Response-abil­i­ty

Years ago, I had the great fun of trav­el­ing across Cana­da with two fel­low record­ing artists — Steve Bell and Bob Ben­nett — in a con­cert series dubbed ​“The Liv­ing Room Tour.” Each night we per­formed in a songwriter’s round, tak­ing turns offer­ing songs, back­ing each oth­er up, and delight­ing in each other’s work.

One night dur­ing a tour stop in Kelow­na, Steve intro­duced a song called ​“Pleas­ing to You.” He described the way he’d been read­ing Psalm 19 dur­ing a sun-kissed morn­ing in his home in a rur­al area out­side of Win­nipeg. ​“The house was qui­et,” he explained. ​“As I looked out the east­ern win­dow, the birds were singing, the deer were afoot, and I even caught a glimpse of the mag­nif­i­cent red fox that would some­times shim­mer by. Soon, a song began to well up with­in me …”.

The audi­ence was lean­ing in, trans­fixed by the pic­ture Steve was so expert­ly paint­ing. I, on the oth­er hand, was feel­ing some­thing oth­er than a song welling up with­in me. I was think­ing of my own home, filled as it was in those days with the joy­ful and not-so-joy­ful sounds of my two very young and active chil­dren. I was try­ing to remem­ber the last time I had spent even five min­utes in reflec­tive silence.

“Steve,” I inter­rupt­ed, ​“can I just say … how very nice for you!” The audi­ence instant­ly caught the note of sar­casm in my voice and erupt­ed into laugh­ter. There was a swell of (most­ly fem­i­nine) cheer­ing. Years lat­er, Steve would tell me that sud­den burst of per­spec­tive was one of his favourite moments of the tour.

My own kids are teenagers now, and though life is still busy, it’s eas­i­er to find pock­ets of qui­et than it used to be. I’ve come to deeply appre­ci­ate the crit­i­cal impor­tance of set­ting apart time for prayer and still­ness. Thus, it was with great enthu­si­asm that I recent­ly found myself extolling the virtues of a con­tem­pla­tive life to a class­room full of adult stu­dents whilst co-teach­ing a sum­mer course at Regent College.

But even as I was mak­ing the case for the val­ue of sus­tained, atten­tive silence, I noticed flick­ers of exas­per­a­tion cross more than a few faces — young moms, har­ried dads, over­worked busi­ness lead­ers, and even exhaust­ed min­is­ters. I knew instant­ly what they were think­ing. How very nice for you!

Is a con­tem­pla­tive life — a life of lov­ing atten­tion to God — only avail­able to folks who enjoy the lux­u­ry of expend­able time?

As I review the var­i­ous sea­sons of my own life — most of them, to some extent, demand­ing — I find myself draw­ing two con­clu­sions. The first is that it real­ly has been of crit­i­cal impor­tance to find, on a reg­u­lar basis, at least some small mea­sure of time to spend inten­tion­al­ly sync­ing my heart with God’s. As Richard Fos­ter has point­ed out, we can only live up to our respon­si­bil­i­ties when we have ​“response-abil­i­ty” — the capac­i­ty to respond to what­ev­er life throws at us with appro­pri­ate patience, wis­dom and grace. Such response-abil­i­ty typ­i­cal­ly requires rhythms of deep and inten­tion­al con­nec­tion with our Creator.

Find­ing the nec­es­sary time requires cre­ativ­i­ty, inten­tion­al­i­ty, and more than a lit­tle help from our friends. But it’s pos­si­ble through sub­ver­sive­ly sim­ple tweaks, like get­ting up a bit ear­li­er to talk over the com­ing day with God, turn­ing the radio off to fos­ter still­ness on a com­mute, or nego­ti­at­ing with fam­i­ly or co-work­ers to allow for the occa­sion­al mini-retreat from nor­mal routines.

The sec­ond thing I notice, how­ev­er, is that, while carv­ing out time for qui­et con­tem­pla­tion has been essen­tial, it’s been equal­ly impor­tant to attend to the move­ment of God in even the nois­i­est parts of my life. It is one (beau­ti­ful) thing to catch a glimpse of God in a sun-drenched coun­try­side. But is anoth­er (equal­ly beau­ti­ful) thing to find him in a messy kitchen or a pres­sure-filled board­room. One of the great fruits of times of still­ness, in fact, should be an increased capac­i­ty to rec­og­nize God in the times of anything-but-stillness.

Years ago, watch­ing the sun come up, my friend Steve read, ​“The law of the Lord is per­fect, refresh­ing the soul” (Psalm 19:7). Tonight, work­ing long past sun­set, I read those same words, and I know that they are true.