P A U S E

Negative woo, 2 questions about reading + Platform 9 3/4

Welcome to Restful | Pause, a newsletter to help us worship God, love people, and enjoy beauty wherever we find ourselves today.

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This special offer expires on January 14!

We've been spending the last few days catching our breath after the sweetest visit with our kids through the first week of January. (I shared dozens of photos on my Instagram stories, which you can find here.) As we move from Christmastide into Epiphanytide, here is that letter I send a few times a month.

First, a restful photo

Each week, I share a photo from our 2022 sabbatical in the UK, Ireland, Quebec, and upstate NY.

We trained from visiting friends in the Lake District to King’s Cross station in London to catch up with some other friends. Learning the train system took a bit of practice, and I guess that’s why it took us until our departure to remember the most iconic square footage of the train station. There was a long line for the photo opp, so we settled for sending our kids a pic of complete strangers.

We were almost late for our train to the Yorkshire Dales and there was a long line for the photo opp so we sending our kids pictures of strangers!

Today’s letter includes:

• A reflection on this week in the church calendar + an invitation for you to take a prayerful pause

• Three Restful Things I found on the internet

• Three things I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to lately

• Plus, a happy reminder about my Restful subscription sale!

Let's begin.

A Restful | Sunday recap

Paid subscribers celebrated Restful | Christmastide with a twelve-day “pageant,” taking us scene by scene through the birth of Christ accounts in Luke 2 and Matthew 2. I’ve unlocked each Restful | Christmastide guide for a limited time. If you are not a paid subscriber yet and are curious about what I shared each of the twelve days of Christmas, now is your chance to enjoy them. Click this link to enjoy all twelve posts!

I also invited everyone to begin Epiphany with me in the latest Restful | Sunday guide.

S U N D A Y

In Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, author Bobby Gross reminds us that the liturgical season of Epiphany brings the themes of light to a culmination. In Advent, we cry out with Isaiah for the people who walk in darkness to see the promised light. In Christmastide, we celebrate the coming of that Light in the birth of Jesus. In Epiphany, we recognize that the gift of Light is for the whole world, as illustrated by the arrival of the Magi from the East to the Jewish home of Mary and Joseph.  

“The one who shows himself to us asks us to make him known to others. The one who declares, ‘I am the light of the world,’ says to us, ‘You are the light of the world.’”

—Bobby Gross, Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God

Throughout the Sunday worship and daily readings in the Epiphany lectionary, we follow the early life and ministry of Jesus as He is revealed as the Son of God, appearing as light to a dark world. He is the very God shining forth, manifesting the glory of God. Oftentimes, the accounts are private affairs (Transfiguration), other times public (Wedding at Cana, Baptism).  All of them take place, though, in the places Jesus lived and worked within the context of his relationships with family, friends, and followers—the sick, possessed, poor, celebrating, drinking, seeking, religious, fearful, apathetic, and discouraged neighbors.  

Jesus often follows these revelations (or “epiphanies”) with the command to “Go and tell.”  

Each Sunday in Epiphany, I share a guide highlighting the week's Gospel account with visual art, music, and links to the Scripture readings for the week. Each Restful | Sunday guide includes an invitation for contemplation (prayerful listening) and community (embodied presence) to practice during the week. In this way, we honor the Light of the World and live out his blessing to make us the light of the world. This is what it means to live the adventure of the kingdom of God—training our imaginations and our bodies to recognize Christ in our homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods, as well as our sanctuaries and personal prayer spaces.

Will you join me in training our eyes and ears for the "one who shows himself to us" this Epiphany? In the spirit of Epiphanytide’s witness, I welcome you to walk through the weeks with me with attention to encountering and proclaiming the goodness of Christ.

Browse my Epiphany bookshelf on Bookshop to see some of the books I’ve found to be good companions to the season.

A prayerful pause

I promised myself I wouldn’t get anxious about how long it would take me to return to a healthy work rhythm after our kids left last week. For the most part, I’ve kept that promise, and I’ve needed to because—sheesh!—I feel discombobulated this week! My brain feels foggy, time feels mushy, and my ability to focus is almost nonexistent. I’m grateful for the things that have helped me through this first week back to work: some good books to read, fresh snow and sun that helped me get outside, and a brand new journal and favorite pen to help me collect my thoughts and prayers.

