He spent time by the Sea of Galilee where he called his disciples to follow him, in the hills of Galilee where he grew up and returned to pray, in open fields where he fed the five thousand, on the mountain where he taught the Beatitudes and was transfigured, on the roads to Judaea where he told the disciples that he would suffer, and in the Garden of Gethsemane where he struggled with his emotions.

He was surely captivated by nature’s beauty. The Gospel texts reveal that he noticed what was going on around him in the natural world, reflected upon it, and had great affection for it. So many of his metaphors and parables were drawn from the world of nature. He said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” In other words, there is no human glory that can begin to match the wonder of the created world.  Jesus had an eye for beauty, and when overwhelmed with the busyness of his life, “leaving the crowd behind” he relaxed with his disciples in a boat or coaxed them away “to a deserted place” to “rest awhile” (Mark 6:31).

Beauty in its myriad forms ministers to the soul, and truly taking it in is exercising a form of self care. Piero Ferrucci (Beauty and the Soul) writes about the extraordinary power of everyday beauty to heal our lives. He says, “Beauty is an extraordinary tonic. It revives us when we feel depressed. With great ease it pulls us out of the big and small frustrations of life. It accompanies us and nourishes us on our way. Sometimes it leads us to finding sense in our lives. It feeds our hopes and helps us dream.”

The word “grazing” has been applied to the contemporary practice of flicking through experiences and never landing on any of them. Christine Valters Painter (“Embrace the Beauty of Nature”) writes about “gazing” as a spiritual practice (what a difference one letter makes): “I can spend hours meditating with ocean waves lapping the shore, contemplating the ancient witness of grand red cedar trees, delighting in geese flying in patterns of support. Gazing is an act of loving reverence, a way of seeing that opens me up to being transformed . . . I begin to connect deeply to the divine slowly at work within me, crafting and shaping my life, inviting me here to sit in stillness and witness to the beauty of the world.”

A friend of mine is an avid golfer. He says it’s not so much the golfing that attracts him (it can be frustrating at times), but rather it’s spending time in the beauty of God’s cathedral of nature that restores his soul. Another friend is an avid skater and finds her spirit revived when she can glide across the ice out-of-doors in the midst of a panorama of sky, snow and trees. For me it’s the sea. I grew up near it, and walking a beach always serves to quiet my frantic tendencies.

In Celtic spirituality such places that open us to the wonder of the Holy are called “thin places.” We return from internalizing such beauty refreshed and renewed, and primed to discern it in all of life. That’s how I see it anyway . . .

For reflection: Where  are the thin places that open me to the sacred and restore my soul?

For prayer:       Loving God, open my senses to the beauty all around, so that my soul may be restored and I may be refreshed to serve you in the everyday.

In the musical, “Oklahoma,” the character Ado Annie Carnes, played by Gloria Grahame, sings a song that begins, “I’m just a girl who can’t say ‘no!’”  Many of us, women and men, are qualified to sing the sentiments of that song, especially those of us who spend a significant amount of time care-giving.

Kirk Byron Jones in his book “Rest In The Storm” calls “no” – the big small word. He comments, “The source of a great deal of our overload and the resulting hurry is our acceptance of too many responsibilities – many more than we could ever expect to do well. The signs of “yes-itis” are all around us: date books with no empty spaces, unfinished tasks, yellow reminder notes all over the place. . . .It is almost as if the eleventh commandment is the one we most dread breaking: ‘Thou shalt not say ‘No.’”

We don’t normally think of Jesus saying ‘no.” We think of him as responding to all requests – isn’t that what “Saviours” do? I don’t think so! One day, early in the morning, Jesus had slipped away to a deserted place to pray. Peter and others “hunted for him” (Mark 1:35). When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you,” implying that there were manifold needs to be met in Capernaum. In the words ‘hunting’ and ‘searching’ there is a tone of anxiety and desperation which could well have been transferred to Jesus. But Jesus had the capacity to see the bigger picture, and didn’t bite. A stressed and guilt driven Jesus might have been hooked by the news that his presence was so badly needed in Capernaum. Our egos are easily hooked by urgent appeals on our time and attention

Often we refrain from saying ‘no’ because what we are being asked to do is something that needs to be done or because we don’t want to offend the person doing the asking, who may well be someone whose relationship we value. But we need to be careful not to spread ourselves too thinly.  That’s why I like Leo Babauta’s phrase: “the gentle art of saying No.” We don’t have to be abrupt or abrasive (although some telemarketers on the phone push me there.)

A few suggestions about how to practice this gentle art:

1. Know your commitments, and how valuable your precious time is. Then, when someone asks you to dedicate some of your time to a new commitment, you’ll know that you simply can’t do it. And tell them that: “I just can’t right now … my plate is overloaded as it is.”

