(A comment on the previous blog was very helpful, so we've elevated it to a guest post here. Please read the prior article for it to make sense) Well firstly, I think the title [of the previous post] should be: "Buyers regret? Be-do-be-do-be". It should start with 'be', then follows a cycle of do be do be do. And finally, at the end of our lives we just be again. Be dead physically, be with God eternally. Right at the start of Jesus' ministry period he is baptized and then God says: "This is my beloved son with whom I am well please". I've often imagined Jesus looking up to heaven and saying: "But I haven't done anything yet!". I've also often wondered why he waited so long to start his ministry. Gosh, if I knew I was the messiah, the savior of the world, I would have started teaching and preaching and healing and all that stuff at least as soon as I was old enough to drive! What on earth was he doing for 30 years? Maybe he was just being? Its not just the religious culture that focuses on doing, its incredibly intrinsic to secular culture. At least modernist secular culture. I don't have space to talk about post-modernist culture! I see it in my fathers generation, and my grandfathers generation. The success of your life is defined by what you have achieved. I hear my father telling people so proudly that I have done a PhD. That I work at a University. That I give guidance to governments. It makes me quite desperate because I feel the pressure to continue achieving things so that he can keep being proud of me. What I would rather hear my father say is: "My son rocks, I just love spending time with him". Thats it. To hear my father say that would be earth moving for me. I've started trying to tell my kids that. Not just that I love them. That I really enjoy just being with them. They need to know that. My wife challenged me the other day by saying that she really hopes our kids aren't very clever! Her point is that she sees very capable clever people living incredibly pressured lives trying to live up to the expectations the world has of clever capable people. She would rather our kids were pretty mediocre, preferably that they have to struggle a bit to achieve much at all in a worldly sense. She would rather they grew up learning that real achievement is growing in humility, compassion, love, service. Its incredibly hard to learn those things when there are massive expectations that you achieve great things and "change the world". And so to reiterate the main message of the article I guess. The doing has to stem from the being. Otherwise the being stems from the doing and your identity rests in what you achieve which is scary. Very scary and very contrary to Gods view of things. And finally, the article begs the question of how do we just be? I'm not sure we ever really learn that until we die. But I think one clue I have started to home in on is that being is best done through doing something that has absolutely no link to any sort of achievement. That's why I stopped running races a few years back. The being I experienced in running on the mountain was lost to the pressure to become fitter, stronger, faster. That is also why I don't do quiet times. Because I feel like failure when I skip one and so the being is superseded by the pressure to tick off another quiet time completed. Funnily enough, for me, right now, gardening is the thing. Mostly because no-one expects me to be a good gardener! I don't think I am a good gardener. I haven't a clue what I'm doing to be honest. The other day I discovered that one plant I had been tenderly caring for is actually a rampant weed... I'm now quite attached to it. But there is still an intentionality to it. When I garden I talk to God. Sometimes he talks back but often he just listens to me prattle on about all the stuff going on in my life. But sometimes he does talk and sometimes I hear him. And that is enough for me to step back into doing... for a few days. Then I need to spend some time in my garden again. Be-do-be-do-be-do-be-done.
1 Comment
Ang
16/4/2014 12:15:12 pm
I like my husband
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Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
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