De-Stressing | Rev. John Riley

De-Stressing

Well, hello. Well, let me ask you a question. Have you ever, when you’re driving, have you ever felt like you’ve made a wrong turn? Have you ever, like, has it ever seemed that you’ve hit every stop light on your drive down the, the El Camino? Excuse me. Has it ever felt like your batteries were just giving out on you every five minutes?

Rush Hour Stress

Well, I have a story for you. So, as many of you know, my son, Ethan, he’s 16, and he’s got his driver’s permit. So, he — of course the, the laws now, which have changed drastically since I got my driver’s license. What, what, 15 years ago? I’m sure it was. So, he had to wait six months and we want him to drive as much as possible. So, because I have the more flexible schedule, I’m usually driving with them to school in the morning, riding with him. Oh my gosh, I’ve got a little, I got a little frog. Have you ever had a frog? So, I’m driving with him in the mornings to school, riding with him, and then I take the car and I go, and usually after football practice, I pick him up and then he gets to drive home. So, you know, he gets a lot of practice under extreme supervision that he – so we make sure that he knows what the heck he’s doing in his car. You know, that parental thing. Have you ever experienced that?

So, not that, you know, being in the car with him has any impact, but, so that was our plan. And in the mornings, we, four days out of the week, he gets to school early because he has what they call zero period. He’s on the football team. And so, he’s training with the team before school starts. And he always wants to get there early Monday through Thursday, before the practice starts so he knows he is there because he has to really work hard to get playing time. So, he wants to make sure he’s there early.

Now, for History he’s okay with being just barely on time, but for football practice, he wants to be there early. So, we’re driving down the road and we, we always go the back road to Palo Alto High School, if you know what that is, Alma, and then we’re on Churchill and we’re there. And at eight in the morning, at 7:45 in the morning, there’s nobody there. There’s no one there so it’s just easy-peasy.

Well, on Fridays we go a different route because when nine o’clock hits, that intersection is a mess because there are people, you know, commuting to work. There are at least a thousand bicycles, you know, going, crossing that intersection there, the commuter trains. And on Friday we usually go a different route and we were both in the car and he gets on Alma and we missed the offramp to go underneath to Page Mill. And, you know, if you miss that, offramp, you’re pretty much resigned to going that way.

So, we said, okay, it’s no big deal. You know, he starts stressing out about it. I’m like, all right, you know, we get there and there’s a long line of cars and you know, I’m like, okay, you know, just relax. There’s no reason to get stressed out. We got plenty of time. But he’s stressed out. Anybody ever feel that way before? Two light cycles, plus one train later, we’re able to turn left and get into the parking lot. And he gets there just, you know, just a minute before and he’s, grabs the stuff and he’s off. And, you know, I’m thinking because the dad that I am, you know, dude, just relax, don’t get all stressed out. I didn’t verbalize that. I know better than to do that. But you know, Unity Minister, you know, dude just, you know, relax. It’s all good. You’re going to get there when you get there. And you’re in the right place at the right time right now. Yeah.

So, we, we get there and I drive off and I go to a store just down the road here because I wanted to grab a few things for lunch and, and so forth and I was getting ready. And, well, that was about the time that rush hour hit. And so, I’m getting ready to turn left back onto Middlefield Road to come back to Unity Palo Alto. And there’s a ton of traffic and I start getting annoyed. I start getting stressed out. Now, who’s in the driver’s seat now? So I’m, I’m like, oh my God, what did I — I just was thinking this, you know, to my son, not saying it, thinking it. Maybe I could try it too.

So, I’m just like, okay, I’m just going to relax. You know what? I’m not going to go that way. I’m going to go this way. So, I turn left and I am clever thinking I can get around the traffic. And I’m like, okay, here we go. And I, then I made a left hand turn and pretty soon I realized that I hit every single stoplight that I could have hit along the way, or just missed every green light depending on whether you look at life as half empty or half full. And I must have hit every stop sign. I think this path that I took has the most stop signs in Palo Alto as any road could have. And because of the construction on some roads, I couldn’t turn left where I thought I could so I had to turn right. And I went even further out of my way. I was pretty much circling the campus and couldn’t get here.

