Death—we do not know—
Christ's acquaintance with Him
Justify Him—though—
He—would trust no stranger—
Other—could betray—
Just His own endorsement—
That—sufficeth Me—
All the other Distance
He hath traversed first—
No New Mile remaineth—
Far as Paradise—
His sure foot preceding—
Tender Pioneer—
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture—now—
Emily Dickinson
What is life, but to be near you?
Do you think Jesus
ever sought entertainment for himself when he was bored? Was he ever bored?
I am a base coward.
Thoughts. I'm sure I have them. This week I've been
wallowing in worldliness. Instead of attending to pain and emptiness, letting
those things bring me to a better place, closer to the heart of God, I watched
a couple seasons of The Office. Yes, that's what I did. During college, when
every Christian I knew was watching the Office, I saw only two episodes of that
show. Once, the British version during my study abroad in Oxford, and the
second time, the American version, the following summer. When things are cool I
do not care for them. That being said, why is it that the sight of the first 4
seasons of the Office sitting on my roommate's bookcase became the opiate for
the masses of my weariness? When I don't even like television? In college,
there were some memorable discussions about the nature of rest, work, and
leisure. It makes sense now, these talks we had. I'm harkening back to one
class session on the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass and one class
lecture on Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis Of Culture, specifically. I
have not yet read Pieper's work, though I ought to.
The general idea is this. Work and leisure are both times of
productive, abundant activity. Leisure is a time for creativity and culture.
According to both Douglass and Pieper, at no time should one's soul be deadened
or one's intellect dulled. Life--rushing, brilliant life--should happen all the
time. Leisure is not idleness: no more is it debauchery, no more is it
dissipation. Leisure is contemplative, creative work.
Douglass' narrative describes the slaves' holidays: the
slave masters offered up their slaves to drunken tomfoolery, knowing that just
as backbreaking labor could not be sustained indefinitely, neither could
Bacchic celebration. These kinds of tactics made the slaves happy to go back to
their slavery, deceived into believing that leisure, or freedom, was not a good
to be desired.
We talked in class about how Western culture follows this
exact principle. Work too hard in your 9-5, give up all of yourself--too much
of yourself--to your career, but then, the weekend comes. On the weekend, or
even the day's end, pushed past healthy limits of productiveness, you seek
drunkenness, sex, noise: any manner of over-the-top "leisure" to
bring you back to balance. "Leisure" exists to make you forget that
the rest of the week you have lived as a slave.
This, sometimes, is how I live. I don't really drink and I
don't sleep around--I truly hate noise--but this is America: there are lots of
opportunities for dissipation. This week, I chose to bludgeon my senses with
the Office and too much Panang curry, instead of drowning my heart and soaking
my spirit in a couple yellow mango margaritas and a one-night stand.
I need to live differently. Please understand, I love my
job. I love my job as much as I could love a "for the time being until I
figure out where I'm going to go to grad school and how to make a living not
being a computer programmer/engineer/doctor/lawyer/physicist". It could
just be that I'm too tired for the work that I do, that I'm not really up to
it, or that this week was especially difficult. Or, it could be that I approach
my job with the wrong attitude, that while I enjoy it, what I'm really waiting
for is the weekend, or the end of the day, so I can "really" live.
The problem with this is that when I get home I'm too spent (this is exactly
the right word) to live according to my creative, child-of-God nature. I ought
to be writing. I ought to be preparing papers to present at conferences, I
ought to have friends over to cook or bake, and I ought to be baking and
cooking whether or not anyone else is here. I ought to be reading poetry,
trudging through French short stories, and cultivating my awareness of God's
presence and favor. I ought to be building community with my roommate. I ought
to be working on low-stress craft projects.
But this isn't what happens, or it is not what happened this
week, when I come home.
When I come home I need to throw off the world, peel it off
like a soiled skin, throw it outside to be burned, locking the door tight. I
need to let my soul expand, and then feed it nourishing food. Steve Carrell
cannot do this for me. Only Jesus can. There is something about satire, about
watching other people live and work and worry, that is comforting (in a bad
way) to my soul on a weekday evening. But what if I had instead written more on
this blog? What would I have discovered? What if, in a week spent reading
Lauren Winner's latest book about embracing life in the middle, I had actually
been brave enough to live in the middle of my own twenty-something angst?
Sometimes I worry about the things I miss.
I did read my Bible
everyday. That's something. And I liked it. That's something else.
I want to be like St. Therese of Lisieux. I want to like
only what God likes.
I need to do work-work and leisure-work more joyfully.
For next time. . .on bearing fruit and needing to be buried
in the earth before you do.
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things (turn my
heart from wanting to watch the Office) and give me life in your ways.
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