2. Know your priorities. Even if you do have some extra time (which for many of us is rare), is this new commitment really the way you want to spend that time?

3. Don’t apologize. A common way to start out is I’m sorry but …” as people think that it sounds more polite. While politeness is important, apologizing just makes it sound weaker. You need to be firm, and unapologetic about guarding your time.

You may feel crappy after you have said “no.” I often do. But we need to shift emotional gears and congratulate ourselves on how wise we were to keep our priorities straight and take care of ourselves. For then we can do what we choose to do from a healthy place.

For reflection: Identify a time in the recent past when you said”yes” to something which, for justifiable reasons, you really wanted to say “no.”

For prayer: Loving God, help me in the coming year to be judicious in deciding how to use my time so that I may live with vitality and compassion and avoid exhaustion and compassion fatigue.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how Jesus intentionally lived within limits. He practiced a healthy rhythm of work and rest so as not to succumb to physical and spiritual exhaustion.

A telling scene in Mark’s Gospel precedes the feeding of the five thousand. The disciples had returned from their mission described in Mark 6:12. They gathered with Jesus to bring him news of their adventures. But privacy eluded them. “Many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” Jesus sensed that they were nearing exhaustion, and he himself was reeling from the news of John the Baptist’s senseless execution by King Herod. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” he said to them.

Here is an indication of Jesus’ consciousness of the need for rest and retreat in the midst of a demanding life.

On another occasion, Jesus had been teaching all day sea-side, and as evening descended, he suggested to the disciples that they accompany him “to the other side” (Mark 4:36) – an opportunity to withdraw from the crowd. As the boat made its way across, a raging storm arose. Jesus fell asleep, and had to be roused by the disciples.

Kirk Byron Jones in his book Addicted To Hurry comments, “Of all the artistic depictions of Jesus I have seen, I do not believe I have ever seen a picture of Jesus asleep. Perhaps our perceptions of the ever-busy, ever-ready Jesus feed our own addiction to busyness. But, as Mark’s account in his Gospel indicates, Jesus was not always busy; more to the point, Jesus slept. Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The Saviour actually slept! Jesus’ perfection did not exempt him from taking care of the human body that he occupied.

While Jesus was in the back of the boat, he was not engaged in caring for others. The back of the boat is not a luxury; time spent in the back of the boat is not optional if our intention is to live a healthy, balanced, and productive life. It is the back of the boat time – the ‘off’ time – that makes the bow-of-the-boat time – the ‘on’ time possible.”

The Gospels indicate that Jesus knew what it meant to be human. He knew what it meant to have limits. He knew how to prioritize and balance his life and work in light of those limits and how to focus on what was truly important.

Establishing limits and being intentional about trying to honour them is vital to living the full life that God wants for each of us.

For reflection: How am I faring with establishing limits in my life so as to effect a healthy balance between doing and being?

For prayer: Loving God, help me in my struggle to be a compassionate and caring person while at the same time setting limits so that I may not succumb to compassion fatigue and burnout.

Jesus neither lived his life nor exercised his ministry as one set apart from others. He knew the importance of supportive relationships and was intentional about nurturing them. At the outset of his ministry he chose companions “to be with him” (Mark 3:13) and to share in his mission. It would be shortsighted to think that Jesus formed this group simply as a strategy for spreading the word. He realized that leadership can be a lonely place and took action to create a support group and attend to his well-being.

While twelve made up the band of disciples, Jesus regarded three of them as his special intimates: Peter, James and John. It was this triumvirate that Jesus took “up a high mountain, by themselves” where they experienced his transfiguration. When Jesus went to Gethsemane to pray, he took all the disciples with him. But then “he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee” apart from the twelve, and it was in their company that he became agitated. This signifies his openness to expressing his true emotions and his trust in them as his confidants.

Jesus’ support community was not confined to the disciples by any means. He nurtured friendships with both genders. In Luke 10, we are given an account of a visit Jesus paid to the home of Mary and Martha. To understand this story we need to note that in Luke’s Gospel it follows a pivotal moment: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, and that colours all that follows. He was heading towards danger, knowing full well that clashing with the forces rising against him would have drastic results. So on the way to Jerusalem Jesus stopped by to see his friends: to demonstrate his affection for them, but also to be good to himself as he drew from them the understanding and support he needed as he faced the days ahead.

We too need “Blessed Connections” – relationships that sustain vital ministry.  We need “support systems” – I prefer to call them “support people.” They are people we trust, who exhibit the sensitivity to listen when that is what we need, to advise when that is what we need, or just to be there when, as Joyce Rupp says in one of her prayers, “the limbs of my life are weak.”

