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The Invitation to Dance

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Ken Medema, the Christian musician, is blind. When I heard him sing this song decades ago, I was moved by the meaning of the text. I am still moved. I hope this dancing metaphor has stimulated strong images and associations for you. Today, please consider the question: Who is it who is extending the invitation to you to dance?

She asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
I had visions of everyone laughin’ us right off the floor.
No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
She gently insisted and finally I told her I would.

Unforgettable, she was a fresh breath of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
Unforgettable, she taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

Well, he asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
I had visions of saints and angels laughin’ us right off the floor.
No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
He gently insisted, and finally I told him I would.

Unforgettable, well, He was the coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
Unforgettable, for He taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

The coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day…
taught me to sing in a whole new way…

There is a moment in every Christian journey when the reality of Who is extending this invitation just hits us between the eyes. This One wants us to be in step with Him—not just pacing to theological formulations and ecclesiastical schedules. He holds us and there is rhythm in the motion, laughter in the pure joy of stepping together, love in His eyes.

I hope, if you have not, that you will reach that reality soon. Someone has extended a hand to you.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

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The Rhythm of Breath

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The film Signs, starring Mel Gibson, is a profound meditation on the loss of faith. Employing the plot device of an alien invasion (not my favorite narrative arc), the story looks at the Hess family, which has been shaken by the brutal accidental death of its mother and wife.

Graham Hess, the father, an Episcopalian priest, has forsaken his calling and no longer believes, but the alien visitation forces him to look at issues from God’s perspective. The one scene in the film I find breathtaking is where the Hess family spends a night of terror in their boarded up farmhouse. When the attic is breached by an advance alien contingent, the family of father, uncle and two children retreat to the basement. This trauma sets off a severe asthma attack in Morgan, the son. The father holds his son, the child’s lungs swelling as he struggles for breath and life. “Breathe with me,” the father says. In and out, in and out, they labor for breath together. “Don’t be afraid, Morgan. Breathe with me. You and I are the same. Together, breathe with me.”

If you haven’t already seen this already, you need to rent this video.

During a time when I was meditating on Christ’s words from John 15:4, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” I thought about the Apostle John with his head on Christ’s breast during the Last Supper. When your head is that close to the body of another person, you can hear the heartbeat, feel the pulse; you are aware of breath being inhaled and exhaled.

I realized that when I pray, I should be resting my head against the breast of this One. I should hear the heartbeat, feel the feathery aspiration on my face. Not only this, I remembered Christ’s words from John 14:20, “I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” When my head is on the breast of Christ (through meditation and prayer), my being tucked within His embrace, Christ’s head is also on the breast of God. The Son is enfolded within the embrace of the Father, and I within the embrace of the Son. Breathe, they say to me through the Holy Spirit. And in prayer we breathe together; in and out, in and out. You and I are the same. Don’t be afraid. Together. Breathe with me.

Sometimes life strikes blows. Terrors over which I have no control torment me. I fight for enough air. If I can just remember this sacred rhythm, one so subtle it is easy to forget, but if I can just remember to become one with Christ who is one with God, then it is as easy as breathing in and out, in and out. I have moved into the heart of the perichoresis koinonia, the theological term that infers that the Trinity is a fellowship of Three Holy Dancers; we have moved into the deepest part of the sacred Dance, where God is.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing micro-enterprise projects.

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Sleep Cycles: Putting My Soul to Bed

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Falling asleep each night has been called “the little death.” In a way, we practice for the final death that will eventually beckon to us all. Night after night we give ourselves to God and relinquish the failures and successes, the frustrations and delights of each day into His hands. The childlike prayer many of us once prayed holds profound meaning despite its simplicity:
“Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

Each night before we fall asleep we should prepare our souls to meet God. We tuck away the cares and concerns of the day and, like Christ, we find ways to pray, “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.”

I have noticed that when I put my soul to bed each night (in contrast to watching videos, reading secular books in bed, or just flopping down exhausted) my rest is more tranquil. If I wake, I wake in prayer. Then I even slip into morning prayer more naturally. It is a 24-hour cycle I fight to establish and maintain.

Arthur Paul Boers writes in The Rhythm of God’s Grace, “Evening prayer is a small death; we surrender ourselves into God’s hands. The morning is a small rebirth and resurrection. We often give thanks for a new day and its opportunities. This dying and rising is relived in each daily cycle. Thus, as we observe the morning and evening rhythm, we also have opportunity to live deeply and enter into the most basic and important truths of our faith.”

