Of rest and recreation
"Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. " - Ecclesiastes 4:6
I have a special soapbox reserved especially for the topic of rest and work. I will try to refrain from soporific soliloquizing and make my case as simply as I can:
One of the things that we, the image-bearers of God, are supposed to be like God in is that we are meant to be both workers and resters. In Genesis we see God at work, creating, shaping, arranging, designing... But at the end of each day, God stepped back from his work and ENJOYED it. “This is good”, he said.
God himself models that there is a time for work and a time for rest, and to ignore either is unwise.
But.... contra to modern thinking, rest is not just about the cessation of activity. We tend to think of life in two categories: work, and then the rest is “not work”, or time off. But if we think of rest time as “time off”, we are not valuing that time for what it IS, we’re just describing what it isn’t.
So what is "time off" for? I believe strongly it's not just for sleep (lest you die), and is most certainly is not for errands (which is still work - it's just unpaid). But Ecclesiastes tells us what that ‘time off’ is for: it’s for leisure. Leisure which includes tranquility and enjoyment.
Enjoyment? Yes. I strongly believe that there's little point in working hard and being successful if we don't get to ENJOY it. And by that I mean enjoying the PRODUCT of our work, not just the process of it. It’s important that we don’t just finish our projects and move on to the next thing. We need time off to reflect on why that was enjoyable, and what was accomplished. There’s no point in working hard on a scrap book if you never take the time to enjoy it. There’s no point in spending hours in the garden if you don’t walk through it. And there’s no point in working hard to make your house beautiful if you don’t spend any time in it. No point in investing time and money in your kids’ education and future if it means you don’t STOP to just enjoy your kids and all that they are learning and discovering about the future. THAT’S what rest is for. It’s for taking the time to put the blessings of work into perspective, and enjoy them as gifts from God and be thankful.
Our culture idolizes work. Our opening question is usually "what do you do?"... and immediately everyone knows the inferred question is actually "what do you do FOR WORK?" The issue of work and rest was a big one in South Africa, but I find it's even a bigger one here in the USA. Americans seem to be very bad at resting! Even their vacations often involve a jam-packed schedule of driving thousands of miles and non-stop activities each day... on their 10 annual days of leave. It's as if the culture all have a deep set belief that if they actually stopped working for just a minute - the world would fall apart. The mindset seems to rule from the biggest of corporations to the individual. Work, work, work, work... and then a little "time off" for sleep.
It was not always so. The Ancient world valued leisure above work. I was fascinated to discover that the Latin word for business is ‘Negotium’ = “not leisure”. So whereas we see life in two categories: work and not work; they would have seen life’s two categories as “leisure” and “not leisure”. This is one of the things the Europeans gets right, I think: they see work as something which supports life. Not work AS life. They limit the work week so that there is time to enjoy the fruits of the work week. I think there's much wisdom on this.
When I was a law student and feeling tremendously pressured for time, I started thinking about the topic of rest and decided to experiment with taking a WHOLE DAY OFF one day a week. My friends thought I was crazy. We worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week anyway and still didn’t feel like we were getting things done – so what would happen when my week lost a couple more hours? Well, I tried it, and amazingly - I actually did BETTER at school. And I had a BLAST. I spent that day going to church, I had lunch with my Mom, I went to the botanical gardens, I watched a movie, I took a nap. I LOVED it. It threw my whole law school experience into a different light. I started to ENJOY my work more, and then loved my time off.
Oh dear. I am fully entrenched on the soap box now... so I need to reign myself in because Aye, here's the rub:
What on earth do you make of the idea of work and rest when you are a stay at home Mom? Jeremy and I were talking about this last week and I observed that the difference between his work and mine is that when he works, he actually produces something. Things move forward. I, on the other hand, just hold back the chaos. I am the official enemy of entropy (I should try that as a job description next time someone asks me what I do). I am not complaining about my work though: my task right now does involve raising kids, doing laundry, cleaning, clearing up, cooking and organizing... but what does REST look like in that? Even on a Sunday, meals still need to be prepared and children need to be fed and bathed... which is what I do every other day of the week so it doesn't really feel like a change of activity. What does tranquility, leisure and enjoyment look like? As a start... I really like watching my kids sleep. Watching their little chests rise and fall and their faces soft with sleep - I step back and DO enjoy them, and am thankful that on this day, they were my work.
