This week, Ethan and I have been at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, for our annual week of planning: to step away for a few days to map out the year of planning and teaching. It's a habit that we learned from ministers with a good deal more experience than ourselves, and it might just be the very best practical ministry piece we've learned. We sit down and road map the whole year's worth of Sunday and Wednesday nights, prayerfully laying plans for the next year in the life of the church.
One of the gifts of this retreat being at the nearby monastery is that we get to join the Brothers for their daily services. The last service of the day, called compline, occurs in the dark and includes their normal chanting of Psalms, reading of scriptures, and moments of silence. It's beautiful and peaceful. My very favorite part of the service is at the end, when as we are exiting there is an opportunity to have a priest sprinkle holy water on our foreheads. Sometimes, that sprinkle has been more of a shower as he flings the spoon of water on your person. I've jokingly been calling those holy water showers my "bedtime blessing" (New Melleray Abbey). But my love of that moment and curiosity led me down the rabbit hole of trying to understand why we were offered this sweet "bedtime blessing."
The sprinkling of water is intended to remind us of our own baptism in Christ, and that in baptism "we died to the darkness of sin and rose to the light of grace." It's a sweet reminder, as we close the day, of the deep love of Jesus and to remember the ways we experience God's grace each day.
None of us live on retreat at a monastery full time. But tonight as you prepare to go to bed, as you touch water, whether by washing your face, brushing your teeth, or taking a shower, take a minute to remember your own baptism and the ways you too have experienced the light of grace. We may not be monks, but their nightly practice is one that reminds us of something we hold in common—gratitude for our Lord and His grace.