Stop!

It happens to me, it seems, quite regularly. I imagine a lot of you can relate. Life is humming along, you're feeling, dare I describe it as content. Things are happening, in a good way. There's a lot going on, but you're managing. Then one day you start to feel slightly behind on what you had in mind that needed done.

Then the next day, maybe just feeling that slight bit more behind.

That's ok, you're still mostly on top of things. Ok, so house cleaning isn't really happening. There are piles of things that seem to be migrating from room to room, awaiting their turn at being tidied.

Then things are feeling not so in control. Life is feeling more like chasing down very evasive things that are just fast enough to stay one step ahead of you.

It creeps up. It's hanging out there, just in your blind spot. In a moment of total distraction, you're chatting with someone and they ask, 'how's everything going?' and before you realise it, the dreaded word has slipped out of your mouth...

BUSY!

Nooooo! Not again. The dreaded 'state of doing', rather than state of being, has asserted itself again. Despite every resolution to maintain proper balance, to be reflective and considered, to set aside definite times to step away from the screen, put the phone down, go for a walk, sit quietly, be deliberately idle, let your mind clear, pray, and hopefully listen with some sense of spiritual openness and expectation. It has happened. Again.

Standing at the beginning of Holy Week, which I genuinely and truly believe is a special and meaningful time of year to observe in an intentional way, and I feel exhausted and run-down. True confessions!

So I am reminding myself, again, that I need to stop with the busy. Just stop.

Getting ready for Monday in Holy Week, there was pretty much the perfect gospel story for me right now:

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

(John 12:1-8)

Mary and her family had been through a lot. Lazarus had died, and was brought back to life after being dead for several days. There's a real emotional roller coaster there. This Mary was the one who sat and listed to Jesus' teaching while Martha was, you guessed it, busy. This is a family that Jesus seems to spend some quality time with, friends who were dear to him. Mary, it seems, does nothing by half measures. She had some urge, inkling, notion, prompting, to make this extravagant gesture, to use us probably one of the most valuable material possessions she owned, the bottle of perfume, and there it went, she gave it away. I can only imagine what Martha must have thought. Judas Iscariot, well, he had something to say about it but the narrator clues us in on his character deficiencies.

Mary's gesture was not busy, hurried, self-important, or some kind of virtue-signaling ploy. Mary was all in, and in this gesture, it was all about being with Jesus. Just as she sat to listen and take in what he had to say, this was 100% about presence with. Not distracted. Not piling on the next important (or not important) thing. Not put off by what Judas, or any of the other onlookers, might think or comment.

I was chatting with a Japanese friend recently, who reminded me about the cherry blossom festival in Japan, which is a celebration of the very delicate, and transitory, blooming season of the cherry blossom. We have those trees here too in Dublin, and of course it's spring and lots of other things blossoming away as well. The dreaded 'busy' stands in such contrast to actually taking time, dare I say it, wasting time, to enjoy a walk, to go looking for the blossom, to enjoy it, to appreciate the beauty to nature, to be refreshed by it, and perhaps in all that to get as far as giving a grateful nod to the Creator!

Busy, I'm on to you. I know this has to stop. I want to enter genuinely into the journey of Holy Week. Like Mary, I want to present with, not distracted, irritable and worn out. Patient and persevering, yes those are necessary a great deal of the time, but also filled with love, joy and peace and enough wisdom to know when it's time to stop and take a seat for a while, in order to be ready to get up and go when it really matters.