Finding rhythm

The air is changing, Fall is beginning to roll in here in the Pacific Northwest. While we still have another full month of “official” Summer ahead, I can already see the signs of the season’s change setting in. Kids in our neighborhood went back to school yesterday. Teacher friends around the county are finishing up with trainings, preparing classrooms, welcoming new cohorts for the learning year.

I feel the change more readily this year. This is the first year in many that I am not starting back up a school year myself. After almost a decade connected with a university ministry at a local church, I left a few years back to finish my Masters degree and now, with that finished, there is no academic Fall start up rhythm for me. And it’s different. It’s good, but unsettling nonetheless.

This Fall marks a shift. I’ve been thinking about how we mark shifts in our lives, individually and in community, for a while now. In the final year of my Masters of Divinity program, I spent a good portion of time in studying the dynamic shift that the Christian church is undergoing in America. I wondered at how we can navigate such shifts, which are highlighted by statistical decline and reconfiguring of our cultural identities — how to we make it through a season like we are experiencing and emerge healthy and alive? What I found is that it’s by rediscovering a sense of rhythm and practice. Rhythms of life stabilize us, the help us mark time and recognize our surroundings, even when we feel like we’re on foreign ground. A shift in rhythm like the change from Summer to Fall is a welcome remind that the rhythms of life continue on, even when we feel like many of the things we have come to hold as given are changing and falling away.

For me, this is a year of finding rhythm. It is a year of establishing new practices that help me, my family, and my community mark time well, even as we experience dramatic changes and growth. It is a year of receiving the shifts with gratitude, not anger or despair. It is an opportunity to evaluate all that we do and possess and choose to live more simply, more gratefully, more generously. In finding rhythm, I believe we find grounding, the place we belong.

To find rhythm, we must take stock of what is. I’ve been joking with friends recently that I’m taking a “rhythm audit” of my life these days. What are the routines and patterns of the day that I maintain? How do things like when I wake and go to sleep impact the way I experience the rest of the day? When do I use my computer, smartphone, or tablet and when is it time to put that to rest? Throughout the week, what days do I run errands and what days do I set aside for delighting in sabbath rest.

As I take stock of how my time is spent, rhythms begin to emerge, patterns that inevitably shape who I am becoming because, simply…we are what we do. Or as one of my favorite writer’s these days recently put it, you are what you love. We are creatures of habit, formed by “liturgies of ultimate concern,” practices that tune our hearts in certain ways. As I audit the rhythm of my days, from home to work to family time and everything in between, I begin to see patterns emerge that speak to what is forming me and how I might be able to find healthy, life-giving rhythms in this time of shift that will sustain and strengthen.

To take stock is to open ourselves up to being changed, to letting old patterns fade and new rhythms emerge that lead towards greater life, greater connection, a fuller sense of flourishing and peace. This is a journey towards finding rhythm.