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Choices and Routines
By daniel | April 17, 2005
Folks in the Way,
It?s been a while since I last wrote you. Honestly, it?s because I?ve been too busy. I?m sorry about that. I?m sorry not only for the absence of letters, but primarily for the busyness. Busyness, I?m convinced, is a mild form of blasphemy.
I know that sounds a little over-stated, but let me explain. Contrast the words busy and working. The first describes a state, the second an action being taken. It?s like the difference between moving quickly for a short period and hurry. I can move quickly and pray. I can move quickly and listen. I can do neither when I hurry. When I hurry I am acting on a deep and quiet conviction that if I don?t get there now, if I don?t finish whatever it is by whenever whomever wants it, the world will disintegrate. I hurry when I think I?m God. But I move at God?s pace, which is occasionally pretty fast, when I think Jesus is.
And that?s the difference between busyness and work. When I work I cooperate with God. When I?m busy I enlist God to help me out with all the things I?m doing, I insist, for him. I?m busy when I allow what I perceive to be my duty, what?s expected of me, to occupy my attention. I work when I allow “the glory of God in the face of Christ” to occupy my attention while I?m doing what he wants when he wants it. I, lately, have made the idolatrous mistake (with the best intentions) of being busy. Forgive me.
The fact is I have a lot of irons in the fire just now. And for good reason. God is doing quite a bit with our church ? the Wind is up and so must be the sails. That is a fact. How to respond to that fact is the matter at hand.
I?ve had this much going before, during my senior year in college. I was finishing up the pre-med program Summa Cum Laude, working in the library, working as an RA, working as the personal assistant to the Dean of Men, speaking often, discipling forty young men (fourteen of them rather intensely), and trying to have something like a normal life. Three days a week I slept about four hours a day, and the rest of the week I got about six. Sometimes less. I quickly concluded that I would have to make a decision, a choice.
The tenth chapter of Luke finds Jesus drawing an important contrast between two women, Mary and Martha. He also draws a second contrast, but we?ll get to that later. Martha is described as “tied up and dragged around by much service” and “anxious and troubled about many things.” That, friends, was me. Now Mary, on the other hand, Mary is found “seated at Jesus? feet, listening to his word.” That, friends, was who I desperately wished I could be. But duty demanded a certain level of busyness. Medical school demanded very good grades and high test scores. The guys I was discipling demanded time. My jobs demanded a certain number of minutes each day. And my body demanded more rest than I was giving it. All of these things were very important ? no one could argue that.
So why didn?t life (or God or the powers that be or whomever) deal me a hand with more room for contemplation and reflection? The same reason no one gets dealt that hand. It has to be chosen.
See, that?s the second contrast Jesus draws. The important vs. the necessary. Martha was anxious about many truly important things (who could fault her for hospitality?), but, as our Master so masterfully puts it, “only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Mary chose, and so, therefore, did I. I chose to practice solitude, to deny myself the comfort of company to teach myself that other people?s praise is not my source. I chose to study and meditate for one hour each morning, to teach myself that man lives not by his productivity, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And to let Jesus teach me anything else he had in mind. I chose to follow that hour with thirty minutes of prayer, rain or shine, in the secluded spot behind Dorm 2. I?d pace for thirty minutes and give personal attention to the relationships, and the Relationship, that define me. I chose, at times, to fast, learning that my body is not my source. And I chose to practice Sabbath. Let the other pre-med students (those competing for my slot in med school) study their Saturdays away. I would rest on purpose, not because I was exhausted.
I chose the good part, and you know what? It was not taken away from me. I risked time and space and energy that I and others were so convinced were “needed” for other truly important endeavors. And all went well. And if it didn?t, I was well anyway, and that?s what counted.
So, here I am again, throwing down the altars of busyness and declaring my independence from the tyranny of the urgent, pledging my allegiance to another King. I?ll keep working, but I won?t be busy.
How, exactly, will I do that? New routines. When I was in college I could just choose the good part when it needed choosing. Now, however, I have two ladies and a small, excitable dog in my home, sharing my moments and my space. Thus, my moments are not entirely mine. They, in a very real and literal and constraining and wonderful way, are ours.
We are a family. And all families have routines. The question is, do our routines predispose us to Marthaism or the glad repose of Mary? Now, let?s keep one thing straight. Mary was not lazy, she simply had the insight to tell the necessary from the important and the courage (and gall?) to go ahead and choose it. I am in the process of totally overhauling our family routines to facilitate individual and group spiritual disciplines.
For example, we?ve practiced Sabbath since we were married, and now we are being a little more ruthless about protecting it. We?re starting dinner earlier so we have time to develop some table traditions around the Word before we scurry off to one of our many enjoyable evening meetings with the saints. When I come home in the afternoon, I take ten minutes or so out on the porch (I call it my eyrie) to re-collect, to pray and center down and leave my work behind. Regardless of whatever housework needs doing, Joy is learning to use Mia?s morning nap time first for study and reflection. We are beginning to systematically refuse to hurry, not for slowness sake, but so our souls can keep up with our bodies. We?re still talking about other changes, but these are the ones in place so far.
You see, the spiritual disciplines are individual endeavors, yes. But they require cooperate cooperation to be workable. We must make space for one another, alone and together, to place all the parts of our personalities before our Lover, our Teacher, long enough and with enough intensity to make His mark on us. The spiritual disciplines are not more clutter (albeit holy clutter) added to the chaotic routines of our lives. Rather, they replace our routines and habits with those of our Teacher and his more competent students.
Well, there you have it. I don?t know if that did you any good, but I?m glad I wrote. Perhaps it is the clarity writing brings to my thinking. Or perhaps it is the accountability I get from telling three hundred people everything. Who knows? I?m just glad to be with you in the Way. Thanks for letting me walk with you.
Yours, steady as she goes,
Virgil
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