The reflection by Rev. Tyler Connoley presented on Sunday, August 13, 2023.
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Liberating Word:
Ancient Witness:
- Psalm 46
- John 15: 1-15
Contemporary Witness:
“It is good to make an end of movement, to come to a point of rest, a place of pause. There is some strange magic in activity, in keeping at it, in continuing to be involved in many things that excite the mind and keep the hours swiftly passing. But it is a deadly magic; one is not wise to trust it with too much confidence. The moment of pause, the point of rest, has its own magic.”
Howard Thurman in Meditations of the Heart
“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: 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. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Rev. Tyler Connoley is fifth-generation clergy and also fifth-generation northwesterner. Tyler is the Conference Minister of the Central Pacific Conference, United Church of Christ.
Our podcast theme music, "Listen!", was composed by KMUCC members Dave Parker and Kathy Walden (used with permission of the composers).