Thoughts? Advice? I'm all ears.
I have a special soapbox reserved especially for the topic of rest and work. I will try to refrain from soporific soliloquizing and make my case as simply as I can:
One of the things that we, the image-bearers of God, are supposed to be like God in is that we are meant to be both workers and resters. In Genesis we see God at work, creating, shaping, arranging, designing... But at the end of each day, God stepped back from his work and ENJOYED it. “This is good”, he said.
God himself models that there is a time for work and a time for rest, and to ignore either is unwise.
But.... contra to modern thinking, rest is not just about the cessation of activity. We tend to think of life in two categories: work, and then the rest is “not work”, or time off. But if we think of rest time as “time off”, we are not valuing that time for what it IS, we’re just describing what it isn’t.
So what is "time off" for? I believe strongly it's not just for sleep (lest you die), and is most certainly is not for errands (which is still work - it's just unpaid). But Ecclesiastes tells us what that ‘time off’ is for: it’s for leisure. Leisure which includes tranquility and enjoyment.
Enjoyment? Yes. I strongly believe that there's little point in working hard and being successful if we don't get to ENJOY it. And by that I mean enjoying the PRODUCT of our work, not just the process of it. It’s important that we don’t just finish our projects and move on to the next thing. We need time off to reflect on why that was enjoyable, and what was accomplished. There’s no point in working hard on a scrap book if you never take the time to enjoy it. There’s no point in spending hours in the garden if you don’t walk through it. And there’s no point in working hard to make your house beautiful if you don’t spend any time in it. No point in investing time and money in your kids’ education and future if it means you don’t STOP to just enjoy your kids and all that they are learning and discovering about the future. THAT’S what rest is for. It’s for taking the time to put the blessings of work into perspective, and enjoy them as gifts from God and be thankful.
Our culture idolizes work. Our opening question is usually "what do you do?"... and immediately everyone knows the inferred question is actually "what do you do FOR WORK?" The issue of work and rest was a big one in South Africa, but I find it's even a bigger one here in the USA. Americans seem to be very bad at resting! Even their vacations often involve a jam-packed schedule of driving thousands of miles and non-stop activities each day... on their 10 annual days of leave. It's as if the culture all have a deep set belief that if they actually stopped working for just a minute - the world would fall apart. The mindset seems to rule from the biggest of corporations to the individual. Work, work, work, work... and then a little "time off" for sleep.
It was not always so. The Ancient world valued leisure above work. I was fascinated to discover that the Latin word for business is ‘Negotium’ = “not leisure”. So whereas we see life in two categories: work and not work; they would have seen life’s two categories as “leisure” and “not leisure”. This is one of the things the Europeans gets right, I think: they see work as something which supports life. Not work AS life. They limit the work week so that there is time to enjoy the fruits of the work week. I think there's much wisdom on this.
When I was a law student and feeling tremendously pressured for time, I started thinking about the topic of rest and decided to experiment with taking a WHOLE DAY OFF one day a week. My friends thought I was crazy. We worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week anyway and still didn’t feel like we were getting things done – so what would happen when my week lost a couple more hours? Well, I tried it, and amazingly - I actually did BETTER at school. And I had a BLAST. I spent that day going to church, I had lunch with my Mom, I went to the botanical gardens, I watched a movie, I took a nap. I LOVED it. It threw my whole law school experience into a different light. I started to ENJOY my work more, and then loved my time off.
Oh dear. I am fully entrenched on the soap box now... so I need to reign myself in because Aye, here's the rub:
What on earth do you make of the idea of work and rest when you are a stay at home Mom? Jeremy and I were talking about this last week and I observed that the difference between his work and mine is that when he works, he actually produces something. Things move forward. I, on the other hand, just hold back the chaos. I am the official enemy of entropy (I should try that as a job description next time someone asks me what I do). I am not complaining about my work though: my task right now does involve raising kids, doing laundry, cleaning, clearing up, cooking and organizing... but what does REST look like in that? Even on a Sunday, meals still need to be prepared and children need to be fed and bathed... which is what I do every other day of the week so it doesn't really feel like a change of activity. What does tranquility, leisure and enjoyment look like? As a start... I really like watching my kids sleep. Watching their little chests rise and fall and their faces soft with sleep - I step back and DO enjoy them, and am thankful that on this day, they were my work.