A book of Daily Offices, or fixed-hour prayers, helps us establish this evening/morning rhythm. I love this nighttime prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps it will be useful to you this evening.

“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels and saints charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Shield Your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake. Amen”

Rest well tonight, beloved ones. Learn the sleep cycle practice of putting your soul to bed with God.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

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Sabbath Thoughts

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Today is Tuesday. One crucial question we need to learn to ask is: How are we going to make Sunday the best day of the week? What do we need to do to make sure we are ready to observe it with a Sabbath heart? Establishing this rhythm of looking to Sunday in the middle of the week makes the whole cycle of the week richer. Here are a few quotes from the book Seven Days of Faith by R. Paul Stevens. Perhaps they will serve to frame your thinking.

“For many people, even the attempt to experience Sabbath can become work. The church unwittingly encourages the toxic mix of compulsive ministry and utilitarian spirituality. … Hardly ever is a person commended for refusing an office. Doing is considered more important than being. Sunday is often the most hectic and stressful day of the week, the least restful.”

“Sabbath and leisure have much in common: they are both personally restorative, enjoyable, non-utilitarian, and playful. But there are significant differences. Leisure is a matter of personal choice; Sabbath is a divine law (Exodus 20:8). Leisure is perceived as avocational; Sabbath is vocational—part of the response of our entire persons to the call of God. Leisure is directed mainly to self, while Sabbath is directed more to God. Therefore, leisure is more concerned with pleasure than meaning, while Sabbath is more concerned with meaning than pleasure. Both are aesthetic, but leisure tends toward hedonism while Sabbath invites contemplation. In sum, leisure is more often a diversion from Sabbath than a means of experiencing Sabbath, and this I think is reasonable to call it pseudo-Sabbath. It cannot give us a day of rest.”

“Sabbath seems to be a waste of time, but in reality it is the redemption of time.”

“In the deepest sense, we do not keep Sabbath; the Sabbath keeps us. Sabbath was intended to be the leisured but intentional experience of reflection on the source and goals of our life on earth. Therefore, it keeps us turned toward God and heaven bound. We make ourselves available to the gift of Sabbath precisely because we are not capable on our own of sustaining our orientation toward God and our heavenly direction. So we are left with a biblical irony: we must explore how to enter that rest. Some form of Sabbath is not an optional extra for the New Testament Christian. It is fundamental to spiritual health, and even to emotional health.”

My experience in attempting to keep Sabbath in a basically Sabbath-less world has taught me that these observations are true. Keeping Sabbath keeps us, but because it is such a countercultural activity, we have to keep keeping at it. This holy rhythm all too easily slips out of our grasp. How frequently myself thinking, “Oh, we’re losing our Sabbath-practice again!” So some time on Wednesday/Thursday, I remind myself to plan the weekend—not what gardening I will get done, or what event we might attend, but first of all, how we will make Sunday the best day of the week. Then all the rest can follow.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing micro-enterprise projects.

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Personal Rhythms

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I like the thought that Dorothy Bass introduces in her book Receiving the Day in which she states that, for Christian women and men, part of the rhythm of stepping well in life’s dance is learning to set established times aside each day for attention to God. Doing this, day after day, she maintains, not only helps us to see life more clearly but also to discover that we ourselves are being seen. “The idea of doing something with regularity arises from the concept of the regula, or rule,” she writes. “A monastery is governed by an official written rule that serves as the basis for the covenant among community members, making possible a certain way of life and expressing the convictions implicit in that way of life. Rules do their work amid the humblest details of daily life: they direct what time to get up, how to eat, what to do when a stranger comes to the door, and more.”

