This lyric from the song “Turn Turn Turn”, made famous by the Byrds and adapted from the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, keeps resonating in my mind as I prepare to do something that I have never tried in my entire working career. I am going to take a three week sabbatical.
Up until now, I have always thought forward momentum came through working harder, longer, with more focus. The idea of Ease and Grace was just another way of saying to work smarter. The possibility of making forward progress in any endeavor while taking time away from work was simply beyond my comprehension. However, I have long ago passed the time when my level of physical and emotional exhaustion could be remedied by simple spiritual treatments. I am facing a level of burnout that simply leaves me no choice but to adopt a spiritual practice that is utterly foreign to my typical way of being in the world.
I love my work. I love the people I work with. I love the possibilities that are unfolding right now in so many areas. And yet, I need a break. My fear is that if I take a break I will interrupt the flow and stem the momentum. I have held this fear and made decisions based on this fear over and over again.
When I first graduated from college I sold carpeting. The #1 salesman for the company that I worked for had a heart attack and survived. His doctor told him to do nothing more stressful than paint. I remember the frustration of the sales manager who was annoyed about losing his top producer. He tried to convince the salesman to come back to work by offering to let him work part-time. The salesman said no and the sales manager was annoyed.
This story reminds me of the conflict in values that comes up for those of us who are focused on production and results rather than quality of life or balance in our life. We keep saying that we will take on just this one more project. We think that things will ease up next week, or next month or after we complete this next task. We are measuring the value of our life by our production. There is another way to look at life. I have never seen it, but I am going to experience it over these next few weeks.
If you are like me, then we both are so used to experiencing life from a driven perspective that we think we always have one more push. And this leads to exhaustion, hypertension and burnout. It leads to an unbalanced life of striving rather than allowing. That #1 salesman taught me a lesson. If I keep pushing and become the #1 at anything I focus on, there is also a cost, that I lose everything else that is dear to me.
A sabbatical is very different from a vacation. I see a vacation as an opportunity to recreate and relax. It typically includes lots of activity and enjoyment that is not work, but it is still an action-oriented endeavor. It is not an experience of going inward and reflecting. It does not encompass much stillness A sabbatical, on the other hand, is probably hard work. It is just not external results-oriented work, it is interior work. It is the work of the soul seeker taking time to listen deeply to the recesses of the heart.
A sabbatical is not taking time away from my spiritual work- it is approaching my spiritual work from a different direction. It is removing the busy distractions of the day-to-day logistics and details of my work so that I am free to go deeper into my heart and soul. At least that is what I am postulating.
So I am taking time to see what renewal feels like. I am taking time to see what it feels like to not work and not feel driven to do more. I am going to experience faith that there is a Higher Power that can do what I cannot do: allow momentum to build with me doing nothing overt to make things happen. There is a season. A time for rest. A time for work. And a time for every purpose under heaven.
