“The Sacred Year” with Lyn Pace

Shownotes:

Our world is busy. Our lives are busy. Our time is filled with tasks and lists and work and errands and obligations. How do we slow down and open ourselves up to letting God disrupt our lives? Today’s guest, Dr. Lyn Pace, talks Chris and Eddie through using the liturgical year to engage the season we’re in and how to emphasize certain moments within each season of the church calendar. 

Dr. Pace is Chaplain of Oxford College at Emory University. He joined Oxford College in 2009, after working at Wofford College as the associate chaplain, director of service learning, and director of the Bonner Scholars Program. He received his BA degree in religion and history from Wofford College in 1999 and earned his Master of Divinity degree from Emory's Candler School of Theology in 2002. He is the author of  The Sacred Year: A Contemplative Journey through the Liturgical Year. 

Resources: 

Buy The Sacred Year

Transcript: 

Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weght.

Eddie Rester 00:04
So Chris, in light of today's conversation, here's my question. What is your favorite liturgical season or moment during the year?

Chris McAlilly 00:18
That's a good question, Eddie, that you have offered. I think I'll say Ash Wednesday. That's the day when I get to put ashes on your forehead and tell you that one day you will die.

Eddie Rester 00:30

Yeah, there you go. You are sinful. You will die. Yeah, so you should repent now. Yeah, that's a good one. I think my favorite, I'm gonna go a little more hopeful. I'm gonna go All Saints, which is, it's honoring those who have died, but claiming their place in eternal rest and the hope of Jesus for them. So mine is more... Well, it's death, too. So maybe we shouldn't ask each other this.

Chris McAlilly 00:56

It's a little more hopeful. Today we're talking to the Reverend Dr. Lyn Pace. He's a chaplain at at Oxford College, which is a part of Emory University in Georgia, in Oxford, Georgia. And he's written a book called "The Sacred Year: A Contemplative Journey through the Liturgical Year." And it's interesting because his role as a chaplain really shapes the way he sees these things. What did you hear in the conversation today, Eddie?

Eddie Rester 01:25

I think one of the things I valued, and it may be simply because it's where my head has been with some of the reading and work I'm doing right now, is just time. We never feel like we have enough time. We're running out of time, where time has worn us down. And I just feel like his conversation around time, and the way he layers his understanding of the liturgical year into that understanding, I think is helpful. It was helpful for me to just conceptualize a different way of thinking about my year, my time, how God wants to interrupt my time as well. What about you?

Chris McAlilly 02:05
So we're recording this in late January. And so you know, we're about a month into a new year.

And of course, I got my calendar out, and...

Eddie Rester 02:13

I know but, and by the way, if you don't know what liturgical year means, don't cut it off. We're going to talk about that. I don't want to spoil that for anybody. But go ahead. You got a new calendar.

Chris McAlilly 02:21

Yeah, I got a new calendar. And so I'm thinking about, you know, how I'm living in time. Am I managing my time well? And what I've realized is that most of the ways I think about time are in terms of productivity, the things I'm getting done. The conversation, I think, helped me remember that I need to embody time, the gift of time, in more contemplative ways. So whether that's with my kids, whether that's walking the dog, whether that's trying to do things that really don't have any outcome, whether it's like reading a novel. Those are modes of living in time that are deeply human and that, for me, will, I think, connect me, with God and with the people around me in a deeper way. And so just the liturgical year, just walking through time with the church calendar is one of the ways to do that. And it was just a reminder of how powerful that can be, particularly for college students. When they're asked to construct all the meaning that there is to construct in their life, sometimes, you know, there may be an openness to receiving the wisdom of the church. It has a particular weight to it.

Eddie Rester 03:44
Again, it's Dr. Reverend Dr. Lyn Pace and his book, "The Sacred Year: A Contemplative Journey through the Liturgical Year." We hope you enjoy episode. Share it. Make sure you encourage others leave us a review. That always helps other people find it as well.

Chris McAlilly 04:00
[INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact, that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 04:09
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 04:18
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 04:29
Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.

Chris McAlilly 04:39
We'll create space for heavy topics, but we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.

Eddie Rester 04:46
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 04:48
We're here today with Lyn Pace. Lyn, thanks for taking time to be with us on the podcast today.

Lyn Pace 04:55
Absolutely. It's great to be with you all.

Eddie Rester 04:56

Well, we want to start off with something pretty significant, I think, and just just get right into it. Your favorite Buffett song. What's your favorite Jimmy Buffett song? I was going to intro that you're a Buffett fan.

