Followup notes to recent WATER Meditation with Jeanne Christensen
Mary Hunt
Follow up to WATER Meditation
“Rest in a Time of Chaos: It’s Mine and You Can’t Have It or Me!”
With Jeanne Christensen, Monday, April 13, 1026, 7:30 PM ET
WATER thanks Jeanne Christensen for the invitation to rest. How little we do of that! This is the link to the video https://www.waterwomensalliance.org/april-2026-rest-in-the-time-of-chaos/. Feel free to share with others.
Last month we heard from Lillian Lewis on “Hallowing Time,” a timely reminder of the value of the Lenten Season. The video and notes can be found at https://www.waterwomensalliance.org/march-2026-hallowing-time-with-lillian-lewis/. We are grateful to Lillian for her insights and sensitivity.We began our session with a land acknowledgement. Then we turned to Mary E. Hunt’s Introduction to Jeanne Christensen:
I met Jeanne through the Sisters of Mercy when I was privileged to be part of their Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee now some years ago. After having worked in Kansas City, Missouri for many years, Jeanne now lives in Omaha, Nebraska, in what for a Mercy passes as retirement.
I say what ‘passes as retirement’ because according to her bio, “Since 2011 she has served as the Justice Advocate against Human Trafficking for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. She is a founding and board member of the Alliance to End Human Trafficking: Founded and Supported by U.S. Catholic Sisters. She serves on their advocacy working group and development planning committee. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the College of St. Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, and is a member of the Academic and Student Affairs and Strategic Planning Committees.”
Jeanne has been an advocate for those who are trafficked, a tireless supporter of their dignity and the justice they deserve, a leader in supporting all women. She supports and engages in the many elements of the Mercy justice agenda with foci on Earth, immigration, anti-racism, non-violence, and women.
What I have come to appreciate about Jeanne through her WATER association is how genuinely she embraces friends and colleague well beyond her immediate circles. Sometimes, in a large community, it is easy to limit your friends to those who are part of the group. But Jeanne has friends in many places. I have also come to value her artistic ways, especially her photography, which we see in tonight’s graphic.
Jeanne, in my view, is a trustworthy spiritual guide because she lives her beliefs and commitments in a variety of ways, always with integrity. Welcome, Jeanne, you are at home here.
Introductory Notes by Jeanne Christensen
1. My reflection was written before I read Tricia Hersey’s book, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (Little, Brown Spark, 2022).2. In her book, Tricia Hersey ponders the impact of subjecting our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging and machine-level pace -- claiming productivity as the cornerstone of success. She terms it the “grind culture”.
3. Her response is to show us how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. To know that our worth does not reside in how much we produce.
4. She demonstrates that rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power. Through rest we can acknowledge that we are enough and systems and the chaos around us cannot have us.
5. My reflection was originally written shortly after the Zoom I reference in it. I adapted it minimally to include it in the winter edition of “Weaving the Journey” which is an occasional forum for and about lesbian and queer religious women to exchange ideas, feelings, experiences and events. It is a project of New Ways Ministry.
6. My reflection was written before the Iranian war, which would only add to the chaos and need for rest as resistance.
7. An excellent summary of the Zoom presentation I referenced was published by Future Church following their hosting the same zoom in March. Their summary will be included with Mary’s notes from tonight’s meditation.
MEDITATION
“Rest in the Time of Chaos: It’s Mine and You Can’t Have It or Me!
By Jeanne Christensen, RSM
November 19, 2025Why am I reflecting on rest in the time of chaos after nearly five days in retreat with other amazing women religious who are queer? The New Ways Ministry Retreat in Racine was a gift – a time to share and know gentle and encompassing love.
When I returned home on October 27, I realized since September 25 I had been home only seventeen days. I had been in three cities, flown and driven, visited family, participated in my Community’s Life Gathering and shared in Weaving the Journey retreat. I felt blessed, but I was tired and felt scattered! My spiritual director suggested I debrief these times, these experiences, the emotions, joys and difficult moments.
How am I supposed to debrief? I accidently came to my answer – through a Zoom presentation entitled, “Rest in the Time of Chaos.” Participants expressed what they were feeling in that moment. Responses ranged from scared, to anger, to suffocation, to fear, to disempowered, to helplessness. You get the idea! Hope wasn’t mentioned.
The culprit of the negativity and chaos is the dysfunction of the society that surrounds us – violence, cruelty toward immigrants, ending of programs supporting the most vulnerable people and targeting persons who are queer like us or non-Caucasian. The dysfunction includes expectations imposed on us, especially as women, to work harder, to dress and act in certain ways, to meet standards we may not be aware of that are set by someone else. Standards and expectations most often set by men who believe in and live by the expectations of capitalism and white supremacy. When we are part of the queer community, the standards, expectations, stereotypes and myths surround us like a descending spiral. How do I debrief in order to break my spiral descent into a darkness thrust upon me by the chaos and dysfunction in the society that surrounds me?
