Jeff and I have been doing Pilates faithfully for several months now. We attend a class for an hour every Wednesday and then each night we do 20 minutes of exercising right after our daughter’s bedtime. I never do pushups doing those 20 minutes. I hate pushups. Not surprisingly to many of you who know me well, I whine about pushups during class. Which means that our instructor Anne makes me do pushups. Every week. I’m pretty sure the other students hate me at this point. It’s enough that I just do 20 minutes of Pilates a night, but to really be healthy and to change my body I need Anne to push me during class to try the exercises that are hard for me.
This truth revealed through Pilates is a mirror of my spiritual life. Sometimes it feels like freedom is what I need most in life, the freedom to create, to follow my spiritual journey, to live the life God has called me to live. Sometimes however I long for accountability. To be challenged to grow and to confront those things that are barriers in my life I need to be held accountable by a community. I feel like in my faith life I am sometimes so bound up by the business of church there is no room or freedom for ministry. If I went to Pilates class every day and was pushed too far I would quit sooner rather than later. Sometimes I’ve found myself so far off the path and so disconnected from God that I’m not really sure what I’m doing anymore. If I just did Pilates at home I can guarantee you that I would have well stretched legs and puny arm muscles.
I think this is part of the tension of the modern church. How do we have the freedom to express our spirituality while continuing to be held accountable in our growth as people? How do we shape new ministry outside of the church while finding sustainable ways to pay our bills? This is a tension of our new start ministry as well. We need the freedom to experiment and fail while being held accountable by the conference for our choices and the progress of our ministry.
To be truly healthy as a people we need to be free to do what we can. We also need to be challenged to try hard things. So I’ll keep doing pushups in class and finding ways to weave freedom and accountability through my life.
-Eilidh
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| The cats are not big fans of pushups, but they enjoy warming up my Pilates mat. |
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