Lyn Pace 05:08

Yes, I'm a huge fan. I've been to about 30 or more shows over the course of about 30 years. You know, there's so many. One of the ones that just comes to mind off the top is "Lovely Cruise." I can't remember at the moment what it's on. But it's, if you listen to the song, and I've been playing with this idea of meaning, making, and faith that comes out of Buffett music, and Buffett was clearly raised as a Catholic, and he was an altar boy and all those good things. And "Lovely Cruise" is kind of like this benediction song. And it's also a song that I've said to my wife, I think I want played and sung at my funeral. Because it talks about this whole thing of it's been a lovely cruise, you know. The whole song just is playful, but it also helps you think about endings. And when you work with 18 and 19 year olds, like I do, endings is not something they're always ready to think about. Because they're immortal. So, you know.

Chris McAlilly 06:11
Tell us a little bit about just kind of what you do. What's your background? And I know that you work with college students as a chaplain, how did you end up in that vocation?

Lyn Pace 06:24

Yeah, thanks for the question. So I grew up United Methodist. I've been United Methodist my entire life. And about right at the start of high school, my mom remarried, and my parents divorced, and my mom remarried and married a Methodist minister. And so I'd always been in the church, but I had never seen it from that side of things. And so he was one of the big influences early on in my life. At that point, I was sort of leaning towards going to college for education degree and high school history teacher and coach. I loved history, and I loved to play basketball and tennis. And so I started, I had a home church pastor around then, too, who also had me thinking about ministry and the ways in which I had just sort of naturally taken on roles growing up. But when I went to college, thinking I was still going to be that high school history teacher and coach, I met my college chaplain Talmage Skinner, who's deceased now, who was at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. And he had been there for about 15 years, and he was already in his early 60s. And it didn't seem that way. You know, I think college kids have this magical effect of keeping us younger on the college campus, or at least I like to tell myself that. And Talmadge just sort of took me under his wing right away, knowing kind of... He knew about me already because he also helped direct a service scholarship and I'd gotten that scholarship. And he had a regular weekly Tuesday Eucharist that he did on campus. By the time I was a second semester sophomore, I was his server every week, like I was the one who was coming consistently and he put me. By the time I was the second semester sophomore, I was the Wesley Fellowship president. And, you know, Talmage was working his magic unbeknownst to me that first year. By the time I was a sophomore, when the Candler folks and Duke folks came to visit Wofford for recruitment, Talmdadge had me at the lunch, and that's sort of history. Will Willimon is a Wofford grad and Duke, had certainly been around Duke a long time and so he courted Wofford students. And I had a good friend who went the other way and went to Candler, first one in a long time. She had me down to Candler, and, you know, I got there and ended up choosing Candler. And the rest is history. But I assumed I would serve churches for a while first, that was kind of how it was thought in South Carolina, and kind of an old system. You pay your dues, and then you get to be a chaplain. I went off to England for the first year after seminary and served Methodist churches there for a year. They were shortage of clergy and receiving folks then to do that right out of seminary. And that was a great experience. But I came back, and through a strange sort of happenings, faith coincidence, all the things, landed a job at Wofford as the Associate Chaplain and Director of Service Learning after England. Did that six years, and then got the job at Oxford in '09, and I've been here ever since. But it's been, you know, ministry and chaplaincy have been all about mentors. It's been all about people that saw something in me, that they said, you know, "You've got a faith that you're willing to let go grow and evolve. You've got pretty good public speaking skills. You're willing to pray, the only youth group guy who's willing to say the prayers." And some of those things that they saay that you think is not a big deal, but they're like, "This is pretty big." And so that was... And then at Emory, I got close to Susan Henry-Crowe, who has just retired from the General Board of Church and Society, but was at Emory 20 plus years, and I got another model of chaplaincy. Talmage was very much a ministry of presence at Wofford. He was at everything, everything. And Susan also was present, but had a lot of programming and had a very multifaith chaplaincy. So that exposed me to how you do chaplaincy with more than just Christian kids, how you're in that role with everybody, faith and no faith, everything in between. But it's the people. It's the relationships that people formed with me that made a difference.

Chris McAlilly 10:59 Thanks for sharing.

Eddie Rester 11:00

Yeah, and you've been at this for a long time. You've written a book I want us to get to in just a minute, particularly in how it relates to I think, college students, but all of us. But I mean, you've been at this, since the mid 2000s now. It's 15 years later. The world has changed dramatically. And people make a big deal about that, because it is a big deal. You know, technology has changed. Social media has changed. COVID happened. But what are the threads that you see that are consistent through the years with your college students?

