Bob Dunham, pastor emeritus of the University Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill, “Rest As a Key to Personal Well-Being”
Rest As a Key to Personal Well-Being
--- Bob Dunham
Decades ago, the Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote a song about a child who was delighted by dragonflies and amazed by the world around him, but who grew impatient as he got older and wanted the pace to quicken. I sang “The Circle Game” to my children when they were young, lamenting that we’re but “captives on a carousel of time,” unable to return and relive the days behind us as the years increase their speed. In the third verse of the song, Mitchell sang:
Sixteen springs and sixteen summers
gone now,
Cartwheels
turn to car wheels through the town;
and
they tell him, “Take your time; it won’t be long now
till
you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”
It’s true,
isn’t it? Every year we live, life seems
to increase its pace. I suspect that
perception has long been true, but it seems even truer in our time, now that
hurry has become the standard operating speed of our culture. Whether one
visits the C-suites of business leaders or the apartments of young laborers,
the universal refrain is: I am so busy.
How well we know that refrain. We say it all the time: crazybusy, as if it were one word.
And so, we hurry through our days. We hurry because people depend on us,
because we want to honor the commitments we have made, because we want to fit
it all in. I am so busy, we say. It’s
no wonder we are so weary.
Such busyness is a hindrance to the emotional and spiritual well-being of clergy and laity alike. Overwhelmed at times by the demands and obligations of our lives, we struggle to manage time. With our online calendars and day-planner apps, with all our synchronizing devices, we long to feel in control, to feel like we have a handle on time. And yet, in the midst of the hurry, beneath the competent face we present the world, doubt creeps in. We sense that something is wrong with our relationship with time, that despite all our organization and activity, we are missing something vital. We wonder if the values we profess are really the values we embody as we rush from task to task. We wonder, when in the hurry to prepare a dinner, we realize we haven’t heard a word our child has been saying. We wonder, when we have to reschedule a visit to an aging parent yet again and worry about how many more visits we might get. We wonder, when we are halfway down the block before realizing that someone has spoken to us. We wonder, when we find we have no idea of the phase of the moon or whether the last leaves have fallen from the trees. In such moments, we feel the gap between the values we profess and the constant motion and hurry of our everyday lives.
Beneath our busyness, the doubt and wonder signal a longing for rest, a longing placed within us by our creator, who built a rhythm of work and rest into the very order of creation. The fourth commandment tells us to keep the Sabbath, and the command is intended not as a burden, but as a gift. Sabbath rest is a gift that helps us develop a different relationship with time; it helps us to understand and live into time itself as a gift. “Remember the Sabbath day,” says the commandment, and maybe the assumption behind it is that we will forget, and we know that, if given enough time, we will forget. (Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives. Bantam Books, 1999, 6.) And when we do, we forget not only the command, but also its inherent promise of space for serenity, rest and restoration.
One of the books I keep on my nightstand is the Anglo-Irish poet David Whyte’s Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. I find many of the brief word-studies Whyte offers stirring and spiritually replenishing. Regarding the word “rest,” he says, “Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be…. To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right….” (Consolations, 142)
The rest Whyte envisions is consonant with the Judeo-Christian notion of sabbath – of relinquishing so that we may return to our true Center, thus enabling us to return to our lives and labors with a renewed sense of purpose. Rest is essential for the maintenance of both body and spirit, especially if we remember the re-centering part as well as the relinquishing part. And if we remember, we may find ourselves truly transformed by the rest.
As Whyte says, “Rested we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it; rested we care for the right things and the right people in the right way. In rest we reestablish the goals that make us more generous, more courageous, more of an invitation, someone we want to remember, and someone others would want to remember, too.” (Consolations, 183-184)
Remember the Sabbath Day, says the commandment that is also a promise. It is a promise that is echoed in the words of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel in the Christian New Testament: “Come to me, all you who labor and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” That is what Jesus offers, and he offers it to all who will align their lives with his. The promise still stands. And goodness we need it.
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The Lutheran pastor Barbara Lundblad says that our burdens may be no heavier than a cell phone, our labor no more demanding than pushing the buttons on our washing machine, but we know what it is to long for rest. Or maybe we have no work at all, having been laid off after years with the same company, or we’re still looking for our first job after high school. Our days may not be filled with work, but neither are they graced with rest. What Jesus means by rest is more than sleep or a break from our routines. It is the rest St. Augustine meant when he said, “O God, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Without relief from our frantic seeking, without finding space in God’s gracious provision, we remain restless even when we manage to take time off. (“I Will Give You Rest,” Day 1 sermon, July 04, 1999)
My grandmother used to tell how as a child she shared in the chores on her parents’ Missouri farm, one of them being plowing behind an old mule. I still laugh when I remember her description of the day they worked the mule so hard that it finally reached the point of utter exhaustion. “You know,” my grandmother used to say, “That old mule just sort of sprawled out there in front of the plow, as if to say, ‘That’s it. I've had it! I just can’t go any further! I gotta rest!’”
I know the feeling. There have been
times in my life when I have spent myself for good causes and yet have come to
the place where I couldn’t go any further...where I didn’t think I could
move...where I couldn’t think straight.
Have you been there? Have you ever been there? Are you there right now? If so, perhaps it’s time to consider the gift of Sabbath. It is a gift we all need, yet a gift we so seldom claim, caught as we are on this “carousel of time.” And Sabbath rest is still ours for the taking… pure grace, even if in the form of command.
Bob Dunham is pastor emeritus of the University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, where he served as pastor and head of staff for 26 years from 1991-2017. His post-retirement service included a two-year stint as Interim Senior Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York. He and his wife, Marla, now live at Carol Woods.
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