Ruth Haley Barton

Review: Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest

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Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest, Ruth Haley Barton, foreword by Ronald Rolheiser. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press/Formatio, 2022.

Summary: Describes the journey to life-giving sabbath practices as well as planning for and taking sabbaticals.

Ruth Haley Barton is a gifted speaker, writer, and Christian leader. And like many such people she pushed herself hard in a high-performance church culture and later as leader of her own ministry organization. She enjoyed reading books about sabbath, but that was for other people. Until she was in a bike accident. And she realized that God had given her a harder nudge that it was time to begin a journey of sabbath practice.

This book describes that journey and a further one of taking sabbaticals–extended sabbaths allowing a longer period of rest and transformation. She discovered that sabbath began with God, who wove rest into the fabric of creation with his own rhythm of six days of work, and then rest. Sabbath is participating in the rest that is already there, that we work and rest in rhythm with God. Sabbath is also an act of resistance. It was for the Hebrew ex-slaves who always had to work for Pharaoh. It is as well in our 24/7 culture.

Sabbath was meant as a community practice, enjoyed and shared together. We often try to figure this out for ourselves, and one of the unique contributions of this book is that it casts vision for churches and other communities to share in sabbath practice. She gives practical help in leading that culture change process, beginning with oneself, other leaders, and the congregation. She speaks of “no emergencies with God” and allowing the process of communal sabbath-keeping to take the time it needs. The book includes an appendix with a discussion guide for church leaders to use.

She addresses unplugging from our technology, acknowledging the hold it has on us, and ways we may be more present to God and each other when we include “unplugging” in our sabbath practice. She shares with us her delight in sabbath, particularly in just having time to “putz” around. It’s a time to be free to be neighborly, to allow the accumulated emotions of the week to bubble to the service, and to bring them to God without self-numbing. She speaks of sabbath in different seasons of life, as a student, with families, caring for parents. Then she pulls this together in helping us shape our sabbath practice.

There are times when sabbath is not enough. But the good news is that sabbath prepares us for sabbatical, for extended periods of rest. She addresses the temptation to be “productive” during sabbaticals and encourages beginning to plan a sabbatical by listening to what one’s soul is trying to say to God and ourselves about our longings for this time. She shares her own sabbatical journey–during a pandemic–and offers practical helps on how to plan a sabbatical and an appendix on re-entry from one. One of the basic insights that everyone I know affirms is that you don’t know how tired you are until the first weeks of a sabbatical and the importance of making allowance for this.

It is obvious that Ruth Haley Barton has “put her own mask on first” before trying to help us. Her delight in sabbath and rich experience of sabbath invite the reader to consider these for oneself. Sabbath and sabbatical are shared as gifts rather than obligations and burdens, practices that keep us even more than we keep them. Perhaps more, the language of embrace suggests sabbath as a welcome friend, or even a reminder that as we rest and trust, that the Lover of our Soul will embrace and hold and refresh us.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: A Just Passion

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A Just Passion: A Six Week Lenten Journey, Ruth Haley Barton, Sheila Wise Rowe, Tish Harrison Warren, Terry M. Wildman, and others. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022.

Summary: A six week Lenten devotional consisting of brief excerpts from works by InterVarsity Press authors, scripture readings, and breath prayers, considering how, in the passion of Christ, we lament the injustices of the world, find healing in the redemptive work of Christ, and enter into Christ’s heart for justice for the oppressed.

Lent is a season of fasting (except on Sundays), where we begin by remembering that we will die, we lament our sins and those of the world and the impact of these on others. It is a time of repentance and drawing close again to Christ, walking in the way of his passion and anticipating the hope of Easter Sunday. For many, some form of Lenten devotional reading is a part of their practices from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday, the forty days of Lent.

A Just Passion follows in that tradition, offering readings for the forty days of Lent (Sundays excepted because Sunday is a feast and not fast day). The readings are drawn from the writings of InterVarsity Press authors, each reading of two short pages of reading. Among those included are Ruth Haley Barton, Tish Harrison, Warren, Eugene Peterson, Esau McCaulley, Sheila Wise Rowe, Dominique DuBois Gilliard, John Perkins, Tara Beth Leach, and Soong-Chan Rah, just to give you a sense of the stellar lineup represented here.

