Life, Change, and Stress

The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live within Your Limits, by Richard Swenson

No wonder that so many people are stressed out so much of the time, says Swenson: We are living lives that are overloaded. More and more of us live as if we have 10 percent more time, money, and energy than we really have. Every human being has limits, but we tend to deny them – and experience fairly predictable results.

Where does this push to do more, to achieve more, to be in control of more actually come from? It seems to be the inevitable fruit of the religion of progress. We think that more and more should be accomplished with greater and greater efficiency. And while, amazingly, this continues to work (somewhat), the cost is high. We find ourselves facing a complexity of life that is beyond our capacity to absorb and adapt to. We have tremendously high expectations for our lives. We are saturated with media, information, and choices. We turn to work, spending, and busyness to accomplish things they just can’t deliver.

“There are only so many details that can be comfortably managed in anybody’s life. Once this number has been exceeded, one of two things happens: disorganization or frustration. … Every year we have more products, more information, more technology, more activities, more choices, more change, more traffic, more commitments, more work. In short, more of everything. Faster." (p. 43)

Swenson’s comments about change and choice, knowledge and information really hit home with me:

“William Shakespeare was born in 1564. When he died in 1616, the world around him was not very different from the world he was born into. .. and so it has been from generation to generation, for century upon century. …there has been more change from 1900 to present than in all of recorded history prior to 1900. And there is no deceleration in sight.” (p 73)

“If in 1950 we had ten activities to chose from, today – compliments of progress – we have a thousand.” (p. 65)

If, as Swenson (a medical doctor) claims, stress is basically “an internal physiologic adaptation to any change in our environment,” living a low(er?)-stress life in today’s world is going to take some serious counter-cultural living. Things like deciding not to buy any new clothes, to cancel most of one’s media subscriptions, or to stay in the same house or job even if something "better" is available. Downward mobility. Ruthlessly pruning activities; deciding to give up hurry.

Frequent moves, new jobs, changing fashions, new opportunities, new products and services and programs – constant upgrades – all sound great, but each one means making changes. And we only have so much capacity for change.

Today’s tidal wave of knowledge and information is also overwhelming. This is what I've been dealing with lately, having pulled back from my job as a gatherer and disseminator of information. Even though I love it. I really needed this break.

I suppose we could just be grateful to have so much at our fingertips, but it is so hard to unplug, or to live with mystery or ignorance when so much is out there for the knowing. I don't know about you, but I feel pressure to have opinions about so many things, to make educated decisions about ever-changing and increasingly complex issues, and to simply “keep up” with the world. Yet this pursuit frequently leads to frustration.

“Francis Bacon, a contemporary of Shakespeare, is regarded by historians as the last person to know everything in the world. Since then, each of us learns a progressively smaller percentage of all the information that exists…. Furthermore, there is no reason to suspect that the situation will suddenly reverse, giving us a chance to catch up.” (p. 136)

Unplugging is increasingly difficult. Even when not tempted, internally, I feel pressured, externally. Feel as if I must defend my position on this. To truly pull away seems irresponsible or at least anti-social. There must be something wrong with you if you don’t have an iPhone, or if you aren’t on Facebook, or your computer or camera or MP3 player is a couple years old and less fashionable and can’t do what someone else’s can. Swenson was writing in 1998, but even then he marveled at the trouble and expense he saw people making in order to give away their precious privacy, silence, and solitude, primarily through our commitment to the latest communication technologies.

“We have no excuse left for not being on-call for the universe.” (p. 45)

No wonder we are – I am – so often overwhelmed. Who can keep up?

My only real criticism of Swenson’s book is that, ironically enough, it is written in an up-to-the-minute style – chock full of statistics and “current” examples that probably worked great for the presentations he was giving at the time but seem quite dated now more than a decade later. If you're looking for something more recent that to quote/reference/recommend, you might try Swenson's just released In Search of Balance: Keys to a Stable Life. I've got a hold on it at the library. My guess is it would cover some similar ground, with more recent data. Both are from NavPress and are "Christian" books though the author teaches in secular settings as well.

Questioning

As we try to make sense of ourselves and our world it’s those “why?” questions that seem most compelling, most crucial. Maybe, if we could get answers to those, those answers would be key to it all. Yet I’m coming to believe that with complicated systems, we can’t answer those “why” questions satisfactorily. Or at least that accuracy and clarity are usually inversely proportional.

In other words, if someone gives you a short, simple, astounding answer that seems to explain everything, they’re probably missing the mark. (The charms of Twitter, the beauty of brevity, etc. notwithstanding.)

