A Time and A Place

In the lectionary passage for last Sunday (the fifth Sunday of Lent for those following along in your hymnals), Jesus asks the question and then makes the statement, "And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour." (John 12:27)

This passage echoes my very favorite passage in all the Bible, Mordecai's appeal to Esther, "Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14)

Most of the time it seems like there is no right time for anything. Most of the time it seems that something... anything... or at least almost anything... is better to do than the thing that we are typically engaged in doing. Why?

Because busy-ness works. Keeping busy is a way to keep the fears at bay. It may or may not be successful with the wolves that are at the door, but it damn sure does a good job with distracting one from the scratching and baying that is going on outside. You can pretend that you are working, pretend that you are effective, pretend that you know what you’re doing and that a better day is right around the next bend, whether it actually is, or not.

I’ve been very good at this over the last few weeks. I can post at facebook and tweet on twitter. I can send out emails, add contacts and content to my LinkedIn pages and read countless articles on how to be a better internet marketer, seo maven, wonderboy, guru or rock star. I can even send out new proposals, spec articles, resumes, and samples with the best of them. I can check the weather, the surf, the time, and the stock market with the press of the F12 button for my widgets.

All of the activity brings with it a certain feeling of accomplishment. I’m doing SOMETHING… even if that remains somewhat unfocused and totally undefined. I AM doing something.

Or am I?

Perhaps instead, the noisiness, chaos, and frenetic activity is actually a replacement for really doing something. Perhaps it is a way of avoiding doing the one thing that might actually make a difference in everything. Staying put… sitting still… Being There. How often is the philosophy of Do Anything actually a replacement for Do The Right Thing?

A few weeks ago, Twitter gained a sudden sweeping tsunami of publicity when it was revealed that a number of senators were Tweeting during President Obama’s congressional address. The incident gained a lot of buzz for Twitter, and perhaps even a good deal of buzz for those congress persons engaged in the activity, but was it really the best use of their congressional time? Was Tweeting, instead of listening to the new president, really the better option? Was somehow snarking one’s own agenda into the greater reality of our collective citizenship a valuable use of consciousness, time and bandwidth?

Last night, a good friend of mine attended the opening concert of the new Springsteen tour. He spent the entire concert texting the songs played and occasional notes on his reactions. This while spending the evening, next to his wife, in front of The Boss. Now, while I enjoyed getting the texts and having a bit of a vicarious experience of the show, I am hard pressed to believe that the busy-ness of texting was an improvement over the true experience of soaking in the words, music, sights, sounds, smells, and experience of the event.

I KNOW for a fact that the busy-ness of reading the text was not an adequate substitute for either being at the concert myself, or more fully being with the family and friends who were sharing my Twitter-space at the time.

My dad used to tell a joke about a family visiting the Grand Canyon. The car pulls up to the side, everyone piles out of the car and rushes to look at the magnificent colorful earthen gash in front of them. Dad runs around the car, over to the edge of the canyon, back and forth around the family, click click clicking away on his camera. A few moments later, he climbs back in the car, turns the key, hits the radio and revs the engine. When nobody gets the hint he jumps out and yells, “Come on!” One of the kids turns around and says, “Wait, we just got here and I haven’t really seen it yet!”

Dad shakes his head, motions for everyone to climb in and says, “Don’t worry about it! You can see it when you get home!”

I used to take a lot of photographs myself. I still take a fair number and I am regularly distressed when - on certain road trips in the wine country in particular - I forget my camera. However, I believe I was forever cured of my obsessive shutterbugging one time on a solo drive up Highway 1 through Big Sur when I kept stopping to shoot photos of the sun setting into the Pacific. Somewhere along about the actual town of Big Sur, right near Esalen (perhaps there was some sort of awakened power point nearby) it dawned on me that I was doing - even by myself - exactly what the dad in the joke was doing. I was living inside my camera; I was not experiencing the life around me. At the time I was even pretty good at fooling myself into thinking that I was experiencing the outer reality even more deeply by absorbing it through the lens, and mediating it with my artistic consciousness.

Hogwash! As they used to say.

I put my camera into the back seat. Parked the car and climbed out onto a rock to watch the sunset. I then kept that camera in the back seat of the car for the rest of the trip. It took years before I even began to pick it up again. For the most part, I didn’t miss it.

For me, this is the change of life that I am most seeking as this Lenten season comes to a close. In the frenzy of economic meltdown, job insecurity, confusion, frustration, and disorder I want to learn to ask the questions that address the place I might take at the table, the ways I might add to the conversation, the truly worthwhile actions I might engage in. Not just do some thing… Do the RIGHT thing.

What is it I am truly here for? What is my real task? Why have I been brought to the kingdom at such a time as this?

What about you? What is it that you will say now? “Father save me,” or “It is for this reason I have come.”

Don't just do something... Sit there.