Lyn Pace 11:37

Yeah, the things that haven't maybe changed as much, that's a nice question. One I'm going to think for just a second. But, you know, I've always worked at, what I would, I guess, call a traditional college, or what I was used to, and that's with 18 to 22 year olds. I'm at a two-year campus now. So it's 18 to 20, pretty much and that's pretty much all I work with. And so, you know, there are many things about 18 year olds that don't change, that developmentally, the places that they're in both just personally, but also faith wise, or even broadening that out, because I think we all come to college with some sort of way of making meaning in the world, even if we don't have a faith or religious or spiritual traditions. So that's how I see working with students and see my role. And I don't think that's changed much. I think students do come with a curiosity. Students come with, I think, the willingness to be open to this idea of meaning making. They may not be open to the idea of religion, or come into the religious practice every week. But I think they are open to the conversations of what are the ways in which I do make meaning in the world? And I've worked at liberal arts colleges the whole time. And so, you know, that's a hallmark piece I think of liberal arts learning. It's not just how do I get a job? How do I get into grad school? Which most students are coming with those thoughts, and their parents even more so. But I think they're also coming with this idea of what's this experience about? And what are the questions I need to be asking? How do I figure out how my life matters in all of this? That, to me, hasn't changed. That still stays the same. You know, the demographics have changed, certainly, since I was in college. And then a little bit in the early 2000s, when I was in seminary, you know, the students who checked the box "none," that's dramatically increased over that 20-year period. And that's the most the most we've ever, the most percentage we've ever seen. I went and did a Rotary talk not a few years ago in town, and most of the people there, most of the older group, the older men in the crowd were Oxford alums. And they had not had an update on Oxford College in quite some time. And these were guys who had graduated in the 50s, you know, and when I told them that. They were asking me about religious demographics. And I said, you know, the largest group at Oxford are the nones, and some guy raised his hand and he said, "Hang on. You mean to tell me that there are Catholic nuns in large numbers?" And I said, "Not the N-U-N-S, but the N-O-N-E-S." And so, the nones are, you know, that's changed, but the things that haven't are the ways in which they come wanting to know what matters, to know what's important.

Chris McAlilly 14:54

Yeah. So if you're interested in just that idea of the nones, it goes back to Pew research that's been tracked for long time and it's just the growth of religiously unaffiliated folks. You can look up, just Google Pew Research and look at the nones, and you can kind of check that. I wonder, so, you know, for you, it sounds like construing your practice of chaplaincy quite broadly as being a mentor or a companion for 18 to 20 or 18 to 22 year olds, and the process of helping them think through and examine whatever meaning making looks like for them. That's kind of the way that you've come to view your practice as a chaplain. The book that you've written is explicitly a Christian way of construing meaning and making meaning, and particularly in time. The book is called "The Sacred Year." And it's a way... Perhaps you could talk through why you wrote the book, and, you know, in a world that's increasingly secularized, and where nones are on the rise, why make a claim for a Christian way of construing meaning and time?

Lyn Pace 16:13

Yeah, great question. Thanks. Well, first, the book. You know, I have loved books since I was a kid. And for a while now, I wanted to write one and just didn't know how that would happen. And it turns out, I had a friend, about seven years ago, invite me to lunch. She had worked at Oxford. We were really colleagues then. But now our sons are best friends. It's funny how all that evolves. But she, over lunch, she said she was now the general manager of our local newspaper, really small newspaper, still publishes print and digital, of course. And she wanted to develop a religion column, something that we could write from our identity as whoever we were, but offer it broad enough for the local community to sort of make some meaning out of this religion column and asked if I would do it. I didn't think I had time to do it. I didn't know what I would say. Turns out, I'm now still writing the column seven years later, so I guess I have plenty to say. But I wrote that column and about year five, when we were in the middle of COVID, really sort of coming out of the first waves of lockdown, I had a little more time than I did before, and so I started combing through those articles. And I thought, well, I've written a lot, so maybe there's a book in all of this. I had had several people say, "Maybe there's a book in all of this," you know, and tried to figure out what the themes were and if that would sort of tell me what the book might be about. I wrote the columns monthly. And there was, at first, there was a prescribed week that was mine. So every third week was me, and I wrote the religion column. It got a little looser as time went on. I wrote about lots of things, and of course, I wrote about faith but also what was going on in the world, setup the Bible in the newspaper. So I'm trying to figure out how those things two things integrate and engage one another. But because I wrote it in calendar year wise, for me, I, and I've always done this. And I credit Don Saliers a lot at Candler School of Theology, who is a great worship and liturgy guy who's still around Candler doing lots of good things, with shaping me in the liturgical year. Another way of keeping time, not one that's going to... You know, you're not going to stop keeping time, January, February, March. But another way to do it, and to see how it might help us slow down and pay attention more because of that way of keeping time and what it means. I wrote about that a whole lot, because it was what I was living. I do services, some on campus. We don't have a regular Sunday, because there's a church that sits on campus, but there are certain seasons where I have services that certainly matter to our campus community. One coming up, Ash Wednesday. It's huge. We get great turnout on Ash Wednesday here.

