I Don't Have Enuf Time
July 8, 2007
Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper

Sometimes, some scriptures just whack you up side the head. This one did it for me. "Come away to the desert," says Jesus. THE DESERT? Nothing is happening there. I like to be in the happening places. Plus, I don't think they have wireless in the desert.

But this one changed my perspective. All of a sudden I realized it is a form of Hebrew Humor. The apostles have gathered around Jesus and are giving their weekly report. They are showing their numbers. They are speaking to their boss. It is a staff meeting. Quoting: "The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught." Jesus responds by telling them to go away. He sees that many of them were "coming and going" - does that sound familiar? - and that they had no leisure even to eat.

No leisure to eat. Coming and going. Reporting in on what we have done. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Katie, my daughter, works for a very fine union; every day at 6:30 p.m. they have to show their numbers. How many signatures, etc. This and mandatory testing in the third grade and eight grade will show her how to be a good disciple, right? Not really, but it will surely acculturate her to the world in which we all live.

The desert? He wants us to go to the desert? Will anybody care about our numbers there? Why would we want to go to a place without numbers or assessment?

Jesus enters the time famine and accountability game "sideways," as in up side the head. Into this time famine, this busy business, this doing at the expense of being, this counted accountability, into this Jesus says, "Go away. Rest a while." He meets the famine of time with the feast of time, acting as if the disciples really had time to take off from saving the world.

Jesus gives spiritual permission to rest. If I could only believe that he meant it, I'd do it. But I don't really believe it. Instead I believe that I don't have enough time to rest. Rest would be wasting time. Rest would be useless time, boldly useless in the same way people imagine weeds are. Rest would be time in the desert, a place of imagined infertility. I think my orders from God are to GROW. Jesus contradicts those orders and recommends the desert instead.

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE: If you have ever read Joseph Wood Krutch's magnificent book called the Desert Year, you know that things are growing also in the desert. We just don't see the growth they way we do at staff meetings. It gets reported differently.

Jesus is not only contrasting time famine and time feast, he is not only making a bit of fun of his disciple's reporting. He is also saying something about work and about food. He notes obliquely that weeds don't work but they do survive.

I want to look at the spiritual permission to rest and advocate it, even if I truly know very little about it. From where I sit, this invitation to the desert sounds corny. It sounds like something some other kind of person, in some other kind of time, in some other kind of galaxy would do. I don't go an hour without hearing some one say to me in some way, "I don't have enough time." I go less than an hour without saying that to some one else, in some way, shape or form. It may be the phone call I don't return or the message I delete. It may be the shortening of appointment times: yes, they used to be the 50 minute hour, now they are a 30 minute hour, and I am not the only clergy person confessing to that. Much longer than that and I don't look at the emails or manage the phone or eat. "The disciples were coming and going, so much so that they did not eat."

Let us begin with the facts about time, before returning to the spiritual permission to rest. Astonishing things are happening with regard to human longevity. If you were born at the beginning of this century in this country, 46 was your average number of years to live. If you were born yesterday, your average number of years to live is 79. That is a gain of 33 years in a century. Let's just assume that each one of us here is above average and that we are each going to live to be 80. For fun and to make the math easier and because I don't have enough time……

That means we have a total of 28,800 days in which to be alive. Now figure you lose a third of them to sleep - although that all by itself is a remarkable statement. Losing to sleep? Is anything more wonderful than really sleeping? Is anything more obnoxious than not really sleeping? But let's keep going using quick rounded-off math. That helps you from thinking I am trying to make a scientific point. If we lose a third of them to sleep, you still have about 19,000 days in which to be awake. Figure you lose half of them to standing in lines, personal administration, driving in traffic, being with the wrong partner, believing in the wrong God or having the wrong job - or some other form of so called wasted, weed filled time, you still have 9,500 really good days. Or, on average, 30 good years of awake time that is yours. Figure 20 of that goes to being a kid, something which we are losing as well to timed activities, so you are down - or up - to ten really good years.

When the feeling about not having enough time meets this data, what happens? In me, I get an overwhelming feeling of abundance. I get a new picture of time, scientifically delivered. It makes me think I have time to follow Jesus. To go away. I have time for the leisure to eat. I have the leisure for the desert.

So now I have both Jesus and the facts telling me I have enough time. Or better put I have all the time I'm going to have. That still doesn't quite translate to permission to rest.