Still I keep asking, and the answers, if not complete, at least shed some light on the issues raised by the questions. One of my big questions is, “why haven’t I figured out how to manage my life by now?”

Oh, it’s not a total mess, but as I’ve slowed down and used the time and space on my hands to take a closer look at how I live and how I feel about it, I’m not too impressed with myself – and I wonder how I got this way. I’ve come to realize some of the reasons that the coping strategies that once (sort of) worked no longer do: (1) I’m a different person than I used to be and in a different place in life, and (2) the world continues to change rapidly and throw new challenges at us, challenges my old strategies are not sufficient to overcome.

Two books that have been helpful in reframing my questions and providing some partial answers. “The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live within Your Limits,” by Richard Swenson is helping me understand why people like me live the way we do, and “The Vertical Self: How Biblical Faith Can Help Us Discover Who We are In an Age of Self Obsession,” by Mark Sayers, is helping me understand why we think about ourselves the way we do. Both offer some helpful prescriptions, alternatives, solutions. But at this point I think what’s most helpful is just seeing someone put these struggles into words and show me I’m not alone.

The next couple of blog posts will explore what these two books have to say.

Detour - time to write a paper

Holding back from blogging because I've got some other writing to do. I'm scheduled to present a "paper" at a meeting April 23.

Look at this paragraph sitting waaaaay too close to the top of the promotional flier:

Marti Smith is a Denver-based mission mobilizer for the mission agency Pioneers. She has trained dozens of short-term teams sent to unreached communities around the world to do ethnographic interviewing, asking open-ended, descriptive questions that invite people to teach them to see the world from their point of view. She will be presenting on the topic, "Listening as a Ministry: Empower Others by Listening Before Speaking."

Although I've taught what I see as my core material any number of times, I haven't prepared this particular presentation. Not yet.

If it were really just a presentation, no problem.

But the idea, here, is to "present a paper." If you move in academic circles very much that may seem to make sense, to be natural. But it's not my usual approach to studying and communicating things... "writing a paper" seems a stilted, unnecessary thing, compared to the act of preparing a presentation, or writing something more like a feature article.

If it sounds like I have an anti-academic bias.... well, yeah. But mostly I just feel insecure because I never went back to school. That I don't know what I'm doing, maybe.

I think I have it in me to write this paper. But I recently learned that in order to be considered for the national conference in September, the papers are due earlier: April 15. And today is - well, close, eh?

I'm planning to build it around some things I've posted here and taught in various situations over the last couple years and add in some examples from recent ethnography team reports. It's not smack-dab in the middle of this year's theme, but I think I can make it fit. The trick will to be able to make this stuff look academically credible instead of merely practical.

"We are looking for papers that (1) provide in‐depth analysis and reflection on significant diversity issues facing evangelical missionaries and that (2) document ways that evangelical missionaries are or are not attending to and coping with the challenges of diversity in mission work today."

This is a good year for me, because they're more interested in field research than book research:

"Case studies are welcome, as are research‐ and survey‐based papers. Especially desirable are studies that build upon field‐based research or in‐field missionary experience. Presenters are urged to grapple with actual issues faced by missionaries in the field and by mission agencies in carrying out their role."

The instructions also add:

"Papers should run 4,500 to 7,000 words in length, including endnotes or reference list. They should be formatted in accord with the Chicago Manual of Style. The papers need to interact with current relevant literature. Documentation needs to be complete, utilizing either endnotes or CMS’s author‐date style, whichever fits best with the paper’s subject matter."

Also, between lovely sabbatical activities like going for walks, reading novels, and trying out new recipes, I'm working on another writing/editing project - the devotional I mentioned earlier. It's coming along. Currently standing at 28,000 words. To put that in perspective, the 30-day prayer guides we've published over the years run about 10,000 words, the last ethnographic report I worked on came out at 19,000 words, and Through Her Eyes was about 70,000 words.

So, length-wise, writing a paper next week that's about 5000 words seems do-able. But writing one that's good enough to be presented at the annual conference and published, afterward, is a bit of a stretch, isn't it? So here's my plan:

1. Prepare for the April 23 presentation much as I would for giving a lecture, basing it on ones I've already given. I love this stuff, I know it works, and I've seen the lights come on in people's eyes when I present it. Even if it's not up to snuff to make it in an academic journal/volume, presenting it to an academic-minded audience should help me see ways it can be improved.

2. If there's time, I will take my verbatim-style lecture notes and start cleaning them up, formalizing the language a bit, adding in those pesky footnotes and the "interaction with the current relevant literature" that 90% of my [usual] audiences would only find stuffy but that I have to admit, would help. If there isn't time, or this doesn't happen before April 15, fine; nobody's making me submit this to the national committee. Perhaps someone else will be able to publish it down the road.

