Give It a Rest

I just returned from Ione, which is just down from Metalline Falls, which is close to Border Dam—all of which is on the edge of the Washington-Idaho-Canadian border. And here, in this small corner of the world, things are quiet. Very quiet. And here, I found rest. Setting out with a kayak, the only sounds were an occasional waterfall and the movement of birds. No cell-phone, no lap-top, no slavery to overconnectedness, no blogging.

I’m not too great about rest. Like all too many, I have a hard time stopping. Living in two ministry worlds doesn’t help, but even if it were one world, I would still be a “Sabbath-breaker”, to use Eugene Peterson’s words. It’s ingrained in me to live at a pretty rapid pace, and I don’t wear this as any badge of honor. I came back from my years in Europe so burned out that I wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Oregonian entitled “Has Rest Become a Four Letter Word?” I was trying to get some balance, but finding my re-entry into culture here like entering a perpetual hothouse. So once again, it was nice to get away from the lights and the heat.

There is a lot of truth to the statement that while we tend to trade sleep for productivity, we would actually be more productive if we rested more. Without it, the jungle out there just keeps on thickening. When Lauren Winner was asked how to be countercultural for the common good, she wrote an article for Books & Culture on, of all things, sleep. She discovered that a lack of sleep leads to “sleep debt”, leading to huge costs, personally and societally. Sleeping, as she notes, may well be one of our essential acts of discipleship. It testifies to the Person of God, who rested. It testifies to the basic Christian story of Creation, to our own finiteness, as well as to our own mortality. Getting away to rest allows us to clarify values, imitate God’s rhythms, deepen our trust.

Anna Quindlen, in a Newsweek article, “Doing Nothing is Something”, put it especially well. Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or staring on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I did all of these—and more. I brought more than enough books to read, but often I could not get past an occasional Sports Illustrated article. I read what it is like to pilot a B-2 bomber (Atlantic Monthly), the political confessions of Billy Graham (Time), as well as the confessions of an eco-terrorist (Outside). One day I messed around for an hour looking at all the hilarious pictures on Despair.com with family and friends. Amidst the occasional spurts of energy, a 50 mile bike ride around Sullivan Lake and floating on rivers, there was the occasional gift of “enforced boredom”, as Quindlen puts it, where we “stare into space, bored out of our gourds, exploring the inside of our heads.”  This is, of course, when it gets scary.

I did work through The Cross and ChristianMinistry, and took an occasional dip into Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Challenge. But then I would remind myself I was on vacation and put the cerebrum back in neutral, and if necessary, go back to re-reading Buchanan’s The Rest of God to get my bearings. And I would focus on these words—

-if God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called to His purposes, you can relax. If He doesn’t, start worrying

-if God can take any mess and choreograph beauty and meaning, you can take some time off

-either God’s always watching the city, building the house, or we need to try harder