I don't have anything inspiring to say. I'm too busy.
Over the past three weeks, I've been overwhelmingly busy. We say this so much that it sounds like an excuse. But when I take stock, I see how much the Bowmans have been juggling. March and April bring a lot of family obligations (these are fun, don't get me wrong). My children are changing sports which means new schedules, more coaching for me, and lots more driving around. At home, I have a few projects I'm working on, but they take a backseat every spring when, like the seasons, our basement floods with the spring melting. My list of things to do at school has spilled over onto a third post-it note--and I keep adding more. Of course, I've also been planning a Revolution seminar--a labor of love. What this all adds up to is this: not a lot of down time, very little quiet time at home, and a mind that is always full of lists of things to do. And very little time to contemplate the sense of the world.
My purpose here is not to complain, or to brag about how busy I am, or to make excuses for my lack of attentiveness to certain things. I'm simply noting that this is what often prevents people from paying attention to the little things. This insane running from activity to task to obligation is what exhausts us, distracts us, and prevents us from thinking about the issues that the Revolution is all about. When all is quiet, and my list of tasks is short, I read, I contemplate, I make connections. I think "maybe I'll pray today" or "perhaps I'll try something new this morning." I take time to really think about how a friend might be feeling, and I give him a call. It is when we have time that we explore the sense of the world, and try to make ourselves, and the world, a little better. It is so easy to make New Year's Resolutions over a quiet breakfast with family, after having been out of school for 9 days...when all you have to do all day is look at Christmas photos and decide what to have for dinner.
Time is our most precious commodity. We need time to reflect so we can be in touch with things higher. Heschel famously said sabbath was time for this. This is what Sunday church or Saturday temple was supposed to be for. But many of us don't have that anymore. We've lost our sabbath, filled it with ski trips, basketball games, and homework. And for those of us who do have the sabbath, whatever we contemplate in our weekend services gets lost in the race through the week. We need to create more sabbaths. We need to reserve time to think about these things. We need to take better advantage of the time we do have. My hope is that the Revolution serves as a sort of sabbath for me and for those who participate.
I couldn't agree with you more. I've thought of it a few times and I always come back to the same question; what is the price of our Sabbath? Just reading about your schedule I'm sure it would be difficult for you to forgo any of those activities in favor of some "me time." I think about how Thoreau advised us to "Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand" but how can we chose just three? This is when my bitter side comes out and I say "sure Thoreau, that's easy for you to say when you're living by yourself in the woods" but I know deep down he's right. It's a funny concept to think of scheduling down time. But boy what a change we'd see in the world if everyone observed some sort of personal Sabbath.
ReplyDeleteI used to think that I could be a much better person in the world if I could think and reflect as well in the public sphere as I could when I'm just sitting by a river or looking at the stars. It's a shame that our trains of thought are so easily derailed almost the second we come in contact with something that diverts our attention away. I suppose in the end its a challenge for us, a very doable one. Thank you for that entry, though you didn't think it was very inspiring it was at the very least a helpful reminder to me pause for a second.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ogQ0uge06o