Dealing with Frustration

So, every time I stopped and I started to feel that frustration, I had to, I just had to laugh at myself. It’s like, okay, practice the principle that you were “telepathing” — saying to your son via telepathy — and okay. So, I just relax and then I get to the next stop. I’ve got tense again. I just started laughing. You know, it’s like, okay, I can’t go that way. Well, I wonder what I’m going to find this way. So, my mental attitude, by the time I got here, I was laughing my head off. I was in such a good mood. And uh, so there, I proved my point. I’m so, so proud of myself. You’re the only people that I can tell that to. Certainly, my son won’t get it or won’t care.

But the stop sign, have you ever run into those stop signs in life? Because sometimes we’re going down a path that we think we’re supposed to go on and there’s a stop sign. Sometimes we’re going down a path and we miss the exit altogether. Have you ever felt that? But a great metaphor for life because that happens to us all the time. And how often do we get stressed out and frustrated about it versus laughing at ourselves for getting stressed out and frustrated about it?

So, it just takes a little bit, the idea of the big stop sign and the right hand turn instead of a left hand turn, you know, really was calling to me for today’s talk because this is my last talk before I go on sabbatical. Now, don’t worry. It’s just a month. I can see some of you cheering and some of you weeping. I don’t know what that means, but … And sometimes we get those stop signs and it’s like, okay, it’s time to take a break.

Take a Break

So, what is a sabbatical? What is a sabbatical? Well, the word comes from the Greek word — wait, I wrote this down because I’m not going to remember the Greek word – shabbaton, shabbaton. Did I sound Greek? But that word comes from the Hebrew word, shabbat and shabbat is the idea of the Sabbath. So where does this idea of the Sabbath come from? Well, of course, in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew scriptures, in the Torah, the second chapter of Genesis starts off with, you know, it was the sixth day and God finished creating the earth and the heavens. And on the seventh day, He rested. And He blessed and hallowed that seventh day because He’d finished. It sounds like a pretty good gig. “Hey, I’m done. We’ll make this day a holy day.” So, on the seventh day, that’s where we get that idea of Sabbath.

In Exodus, it’s repeated, it’s even longer in Exodus –sorry, Leviticus, Leviticus 25. Leviticus is written by the priestly — it’s the priestly writers, it’s all the laws that have come up. And Levitis, Leviticus 25 says, “Six years, thou shall sow thy field, and for six years shall thy prune thy vineyard and gather the fruit thereof. But in the seventh year there shall be the Sabbath of rest onto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord. Thou shall neither sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard. And that which grows on its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather thy grapes, the grapes of thy vine undressed, for this is the year of rest unto the Lord.” So, every seven years, there’s a year-long rest. And I don’t know, maybe that was the beginning of learning how to rotate, rotate crops. But that’s certainly where we get the idea of the seven year’s sabbatical for those in the, uh, education world, right. Seven years, and you get some time off.

Now, a lot of times people think of the word sabbatical and think of it, oh, it’s a vacation. You know, congratulations, you get a month off, but the real term of a sabbatical — and I think, you know, there’s some academics in here — the real idea here is that you’re not just, you know, going on, going on a vacation for a year, although some may think of it that way, but it’s a time to research. It’s a time to look at things a little bit differently. It’s a time to, you know, evaluate, maybe create a new project or something for yourself.

And in the ministerial world, it was often after seven years, you get a sabbatical…sabbatical, but nobody wants to let their minister go for a year.

Who knows what’s going to happen in a year? So, they only gave them three months. And nowadays, even those three months were too much. The congregation gets too used to not being with you. What’s up with that? Or the minister decides, ah, the heck with it. So, more modern it’s like every three years we get a month and that’s, that’s what we wrote into our contract. So that’s, there’s the law, right, the written law that we all, everyone in academia has in their contract.

What I love is this idea of when we look at a Sabbath from a little more detail, because in Leviticus it also said six days shall work be done. But on the seventh day is the Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy, convocation. You shall not do work. It’s a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.

So, in that day and age, you were giving structure to their religious practice. You know, “Work for six days and then you take the seventh day off. And, by the way, on the seventh day, you gotta come to church. Here’s what you have to bring. Here’s what you have to do.”