Those Who Will Not Stop

> See all posts labeled sabbatical.

In the introduction to The Rest of God: Restoring your Soul by Restoring Sabbath, Mark Buchanan paints the best picture I’ve seen yet of what happens to people who will not stop.

“It happened subtly, over time; but I noticed at some point that the harder I worked, the less I accomplished. I was often a whirligig of motion. My days were intricately fitted together like the old game of Mousetrap, every piece precariously connected to every other, the whole thing needing to work together for it to work at all.

“But there was little joy, and stunted fruit.

“To justify myself, I’d tell others I was gripped by a magnificent obsession. I was purpose-driven, I said, or words like that. It may have begun that way. It wasn’t that way any longer. Often I was just obsessed, merely driven, no magnificence or purposefulness about it. I once went forty days – an ominously biblical number, that – without taking a single day off.

“And was proud of it.

“But things weren’t right. Though my work often consumed me, I was losing my pleasure in it – and, for that matter, in many other things besides – and losing, too, my effectiveness in it. And here’s a secret: for all my busyness, I was increasingly slothful. I could wile away hours at a time in a masquerade of working, a pantomime of toil – fiddling about on the computer, leafing through old magazines, chatting up people in the hallways. But I was squandering time, not redeeming it…

“The inmost places suffered most. I was losing perspective. Fissures in my character worked themselves here and there into cracks. Some widened into ruptures. I grew easily irritable, paranoid, bitter, self-righteous, gloomy. I was often argumentative: I preferred rightness to intimacy. I avoided and I withdrew. I had a few people I confided in, but few friends. I didn’t understand friendship. I had a habit of turning people, good people who genuinely cared for me, into extensions of myself: still water for me to gaze at the way Narcissus did… I didn’t let anyone get too near.”

He goes on to say:

“God made us from dust. We’re never too far from our origins. The apostle Paul says we’re only clay pots – dust mixed with water, passed through the fire. Hard, yes, but brittle, too. Knowing this, God gave us the gift of Sabbath – not just as a day, but as an orientation, a way of seeing and knowing. Sabbath-keeping is a form of mending. Keep Sabbath, or else break too easily, and oversoon. Keep it, otherwise our dustiness consumes us, becomes us, and we end up able to hold exactly nothing.”

(The Rest of God: Restoring your Soul by Restoring Sabbath, pp. 1-3)

When You Reach the End of the Line…

Yesterday my last mechanical pencil ran out. (A sign I should lay off Sudoku?) Why do I share this humble detail of life with you, dear reader? It’s because, in the spirit of telling secrets, I confess: It seems I am a thief. A burglar. One who absquatulates (look it up).

You see, while I regularly stop by the office supply store – O Temple of Possibility! – to browse and to stock up on notebooks, tablets, and writing utensils for any researchers I am training – I cannot remember the last time I bought such things for myself.

Apparently, almost without knowing it, I filch all mine from the office.

It’s been almost two months since I’ve had an office to go to. Hence the lack.

Do you find your character suffering this sad flaw? Peace and integrity can be yours. For just over US$5 I purchased, free and clear, a score of pens and pencils from Office Max. And eased my conscience considerably.

If You Were to Join the Club...

For bedtime reading last night I picked up a Chesterton book, The Club of Queer Trades. Reminds me of the better-known The Man Who Was Thursday – but this one is less nightmare, more sweet dream. It’s a series of linked short stories. Each one is connected to a member of the club that gives the book its title. To qualify, he must have wholly invented a new way of making a living. For example, there’s the – no, I won’t give it away. You’ll have to read it for yourself. I particularly like “The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown” and “The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit.”

I suppose the premise marks the book as early modern; surprising industries are invented all the time these days, aren’t they? But then, as the narrator says, “The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world.”

At Easter dinner earlier in the day my friend B. told a story about his brother, a family therapist who also has a passion for candles. This man has strong ideas about what kind of candles are appropriate for various situations and seasons and dispenses his advice like a sommelier dictating wine pairings. “Does he do aroma therapy?” I naturally inquired. No, but B., an English teacher, thinks his brother should open a business that is a candle shop in front, counseling practice in back. It would be called, of course, “Scents and Sensibility”!

I suppose all of us look for vocations and avocations that combine our interests in satisfying ways. My mother – retired from software testing – now puts a lot of her energy into weaving. It provides a nice combination of math, craft, and problem solving. My sister has lately been melding her interests in natural science and fine art with some interesting drawings on paleontological themes (like this one). Me, I’m not so artsy, but am glad to find teaching and writing go so well together that I may never have to choose between the two.

