“Remember what we’re here for.”
The 5th Sunday After the Epiphany, February 8th, 2008
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“What this story says to me is that it’s a good thing to just stop for awhile.
Stop the multitasking.
Do one thing at a time, intentionally.
Enjoy the wonder of being in the present moment.
Recognize holiness and even divinity in the people and things around you.
Entertain new possibilities, and be open to seeing the world in a new way.”
Stop the multitasking.
Do one thing at a time, intentionally.
Enjoy the wonder of being in the present moment.
Recognize holiness and even divinity in the people and things around you.
Entertain new possibilities, and be open to seeing the world in a new way.”
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Click here to listen to streaming audio version of the sermon.
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you, in the name of God our Creator, our redeemer, and our sanctifier.
Amen.
Thursday morning at the train station
Thursday morning Rob and I arrived more than half an hour early for the 10:33 train into the City.
Allowed plenty of time.
Wanted to be sure to find a parking space.
It was really cold outside.
But it was warm in the waiting room.
Three of us sat on a bench in the sun.
Rob on my right, then me, and then, on my left, a woman I’d spoken with briefly as we were buying our parking tickets.
Thirty minutes with nothing to do.
So I pulled out my laptop computer and placed my laptop in my lap.
Started it up and got three things going at once:
checking for eMail, looking up the weather report for the next couple of days in San Francisco, and calling up my things-to-do list, doing all three of these things simultaneously, and at the same time, keeping my eye on her, the woman ten feet to my left, on the bench.
She asked me to watch her black canvas bag, which she left on the bench, while she stepped out for a smoke.
While my fingers tapped away on my keyboard, I did keep an eye on that bag, looking back and forth between it and the computer.
I kept an eye on the bag until she came back, and after that, I kept an eye on her.
What she did when she got back was immediately kneel in front of the bag, as though in payer.
I could hear her talking to the bag, but couldn’t make out the words.
I kept typing, and listening, and sneaking a peek every once in awhile.
This kind of multitasking comes naturally to me.
I do it all the time.
“Rob,” I whispered.
“I think that woman over there is praying to her suitcase!”
I kept typing.
Then finally, I got an idea of what was actually going on.
I tested my idea.
“What’s in the bag,” I asked her.
The answer: two cats.
She had been on her knees all this time talking with her two cats.
A kind of prayer, I suppose.
But not what I was thinking.
Here’s the way my day goes.
As I said, this multitasking thing is something I do all the time.
If I’m in the kitchen, the TV is on.
If I’m in my office, I’m listening to the radio over the internet:
news from Boston, contemporary music from Woodstock, classical music from Seattle.
I grind coffee beans and make a double cappuccino while I’m preparing the dog’s breakfast and portioning out his medications.
I never just read the morning paper.
I read the paper and watch TV at the same time.
My day goes something like this.
I set out to answer eMail, but then the phone rings.
It’s a client asking me to fix a bad link on a website.
It’ll only take a minute.
So I don’t go right back to the eMail.
Instead, I start up Dreamweaver, the program that manages my websites.
It’s a big application and takes awhile to open, so I decide there’s time to synchronize my iPod with my computer, and so I start that.
Then the phone rings again.
I can see it’s Val Stelcen in the bishop’s office returning my call.
Better drop everything and take that one!
She has a request.
She wants me to send out eMail to Ulster County clergy.
Of course I still haven’t gotten back to my original eMail, but I follow through with Val’s request anyway, and that’s the way my day goes, switching from one thing to another to another to another.
This way of working is called “multitasking.”
For most of us, it’s the way we live our lives these days.
Read while we exercise.
Eat breakfast on-the-go.
Text-message while listening to a lecture.
Talk on the phone while grocery-shopping.
Talk on the phone while driving a car!
It’s what we do.
Multitasking.
Switching from thing to thing to thing.
Never just focusing on one thing at a time.
The brain switching
The word multitasking comes from the world of computers, actually.
I can ask my computer to do any number of things, all at once:
transform a bunch of photos into a movie, print a 500-page document, add up a column of figures, whatever.
The computer will complete all the tasks, eventually, but it might slow to a crawl, and if I give it too much to do all at once, it might even give up and crash.
Something called “context switching” is what slows the computer, the need to continually switch from one workspace to another.
For us, the kind of multitasking that we take for granted is the human version of “context switching.”
What psychologists say
In the last couple of decades, psychologists have been studying the nature and limits of human multitasking, and the effects of “context switching” on humans.
They see that all of these switches that we make on a daily basis gobble up our energy, and affect productivity.
We may complete all the tasks eventually, but productivity can slow to a crawl.
If we try to do too much all at once, like the computer, we may very well, ourselves, crash.
Context switching is disorienting.
And what’s more, psychologists note, frequent context switching interferes with one’s ability to feel happy.
