We’re all-too-familiar with the Nike slogan, “Just do it!” Get out there and DO something. Reverend Seth’s sermon on August 19th, “Controlled by the Clock,” touched off reflections for me that might well be summarized with the slogan “Just Don’t Do It!”
In the interest of full disclosure, I function best when I have a fair amount of structure in my life, and this often leads me to make a to-do list. Then the list takes on a life of its own and can generate feelings of “I have to get these things done. And I don’t have time to get them all done!” On the other hand, I also cherish my unstructured time. Especially as I’ve matured, become more comfortable with myself, and learned better how to manage life with chronic pain, “down time” has taken on greater importance for me.
I realize how fortunate I am. Not everyone has the privilege of having as much flexibility with their time as I do. We’re all at somewhat different stages in our lives. The days our grandchildren stay with us remind me that those with children have far less control over their time than I do. Caregivers may have to struggle to find even a few hours. Many people are financially unable to retire, or even semi-retire. Farmers, especially those who have livestock, can’t easily take a day off; cows and pigs must eat and be watered, and the barn be mucked out!
Other factors are even more complex. Our culture equates busyness with importance. If I’m always short on time because I’m so busy, if I can’t possibly get done in a day all I need to do, I and my “doings” must be important, right? It’s become commonplace to respond to “how are you?” not only with the automatic “fine” or “ok,” but with “busy.” Employers increasingly expect their employees to be connected to work 24/7, because we now have the digital capability to do so. Some people use the analgesic drug of busyness to shield themselves from feelings they aren’t yet ready to feel.
Time seems different depending on what I’m doing. I experience time differently when I’m focused on completing a single, big project than I do when I’m going through my list and ticking off a dozen little miscellaneous things. A former colleague of mine describes the latter as feeling as if she is “being nibbled to death by ducks.” Both can be equally satisfying for me. Working on a big project is wonderful, finishing it even better, but checking off the dusting, watering the plants, and brushing the dog’s teeth feels great too!
Reverend Seth cited Jewish rabbi and scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man in his sermon, noting the Jewish Sabbath is a sanctuary in time. I’d like to share a few things that help me create sanctuaries in time for myself. These things help me loosen the grip of time’s tortuous tyranny over my life.
I start my day by taking time for a cup of coffee and “just sitting.” Some of you have undoubtedly heard me joke about my “coffee meditation,” but that time is genuinely a form of meditation for me. What surrounds me very much depends on the season and the sunrise times, so it helps me stay attuned to a more natural rhythm than the clock provides. Weather permitting, I sit outside. If not, inside near an open window suffices. Now, it’s dark and night sounds still abound—late summer insects mostly, with the occasional owl call. The one cardinal who is always the first bird has usually sung before I finish.
As much as I can, I try to stay focused on whatever I’m doing, without thinking about what comes next. I frequently need to stop and take a few breaths to bring myself back into the present moment. I’ve used breathing as a focus for meditation for enough years now that doing so comes naturally and usually works.
When I finish working for the day, which I try to do by 4:00 or so, I take the extra few minutes to straighten my study so that disarrayed leftovers from the day before don’t greet me in the morning. And I close the cover on my day planner. Yes, it does require a little extra time, and a little more to get things out again to continue the project the morning, but it’s worth it for the sense of completing one day’s work and starting fresh the next day. I try very hard to have all screens off by late afternoon as well, although that’s harder. I make an exception for personal reading I do on my tablet!
I do try to maintain Sunday as a Sabbath time. I don’t schedule things for after church in the afternoon or evening. Of course, sometimes that doesn’t work, but it’s always my goal. My plan is to have that time for myself or to do something with Tom.
One of the things I’ve realized more in thinking about time and loosening its hold on us is that one of the things I appreciate most about the annual trek Tom and I make to Florida in January and February is the way in which the sea, without any effort on my part, changes my sense of time. Ocean time is different. The rhythmic wash of the waves and the rise and fall of the tides replace the “ceaseless flow of endless time” marching relentlessly forward.
In response to Reverend Seth’s sermon, I’d like to pose a challenge to all of us: In the coming weeks, pick one thing you can do that might help shift your own relationship to time. Then do it. If the first one you choose doesn’t turn out to work as well as you thought it would, pick a different one. Enjoy!
In closing, I propose an additional verse to the hymn we sang that same Sunday, “When the Spirit Says Do” (# 1024):
You got to rest when the Spirit says rest!
You got to rest when the Spirit says rest!
When the Spirit says rest, you got to rest, oh Lord!
You got to rest when the Spirit says rest!
Blessed Sabbath Time!
~Rev. Julia