What about you? If you were to creatively combine two of your passions, what would they be? Could you make a living at it? Or, where do you see striking combinations in the people around you?

Jesus Resurrected

Along with others from my church, about three weeks ago I finished a read-through of the Old Testament and began on the New Testament, wrapping up with the book of Revelation just a few days ago. It's been quite a journey; I'm so glad we did this.

Many were looking forward to turning the page from Malachi to Matthew: finally, the New Testament! The world had sure changed in 400 years:

Not only had the Jews survived, they'd increased. The scriptures had actually been written down and disseminated - in Greek, too. Many Jewish people seemed to know the law and the scriptures. Not only that, but they had taken them further and developed a whole body of tradition based on the law (creating, of course some bigger problems!) The whole system of synagogues had appeared on the scene... social structures that hadn't existed before, and were to prove quite significant. Groups like the Pharisees and Sadducees had come along, and the priesthood had obviously gone through some significant transitions (some of which were out of step with what God had instituted, to be sure).

Greeks and Romans had conquered and reshaped almost everything. In years to come the Roman church would have good reason to argue that these changes were instruments of God, and part of what helped Christianity spread and grow as quickly as it did: Indeed, Christ had been born in the "fullness of time."

Yet in flipping the page between Malachi and Matthew I saw many other things that had not changed so much. In some parts of the gospels Jesus seems much like the other prophets, bringing a challenging message that was a threat to many, saying things that must have seemed bizarre. Of course there were all those miracles, not everyday fare for a prophet. He spoke of and seemed to belong to an outbreak of spiritual transformation that was coming on the earth. While Jesus' popularity with the masses made it clear to those in power that something would have to be done about this man, I don't see many of the people around him changed, in essence, at least not as they would be changed in months and years to come.

So if Christ coming into the world is not, quite, yet, the hinge-point of everything, what is it? What made the Christian gospel into the unstoppable force we see in the book of Acts? Is it, as many evangelicals today seem to assume, what happened on the cross?

The latest issue of Christianity Today addresses the question. Fuller Seminary's J.R. Daniel Kirk writes:

"In the spring of my senior year in college, I was deeply immersed in the rhythms of Christian life. I was a leader in InterVarsity, participated regularly in a Bible study with other seminary-bound friends, set my Sundays aside for worship and rest, and read more than my fair share of extracurricular Christian books. As Easter approached, I began rehearsing the importance of Jesus' resurrection. I knew that for Paul and the other New Testament writers, there could be no Christianity without it. Yet one day as I was walking back to my dorm, it dawned on me that the gospel as I understood it had no need for Jesus to be raised from the dead.

"The story of salvation as I had learned it was, in its entirety, about the Cross. I would teach other students about the Romans Road to salvation and the Romans 6:23 bridge diagram. What each of these captured beautifully was that we had a sin problem that God overcame with the cross of Christ. But each presentation also omitted the Resurrection entirely. And why not? Once our debt has been paid, what else could we possibly need? What is so important about Easter?"

The transformation of people is a crucial component of God's plans for the world; the good news does not end with "Jesus died for your sins" but goes on meaningful partnership with God as he re-creates the world. Kirk suggests that not only were the disciples different people - confident, inspired, empowered - after the resurrection (as becomes clear in the book of Acts), but that Jesus himself was different :

"Jesus in the Gospels is like David in the Book of 1 Samuel. He has received God's anointing as the chosen king, but another king is currently on the throne. The story of the Gospels is one in which Jesus inaugurates a new reign of God and deals a deathblow to the imposter king through his death on the cross. If the Cross is the defeat of the old king, the Resurrection is the enthronement of the new. Jesus now literally sits in the space that the kings of Israel had figuratively occupied before him: at the right hand of God. Though the preexistent Christ has always been God's agent in the creation and rule of the world, the human Jesus is now joined to that role as Lord and king over all.

"This is the logic behind Jesus' claim in the Great Commission: 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me' (Matt. 28:18-20). At the Resurrection, Jesus has become the Messiah, the Christ, God's anointed ruler of the earth.

"Only after being raised from the dead can Jesus say, 'All authority has been given to me; therefore, go!' From his first appearance to Mary in the garden to his last appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus, when the resurrected Jesus appears, he almost always sends. The vocation and mission of the church as a sent people depends on the resurrected Jesus as our sender."

Happy Resurrection Day. He is risen!

>> Read all of Kirk's article, A Resurrection that Matters.