Timothy Ferriss, a productivity guru, argues that you should rarely multitask and should instead devote full attention to completing just a very small set of defined goals in a given time.
Jesus needs time alone.
This morning in the gospel reading, Mark told a story about Jesus going about healing people who were sick and disabled.
It didn’t seem to matter who needed help.
Jesus responded to anyone who asked.
Clearly, even this early in his ministry, Jesus was gaining a reputation.
Mark says that people were flocking to Jesus, and in today’s story, it apparently had been overwhelming, switching from person to person and thing to thing, as we do.
It had to have been stressful.
And apparently it was.
One thing right after another.
Nonstop.
What a day for Jesus.
A human version of the dreaded computer crash.
Here’s what happened next:
The next day following that frenetic series of healings, the next day early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
In the midst of everything, Jesus simply left.
He stopped what he was doing, and disappeared.
Didn’t say anything to anyone.
Didn’t leave a note.
He simply left.
Went to what Mark called “a desolate place,” a place with no distractions.
And there he prayed.
This sent his disciples scrambling.
They searched everywhere.
The crowds wanted a show, and the disciples couldn’t find the star of the show.
When the disciples did finally find Jesus, he said “no.”
“Let’s move on.”
In the midst of this frenzy of activity and fame, Jesus had sneaked out the back door to pray to the god he called “father,” and and to reorient himself to his calling, his purpose.
Many things to be learned
Of course there are many things to be learned from this passage, but what stands out for me is that Jesus recognized his need to get away.
Even the one we call the “son of the most high” could not get his thoughts straight in the midst of so many things happening around him all at once.
Too much context switching from thing to thing to thing.
Too much multitasking.
He needed time alone, to think, to pray, to regain his focus.
There’s a sort of hunger, an insatiability, that can come with being in the spotlight all the time, and Jesus rejected that feeling outright.
He remembered what he was there for.
Fame and power were not it, not what he was there for.
Staying busy all the time was not what he was there for.
And those things are not what we’re here for either.
The point of the story?
What this story says to me is that it’s a good thing to just stop for awhile.
Stop the multitasking.
Do one thing at a time, intentionally.
Also, for maybe only 10 or 15 minutes in the midst of the day, just stop, with intent, and think about regaining some perspective on what’s going on in your life, in your family, in our community, in our country, in the world.
Enjoy the wonder of being in the present moment.
Recognize holiness and even divinity in the people and things around you.
Consider the connection between ourselves and all things that live and move and have their being.
Entertain new possibilities, and be open to seeing the world in a new way.
Jesus recognized that he needed to get away, to retreat, and to reorient himself to his calling, to his purpose.
Jesus said “no” and went off to a desolate place where he got back in touch with the One he called “Father.”
We can do the same.
Amen.
Thursday morning at the train station
Thursday morning Rob and I arrived more than half an hour early for the 10:33 train into the City.
Allowed plenty of time.
Wanted to be sure to find a parking space.
It was really cold outside.
But it was warm in the waiting room.
Three of us sat on a bench in the sun.
Rob on my right, then me, and then, on my left, a woman I’d spoken with briefly as we were buying our parking tickets.
Thirty minutes with nothing to do.
So I pulled out my laptop computer and placed my laptop in my lap.
Started it up and got three things going at once:
checking for eMail, looking up the weather report for the next couple of days in San Francisco, and calling up my things-to-do list, doing all three of these things simultaneously, and at the same time, keeping my eye on her, the woman ten feet to my left, on the bench.
She asked me to watch her black canvas bag, which she left on the bench, while she stepped out for a smoke.
While my fingers tapped away on my keyboard, I did keep an eye on that bag, looking back and forth between it and the computer.
I kept an eye on the bag until she came back, and after that, I kept an eye on her.
What she did when she got back was immediately kneel in front of the bag, as though in payer.
I could hear her talking to the bag, but couldn’t make out the words.
I kept typing, and listening, and sneaking a peek every once in awhile.
This kind of multitasking comes naturally to me.
I do it all the time.
“Rob,” I whispered.
“I think that woman over there is praying to her suitcase!”
I kept typing.
Then finally, I got an idea of what was actually going on.
I tested my idea.
“What’s in the bag,” I asked her.
The answer: two cats.
She had been on her knees all this time talking with her two cats.
A kind of prayer, I suppose.
But not what I was thinking.
Here’s the way my day goes.
As I said, this multitasking thing is something I do all the time.
If I’m in the kitchen, the TV is on.
If I’m in my office, I’m listening to the radio over the internet:
news from Boston, contemporary music from Woodstock, classical music from Seattle.
I grind coffee beans and make a double cappuccino while I’m preparing the dog’s breakfast and portioning out his medications.
I never just read the morning paper.
I read the paper and watch TV at the same time.
