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Delivered January 8, 2006 Is Time the friend that sets the natural rhythms of your days, or is it the foe to be fought because 'there is never enough time to get everything done'? Wayne Muller explores our relationship to Time in his book Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest. I'll be sharing some of his ideas with you this Sunday as we take some time out of our busy days to reflect on Time.
ReadingsThomas Merton There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence ....
Second ReadingEtte Hillesum was a thoughtful young Dutch woman, a victim of the Nazi Concentration camps. In the diary she kept in the midst of the Nazi occupation, she describes the tender balance between her daily forebodings and her deeper search for peace: We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies..... The things that have to be done must be done, and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries, so many motions of no confidence in (the Universe). Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. A Time to RestWhen Diana called me to ask if I could come and talk today - I looked through the services I had done the last years and this one seemed like a timeless message - and I have noticed it always seems timely to remind ourselves to explore how we are relating to time in our lives - since that truly is the measure of our lives - birth to death - everyone has a certain, unknown, amount of it to "use" or be used by in life. And it seems especially important at this time of year - when people are making resolutions about what they hope to be doing in 2006: how they want to use their time this year.A couple years ago I listened to a tape by Wayne Muller, called Remembering the Sabbath: Reclaiming Rest as a Therapeutic Necessity. It was a recording from a conference where he had been one of the presenters. I hadn’t had the time to actually go to the conference so I bought the set of tapes. Then of course I didn’t have time to listen to the tape. I finally got the chance to hear it while driving in my car to Sacramento. Sometimes, after working all week long at my psychotherapy private practice in Santa Rosa, I go to Sacramento to work weekends for the State. In order to make the best use of my time while driving I listen to tapes and try to stay up to date with the field of psychology and wellness. I was intrigued by his ideas, but I never quite had time to actually go buy his book to explore the concepts further. Then as a gift for joining the institute of Noetic Sciences I was given his book: Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest. But still it sat on my pile of ‘to do’s’ for a year. I wanted to read it but because of my priorities it just never made it to the top of the list. Above it were working, keeping up the house, books for when I was too tired to think and just needed to unwind, books for work, lists of phone calls, and other more important to-do’s. Does this sound at all familiar to anyone? In order to finally give myself the time to read this book about creating sacred time in my life - I used an old trick I learned back in school. I gave myself a deadline: I agreed to do a service about it. Then I had to read it. The first challenge Muller gave me was to examine how I measured my self worth. When I would say "I’m so busy" I felt important, that I was on the right track, my life was full because I was successful. I had many things to do and many people to do them with. This seems to be a common response today. Ask someone how they are doing and they will often reply: ‘I’m so busy’ sounding overwhelmed but also with some sense of accomplishment. It seems like the phrase ‘I’m so busy’ is the entry ticket for the carnival ride we call modern life. Muller says that in his twenty five years in the fields of community development and public health he has noticed - that "it becomes the standard greeting everywhere: I am so busy. We say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy, our ability to withstand stress a mark of real character." Imagine asking someone ‘how are you doing?’ The first person responds with ‘Life is crazy. I just can’t seem to get everything done and the house is a mess and I can’t find time to exercise enough. I have a million things to do and never enough time to do them.’ You ask someone else and they say ‘I didn’t have a thing to do this morning. I sat around and listened to the birds sing then I just let it come to me how the rest of the day would unfold.’ The second response can be met with some hidden envy, perhaps a longing, but in the eyes of the culture a judgement is made that the first person’s life is obviously more important because they have more to do. The first person is clearly more popular, must be contributing to society more. She is ‘productive’. The second person can’t even find something to do with her morning. One of the people we UU’s admire: Henry David Thoreau would have understood the second person’s response. He wrote: "There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance."Muller explains that "life has become a maelstrom in which speed and accomplishment, consumption and productivity have become the most valued human commodities." I wonder what this does to the ‘Thoreaus’ of this world now. What does it do to the people who through choice or circumstance do not move at the more accepted, fast pace of the world? How is it for those who choose to move at their own pace, or because of the natural physical limitations due to illness or age must live life differently? I wonder if these people feel some of what Thomas Merton was referring to in the reading, when he said "there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence." The rush and pressure of life is harmful not only to those who inflict it upon themselves but for those that don’t fit the ‘norm’. And the norm seems to be - ‘I’m so busy’. After all ‘time is money’ and money is supposed to be more important than time. Once you have spent the time to make the money, you need to spend more time to spend the money so you have things that will then make you happy so that you can spend more time to gain more money, to start the whole process over again. And if you can’t play this game, well there’s something wrong with you, or you just are no longer contributing to society. In Chinese pictographs to convey the sense of ‘busy’ you would need to use two characters - one is heart and the other is killing. Before reading Muller’s book, I had been buying into the cultural myth that the solution to being too busy was to go faster and get to the bottom of the list and then I could rest. Or to work and work and then at retirement I could rest. But I had heard my parents and many people who were retired say ‘I don’t know how I ever found the time to work. I’m so busy now.’ So I knew the time to rest would not be then. I could tell when my life was most out of balance when I was just hanging on until after this or that event happened and then I could relax. Often the fact that these were events I had been looking forward to got missed. Now they were just something that meant I had to clean the house or prepare for in some way. They had become one more thing on my list that left no time to relax. The very things I wanted to do in my life - became the things that were overwhelming. Ever felt so stressed after a vacation you needed a vacation? Not only is there no time to rest but Muller talked about a concept he called: ‘Doing Good Badly’. This is from his observations working in public health and community non-profits. "I have sat on dozens of boards and commissions with many fine, compassionate, and generous people who are so tired, overwhelmed, and overworked that they have neither the time nor the capacity to listen to the deeper voices that speak to the essence of the problems before them. Presented with the intricate and delicate issues of poverty, public health, community well-being, and crime, our impulse, born of weariness, is to rush headlong toward doing anything that will make the problem go away. Maybe then we can finally go home and get some rest. But without the essential nutrients of rest, wisdom, and delight embedded in the problem-solving process itself, the solution we patch together is likely to (contain) the seed of a new problem."