the unbusy (fill in the blank)

The only really not-so-good thing that happened on my vacation at the end of August was that I left the book I was reading, Eugene Peterson's The Pastor, on the plane when we landed in Winnipeg. I put in a claim with Air Canada as soon as I discovered my error, but when there was no word from them after a week, I realised that I might never see that particular book again. So I hoped that whoever found the volume might enjoy it, and I ordered it again. On Thursday, it appeared at my door.

Yesterday I finished the chapter I had just begun to read when I misplaced the book - chapter 35. If I was the legislating kind, I would insist that all pastors read this chapter. However, what Eugene says here about his own experience goes far beyond the pastor vocation. I think it speaks to all of us who find ourselves running non-stop in this demanding, busy, over-scheduled lifestyle, always feeling like we are a bit behind while never quite getting where we want to go.

Below is an adapted version of Eugene's mini-manifesto.  Finding himself overworked and frustrated as a pastor, he offered his resignation. Instead of accepting his decision, the elders (leadership team) asked him what he wanted to do differently. This is how he responded.  I have taken out his word, "pastor," so that you can insert your own descriptor/vocation.

I want to be a ______ who prays. I want to be reflective and responsive and relaxed in the presence of God so that I can be reflective and responsive and relaxed in your presence. I can't do that on the run. It takes a lot of time....

I want to be a ______ who reads and studies. This culture in which we live squeezes all the God sense out of us. I want to be observant and informed enough to help [you] understand what we are up against, the temptations of the devil to get us thinking we can all be our own gods. This is subtle stuff. It demands some detachment and perspective. I can't do this just by trying harder.

I want to be a ______ who has the time to be with you in leisurely, unhurried conversations so that I can understand and be a companion with you as you grow in Christ - your doubts and your difficulties, your desires and your delights. I can't do that when I am running scared.

I want to be a ______ who leads you in worship, a ______ who brings you before God in receptive obedience, a ______ who [makes] scripture accessible and present and alive, a ______ who is able to give you a language and imagination that restores in you a sense of dignity as a Christian in your homes and workplaces....

I want to have the time to read a story to [my daughter].
I want to be an unbusy ______.   (p. 278).

In order to pursue these desires, Eugene chose to give up the "running" of the church. Instead of a resignation, he opted for a re-organization. He entrusted administrative tasks to people who were perhaps less qualified than he was, but who were willing to learn. He had to learn to trust them, and he also had to learn to live with the decisions they made, even when they were not the same ones he would have made. But he realised that he couldn't have it both ways. He says: "If they let me be the pastor I wanted to be, I would have to let them be the elders they wanted to be." (p. 280).

Yes, it is a trade off. We can't have it all and be unbusy. We have to decide what we really want and let the rest of it go.  Yes, I want to be an unbusy student, an unbusy wife and friend, an unbusy teacher and writer. I want to be reflective and responsive, not running from one task to the next, hoping to strike a few things off my to-do list before more gets piled onto it.  I want to understand and discern and observe so that I can be part of informing and tranforming myself and others. I want to have leisurely, unhurried conversations that honour and respect the incredible worth of the people I am talking to. What do I need to let go of, to give away, in order to be an unbusy Matte?

Quotes are taken from Eugene Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

The photo: Eugene's book amidst some of the reading I have to digest this term.

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become. Besides, I have studying to do. But this weekend, something changed. I read the book of Esther. First, some background: the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years). Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs. This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments. It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun. I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading. One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others). Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding. Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity. In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007. “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’ C...

outWORD by Matte Downey

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