Three Little Words
I’ve been teaching a lot about discernment lately, encouraging students to include prayer in their decision-making, listening for God’s voice in the choice. Of course, we all know that decisions are easier if there is a positive and negative or pro and con. But, efforts for prayerful discernment are required when we have two good choices and only one can be chosen.
At this time of the new semester, which is traditionally a very busy one precisely because we wanted it to be less busy than the fall was, one topic for discernment which presents itself to me most often is how to engage in healthy self-care—or more precisely, how to say those three little words, “No. Thank you.”
Self-care is particularly critical for campus minsters because we are watched by our students almost constantly. We become “passive teachers” like our bulletin boards and display cases, passing along ideas without really being fully engaged in the process. One thing we may indeed be teaching them while we are busy with programs, projects, and a multitude of demands is that we have no control over the violence which surround us. I’m not talking about guns or weapons of war. I’m referring to the violence of busy-ness, even when trying to “save the world.”
Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander remarks about this when he says,
"The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist...destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful."
Some of us understand this messiah complex more than others. But, even those of us who do not desire to save the whole world, can still fall into the trap of having over-crowded, Sabbath-free schedules. And, these over-busy times which deprive us of God’s gift of Sabbath rest, are times of violence against ourselves, as Merton suggests. They deprive us of sacred breath; they smother us. Our response to too many good choices must be a careful discernment about what this means for us and for our ministry.
When all of the valid requests — the liturgies, crises, meetings, spiritual direction sessions, spring break service fund-raisers, interfaith initiatives, prayer groups, and phone calls come together, it can be overwhelming. We must discern what is a priority and what can receive a gentle, “No. Thank you.”
Perhaps this Lent is a time to begin some new practice. While that seems like “one more thing” I invite you to give it a chance to change your heart. Begin with at least 10 full minutes of silence. This means silence without words to read or recite; silence, without words to type or construct; and silence, without phones to answer. Before you turn on your computer or check your voice mail each morning, create a space for your Guardian Angel to do her job—to stand guard so you may listen as God reminds you that you are loved, that you have enough, that you do enough, that you ARE enough.
At the end of the ten minutes, ask God to enlighten your hand as it types or writes your list of things to do. Ask God for assistance as you give a priority to each item on that list for the day. An A denotes a must do; a B denotes a might do; a C denotes can wait. And, when new requests come across your desk, delay deciding which letter can be attached to it.
Ask God again to give you wisdom to know which of the A’s is a 1, a 2, or a 3, etc. End your To Do List with a prayer for continued perspective and calm. Attempt to follow your numbers and not to take a short cut by doing the C’s first. Check each item off of the list. Do not scratch through the item to obliterate it; leave it with a check so you will be affirmed when you see what you have accomplished.
Finally, after six days of doing this, sit in silence to prepare for your Sabbath day of rest. Create a space in your calendar and time in your life to ask yourself or to read how others explain what Sabbath really means. I recommend Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath or Norman Wirzba’s Living the Sabbath, though there have been many wise teachers who have also written excellent guides.
On that last note, I close by remembering a professor who reminded our class that the Sabbath was not made so that an almighty God could rest, it was created because we need to rest. May we use Lent to give ourselves a chance to discern our best Yes to God by living with a sprinkling of three little words, “No. Thank you.