning, having coffee, building relationships, and getting to know myself better.  Now that I feel integrated and fairly settled in my new community, however, I’ve become acutely aware of how I can help fill its needs.  

So the ideas begin to flow.  And the commitments start to snowball.  And I want to do everything but don’t have enough time.  And all along, I sense the little rational people in my head red-flagging me, warning me of self-destruction. 

Evidence that I am practicing the Sabbath today,
and yes – my Bible is duct-taped so that it won't fall apart

‘Caution,’ they tell me. ‘Every time you enter this hyper-productivity phase, you tend to spiral out of control until you reach a breaking point for which your dad usually has to pep-talk and console you through.’

But alas, not this time.  Thankfully, I’ve been rescued from my tendency to overload by rediscovering an age-old tradition that receives little attention or reverance in a fast-paced and heavily fragmented modern society:  The Holy Sabbath. 

The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word that means “to cease, to stop working.” It refers to doing nothing work-related for a 24-hr period each week. It’s a tradition that challenges us to prepare ourselves for the work of doing nothing throughout the whole week; it’s a challenge to spend time with God for a day instead of always doing for God.

“We imitate God by stopping our work and resting,” writes Peter Scazzero in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.  God worked, he says, then He rested.  We are called to do the same.  

I’ve been practicing the “Sabbath” tradition for three weeks now, and it has already had an enormous impact on my mental health and my ability to manage stress.  It gives me something guilt-free to look forward to each week and provides a rhythym to my life that balances work and play.

For my Sabbath day (which happens to be on a Sunday, and for which I spend a lot of time preparing on Saturday), I spend a whole 24 hours doing what I love to do and spending time in the spirit.  I read, write, learn, play, meditate, pray, hang out with people I love, exercise, watch movies, plan things to look forward to, and just dwell a little in the quiet of the calm.  

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence . . . activism and overwork.  The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.  To allow  oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence . . . it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. - Thomas Merton

Everyone will approach the Sabbath day differently.  We should adjust, modify, and de-legalize the concept of the Sabbath so that it best suits our personalities/religious preferences, but for me the most important aspect of respecting this tradition is a call to trust.  I need to trust that God will take care of me and the world around me if I decide to just stop for a day.

Stopping reverses the mentality that drives most of our modern lives: “don’t just stand there, do something.”  Stopping challenges us once a week to say, instead:

Don’t just do something. Stand there.  

Weekly Grape:  Do I take time each week to rest and rejuvinate?

Warming the Heart

Many Armenians believe that all health issues and every aspect of well-being are associated with staying warm.  I will concede to the idea that being cold can affect our immune system’s ability to fend off illness, but when you start blaming the cold for a gassy belly and a liquidy stool, you may have gone too far.

Not wearing slippers inside the home (walking around in just your socks, or even – God forbid – going barefoot) and thereby exposing your feet to the elements is akin to self-mutilation to my Armenian friends.  If I ever tell them something is wrong with me (headache, stomach-ache, sore throat, probably even a minor scrape), they’ll tell me it’s because I was cold.  And then they’ll yell at me for not wearing my slippers.  

While temperature may not be the dominant force behind our health and well-being as they say, a study done by John A. Bargh proves that it actually can affect the way we perceive certain things.  Bargh claims that  “people holding a warm cup of coffee tend to have more positive opinions of others, and having something warm in your hand can actually make you more generous.”  

No wonder Sheldon always offers warm beverages to anyone who cries or comes to visit him on Big Bang Theory!

In Bargh’s study, people were asked to hold a cup of either hot or iced coffee for someone who had pretended to be flustered and couldn’t carry it themselves.

Later they were told they were to receive a reward for completing the study and could choose a prize either for themselves or for someone else.  The study showed that people who held the warm beverage tended to be more altruistic than the ones who held the iced cofee; they were more willing to give the gift to someone else.  

The warm-beverage people were more willing to give because, as Bargh contests, warmth causes us to trust people more, to cooperate more easily, and to want to help others. He says the connection we make between warmth and closeness is innate because we associate it with our caretakers from an early age, who, ideally, represent for us a bond of trust.  

Maybe it’s only because I’m drinking a cup of hot tea right now that I feel more understanding toward the Armenians who relentlessly scold me for never keeping myself warm enough, but maybe they’re really onto something!

Why not, this week I’m challenged to drink three warm beverages per day and see if I get any nicer.  

Weekly Grape: Can warm beverages actually impact my perception of others?

Mortality and Punctuation

European monks and scohlars used to keep a human skull on their desks to remind themselves of their mortality throughout their day.

Too often we separate our thoughts from our mortality, either because we fear it or because we’re too busy distracting ourselves to think about it.

Sometimes I like to think about my future tombstone, and the little dash that will indicate when I was born and when I’ll die.  Will that dash represent a life lived, or a life wasted?

