One good thing about living alone (well, almost alone, counting my four housemates) is that if I really want to take a day off and do nothing, I can do it without anybody bugging me about it (except for the sacred hour of cat-feeding twice a day). I can have breakfast at 6am or not until noon, dinner at 1pm or not until 6. I can skip a meal or cook up something particularly luscious, I can mow the floors today or let it wait until tomorrow, unless the dust kittens are too obvious in their plumping themselves in the middle of the floor as if to say "Neener neener neener, come and get me!"
I love my little refuge. Other than bills that demand my attention periodically and the fur-kids who likewise demand my attention periodically (and usually a lot more often), when and how I respond to the things needing to be done are up to me. After working during the week, which usually includes having lots of people tell me what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, it's lovely to come home, shut the door and allow myself to be rather than to do.
Jesus took time to just be rather than do. After his baptism he went into the desert for a retreat. Yes, he had to face the temptations that can arise for any of us on similar retreat (only we won't be asked usually to do things as tough as the ones he was presented with), but I am sure that much of his time and attention was focused on being -- being away from pressure to do this or that, away to get the batteries recharged, away to be with God. Periodically he would withdraw from the crowds to get that recharge, to be rather than to do the things a public ministry like his required:away from making decisions as to where to go, who to heal or see or talk with, how to appeal to those he wanted to reach. In order to truly know himself and his ministry, he had to know himself and the way to do that was to take time to be rather than to always be doing.
I've been reading a book on ministry and the laity. It's an anthology collected and added to by Verna Dozier, whom I admire greatly. Reading the essays, articles and interviews in the book, a comment by William Diehl jumped out at me: "To suggest that one's occupation validates or denies one's Christian status is to define Christianity on the basis of what we do rather than who we are."*
"...[D]efine Christianity on the basis of what we do rather than who we are." Now there's something to consider.
Is the job I do a defining characteristic that makes me Christian or not, or is it how I do that job? Are the beliefs I profess the things that make me Christian or is it how I live out those beliefs? Is how I worship a definer or is it that I involve my whole self in whatever worshipful activity that connects me to God in the closest, most intimate way?
What does my life and how I live it demonstrate my be-ing and not just my do-ing? Have I taken the time to really find out for myself what that be-ing really means? Have I used my time in my hermitage to do what I fancy or to get in touch with what is inside me? Do I just sit and wait for God or do I have to be actively thinking or enunciating words to fill the void? Can I just sit and be without doing something?
Can I be considered a Christian if I just do? God made me a being --- and it's up to me to cultivate that be-ing.
* Dozier, Verna, The Calling of the Laity: Verna Dozier's Anthology. (1988) New York: The Alban Institute, Inc. (68).
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