Week 24 Sunday
Week 24 Sunday
In Which We Consider Boredom
Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
In a very stimulating book, How Never to Be Tired, Marie Beynon Ray lists boredom as Enemy No. 1. She names fear Enemy No. 2.* Considering her particular emphasis on tiredness, it is quite probable that boredom does create more tiredness than anything else. But I have deliberately put boredom toward the last of the enemies of the personality, for it seems to me to be as much a result as it is a cause. We are bored because we feel that our sums are not adding up, that we are not on the Way. Boredom, therefore, is a result of the sense of futile living. It is true that the result turns into a cause. We are bored; therefore we are tired. The boredom produces the tiredness. But the boredom itself is produced by a feeling of out-of-gearness.
This is seen in the words of English poet Edmund Gosse, “You speak of the peace which the years bring. But they have brought no peace for me. Life is pleasant, but I am not without terror at the idea of this sensual sufficiency coming to an end. I have no idea how the spiritual world would look to me, for I haven’t glanced at it since I was a child.”* He was bored and even terrified at life because he didn’t know how to live it. He knew instinctively he wasn’t on the Way. When one is on the Way, then boredom drops off like a dead leaf. A living interest comes back into life that takes the dullness out of living.
Boredom, though a by-product, can be, and is, devastating. “Boredom with housework,” says Marie Beynon Ray, “has made women blind; boredom with a husband has made them cripples, boredom with a mother-in-law has paralyzed them.”** Many of these people think they are physically ill, and they are! The cause is not physical, however, but mental and spiritual. This is confirmed by another, “Over fifty percent of all ills are of a mental nature. More than half the hospital load of the nation is mental cases—and a vast number of these sick people believe their trouble is physical.”** Boredom slows down the machinery of life; interest makes it run again. The Christian cannot be bored, for he or she is under “the stimulus of Christ.” A living interest works within Christians.
O living Christ, who walked the earth well amid the sick, strong amid the weak, radiant amid the dull, and alert amid the tired, give me of your fountain of life. Show me how to live so that I too shall never be tired, never exhausted. For I shall be tapping your resources continuously. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Drink from your own cistern, drink fresh water out of your own well” (Prov. 5:15 Moffatt).
*No published source was found for this quotation.
**Marie Beynon Ray, How Never to Be Tired (Indianapolis; New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1944).
Week 24 Monday
A Long Rest?
Proverbs 14:30; 15:13; Ecclesiastes 11:10
We continue our study of boredom by summing up the conclusions of Marie Beynon Ray:
That mental work cannot cause fatigue.
That the fatigue we feel may be actual fatigue, an incapacity to do further work; or a feeling of fatigue, which is not actually an incapacity to work nor even a measure of actual fatigue—but in either case it was not brought on by mental work.
That there is no such animal known to science as a man brought to the point of exhaustion or breakdown by mental work.
That it is boredom, not work, which is the cause of much fatigue—boredom and other psychological factors.
That the chronic fatigue of the sedentary worker is 100 percent due to psychological factors.
That fatigue that is not wiped out by the normal period of rest is pathological, and that no amount of rest will ever cure this kind of fatigue.
That the glands do influence energy, but that most people are normal in this respect and need only to apply the proper emotional spurs to stimulate glandular energy.*
One of the things psychology and medicine are emphasizing is that no organ works well if attention is paid to it. You can upset the rhythm of an organ by thinking about it. The organ, if it thinks, is not thinking about itself; it is thinking about the whole. It loses its life and finds it. The same is true with the total person. We must think about something beyond ourselves if we are to be rhythmical and happy and without boredom. The self-centered make themselves tired.
If you get your eyes off yourself and focus them on others, fatigue will drop away. Someone has said, “When we look within we are depressed, when we look around we are impressed, when we look at Jesus we are blessed.” Look at him and others instead of at yourself.
O God, fountain of life, spring of all energy, I come to you with exhausted nerves—exhausted through conflict and fear and boredom. I bring them to you. Bathe them in the fountain of your calm and peace. Give me a new sense that I live with a purpose, a purpose to do your will, and that in your will are no boredoms. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “That our God may brighten our eyes and grant us sustenance in the days of our bondage” (Ezra 9:8 Moffatt).
*Marie Beynon Ray, How Never to Be Tired.
Week 24 Tuesday
Steps Out of Boredom
Proverbs 4:22-23; 12:25; 13:12
You are probably bored with my talking about boredom without talking of how to get release from boredom! Here are the steps:
(1) Ask this question of yourself and ask it honestly: In a world sparkling with novelty and opportunity, why am I bored? You may answer, “It’s because of the dull, stupid people I’m compelled to meet.” Or, “It’s because of the monotony of my work.” Or, “It’s because life has let me down; I’m frustrated.” All of these answers are outside of you. In nine cases out of ten you are on the wrong trail. You are like a fever-tossed man who turns to this side of the bed and then that, hoping vainly for a cool spot, when the fever is within him. If “the kingdom of God is within you,” the kingdom of boredom is also within you. Some Africans have a custom of holding a berry in their mouths so that everything they eat tastes like the berry. You are probably holding the berry of a wrong attitude toward life in your mouth, so that everything you eat tastes bitter or insipid.
