February 21, 2010
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: Romans 12:1-2; Luke 10:38-42

Going fast was his life, and for Nodar Kumaritashvili, the 21-year-old luge athlete from the Republic of Georgia, it was also his death. Whether it was the track, or his own error that was the critical issue, his death was ultimately caused by what is known in traffic violations as “traveling too fast for conditions”. For quite a while, many of us have found that life often seems to be a constant state of traveling too fast for conditions.

She was happy to be at church camp for a week – in June, not too long after the end of the school year. And it was a great change of pace, since she had accomplished enough in 7th grade that she would be starting 9th grade in the fall. So why was she crying ALL the time at camp? I was volunteering as a counselor between seminary years, and another counselor and I talked at length with her. Was she homesick? No, although she loved her family, she wasn’t feeling any real sense of missing them. Was she nervous at camp? No, quite the contrary, she felt more relaxed than ever. After a couple of days of her crying and us talking with her, it seemed that she was just feeling a profound sense of release, of the pressure being off after such an intense school year, trying to work hard enough to hurry past a grade.

I’ve known many people in retirement who found themselves busier than ever having taken on new volunteer obligations and discovering new hobbies. Staying busy is good – hurrying through retirement can be not so good. Often we even spend our vacations hurrying from one place to another, so we find ourselves always living at a state of acceleration that eventually feels normal to us.

Hurrying can lead to stress, joylessness, poor health and accidents. And it becomes a habit. Cecile Andrews wrote in an essay that was includes in Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: “What is this addiction to stimulations? Sometimes I feel addicted to my own adrenaline. If I’m not rushing, feeling pressures, I feel like I’m missing something. Is this the only way we can feel alive now—by rushing?? Are we mistaking the rush of caffeine for a feeling of vitality? Does rushing make us feel like we are doing something important, that we are important people?”

Fifteen years ago, when I was in seminary, I was the keynote speaker for our presbytery’s junior high retreat – as I prepared for it, I realized that the lives of junior high kids more closely resembled my life as an adult than my life as a youth. Today’s junior high kids may be involved in sports, music, scouts and youth group, plus the occasional school play. And when kids are involved in so many activities, the parents also are always in a hurry. Families are under unbelievable stress – and where in many communities, Wednesdays and Sundays used to be off-limits for youth activities because it was understood that these were church times, now many sports and other activities are scheduled 7 days a week.
Wayne Mueller writes at length about the impact hurrying has in our culture: “In the relentless busyness of modern life, we have lost the rhythm between work and rest…. there is a universal refrain: I am so busy. It does not seem to matter if the people I speak with are doctors or day-care workers, shopkeepers or social workers, parents or teachers, nurses or lawyers, students or therapists, community activists or cooks….Despite their good hearts and equally good intentions, their work in the world rarely feels light, pleasant, or healing. Instead, as it all piles endlessly upon itself, the whole experience of being alive begins to melt into one enormous obligation. It becomes the standard greeting everywhere: I am so busy….this has become the model of a successful life.

“Our lack of rest and reflection is not just a personal affliction. It colors the way we build and sustain community, it dictates the way we respond to suffering, and it shapes the ways in which we seek peace and healing in the world…. With a few notable exceptions, the way problems are solved is frantically, desperately, reactively, and badly ….”

This often feels like it’s a problem of modern life, but about 450 years ago, St. Teresa of Avila, was writing a prayer expressing some of the same concerns. She wrote: “How is it, my God, that you have given me this hectic busy life when I have so little time to enjoy your presence. Through the day people are waiting to speak to me, and even at meals I have to continue talking to people about their needs and problems. During sleep itself I am still thinking and dreaming about the multitude of concerns that surround me....” If Teresa of Avila had this challenge in a convent 450 years ago, we can be sure that it is a matter of the heart, not an issue of technology. I am reminded of the saying, “Hurry isn’t of the devil; hurry is the devil.” Living in a constant state of acceleration makes it impossible to enjoy where we are, or to notice what God might be doing in our lives – we can hardly be grateful for this moment if we are already living in the next moment.

So this kind of hurried living is not new, although it may be more widespread than it has ever been. What may be new in the modern era is promoting overbusyness as a good thing. I occasionally hear older people say that younger generations are good at multitasking, but I am not convinced – I think that all too often, those in any generation who have become accustomed to over-stimulation find it difficult to do the kind of focused deep thinking that can lead to thorough understanding and new ideas.

And this is not a new problem, even if promoting it as a virtue is new – it is not a matter of a new generation coming up with a different and better way of thinking. The gospel story presents these contrasts pretty clearly – the contrast between frantic multitasking activity of Martha and Mary’s single-minded attention to one thing. Any of us can understand Martha’s complaint, “Lord, tell my sister to help me – she has left me here to do everything!” And we’re none too pleased with the response of Jesus, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things but there is need of only one thing….” We’ve tended to see this as Jesus stating a preference for study and contemplation over action but I think that is a wrong interpretation – the emphasis here isn’t on what each woman is doing, it is how they are paying attention: many things versus one thing.