Chris McAlilly 19:30
College students come out for Ash Wednesday.

Lyn Pace 19:33 What's that?

Chris McAlilly 19:33
College students come out for Ash Wednesday. I feel like...

Lyn Pace 19:35

It was wild to me when I started this work, and I don't know, because it's, again, I said earlier, they're immortal. You know, you're preaching completely this: "Yeah, we die. That's what we do. Everybody does. And you're 18 and it's gonna happen." And they're like, "No, no way." But they show up . And my Catholic kids, they, it's not a holy day of obligation. So the priest is great. He's like, you don't have to get to the local parish, go to the chaplain on campus. And so that's who shows up, right? It's easy, they get there, and they appreciate that. Anyway, that's how the book came to be, is really those articles and looking at that theme. And I thought this has always been important to me, because it shapes me and it forms me, the way worship should shape us inform us. It doesn't have to just be in worship. We can live this kind of liturgical year every day. We're in seasons all year long. How do we talk about that? And so the book, you know, the repurposed, I mean, really didn't do much editing to the articles got permission from the newspaper. And the articles really formed the devotional material that's within each season. Each chapter is a season. I give a brief, by no means exhaustive--Don Saliers exhaustive-- introduction to the season. But you know, what is Advent, briefly? What are the colors? What's the music? You know, what does it mean? Four or five articles that really can operate as devotions to help illuminate the season for folks that I wrote and help do that along the way over the years that are set in time, right. Some of the articles come back before COVID. Some are written during COVID, you know, now kind of post COVID. And then the end of the book, this is where I think I tried to... I'm working on broadening it out. And this is something I've done on campus is I got invited by a psychology professor a few years ago to co-teach with her. That rarely happens. And so she did a lot of work and research on contemplative practice and contemplative mind, and that in higher education. What does it matter to open up your class with a different contemplative practice every week? To start class that way, instead of just sort of the way we normally come in and start class and to end it with a moment of quiet. And so each chapter in the book ends with a contemplative practice. And I draw from the tree of contemplative practices that have these branches that are certain groupings of practices, and then specific ones. I try my best to think about how does... There's seven different groupings. I took each one and paired it with a chapter. And so for Advent, it's stillness practices. And for Lent, its pilgrimage practices.

Eddie Rester 22:37

So people may be--I want to help people with the whole liturgical year concept, because preachers swim in it. We breathe that air. But for someone who has no idea what we're talking about right here, what's the liturgical year?

Lyn Pace 22:54

Yeah, well, and you guys can jump in if I get anything that you think is off. But, you know, certainly, I'm coming at it from a Methodist perspective. And I would say more of our liturgical traditions, certainly Catholic and Episcopalian and Lutheran and Methodist and others, but tend to keep time differently. Time has evolved in the church tradition over the years into its own calendar, recognizing that there are ways that we live our lives that are certainly informed biblically, but that help penetrate beyond the Bible and help penetrate our worship, help us learn how to shape and form ourselves, as clergy, certainly as we're trying to shape and form the gathered community, and individually and collectively. And so the liturgical year itself starts with Advent. The beginning of the year is Advent, which is usually right around the end of November. And you've got a four-week season of Advent that leads into Christmas. That's this season of waiting and preparation, certain themes that accompany all these seasons, and you move from Advent to Christmas, and again, this is broad, to Epiphany and then into Lent, which we're, right now we're in Epiphany, or the season after epiphany, and in a couple of weeks, Ash Wednesday will begin Lent. And that, you know, I'm sure you've found this true in local church work, but on college campuses, everybody knows Lent, or at least they know something about Lent, because they give up stuff for or sometimes take on things.

Eddie Rester 24:41

It's funny, a few years ago, Time Magazine did an article about a mega church in the southeast, how they had rediscovered Lent, and I was like, we never undiscovered it, so. But that... how they had rediscovered Lent, and I was like, we never undiscovered it, so. But that...

Lyn Pace 24:54 It's not a new thing.

Eddie Rester 24:55

But it was interesting that this pastor who didn't come out of a liturgical tradition, had found that this timekeeping way of seeing the year, of seeing the moment leading to Easter was extremely valuable not just for him, but he was trying to teach his congregation about it. And for a moment, I kind of chuckled, but then I was thankful for that moment. So you've got this nice rhythm.