Since I have been concentrated in this blog on examining the sacred rhythms in my own life, I decided to count up some of the regular practices that have become rhythms in my day. I discovered these below:

  1. Putting a going-to-bed pattern into place so that I don’t just flop exhausted onto the mattress, but instead, close the day in God’s presence.
  2. Meeting with my husband David on the mornings he is home to read the   Divine Office and also trying to observe this at noontime and late afternoon.
  3. Memorizing Scripture and repeating it to myself when I in the middle of the night.
  4. Attending better to the moments in the world that remind me of God’s creative genius—although I am still jerking myself to awareness. I’m trying to rush less and enjoy more!
  5. Attending Sunday worship service with regula—sometimes we minister during the week in meetings where worship is a central focus. Once, we counted that we had been in 8 worship services! It is easy not to go to church on Sundays when your week has not been at all like the average churchgoers.
  6. Working to re-establish a good Sabbath practice. I’m trying to end Saturday and begin Sabbath/Sunday by attending a Vespers service a nearby church holds at sundown on Saturday. To bed early, rest well, church on Sunday. My question to myself is: How can I make Sunday the best day of the week? My intent is to gather good worship music. We’ve built the classical-music library, but I need to find that church music that stirs the soul for background to the Sabbath experience.
  7. For 38 years I have kept a prayer journal; this is a rhythm that is so familiar, it is easy to overlook it.

I think you get the idea: Intentionally looking at the rhythms in our lives helps us to see where we are “in step” and where we are “out of step.” What are the regular rhythms you have in place or need to put in place so that you can pay attention to God? It is an amazing thing to not only see Him with the eyes of the soul, but to discover that you are, indeed, being seen by Him.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing micro-enterprise projects.

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Global Bag Project Begins to Help Microfinance African Women

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We now have 300 African-made kanga-cloth bags in the Global Bag Project office. Carla Boelkens and I will gladly hold home-based bag parties in the Chicagoland area. Just sign up at info@globalbagproject.org and we will get in touch with you. Carla and Doug Timberlake fly to Nairobi September 4. David Mains is using frequent flyer mileage and will have to transit alone via Turkish Airlines through Istanbul, then down to Nairobi. Pray for him; he is 73. They will be organizing personnel and systems to purchase fabric, train bag-makers, ship bags overseas, and filming, hopefully, three more bag-maker stories (every bag has a story). To see the first such story, of Mary Nduta, watch it on YouTube.

For contributions of $30 (+$6.95 shipping/handling), we can provide you with a kanga-cloth, artisan reusable shopping bag. Shipping and handling are extra. Jim Whitmer and his wife, Mary, photographers par excellence, have put together a YouTube “Dancing Bag” clip. That link is HERE and will show just a sample of the kanga-cloth patterns that are available. The bags are cotton; the fabric is made in East Africa. The bags’ bottoms have a firm lining, and the straps are reinforced. Proceeds go directly to the Global Bag Project and are helping to sustain the living of Christian sisters and their families. Some of the HIV/AIDS widows we work with are struggling with health issues. There are 30 or more children involved with these mothers. Pray for renewed health for our African friends. Make out a check for $36.95 to The Global Bag Project, and send to P.O. Box 30, Wheaton, IL 60187.

Please pray for safety and strength for David, Doug and Carla. We also need financial donations to underwrite some of the expenses. David and Karen are taking out a home equity loan to provide liquidity when needed, but in this economy and at the end of a summer without many gifts, your contributions toward the project will be greatly appreciated.

The Global Bag Project is our way of helping Micro-finance Women in Africa who have real needs for basic income to provide for their needy families.

Your Christian Blogger Karen Mains

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Weddings in the Family

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What do weddings have to do with Sunday/Sabbath practices? Two weddings in my family—a cousin’s and our youngest son’s (age 31)— several years back caused me to think about how good marriages on Earth are a sign of the covenant agreement God makes with His children.

The New Testament teaching is that Christ, the Lamb of God, will marry His Bride, the Church, at His Second Coming. And our relationship to Him now is similar to that of betrothal. In the Middle East, a marriage began (sometimes years before the actual ceremony) with formal betrothal, in which a man in the eyes of the community was as good as married to his betrothed. This arrangement, though unconsummated, could only be dissolved by divorce such as when Joseph realized that Mary was with child without any intimacies with him and he “resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matthew 1:9). Betrothal was considered complete except for the privilege of sexual intimacy.

But when finally the time for betrothal was ended, and the wedding ceremony was near, the bridegroom would leave his house which was the center of the festivities, and with all his friends—musicians and celebrants and dancers—he would make his way to the bride’s house, where a simple marriage ritual took place. Then, taking her by the hand, he would bring her back to his house for the wedding feast, which would sometimes last for days.

All earthly weddings foreshadow the eschatological reality that one day our Heavenly Bridegroom will come and gather His Bride into His household.