Just Thursday I was to meet one of you in New Jersey. I stayed on the computer too long, knew I had to get to the ferry by 11:15, did a silly thing and called the ferry people too late, got the wrong 800 number, got the wrong directions, went to the wrong place, had to walk up the river from the one water taxi stand to the World Trade Center, was directed to another number which the woman assured me was "service"…which I thought meant service for me but instead meant service to the one the man called "her," that she would be fueling between 11 and 12 and not make her normal schedule and as this very friendly man with a thick New York accent explained to me with joviality, "I have no idea how she runs on Thursdays, nor what her schedule is, I just keep her going, HE HE HE." I can't believe any of these people think I have the time for this foolishness. All I could think of was about to miss lunch at the appointed time and not be fueled myself. Normally my favorite walk is up from Battery Park to where the trapeze used to be. On this day I got a "free" walk, on a beautiful July day, and saw none of my usual sights. I was staring inside, at my anxiety, about being late again, which meant I would be late all day, which meant I was in time famine instead of time feast.

What is interesting about this silliness is that I was in a kind of desert in the city. I was shut down to all around me. Instead of choosing the useless time, I had walked right into it and aggravated the situation by worrying about it. By the way, we had a great lunch in Jersey City. But I did spend a full hour worrying the thing to death.

Can we be honest about the time famine? Honest enough to hear the time feast? I'm going to try.

Did someone steal our time? Or did we give it away? Or did someone steal it and then we gave it away? I think the latter. A simple answer is that internalized capitalism or internalized workaholism destroyed our INNER Active and we "was robbed" and we cooperated in the robbery. But that is a only a necessary but not a sufficient answer to the problem. Religion itself helped to justify our participation in the robbery. We are to work for the night is coming and idle hands…are the devil's workshop.

A great screed is circulating on the Unitarian web site right now with someone condemning the prayers they used in their big national worship two weeks ago. "We the messengers, we the doers, we who bring on justice." Falderal, says the correspondent. God by grace saves the world. We by work do not.

The victory of work over grace, what the old timers called works righteousness, has constipated Social Action. Note the word "Activist": we are to work for justice. Activity has superciliously superceded passivity when it comes to waiting for the reign of God so much so that even morality gives sales reports at the end of the day. FYI, Katie's union works her 6 days a week, for 12 hours, except on Saturdays when they get off in the afternoon. No wonder Al Gore said yesterday, "I have fallen out of love with politics."

We live with the tyranny of the present, the tyranny of action, the tyranny of the practical. Do something, damn it. Do something. Be an "Activist." We interrupt our own sleep and our own river walks with these internalized commands from a place that is deeply ungodly. And I think we do it not just for the money but also for the numbers. We want to show off to Jesus: the disciples tried to tell him everything they had taught and done. He told them to go away.

You probably saw the article in Wednesday's Times about the Italians living better than we do. The worst sentence in Timothy Egan's article in Wednesday's Times, "A NATIONAL GUT CHECK; WHO LIVES BETTER?" in which, guess who, the Italians win hands down. He says, "Americans can't relax." Italians get 42 vacation days a year, The Average American takes 13. And the killer phrase, for me 25% of the American population has no vacation days at all. The TIMES op-ed proofreader literally let him get away with that sentence: Americans can't relax.

If Jesus thought he had a hard time with the disciples, telling them to go away, look what he faces today. He faces people like you and me cooperating with the state and the economy to work hard to post good numbers and get good money, getting as far away from menial labor as possible, because that is where the money is.

A few openings do exist. Our hearts can open to the desert call. That is the start. Then we have to wrestle the economy and the state or learn how to ignore them more deftly. Opening our hearts and minds is the first step. Here at Judson, with our little staff, we try to model decent work habits. I try to goof off as much as possible. I fail. But I try. Peter Gaitens, our administrative assistant, explained New York to me after I'd been here about two weeks. He said, when I was late for the fifteenth appointment in the row, trying to post good numbers, "In New York, everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much." He was sort of right, although I think thrice is more accurate than twice. My new mantra, to open my heart to the River, when I am "Stuck" there, is the traffic sign, "Expect Delays." They are as good as weeds. Delays are as good as weeds. They have the same holy absence of utility, the same sacred stab to the heart of the system. Delays and mishaps and just wandering are holy kinds of time, even if you don't get a long vacation, like some lucky people do, from your employer.

I think of the wonderful word, "Cimarron," which means in the Wild West, a formerly tamed and corralled animal who figures out how to get free. We who have internalized workaholicism can become "Cimarron's." We can break out. We can be less tame. We can wander freely. I know: just don't let my boss know. Don't worry, I won't let your boss know either. And I will beg you and myself to be our own bosses when it comes to time and taming.

A few more uselessly useful tips: "Just," just, she said, "Relax." Take back some time. Learn to enjoy personal and system wide administration. It only feels useless but administration is the art of being free while working. It is self-direction in a communal context. If you don't administer yourself, other people and things will be happy to do so. Keep a Sabbath, a long one. Learn how to love your work or don't do it. Learn to love manual labor and photocopying: these are not just for immigrants or the poor. They are part of being part of our work. Learn that the interruptions and the delays are a gift from God.

You only have thirty good years: Make the least of them!

Amen

*****

Ancient Testimony: Mark 6:30,31