Chris McAlilly 25:22

Yeah, I think the rhythm... I think about, alright, so, you know, we're, however many years post enlightenment. This idea that you have to... that it's all on you to make the meaning that is there for your life. You know, I think it's, you know, working with college students in a college town, I think it's oppressive, you know, the sense that I, as an individual must create all and construct all meaning for life. And I think it's too much. And I think that there is a recognition that perhaps we need helpful frameworks, guides, mindsets, mentalities. And then the question then becomes, where do you go looking for them? And I think that a lot of the places where I see folks, both young and old, looking is on social media, certainly frames of reference from folks who are influencers, who have accumulated significant attention. And I think that there is some value in that. There are certain ideas that rise to the top within the context of a very flattened and decentralized social media kind of ecosystem. But I also see students that find their way to the church, they tend to be ones that are looking for something deeper, something that has more, I mean, has more weight, and something that's rooted in a deeper, more ancient tradition, or kind of a wise practice, that's been the accumulation of years and years. And, you know, there is something to some... I do think there's a recognition among young people, that there--not all of them, but some of them--that there is something to these ancient ways. And that you don't just have to chart your way out into the forest without a path, you know. You can follow the path and that actually is maybe better, you know, or more healthy, or it leads to health and kind of wholeness or something. What were you going to say, Eddie?

Eddie Rester 27:34

I just, you know, doing some work right now around Sabbath and rest and this rhythm of work and life. And I think humans, particularly modern humans, we have messed time up, in some ways. We've added clocks and calendars to the human life, which at some level kind of existed forever, but never in the way that we've used them in the last, say, 150 years to mandate everything we do, day to day. And what the liturgical, just as Sabbath kind of is a break for us. I think, one of the ways that, Lyn, I think about the liturgical year, is that it's pacing. It reminds us, as Chris was saying, is that there's this deeper meaning. I really didn't fall in love with the liturgical year, to be quite honest, until sometime...

Chris McAlilly 28:22 Until you met me!

Eddie Rester 28:24

Until I met Chris McAlilly. Then everything in my life improved. Absolutely everything in my life. And then, later, probably early my ministry, but it was really ordinary time for me, which is, nobody talks about ordinary time. Because it's ordinary. It used to be the season after Pentecost.

Lyn Pace 28:46 It lasts forever.

Eddie Rester 28:47

But it lasts forever, which is something to be said that ordinary time is this pacing of life. But the color is green, and it's a time of growth. And so the liturgical calendar, with this long, huge stretch of time, reminds you that your life is to be a season of growth, which is a great reminder that comes to us when we're willing to say there's a different calendar that I can live my life by, other than the one that starts January 1 and ends December 31.

Lyn Pace 29:21

Yeah. Well, and this is the thing too, right, in the opening of the book, I talk about time. Your whole we're sort of messing with time is, it's true. I'm, bosh, I'm a prime example. I live and die by calendar. I just have to have it. And I love wall calendars. They adorn my office, wall calendars, do mostly for the pictures in them, but I also like the days and knowing what's coming, and there's that sort of thing. But I talk in the book, again, in our sort of Christian language, and broader, we talk about Chronos versus Kairos time, right. And Chronos time is this time we keep that's ordered. But Kairos time is the time that is sort of this breaking in, at least in Christian terms, of how God breaks into our lives, and it reminds us that time is not actually something we control. And so I also think students are looking for ways in which they don't have to control everything, because sometimes their parents are controlling everything, and that feels oppressive. And they think that they've got to have the the career figured out. My spouse is actually the career counselor here. And she's got a dual master's in social work and pastoral ministry from Boston College. So she brings a whole lot of stuff that they don't always know they're doing, but that's what she's doing with them. And these are 18 and 19 year olds, which is why she works here because she said, I don't really want to work with the juniors and seniors, because all they want to do is land the job. The 18 and 19 year olds still have this capacity to shake it up, to let somebody shake it up, to think that they may not end up doing what they came thinking they were going to do. And they may do something that's not going to be as lucrative or that wasn't the thing that they thought forever, but that actually brings them more joy and allows them to be, like Chris said a minute ago, more whole, more balanced. And of course, you know, when we think of salvation, health and wholeness is what that word sort of gets at. And I think part of the book is helping us be more healthy, helping us be more whole. That's why the contemplative practices come in, because I think the liturgical year is a contemplative practice. I think it's meant to help us slow down and pay attention more deeply to ourselves, to each other, to our neighbors, and last but not least, but probably first, to the Divine--the holy, the sacred in our lives. And so that's another reason I wanted those practices to be in there to say, "And here's some other ways to implement into our lives, either individually or collectively, this idea of slowing down and paying attention." And that's the thing I see the most in the college students I work with is how can we not just always be busy and be boastful about the busy that we're a part of.

