Lent and Busyness

Silence is true wisdom's best reply.
- Euripides 

I have been making a study of busyness and how that looks in our lives. Particularly as we have now entered the 40 days of Lent, looking at what it means to "be still and know that God is God." These 40 days are supposed to be a time of slowing down to spend more time in quiet, prayer, and abstaining from something so that we are more centered in our souls.

When it comes to living busy lives, we are all experts, and I don't mean that as a compliment. We have all grown accustomed to keeping that busyness as a constant every week. Whenever we get a reprieve from the hectic nature for some quiet days we have a hard time transitioning from one extreme to the other. We are used to the fast-paced hours that when we actually slow down or come to a break, we feel out of sorts, like something is missing because we don't know how to slow down.

What an awkward way we live life. Instead of embracing balance, we cram so much into our lives we become perpetually unbalanced, which becomes the new "norm". We henceforth forget what slowness, resting, thinking, and musing is. It takes huge leaps to make our way back to a place of stillness from that skewed norm, and that is not an easy task.

I have found that it doesn't work to take one escape or event to restore such a calm state that I may venture into readily, but a daily practice is needed. In the schedule of hours, I would claim that we need to allow time for stillness/rest/solitude on a daily basis, just like we do for sleep. 

It is only if we see it as important to our everyday that we will actually do it, and find great benefit from it. If we leave stillness on the sidelines, with a leftover if-I-have-time-to-do-it mentality, it will never happen. There is always something in your time that will grab your attention away from slowing down to be quiet and still. 

I have observed that our bodies and souls have trouble entering a state of slow and still to experience truly reflective times. In a culture that values "success", ambition, and more of everything there seems to be little room for the times that actually restore us, which may be seen as wasting time. Paradoxically, that may be the most valuable time of all.

How many people in our society experience burn-out? Study those people, or look back at yourself if it was you. Were there regular times carved out for being restful, quiet, and reflective? There is something here to pay attention to. We were made with the ability to do amazing things. To think, create, and produce. But not non-stop. Built into our human nature is the need for rest (and sleep!). If we think we can do it all and forego the restorative time, we are self-deceived. But not just rest, I would also add solitude/reflection/meditation. 

I will be the first to admit my need for quiet time. I crave it. I know many people do not, as it makes them uncomfortable to be in a quiet place. It is productive time, however much it may look like it is not productive in a worldly sense. But are we building up treasures on earth, or in the heavenly realm? Is what we are doing with our time creating more from an eternal perspective, or a worldly?

The world will try to steal away our quiet time to make it busy and cluttered. The heavenly realm will try to restore us to make us wholly who we were meant to be, by being less dependent on the world. May our choices with our time reach ever more toward the latter.