And so, it was very planned out, very structured at least until, at least until Jesus came along, as it was told in the synoptic gospel, gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They all told the same story about how Jesus was intentionally breaking the Sabbath to gather food. And when he was approached by the Pharisees, he said, you know, “Man was not made for the Sabbath; the Sabbath was made for man”, a very intentional distinction because we had gone into a rote routine. We forgot what the true meaning of Sabbath is, which is to become, to celebrate that oneness that we have with God, to be in the flow of life, love, and wisdom, and to allow it to be our, our gig. And, in fact, Jesus’ message was, the Sabbath is the state of consciousness that we should have all the time, even when we’re working. And this was his way of, you know, creating that lesson for us.

The True Sabbath

In The Revealing Word, the co-founder of the unity movement, Charles Fillmore, wrote this about Sabbath, “The true Sabbath is that of a state of spiritual attainment where human beings cease from all personal effort and all belief in their own work and rest in the consciousness that the father abideth in me doeth the work.” That’s from John 14, “the father abideth in me doeth the work.” The Spirit in me does the work, right? That’s the clear indication that God is everywhere present in all things and in all people and in you. And if we get our ego out of the way, we allow Spirit to move, we allow Spirit to be, and to express in through and as us. And that’s the true meaning of Sabbath is to allow that presence and power to be.

A Time of Rest

You know, I like how he says spiritual attainment, because what he’s talking about is this idea of intellectualized … intellectually knowing it, but then also feeling it in your bones and also having that sense feeling of it. It’s, it’s just who you are and who you become. So, it’s not just the knowing of it. And, in fact, whenever we’re doing, if you’re taking a class or doing spiritual, any spiritual work, you need a time of rest to start to digest it, to start to internalize it, to start to make it a part of you.

If you’re doing any learning whatsoever, there’s the intellectual learning and then there’s the practical application. How am I putting it into work? How am I making it a part of my knowledge base, a part of my learning, a part of who I am now, now that I have more skills? So, that process is something that everyone does. And it’s a process that, if we do it intentionally, we’re going to have so much more fruit from that activity. So, that’s, to me, what a sabbatical is, for me.

Now, every three years, I get one for a month and I was eligible in 2020. And I don’t know, something came, something came up. I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember. Anybody remember? Don’t tell me. Something came up a couple of years ago. And so, I’m taking it now. I’m taking it in September, taking September off, there’ll be four Sundays. We have fabulous guest speakers, our own Moj Razmi who does our meditations on Sunday morning. Along with Sue, Moj is going to be speaking. And then Rusty Gaillard, who’s our platform leader and speaker on occasion, he’s going to do a three-part series. And I’m just so proud of this Spiritual community because we can all keep going, keep growing, keep practicing with each other. It’s not dependent on that idea of a Minister, right? It’s because the Minister is in here, is in all of you.

And so, this idea of sabbatical for me is intentionally taking a right hand turn instead of waiting in traffic for the left hand turn, the way I’ve always gone, right? It’s intentionally shifting from my old behavior patterns to try something new, excuse me, to try something new. I think if you looked at your own life and your own, you know, what you’re doing in life, and if you said, I’m just going to take one day in – because not everybody — anybody here can take a month off, let alone a year? Academics. Okay. Not everyone can.

Try Something Different

And so, instead of the seven-year plan, you go to the seven-day plan, right, and we take a day off. But, in that day, what if you decided to take a right-hand turn and just tried something different intentionally, intentionally said, “I’m going to break these habits that I do every day and I’m going to try something different. I’m going to look at the world in a different way. I’m going to intentionally stop at the stop sign and look around and see what’s around me. At least until the car behind me starts to beep.”

Sabbatical is that idea of breaking apart that crystallized thinking that we all have, breaking apart those crystallized beliefs, those automatic beliefs, those automatic behaviors that are running our life. We’re not running our life; those behaviors are running our life. So, taking a day to break apart those, that thinking and those behaviors to observe life from a different perspective, intentionally saying, “I’m turning right. Now world, now Spirit, what’s next?” and allowing Spirit to breathe you, allowing Spirit to move you, to inspire you, opening your heart to that harmonizing energy, opening your mind to divine inspiration and just saying, “okay, what’s next?” Just take one day this week and just see how it changes your perspective on the rest of your day.

