Show Notes
In this episode, Derek Vreeland shares his personal experience of taking a two-week break from church work for the first time in 25 years. He reflects on the importance of silence and solitude as spiritual disciplines, the lessons he learned about his limitations, the necessity of rest, and the realization that he is not defined by his productivity. Through this journey, he emphasizes the value of self-awareness and the need to disconnect from the constant demands of work and technology.
Books mentioned in this podcast:
Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton
Did you find this episode helpful on your spiritual journey? Consider helping us out!
Leave a review
Share it with your friends
Give us a 5-Star rating on your podcast app of choice
Get to know the host: https://derekvreeland.com
Interact with Derek on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook
Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Peaceable and Kind, the podcast where we explore the transformation. Of living out Jesus’ call to peace and kindness in our everyday lives. Each week your host, Derek Vreeland, will delve into the stories, scriptures, and practical steps that help us embody these essential Christian virtues.
Derek Vreeland: Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host. Derek Vreeland, thank you for joining me for this episode. And if you have not subscribed already, I encourage you to do that. Get subscribed right here wherever you’re listening to this episode. And if you haven’t left a rating or review, if you could do that, that would help us so much. And the last thing. That I would ask is if you find value in Christian content like this, would you consider sharing this episode with a friend? I think you’re going to find a lot of value in what I’m going to share today. On this episode, I want to share an experience I had with you back in October. For the first time in 25 years of church work as a pastor, I took a two-week break And I’m not celebrating the fact that it took me that long to take a full 14-day break In fact, I’m confessing that to you. I’m confessing it as a sin. I can’t believe that it took me that long to take a break. Now, of course, I take time off around um holidays. Of course, the life of the church means a lot of activity around Christmas and Easter. But at other times I’ve tried to take a few days off with family. We do vacation as a family, not every year I’ve taken a seven or ten day vacation with the family and it’s always great fun, but I’ve always been tied to the work with the church. I’ve been tethered to my email. I’ve made the mistake of taking my laptop with me on vacation and in the morning or evenings I’m doing email or doing email and checking messages on my phone. So for a quarter century, 25 years, I’ve been serving the church and haven’t taken a real break until last month. And here’s what happened. The first week of October, I was in Colorado for a retreat. This was a five-day spiritual retreat that our church was hosting just south of Rocky Mountain National Park in a beautiful retreat center. And our church was hosting this retreat, so there was some work for me. I spoke one time during the retreat and had some administrative things to do, but it really wasn’t work. It was mostly fun. Then I returned home from that retreat on a Friday, and while I was back in town, I had returned home, I didn’t return to church Because that Saturday began the 14-day countdown of taking a break from church work So while I was back in town, I didn’t even attend our church the two Sundays during that break. I love the church. I love our church in particular. I love being with the people in our church. But I knew that I couldn’t just attend a Sunday morning worship service and not get back to work. So for those two Sundays, I didn’t attend our church. I attended other churches in town where I had pastor friends who were preaching those Sundays. And I’ll share more about that in just a little bit But during this two-week break, what was most important for me is that I attended no meetings, I had no appointments. And I mostly avoided my email. I did peek into my inbox a couple of times during those 14 days. Because I was checking emails from my editor. I’m working on a book project and needed to follow up on just a few things related to my writing. But I didn’t spend much time in the inbox. So I took a break from meetings and appointments. I took a major break from email. I did something I have never done as an adult, and that is I deleted the Gmail app from my phone. I recognized that I was spending a lot of time doing emails on my phone because it is quick and easy, but for this 14-day break, I wanted No messaging, no email, so I deleted the Gmail app. I also deleted all of the social media apps off of my phone Now, I have taken breaks from social media in the past. I have during the season of Lent, for example, taken a social media break, a social media fast. The season of Lent is a 40-day period before Easter, and Lent is a season of pulling back It’s a season of repentance and reflection and prayer, and there is a common tradition among Christians to give up something for Lent. And so there have been times in the past that during the season of Lent, I take a break from social media. But for these 14 days, I knew that I needed to take a break from social media because I message with a number of our church members through my social media accounts. So for 14 days, I had no email on my phone. I had no social media apps on my phone And it wasn’t necessarily a true sabbatical. Pastors and ministers often take a sabbatical break, which could be six to twelve weeks. So this wasn’t necessarily a sabbatical, but for me it was a