Consequently, practicing the Sabbath principle is like the engagement ring a woman puts on her finger to remind herself and the watching world that she is taken. In a sense, we Christians wear the Sabbath ring (and polish it each week) to remind ourselves of the consummation in which our Lord will come for His bride-to-be, the Church.

Sunday, celebrated with delight, captures a taste of the distant future: Indeed, it is a prophetic practice of what eternity spent in Christ’s presence will be like. We are betrothed to Christ and as married to Him as though we had taken wedding vows. How dare we pull dour faces and downcast eyes. According to the Levitical law, no fasting was allowed on Sabbath. The one psalm specifically assigned in intertestamental times to Sabbath worship, Psalm 92, is a song of thanksgiving, sung in festive mood with musical instruments, “…to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.”

In 18th-century American, Jonathan Edwards preached that the Sabbath, “a pleasurable and joyful day, was an image of the future heavenly rest of the church.” So let us become accustomed to resting in the arms of the Beloved. Let us frame our Sunday/Sabbath practice in such a way we will be ready for that eternal rest of which Hebrews 4:9 promises: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”

In truth, when the Bride is finally is brought into the household of the Bridegroom, every day will be Sabbath. Eternity will be a Sabbath without end. As we place this wedding ring of Sabbath upon our finger now, it is a sign that we are betrothed to Him, awaiting the consummation of a final marriage act; we are remembering God’s act of creation, His bold impregnation of souls with spiritual nativity; we are looking forward to a final re-creation, a perfect world in a perfect time, a utopia that can no longer be spoiled by infidelity.

In truth, this marriage celebration will be the ultimate wedding in the family.

This marriage metaphor makes sense to me; it resonates deeply within and makes me look forward with anticipation. Remembering the divine prototype and its earthly parallel, I am more than eager to “observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.”

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Continuing to promote Hungry Souls, a ministry that is a laboratory for those who seek to develop spiritual growth tools that work. Designing a Webinar that will mentor writing wanabees. Wading through research data gathered from participants in Listening Groups. (Karen has been a spiritual coach to many through her years of ministry and is excited about the replication potential of Listening Groups.)

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information).

Making Sunday Special by Karen Mains
(inside-flap copy, hardcover edition)

Whatever happened to the spirit of Sabbath-keeping? Many Christians in this secular age have reacted so strongly against secular rules for Sunday that they retain no sense of its spiritual, sacred opportunity. This lively yet practical book by noted Christian leader Karen Mains calls us to restore the sacred meaning of the Lord’s Day—a choice that will make for a richer, fuller life.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

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Sabbath Steps: The Best Day of the Week

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How can I make Sunday the best day of the week? One of the ways to do so is to consider the weekly rhythm of Sabbath-keeping.

In order to get into the rhythm of God’s sacred Sabbath time, this is a question we need to learn to ask in the middle of each week: “How can I make Sunday the best day of the week?” And the best way I have learned to answer the that question is with another: “How can I fashion this day so that it is a day for making love?”

The concept behind the Sabbath is that God has given us the gift of time; 24 hours that are not to be crowded with the cares of the workweek; 24 hours for rest and recreation that are not to be intruded upon with the worries of ordinary time (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday).

There are many theological explanations for keeping the Sabbath “dance.” In fact, the more I practice, the more I learn, the more I agree with Karl Barth’s exclamation of “a certain awe. The radical importance, the almost monstrance range of the Sabbath commandment.” The more one studies Sabbath, the more there is to study and learn about it. Yet no theology stimulates me motivationally more than the love analogy.

I am learning to observe Sunday with a Sabbath heart, with the heart of a young woman who polishes her engagement ring; who holds it to the light so the diamond can catch the shining; who remembers that the setting apart of this day is meaningful to the One she loves; whose heart floods with joy at the thought that He (the Lord of the Sabbath) is coming in a special weekly visit, that the day will be spent in His company without the distractions of the workweek.

I look inward and make sure there are no idol suitors vying for my attention. For instance, have I watched too much television/video on the weekend, and are my thoughts filled with everything but my desire to know Him better. Is my heart chaste? Are my desires for my Loved One and for Him alone? Is there anything in my life that will cause Him grief or sadness when we come together?