One image that helped me begin meeting with spiritual directees again was Jesus at his baptism from Sunday’s gospel reading. In the pauses when my mind wanted to wander, the Holy Spirit helped me meditate on the voice of blessing Jesus heard as he came up from the Jordan: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus had not yet performed miracles, organized ministry opportunities, or taught in public. He just said yes to God’s command for baptism and made room for God’s voice to be heard. I sat in my chair, eyes closed, imagining myself standing knee-deep in the river with Jesus, listening for God’s loving voice to be heard by my directee. What a profound yet gentle gift.

Where have you been able to pause and prayerfully reflect on God’s presence with you in this season?

How could you do that today?

Maybe you’d like to pause this week to ask Jesus, Where are you reveling in God the Father’s blessing right now? How can I join you there?

Restful Things

Here are a few things that helped me worship God, love people, and enjoy beauty this season.

Links

Fighting consumerism with fasting and feasting (Christ and Pop Culture) Speaking as someone who’s already created a rule of life for food around the church’s rhythms of fasting and feasting, Kendall Vanderslice’s genuine insights are some of the most inviting I’ve read on the subject.

Related: An article I wrote for Think Christian a few years back - Lindy West, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Embracing Our God-Given Bodies

When I Look I Can See the Good (Karen Stiller) A writer who has inspired me in my marriage to a minister shares the good she can see on the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death. “Here is some of what has been good, because I know you would have told me to look for it, and to reach toward it and name it when I find it.

Related: The review I wrote for Karen’s book for Englewood Review of Books - Living in the Fishbowl - A Review of The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More Karen Stiller

The Listening Heart: Corita Kent’s Reforming Vision (Nations) I’m slightly obsessed with this nun/ mid-century avant-garde artist who sees the sacred everywhere, including a bag of Wonderbread. The article is from 2022, but since Santa gave me several Sister Corita-inspired gifts this Christmas, I thought I’d share it again.

Reading, Watching, Listening

Watch my friend Jack and me being interviewed about Apostles Reads, the reading group I facilitate for our church. If you know Brian or me, you might notice around the 5 1/2 minute mark the deft way he helped me stay focused in a conversation I’d have gleefully expanded to the length of an episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Related: Browse my Apostles Reads bookshelf at my Bookshop page for the books our church has read together for the past seven years. You can also find my list of the 15 books lingering with me from 2023, what I’m currently reading, as well as a whole bunch of more thoughtful lists at my bookstore.¹

Season 4 of one of our favorites! This season includes even more breathtaking views of the Yorkshire Dales and of Grassington, the filming location for the fictional village of Darrowby. We stayed in Grassington for a few days of our 2022 sabbatical, and during every episode, Brian and I say, “Remember when we were there?!?”

We enjoyed our first official snowfall last weekend, which inspired the playlist I’m sharing in today’s letter: It Snowed

What restful things are you enjoying lately?

Before you go…

There’s still time to get a whole year of Restful | Sundays, including my Advent and Lent guides, for half the annual subscription.

The Restful subscription sale ends in two days, and I am so grateful to those of you who have responded to this big sale!

The response to this sale has been a bit underwhelming, which, to be honest, has been a kind of pattern in my work and ministry life. After spending half a day in an existential identity crisis, I noticed a new sense of peace in what I have to offer to the world. Naturally, the whole thing inspired a social media post.

My sisters and I spend hours on Voxer bemoaning how hard it is to convince people that what we want to offer the world is worth noticing. One day, after sharing how many hours she’d spent praying and preparing an invitation to hundreds of people in her church family that only a few people seemed to notice, my sister @agnichols10 wailed “I HAVE NEGATIVE WOO!”

Now every time one of us talks about how hard it is to persuade people we care about that we’re offering something really good out of the most tender and passionate parts of ourselves, we quote my sister and lament our “negative woo.”

I feel this way about a few invitations I’ve put out in to the world lately—a healing prayer retreat at church, my book that released in June, and my Substack subscription sale. I want to only ever offer invitations out of love and respect but, man, is that vulnerable!

So here I am again with all my love and all God has asked me to offer the world even though God hasn’t given me the gift of woo. I love you and hope you’ll consider saying yes to my invitations. If you say no or don’t even reply at all, I will still love you and will still keep inviting you with all my heart because that’s a way better option than retreating to a little jaded version of myself. And l want to stay gentle.

Here’s my current invitation: https://tamarahillmurphy.substack.com/subscribe

I love you,

Tamara

p.s. Here’s a little snow day playlist to enjoy no matter the winter weather!

1. When you purchase a book through my Bookshop links, you don’t pay more but I receive a small commission. At least that’s what I’m told; it hasn’t happened yet!