much-needed break. It was a time with much silence and solitude, and I’m grateful for that. And so on this episode, I want to share thoughts and gratitude from my two-week break, from my two-week time of general silence. You know, silence and solitude are spiritual pathways. These are spiritual disciplines that have been walked by Christians for centuries but they are pathways that I mostly avoid. Now, I don’t have a problem avoiding the solitude part. At my core, I’m truly an introvert. So while as a pastor I live in an extroverted world and I have an extroverted job and I love people, I love being with God’s people. It wears me out. And so I do recognize I need times of isolation and solitude just for my own soul and sanity. So of silence and solitude, the solitude is easy. The silence has been more difficult for me I have over the years developed a practice in morning prayer of silence, and I’ve grown more and more comfortable with that. But most mornings, those times of silence are just a few minutes. So in my entire day, I only have a few minutes of silence. I tend to fill the activity of my day with input. I’m either reading something on my phone, I’m reading a book, I’m listening to a podcast. I’m watching clips on YouTube. It’s just constant input. So I have this tendency to avoid silence. And during this 14-day break, I was trying to form some new habits. I was trying to grow in the area of silence and solitude So I want to share with you some of the things that I learned during my 14-day break. But before I jump into that, I want to share just a few thoughts from Thomas Merton. And his book, Thoughts in Solitude. If you’re not familiar, Thomas Merton is perhaps the most influential Christian mystic of the last 100 years. And Merton has been a spiritual master in the Christian tradition that I have learned from Merton is someone who has challenged me. And his little book, Thoughts in Solitude, is actually a collection of writings from one of his journals. Merton was a monk, and he spent his life in prayer, in contemplation, and a lot of silence and solitude. So if I’m going to grow in this area, and perhaps you’d like to grow in the area of silence and solitude, then I think together we can learn from Merton. So here’s just a couple of thoughts from Merton in his book, Thoughts in Solitude. First, he’s quoting here from St. Thomas Aquinas. Merton writes, Saint Thomas says that a man is good when his will takes joy in what is good, evil when his will takes joy in what is evil He is virtuous when he finds happiness in a virtuous life, sinful when he takes pleasure in a sinful life Hence, the things that we love tell us what we are. One of the things that happens to me when I am practicing intentional silence in prayer in the presence of God is all sorts of things from my internal life begin to bubble up to the surface. Painful memories from the past, anxious thoughts about the future Often in silence, I’m in a place where I can evaluate my life. I can review my life. Murton says, the things that we love tell us what we are In moments of silence, we can draw near to God, we can begin to see and experience God, but moments of silence are also an opportunity of self-awareness To grow close to our true self, to ask ourselves in silence, what are the things I am truly pursuing What are the things that I really desire? What are the things that I love? Often we fill our lives with Just media that’s entertainment. It’s not necessarily bad for us, not necessarily good, but we fill our minds and we give so much attention to that And sometimes those things can reveal truly what we love. And so if we are examining ourselves in moments of silence, And we begin to see what we’re giving so much attention to, it can really reveal who we are. And if we see that we are desiring things that aren’t good, they’re not healthy, they’re not causing us to grow in our relationship with God, it gives us a moment of pause to not only evaluate, but to repent, to change, to turn towards the greater things of love. Let me move on. Merton goes on to say, a purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas from actions. I have spent my life in a lot of academic pursuits. I earn three degrees. I always have a book near me. Yes, I spend time listening to podcasts, watching videos, but I always have a book. If I have to go pick up my son at school after band practice or some extracurricular activity. If I have to sit in that parking lot for longer than five minutes, I have a book with me because I’m always reading, because I always want to be learning and growing intellectually But I recognize that I’m not just a brain on a stick, that who I am as a person is more than what I am learning. And while the mental life, the intellectual life is important, sometimes, and Merton is right here, sometimes we can assume that that’s the totality of our life. particularly if we’re not letting what we’re learning affect how we live, that is our action. I thought that was helpful from Merton. He goes on to say in Thoughts in Solitude, here he’s talking about prayer. Prayer, Merton writes is then not just a formula of words or a series of desires springing up in the heart, it is the orientation of our whole body, mind, and spirit to God in silence, attention, and adoration. And I must say something about that. I want to share an experience from my two-week break. that really speaks to this acknowledgement that prayer is not just the words that we speak, but prayer is about the attention of our heart, the adoration of our heart. Okay, a couple more things from Merton. He writes, your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire How true is this? The kind of life that we are experiencing and the kind of people