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"Becoming More by Doing Less"
A typical, compulsive American man took a safari to Africa. I say he was a typical man because he had an agenda. He had a timetable and he was in a pall-mall hurry and he wasn’t about to ask for directions when he got lost. But what made him a typical American was he couldn’t just go on the safari. No, he had to take stuff with him, you see, because that’s what makes us Americans. Stuff. We not only have stuff, we take stuff with us when we go places. And now we pay extra for it on the airline to take that extra stuff. Then when we get there, we buy more stuff and bring it home. And then we put it in that place we used to keep our cars. Every once in a while we go out there and feel guilty and move the boxes around. And if we feel too bad, once a year we put a table out in front of our house and sell our stuff to our neighbors. Then we go around the neighborhood and we buy their stuff real cheap.

But this American had so much stuff, he hired two tribes—two tribes!—of people to carry all his stuff. On the first day they got up very, very early and traveled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the second day they got up very, very early and traveled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the third day they got up very, very early and traveled very, very fast and went very, very far. And on the fourth day, he got up and the tribe people refused to move. They just sat by a tree and he’s ticked off. The translator said, “They’re waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”

That’s the way we live. That’s the way I live. We live in a world that is addicted to busyness. We live in a world that worships at the altar of the superlative: whatever’s bigger, whatever’s faster, whatever’s newer. Just think about the way we talk to each other. When we greet each other, “What do you do,” or “What have you done today,” or “What have you done lately?” And we live in a world where important people are busy people. We have turned multi-tasking into a spiritual gift. Trust me. If my cell phone were to ring now, I’d probably reach it and answer it because, you never know, they might be more important than you are!

I’ll tell you what, though, here’s the deal: if we live this way, hectic and busy, it’s going to take a toll. I know personally. I’m married, but it’s not my first. You see, I know what it’s like to kill a marriage. Literally. Here’s the irony: I did it when I was working hard for Jesus. I was busy doing good stuff with a big church with all the accolades and all the pats on the back. But here’s what happens, if you don’t say no to something in your life, no will be said for you by default and you will end up saying no to the people you love the most. I did that and I don’t want to do that any more.

Maybe it’s the same for you. Let me ask you these questions: Have you ever said yes to something when you knew that the only real answer was no? Have you ever responded to someone’s question, “How are you dong?” and the only answer is “I’m exhausted. I’m completely stuffed to the gills. I don’t know!” Or have you ever found yourself in a conversation and then halfway into it you realized, “I’m not even here!” Like the little boy who said to his mama, “Mama, mama, listen to me! But this time with your eyes.”

So what’s the answer? Well, let me tell you a story. It’s from the Gospel of Mark. It’s about the way Jesus handled his busyness. The Gospel of Mark is the oldest record we have of Jesus’ life and in the Gospel story it says this: “That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon possessed.” Did you hear the word “all” there? Sometimes we hear our Scriptures being read, for whatever faith we are, and it kind of goes right over our head, but sometimes they’re pretty straight-forward and humorous.

The next verse says: “They brought to Jesus all the sick and demon possessed, and the whole town gathered at the door.” You’ve got to think about that for a minute! You know, “Hello honey. Evanston is over for dinner!” All the sick and demon possessed and the whole town gathers at the door. And then the next verse: “And Jesus healed many.” We have a mathematical problem here. All the people are brought and Jesus healed many.

Now, this story isn’t about healing. This story is about self-care, self-nurture, boundaries, and what we call Sabbath or the “power of pause.” But first we’ve got to get the mental picture. This is first century Israel and we think of people being healed just like we think of people lining up at Starbucks for their coffee. This is not a nice, neat line of people. This was a clump, which is really what our life is. Our life is a clump. It’s all the obligations and responsibilities and to-do lists and things we should have done and people and expectations and crises and…stuff. We all have a clump.

But here’s what happened: somewhere in the middle of that clump, somewhere at many, somewhere in the middle of that clump, Jesus literally, literally looked someone in the face and then said this one word: “No. I’m done now.” Now what did he do? Well, it says what he did. But the scary part is you’ve got to say no because if you’re anything like me, who are you going to say no to? What are you going to say no to? And then if you don’t you end up, as I did, killing a part of your life that’s too important to kill.

