Tag Archives: time

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Friday Link Love

The Cult of Collaboration — Fernando Gros

Just jokin'. Sort of.

…We often need to collaborate in order to solve really big problems. And, as humans, we also need to work alongside other people to satisfy more basic emotional desires for community and belonging.

But, the hard slog of creating, innovating and thinking is something we largely do alone.

That’s something I totally agree with. And, it worries me that in many parts of society, including schools, we are not encouraging people to develop the skills required to work alone, for extended periods of time, on complex problems.

Add in the fact that smartphones mean that we need never be alone again, and this is an issue worth thinking about. Alone. Or together.

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Religion for Atheists — Alain de Botton

We are far more desperate than secular modernity recognises. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror pretty much all the time – and religions recognise this. We need to build a similar awareness into secular structures.
Religions are fascinating because they are giant machines for making ideas vivid and real in people’s lives: ideas about goodness, about death, family, community etc. Nowadays, we tend to believe that the people who make ideas vivid are artists and cultural figures, but this is such a small, individual response to a massive set of problems. So I am deeply interested in the way that religions are in the end institutions, giant machines, organisations, directed to managing our inner life. There is nothing like this in the secular world, and this seems a huge pity.

The above link is to an FAQ about Botton’s TED talk on Atheism 2.0, which is outstanding and available here.

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Pomodoro Technique

If you’re not familiar with the pomodoro technique for time management, it’s incredibly simple and very effective. I wrote Sabbath in the Suburbs primarily using techniques like this one.

Poke around the website to learn more about it, though for heaven’s sake, I don’t know why you’d need a $26 book to understand it, let alone the tomato-shaped timer, although it is cute.

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And along the lines of time management:

The Biggest Myth in Time Management — Harvard Business Review

In a nutshell: That we can get it all done. (Comments are interesting, trying to diagnose “Brad’s” problem in the article.)

I think this simple realization has profound spiritual implications, way beyond simple time management. But then again, I would think that, I just wrote a book about Sabbath…

Have a good weekend. It’s a long weekend for us, what with teacher work days on Monday and Tuesday. We have our congregation’s annual meeting on Sunday, after which the kids and I head to Johnstown, Pennsylvania for a short visit with Robert’s grandmother.

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This is Now

Heads down time for me: This is my last blog entry for a while—see you when the book is done. Until then, I leave you with one of my favorite quotes about the passage of time.

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, “This is now.”

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

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Today’s Sabbath-ish Thought

Actually, since I’m working on the book, I am having more than one Sabbath-ish thought per day. Why, some days I have as many as 3.5 Sabbath-ish thoughts!

My friend Marci posted a link on FB to an NPR story about Joan Didion’s latest book, Blue Nights, in which she writes about the death of her daughter. (I reviewed The Year of Magical Thinking some time back.)

Marci was startled into awareness by this quote in the story:

Didion writes that in theory, these mementos should bring back the moment, but in fact, they only make clear how inadequately she appreciated the moment back when it happened.

I am certain that, had I heard the story, it would have been the money quote for me as well.

Part of my impulse to explore Sabbath is to try and cheat time, in a sense—to slow it down to the speed of savoring, just one day a week, by not having to be anywhere, do anything, prove myself, develop skills, inculcate kids, bring order to chaos. Sabbath has been an exercise in mindfulness and awareness—the kind of mindfulness Didion grieves the lack of as she beholds touchstone objects from the past. My Memory Project, too, has been a way of capturing on paper the essence of these days.

I was thinking about all this today, as James played on a church playground with Margaret while Caroline rehearsed with her children’s choir inside. The world was washed with gold as the sun receded, and I knew that in a week, this hour of the day would be blue-black and cold.

I found myself watching them with love, recording the scene as fully as I could, just as an exercise. One of the things that drives me, in parenthood and life, is not wanting to have the experience Didion describes, a wistful, heartbreaking “I missed it.”

