Productivity

Dear Friends,

Recent events have wound me tightly. I’ve been worrying over my middle school daughter’s ineptitude with homework, fretting over a new lump in my breast, mourning the passing of our neighbor’s dog, and opening my newsfeed with a pit in my stomach. On Monday morning, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, reflecting on nuclear war, undone English assignments and mammograms, my heart began to pound.

“I am battling the approach of a panic attack,” I realized. I’m not alone. In her article, We Can’t Survive in a State of Constant Agitation, Sharon Salzburg tells the story of Jeanine, who wakes in dread to the news on her phone. Fearful that she will miss anything, she lives her day agitatedly glued to a screen:

“She would not respect herself if she turned a blind eye to the painful truths of the world, but the world breaks her heart. This habit does not do anything to help her change the things she is so concerned about. In many ways, it substitutes for action.”

I found Salzburg’s article right after reading about the devastation in California. Okay, I thought, time to shut my computer. Time to act. But how?

My vocation lends itself to contemplation more than action, which is often a source of much consternation for me. Growing up in a family of do-gooders (in the best sense), I struggled with my identity. I felt as though I was put on earth to find beauty, to listen to it, to write it. Such work is so often unquantifiable (hundreds of pages scrapped, hours of quiet seeing and being that seem to help exactly no one). And though my work takes me right into the middle of suffering, my actual output can feel ineffectual and insignificant.

But this work–writing and being–is what I have been given to do. So this week, I took action. I met with people and laughed, prayed, talked and listened. I went for long walks in the woods. I knelt down next to my dog to see the world from her eyes. I stopped to wonder at the way the sun lit golden oak leaves. I made an appointment for a mammogram. I helped my daughter with her homework. I said goodbye to my neighbor’s dog and then I picked a bouquet of flowers from my fading garden for their family. I did laundry and made dinner and wrote.

And I tried to love it all, like so many people have before me. I take strength in the odd, unquantifiably wonderful lives of people like Van Gogh. He never knew that his work would amount to much but understood that living in this world is a complicated, messy thing that has less to do with productivity and more to do with the immeasurable. “It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength,” he wrote to his brother Theo, “And whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

At the beginning, and middle, and end of all things, this is my sacramental work, and your work too. So if the world ends in a blinding flash while I am sitting next to my daughter at the kitchen table; if I am standing in a glade of young alders with my dog; if I am here, at my window, writing; I want to be loving fiercely all the while. For I have found that living well in the mundanity of the day-to-day requires great courage and audacious love.

So wherever you are this week, whatever you are doing, may you have the strength to turn from fear to love. May you choose to hope. May you seek wisdom to do your work well. And may you find joy in this good, infused world.

Peace,

Kim

P.S. What is the good work you have been given? We would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment on our blog, Facebook, or send us a note . If you’re on Instagram, use hashtag #thisgoodwork. You can find our daily Instagram posts, with quotes from inspiring people and photos of daily wonder, at each_holy_hour.

P.P.S. For further reading to help you in your journey this week, I recommend these articles:
We Can’t Survive in a State of Constant Agitation by Sharon Salzberg;
Vincent Van Gogh on Art and the Power of Love. . . by Maria Popova;
The Hollowness of Autumn Leaves Space for Light, by one of my favorites, Parker Palmer.
Oh, yes, and this one: You’ll Never Be Famous, and That’s Okay by Emily Esfahani Smith

This morning I said goodbye to the girls and my husband, Martin, and I drove through rare and welcome midmorning sunshine to the ferry dock. After a peaceful hour’s ride, we exited the mouth of the ferry, whisked through the bustle of Seattle, wound up the still-snowy mountain pass, and rocketed out into the vast, desolate rolling hills. No kids in the back seat, a podcast murmuring quiet wisdom, and a hot cup of coffee: bliss. A chance at last to cultivate what Lindsay talked about so well in her Consider this week: the art of inwardness.

Now I sit alone in the hotel room with the hum of the air-conditioning and congestive rattle of the mini fridge. As soon as Martin left to see colleagues (this is work trip), I fought the urge to flip on the T.V. Instead, I sat down with a glass of wine to mull over what Martin said after I got off the phone with Lindsay this afternoon. “You’re so busy,” he said, “I wonder if you’ve taken time to slow down and reflect on the process of launching Each Holy Hour?” You mean like metacognition, I answered, using a word educators love. He smiled.

Metacognition is about thinking and talking honestly about your own learning process. So as I begin to narrate the process of building Each Holy Hour, a project for wonder, I admit to myself that my recent preoccupation with the many “ticks on the to-do list” that Lindsay described in her meditation has had nothing to do with encountering wonder. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed moments of loveliness as I’ve waded through a thick morass of details of building a new website and content. Even in the thicket of logistics, even as I clawed my way up the steep learning-curve of technology, I’ve found time to hug my kids, take in our blooming cherry tree, stand hushed and awed over a nest of newly hatched chickadees.

But I’ve reflected very little. I’ve been glued to my phone and my computer so much that my eyes have become achy and bloodshot. I’ve been myopic and obsessed, not inward–there’s a big difference: “Inwardness is a summons that resists stress and hustle, an orientation to the world, not something that can be gained by doing.”

I struggle with the tension of keeping my life balanced. When you parent three kids, work a part-time job, and write to boot, getting things done is hard-won. On launch day, all my daughters were home sick. As I face-timed Lindsay about the first Consider, her daughter (home sick!), jostled her elbow and asked questions.

But now after two weeks of doing, I feel unmoored from the very things that Each Holy Hour is all about: solitude, reflection, face-to-face, unhurried communion with people.

Flashback two months ago to a walk on the beach by grey Puget Sound. Lindsay had made the drive from Montana to visit us. Our kids picked their way through shallow pools, collecting crabs and eels. We tiptoed through thousands of sand dollars stacked in the sand–like shingles, Lindsay observed. We dragged sticks in the sand, bent down to pocket smooth, ancient stones, lingered over driftwood. And we discussed our passion for contemplation and our need for silence. We talked about Each Holy Hour.

Life is about dwelling in that tension between doing and being. Some hours are as spacious and silent as the hilly farmland we drove through this afternoon; others are as hectic and noisy as downtown Seattle. Sometimes we hold our breath, lower our gaze, and plow through the crowd, and other days we wander blissfully under a wide, open sky.

But finding balance demands more from me than just silencing my phone for a few moments to snap up some convenient inwardness. Inwardness is an “orientation to the world.” It’s a way of being, a way of breathing, if you will. And in a culture that measures me by my productivity, I need to exhale and open my hands.

–KLC

Each Holy Hour

A Project for Daily Wonder

Consider: This Good Work of Ours

Travel Log

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