Busyness and the Cost of Guilty as Charge • Busyness is having an ongoing effect on our soul and on our society. • Busyness is causing us to lose focus and to multitask to the point of forgetting one of the tasks. • Busyness is a problem across the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, and the urban-suburban divide. • Busyness is a problem in America.
Speaker 2
You know who all of you are.
Speaker 1
Two, when you come to a stoplight you count the cars ahead of you and change lanes. Okay, now we’re getting a little deeper guilty as charge. Three, you multitask to the point that you forget one of the tasks.
Speaker 2
Not to play armchair psychologist but I’m pretty sure we all have hurry sickness.
Speaker 1
The ongoing effect of busyness on our soul and on our society is really starting to take its toll. I mean just think about it. What’s the first thing most people say when you ask the customer, hey, how’s it going or how are you? What do most people say? Oh good, just busy. Pay attention and in my experience you will hear this across the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, the urban suburban divide, everybody is busy. College kids are busy. Young parents are busy. Professionals are busy. Working class people are busy. Empty nesters in the pearl are busy. Retired couples in rural Oregon are busy. Really is busy. At least everybody in the West. All my African friends love to tell me, you Americans, you’re just all so busy.
Speaker 2
It’s like they show up and think what has happened to your society, it’s sped out of control.The Cost of Pathological Busyness • Busyness is taking its toll on our soul and society. • Busyness can be classified into two types: productive and pathological. • Pathological busyness is when people are constantly busy but it’s not productive. • Busyness is a problem in the West, but it’s not unique to the West. • Busyness can be a sign of a lack of priorities and a lack of control over one’s life.
Speaker 1
The ongoing effect of busyness on our soul and on our society is really starting to take its toll. I mean just think about it. What’s the first thing most people say when you ask the customer, hey, how’s it going or how are you? What do most people say? Oh good, just busy. Pay attention and in my experience you will hear this across the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, the urban suburban divide, everybody is busy. College kids are busy. Young parents are busy. Professionals are busy. Working class people are busy. Empty nesters in the pearl are busy. Retired couples in rural Oregon are busy. Really is busy. At least everybody in the West. All my African friends love to tell me, you Americans, you’re just all so busy.
Speaker 2
It’s like they show up and think what has happened to your society, it’s sped out of control.
Speaker 1
Now we need to clarify, there are a few different types of busyness. There’s a type of busyness that just means you have a lot to do. You’re not wasting your life on Call of Duty or like the Netflix binge or just trivial things. But you’re really giving your life away to what matters and the precious commodity of time. By that definition, Jesus himself was busy. But there’s another far more common type of busyness that Ronald Rolheiser calls pathological busyness.The Cost of Pathological Busyness • Pathological busyness is a problem that affects both our emotional and spiritual health. • It’s a problem because we’re not able to spend enough time with our loved ones or ourselves. • We need to slow down and focus on what’s important in order to have a fulfilling life.
Speaker 2
It’s like they show up and think what has happened to your society, it’s sped out of control.
Speaker 1
Now we need to clarify, there are a few different types of busyness. There’s a type of busyness that just means you have a lot to do. You’re not wasting your life on Call of Duty or like the Netflix binge or just trivial things. But you’re really giving your life away to what matters and the precious commodity of time. By that definition, Jesus himself was busy. But there’s another far more common type of busyness that Ronald Rolheiser calls pathological busyness. Which is where you have not a lot to do but you have too much to do. That’s the essence of it. It was the second kind of busyness that Bill Gates was referring to when he said busy is the new stupid. I love that. The essence of pathological busyness or if you prefer hurry is that we have too much to do. And so the only way to cram it all in is to speed up our mind and our body and our relationships to this frenetic pace just to get it all in before the end of the day. And this has all sorts of implications for our emotional health and our spiritual life.The Cost of Pathological Busyness • There are two types of busyness: one that just means you have a lot to do, and the other that is pathological. • Pathological busyness has negative consequences for emotional health and spiritual life.