My accidental answer to debriefing is to experience rest in this time of chaos. Tisha Hersey, in her book, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, notes that rest is liberation. Rest puts us in a space that is quiet, where we are alone, allows us to be free, to find joy. Through the practice of rest, taking a sabbath day or hours, we come to be able to turn off the television and ignore the smart phone and our computers. Once we have learned to cherish our sabbath resting time and the strength and courage it gives, we can say to the dysfunctional society that imposes the negativity and chaos around us, “No you can’t have me!”
It is up to each of us to choose our sabbath resting practice and to stubbornly hold onto it, letting nothing short of an emergency interfere with it – claim it as mine! The chaos and dysfunction surrounding me can’t have my sabbatical or me!
A period of silence followed; this photo, taken by Jeanne, was a backdrop:
North Kansas City, Nov. 2019
Discussion ensued. A sampling of the comments follows:
1. One colleague shared an acrostic poem using the word “Resistance.”
2. Another person reflected on not resting, not being enough, activity being prized. Even the Easter holidays can be filled with activity. It is time to reexamine all of this. Jeanne talked about the need to feed oneself which sometimes involves travel.
3. One person turns off the TV and sits in quiet to refresh her spirit, to rest from work and news.
4. Jeanne’s permission to rest gave one person a lift from feeling guilty about sleeping and resting. Jeanne underscored how hard it is to take time.
5. Many Catholic sisters work far longer than the average person. A sister in her late 80’s described her struggles with retirement, whether she was really retired now. Jeanne reported having told an older sister who is in the hospital that no one is indispensable when the sister worried about her work in the midst of healing.
6. Another person commented on the power of the picture that Jeanne took and shared. It was useful for this person in her meditation, “not thinking,” using the picture as a focal point.
7. A final comment came from a participant who had a good friend who was a Sister of Mercy. According to her friend, Mercy members do not have “retirement” in their vocabulary. She added that resting with a dog allows one to feel their golden hearts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the reflection from FutureChurch to which Jeanne referenced:Blessing of the Week: A Reflection on “Rest in a Time of Chaos” by Martha Ligas
On Wednesday of this week FutureChurch was honored to host Laurie Cassidy and Elise Gower for a program titled “Rest in a Time of Chaos.” Throughout the two-hour program, I felt my nervous system re-set. The tone was gentle, beginning with a meditation during which we visualized placing our feelings and worries on an altar. Words like “helpless” “anxious” and “grieving” were shared in the chat as we let ourselves admit the feelings that we are carrying as we see the injustices of the world around us.
After we laid our burdens down, Elise began by sharing wisdom from Tricia Hersey’s text Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, teaches us that rest is an act of liberation. When we rest, we reject grind culture and white supremacy and instead give ourselves space to dream, to be creative, to consider a different way forward. Rest is not a time to re-charge in order to then be productive, says Hersey, but rather rest in itself is productive. When we make space to rest, we remember that we are an embodied people. As an example of this practice, Elise lifted up maroons. She explained that the maroons were people who escaped the terror of chattel slavery and founded independent, hidden settlements. Through their actions they rejected the broken system and chose to live in a third space – in this world, but not of it. This powerful example moved those who were listening, myself included, and inspired us all to consider what it means for us to also be in the world, but not of it.
Overall, this understanding of rest as a productive way to reclaim myself and recognize that my worth is not wrapped up in my "doing" was new to me. Even the morning after the program I found myself completing household tasks more intentionally and deliberately, recognizing that rush is the opposite of rest.
After some time to discuss our relationship with rest in small groups, Laurie reconvened to share some of Walter Bruggeman’s wisdom on the practice of Sabbath. Laurie explained that Sabbath is our response to God’s desire to be in relationship with us. When we slow down, unplug, and reclaim our roundedness, we are remembering to prioritize our relationship with God. It is a recognition that the place that we are standing is enough, we don’t need to be anything that we are not, and that when we slow down we enter back into the natural rhythm of nature. Laurie reminded us that the first Sabbath took place when the Israelites were in exile – and to make the intentional choice to slow down in that time was a deliberate act to say they were loved by God.
As the program concluded, Laurie led us in a meditation of love – love from someone close to us, love from an ancestor, and love from God. It is not always easy to cultivate that sense of peace through a zoom screen, but it happened on Wednesday night. I am grateful to be part of the FutureChurch community and have experiences that remind me who I am… and whose I am.