Rising Green: A Post-Sabbatical Message from the Minister
- revshariw
- Nov 12
- 8 min read
Warm autumn greetings! It is good to be back amid the community of First Unitarian. I returned from sabbatical to the church’s ministry on November 1, and to its pulpit on November 2.
The sabbatical period refilled my well of vitality and creativity, as intended. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
My gratitude goes to the Sabbatical Team, the Worship Arts Team (special shout-out to chair Mary Kay Peters), our excellent staff, the Board of Trustees, Caring Team coordinators and on-call pastor Rev. Juniper Meadows, and to Rev. Dennis McCarty, who provided a ministerial presence, first virtually with our lay leaders and staff over the summer, and then in person in the first two months of autumn.
“What did you do on your sabbatical?”
Since I’ve been back, curious folks have inquired. I shared some rough plans prior to the sabbatical, as represented by this white board:
Rest. Rest and time to put my health first was the foundation for the sabbatical. The word sabbatical, after all, refers to a period of rest. This made such a difference to my well-being! The last service I led before my sabbatical, in June, was themed Rising Green, inspired by the text of the earthy Carolyn McDade song: “rising green to bring a new day.” Indeed, I return to you renewed in body and spirit.
Learning. Study is often part of a sabbatical too. Independent reading fed my intellect and will likely spill over into future work at First Unitarian. More formally, over the summer, I completed a doctoral course from United Seminary of the Twin Cities on “Trauma, Suffering, and Care.” The class added more knowledge and tools to my pastoral toolkit in general.
As part of the class, I gave special attention to one particular kind of trauma, trauma that takes place in religious or spiritual communities. It’s a topic that is relevant to many people who find their way into Unitarian Universalist communities like First Unitarian – whether they grew up in a fundamentalist tradition, had some later brush with high demand groups (spiritual, political or otherwise), have a loved one in that situation, or want to inoculate their children against unhealthy group dynamics and harmful spiritual ideas.
Writing. The sabbatical also gave me more time for writing, including a new Roots & Wings blog I started in June. It is for church nerds (UU or otherwise) and anyone else who is interested in the future of progressive organized religion.
Change is the one constant in the universe, and we’re certainly seeing it unfold in the realm of religion. Even as Unitarian Universalists remain rooted in our core values, how can spiritual community evolve to meet the needs of the present and future? What forms and practices of religious life might we experiment with, and what are we learning from those experiments? These are the kinds of questions I explore on Roots & Wings.
I continued writing pieces for the Savvy Seeker blog as well. Between the trauma course, writing time, collegial connections made, and time for exploration and discernment, I laid the groundwork for several other writing projects now underway. Notably, a curriculum to help people heal from experiences in high control religion, in a small group ministry format.
Connection with People & Nature. Travel was a significant part of my revitalization during the sabbatical, too. You can learn a bit about the people I connected with – and the natural beauty I imbibed – from the Nov. 9 worship service, Beauty Before Me, which included photos and video meditations. My hope is that this immersive service provides to all who participate in it some revitalization of your own body and spirit.
I share more below, in written form, some travel reflections drawn from that service, including more about the 3-week road trip that rounded out the sabbatical last month.
That final adventure took me to something like seven national parks. I spent time with my brother, visited with five UU minister colleagues throughout the looped route (including a potential curriculum collaborator), and met up with over a dozen other friends, mainly during the California Bay Area week in the middle of the trip. I imbibed so many varied and gorgeous landscapes on that pilgrimage. And I experienced deep healing in relation to my own spiritual journey.
About the only thing I thought I might do, that I did not get around to in the past four months, was writing more songs. However, I am touched that my song “Coming Home” was chosen as one of the inaugural songs accepted to the UUA’s new virtual hymnal.
I am happy to have come home to Omaha and First Unitarian. Now we embark on the next steps of our shared ministry, together.
Warmly –
Rev. Shari Woodbury
More on My Sabbatical Travels…
This is Shoshone Falls in Idaho, once called the Niagara of the west. The water is much lower in the autumn. I felt like that too, before all my time in nature over recent months – not completely dry, but running low, reserves all tapped out. Perhaps you’ve been there.
Almost any kind of natural beauty helps to refill my well of vitality and creativity. I don’t require exotic scenery. Any kind of water, any kind of plants, any kind of wildlife is a balm for the parched soul.