Chris McAlilly 32:36

Yeah, one of the things I'm thinking about in this conversation about time is, I mean, from the Christian tradition, the Judeo Christian tradition, time is a gift. It's not something that we create. And then it gets patterned in certain ways, you know, the Sabbath being the first and then eventually through the year by the festivals of the Jewish faith. And then ultimately, those get transposed in the Christian tradition into the liturgical calendar. But in the background of all that, as we think about adopting or living our life, allowing our lives to be patterned or shaped or formed by the liturgical year, is kind of the, I don't know, the extent to which the economics and finances drive the way that we think about time. And so, you know, so much of what we do, I mean, as college students, as adults is about embodying time in productive modes. It's how can we... Time is money. I mean, there are all these analogies that are there. You know, we don't... Time... We think of time as scarce. All those things are rooted. We need to make the best use of time. All of this, all of those are time spent in a productive mode. You know, I think having children, for me, is one of the ways that I've been jarred into thinking about time differently. Because when you're just caring for young children under the age of five, you're not getting anything done. Right? You're not getting a single thing done. And what you have to do is, you really have to move into a different mode in the the tree of contemplative practices that you provide the book. It's relational contemplation. It's deep listening, dialogue. It's paying attention. It's a different mode. So just moving... I guess that I just want to highlight that, you know, so much of the way we think about time is in the mode of productivity. And it seems like what you're trying to kind of move us towards is thinking of time as something that can be embodied in a contemplative way. And we just don't know how to do that. I mean, I think that's part of the difficulty in that conversation, or I shouldn't say, we. I don't know how to do that. I have to relearn that.

Eddie Rester 35:04

And maybe that's part of the reason Jesus called us to faith like a child. Because as you're talking about your kids, and it's this all-in thing, kids have no concept of productive time. I mean, it's all Kairos time to them. It's all, you know, how do I get from moment to moment. And so maybe part of the call of Jesus to faith like a child is kind of this releasing of our grasping at time, so that we can receive, what you just said, Chris, the gift of time. I wrote that down. I'll probably quote you in a sermon coming up, so thanks.

Chris McAlilly 35:42

It's okay. You quote me in sermons all the time, you know, if you would like to get--I can write your sermons, you know, for a fee.

Eddie Rester 35:49
For a fee. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, that would save me time.

Lyn Pace 35:52 Time is money.

Chris McAlilly 35:53
That would save time, that would save you time.

Eddie Rester 35:57

But, you know, I think there's this sense of, again, releasing some of our grasping. And different seasons of the liturgical year, I think, do that better for us. Maybe all of them do it. But I'm thinking about Advent right now, the start of the year. And it's always jarring when I talk to confirmation classes about when the Christian year starts, because they think oh, January one. In your mind, what's the good gift of Advent? Why do you think that the early church leaders said, Christian year starts with Advent?

Lyn Pace 36:36

Yeah. I guess in my mind, the place that I go, is this idea of having the weight of the anticipation, because Advent, you know, we're talking about two Advents, right? We're talking about--or at least where we are now and how we narrate it, thinking about this idea that in the season, we're moving toward the birth of Christ at Christmas. And yet, what we're also talking about is this idea of Christ coming again in glory, of this return of Christ, and what it is to live in between those two places. And then the waiting of, of course, Christmas is for so many, for kids, it's really hard, right? The waiting is, and there's a lot of joy and anticipation in that. For the rest of us, I think Advent becomes all busy, all the time, because of the preparation we have for the families, for the gatherings, for the work things that are extra during the season. You're still working, but maybe there's this event and that one to plan for. And then, you know, prepping for all the gifts and the lists. And you know, you're filling up all the time. So this is the hard part, right? This season calls us to this idea of waiting, which again, for me, waiting signals this idea of how do we slow ourselves down and open ourselves up to, again, like Chris said, receiving this gift, that there still might be a gift of time in all of this. One of the phrases that always stood out to me with students, and I guess this is one of those consistent things that I've heard for 15, 20 years, is the students always say, "I'm just out of time." And I will play around with that with them and say, "Well, are you really? And what do you mean by that?" Right? And, "What have you been doing to fill the time?" And, "Let's think about whether or not you're really out of time and what that looks like." So I don't know if that... I don't know if that gets to your question any, but that's sort of what I'm thinking about with Advent and the waiting piece that is so important in that season.

Eddie Rester 38:57

When you think about the full calendar, it's a lesson that sets up the rest of the year for us in my mind, as well. When you were sitting there talking about, we're waiting in between, in this moment between what is and what will be, there's a lesson there for us. Okay. Approach the rest of your year, of your life, of we're in this in-between moment. Christ has come; Christ will come again.

Lyn Pace 39:23
Yeah. As we say at the table every well, depending on how often you have Eucharist but yes, every Sunday.