we are becoming is based on the goals we set for ourselves. What is it that we’re truly living for? Merton writes, you are made in the image of what you desire. And as I’ve practiced silence as a form of prayer, it has caused me to grow in my desire for Jesus because this is the great goal of my life. I want to be like Jesus Okay, one more line from Merton. This line I read when I first got the book, and it was the one that I underlined I struck it with yellow highlighter. It has stars near it. This is the thought from Merton that really Stuck with me after first reading this book. Merton writes, It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard. That thought has reverberated within me as I have tried to grow in the practice of silence Because as a pastor, as a teacher, as an author, and now as a podcaster, words are my life. I live with this anxiety to be heard. I have words within me and they compel me to speak and to write and to podcast. But silence is a way to grow in desire for God. Silence is a way for us to grow in self-awareness. And it is true that it’s not the words that break our silence so much, but the anxiety to be heard Okay, with some thoughts from Merton laying a bit of a foundation, let me talk to you a bit about what I learned from my two weeks of silence. When I say silence, I don’t mean literal silence. I did lots of talking and activities, spent time with the family and went on walks with my wife, and I was still talking. I did some writing. But when I think about my two-week break as a time of silence, it was about silencing the clutter that was in my head. And that’s why I couldn’t do email and social media and all that during two weeks. I didn’t record any podcasts. uh during that two-week time because I needed silence in my mind, silence in my soul. So here are some things I learned during my two-week break. First I learned that I am not limitless. I have limits. I have limitations. Only God is limitless I can only do so much. I can only read so much. I can only write so much. I can only produce so much. As an aside, I often feel guilty because people send me articles and podcasts. and lectures and sermons to listen to, book ideas, new books to read. And I feel a little bit of guilt that I don’t have time to read and listen to everything that I want to. And during this two-week break, it was brought to my attention that it’s okay. I can let go of that guilt. I don’t have time within a 24-hour period to do, read, listen to everything that I want to, and that’s okay During my two-week break, I had the opportunity to live at a different pace of life There was still activity going on, but there was a lot more margin in between those activities. In my normal life, I try to squeeze too much into every moment of the day I have lived too much of my life with the false assumption that I am limitless But that’s me trying to take the place of God in my life. Only God is limitless. I have limitations. A part of this different pace of life, I, as I mentioned uh earlier, did not attend my church on the two Sundays during my break. I attended other worship services where I have friends at other churches. And the first Sunday I attended a church that is a half a mile from my house. It is a thriving United Methodist church. I know both the pastor, I know the worship leader there. And so I walked the half mile from my house. It was a beautiful crisp fall morning, and I slowly walked and and just that was different. Normally I hop in my car and I drive to my church on Sunday morning. But this Sunday morning I walked into this United Methodist Church, and I wanted to attend both their traditional service and their contemporary service. So I showed up at 8 a. m. for their traditional service in the chapel, and my friend Doug, who’s the pastor, saw me walking down the hall and greeted me warmly. He didn’t know I was planning to attend. And uh it was a smaller gathering. There were perhaps twenty-five, thirty of us in the chapel. And I have to tell you, I felt the presence of God. It was a traditional service in the sense that it was traditional songs of worship. So there was a piano, we sang from the hymn book. Uh Doug preached, and at the end he was preparing us to come to the Lord’s table to receive Holy Communion. And in preparing the church for communion, He had said to the congregation, I’m happy my friend uh Derek is here, and he’s an Asbury theological seminary grad and has a Wesleyan bent, and I want to invite him. to come offer the elements of communion. And I felt so honored. So I slid out of my row and and walked down the aisle towards Doug and He said, is this okay? And of course, at this moment, I’m fully committed. I said, sure, I’m I’m here to serve. I had a moment of anxiety because I I don’t know United Methodist liturgy. I didn’t know exactly what it was supposed to do and say. But in my home church, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. And I thought, well, I’m just gonna do what I know to do. And so uh Doug served me uh the body and blood of Christ, and then handed me uh the chalice, and I was to serve the cup. And he was serving the bread as the people came. Doug said, The peace of Christ with you. And as I held forth the cup, I said, The blood of Christ shed for you. That’s the words that we use in my congregation. And I felt so honored to serve communion in that moment. Because when I walked out of that chapel, I felt the presence of God. And I enjoyed the contemporary service. The contemporary service was very similar to the flow and the feel of my home church. And I I loved that experience as well. But I’ll remember walking out of that little chapel. Because there was something about the practice of communion that I can’t