(2) You will probably find one of two causes for your boredom: a sense of wrong moral and spiritual attitudes or a sense of frustration in your life plan or work. The probabilities are that the first is the cause. You are your own hell or your own heaven.
(3) You will probably find that you are thinking of yourself first. When you are not at the center of things, you are bored and unhappy. You are out of harmony with the great Design, and therefore you are up against it. Dr. Ira S. Wile says, “In one sense, fatigue is a consciousness of time. When we are doing something we don’t like to do, we watch the clock. . . . Or fatigue [is] due to a lack of inner harmony, to internal strivings, or even fatigue from sheer habit. All these are forms of neurotic fatigue. Normality is unawareness of the functioning of body and mind. Once we pay attention to the organs, we soon acquire the habit of self-reference. Nothing is more tiring. To enjoy complete freedom from fatigue we must get away from all consciousness of occupation, of effort, time, self.”*
“O Christ, I see that I am bored with myself because I have to live with a wrong self. I need to be set at rights within. For futility dogs my steps; my futility is ever with me, in me. And now I want to be cleaned out.
So wash me, Thou, without, within,
And purge with fire, if that must be.”** Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Look to him, and you shall beam with joy, you shall never be abashed” (Ps. 34:5 Moffatt)
*Ira S. Wile (1877–1943) was a longtime editor of the Medical Review of Reviews, a psychiatrist, and an educator. Source of this direct quotation is unknown.
**Walter C. Smith (1824–1908), “One Thing I of the Lord Desire.”
Week 24 Wednesday
Further Steps to Victory
Psalm 116:7-9; Proverbs 3:7-8
We come now to the next step in release from boredom:
(4) The remedy for this attitude of self-reference is self-surrender. You have been on your own hands, and you are tired of yourself. You deliberately turn over your bored self to Christ.
(5) Since you are fully surrendered to God, now a purpose runs through all you do. For you are no longer hanging at loose ends; you are going somewhere. You are working out a pattern, Christ’s pattern. The commonplace is no longer the commonplace; it too has the golden thread of God’s purpose running through it. You are living a God-purposed and a God-guided life.
(6) You are no longer dealing with the little and insignificant, for you can show a spirit in everything you do. You see that it is not so much what you do as how you do it that really matters. Every little thing you do, you will do greatly. When you say, “Good morning,” the smile of morning will be in your words. When you start your work, you will put harmony into monotony and tune your work to “the music of the spheres.” You will live in time and eternity simultaneously, and eternity will make time significant. Every common bush will be afire with God.
(7) You will do everything you do “for the love of God.” You have been doing everything for the love of self. Now you do everything for the love of God. It is said, “On that day the very bells on the horses shall be inscribed with ‘Sacred to the Eternal’; . . . indeed, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 14:20-21 Moffatt). The pots and pans of daily use become temple vessels when they are handled “for the love of God.” I saw in a chapel in London, Ontario, a carpenter’s bench that had been made deliberately into a Communion table. That is as it should be, for every act of the consecrated carpenter working “for the love of God” becomes a reflection of the Carpenter. The Quakers say that all breaking of bread should be a partaking of the Body.
O Christ, I see I am to make dull hours into dancing hours, for you are to be with me “always and in all ways.” I am no longer a clod, for a divinity stirs my clod; a divine purpose takes all the cells of my being and makes them into “an organism of the Spirit.” I am indwelt, inspired, intrigued—with everything. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “For life’s own fountain is within thy presence, and in thy smile we have the light of life” (Ps. 36:9 Moffatt).
Week 24 Thursday
Retire to New Responsibilities
Psalms 92:12-15; 106:15
(8) Deliberately take up another task if your present one tires you. I mean in addition to it. I know you throw up your hands at that, but I mean it. “We are tired not by what we do,” says Marie Beynon Ray, “but by what we don’t do, by all the neglected interests and excitements out in the world which we are missing. Relaxation, not rest, is what is needed. And relaxation means constructive activity. The cure of fatigue is increased activity, either in the form of work or play.”*
Poet Edgar Guest retired at fifty. In no time he was flat on his back, calling for doctors, nurses, and medicine. Not a single doctor could find anything wrong with him, and that made him wild, for he was a very sick man. Finally his wife told him what was wrong. He was dying—dying of boredom—and he’d better get out of bed under his own power before they had to call the undertaker. Guest seemed delighted at this news and got up at once and set to work. He’s been at it and in the best of health ever since.
And don’t try the “rest cure.” Places where people do nothing but rest and stuff themselves with food are going out of business. Why? Because nine out of ten people who come to these places do not need rest; they need to be delivered from themselves. “I have never seen a single chronic case of nervous disorder cured by such means,” says noted psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Brill.** Not rest but rescue is needed. These people need to be rescued from self-attention.