But I realized today, I will have that experience; indeed, there is no way not to. Every day is full of golden moments. You simply cannot hold on to them all. You can’t even hold on to a fraction of them. They are too numerous, growing in number constantly. And they are simultaneously too precious to record in our memory banks adequately, and too quotidian to register as something to remember.

When loss comes to us, we will never feel we have appreciated the moment enough. That’s what grief is.

Didion’s experience is not a call to intentionality for the rest of us, although I am a big believer in intentionality. Rather, what she describes is an inevitable by-product of love and death. There is no remedy for what she describes in her book, no amount of intentionality or mindfulness that will keep us from the same fate.

I found this amazingly freeing.

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Friday Link Love

Here we go:

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See-Through Church – Belgium

I ran across this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, who said, “that’s one way to get more transparency in the church.” Visually arresting; see the link for more photos:

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Applying Sentiment Analysis to the Bible – OpenBible

An interesting image and idea, and something one could sit and study for quite some time… although I notice that the resurrection is listed as a negative event. Yeah, I guess Mark could be read that way…


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The Roots of Religion – Big Questions Online

Myth, story, practice…

 I have found that the very mention of the words “religion” and “evolution” sets off a kind of reflex reaction among some, but fortunately not all, contemporary Americans. Among both religious fundamentalists and what might be called atheistic fundamentalists these terms set off a war to the death, with abusive language directed toward the supposed opposition. In that kind of atmosphere any rational discussion becomes impossible. What unites these two groups is the idea that religion and science are essentially the same thing:  sets of propositional truths that can be judged in terms of argument and evidence.

What surprised me when I began to read the work of leading scientists in the fields of cosmology and evolution is how many of them rejected this idea and argued instead that science and religion are really two different spheres that may at points overlap but that operate in accordance with different logics. Science operates with scientific method in terms of which different theories can be tested and proved or disproved, though if Karl Popper is right, proof is always problematic and we are safer to stick to disproof. Religion on the other hand is a way of life more than a theory. It is based on beliefs that science can neither prove nor disprove. Its “proof” is the kind of person the religious way of life produces.

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Dying and Dinner Parties – Vimeo

Linked from the Improvised Life blog, this is a delightfully matter-of-fact take on the last adventure of life.

Dying and Dinner Parties from ThinPlace Pictures on Vimeo.

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An Interview with David Eagleman – BoingBoing

David and I were at Rice University at the same time, though I did not know him there. He’s made the rounds on some of my favorite podcasts, including Radiolab, and his book Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlives is really interesting. In this interview he tackles near-death experiences, déjà vu and more. When asked what advice he’d have for young aspiring scientists and thinkers, he says:

Watch TED talks: smart people will distill their life’s work down to 20 minutes for you. Follow links through infinite trajectories of Wikipedia. Watch educational videos on topics that resonate with you.

There are a million ways to waste time on the net; reject those in favor of ways that teach you exactly what you want to know. Never before have we enjoyed such an opportunity for tailored, individualized education.

And be sure to get off-line often, to take digital sabbaths. As much as the net provides a platter of mankind’s learning, there is a different kind of learning to be had from a hike in the woods, the climbing of a tree, an afternoon building a dam in a stream.

Amen!

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Are We Teaching Our Kids to be Dysfunctional about Time?

Prison Countdown Clock. Because it's not too soon to start that Christmas shopping.

The book writing is coming along, which means I’ve got Sabbath on the brain all the time. (Too bad I haven’t taken one in a couple of weeks. Oops.)

I’m finding that the book is really not about Sabbath. It is about Time: how we understand it, measure it, spend it. Time is a great leveler because we all have a finite amount of it. Even the CEO of a Fortune 500 company cannot cheat death (though admittedly, top-notch health care doesn’t hurt).

So here’s something I’ve been kicking around about time, and I don’t have an answer. I’ve always heard that with kids, it’s beneficial to give them some warning when it’s time to transition from one activity to the next—especially if the first activity is something fun that they aren’t going to want to stop doing. Parenting experts advocate a countdown, e.g. “five minutes and then we need to leave the playground,” or “we leave for the bus in ten minutes.”

