In August we turn toward planning and preparation for the work of the coming church year. What will we need for ourselves in order to do our best work?  I’ll draw from the work of Rev. Dr. D. Scott Stoner who outlines a holistic view of wellness encompassing eight dimensions of our beings. First up, the dimensions of mental health.

Well it is summer.

It’s summer outside.  It’s summer in here, too

We’re hot.  We’re tired.  Crazy wildfires are raging across the state.  And what a tragedy that has been for people and homes and the trees and animals and our air and water.  It’s truly heart-breaking.  And disturbing for what it indicates for our earth’s future.

It’s been summer, too, here at the church.  We finished our church year.  Our children’s religious education has shifted from regular programming to summer programming:  Hogwarts and backpacks.  We had a great summer potluck picnic on Thursday.  We had about 40 people here and had a great time.  Thank you Laura Scully, and others, for arranging that.

In the rhythm of the church year, the summer months are for slowing down, easing up, and taking off.  We do it naturally, because we are animal bodies and the hot weather fiercely demands that we take a break.  But we do it deliberately too, choosing to move with the seasons, rather than battle against them.

Whether you take an actual summer vacation, or a staycation, or your summer schedule doesn’t change from the rest of the year, I encourage everyone to recognize July as the “Sabbath month of the year.”  If not physically, and professionally, at least spiritually, give it a rest in July.  Cultivate quiet, and stillness.  Being instead of doing.  Emptying.  And if you missed the opportunity in July, do it now.  It’s not too late.

And then, in August, we’re still in summer mode, but we shift this month to looking forward and gearing up for the work that will begin in September.

The focus of August, is not to start the work of the church year, but to start preparing for the work.  Setting goals.  Making plans.  Laying out the calendar.  And then, with the work named and arranged for September through June, to the next question, “What do we need to do to prepare?”

The work starts in September.  But in August, there’s the pre-work, work, of preparing for the work.

So that’s where we are, in August, here at the church, too.

There is a lot of work ahead in the coming church year, starting in September.

The Board took a retreat day back in June and identified about a half a dozen large goals for the church that they hope the church can work on in the coming year:

Work around our internal church communications, asking, “How does the congregation get the information it needs?  How do we use our website and newsletter and weekly email announcements and bulletin boards and facebook effectively?  Who’s – in charge of producing and editing all of that content?

Work around leadership development.

Work around rethinking our governance structure so that we honor our value of democratic decision-making and recognize the realities of volunteer workloads and time commitments and the realities of a changing culture that thinks about participation in communities and institutions in new ways.

We want to get our church policies organized and accessible and up to date, this year. 

We want to make the physical space of our church look more attractive and function better:  this hall, the church office, the open space outside my office.  Maybe some air conditioning, that would be nice.

And then there are the two big goals for the coming year which are hosting the District Assembly next April, and preparing our congregation to elect a Search Committee probably next May, who will work on identifying a candidate to be your next settled minister.

That’s a long list of work to do.  Most of us will need to be involved in at least some of those projects if we are to actually get them all done over the next year.  The Board and other groups involved are already busy planning.

But what can the rest of us do, now, to prepare for that work?  What could we be doing now, still in the heat of August, so that when we are called to report for work in the fall, we will be ready?  How do you get ready for any work?  How do you prepare yourself:  mind, body, heart, and soul?  Or mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

Back in April, I attended a training, recommended by the Unitarian Universalist Association for Interim Ministers.  Part of the training, was to remind the ministers in the room, as they care for congregations and churches, to also stay conscious of the need to care for ourselves.

Self-care is important for everyone, in any work.  We have to recognize our limits, as finite creatures.  We have to learn to say no to work that isn’t ours.  And to the work we say yes to, we must attend to the balance of what we are giving out, and what we need to take in to replenish our resources.

Self care refreshes us when we’re feeling worn down from the work we’ve done.  And self-care is also a means to prepare ourselves before the work begins.  How do I get in shape, asks the athlete, before they run the marathon.  What will I need, says the back-packer preparing for a trip.  How can I show up on the first day, as ready as I am able:  mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually?

We talk about self care often when ministers gathering together.  Sometimes the talk is jokey and unhelpful.  It feels like that nervous kind of joke that reveals our deeper embarrassment about the subject. It’s embarrassing to reveal our needs.  It’s spiritually challenging to recognize our limits.  So we make jokes about self-care being going shoe-shopping and calling it “Retail Therapy.”  Or we brag about how we’re too busy for self care.  Or we minimize self care to pretend we can adequate replenish our souls by simply scheduling a monthly manicure or an occasional massage.

What we often fail to address, in our embarrassment and anxiety around self-care, is the perverseness of the way the issue is framed.  Self care shouldn’t mean exhausting yourself through soul-damaging work and then recovering at the mall or the nail salon.  Self-care shouldn’t be working yourself to burnout and then collapsing until you’ve got sufficient courage again to go back for more abuse.  The goal should be, shouldn’t it, that you arrange your life so that caring for yourself is part of what you do everyday anyway.  Why should our work be inherently stressful and draining?  Why should self-care be a treat that you give yourself occasionally, rather than a part of your healthy meal plan?  Self care shouldn’t be a cure that you have to take for the poison of the rest of your life, because our goal should be to create a life, including your working life, that satisfies our own needs, as well as serves the needs of others.

So I was pleased, in this training back in April, when we got to the self-care unit, that it wasn’t about manicures and messages.  It was about lifestyle.  And it wasn’t just about recovering from physical exhaustion and mental burnout.  It was about caring for ourselves: mind, body, heart and soul.