For reflection: Who are the people in my life who are kindred spirits, who keep me honest, or who act as mentors in my ministry? How am I nurturing my relationship with them?

For prayer: Loving God, thanks for friends and mentors. May I never take them for granted, and may I have the humility to reach out to them when I need to do so.

We all have them, and they can easily get us into trouble. The reason? Because many of us have grown an unhealthy image of what we need to experience self-actualization. We have a tendency to be dependent for self-esteem on the praise we receive when we are judged to be meeting the  expectations of others. Conversely, we’re wounded by the criticism we receive when we are judged to be falling short. An accompanying characteristic is a tendency to hear praise in whispers and criticism in shouts.

From the standpoint of appropriate self-care, it’s vital that we realize that the expectations that so often lead to distress don’t just come from outside. When we objectify others as the problem, then the problem is out there and we can blame them for how we are feeling. Those expectations are real and must be addressed in realistic ways, but research suggests that what leads us to frustration, depression and feelings of inadequacy is actually the idealistic expectations we lay on ourselves. There may be little we can do about external expectations; they will be contradictory anyway. Meeting the expectations of some inevitably means not meeting the expectations of those who have opposite expectations. But we can do something about expectations we lay on ourselves, and doing so is a form of strategic self-care.

To be healthy and thriving, we need to be moving toward a level of self-validation that enables us to define ourselves, to regulate our expectations, and to find our fulfilment from within rather than from external sources. It requires focussed intentionality to take responsibility for our own emotional well-being rather than depending on others to validate us.

This image of what we need is liberating in several ways. It liberates us to live from a stance that says, “I’m doing the best that I can and it’s enough.” It liberates us from giving people power over our feelings.

As things gear up for the Fall period, don’t let external or internal expectations weigh heavily.  Set reasonable goals for yourself, and let what you accomplish, while still making sufficient time to restore your soul, be enough.

PRACTICE

In quiet reflection, ask yourself how you handle expectations? Do you depend on external praise for your sense of self-worth or do you affirm yourself from the inside out?

In prayer, “Help me, Source of life, to deal with expectations laid upon me by others as well as by myself, and remind me that You love me just as I am.”

Some years ago a retreat was held at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church with the contemporary spiritual leader, Joyce Rupp, OSM, as the keynote guide. During one of her sessions, she said, “Care givers do not compassionate themselves well. We need other people to call ourselves to it.” I took note of that. So these days I’m playing that role, calling us all as care givers motivated by our response to Jesus Christ, to recognize the importance of taking care of ourselves as well. I’m not interested practical strategies for self-care, such a time management, priority setting or efficiency adjustments. Those things are important, but I leave them to others to explore. My explorations have been and continue to be in relation to spiritual foundations for self-care, because I believe self-care is a spiritual issue.

I’m not an audio-visual of perfected self-care. It’s not my intention to judge anyone who finds himself of herself overwhelmed, whatever the reasons. I still struggle to keep a balance in my life, and I can easily slip back into old patterns. But I have come a long way, and as a recovering workaholic, I think I have some wisdom to share.

Workaholism is rampant in our society, and it spills over into the Church. After all, were we not taught from day one that to be Christian meant living a life of total self-giving. I remember learning a little acronym for JOY in Sunday School: J for “Jesus first,” O for “others second,” and Y for “yourself last.” The concept of putting ourselves last included not thinking about our needs. To do so was regarded as being selfish, and self-centredness was a sin of vast proportions. A verse that stands out in my memory as a key verse in my growing up in church is: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). At the time I was not able to place that verse in the context of a mature spirituality, and mature spirituality is what saves us from the destructive outcomes of activism and overwork such as self-depletion and burnout.

Jesus said, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” I think as Christians we have gotten the` message about loving others. We have learned that we are called to do so. We know that’s what it means to be Christian. However, I think we have not done so well at recognizing that Jesus put in there – “as yourself” – as something closely linked with loving God and loving others.

I have grown into realizing that in order to be caring for others effectively, I first have to be caring for myself. To practice self-care is not selfish or irresponsible; it is essential and responsible, and respectful of how God designed us as human beings.

You know what a flight attendant says just before takeoff, “In the event of a change incabin pressure, panels above your head will open revealing oxygen masks. Pull the mask down toward you to activate the flow of oxygen. Cover your nose and mouth with the mask. Place the elastic band around your head and continue to breathe normally. Remember to secure your own mask before assisting others.” Life’s like that. Not taking appropriate care of ourselves has serious negative consequences and renders us unprepared to be present to others from a healthy place.

PRACTICE

In quiet reflection, ask yourself: “Where do I fit into my priority list? What do I do to ensure that my needs are met, so I can be a genuine resource to others?

In prayer: “Help me, Source of life, to value myself as your creation, and to take care of myself as preparation to care for others.”