explain, but it’s a powerful expression of the presence of God. So, during this two-week break, first thing that came to my attention is that I am not limitless. I have limitations. Only God is limitless. Second thing I learned is that I am stronger when I rest. I typically have a go-go go and do do do mentality. Rest has not always been easy for me. Within the last ten years or so, I think I have developed good habits of Sabbath rest in terms of taking one day off per week. For most Christians, a day of Sabbath rest is Sunday when we worship together But as a pastor, uh Sunday is a workday for me, at least a half a day of work. So I take Fridays as a full day of Sabbath rest. Now, even on my day of rest, I’m cheating just a little bit because Friday mornings is usually when I do the bulk of my writing for that week. I’m currently writing this three volume Bible study series. I have the first two books written. I’m I’m working on the third. And so Friday, which is a day off, I I do some writing, which is work. but it’s work I delight in. And so I did cheat a little bit on my Sabbath. But here’s what I’ve learned recently about Sabbath rest. Sabbath rest is not just about resting your body, but resting your mind. I recognized during this two-week break that my mind was never resting. My thoughts were always on the church, even when I was on vacation, as I shared earlier. I would have my laptop or email on my phone, and I was always connecting and messaging and emailing. And for 25 years as a pastor, I realized I’ve never taken a mental break from the life of the church. It was John Mark Comer who was really helpful in me understanding that Sabbath is not just rest for our bodies, but rest for our souls, which includes our minds. And so it was like that for me in this two-week break. I gave my mind time to rest. Yes, I was still reading books. Yes, I was still listening to podcasts. But by completely unplugging from church work, I did give my mind time to rest. from all of the thoughts I have about the church. So the second thing I learned is that I am stronger when I rest When I take a break, both physically and mentally, to rejuvenate, I’m stronger. I have a surge of energy. The third thing I learned in my two-week break is that I am too tethered to my inbox. I recognize that I have what I would describe as inbox anxiety. I have this strange anxiety about a cluttered inbox. And I didn’t even realize until this two week break that I would begin my mornings checking email. I didn’t know I did that until I deleted the Gmail app from my phone. And during that break when I would get up in the morning and I would go downstairs, even before coffee, even before prayer, even before reading. I was looking for that email app because I had this bad habit of of going through emails. I was checking email first thing in the morning and often even before bed and brushing my teeth. I would check my inbox again because I didn’t want this cluttered inbox. So the first couple days of my break It it was a bit of an adjustment because I kept reaching for my phone first thing in the morning and I had no email app. I couldn’t check my email. And here’s what happened. On the Sunday morning that I was returning to church, I spent one hour before church ploughing through three weeks of email. While I was in Colorado, I didn’t check my email at all. So I hadn’t really processed email for three weeks. I spent one hour before church early in the morning, that first Sunday back after the break, and I processed three weeks of email in less than one hour. And I was so shocked by that. And it was such a realization that I need to cut the tether to my inbox. I don’t need to compulsively check my inbox all throughout the day. because I can process email faster. So during the break, uh while the emails piled up, I thought about it from time to time, but I let it go. But after processing in one hour, three weeks worth of email, what I’ve been doing since then is ruthlessly unsubscribing. uh from emails I don’t need. I have unsubscribed from many Substacks and all sorts of things that, while they’re good, I don’t have time to read, and I’m happy to say the Gmail app has not returned to my phone. Well, it is actually on my phone, but it hasn’t returned to my home screen, and I have cut ties uh with email on my phone. I can go to it if I need it, but I’m no longer compulsively checking it. Okay, last thing that I’ve learned during my two-week break, and that is that I am not what I produce As I mentioned, I did some writing. I worked on my Bible study series during my two-week break. I really wanted to write every day. But I didn’t give myself an agenda. I was really living very unstructured, very day-to-day. And so I didn’t do as much writing as I wanted, but I was okay with that. But in taking time off social media, I did no social media creation, no content production. I preached no sermons, I taught no lessons, I led no groups, I recorded no podcast, I stopped producing and just pressed into the ordinary. just meals with my family on those Sunday mornings when I didn’t attend church. I would attend, I mentioned the United Methodist Church. I the next Sunday attended uh a Christian church And both of those services got out earlier than my home church. Now the family went on to the home church. They’re all involved in different activities and volunteering. So they all went to my home church, but I got out before they did. So on those Sunday mornings, I was able to get home and start preparing lunch for them. Which is a bit of a reversal. Usually my wife is home after church on Sunday morning preparing lunch because I’m usually one of the last people to leave church on Sunday morning. So I didn’t do any production