The bane of being busy

Lately I've become increasingly (and painfully) aware of my reputation for busyness. This came to a head yesterday when I offered to catch up with a friend over the weekend, and her response was: "But you're too busy."

My busyness has gotten to such as state that my friends don't even trust my word anymore.

On any given day I find myself beginning conversations with students at breakfast with: "Got a busy day ahead of you?". I always have to "rush off" after scoffing down a hurried lunch, and I have begun a habit of taking early dinner, as I don't have time to attend Formal Hall and coffee in the SCR afterwards. My invariable response to the question of "How are you?" seems to be: "Good, but ... busy!" It's funny tho', I don't think I always mean it when I say it - it just seems to be easiest thing to say. No-one questions you, and most nod their heads respectfully, or click their tongue in sympathy.

Busyness has become a by-word in our society for our self-importance; a badge of a person's success. The more tasks we have to do, the more important/interesting/needed we feel. Our identity is placed in being strong, action-filled people, and we pride ourselves in being able to juggle multiple jobs at the same time. Busyness, I suspect, also means we can hide in our work, and avoid having a real conversation. It's a way of hiding from our fears. By getting caught up in the pressing minutiae, we don't have to lift up our eyes to look at the bigger picture of our lives, and where we're going. But busyness saps our lives of beauty. When was the last time I went for a long walk and looked at a tree? Or spend an afternoon with friends, unfettered by nagging thoughts of unfinished projects, my brain empty of calculations of rescheduling my timetable so that I can squeeze in an extra hour of admin in the evening?

Of course, I'm not decrying work. Work itself isn't bad. In fact, it's very good. There are many valuable things to be done, and idleness is as much a danger as busyness. Sometimes we simply have to work mad hours and numerous jobs - the reality of life is that there are responsibilities, rent that needs to be paid, assignments that need to be turned in, deadlines that need to be met. But work will always want more of us, and when busyness become a habit, and you give the impression of not even having time for friends and family (let alone God!), then you've got to wonder.

Jesus understood this very well. We've been working through the gospel of Mark at Christian Union this semester, and students have picked up on the almost ritualistic regularity of Jesus' departing to a high mountain to pray. There couldn't have been more important or urgent work than the proclaimation that the Kingdom of God had come near, and yet the Son of God took time out to spend with his papa.

So, I'm going to make a conscious effort not to be so busy, and, perhaps more revealingly, not to appear as if I'm too busy.

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The formal rituals of liturgy really help in regulating rest and work. There is the Jewish Sabbath or Shabbat, a day of rest between Sundown Friday and the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. It's a time of rest, of celebration, of reflection and prayer. (Compline and Evensong, services within the Catholic and Anglican tradition, echo similar concepts in the closing of a day's work with thanksgiving and prayer.)

Shabbat is ushered in with the lighting of candles. Traditionally, the women of the family lead the prayers. Hands are drawn over the twin flames of the candles towards the face, welcoming in the light of the Sabbath day into oneself. (In fact, in one of the songs, Shabbat is conceptualised as a bride or a Queen, to be welcomed into the home). Then the festivities begin, as the family gathers around the table for the evening meal. Prayers and blessings are recited, there is singing, and bread and wine is shared.

Saturday is then spend in enjoyment and play, the contrast being not to engage in activities that are considered to be 'creative', by way of exercising order/control over our environment.

My favourite part of the Shabbat ritual is the Havdalah, the service that marks the end of Sabbath. Again, a braided candle, symbolizing the light of Shabbat, is lit. Wine, as always a symbol of joy, is passed around, so that people can take a final sip of the joy of Shabbat.

As one of the final acts of Shabbat, spices, such as cinnamon and clove, are placed in a box, and passed around, so that everyone might smell the fragrance. The sweet-smelling spices symbolize the sweetness of Shabbat, and the idea is that worshippers breath in sweetness of Shabbat in one last time so that it might sustain them through the week to come until Shabbat can be welcomed once more.

Havdalah is intended to require a person to use all five senses: taste the wine, smell the spices, see the flame of the candle and feel its heat, and hear the blessings. Thus the sounds, tastes and smells of Shabbat brings the holiness (ie., the set-apartness) of Shabbat into the rest of the week.

Whatever you might think about the divide between the sacred and the ordinary, or the role of ritual and liturgy in daily life (and I'm certainly not into forbidding certain tasks and abiding by strict laws on the Sabbath), the sentiment deserves consideration. This is one of the occasions I find myself deeply grateful for our physicality. Time and meaning are marked through our bodily senses. God dignifies and enriches our mundane, transitory doings with glimpses of eternity, as we echo his pattern of work and rest in creation with our own.

Capitulating to the inevitable

Good grief! Not another blog?!

Not another computer screen full of half-baked ideas, maudlin sentiment and introspective drivel? Lashings of well-worn metaphors, multi-clausal sentences? Argh. Run away, run away now! (Also, I must to say, as self-proclaimed Luddite, who advocates the return of fountain pens and parchment, this feels the oddest thing!)

The world doesn't need another blog, so why am I doing this?

The blog is called "Addison's Walk" for a number of reasons, and maybe an explanation of some of the thoughts that went into the name might help.

Firstly, it's homage to CS Lewis. If ever I had a spiritual father in the Christian faith, it would be CSL. On warm summer nights, CSL and his friends would stroll along Addison's Walk, a side path on the grounds of Magdalen College, that runs past the river Cherwell, in Oxford. CSL was converted, in part, due these long walks with his friends. CSL, Tolkien and Dyson got into some heated arguments - hammer and tongs - long into the night; lasting till early hours of morning. (Then, being the freakazoids that they were, instead of going to bed, they wrote poems, summing up their arguments in verse. Tolkien's "Mythopoeia" was the result of one of the most significant of those summer walks.)

And so, in a cheesy turn of metaphor, this blog will like an Addison's walk, in tracing the passage of a life after conversion. I hope, if this blog continues, that it'll help me see God at work in me, and encourage me to take captive every thought, decision and act for Christ.

Another thing about Addison's Walk: I've always enjoyed talking the best, when it's coupled with walking. And I love the image of friends walking and talking together. I think this is largely the reason I've chosen this public platform, for what otherwise would be private musings. By nature unhealthily private and introspective, my thinking needs to be aired - taken into the sunlight, as it were - and then (trans)formed by being challenged by others wiser and clearer-thinking.

I have a memory like a sieve, and am incredibly scatter-brained. So I also write so as not to forget - a rather desperate grabbing before the waters of Lethe drown out all. Perhaps it's my training as a historian, but I find time and memory incredibly sad concepts. The reality is that all things shall pass and be forgotten, and their value lost along with the ones who found them precious. So this blog will try to capture transitory moments in reality, and, to borrow a phrase from Updike, "to give the mundane it's beautiful due." (The assumptions/world view underpinning that phrase are profound - but perhaps more on that in another post!) Of course, it's only God who Remembers, and all this is but my playing 'grown ups' in the dress-up box.

So! Adding to your plethora of on-line reading material, email updates and general grey cell exertion, here is my humble little patch of cyberspace. I pray that sometimes it might be useful for you, and enjoyable, as you stroll along Addison's Walk with me. It's mostly harmless. We'll see how it goes, anyway.

WHAT THE BIRD SAID EARLY IN THE YEAR

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you.
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Quick, quick, quick, quick! – the gates are drawn apart.

- CS Lewis.