Speaker 1
Now we need to clarify, there are a few different types of busyness. There’s a type of busyness that just means you have a lot to do. You’re not wasting your life on Call of Duty or like the Netflix binge or just trivial things. But you’re really giving your life away to what matters and the precious commodity of time. By that definition, Jesus himself was busy. But there’s another far more common type of busyness that Ronald Rolheiser calls pathological busyness. Which is where you have not a lot to do but you have too much to do. That’s the essence of it. It was the second kind of busyness that Bill Gates was referring to when he said busy is the new stupid. I love that. The essence of pathological busyness or if you prefer hurry is that we have too much to do. And so the only way to cram it all in is to speed up our mind and our body and our relationships to this frenetic pace just to get it all in before the end of the day. And this has all sorts of implications for our emotional health and our spiritual life. The professor Michael Zigarelli conducted a survey of 20,000 Christians in the US and identified busyness as the major block in people’s relationship to God. Listen to his summary of a 20,000 plus person survey. Quote, it may be the case that one, Christians are assimilating a culture of busyness, hurry and overload, which leads to two, God becoming more marginalized in Christians lives, Which leads to three, a deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to four, Christians becoming even more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about how to live, which Leads to five, more conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload and the cycle begins again.The Cost of Slippage • People are more reactive than proactive in their lives, and this can have negative consequences. • People are also increasingly disconnected from their identity and from their spiritual practices. • This can lead to a decline in quality of life.
Speaker 1
Just binge watching the crown on Netflix, if that’s your thing or whatever it is or on social media all the time or shopping or work or church or whatever your, you know, cultural non-totic Of choice is. Disconnected from our identity and calling. We forget who we are and who we’re not, what we’re called to do and what we’re not called to do. So we just get sucked into the tyranny of the urgent in our life is far more reactive than it is proactive. Not able to attend to human needs, basic things like sleep. I read a number of surveys that said prior to Edison and Lightbulb, the average American slept 11 hours a night. Just think about that for a moment and just then think about politics and just wonder about whether or not those two things are connected, right? Just the level of anger and anxiety and like, just think about that. What does it do to whole society? Now the average is seven and most of us feel great if we get that or exercise or cooking our own food or not eating out all the time or just rest. Hoarding energy. Like you ever have that feeling where you’re like, I can’t really get too involved with this person or this thing because like, I got to be ready for the next thing.
Speaker 2
Okay. So yeah, I’m not the only one.
Speaker 1
And then finally, slippage in our spiritual practices. The time that we dedicate to cultivate and nurture and turn our attention andThe Difficulty of Spiritual Practice • Spiritual practices can be slipping away. • There is a climate conspiring to make it difficult to have spiritual depth. • We are distracted and busy.
Speaker 1
And then finally, slippage in our spiritual practices. The time that we dedicate to cultivate and nurture and turn our attention and our awareness over to God and to receive his love and be transformed into people of love, that goes down as Our to-do list goes up, which is the exact opposite of what you see in the life of Jesus. Are we having fun yet, by the way? Like just here to just to pass on guilt and shame to all of you. No, not remotely. That’s not the point of this exercise. When I first read this, I was at least seven for 10 and my wife probably would have said, no, 100%, you’re 10 for 10. The point is there’s more at stake here than just our emotional health. Some of us, if you’re more kind of melancholy like me, then you can’t like live a life of hurry and a happy life. Some of you can. I know some people that had just really high capacity, but not necessarily a loving and compassionate life. They can get through, they can have fun, they can even enjoy the adrenaline rush. But man, spiritual life with God and other people, that’s a whole other thing. I love this from Ronald Rolheiser. It’s worth kind of a bit of a long quote. He writes, today, a number of historical circumstances are blindly flowing together and accidentally conspiring to produce a climate within which it is difficult not just to think About God or to pray, but simply to have any interior depth whatsoever. We are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion. It is not that we have anything against God, depth and spirit, we would like these. It is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than non-spiritual, andThe Pathological Busyness of Our Spiritual Lives • Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives. • To receive love from God and others, we need to be able to slow down and focus on our relationships.