Floating down the Niobrara River, in north central Nebraska, was an excellent way to downshift. Literally going with the flow. Floating past red cliffs pocked with swallows’ nests. Gliding beside verdant hills and emerald trees. Occasionally seeing a mini waterfall, where streams poured into the river.
It was July when I met up with three generations of family near Valentine. Our float day was perfect. The air was pleasantly warm, but not too hot. The sky a beautiful blue with thick patches of clouds. The slippery surface of the Niobrara sparkled in waves.
As we slid along the sinewy surface of the river, my own body began to relax. There was nothing to do but chill during the hours of wafting on the water, soaking up the scenery.
We pulled ashore part-way through our float to mosey over to Smith Falls. At 60-some feet, it is Nebraska’s tallest waterfall. The drum of the water cascading down over the rocks, and the cold mist spraying on my skin, soothed me.
It was our teen’s favorite part of the trip. “Mom, I feel so alive!” she said, as she played with her cousin at the bottom of the falls.
Nature does that. Beauty does that. It makes one feel more alive.
Later in the summer I would travel in the other direction, east to the far corner of Iowa from here. My best friend from Indiana met up with me at Backbone State Park. I love mossy ferny places like that, with rock outcroppings – rock ledges and crevices you can climb through. Windows in stone and intriguing caves. With moss and tiny green plants and fir trees somehow growing on the rocks, as creeks burble past below overlooks.
That kind of place gives me a land-before-time feeling, as if there could be a dinosaur around the corner – and no such thing as clocks and schedules, no timepiece beyond the sun and moon and seasons we can sense directly.
The artificial hustle and bustle of modern society – and the attention-addicting screens that permeate our lives – these run counter to the biological rhythms that put our bodies and spirits at ease. Time in nature can restore one’s inward balance. When I am in the woods or by a river or such, I come back home to myself as a creature of the earth.
After a few months of rest, study, and reconnecting with loved ones, I felt drawn to a bigger adventure. Partly, I wanted to make the most of the opportunity to visit places I don’t usually have the time to get to – to get farther afield than a neighboring state, and immerse myself in unusual beauty. Partly, I wanted to reconnect with people in more far-flung places. And partly, I was on a quest of healing in my own spiritual life.
So I ended up taking a 3-week road trip, just me and my car. I drove about five thousand miles, from late September to mid-October. I went to Colorado, up to Yellowstone, across Idaho and Oregon, then down to the San Francisco Bay Area. I spent a week in the Bay Area, catching up with friends I haven’t seen in person for twenty years. Then I headed back east, through the Sierras, across Nevada and Utah and the rest of the way home.
I look upon that journey as a pilgrimage. To me, as an earth-rooted person, the whole thing was sacred time. Landscapes shifted from prairie and high plains, to mountains of pine and aspen, then arid desert for days. Finally mountains again, with both volcanic fields and the huge high Crater Lake. Then ocean’s edge, and deep redwood forests darkening my path down the coast range.
After my sojourn in the Bay Area, I left the misty coast and went through the golden central valley, up into the foothills of the stream-strewn Sierras and across the top of that blue-green range back into desert territory. Desert is not my favorite landscape, but there were treasures there too: wind turbines bright against dark rock hills, towering ponderosa pine, the rainbow that hung over one roadside supper in Utah, striking red rock formations.
The many days of solitude amidst these varied scenes of grandeur filled up my senses (to echo a John Denver song). This time set apart from ordinary life also lent itself to processing those emotions that can accumulate during busier periods. Notably, grief.
One particular grief propelled me to do this road trip. I visited a community I had been very involved in as a young adult. I’d had a confusing experience with that community and left with some spiritual trauma. Returning to that place twenty years later was a pilgrimage of personal healing. It was powerful medicine.
From my visit to that ashram, I went straight to a nearby beach. I had anticipated the ocean setting would help to settle my nervous system. The sand was cool underfoot as I left my shoes behind and walked along the water’s edge. The cold water on my soles grounded me in my body. The rhythmic crash of the waves was like a wordless lullaby. The ocean worked its healing magic.
If you’re curious, I wrote about the ashram visit here, and about the integrating of that experience afterwards, starting at that beach, here. (Both pieces are on the Savvy Seeker blog on my ministry web site, the two October entries under Fallen Guru.)
I had been a bit restless before my western road trip. The time in nature, the renewed social connections, the learning, the varied scenery --all of it met that need for new input.
When I returned home to Omaha, my proper bioregion, I felt a deep sense of peace, and home… ready to start a fresh chapter of ministry.
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