Burning Ones

I’m taking a class called Models and Mentors in the Christian Tradition. One of the things that this class has begun to highlight to me through some of the models and mentors (especially Henri Nouwen, who I’m growing to adore) is the need to be fully present in what we do. I don’t know about you, but I grew up just like most people in a frame of mind where everything that I did was about how fast I could get through it and how many other things I could do while getting it done. If you’d ask my wife, she’d tell you that I’m embarrassingly obsessed with attempting to do many things at once. Obsessed to the point where I’ll make us late to an important event because I just want to kick off one more task on my computer, or I’ll stuff my bag full of things to do because I think there might be a chance to do some of it during whatever we’re going to. Everything I do I try to do with only enough attention to get it done quickly and efficiently.

That’s stupid.

Ghandi said, There’s more to life than seeing how fast you can get through it. I’ve been meditating upon that for a few days now. Many of you might know that I’ve been riding my bike lately as much as I can. I’m beginning to really enjoy it. There’s something about powering your own vehicle and being so close with what you’re moving with that is very attractive to me. I love getting up in the morning and putting on my biking stuff and then pushing off the steps in the front of our house and feeling the cool air on my face. But to be honest with you, I’ve been in a race to see how fast I could be. I wanted to get my time down to the absolute minimum that I could. I found that I was simply pedaling along as hard as I could for as long as I could with my eyes fixed blankly on the road ahead of me, blindly looking for spots that might trip me up and bumps I could avoid.

I encountered that quote from Ghandi in my Models and Mentors class and it got me thinking. I would be pedaling along and that line would come into my head. There’s more to life than seeing how fast you can get through it. And I would realize that I don’t need to see how fast I can get some place. It’s better to be a few minutes later to something and have been fully present along the way than it is to have been focussed on the future while the present was passing you by unnoticed and unthought of. You see, I really, desperately want to wonder at God. I want to be awestruck by him. I want to encounter what he has done in Creation and in my life and be thrown down upon my face in worship. And there’s a simple fact; I cannot do this while I’m in a rush.

A quote that I love from Stephen Charnock is this (paraphrased), It is not by thought that we loose our wonder, but by a lack of thought. I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to be fully present to what I am doing. I want to be fully engaged with the person at church who comes up to me while I’m doing sound and talks to me. I want to be able to identify what’s important in life and not be distracted. An interesting post that got me thinking about how to do this in my own life was put up on Haiku Productivity. What Leo proposed, basically, was that in order to do anything well, we have to commit ourselves to only doing a few a things at 100% involvement. We will get less done! But it will be done better and we will experience it more.

So, I’m trying to commit to not multi-task anymore. I’m fine with committing some of my time to kicking off tasks that can be done without my attention. But no longer will I be reading my e-mail and talking online and doing my homework and listening for my phone and and and… I’m going to do one thing at a time. And I’m going to be fully present to it. I’m going to attempt to slow down on my bike in the morning and look at the sun drenched trees that God made and the sparkling creeks and the people in their cars and wonder, how have I become so blessed as to see this? I’d love to invite you to think about it as well, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Love you guys!