during those two weeks. I just pressed into the ordinary. I slept. I slept more than I normally sleep. Took naps. Uh spent time with the family. Jenny and I took some walks. Dylan, my youngest son, and I went camping for a couple days. Uh, went on a couple bike rides and just lived. Not as one who is producing content, but one who’s just being. And it reinforced what Merton said. We are what we love. That when we recognize the things that we love, we determine what and who we are. And I recognize that I am not what I produce. that I am what I love. It caused my love for God, my love for people to grow. And this was also reinforced With a trip to a local adoration chapel. If you’re not familiar with the devotional practice of adoration in the Roman Catholic tradition, It is built around this idea that when a priest will bless the host, bless the bread, that it becomes the body of Christ. And so in the Roman Catholic world, there is a practice of adoration where you sit or kneel in the presence of the blessed host. Acknowledging the presence of Jesus. Now, I’m not Roman Catholic. I don’t subscribe to Catholic theology as related to Holy Communion I am sacramental in the sense that I believe that through the bread and the cup, that we are mystically connected to Jesus. But I don’t subscribe to the doctrines that my Roman Catholic friends would concerning the bread and the cup. But I knew that there was an Adoration Chapel in our town, in fact, only a couple miles from me. I had driven past it a few times. And I thought, well, even though I’m not Catholic, and even though I don’t believe what they believe about communion, I think I want to sit in their chapel in silence. And so I went for what I thought would be ten to twenty minutes. I ended up sitting for an hour in silence. When I walked into the chapel, a gentleman was walking out and I and I whispered good morning and And he kind of just smiled and whispered something I could barely hear. I thought, oh, this is a place of silence. I need to be quiet. And they have a place for guests to sign in. So I signed in and I noticed that they had a calendar And they had people scheduled almost every hour around the clock for months to come into this chapel, very small chapel. It would see maybe twenty-five, thirty people And there was an altar in the front, and there was the host, which is a a round wafer. And it was in some type of container that had what looked like sunbursts coming out from it. And it was sitting there, and I walked into the chapel, and there was a woman sitting in silence. And so it made me a bit self-conscious because I wanted uh to be respectful. I thought maybe I would read my Bible while I was sitting in there. I had my journal. And uh so I sat in a pew opposite from where this woman was sitting, and she was quiet, and I was quiet, and I just sat there. And often I would close my eyes, but I sat in silence. And again, I thought it would be difficult. I thought 10, 15, 20 minutes, I would be ready to walk out. But I sensed the presence of God. And I rested in that moment. I did grab my journal and jot down a bunch of things. Perhaps I’ll share some of those things in a later podcast episode. But as I sat there meditating on the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Meditating on Jesus, who does make himself available to us through the bread and through the cup. As I meditated on the sacrifice of Jesus, all sorts of things began to bubble up in my heart. I’ll share one thing from you that I wrote in my journal. As I sat there in silence, enjoying the quiet, enjoying the presence of God, I had this thought that This is what I wrote in my journal. The Christian life is a slow walk interrupted by moments of grandeur. Most of our days are spent patiently waiting on God I recognized in that moment of silence that a part of what I’m doing is simply waiting, waiting on God. I heard the woman who was sitting opposite me uh stand up and she walked out and then another woman walked in. She made the sign of the cross and uh she sat down in a pew. And once she was sitting there for a couple minutes, I thought, well, I’ve been here about an hour, it’s probably time for me to go. So I gathered up my my journal and my Bible and I walked out and I felt like I had experienced something. I felt almost in my body like I was trembling a little bit. I came in contact with the sacred. With something holy. And I walked away with this sense of my connectivity to all of my brothers and sisters in Christ And so while I consider myself a Protestant of some sort, a sort of a theological mutt, sort of a Christian that’s been influenced by many traditions, But I recognize that I’m not Catholic and I was in a Catholic space, but I felt my connectivity with my Catholic brothers and sisters, and I recognized that my true identity is that of a child of God. And so it really typified what this two-week break meant for me. It meant that I was learning that I am who God says that I am And I am first and foremost loved by God, and am a child of God. And while I am called to serve the body of Christ by producing, um now podcast, but I write so producing books and preaching and teaching. That’s not really who I am. I’m first and foremost beloved by God. Well, that’s what I learned. And I’m sure over the next few months, more of what I learned, and particularly things I journaled, I’ll be sharing on future podcast episodes. But that’s all that I have for today. Thank you for joining me for this episode, which ended here somewhat vulnerable, sharing with you this very personal spiritual experience that I had. I hope it was encouraging to you so thank you for listening. Go in peace and be kind
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.