Eddie Rester 39:30

Yeah. How have you used some of this jst with your students? How do you help them? You mentioned a little bit of it there, but how do you help your students connect to the liturgical year in the lessons in the hope of that? Have you found it to be helpful?

Lyn Pace 39:48

Some of it, a lot of it, like I mentioned a second ago, I just sort of use in a one-on-one counseling session, when somebody's in there talking about being out of time and that's become so stressful that they don't really know... They've gotten to the place of not knowing how to put one foot in front of another. It's become that stressful, right? And that it's all about-- it's not always all about this. But a lot of times it's about how they've structured and prioritized their time, and what might be able to be different about that. So a lot of it comes in that. There's collective ways, too. You know, I said earlier, we don't have a Sunday service. So I don't get to do this every Sunday, and unfold it. But I've tried over the years to mark special times during each season, that we might have a chance to engage the season itself or a particular moment during that season. Of course, you lose a lot during the ordinary time because all my students are gone in the summer. We don't have summer school, either. But setting up those times like Ash Wednesday, right. And not letting that go. I mean, there's a church on campus. I could direct them to Ash Wednesday on campus. But one, it's probably my favorite day in the whole church year, and so I am not willing to let it go. But I think it also is so important for them to remember, if nothing else, to remember that we actually are not immortal. That this is, you know... And why is that important? Why is that important to you, as a college student? And many of them already have experienced plenty of death, but they still think they're immortal. It's not gonna happen to me, you know.

Lyn Pace 41:38

But you know... And it's just, one, it sounded kind of chaotic out there, if you've done blessing of the animals. It can become sort of that. And that's kind of a neat thing. But then just to have this joy, right, that we have in our pets, and that they're missing. But that this is part of this season of Ordinary Time. This is part of this season of growth, and discovering why it is that these animals are important to us these animals that we call pets, or any animal, that they're part of a larger creation that we've been created. And that we've been created to care for each other, certainly to care for our pets as well. It's somebody else. And then, for instance, another time that we do this is in October. I keep the feast day of St. Francis. And we try to keep the actual day of October 4 for his birthday, and have a blessing of the animals, which, again, for college students to get animals on campus, because they're not allowed in the residence halls, unless it's a service or support animal, is huge for them, and it draws them in, right. I know I'm gonna get a great draw. They get to bring pictures of their pets from back home. Faculty and staff bring mostly dogs, sometimes a cat. Next year, somebody's threatening to bring chickens. I said, "Bring it on," you know, "We'll figure out. Keep them maybe in a cage, because we have a lot of dogs."

Chris McAlilly 43:09

One of... Pets is so fascinating, because I feel like pets are... They're kind of an homage or a memory of the fact that these kids who are in college, who were just with their peers, belong to a larger human family that's intergenerational. One of the things that I've been toying around with is just how odd the college, the American college experience is as an anthropological experiment. I was joking with a friend of mine. There's the concept in Amish communities of the Rumspringa, you know, where you just leave out from the tribe and from the community, and then you go off and you sow your wild oats. I mean, that's the way that we conceive of college. You know, it's not a time where we're expecting much, typically, the church is not expecting much of these young people in terms of... But what happens is, this is the time and the place within which a lot of the kinds of habits and practices and coping skills emerge for college students that lead to deep brokenness, pain, unhealth that takes decades to unravel. Tons of therapy, all kinds of really, really bad outcomes. And so, you know, I think, what I hear in your book is, it's kind of one drop in the bucket of saying, maybe there's a different way for college students to embody the time that is college, and to make meaning maybe in a way that's slightly more shaped, formed in a way that would lead to health. Maybe more abundant life, less pain. You know? I don't know. I come at this thinking, yeah, I was a preacher's kid, and so college for me was a time very much where I was not engaging in the practices that you lay out. So I think it's always fascinating when I see a college student show up and they're like, "Yeah, I'm kind of interested in engaging this stuff."

Lyn Pace 45:17

It never, never fails to take me by surprise, I guess because I also... Well, I stayed engaged in college, but I also sowed some wild oats in college, you know. That's just, that's what it was. And that's what I did. Just the other day, I had a student who is not really coming for Somebody else.

