First, a note:
I don’t know how other pastors have used this space, but I’m approaching it as an opportunity to share some of what has been taking up space in my mind and body and spirit each week. At times, you may find these notes dovetail with the sermon to follow on Sunday; at other times, they are completely unrelated. They will always be “me” — my thoughts, and perhaps a little less guarded or more raw. Whether in this space or sermons or whatever, I hope you give some consideration to what I say…… but I also hope that you do not take me at my word. Look at my sources, ask your own questions, push back at me in conversation. That is the Baptist way.
Two quotations:
“The Devil finds work for idle hands.” (Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ca. 1400)
“Go sit in your [room] and your [room] will teach you everything.” (Abba Moses, ca. 400)
Some thoughts:
Especially in the Midwest, and particularly among the working classes, we have been programmed to valorize how much we endure and carry on as normal. Corporate competitiveness is measured in how many hours per week or day one worked. Those in trades can look on their early days almost like a time of hazing that they feel responsible to inflict on the next generation. Those who grew up in poverty jockey with stories about who had it the worst. Even we pastors can seem to “win” prestige in seasons with multiple funerals or weddings in close proximity. We have been instilled with an ethic of hard work that was easily and greedily distorted by the hoarding class.
And it has spilled over into other dimensions of our lives too. There comes a time in life — for some, sooner than others — when one faces a health challenge that is not able to be overcome by doubling down and pushing through. There comes a time when one realizes “try harder” does not achieve measurable results. There comes a time when this stubborn unwillingness to allow the realities of life to be too much for us capsizes because the realities of life are too much for us. And when that time comes, most of us have few means of coping with this drastic sea change of life.
But all that is before; here is now: For all that we were already being predated on by the manipulation of our desire to find fulfillment through hard work, this new disordered reality we are in has changed things exponentially. It has changed because the dysfunction we have to endure isn’t cancelling our weekend plans to finish our TPS report, or enduring someone’s boring stories at the water cooler to “make nice” for a promotion. The dysfunction we are enduring involves the resident of the White House chaotically and with intentional cruelty dismantling the government itself while the majorities of the Senate and the House refuse to intervene.
No one can push through that. We biologically, mentally, and spiritually cannot endure the consequences of attempting to just hold steady and endure until the storm blows over. This is not a storm like any we have encountered; we cannot “stubborn” our way through. And yet our social, relational, and vocational programming rebels when we try to do anything but push through and endure.
We must learn a new way. We must absorb some new programming. And it seems to me that a big part of that is going to be learning how to be still and silent and alone with ourselves in ways that that instinct toward busyness never allowed us to develop. Community (ironically) is going to be important as we learn to do this, because we will need one another more than ever before.
Remember, we’re all in this together.
Pastor Michael