Speaker 1
It is not that we have anything against God, depth and spirit, we would like these. It is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than non-spiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall, and the fantasy life they produce In us than we are in church. Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives. Now to clarify what we mean by our spiritual lives, because that language is really easy to sentimentalize, especially in the church, but even in a city like Portland where there’s All sorts of talk about spiritual life and what most people mean is like I do yoga twice a week and go hiking on the weekend or whatever. I want to slam that, but it’s easy to sentimentalize this idea. What we mean by our spiritual life is our capacity to receive and give love in relationship with God and others. To receive love from God and others, but in particular from God, and then to give that love back to God and to others, to our friends and to our family, and eventually we stay out long enough Even to our enemies. And hurry is incompatible with love.The Pathological Busyness of Our Spiritual Lives • Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives. • What we mean by our spiritual life is our capacity to receive and give love in relationship with God and others.
Speaker 1
It is not that we have anything against God, depth and spirit, we would like these. It is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than non-spiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall, and the fantasy life they produce In us than we are in church. Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives. Now to clarify what we mean by our spiritual lives, because that language is really easy to sentimentalize, especially in the church, but even in a city like Portland where there’s All sorts of talk about spiritual life and what most people mean is like I do yoga twice a week and go hiking on the weekend or whatever. I want to slam that, but it’s easy to sentimentalize this idea. What we mean by our spiritual life is our capacity to receive and give love in relationship with God and others. To receive love from God and others, but in particular from God, and then to give that love back to God and to others,The Parable of the Prodigal Son • Interruptions can be a chance for connection with others. • Jesus responded with compassion, wisdom, and love when interrupted.
Speaker 2
If you’re a parent, that one just killed you right there.
Speaker 1
But like, it’s in those moments where we’re unguarded and we don’t know what to say. We don’t have time to like craft a text message response that’s, you know, like it’s just who we are there in the moment, all of our insecurity, all of our anger, all of our fear, all of our Love, just it’s there, that interruption moment. That’s actually who we are. And I don’t know about you, but usually I respond to interruptions with anxiety at best, or irritation and anger at worst. Jesus responded with compassion, with wisdom, with presence, and with love. And he calls you and I as his apprentices to that, to slow down to that loving kind of speed of relationship. Case in point, take a look with me at Luke chapter 10. Thank you for your patience. Let’s read a well-known story.The Cost of Hurrying • It is easy to judge others and to think that they are all horrible people. • It is important to slow down and to love others in a way that Jesus does. • Hurry is incompatible with love.
Speaker 1
Well, you think I would never do that, how many times have any of us often going to or coming from church, passed by a houseless person on the side of the road and not even like sorry to have Time and just kept going or a car broken down on the side of the road and well somebody else will help. You’re all looking at me at the blank stairs, okay? I guess I’m the only horrible person in the room. I’ve done that because that takes time because I’ve been in the city long enough, I’ve talked to people that work with houseless people, they’ve all said the same thing, never give money, Give yourself, give time, give relationship, so don’t give money, but anytime that happens, offer device, somebody launch, stop and go have a meal with them. Yeah, but that takes like an hour, I’m late for coffee, like I have to go pastor people into the way of Jesus, I don’t have time to stop right now.
Speaker 2
Yes, exactly, you caught me, exactly.
Speaker 1
My point is it’s really easy to judge and this is a caricature, of course this is like a dead body on the side of the road or like is it, this is more severe, but this is a thing in all of us where We just don’t want to slow down to love in the way that Jesus has. My point is this is real life. Jesus is calling his apprentices to slow down and make space for love because again hurry is incompatible with love. Coming back to our vision series and the teaching just a few weeks ago on becoming a person of love, which for me, I don’t know if it was that great of a teaching, but it was the culmination Of my thinking over many years and my own apprenticeship to Jesus.The Importance of Time in a Relationship • Love is timeconsuming. • It is important to schedule time for love in order to get the depth of intimacy that is needed for a longterm relationship.