And I am learning that Sabbath/Sunday is a love day, a day to adore. As I strive to celebrate Sunday with a Sabbath heart, I have learned that when the Loved One is near, I don’t work. I don’t need to spend an afternoon shopping or to spend Sunday catching up on the tasks I didn’t get done during the week. This is a day set apart for love. It is a day for dancing with God.

In fact, think of it like this: Sabbath/Sunday is a day on Earth that comes each week so that we can practice the steps of eternity where Sabbath never ends. We are practicing here in this time how to be good and loving Sabbath-keepers there, when we move beyond and out of time’s constraints.

So, how can I make Sunday the best day of the week? How can I set it apart so that it is a day ideal for making holy love?

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen continues to write for her new Christian blog, with topics relevant to Christian women and men in today’s contemporary world. Also, Karen Mains has been a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men. These days, however, she is finding joy in working in teams with highly qualified adults who bring spiritual teachings into her life in fascinating ways. Maturity is a state where the teacher realizes she learns as much from her students, she receives as much from her companions as she teaches and she gives. Hungry Souls is a ministry that is a laboratory for those who seek to develop spiritual growth tools that work. Check out Karen and David’s Web site,www.HungrySouls.org.

Making Sunday Special by Karen Mains
(back-cover copy, paperback edition)

Do you rush around on Sunday morning complaining and shouting instructions to a household in mass confusion? … “Why didn’t you tell me earlier the button was off your shirt?” “Stop teasing your sister.” “Don’t hog the bathroom.” “Hurry, we’re going to be late.” “Has anyone seen the car keys?”

Has Sunday-morning worship become an intellectual exercise without meaning? Do you rarely experience the presence of the Lord, even in His own house?

Then let Karen Mains show you how to make Sunday the best day of the week. For years Karen and her husband, David, have searched for ways to make worship more meaningful. Here Karen tells what they discovered in an examination of the Sabbath-keeping principles that not only restore to Sunday a sense of the holy but even give work and leisure renewed meaning.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

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Sitting Life’s Dance Out: Shingles

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In Jr. High I was not allowed to take part in the social-dancing classes offered by the Physical Education department. Between the position of our church, my father’s work as a faculty member in the music department at Moody Bible Institute (considered the “West Point of Fundamentalism”), and my mother’s involvement as executive secretary to the director of a conservative mission-sending organization, everything weighted me with the preordained conclusion that good Christians don’t dance. I sat out the unit while my peers learned to do-si-do and allemande left. As classmates hastened to the gym in happy herds, I sat alone in study hall.

Several years back, I had good reason to “sit this dance out.” A backache sent me home early from the office on a Friday afternoon, and in the middle of the night, I woke with one thought original and unbidden: I bet this is shingles. Sure enough, the mirror revealed a few patches blooming on my hip, and the charming Convenient Care Center doctor confirmed that, indeed, the herpes virus had been chomping its way along a neural path on the right side of my body and was popping to the surface. She started me on antiviral medication immediately.

“Oh, we’re sorry you have shingles,” commiserated many former sufferers. “They are so painful.”

But due to early treatment (and my inexplicable early inner self-diagnostic), the patches that bloomed on my skin after the first all began to fade. (Those that popped out before medication all blistered and scabbed over and itched and sent off alarums of pain when touched.) Consequently, I tucked down into the guest-room bed, hunkered beneath a feather comforter, and drugged myself into happy slumber with regular doses of Tylenol 3. Being a good Christian woman with a life full of godly projects, endless hospitality events, mentor-writing projects and endless trips on the road, speaking and teaching, this was the best sleep I’d had in decades, and my dreams were not crowded out by a mind so busy it organizes even when I’m resting. I considered this enforced interval one of God’s good gifts to me.

Sitting on the sidelines while the dance swirls around us can be a good gift. We hear things the music often drowns out; we pay attention to thoughts that active rhythms often prohibit. We sleep; we dream. Bobbing in and out of sleep; taking Claritin, ibuprofen, the antiviral, and codeine; and dosing my skin with calamine, I heard this word: “Write. Write out into the culture.” And as if to verify this, articles began forming themselves in my mind, all slanted to a secular readership.

A friend, who has been out of work for nine months, called to commiserate with me that I had been laid low with shingles. I found myself saying, “Oh, please. I needed this rest. Maybe you should look at this period of your unemployment as a gift from God. Do in it the things you don’t ordinarily have enough time to do.”

