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DiggWaiting for the Soul to Catch Up
When the to-do list reads "sit sill," what discoveries are made? Author Terry Hershey goes exploring.
This article appears in the Sabbath edition of Trinity News. To receive a free subscription to the print edition of Trinity News, send your mailing address to news@trinitywallstreet.org. (Please note that in doing so, we may use your email and mailing addresses to inform you of special parish events and resources available on this website).
We are wired to achieve, to see accomplishment as a sign of our esteem and worth. It is in our blood. Most of us can’t make it through the day without our lists, our BlackBerrys, or some new technology designed to save time. Ah, the ecstasy of crossing off each consummated to-do. In the end, as Pascal noted (a few hundred years ago), “By means of a diversion, a man can avoid his own company twenty-four hours a day.”
Thomas Merton put it even more bluntly, saying that it is “a pervasive form of contemporary violence. . .to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything.” But look on the bright side: at least we are skilled at such violence. The Girl Scouts now have a “stress-free merit badge.” In the bookstore the other day, I found One Minute Bedtime Stories, “for parents with not very much time.”
Oh, my.
I didn't want that -- not anymore. Like most everyone, I was busy, with work, getting ahead, trying to accomplish everything: teaching, writing, reading, counseling, parenting, growing the best garden. One day I realized I wanted to change, because I wanted to know what it meant to keep my own company. The demon was my insistence that time was meant to be filled, and I wanted my soul back. I wanted to learn how to be alone and like it, because I wasn’t very good at that. I wanted to learn how to be alone with God and like it, because I wasn’t very good at that, either. I just didn’t figure it involved sitting still. But that is basically the plan: in my case, finding time to learn the art of doing nothing.
I had a conversation with someone wondering about my current project.
“What are you writing about now?” he asked.
“Slowing down,” I answered.
“Slowing down?” As in, surely there’s more.
“Yep. You know, learning to sit still.”
“Sit still? Why?” As in, this man needs help. Serious help.
“It helps us to see.”
“See what?”
“You know,” I searched for words, “to see the world around us.”
He scrunched his eyebrows and an invisible hook tugged up on the left side of his lip. “What on earth for?”
Indeed, what for? Well, there are those lucky days when a swallowtail butterfly provides a cabaret while sipping at a wallflower, or a rainbow arches through the northern sky after a morning of foreboding clouds have skittered and leapt, or daffodils flow, faithfully sanguine, around the maple tree, or the summer sun stays in the sky well into evening, letting you listen to the crickets ’til it’s way past your bedtime. The candied scent of a bearded iris transports you back to a high school dance when the best-looking girl in town draped her arms around your neck.
Yes, there are those lucky days when public opinion means something only to pollsters and politicians, when you realize that the elastic jurisdiction of what “they” think cannot find you here in this little corner of the globe, and you raise your head to the stars and shout to no one in particular, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
It is no secret that our culture is not very good at this. Some call it idleness. Some just call it laziness. However, some of the enlightened call it rest, or play. A rare few call it “letting the soul catch up.” Here’s a story:
An American traveler was on safari in Kenya. He was loaded down with maps, and timetables, and agendas. Porters from a local tribe were carrying his cumbersome supplies, luggage, and “essential stuff.”
On the first morning, everyone awoke early and traveled fast and went far into the bush. On the second morning, they all woke very early and traveled very fast and went very far into the bush. On the third morning, they all woke very early and traveled very fast and went even farther into the bush. The American seemed pleased. But on the fourth morning, the porters refused to move. They simply sat by a tree. Their behavior incensed the American. “This is a waste of valuable time. Can someone tell me what is going on here?” The translator answered, “They are waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”
The Bible calls waiting for the soul to catch up Sabbath. Regardless of the label, the effect is the same. It lets us stop long enough to connect, or reconnect as the case may be, with something quietly fundamental to being alive.
To be human in a world mesmerized by speed is tough. Down the road, I hopefully believe, something will snap. In my case, there is all this evidence that it will: while I sit on the back deck, the sun sets over the peninsula. The sky, as if batter poured from a pitcher, turns an effluence of slate blue and vermilion. Spires of hemlock stand in silhouette. And I stand, for some unknown reason, singing, “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog.” I am singing at the top of my lungs, doing a little boogie with my dog, who hasn’t the foggiest idea what’s come over me but is a sucker for a party and plays along nonetheless.
The moment melts around me before I regain my composure and give myself a reality check, a quiz requiring justification for what I’m feeling and why. And then it hits me. I can’t tell a soul about my dance at twilight without coming face-to-face with who I was pretending not to be and the energy it required to maintain that image.
When I lived in Southern California, I spent three days a month at a Benedictine monastery out in the high desert. On one visit, a friend asked one of the monks, “What exactly do you do here?”
“We pray,” the monk replied.
“No,” my friend persisted, “I mean really. What do you do?”
“It is enough to pray,” the monk said.
“It is enough,” I tell my dog as we stand on the deck absorbing the summer sky, “just to boogie.” Just to boogie under the canopy of dusk. Just to feel your lungs breathe and your heart flutter. Just to cheer the sun as it sets and not give a damn about some need to fight back the tears, standing spellbound in the salty prism for twilight rainbows.
To sit still is a spiritual endeavor. To sit still is to practice Sabbath — meaning literally, to quit. To stop. To take a break. To create uncluttered time.
Truth is, there is nothing holy or devout about the word Sabbath. It is about our basic need to quiet the internal noise. To separate ourselves from the people who cling to us. And to separate ourselves from the routines to which we cling. At face value, it all sounds so essential, so inviting. But if that’s the case, then why is it that in the real world, stopping always feels like an interruption? What’s at stake here is not your “to-do” list, but an invitation to savor moments of silence, letting them work their magic.
Your deck for sitting still may not be a deck at all. It may be a pew. A subway car. A moment stolen away on the fire escape as city lights twinkle around you. It may be a particular path in a particular forest that speaks to you of the ages, of the mysteries of time. It may be a swath of the morning before the kids wake up, just you and the coffee and the empty kitchen. Silence can be found in many of life’s moments, if we stop. And listen.
That space, created by silence, represents sanity. For silence can be a fullness, rather than a void. It can allow the mind to run through its paces without any need for justification. It can let us recover — grab hold of — those parts of our selves the week leaves scattered and disparate. It’s all about what we can see when we slow down and let the silence descend. It’s about paying attention, which is, in the end, the only way to enter life, to live life fully. And you can’t be fully human without a Sabbath.
Terry Hershey is an author, speaker, storyteller, philosopher, humorist, and
gardener, and has frequently appeared on Faith & Values programs on the
Hallmark Channel.To learn more about his work, visit www.terryhershey.com