counseling, but just coming... Well, yes. But trying to figure out where their spiritual sort of self is, where their spiritual practices are right now. They're already doing some of this, more than many of the college students here on a regular basis. But she said something, and I actually said something about my book, and she said, "Wait a minute. You wrote a book?" And I was like, "Yeah, you know, just recently." And I started telling her about it. And all of a sudden, she pulled out her phone, she was like, "Is there a way to buy it?" And she's been Venmoed me half. She's like, "It's not much, but I'm going to just buy, for principle, I'm going to pay you half now and pay you half later." And so, you know, I'm gonna see her later again today. And she took my book with her last week. And as she walked out, I thought, I know I wrote this with college students in mind, but I never thought that would happen like that. But out of this sort of counseling session, and I'm telling her what the book is about and she, you know, she she grew up Catholic. So she's got a sense of the liturgical year already. But she's so far from being Catholic right now. And more being, just like so many, exploring, right. When I told those guys about the nones at the Rotary meeting, and I said, you know, this does not mean they don't have anything. Like, that's never what it has meant. It means they don't know. It means I don't want what I brought with me from home, It means I've been hurt and I'm looking for something different. It means I don't right now, but I might. I mean, it's so many things. And I think this is the challenge of, quite frankly, college chaplaincy. My chaplain at Wofford, which in the mid 90s, was still very much a Christian camp. You know, very much the students who identify as Christian mostly, that's how he had been taught. That's who he dealt with best, even though he was open to other traditions and ways. And we just joined stuff. We got there, and we were in Wesley fellowship. And we did it was easy. To me, it seemed easy, right? These last 20 years, I would not call easy. It's you figuring out how... I think I've figured it out. The way in which chaplains need to move on campus--and my Chaplain did do some of this--is this ministry of presence, to a certain extent, because you've got to show up at stuff and be present that stuff, and not just present, but then get yourself in a role in those things. So I collaborate heavily with our International Student Programs Office, and with our Student Involvement and Leadership, I mean, I'm so intertwined with campus life. And they so trust me, and of course, I've been here 14 years. So there's a level of that, that they don't mind. They're going to ask me to, to speak at this thing, or to be on a panel at this one. And that's how chaplains have to do it now, right? That's how you earn the trust of students to show up in your office and say, "I saw you at this event, and I just wanted to reach out. I'm trying to figure out where my spiritual practices are," and then she buys your book, and then I mean, just... Wow, okay. You know, and I know that's just one. But I just think that's how chaplains... if you're not working that way today, it's not gonna be setting up a church service on Sunday or, you know, whatever.

Chris McAlilly 49:08

Yeah, I think the thing that I hear in that is that... there may have been a time where there was an institutional trust that was broadly shared, not just for college students, but across America, that the practices of the church were trustworthy. That is no longer the case. And so what has to be done is, you know, person by person, chaplain by chaplain, pastor about pastor, showing up, being present, having a role in the community, and earning the trust to have the conversation about the practices about this... It's mentor by mentor, it seems. I think that that's... And so yeah, it's like, that, in some ways, is quite daunting, because it means that if you're a practitioner of ministry or any... If you're a Christian in any sector, any field that wants to convey to someone else a life that's worth living, you know, it means that you have to reengage the practices. And to have it to so embody, to be so shaped and formed by the tradition that somebody says, "I want to, learn about that," you know, you have a life worth sharing. So...

Lyn Pace 50:28

Yeah, I would just, one brief thing to say about that, but what I heard and what you said, it also means and this comes out of my... I did a D.Min at Candler. And the work that I did was on the relationship between colleges and the community. So town-gown relationships, right, and looking at how we engage college students and the community residents, even though none of my college kids came here to meet local residents in Oxford, Georgia, right. But that doesn't mean it's not our job to figure out how they get to do that. And so what you said, Chris, are the daunting, too, probably mostly for us, unless there's just, some churches out there that are golden and get this and understand it, and some college administrators who are good at this. But most don't. And I think it's up to us to teach it and to understand that part of our work--and a huge part of our work, right--is that we have to be in the community, not just in our congregation, not just with my students, but there's this teaching role that we can play, an earning trust role that we can play in our community. And at least my experiences, most congregations especially have not valued that as much. They want you there. Come visit me I'm sick. But being out in that sort of broader community is the place where, even if they don't come to church, it's where we rebuild that trust with the broader world, right. And we trust the seeds that we're planting of what might be happening in that. And the same year, my, you know, it's a little harder in the college environment. But my administrators have trusted that I don't have to just set up church services, or I don't have to just set up religious and spiritual looking things, even though I do, but that these collaborations I'm doing with these other offices are just as important to then making sure students that I sort of get to infiltrate the rest of the community, and be there and help that trust piece.

Eddie Rester 52:42

Yeah, you're building trust. Yeah. Lyn, I'm thankful for you and the work that you're doing. I'm thankful for our conversation today, and just blessings on you as you continue to build that trust with students because those seeds that you plant will bear fruit in local communities and local congregations down the road. So thank you for your time.

Lyn Pace 53:02
Thank you. It's been such a joy to be with the two of you, and I appreciate the invitation.

Eddie Rester 53:06
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Chris McAlilly 53:15

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]