The interludes in the dance that is our life—when the music changes, or the silence intrudes—can be life-altering. They can be inconvenient, embarrassing, annoying or painful, but after we’ve lived awhile, we begin to understand that they are never outside of God’s intents. Sometimes, we need to stop dancing.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Continuing to write for her new Christian blog, with topics relevant to Christian women and men in today’s contemporary world. Planning upcoming mentor-writing sessions. Preparing for the upcoming Silent Retreat (see the Hungry Souls Web site for details).

Making Sunday Special by Karen Mains
(back-cover copy)

Author Karen Mains challenges readers to celebrate Sunday with a SABBATH HEART—to make the Lord’s Day so special that there are three days of anticipation … and so meaningful that it continues to nurture for three days afterward.

MAKING SUNDAY SPECIAL is brimful of creative celebrations that take the hassles out of the Day of Rest and restore “the rhythm of the sacred”—practical exercises that will help you fall in love anew with the rest day and with Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

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Flamenco Concert

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On the last night of our pilgrimage to Spain in 2003, before flying out of Madrid early the next morning, a group of us took the Metro to attend a tablao, a flamenco show, the highly structured folk art from Andalusia. We listened as song, dance and the music of the guitar were blended together in the passionate rhythms of southern Spain. By nature oriental, flamenco dance differs fundamentally from other well-established European dance forms. Complex rhythmic patterns are created by a sophisticated footwork technique (with the rest of the troupe providing clicking or clapping accents), and the dancers wear special shoes or boots with dozens of nails driven into the soles and heels.

Flamenco dancing, even when a man and women dance together, is highly individualistic. One young man, dressed in black, sat on stage through two-thirds of the performance, and when he finally took his place at center stage, commanding our attention with a remarkable interpretation of anguish, and defiance, and anger, we in the audience were somewhat relieved that he had a place in the troupe.

In contrast, the Sabbath dance, one of the weekly rhythms of observance built into Christian practice, is not individualistic. It is a communal expression that includes infants and children, the newly married and the recently divorced, grandparents and teens, the disgruntled and the enthusiast, new believers and wise saints.

We enter into the rhythm of Sabbath for the sake of the whole Body (not to satisfy our individual preferences—what a surprise!), and when one of us sits out “the performance” like the young man waiting to take part in the flamenco, the whole is diminished. During this weekly holy event, enacted 52 times a year, earth is connected with heaven in some way that is different than the rest of the days. That connection can only be accomplished through this communal dance. Tragically, it is estimated that some 12 million believing Christians in the States are sitting out “the performance.”

Although observing Sabbath is more than going to church, it includes the obedient practice of showing up for “dance classes,” week after week, year after year. “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another…” Hebrews 10:25.

One summer, in between churches, David and I (well, mostly I) sat out the Sabbath dance. Sorrow and fatigue had slowed me; I was hesitant about the missteps of disappointment, but in my heart I wanted to be passionately engaged in a local church, my shoes driven with nails so that I could pound out the melody of redemption in time with fellow believers, all of us flawed, failing, sinful, striving and neglectful, but despite our human ineptness, helping each other become formed in the image of Christ, making a whole that is more, much more than the sum of its parts, touching together—in barely explainable ways—the realities of heaven. I long deeply to be part of the communal pattern once again.

One Saturday night, I put together a Lord’s Day Eve meal; we lit the Sabbath candles, read the Vespers service together, then went to a new church on Sunday, as husband and wife, taking our small part in the “work of the people.” Hopefully, the grand Sabbath waltz, for me, was beginning again.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Getting the ordering procedures set on Web sites so readers can once again enjoy the books of Karen Burton Mains. Making Sunday Special is one that has been out of print for a decade. In it she looks at the restoration of the Old Testament pattern of Sabbath-keeping and explores joyful ways of incorporating that practice into our contemporary busy world.

Karen is also continuing to develop and expand this, her Christian blog. Additionally, she is designing a Webinar that will mentor writing wanabees. The topic of that Webinar will be Personal Memoir Writing. See www.KarenMains.com for more details.

About Making Sunday Special

In this insightful, encouraging and delightful book, bestselling author Karen Mains challenges Christians to celebrate Sunday with a Sabbath heart—to make the Lord’s Day so special that its impact launches a weekly cycle of reflection and growing anticipation. Making Sunday Special will help you and your people restore the biblical “rhythm of the sacred” and then fall in love again and again with Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

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