My day goes something like this.
I set out to answer eMail, but then the phone rings.
It’s a client asking me to fix a bad link on a website.
It’ll only take a minute.
So I don’t go right back to the eMail.
Instead, I start up Dreamweaver, the program that manages my websites.
It’s a big application and takes awhile to open, so I decide there’s time to synchronize my iPod with my computer, and so I start that.
Then the phone rings again.
I can see it’s Val Stelcen in the bishop’s office returning my call.
Better drop everything and take that one!
She has a request.
She wants me to send out eMail to Ulster County clergy.
Of course I still haven’t gotten back to my original eMail, but I follow through with Val’s request anyway, and that’s the way my day goes, switching from one thing to another to another to another.
This way of working is called “multitasking.”
For most of us, it’s the way we live our lives these days.
Read while we exercise.
Eat breakfast on-the-go.
Text-message while listening to a lecture.
Talk on the phone while grocery-shopping.
Talk on the phone while driving a car!
It’s what we do.
Multitasking.
Switching from thing to thing to thing.
Never just focusing on one thing at a time.
The brain switching
The word multitasking comes from the world of computers, actually.
I can ask my computer to do any number of things, all at once:
transform a bunch of photos into a movie, print a 500-page document, add up a column of figures, whatever.
The computer will complete all the tasks, eventually, but it might slow to a crawl, and if I give it too much to do all at once, it might even give up and crash.
Something called “context switching” is what slows the computer, the need to continually switch from one workspace to another.
For us, the kind of multitasking that we take for granted is the human version of “context switching.”
What psychologists say
In the last couple of decades, psychologists have been studying the nature and limits of human multitasking, and the effects of “context switching” on humans.
They see that all of these switches that we make on a daily basis gobble up our energy, and affect productivity.
We may complete all the tasks eventually, but productivity can slow to a crawl.
If we try to do too much all at once, like the computer, we may very well, ourselves, crash.
Context switching is disorienting.
And what’s more, psychologists note, frequent context switching interferes with one’s ability to feel happy.
Timothy Ferriss, a productivity guru, argues that you should rarely multitask and should instead devote full attention to completing just a very small set of defined goals in a given time.
Jesus needs time alone.
This morning in the gospel reading, Mark told a story about Jesus going about healing people who were sick and disabled.
It didn’t seem to matter who needed help.
Jesus responded to anyone who asked.
Clearly, even this early in his ministry, Jesus was gaining a reputation.
Mark says that people were flocking to Jesus, and in today’s story, it apparently had been overwhelming, switching from person to person and thing to thing, as we do.
It had to have been stressful.
And apparently it was.
One thing right after another.
Nonstop.
What a day for Jesus.
A human version of the dreaded computer crash.
Here’s what happened next:
The next day following that frenetic series of healings, the next day early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
In the midst of everything, Jesus simply left.
He stopped what he was doing, and disappeared.
Didn’t say anything to anyone.
Didn’t leave a note.
He simply left.
Went to what Mark called “a desolate place,” a place with no distractions.
And there he prayed.
This sent his disciples scrambling.
They searched everywhere.
The crowds wanted a show, and the disciples couldn’t find the star of the show.
When the disciples did finally find Jesus, he said “no.”
“Let’s move on.”
In the midst of this frenzy of activity and fame, Jesus had sneaked out the back door to pray to the god he called “father,” and and to reorient himself to his calling, his purpose.
Many things to be learned
Of course there are many things to be learned from this passage, but what stands out for me is that Jesus recognized his need to get away.
Even the one we call the “son of the most high” could not get his thoughts straight in the midst of so many things happening around him all at once.
Too much context switching from thing to thing to thing.
Too much multitasking.
He needed time alone, to think, to pray, to regain his focus.
There’s a sort of hunger, an insatiability, that can come with being in the spotlight all the time, and Jesus rejected that feeling outright.
He remembered what he was there for.
Fame and power were not it, not what he was there for.
Staying busy all the time was not what he was there for.
And those things are not what we’re here for either.
The point of the story?
What this story says to me is that it’s a good thing to just stop for awhile.
Stop the multitasking.
Do one thing at a time, intentionally.
Also, for maybe only 10 or 15 minutes in the midst of the day, just stop, with intent, and think about regaining some perspective on what’s going on in your life, in your family, in our community, in our country, in the world.
Enjoy the wonder of being in the present moment.
Recognize holiness and even divinity in the people and things around you.
Consider the connection between ourselves and all things that live and move and have their being.
Entertain new possibilities, and be open to seeing the world in a new way.
Jesus recognized that he needed to get away, to retreat, and to reorient himself to his calling, to his purpose.
Jesus said “no” and went off to a desolate place where he got back in touch with the One he called “Father.”
We can do the same.
Jerry Brooks+
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