Speaker 1
Just sitting and just soaking in the love of God for us. For all of the talk about a personal relationship with Jesus in the American church, it’s easy to forget that a relationship, at least an intimate one, takes a lot of time. I only have a few really close relationships because I don’t have enough time. Takes a lot of time to stand in that kind of friendship or marriage or relationship. There was the saying back in the 90s, in particular in the parenting literature, that was, it was really cheesy, but it was so good. Love is spelled T-I-M-E. And the idea was that, man, the way that we love each other is we give time and attention to each other. We all want to have every parent wants to hack the system. Like it’s about, you know, quantity of time, not quality, but then you learn like it doesn’t work that way. Because you don’t, with kids, don’t let you schedule love. They’re not like, Dad, can you love me 3 p.m. On Thursday? All right. Can I make an appointment with Tiana to get some time with you? I know it’s book release, Work Week, but I’d love some love on Thursday afternoon. Well, they just like, barge into your life, interrupt everything that you’re doing and just start talking to you and how you respond exactly. And how you respond to interruptions is who you really are as a mother, as a father, as a friend, as a spouse, as a roommate. To be in any kind of long, anybody in a long term friendship or marriage or anything like that, community knows this, you don’t get depth of intimacy without long hours together.The Correlation Between Listening and Loving • Listening is key to cultivating compassion in our lives. • The decline of compassion in our nation is due in part to the speed of our lives. • Slowing down can help us to better understand and empathize with others.
Speaker 1
Whatever that is, it’s not love. That’s not love. That’s not compassion. It’s anger. It’s irritation. It’s sarcasm. It’s impatience. It’s not time for you. Is it any surprise that in Paul’s definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, the first descriptor on the list is, quote, love is patient. Another way to translate that from the Greek is love is unhurried. Or love is not an erush. Or love takes all the time that is necessary. Hurry oxidizes our inner sense of compassion. Compassion as we all know is a feeling word. Love is actually not. Or an action word. Compassion which is tied to love is a feeling word. It means that we slow down long enough to feel what another person is feeling and a kind of solidarity. All sorts of studies have been done by clinical psychologists on the decline of compassion in our nation over the last few decades. And with it, the rise of outrage, culture, social media, the 24 hour news cycle, the anger in politics, many of them tie it. This isn’t to discount the legitimate things out there that are worth some anger. But many of them tie it to the speed of our life. As we move into an election year and the outrage, culture on both the right and the left just spins out of control. I think the only chance we have of living a compassionate life is to slow down long enough to hear other people. To sit with other people in real life, not in a Twitter feed. To see our nation from their perspective, consider how they feel, even if at the end we disagree. Like so many sociological studies have been done on the correlation between listening and loving. When people feel listened to, they feel loved.The Importance of Slowing Down • It is important to pay attention to how fast you move through your day and week, and to how this affects your relationships. • It is important to practice slowing down, and to do this in different ways, including by canceling something, putting away your devices, and taking a nap.
Speaker 1
First, we just want to invite you to pay attention to the speed at which you move through your week and your day, to your mind, to your body. How often do you notice yourself in a hurry? What does that feel like? How does that corrode relationships with people in front of you? Maybe go back and sit with Ruth Haley Barton’s list and just sit in that for a moment. How do I feel about that? How many of those things are true of me? How do I feel when I slow down? Better or worse? Just notice without judgment or guilt or shame, just with attention and awareness. Secondly, practice slowing. Just say no. If you want to get like really type A, just when you go out to your car before you go home or whatever, just pull out your calendar and murder eight things. Just like whatever you want to do. Or start much smaller than that. But maybe cut some things out of your week. Maybe cancel something. Maybe put away your devices for a night. Maybe do something you love. Like go hiking in Forest Park or get tea with the best friend or read some poetry or go for a run or whatever your thing is. Take a nap. Literally practice what Richard Foster calls the spiritual discipline of slowing. Where you intentionally place your mind and bodies and situations where you have to wait in order to let God transform you into a person of compassionate love. And just see how it goes.