A man retired at fifty-five. He thought he would live on his pension. Instead, he lived on aches and pains and grouches. His whole mental occupation was to justify his inactivity—was he not ill; how could he work? Then he began to work a day or so at a time. Now he is working full time. “He’s a different man,” everybody says. He is. Work did it. Responsibility rested him, because it brought him into harmony with himself. Dr. C. F. J. Richards said, “‘I am sixty-eight. I still work nine or ten hours a day, and I have never in my life been tired. I used to run a rest cure, and I saw that all these people had one thing in common—a lack of self-command. It was their minds, not their bodies, that were sick.”** She put people to work—and cured them!
O Christ, who said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” give me your passion for creative activity. I do not want to be fussily busy, but to be calmly creative. For I am made by work and for work. But with you, work will be play and all life a vacation. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “All the stimulus of Christ” (Phil. 2:1 Moffatt).
*Marie Beynon Ray, How Never to Be Tired.
**Source for the quotation unknown.
Week 24 Friday
Perfectionism or Nothing
Psalm 73:21-25
We come now to another road with a dead end—perfectionism or nothing. There is a brand new sin in the catalogue of sins—perfectionism.
I am a little afraid of brand-new sins. Anything that is brand new may be a new rationalization. The recent condemnation of “perfectionism” is a cloak to cover compromises. Anyone who wants something radically different from what is, is branded a “perfectionist.” We are told we must give ourselves to “the discipline of the attainable,” meaning we must pare down to a dull average.
When Christians adopt that attitude, they are accepting a defeatist, worldly attitude. For to Christians, the attainable is the obtainable—infinite resources are at our disposal. Our spirits are, “The miraculous we can do at once. The impossible takes a little longer.” Jesus said, “You, therefore, must be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Our possibility of perfection is based on God’s actua1 perfection. We yield to processes toward perfection. So we give ourselves to “the discipline of the obtainable.” “For with God nothing is ever impossible,” came the assurance to Mary. “I am here to serve the Lord. Let it be as you have said,” she replied (Luke 1:37, 38 Moffatt). And she gave the world a Redeemer. I am not afraid of perfection. I’m afraid of accommodation to imperfection.
But having said this, I must recognize that there is some truth in this charge against perfectionism. And the truth is this: Many people, because they can’t do everything, do nothing; because they can’t be perfect, they withdraw. That is a real danger. And many walk into it, often unconsciously. And often it is a sin of very good people. They are so conscientious that, unless they can be perfect in all they do, they won’t do anything. Their consciences, attuned to the highest, will not approve anything less than the highest. Hence they withdraw into troubled inactivity. I made this mistake in regard to language. I set such high standards for myself in English that, when I failed to reach the same in another language, I withdrew into the use of interpreters, accepted crutches that lamed me.
O God, who loves us in spite of our imperfections and sins, help me to love myself in spite of my imperfections and sins. And since you believe in me in spite of all, help me to believe in myself and others—in spite of all. For I am under your redemption. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The erring will gain insight, and murderers will accept the truth” (Isa. 29:24 Moffatt).
Week 24 Saturday
Steps to Victory over Perfectionism
Isaiah 57:15, 18
Here are the steps that will bring release from perfectionism:
(1) Fix it in your mind that there is real danger in this attitude. I know a person with great possibilities who is today a helpless neurotic, unwilling to do little things at hand because of an inability to do the great things.
(2) Make up your mind that you are to be perfect, but perfect only in love, never in the expression of that love. When Jesus said, “You, therefore, must be perfect,” the word therefore pointed back to the preceding verses that tell of love: love your enemies, love those who do not return the love (see Matt. 5:43-48). A child may love a parent perfectly—as a child—but the expression of that love is imperfect. And the parent knows it, sees through the imperfect expression to the love itself, and rejoices in it.
(3) The perfection in love is perfect but growing. The bud is perfect as a bud, the flower perfect as a flower, the fruit perfect as a fruit. Each stage is perfect and yet growing.
(4) Primarily you are to grow in grace, not in graciousness. You do grow in graciousness, but it is a by-product of growing in grace. You must never be graciousness-conscious. For if you are, you are not gracious. You can safely be grace-conscious, for that speaks of receptivity, of the taking of a gift. That humbles you and lifts you at the same time.
(5) Surrender your perfectionism into God’s hands—this perfectionism that is only another name for pride. Be willing to make mistakes and to stumble, knowing you will always be falling forward.
(6) Rejoice not in what you are, but in what you are becoming through God’s grace. You are on the Way—not at the Goal. You are “the young green corn divinely springing,”* and the promise of perfection in being is beating within your pulses.
(7) You are not perfect, and yet you have a perfect Savior. That fulfills the desire for perfection. You can be a perfectionist, but not in yourself; you can be a perfectionist in Christ. Perfectionism is thus purified and fulfilled.
O Christ, I see, I see. I am gazing and growing, gazing at your beauty and growing into your likeness. Your perfection does not paralyze me; it awakens, inspires, beckons me on. And yet I do not strain after your perfection. I receive, I take, I absorb, I assimilate, and thus I grow unconsciously. Am I grateful? To the depths. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I cannot always trust my guidance, but I can always trust my Guide.
*John Masefield, “O Christ, Who Holds the Open Gate,” 1911.