Death by bread alone
I find it difficult to relax. Ever. There are things I could be, and hence, should be doing, at all times. Enriching podcasts, talks, essays, books, and art I should be taking advantage of. I should be catching up on chores, learning a new skill, getting out and being more physically active, volunteering more, etc. Time is flying away, and I only have one life to live. There are children lost and alone in pain, single mothers struggling to make ends meet, refugees searching for home. I am haunted by the thought that I might get to the end and find that I could have done more. Or, more selfishly, as a single person, I sometimes imagine that the only way someone could possibly find me worthwhile and lovable, in the sea of candidates, is if I am more active, more interesting, more accomplished in more things.
Yet, there is a certain poverty to ceaseless action. Works without faith is dead. Martha is exhausted and depleted with seeking to carrying out the good, yet Jesus tells her that she has missed out on the best. What Jesus is referring to is simply to sit and listen. Jesus himself models this when he repeatedly, throughout the Gospel narratives, withdraws to “lonely places” to pray and talk to his Father. This, despite shouldering the most important mission in history, with not a moment to waste. I am personally no stranger to the poverty of action-- my own experience in the sphere of constant “should” is embedded in a profound sense of tiredness; even, at times, a longing for life to simply end since at least then I can finally rest.
A cup cannot pour out unceasingly, but must, from time to time, pause and be filled again. In Ursula Le Guin’s science-fiction novel “The Word for World is Forest”, the author describes an extraterrestrial, cousin race to humans who find us to be at strangely, deeply ill, because we are in constant activity and never stop to connect with ourselves or a deeper reality except in the mandatory oblivion of slumber. In the course of the story, one of their kind takes on a more frenetic, human-like pace of life and, in ever-deepening exhaustion, comes to fear “that he was cut off from his roots, that he had gone too far into the dead land of action ever to find his way back to the springs of reality.”
Constant action also belies a kind of functional atheism. It says, sure God might be in the world, but he is somewhere else, and right here and now it’s up to me, and there’s no time to lose. There’s a sort of pride, I find, when I am obsessed with my own efficiency, output, and busyness. At least I’m doing something, not being lazy! (Laziness may be the only remaining universal sin to the modern American mind). But Jesus tells us in clear, direct terms that apart from him, we can do nothing. He tells us that we can only live lives that will bear fruit if we are deeply connected to him, the way a branch is connected to a tree trunk. What does all of this mean for us busy Americans? I imagine that it means that many may get to the end of their lives and found that most of it was basically just killing time, even when the things they were doing were “good” things.
May we be men and women whose lives are rooted in Christ, not by means of ceaseless action, but by means of ceaseless prayer. Instead of exhausting ourselves trying to do things for God, may we walk in step with the Spirit, and work effectively with God. And we know that this is a God who is tender with us and values our rest, since he created the Sabbath for us. In God’s world—that is to say, Reality—the cumulative life impact of a poor carpenter can far surpass that of a Harvard intellectual or entrepreneurial giant, if the poor man be a man of prayer. “Pray for great things, expect great things, work for great things. But above all, pray.” -R. A. Torrey
“As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done." We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves. It works. It really does.” -Bill Wilson