Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: Five Minute Friday

  • Five Minute Friday: Anything but Routine

    Photo: Sacha Chua, flickr

    Routines make up the stuff of life.

    Whether from brushing our teeth to making the bed (or not) to checking our social-media feeds, we fill our lives with actions that we do again and again. Some of the routines can be life-giving, and some can suck the energy from us.

    Some of my best routines? One is going to the gym regularly. I’m off to body combat soon, which makes me happy and feel alive. I have some lovely friends at the gym, and when I don’t feel like going, I know that I will be letting them down if I don’t. Sometimes we let each other off the hook, but so many times after our sweat sessions, we’ve remarked how glad we are that we went, and how we wouldn’t have if we hadn’t texted our friend beforehand.

    Another is my weekly writing video call with two writer friends. Some weeks I can’t attend, but I try to make it a priority (even missing out on other gym classes – see above) because of the life that it brings to me and my friends. We cry together, get real, encourage each other, and share our writing. As we remarked yesterday, we are each other’s people. The way our writing calls are structured, we actually get some writing done too – I got a devotional drafted yesterday that I certainly would not have done had I been left to my own devices.

    Those two routines involve other people, but one I do on my own definitely feeds my soul – my Bible reading and prayer times. I can’t claim to have a “proper” time every day, but when I do, I feel more centered in God and ready to face the day. Lately I’ve been taking a chunk of the gospels and putting it into poetic verse. This is a way for me to slow down and digest the words of Jesus, to get them rolling through my head and my heart.

    What routines do you embrace? Why, or why not?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.

  • Five-Minute Friday: Moving Beyond Sloth

    By ConleyHistorical (Own work), Creative Commons

    In the past couple of months, when people would ask me how I am, I’d often reply, “Tired.”

    I have been weary to the bone; tired in body and spirit. Writing two books in quick succession, powering through my MA in Christian spirituality all in a too-compressed time period, and some personal issues have left me spent. Mind you, most of this is of my own doing. I could have spaced things out a bit more.

    So lately I’ve been trying to recover, resting with a purpose, as I’ve seen my friends with chronic illnesses practice. I’m not so sure I’m very successful at that type of resting, however, for once I slowed down, I seemed to collapse into a state of acedia – that malaise and lack of interest in much of life that the church fathers named as a deadly sin (often called sloth). Binge-watching medical dramas seemed about the level of what I was capable of, and my to-read pile of books started to pile up even higher. I neglected my weekly blog posts and have a long list of people to whom I owe an email.

    But this week, after the #BeastfromtheEast had thawed, part of my soul started to wake up too from its winter hibernation. I attended a seminar by one of my favorite lecturers at Heythrop College, Eddie Howells, on St John of the Cross on human and divine desire. The experience of thinking deeply again about things of the spirit and soul, along with spending time in the college library doing some research, felt like the start of a gentle awakening.

    May it continue.

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here. Did you join the linkup? Please share your blog in the comments, and tell me if you feel tired.

  • Five Minute Friday: Replenish the empty stores

    “How long did it take for you to write the books and complete the MA?”

    “Three years,” I said.

    “And how long do you think you’d give someone else to do that?”

    “Hmmm…. Probably five years.”

    “So you’re two years ahead! You can take some time off.”

     

    As I think about a conversation with a wise friend yesterday, I know I enter 2018 with far fewer deadlines than in the recent past. That’s the plan, for I’m tired and worn out. Yes, I want to write some more books and ponder what I’ve learned about Christian spirituality, but not right away. But how do we just turn off the drive to do, do, do? To accomplish something? To make a difference? And how do we do that in a world of social media, where I see authors signing contracts for their next books while wondering if I’m missing out?

    We – that is, I – need to be intentional in my plan to rest. Yesterday in my conversation I talked about adding another word-of-the-year, this one replenish, one that a friend from high school had uttered a week ago and stuck with me. As I mentioned this word to my wise friend, she shared its Latin root and assured me that it’s an apt word to describe the filling up that I need to do this year.

    Being intentional about resting seems counterintuitive to me, however. I am used to deadlines, goals, projects. I will need to adjust my approach. This week, the first week after fulfilling major deadlines, I’ve allowed myself to flop and watch some shows and not accomplish much at all. Next week I’ll make some gentle goals – such as taking down the Christmas decorations (!), playing around with some craft things, and going for walks in the brook.

    How do you replenish your empty stores?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here. If you are thinking about using a Lent book here, I wrote one during that busy time on the theme of forgiveness, The Living Cross.

  • Five-Minute Friday: No Motivation Required

    Someone once said about me that I eat work. There’s a bit of truth to that statement, for I love to pursue a project until it’s done. But the downside to loving work is that I can take too much on. Do too much. Write too much. Speak too much. Have too many things taking my attention away from my family, friends, and own needs.

    I’ve certainly lived the too-much life the last couple of years while doing my MA degree as well as writing a book and articles, speaking, and various other things. I’m not proud of the too-much state of life. It’s not healthy, and not one to emulate.

    And so I know that in certain areas, I don’t need much motivation. Give me a project, and I will work hard to complete it. Where I find motivation harder can be for the open-ended sorts of things. A healthy lifestyle, with enough sleep, exercise, and good foods. Time to be and pray and rest. Fun “wasting” time with loved ones without an agenda.

    Soon I will be done with big deadlines, at least until March. I hope I can stay motivated to pursue the less definable but important goals.

    How about you? How do you motivate yourself?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.

  • Five Minute Friday: The Ache of Feeling Different

    “I like your trainers,” said one of my new husband’s fellow theological college (US: seminary) students.

    “My trainers?” I asked, not knowing what he was talking about.