Rush Hour Stress Part Two

Now, there is a part two to the driving story. This was the story I told you was, last, not this last week, but the week before, Friday, when he missed the turn. No, that was – yeah, Friday. Oh, dang. Did I tell the wrong story? You just barely got there in time. Yeah. I told the story completely wrong. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. Want me to tell it to you again?

So, on Friday we’re driving and we’re supposed to turn because he’s heading, not to football — this is the only part I got wrong — he’s heading to History. Every other day he’s happy. You know, he wants to get there early. On History, he’s happy with getting there just barely on time. And here we are pulling into the parking lot, two minutes late. So, he is just kind of resigned to it. And as we’re pulling into the parking lot, there are kids wandering around. You know, they’re supposed to be in class. Mr. Truant Officer, Mr. Father, there are kids on the football field. He’s like, “What’s going on? Was there an assembly today?” And he pulls up and he gets out. And as soon as he opens the door, we hear it. There’s a fire alarm going off. So, he wasn’t late to history. All of that stress that he had was for nought, as it turns out.

Of course, you know, the metaphysician in me said, “Yeah, it’s exactly how the universe works”, but it doesn’t always work that way. Right? The next, three days later, Tuesday of this week, we’re on…heading to football early and we get just past Page Mill, the last exit, and it’s wall-to-wall, bumper-to-bumper traffic heading to downtown, bumper to bumper. So, he was 10 minutes late for practice that day. The good news is when he got out, there were three seniors who were stuck in that traffic as well so he felt good about walking in with — he’s a junior — felt good with walking in with the three seniors, the varsity football practice, late.

And it, as it turns out, I was thinking along the way as I’m parked there, “Well, maybe I can go that way and go back to Page Mill and go under.” But I, you know, there was something in me that said, “No, no, don’t. Just stay the course.” So I stayed the course. When I was coming back, Page Mill was completely closed off. The underneath pass was completely shut down and all that traffic was diverted from Oregon Expressway onto Alma. And had we gone that route, we would’ve been even further back because we would’ve been in that traffic waiting to come up to where we were. So, sometimes you just got to go with that gut instinct, change that thinking, that thinking that says, “I’ve got to be right”, that “I’m always right” that we try to intellectualize it. It’s like, “Well, here I am. Here’s what is. You know, I’m late, but guess what? So were three seniors who were starters, so he’s okay.”

Yeah, I circled Palo Alto, but you know what? I’m in an electric car. So I felt good by the time I got here. From all of my mistakes, all of my wrong turns, all of my wrong thinking still turned out to be something worthwhile, something that meant something that was meaningful for me. And the message of sabbatical, for me, is to take that left turn, to not get up on, I’m here for two more days, and not get up on Wednesday morning and come to the center to do my normal things, is to let go and not worry about whether, you know, the batteries and the microphones are working. So let go and disconnect myself so that I can intentionally take a right-hand turn and go somewhere else and do something else and explore some other ideas, explore other spiritual renewal ideas and create that sense of rest, create that sense of rejuvenation, create that sense of refreshing my own purpose in life so that I can come back and be fulfilled and be ready to do what’s next, whatever that next might be.

Rest Your Mind

Take a break from the routine, from your striving, from your efforting, from your storytelling and your believing that things are the way they are. Take a break from that. Rest your mind and look for something different. Intentionally, take a different direction, get a new perspective without expectations. And when you hit that stop sign in life, don’t fight against it. Don’t complain about it. Don’t stress out about it. Just listen to it. Pause, pray, proceed.

Everyone’s wondering, “Hey, you know, when do I have time to pray or meditate?” Well, you got 30 seconds there. You can do an open-eyed meditation. Just pause without the dialogue going on. You’ll get there when you get there. At that point, pause, pray and proceed. Revitalize your purpose, rekindle your light, and reignite your passion.

We are all here to live a joyful, abundant life. We all have that capacity, capability. When we tune into that Divine essence within us, when we allow God to be God within us, Spirit to be Spirit within us, the Allness of life, love and wisdom to flow in through, and as us, life shows up differently for us then, even if it’s a stop sign.