Also included in each week’s readings are a lectionary reading drawn from the First Nations Version of the New Testament, an English translation for indigenous peoples of North America, whose lead translator is Terry M. Wildman. One day each week includes a “breath prayer” in which we breathe in a short invitation or supplication to God and breathe out a line of response or release. For example, the breath prayer of week one is (breathe in)”Blessed are those who hunger” and (breathe out) “They will be filled.”

The readings focus on the inextricable link between the passion of Jesus and the pursuit of justice. They begin with Tish Harrison Warren reminding us that on Ash Wednesday, the ashes are to remind us that we are dust, that we die, and to hold on to what is real. John Perkins reminds us that Jesus was love incarnate, a mission of reconciliation his son Spencer died pursuing, and that he continues in West Jackson. Mark E. Strong tells the story of a young boy who has nothing for the offering and climbs into the basket, offering himself, which is truly the living worship of every Christ follower. Bethany H. Hoang, director of International Justice Mission, speaks of the exhausting work of fighting injustice, work that only can be sustained if begun in prayer. Christ outpoured in our lives is the beginning of our pursuit of justice.

Each reading gives the author and book from which it is sourced and an index by days gives more complete publication information. Not only is this a wonderful “sampler” of the authors who write for InterVarsity Press, this is a well-conceived and substantive collection that helps us enter into Christ’s passion while calling us into the pursuit of justice. Vice President of InterVarsity Press Cindy Bunch introduces the collection, offering specific practices we might consider in the pursuit of justice. If you are still looking for a Lenten devotional, this one is well worth your consideration.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Invitation to Retreat

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Invitation to Retreat

Invitation to Retreat, Ruth Haley Barton. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press/Formatio, 2018.

Summary: A guide to retreat as a spiritual practice exploring why retreat, preparing for retreat, helpful practices on retreat, and concluding our retreat and returning from (and to) retreat.

Jesus gives a startling invitation to his disciples in Mark 6:30-31. He said, “Come away to a deserted place…and rest a while.” Wouldn’t you love an invitation like that? Ruth Haley Barton proposes in this book that this is an invitation Jesus extends to each and every one of us. She encourages us to embrace retreat as a formational practice. She explains what she means as follows:

“Retreat in the context of the spiritual life is an extended time apart for the purpose of being with God and giving God our full and undivided attention; it is, as Emilie Griffin puts it, “a generous commitment to our friendship with God.” The emphasis is on the words extended and generous. Truth is, we are not always generous with ourselves where God is concerned. Many of us have done well to incorporate regular times of solitude and silence into the rhythm of our ordinary lives, which means we’ve gotten pretty good at giving God twenty minutes here and half an hour there. And there’s no question we are better for it!

But many of us are longing for more—and we have a sense that there is more if we could create more space for quiet to give attention to God at the center of our beings. We sense that a kind of fullness and satisfaction is discovered more in the silence than in the words, more in solitude than in socializing, more in spaciousness than in busyness. “Times come,” Emilie Griffin goes on to say, “when we yearn for more of God than our schedules will allow. We are tired, we are crushed, we are crowded by friends and acquaintances, commitments and obligations. The life of grace is abounding, but we are too busy for it. Even good obligations begin to hem us in.”

Barton goes on in this book to offer extensive practical help in various aspects of taking retreats, from preparing to retreat and facing our exhaustion (including encouraging us to sleep until we naturally awaken on retreat if possible). She addresses the rhythms of retreat and even offers a suggested daily schedule. She gives help on prayer during the retreat including fixed hour prayers. She addresses the challenge of letting go, unplugging and the deeper issue of relinquishing our false-self patterns. For those familiar with the Enneagram, she suggests particular false-self patterns we may relinquish for each Enneagram type. She discusses the chance retreat gives us for discernment, for paying attention to our life situation and how God may be leading. There is practical help for re-entering our lives.

Throughout, Barton relates personal experiences in retreat, discussions with spiritual directors, insights as she reflects on scriptures, her own practices, including taking time to exercise during retreats (something I’m inclined to forget!), and some of her personal compulsions and how retreat has been an important factor in God’s transformative work in her life. Each chapter concludes with a “Practicing Retreat” page with questions we may use in preparing for or engaging in our retreat. Three “interludes” break up the content with poetry for reflection and prayer. Appendices offer a form of fixed hour prayers and practical considerations such as choosing a retreat location, our intention, and even what to pack.