    He pointed down to my feet, and I realized he must be talking about my tennis shoes. “Oh, thank you!” I said. “I didn’t realize you all had so many different words for things here.”

    I was in my first days in Cambridge, having moved to England from Washington, DC, and I was feeling very much a foreigner in a strange land. I delighted in my new marriage and in my quaint surroundings, but I felt so very different. I’d hold off, when in the town centre, from speaking, lest I’d be marked as an out-of-place American. I had knew that adapting to a new culture might be challenging when I married Nicholas, but I hadn’t reckoned that I would feel so rocked in myself.

    My journey of finally losing a self-conscious walking alongside myself, as C.S. Lewis put it in Perelandra, took more years than I care to admit as I embraced life in the UK. Living in London helps a lot, as this fantastic city is so multicultural that I rarely feel like I stand out as a foreigner. But I had to look more deeply, too, and ask God to help me to be myself, not editing my actions or responses unnecessarily in the quest merely to fit in (but of course modifying where appropriate).

    I’ve learned that it’s more than okay to be different, not least when I meet people from many different countries and hear their stories of life, love, and God.

    How are you different?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.

    I share many more stories and observations in my book Finding Myself in Britain, which to my delight won two awards. Find out more here.

  • Five Minute Friday: The God who is Near

    I love teaching about prayer, and a favorite session is practicing the presence of God. You may be familiar with Brother Lawrence, he the seventeenth-century French monk who intentionally kept God near throughout the day as he prayed, worked in the kitchen, and so on.

    To emphasize how God is near to his people, I start off the session with a series of Bible verses, from the Old Testament and the New:

    Solomon said in 1 Kings 8:27, “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less the temple I have built!”

    Isaiah 57:15: For this is what the high and exalted One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

    Jeremiah 23:23-24: “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.

    Psalm 23 says “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

    Isaiah 43:2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you.”

    Jesus to his disciples, last words in Matthew: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

    In Acts 17:27-28, Paul, speaking to the Greeks on Mars Hill in Athens, said, “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’”

    All of these passages reverberate with the same truth: God loves to be near to his people. We only need to call to mind his presence within to be assured of this truth.

    As we enter the Advent season, a time to celebrate the God who became Man, we can remember that he did so not only to save us, but to be near to us.

    Do you sense God’s presence near to – and within you – today?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.

    Want to join me when I speak sometime? Check out upcoming events here. (I have a break until March!)

  • Five Minute Friday: Pointing the Finger

    You know that spine-shrinking feeling you have when you’ve been caught out at something? They have seen your wrongdoing, named it, and there’s no place to run and no place to hide. You feel exposed, ashamed. You have no excuse. I’ve experienced that sensation, and also the great gift of forgiveness extended to me afterward. The feeling of being washed clean of the rags of shame is freeing and liberating.

    But too often, I’m the one pointing the finger. I’m the one naming – in my family – the list of shortcomings and failures before them. They don’t reach my high standards, and I’m disappointed. Or I place my frustration in one, such as my husband, on a child, like I did this very morning: “Mom,” she said, looking up at me from the half-landing, “You’re mad at Dad for not getting up and getting ready but you’re taking it out on me.” Yes, she was right – and I had to confess that and ask her to forgive me. She walked up the stairs and gave me a hug before going to school. I was glad.

    So what’s our excuse? Pride, self-determination, fear, anger… a whole host of negative and self-focused emotions can lie behind our actions of blaming others or being overly cross when they fail us. But we’re not God; nor does he want us to be taking that rightful place from him. He wants us to extend grace and love with humble hearts. Yes, there’s an added layer of complication when we’re parents and we want to teach our children. But God through his Spirit is the best teacher of all.

    That’s a thought that Oswald and Biddy Chambers held onto in their work with the Bible college they set up, and then later with their work with soldiers in Egypt during the First World War. They would seek not to guilt someone into making a decision for God, or to try to convict them about a specific course of action. They fully believed that God would do the work; they would pray and commit the matter to him and to the person. (This week marks the hundred-year anniversary of his death. You can read my short account of his life here.)

    How can you trust God with your loved ones today?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.

    Want more? My book The Living Cross shares stories from the Old Testament and the New on the freeing nature of forgiveness in a forty-day devotional format (for Lent, but it can be read at any time).

  • Five Minute Friday: Silence (#FMF)

    A pregnant pause.
    A companionable silence.
    An awkward pause.
    The sound of silence.

    Silence –
    It can be deafening
    It can be rich
    Or a source of strength
    Or a drain of energy
    Some crave it
    Others run from it

    I love a good block of silence in my days. When Mondays come around, I’m delighted to be in my sunny study, writing or answering emails, or pondering. The quiet gives me time to process all that’s going on in my heart and in my head, for my thoughts seem to swirl around and around. I need time alone to catch some of those thoughts and process them. To get them down on paper and to make sense of them before God. To seek his inspiration, help, comfort, and love.

    Over the summer, I worked on my dissertation for my master’s in Christian spirituality. I had three weeks in our home basically on my own – first the kids were at camps and my husband was on retreat, and then my husband took them on holiday. During the weekends we’d reconvene, all together in the vicarage, with the noise and hum of daily life once again appearing. And then they’d leave, and I’d be alone.

    Me in my sunny, silent study. A happy place – usually.

    The first week I relished the silence, thrilled to be able to work uninterrupted as I slogged forth in laying down a first draft.

    The second week I made sure I left the house a few times, set up a few video chats with friends, and was glad that my husband was home for a few of the days.

    The third week I cried, feeling sorry for myself as I knew I had not only the excruciating work of rewriting my draft, but had to live in what now felt like crushing silence.

    I made it through the summer alone. I know now that although in my daily life I yearn for slices of silence, I too need times with others.

    How about you? What does silence mean to you?

     

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.