So it says what he did. It says, “Jesus got up and went to a solitary place where he prayed.” In other words, Jesus went to a place to refuel, to relax, to refresh. But I love the next verse! It says, “And Simon and his companions went to hunt for Jesus.” I love the verb “hunt.” It’s an aggressive verb. Why? Because they’re a little ticked off. Why? Because they’re down there with the clump. I mean, you can see them standing there thinking, “Where’s Jesus? Why are we with the clump?”

So they went to hunt for Jesus and they finally find him, because that’s what happens when you do say no in this culture that prides itself on busy and hectic. People look at you funny. People look at you funny and say, “Jesus, what are you doing up here? Jesus, what are you doing up here?”

What were they implying? “Jesus, what are you doing up here doing nothing? Jesus, do you want to be a good Messiah or not? Get back down there! The people loved you down there. You were doing good stuff down there. You were so impressive, we’re going to make a DVD and sell it all over Galilee. And we’re thinking you can be more effective with people if we all had iPhones in the clump we could communicate and we could get more stuff done. Jesus, get back down there!”

OK, that was kind of a loose translation, but do you want the literal translation? When they finally found him they exclaimed, “Jesus, everybody is looking for you.” Now you tell me that doesn’t apply to modern life. You tell me that you haven’t heard that very question: “Everybody is looking for you. Jesus, get back down there. This problem cannot be solved without you. This day cannot go on without you. Get back down there!” Well, Jesus is a PR man’s nightmare. “Everybody is looking for you.” And Jesus’ replied, “Then let us go somewhere else.”

Did Jesus give up healing and teaching? No. Did he give up his mission? No. But he was saying this: “You see that clump called my life? Do you know the only reason I make a difference in that clump? Do you know the only reason I have any effectiveness in that clump? It’s because there are times when I say “no” to the clump.” In order to go to another space. You see, we have two spaces. One is a space where we’re productive and active and achieving and busy and we get stuff done. But the second space is a place where we rest. It’s a place for prayer and reflection and contemplation and poetry and, if we’re lucky, unrepentant napping.

The $64,000 question, of course, is: “OK, Terry, I get it. I get it. What do I do?” Well, that’s the problem. See, we want to do something. We want five easy steps to slowing down or pausing. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you this. Every single one of us has a sanctuary. We have a place to pause. We just didn’t know what to call it. For me, it’s in my garden every morning. But for a friend of mine it’s on the El when they commute. It could be a chair in one corner of your house. It could be a chair in your favorite coffee shop. It could be a walk by the lake. It could be a time in the woods. It only has to be five or ten minutes, but it’s a time when you slow down long enough to let your soul catch up with your body.

We assume that our identity comes from staying busy and hectic and accomplishing and achieving. But when we slow down and hear that other voice, we realize that we are not owned by what we do or fail to do and that the power of pause gives us the freedom to not just be a human doing, but a human being.

Conversation with Terry Hershey

Daniel Pawlus: Terry, it’s great to have you back on the program again this season.

Terry Hershey: Very good to see you again.

Pawlus: We know our viewers appreciate your warm, affable, comfortable delivery and style. I want to commend you. You’ve translated this really well into “The Power of Pause.” You’ve used one of the stories from the book to illustrate that today. Let’s start with why is this so darn difficult for so many of us? We’re so used to doing rather than being. The last thing you said was a very profound thought.

Hershey: Plato said a long time ago, obviously, “What is honored will be cultivated.” So we have to ask ourselves, what do we honor in our culture? Not just what we say, but what do we honor? And there’s no doubt that what we honor is hectic productivity. In fact, if someone were to ask you. “What are you doing? Are you doing anything this Friday?” God forbid if you say no, because they look at you like there is something wrong with you.

One woman said to her husband, “What are you doing today?” He said, “Nothing.” She said, “Nothing! That’s what you did all day yesterday.” He said, “I know, but I didn’t finish!” The point is what we honor is not just the busyness but the fact that we have to feel ashamed if we’re not doing something.

Lydia Talbot: This whole new life style for you, Terry, is really a Rubicon moment here in this formula of becoming more by doing less. I mean, there’s no turning back for you, right?

Hershey: No.

Talbot: Do you ever feel guilty?

Hershey: Yes!

Pawlus: In what way? Expand on that a little bit for us.

Hershey: My first knee jerk reaction, of course, is I have to justify the life style.

Pawlus: Of doing less?