- he was talking from experience here - because he was part of the well meaning group of people that pushed for the Latramen, Petris Short act in the 70s - they looked at the state mental hospitals and said this is wrong. The residents were all working there at farming, laundries, cooking - but they weren’t getting paid. So part of the LSP act required that every resident be paid for their work - which sounded reasonable - until the ripple effects happened. Before - state hospitals, like Sonoma Developmental Center in Eldridge, were for the most part financially self sustaining because everyone who could - did some kind of work. But the system couldn’t afford to pay the people so most of the state hospitals closed - turning thousands of mentally ill and developmentally disabled out into the streets - where unfortunately many of them still are. - now there’s no question that there were things that could have used adjustment and change in the system - but Muller talked about being part of the head long rush to FIX it quickly that set in motion even more problems. "Without rest" he says "we respond from a survival mode, where everything we meet assumes a terrifying prominence." He talks about how we live in a culture driven by high speeds and urgency. And Everything is more dangerous at high speeds. Even a deer. When walking in the woods seeing a deer is a time of joy and wonder. But when driving fast that same deer can become an object of terror and potential harm. Part of what stops me from relaxing can be an urgency to help. There is so much good to be done. That needs to be done. In my profession as a psychotherapist I work with individuals, kids, families that are often in crisis and needing help. We have the larger pressures of community, the needs of the hungry and homeless, and our earth; the Arctic refuge in danger, the ozone layer. The list alone could take days to review. When could we possibility have time to rest? But I had given myself the task of exploring this topic. So I decided to follow some of Muller’s ideas. If I was to find a Sabbath time in my busy life what would that look like? In the midst of work and lists of to do’s I went to sit with a Zen group for an evening of meditation. I had always liked the sitting meditation but hadn’t gone in a long time. I either was too busy to spare the time, or too exhausted and all I wanted to do was watch a video and ‘space out’. But this time I went. I went searching for peace of mind. The first part of sitting quietly was not peaceful though. Once I cleared a little space in my mind - the critic jumped in to fill it - my constant judge of time and productivity. After all there are ways to be more efficient when meditating. Look at how many books there are on ways to meditative? my critic demanded: am I doing the best one? Am I there yet? Then guilt showed up with its long list - of all I could be doing if I wasn’t just sitting there. But slowly I discovered in that time a balance and faith in myself and the Universe I had not been forgetting to listen too. I know that often in the midst of listening to families in crisis, it is not the solutions that I can come up with that help, but that I can be there to listen, witness and allow them to listen to themselves with compassion and to hear their inner strengths. My attention, caring and guidance is so often more important then a quick solution. Another word for that is FAITH. To have faith in myself and others allows myself to take the time to pause and breathe. When I slowed down I let my heart and soul catch up with me and could listen to them better. We live under the myth that we can do anything that we put our minds to. With a little more effort we will accomplish our goals. We just need to find the solution. Convince others of the right path. Get the right resources. Work harder and we will get it solved. The Tao Te Ching asks "Who is it that can make muddy water clear?" If you were given a glass of muddy water how could you get it clear faster, more efficiently? Could you speed up the process? Develop some machine to separate the water from the mud? Muller writes: "The invitation to rest is rooted in an undeniable spiritual gravity that allows all things at rest to settle, to find their place. There comes a moment in our striving when more effort actually becomes counterproductive, when our frantic busyness only muddies the waters of our wisdom and understanding. When we become still and allow our life to rest, we feel a renewal of energy and gradual clarity of perception."When he talks of rest - he refers to it as Sabbath time. "Sabbath is more than the absence of work; it is not just a day off, when we catch up on television or errands. It is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing, or true. It is time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us." I have discovered that Sabbath is the balance point in my life, when I can take breaths, listen, find gratitude, move out guilt and judgment. It can be anything that restores my faith. Walking, sitting, writing, eating, playing games, making love, living life with attention. It is not so much what I choose to do, but how I choose to do it and that I choose it from an inner sense of what I need to be attending to at that moment. Muller has many suggestions of how to create this time, but he also gently reminded us that it is not something to just add to a "to-do" list: Now we have to ‘do’ a Sabbath time. And ironically I have found the more Sabbath time I make the more time I have. If I have faith in myself I can allow myself to rest, knowing I really am not lazy, I will do what I need to. The difference is being with myself - following my natural rhythms of energy - rather than controlling them. The Tao Te Ching says Do you have the patience to waitI have always known how important balance is in my life. That balance that comes from listening to the clarity, that arrives from allowing the mud to settle. But I forget to do it, time and time again I forget and get busy. The commandment is "Remember the Sabbath". In the midst of thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal is Remember the Sabbath. In most of the worlds spiritual traditions there are reminders for Sabbath time. That time to rest and attend to life on a deeper level. The commandment is not thou shalt rest or thou shalt meditate, it is to Remember - as though our long ago ancestors who wrote these teachings down could see our lives now and knew we would forget time and time again that Sabbath time that allows the water to clear and gives us time the to live. I’m going to leave you with this piece I wrote called energy - at the end of it - give yourself a little time to explore for yourself - Listen to yourself, what would your Sabbath time be? what would fit in your life to allow the muddy waters to settle? I’ll ring the bell when it’s time to come back.
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