Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

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Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

June 2000

Does your life balance work, play, rest, and God?

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

The Monday after I got back from Annual Conference in Lincoln I was wasted. I mean I was so tired that my eyes burned, my head ached, and napping seemed like just about the most fun thing I could think of. Going to bed late at night, getting up really early to commute back to Lincoln and trying to think hard and pay attention, to sometimes mind numbing details and legislation, is hard work. Work much like lots of people do every day of their work week (though I hope they get more than six hours of sleep J). As I thought about how tired I was and how much I have to get done (including this newsletter article), I realized I was out of balance and that I'm not the only one. I started looking around at the people driving by on their way to work and working in the stores.

When you work too hard, and focus only on work, without any breaks, you start wanting to play hard. You can't wait for Friday and are always planning what you are going to do with your weekend. Then on Monday you need a vacation from your weekend because you did too much. You are exhausted and now it takes two days to get back into the work schedule. This puts you behind at your work and you work really hard to catch up, and then you want to play really bad and the cycle keeps going, always behind and always swinging from end to end. These huge shifts from too much work to too much play, look a lot like bingeing. The same thing alcoholic drinkers do when they go all out drunk. It is a life lived out of balance, and it is only in the balanced center that we live in the presence of God all the time. If our lives are in chaos, swinging from extreme to extreme then we only pass by God in the middle as we swing by going towards the other end. It is a lonely and frenetic way of life, and lots of people live it and don't know why with so much success, they feel so empty.

Bingeing or unbalanced excesses in our lives of work, things, demands etc, is a problem we all seem to share in America. Yet we weren't designed to work that way. Our week is divided into seven days so that we can rest, and rest is not just play. We need to play, work and rest. Every day should have both play and work in it, and also time to rest. If it doesn't, then it is not human. Even machines break under constant stress, and humans need both play and rest to heal stress. We need rest for the body and play for the mind to rebalance and be prepared to grow.

In modern technological America we also seem to have compartmentalized our lives so much that we almost have multiple personalities. We are one person at work, a different at home, and a third playing with friends or on a trip. Yet we are a child of God in all those same places. We do violence to ourselves when we isolate the different parts of our personalities from each other and from God. We can not only be God's loved one on Sunday and a stranger the rest of the week. We are tearing ourselves apart when we do that, so that we can no longer find our true self, our unified whole self. When we fragment into all these different roles, the loneliness burns deep until we find ourselves doing things we don't recognize.

So how do you deal with the rat race, the daily grind? Even the words we use to describe our daily work reflect our alienation from it. We need to bridge that alienation by bringing all the different parts of ourselves together, to become unified. Letting both our playful side and work side be involved in the project. When Mary Poppins said that "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun, find the fun and snap, the job's a game." She was speaking a spiritual truth as well as a happy attitude. We have to balance the different parts and include them all the time.

The first step to finding the balanced self, is by taking God with us to work. I mean remembering that we are not alone at work, that the God who loves us it also there with us. And the other people there are also struggling and have trouble remembering that they are also surrounded by Angels. We also have to take God with us when we play. Playing is a holy act and a good one. God loves play and recreation. Remember the word recreation comes from to "re-create", and creation and re-creation has always been one of God's big things. J Even the process of redemption is being recreated in God's image, our true selves, our unified coherent self. I read a book on time management that said for preacher, the true path to managing our time so that we get the important things done, it to reunite our fragmented selves, to be coherent. Then we will know the most important thing to do, and the time will take care of itself.

There is always so much to do, our days are so full of running that stillness has become a scary thing. Yet how will I even learn to hear God or even myself, unless I spend time with silence, and at rest? When I blend some good work, play and time at rest into everyday, I find life has a lot more joy that I thought possible 5 years ago. Sometimes I do get carried away and bing at work. But then I noticed, that though I was putting in lots more hours, I wasn't really getting much more done and I was very tired and the joy of ministry seemed to have left. I realized that this was not a way to serve God with joy for the next 30 years. So then I tried playing, and at first I worked much better and efficiently, then I started playing too much (binging again) and I was not enjoying the play, it was becoming work and not rejuvinating. I started to enjoy and treasure the play only when I worked more. When you listen to yourself, you can find wisdom there, for God is already deep inside you giving you life. When I balance the work, play and rest, I get so much done, even when it is not all done, the important things get done and I see fruit all around me. Life has joy in it, and the people I work with and love, are growing. That doesn't happen when I bing. This seemed so important and yet so simple that I wanted to share it with you my extended family in God. Does your life balance work, play and rest? And do you take God with you into all you do? It really does bring joy to life. It is not a quick fix, but over time it makes a tremendous difference.

Try it and tell me how it works with you.

Thank you for being my family,Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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