Thoughts? Advice? I'm all ears.
posted by Bronwyn at 8:26 pm
9 Comments:
Great blog Bronwyn! I don't have anything especially insightful to add. However, I wanted to thank you for posting this poignant reminder of the need for true rest!
Well said indeed...
What about a Mom day off, where it's Daddy day. And then you can hit the Arboretum, have coffee with a friend, watch a movie, take a nap. :) Oh and for meals, how about a double batch on a different day so there's no cooking that day. :)
Of course, having said all that, I should take my own advice. :)
Great thoughts Bronwyn. I think one of the breakdowns in the contemporary theology of rest is the confusion between leisure and entertainment. The latter can be a tool for the former but they are not coextensive.
As for Sabbath for Moms, Amanda and I have had that discussion. It does seem to be the one job you can not get away from. We do try to protect Saturday morning for stuff she likes to do (mostly garage saleing and jogging) but 2-3 hours seems a paltry reward for a week of hard work
Maybe rest for a mama comes in decades, not days; maybe the rest of a mother comes when she becomes a grandmother and can truly enjoy the fruits of her labor, watching her children, whom she reared, rear children of their own, and getting to enjoy those children without all the responsibilities... Maybe?
maybe the sabbath really was made for man...
.. woman has to wait?
Do you think leaving off household chores for a day would be enough of a break in routine to make it feel more restful? So instead of doing laundry, going to the park together? Instead of cooking (unless that IS relaxing for you), eating leftovers?
Hi Bron!
This is my first look at your blog. I was actually rereading your Christmas poem( that was REAL good!) when I saw the link.Hmmm. I've had this discussion with Sarah W. She pointed out to me that men often have high-impact jobs. That is, they go to the office, it is very stressful, they come home and it is time to relax. Our challenge, is as you pointed out, the "ongoingness" of the job.
The "it is never done" ness. On the other hand, the beauty of being a stay-at-home Mom is that we are FREE. We don't have to be at the office and sit at the desk and have a certain amount done for the boss.
But, I can be my own worse boss at times. Because that to-do list does hover!!!! I am blessed though with a husband who praises me when he hears I did something fun or restful, so that helps. Because of his influence and working through some of your questions myself, I do try the mini-vacation approach.
You know, just a few minutes of putting up my feet with a book when the kids are sleeping? Stopping the work and taking that walk with them? And I pray, I pray and try and remember to pray. For wisdom when to ignore the to-do list and when to hit it hard, so I can ignore it later:) thanks for this encouragement to keep thinking and trying
Love
Loki
Is one allowed 2 comments:)- it is my first time, so maybe that is ok?
I forgot my one-day-a-week plan. I do try one am a week to focus on doing something for my own soul, brain or enjoyment. In Korr that is off course a bit harder, because inevitably the day that I am supposed to do that, there is a crisis somewhere. But, here in Cape Town i have asked one of the W girls from Holy Trinity, to come for a couple of hours on a Thurs am and look after the kids just here in our house. She does some fun 'school' stuff with them and I run out to have my hair cut or go for a quick cup of coffee down the road. It has been heavenly. She is someone I really trust. If there isn't a young, unmarried girl like that around, how about trading a baby-sitting thing with a friend? You do it one am a week for a couple of hours, she does it the next? Just an idea...
I've been thinking about this a lot. I also did the Sunday off thing at Varsity and it was great! Now weekends are often harder work than the week. I like what Bethany said - our rest is coming. (Unless we go straight off and get jobs when the kids start school!) Also maybe mommy work is different because it's serving our families. I'm sorta hoping that when I manage to find true joy in serving my family then Sundays can be days of rest with some joyful dishes and tidying and bum wiping on the side.
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