The Courage of Doing Nothing

A few days ago, one of my friends from college posted the following "Poem for Busy People" on their facebook page:

Cramped

I need margins in my life. But I am
Crammed right up against my limits of
timefocusemotionstrength

Therefore it doesn’t take much for me to spill
over into the spaces,
Filling them until I have nowhere left to go.

I need margins. But everything in me wants to do
all I can. Be all I can be. Save the world
from sin and destruction.

Then I have so little time for rest and love.
So little time for quality so great is my quantity.
Rest and Love are segmented parts of my week,
teetering on the edge of my schedule
Where the slightest breath can knock them off,
treated like chaff when they are really marrow.

If I have a Palm Pilot that can keep track of all appointments;
if I have the ability to add more people to my schedule;
if I know all about grace and rest and love
but have not love and rest,
I am a tired disciple, a dim light, a busy Martha.

All that I have been taught tells me to do more.
Tells me that I can be God. That God needs me
in 100 places at once. That I can be Superman if I
beat my arms furiously enough against the air.

In order to make room for margins,
what will have to fall?
If I don’t make room for margins,
I will be falling.

—Marshall Benbow

In such a fast-paced, utilitarian driven society, it's hard for most of us to not feel guilty in taking the time to rest, to make room for the margins so that we can fully nourish our minds, hearts and souls.  Sometimes I find myself making excuses for why I don't have enough time to go to mass, go to yoga, or even make healthy meals at home.  But for me, the undeniable truth is that sometimes the silence and the rest scares me.  This fall, I have had a change of pace in terms of my schedule, which is more socially balanced than last year, but much more of a commitment than I have hours in the day.  Thus, quiet and rest often fall to the wayside, taking with them prayer and contemplation.  I have never been too "good" at prayer to begin with, mainly because my mind is always flooded with thoughts of anxiety and competing voices.  However, it has become very clear to me that I've been keeping so busy not only because I like to feel useful, but also because I'm frankly scared of what would happen if I really self-reflected.

I am definitely not afraid of my own deepest fears or inner doubts- in fact, I would rather confront them head on and try to become more mentally healthy than live in denial of them.  But there is something within me that just doesn't want to "deal" with what is really going on in these changing seasons of life.  It's easier for me to just plunge into my work (be it pastoral or academic) than to go, take my journal, and go sit by the lake.  Because I know that I have a lot of things that I haven't really taken the time to process, but am scared of what that entails.  Sometimes we have things churning inside of us that come up so unexpectedly.  Maybe it's God continuing to knock on the door of my heart until I finally have the courage to open the door, and confront the fact that I don't even know if he/she is really there for me anymore.  I need to have the courage to do nothing, in order to find out. To do otherwise would be for me to be closing the margins of my life, to the point where I just spill over and fall.

In yoga, there is this heart-opening pose called "dolphin" pose, and you literally prop your body on yoga blocks in such a way that your heart is wide open and above the rest of your body.  During that pose, while an acoustic version of "Bring me a higher love" was playing, I cried.  I couldn't stop, and I was so embarassed!!  I wouldn't have known that I had that inside of me until I actually stopped, did nothing, and opened up my heart.  Maybe I need to try that again sometime...