Hershey: Yes. I have to justify cutting back on my schedule. I have to justify: no, just a minute, I’m not going to do the cell phone. I have to justify: no, I’m just going to hang out for minute and do poetry or read or whatever it is. But somehow I have to pretend that that is as important as this other part of my life. So that’s where the guilt comes in. But slowly you eliminate that and you realize it. Charlie Parker, the great jazz saxophonist, said, “If it ain’t in you, it can’t come out of your horn.” And so what I realized, the Rubicon—I love the word—is that the more I feed that other part of myself—that pausing part, just the being part—the more I feed that the stronger I get toward not feeling guilty or feeling that I need to explain or feel that I need to justify it because I feel more present.

Pawlus: The more you have to offer if you’re feeding yourself in that way. That’s the paradox of it.

Hershey: Yes. Just think about the multi-tasking thing. If I’m multi-tasking I’m not really here. I’m not listening to you.

Talbot: In the book you talk about—I just love the imagery—as the day welcomes dawn, you say, and you call the sky a pageant and then you move into the back lighting over the mountains that change into a tangerine. I guess I wonder for you, Terry, the importance of visual stimuli, I mean that every shifting underlying meaning of visual stimuli in our lives from dawn until dusk, from a kind of joy and melancholy even at the same time as images shift.

Hershey: Yeah. And this is a very practical thing because people say, “You know, Terry, I like the sanctuary thing but what do I do when I’m there?” As if it’s a contest or something! Here’s the one practical thing: be aware of your senses. That’s the stimuli part. In other words, while I’m here, wherever I am, what do I see, what do I smell, what do I hear, what do I taste, what do I touch? In other words, if I know that, then I’m present, and if I’m present there’s the likelihood that I can be more real and more available to receive or give or whatever is going on in our encounter. And so that’s very important. I want people to be connected. That’s what I love when Moses was asked to take off his shoes. I don’t think there was anything religious about taking off their shoes, I think God just wanted Moses to touch the dirt with his feet.

Talbot: I know how much the garden is so important to you—and to me. I have a postage stamp garden.

Hershey: Those are the good kind!

Talbot: But as a metaphor for beauty and peace and passion. I want to ask you about the dandelions in your garden. As you say in your book, they are a reminder of spiritual imperfections. Say more.

Hershey: Well, I am a hypocrite! I do fight wars with my dandelions. I had this one pond we were building—because we gardeners apologize for the imperfections—and I had this one pond that was not getting built. It was five or six years and it was supposed to be built. So being left and it was filled with dandelions because I had been ignoring it. There was a group visiting my garden and I was touring them around and keeping them away from that. Please don’t look there! This one woman is standing over there at the edge and I hadn’t really looked at it through anybody else’s eyes. And there is this big lake of dandelions and then a river I had built that had not been a river yet. It was all dandelions. It looked like someone had taken a vat of paint. And she said, “This is the most exquisite garden design idea I have ever seen!” And I said, “Yeah, I know. I just thought of it last year.”

Pawlus: Well, the garden analogy made me think of something recently that happened with my son. He’s starting to get more into exploring different things and we had him outside looking at flowers. We’re teaching him how to smell the flower, to stop and smell the flower. And then he was walking into his day care facility one day and there was a little pot of flowers there and he stopped without prodding to stop and smell the flower. And I thought, boy, if I could bring that sense of stopping to pause like you’ve said. But I’ve been accused of the same thing in my life of just going, going, going for many years and not really relishing in what can happen in those moments. I get it intellectually, but I don’t necessarily do it and make the time and the space for it. Even it’s the five or the ten minutes like you talk about it. It can really feed you in a huge way.

Hershey: It’s literally something I practice. Even if I don’t do it well each day, it’s that five minutes of stopping.

Talbot: You have to say the name of your son is Luke. Beautiful Luke.

Pawlus: My son Luke. Yes.

Talbot: And your son is Zack. In our final moment can you tell us about Zack? He’s eleven now.

Hershey: Zack is eleven and he’s in the sixth grade.

Talbot: How is he a part of this formula in your life.

Hershey: What I love about it is I live on an island and we have acreage and we have fruit and plants and trees and he lives outside. He knows an outside life. I was complaining the other day because the raccoons were tearing up my garden and I was just beside myself. He said, “Dad, you need to know everybody has raccoons in their life.” So he gives me great sermon material, shall we say!

Pawlus: I can imagine. Well, Terry, I wish we had so much more time. This is a great book.

Hershey: Thank you.

Pawlus: We hope it does really well for you. It’s very simple but very profound in it’s own way. “The Power of Pause” by Terry Hershey.

    

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