This is a slim book is full of wisdom and practical insights like the following:

“Many of us are wasting our life’s energy fighting for things that aren’t that important in the whole scheme of things. There are times when the quiet of retreat is the only way we will be able to discern well what battle we should be engaging and how.”

As I husband energies that wane with age, I can’t afford to waste them on unimportant battles. Mercifully, Jesus invites me to come away with Him.  Barton’s book reminded me of that pending invitation. It is one I will turn to as I prepare for retreat. And its convenient size makes it the perfect book to pack, to hold, to use in reflection, on retreat.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Life Together in Christ

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Life Together in ChristLife Together in Christ, Ruth Haley Barton. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: Using the account of the two disciples’ encounter with Jesus on the Emmaus road, Barton explores how we may experience life transformation through our encounter with Christ in the presence of others in Christian community.

I thought this was an exquisitely wonderful book! Barton honestly explores how our dreams of community and life transformation often fall far short of reality, a refreshing acknowledgement in itself. Then she goes on to talk about the Emmaus road account in Luke 24:13-35 as a model for how communities might, in their encounter with Christ and each other, become spiritually transforming places.

It all begins with two disciples who choose to walk the road together and honestly acknowledge the realities of their lives. Barton writes:

The disciples’ choice to walk together and to talk about all the things that had happened to them was, in some ways, fairly radical. They could have decided that what they had been through was so personal, so traumatic and so confounding that they didn’t want to talk about it until they had gotten a handle on it. Or they could have chosen to walk together but avoid talking about what was really going on, chatting away about anything else but that. But no. While the experiences of the weekend were still fresh and raw, unvarnished and unresolved, they chose to walk together and talk with each other about all these things that had happened (p. 26).

She describes their situation as a liminal place where their “wish dreams” had died, but they did not yet understand what would take their place.

Then the stranger comes along and they do something uncharacteristic. They welcome him, and in so doing, welcome Jesus, who often comes in the strange, and as a stranger. Jesus listens to them as they describe the events of that fateful weekend and is simply present, not trying to fix them but giving them the freedom to speak. Haley writes:

Even though he certainly had his perspective on the situation (which he shared fruitfully later on), his initial invitation to them was the complete freedom to tell it like it was for them. The goal of such listening is to lovingly and humbly evoke the freedom of others, to invite them into the fresh air and light of unjudged and unafraid expressions of who they are in God (p. 62).

He lets them voice their hopes and desires for the one who they saw as “the hope of Israel.” She talks about communities where we voice our hopes and desires in the light of scripture to be discerned and affirmed or directed in community.

One of the most compelling chapters centers around the astounding report of “some women in our group.” Barton writes refreshingly and realistically about partnership between men and women in the body of Christ in the way I found a breath of fresh air amidst the church’s discussions of gender roles and the culture’s discussions of gender politics.

She then turns to how Jesus speaks of the Messiah’s suffering and entry into glory and the progression of death into life that is part of spiritual transformation as why die to false selves and come alive to our true self in Christ. In the narrative of Jesus explaining the scriptures to them, she talks about how we find ourselves in the story of scripture, even as we meet Christ. She introduces the shared practice of reading the lectionary and lectio divina as aids to that discovery.

In the concluding chapters she reflects on the burning hearts of the disciples as Jesus spoke to them and the role of communities in discerning the work of Christ in each other’s lives. And she writes of how this inward experience leads to outward witness–indeed the necessity of such encounter for any life-giving witness.

Each chapter includes an “On the Road” section to be used in small group or spiritual formation group discussions. Indeed, this book can serve as a guided experience in spiritual formation in a group setting. The book concludes with biblical verses supporting the idea of spiritual transformation in community, and a discussion of stability, a commitment to not leave community without group discernment, and an example covenant for such a group.

In reading this book, I had the sense of listening to a spiritual director or coach as she reflected on Luke 24. Her reflections both painted a vision and fostered the hope of fresh, life-changing encounters in community, with the quiet invitation to take to the road together in the company of Jesus and his friends.