How do we get to a place where we are paying attention to one thing?? Sometimes we have an accident or illness that lays us low, or we lose a job. Corey gave me permission to share his experience with you. When we moved, Corey came from a school where he had been very busy. He had marching band practice at least until 6 most days, along with schoolwork and other activities. So when we moved here, Corey wanted to try homeschooling. He took 2 classes at SPASH, but wanted to do the rest of his learning on his own. Some of you gently expressed concern – I had my own concerns, but I trusted Corey, and felt it was important to trust his instincts for what he needed. It was his junior year of high school. Well, it was not an academic success – whether because I was busy in my new call, or because Carl had a stroke, or because Jason and Shen moved in with us, or because it was harder than Corey expected. By spring, we needed to acknowledge that it wasn’t happening, and Corey willingly enrolled in school, went to summer school and took enough classes his senior year to graduate on time, and go to college. He didn’t request any credits for the work he had done at home. It was, essentially, a year off. One day, when we were talking about college essays, I asked what he was going to say about his homeschooling experiment. “I know I should say I learned to work on my own, but that’s not what happened,” he said, “What happened was that I learned to be by myself, and to do nothing without freaking out. Sometimes now, at school, a teacher will be a little late coming to class and I look around and other students are anxious – they’re tapping their fingers on the desk, or looking nervous, but I feel relaxed. I no longer am uncomfortable with unscheduled time, and I really enjoy myself.” Corey doesn’t make better grades than someone who didn’t have his experience, but he is able to experience a certain spaciousness within, and this is a good thing. He is able to be busy without being hurried.

Jesus often had busy days – if you read the biblical accounts closely, there are days that he is just going from event to event: teaching here, healing there, conversing with Pharisees, sharing a meal, then teaching again. But Jesus is careful about two practices that we, in our hurried lives, often ignore. We can learn from Jesus, about attention and intention.

First, Jesus paid attention where he was. He was single-minded in his conversations with people – no matter how important the tasks were that pressured him to pull away and hurry, Jesus paid attention to the person in front of him. We have multiple examples of his disciples trying to pull his attention to the next important thing, while Jesus stayed focused on what he was doing. That must be part of why people were so moved by their encounters with Jesus. When we’re living hurried lives, we often only half pay attention to the person we’re talking with. I know I am way too often guilty of this – my mind is racing ahead to the next thing, maybe the thing I was heading off to when someone spoke to me. But I also remember those times when my children wouldn’t let me do that – when they were quite small, and would take my chin in their hands and turn my face to them so that I would be paying attention. This is certainly one of the things I work on, and I’m guessing that a lot of people here – children and adults – could work on it, too. Being present where we are is a huge dimension of spirituality, and many spiritual practices in different faiths throughout history are aimed at helping us to pay attention – meditation and journaling are two examples.

So, Jesus paid attention, and Jesus was intentional about having balance in his life. Although he worked hard, he also made time to be alone, time to be in quiet places in nature, time to pray, and time to share meals with friends. Actually, these are descriptions of Sabbath practices – ceasing, resting, embracing, feasting, as Marva Dawn defined them in her book of the same name: Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting. And these practices can help us in developing a Sabbath way of life – not necessarily one in which we observe a single day (although those who take up the practice of a Sabbath day each week will tell you that it is becomes critically important to their wellness). But even if you don’t take a Sabbath day we can, like Jesus, we incorporate these practices on a daily basis as a way of staying rested and balanced in the middle of demanding, busy, and yes, hurried lives.

Every day we can make some time for one or more of these practices – taking time for prayer at the beginning or end of the day, taking a lunchtime walk as Susan Barrett does on many days, making time for sharing a meal with friends or family as the Session does each month, even taking a nap. Some people find activities such as making music or art to be Sabbath activities, and getting out into nature is restorative in important ways. Not all activities offer the same kind of refreshment and recreation -- as David Elkind point out almost 30 years ago in his groundbreaking book, The Hurried Child, children have little time for reflection, and he points out that part of the reason for this is because of television, which tends to add stress though we may not notice it, and certainly prevents the reflective time that even children need.

We can be active and busy without being hurried – and that means making choices. When Lindsey Vonn won the gold medal in the downhill ski race a few days ago, she wept for joy, and talked about how much she had given up for it. If we’re lucky, each of us will find things worth being intentional about and paying attention to, and to which we can choose to dedicate ourselves. Part of the problem in our culture is a kind of greed regarding activities – we want to do it all. It’s hard to set priorities – it usually means not only giving up things that aren’t so good, but giving up other good things too. Jesus didn’t heal everyone. Sometimes he left the crowd and went to rest. Other times, he paused and spoke to just one person. He made choices, and then was totally present to the things he chose.

In our world, we often think we don’t need to make choices – kids are told they should do many different activities so that they’ll have a better chance at getting into college, and adults want to be involved in all the things we’re interested in – but when it leads to a pattern of hurried living, that’s not healthy, nor is it God’s way. Our first reading today included one of my favorite verses: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds that you might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” And that takes time – taking time to rest in God, to discover how we are led, time for the renewal of our minds, and it takes a willingness to let go of even those good things that lead to a pace that is not nourishing us.

The psalmist shows us the way in psalm 46: Be still and know that I am God.....Be still and know…be still…be….Amen.