The material shared in this class, which I want to share with you now, comes from an Episcopal Minister named Rev. Dr. Scott Stoner.  He developed a program he calls Life Compass.  He has a website, as well as books and curriculum that he offers to church groups who want to work on this.

So, as part of this month of preparation for the church year to come, here today and for the next two Sundays, are some thoughts about how we can prepare ourselves for maximum strength and health:  mentally, emotional, physically, spiritually.

Let’s start today with the compass point of mental health.  The dimension of mind.  How do we care for our mental well-being?

For Dr. Stoner, mental well-being manifests in two places.  This first has to do with arranging our lives in ways that are congruent with our values.  Primarily, for most of us, that means good, satisfying, fulfilling work.  What we do for a living, should reflect how we want to live.  The second manifestation of mental well-being addressed by Dr. Stoner is organization of our time and physical environment.  I’ll get back to organization in a moment.

So mental well-being as a part of our work.  Here is what Dr. Stoner says.  “Many people spend a great deal of their waking hours each week at work or at school. How we experience our work/school life can have a major impact on our wholeness and wellness.”  He then gives a series of questions that you can use for self-reflection about your level of satisfaction with this aspect of your life.  And he says if you aren’t working or in school now you might relate these questions to some volunteer activity you’re involved in.

Here are Dr. Stoner’s questions:

•Is the work/schooling/service you do congruent with your values and beliefs?

•Do you have a sense of purpose in your work/schooling/service?

•Do you see how your work/schooling/service fits into the bigger purpose of your life?

•How do you relate to those with whom you work, serve, or go to school?

•Are you comfortable expressing your needs and wants where you work/serve or are in school?

•Are you growing in your work/service/schooling?

•Do you intentionally seek opportunities for growth and learning?

•Do you see a connection between your faith and your work/service/schooling?

How did those questions make you feel about what you do for work?  Is it possible you might want to make a shift in your job, or a change in your career, to find something that better fits your values and better supports your mental self-care?

I was thinking about this a week ago.  Jim and I were in the car listening to a “This American Life” podcast.  One of the stories was about a guy who runs a business where he cleans up crime scenes.  Pretty horrific work.  Imagine doing that every day.  Would that support your values?  It might.  I also was thinking about the people who have the job of carrying out Federal immigration policy.  What if part of your workday required you to separate young children from their parents?

The Buddhists call this necessity to choose work that supports your values, “Right Livelihood”.  It’s step five of the Noble Eight-fold path.

If what you spend your day working on contradicts your values, then you are going to experience your work as unfulfilling, stressful, exhausting.  You’ll feel annoyed or angry throughout the day, and quickly burn out.  And when the weekend comes you’ll need restorative “self-care” that’s about erasing the rest of your life rather than integrating your work experience and feeling pride of accomplishment.

But if your work expressed your values, then you would experience your work as satisfying and fulfilling.  It’s still work.  So you’re still going to need a rest, and weekends off, and a vacation.  You still need to have other, special experiences and attend to other needs in your life.  But you will be attending to your mental well-being while you are working, not having to do additional self-care to recover from working.

Our work should express our values.  That’s the spiritual dimension of meaning.  Our work should accomplish something we regard as worthy.  That’s the spiritual dimension of purpose.  And the purpose of our immediate work should also contribute to some larger purpose that we feel is important to the larger world and larger movement of humanity.  

The other part of mental self-care, lifted up by Dr. Stoner, is the dimension of organization, and he means how we organize our time, our physical environment, our finances, and our planning for the future. He invites us, as you do a personal self-care assessment to “take an honest look at your life and assess how well you organize all the important things in your life:”  time, finances, closets and drawers and bookshelves, grocery shopping and preparing meals, running errands, paying bills, your email inbox, making plans for the future like writing a will, and keeping track of important papers.

Being disorganized causes mental stress.  It makes our work harder and makes projects take longer.  Fortunately, for most poeple organization is a habit that can be learned.  At first you might need some support or coaching.  But setting the intention and sticking with it, we can make progress and eventually learn a new habit.  Or you might hire someone to organize for you.

Being dis-organized is also a symptom of mental stress.  When we feel stressed we focus on the tasks that we perceive as urgent.  We seek the comfort of immediate gratification, so we prioritize urgent work, even if it’s trivial, and put off more important but long-term projects.  Planning is the first thing to go.  We just do whatever’s in front of us or has a deadline blinking.  Bigger projects loom but never get attended to.  Lack of organization causes our stress level to go up, which makes it harder to get organized, which makes our stress level even higher.

Dr. Stoner writes, “In the end, planning and prioritizing will save us time, and make our lives much calmer, but it is so hard to realize this when we are caught up in our constant busyness.”

So that’s why we designate the month of August in the church calendar as a month of preparation.  Church continues year round.  But we can’t spend an entire year at one level of intensity. Without an intentional time for goal-setting and planning our church work would eventually spiral into trivial busyness and stress.  Deliberately we set aside the months of July and August to get away from our regular work mode.  July for Sabbath.  August for planning and prioritizing.

Now is the time to lay aside the demand of the urgent but trivial, and instead look further out:  to the District Assembly in April, to the election of a Search Committee in May.  To ask between now and then, these months of September, October, and following, what do we need to do?  What are the issues?  What are the needful things?  What are the steps? What will we do to make meaning in our lives by creating a world that more and more manifests our values?  What is our purpose as individuals and as a church?  What should we do that will serve our own health, as we serve the health of others?