Peace Corps was an opportunity to remove myself from all that is familiar and comfortable and embark on a crazy adventure. Now that I’m here, what can I do to make my service more meaningful?

There are 525,600 minutes in a year.  Do I make each one of those minutes count? What life-purpose informs how I decide to live each one of those minutes?

If I were to punctuate my life, I’d like it to be with an exclamation point.

I’m sick of living inside of a question mark or an ellipsis and allowing fear to stop me from living and loving the right way.

I’m challenged to punctuate my life in a way that leaves no reserves, no retreats, and no regrets.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Weekly Grape:  How do I punctuate my life?

Simplicity of Village Life

It’s been said that more than 20,000 thoughts run through an ordinary person’s mind throughout the course of a single day.  I’m pretty sure the same number of thoughts run through my mind in a single hour.

I think too much.

But there’s nothing my hyper-active mind loves more than the simplicity of village life here in Armenia.  When I tell my host mother that I appreciate life in the village, she says, of course you do, “Գյուղի կյանքը շատ ավելի ազատ է, – village life is much more free.”  She explains that in the village, you do what you want and you get what you need.  Beautiful.  

Her reply focuses on a freedom from demands, from all the pressures and frenzy of a more hectic society.  Indeed, there are for more chickens than there are demands in the villages of Armenia. 

In the middle of a noisy and enervating school day, I retreat into the fields and the mountains beyond my village every day for a run.  To get to the unpopulated territory, I pass through my village where everything has been slightly dicolored by dirt, clothes dangle from their lines, and every five minutes (seriously, it never fails) there is a faint rooster’s crow in the background.  

The village ducks, chickens, turkeys, cows, horses, sheep, cats, and dogs along the way toss me their glances as I run past them and then scurry away to continue their business of scouring for crumbs in the mud.  The air is dry and the sun somehow always beats down through a blue sky onto my village, transforming the moistened dirt into mud and my fair skin into a very scarlet shade of red.  

The only thing better than my daily run is a trip to the village church.  It's a church the size of a tool-shed, but its presence can be felt for miles.  It’s a sacred place designed the way that I think a church should be designed:  simple, open to anyone at anytime, and an ideal space to quite yourself and worship. 

On the way to the church yesterday, my host mom shared some interesting insight with me in beautiful Armenian phrasing: she told me never to worry about tomorrow, because “վաղը չկա,” meaning there is no tomorrow – only today.  She also told me to “ապրի այսօրվա կյանքում,” which is basically Armenian for "seize the day."  

Simple, easy to remember, and extremely profound.

During this busy phase of my Peace Corps experience where I find myself having those 20,000 thoughts per hour, I’m challenged to press through the noise and simplify.  

I’m challenge to ապրի այսօրվա կյանքում – to live for today.  

Weekly grape: How can I simplify my day?

The Pursuit of Treasure

In the Peace Corps, our desire for comfort hightens our longing for things that we miss.

I really miss peanut butter, and I’ll go to any length to get it.  

In the states, the anticipation of Smucker’s Peanut Butter and its familiar place between two delicious ego waffles for breakfast with a cup of coffee gets me out of bed in the morning.  

So when I find out that a store in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, sells peanut butter, I practically bolt there one weekend to buy some cheap, crappy brand of my beloved substance that would hold me over until my mom sends me my next jar.  I walk for forty minutes throughout Yerevan – a monomaniachal, fiendish determination soaring through my mind – before I hunt out only two jars on the bottom shelf in a grocery store wedged neatly between some jelly and Nutella.  I leave smiling with my prize, and make a mental note of where to come again the next time I run out.

We’re all treasure-seekers, and our pursuit of treasure can transform us into pirates. In Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack Sparrow accuses Will Turner of having acquired several very distinct pirate-like tendencies throughout the course of their journey.  Turner defensively denies Sparrow’s final and most damaging claim that he has become obsessed with treasure, to which Sparrow replies, “not all treasure is silver and gold, mate,” as he glances toward Elizabeth Swan, a beautiful woman, and the sole object of Turner’s infatuation throughout the movie.  

Our hearts long to worship; to treasure something above all else.  In his most recent sermon, Pastor Dan Nold speaks of a consultant who helped Coca Cola achieve their success.  The consultant asked the company to draw a box and to write what the company thinks they are “all about” inside of it.  At first, “great taste” was the concept in the company’s box. This concept failed, as anyone who would have tasted their “New Coke” product could have attested to.  The consultant later encouraged them to choose a different concept, so this time, the company went with “American Tradition.”  Once their new concept began to inform their entire production process, Coca Cola became what it is today.  

What’s in my box?  What do I treasure above all else?  I know where my focus and my attention should be, but I also know that I am often seduced, or “lead astray.” I’m challenged this week to press through false treasure and stay focused on Jesus, because that’s where I really want my heart to be.  

Weekly Grape:  What's in my treasure box?