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Rev. Eric Reece: Healing What's Broken
Like anyone else, pastors can be damaged by too much stress and fatigue, sometimes even causing them to consider leaving the ministry. Loving Kindness Meditation can provide a path to healing, long-term spiritual health, and service to God.
The "After Pastor"
God’s call to ministry isn’t without crises, and some might say Pastor Eric Reece has had more than his fair share.
Tapped several times to serve as an “after pastor,” Pastor Eric was assigned to restore calm to churches that had been rocked by division. In one case, it was a pastor’s sexual abuse that made national news. In another, a head pastor’s degenerative illness left a congregation upset and confused. In two churches, pervasive ideological divides had either resulted in permanent splits or threatened to.
Thirty-two years into his ministerial career, Pastor Eric was on the verge of leaving the church altogether.
“I was just exhausted from dealing with all the conflict and everything else. I was tired of fighting,” he remembers. “My faith had become so much of my identity that when things were shaken, I was having such a difficult time. I was ready to take time off and who knows - I might've ended up working in a factory somewhere.”
Then, two things happened that changed his course. One was learning about the practice of Loving Kindness Meditation. The other was reassignment to the ministry of Robbinsville UMC, deep in the Western North Carolina mountains.
DISCOVERING LOVING KINDNESS
Pastor Eric first learned about mindfulness from the counselor he visited when he was considering leaving the ministry. “I wasn't taking care of myself, physically or spiritually. There's a lot of literature written about how ministers try to take care of everybody spiritually and don't take care of their own spirituality, and I found myself guilty of that.”
The counselor helped him create a daily routine for prayer, meditation, and scripture reading. That helped, but Pastor Eric was still struggling with exhaustion and doubt. Then, the counselor sent Pastor Eric information from Jack Kornfield, an internationally recognized meditation teacher, about the Loving Kindness Meditation. The practice originated from Buddhism but is easily adapted for the Christian Faith; it resonates with the Hebrew concept of cheçed, a word used throughout Scripture to refer to our imitation of God’s mercy, goodness, and faithfulness toward each other.
“When I first tried the Loving Kindness Meditation, I was so tired and exhausted. It was a way for me to try to grasp at something that would get me out of the rut I was in. I'm not one to try just anything. I'm selective. But this seemed to be something that would help move me beyond where I was during that time,” Pastor Eric recalls.
It clicked right away, and became a life-changing practice. As Pastor Eric walks through it, you can hear his voice become calmer.
“The first part of the meditation is, ‘May I be filled with loving-kindness,’ and those words were healing to me, which was exactly what I needed,” Pastor Eric says. “All I did was change it to say, ‘Lord, fill me with your loving-kindness.’ And of course, when I say Lord, I'm talking about my God, Christ. I just adapted it for Christian use."
“The second phrase was, ‘May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.’ That spoke to the stress and anxiety I was having. Being able to say, ‘Keep me safe from all the outer stuff, but also all the turmoil and stress and anxiety that I'm having,’ was healing as well. Just saying ‘I'm safe’ really got me through a difficult time.”
“After that, it’s, ‘May I be well in body and mind,’ and ‘May I be at ease and happy.’ That brought health to me and strength to me.”
The Loving Kindness Meditation allows the practitioner to turn outward, wishing the blessing above on loved ones and others. It also opens the door for practitioners to offer loving kindness to those who they see as enemies or those who have caused them hurt. Even for a pastor, that can be a challenge.
When you're going through so much and you're exhausted and everything, just saying ‘fill me with loving kindness’ helps you to deal with all the folks that are chewing at you and giving you a hard time.
“What I really struggled with is the part where you say your enemy's name and ask that they be filled with loving kindness, because folks in the past have done me harm. But that's part of the healing,” Pastor Eric admits. “When you're going through so much and you're exhausted and everything, just saying ‘fill me with loving kindness’ helps you to deal with all the folks that are chewing at you and giving you a hard time.”
COUNTERING COMMUNITY STRESS
Now, nearly eight years into his post in Robbinsville, Pastor Eric enjoys calm in the church but uses his mindfulness skills to navigate tensions in the community.
“People in our church are anxious, but not really politically polarized. They leave politics outside of the church. Things come up, and we sit down and talk about them, work them out. A lot of my leaders here know how to work together to see that things are accomplished. And since we have a number of folks that did not grow up here but retired here, there's not a lot of the family friction that can go on in small towns.”
While Pastor Eric reports no political tensions within his congregation, outside the church walls is a different matter. Robbinsville UMC is the only United Methodist congregation in a county filled with conservative Baptist churches. Concerns and disagreements about national political issues cause anxiety for this small community, and Pastor Eric is sometimes called to engage in discussions. In these instances, he has to tread carefully.
“Sometimes you have to fight for the community,” he says. “I do get in the middle of some things, but I try to be careful which hill I'm going to die on.”
Pastor Eric notes that a benefit of learning the Loving Kindness Meditation is building more awareness of how he can communicate with different people in different situations. “I learned that I can be more open with some people, more joking and joyful, and be more direct with others. I’m thinking more about how different people are going to understand what I say and that has helped me improve my communications a great deal – especially around taboo topics. I try to understand more where they’re coming from without passing judgment on their views.”
“Being in ordained ministry has always been challenging, but it's a different challenge now,” he adds. “You're in so many situations now to where you're trying to do so many things and to take care of so many things. It can be overwhelming at times. I think God wants us to find a way to not be overwhelmed so that we continue to be of service.”
building skills with selah
Pastor Eric practiced Loving Kindness Meditation regularly for several months before moving to Robbinsville. Then, as his situation and outlook improved, his practice dropped off.
But his understanding of the value of the meditation stayed with him, and in 2020, when the Selah Stress Management trial program was offered through Duke’s Clergy Health Initiative, he jumped at the opportunity to re-engage his self-care practice. The Selah program introduced Pastor Eric to new tools, including an eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program offered remotely by Duke Integrative Medicine. In addition to taking part in online classes, Pastor Eric also downloaded an easy-to-use app with guided meditations to use any time.
“I cannot say enough about how Loving Kindness Meditation has helped me,” he says. “It gave me a new skillset that I didn't have before, that’s become intuitive. Now I do it more as needed, and I still do all my other devotions and prayers and scripture reading. But a few weeks ago, I was frustrated, I was tired, so I just sat down and did the meditation and felt calm. Some people may say a prayer, but I've always had difficulty praying when I'm angry or frustrated.”
Mindfulness, being able to learn that skill and to incorporate it in my faith helped me to become unbroken and helped me to continue to fulfill my calling and stay in the ministry.
“Mindfulness, being able to learn that skill and to incorporate it in my faith helped me to become unbroken and helped me to continue to fulfill my calling and stay in the ministry,” he adds. “I've been better for it, and I think that those who I work with and serve in the church have been blessed by it too. Because of the Loving Kindness Meditation, I can continue to be in service to God, to work in the community to accomplish a lot of things that help the people and bring me joy.”
This is the third of four stories from pastors using Loving Kindness Meditation to love their neighbors. Learn more about Loving Kindness Meditation and other evidence-based tools for ministry well-being on our Resources page.