We are practitioners of this method, mainly because it makes life easier: more warning means fewer tantrums because they wanted to go down the slide One! More! Time!, and fewer frantic searches for shoes when we need to walk out the door. But we also do it because it respects our children as people. I don’t like being yanked around without warning and wouldn’t like it if it were done to me.

On the other hand, I wonder whether there is a downside, in the sense of making the awareness of time a little too prominent a feature of our kids’ lives. Childhood is great kairos time (holy time, time outside of time) in a lot of ways. Kids get what it means to be immersed in an activity, enjoying it for its own sake, not worrying about the clock. Does the warning system take them outside of this immersiveness and condition them to be aware of time in ways that aren’t helpful? And is there a cost to them in terms of their development or their enjoyment of childhood?

What do you think?

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What It Means to Be Attentive

I’m writing this as the girls play upstairs with two neighborhood friends. I can hear squeals and thumps and am confident I’ll see them all at some point, wearing my daughters’ fanciest dresses. (It’s a favorite activity.) I am ready to intervene if necessary, but I have no idea what they’re doing.

The other day I was with a “soul friend” who asked me how things were going now that all three are in school. I’ve been so excited for this new chapter of our lives that I was surprised to find myself blurting out, “I’m feeling a little grief right now.”

But I am.

James has lost all his baby-ness—and though it is heresy in some quarters to say so, the baby phase is far from my favorite. He’ll be four soon, which is one of my favorite stages. I love the questions—400 a day. I love seeing them move beyond describing their world and into evaluating, analyzing, imagining. The shift to preschool is not as dramatic as it is for some kids, since he’s been in daycare at our neighbor’s house for a long time. But still. He now has a hook with his name on it for his coat and his tote. There is a specific start and end to the day. There are rituals and hallway rules and forms for me to fill out.

Margaret is in kindergarten now. She’s been longing for kindergarten for sooo loooong, watching her sister get on the bus and buy her lunch and do homework. When Robert attended back to school night, Margaret’s teachers said, “We wish we had more time with you tonight, because we have a lot of Margaret stories to share.” Is anyone surprised?

Caroline is starting to care about what she wears. She composes songs on the piano and walks around singing all the pieces she’s learning in choir. She ran for student council rep, writing a speech for her class and reading it with her trademark forthrightness. She did not win, but she brushed it off with great maturity.

Every phase is better than the one before it.

But… yes. Grief.

Part of this is the typical realization that it goes by very fast. (In a way—it also goes verrrrry slowly.) But what my friend and I were able to unravel is that I am changing as my children change.

It’s a goal of mine to parent mindfully, to notice what is going on, to name it (aloud or on paper), and just generally be attentive to what is going on. This parenting thing is fun, you know? And it’s easier to be attentive with littles. It’s kinda built in. When they’re young, you’re with them for hours at a time, face to face, looking them square in the eye, beholding them as you nurse them, bathe them, brush their teeth. And there’s so much intervention required—they need you to set up the Chutes and Ladders, to pull on their socks, to cut their meat.

We’re still eye to eye a lot, but more and more, we’re side by side. As it should be. I read a magazine and they play a game. Robert cooks dinner and Caroline reads to James. Just as toddlers experience parallel play, it happens with parents and their children too.

So I have to learn a new way of attentiveness. They’re upstairs with friends right now, making up whole new worlds. I shouldn’t be lurking about. They need their space.

But I don’t want to miss this either.

Yes, we must always make time for long moments together. (The Sabbath practice continues!) But the challenge now is to be attentive at the margins: while sharing an errand together, in the last few minutes before bed, walking home from the bus stop, at the breakfast table. Every moment is an opportunity to savor, to experience joy, to express love. But it feels much harder, as the busyness of life presses in, and as these little people develop their own busynesses to contribute.

I feel as though I’ve finished the Basic Mindfulness course. Now it’s time for the upper-level work.

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Reverb #6: Make

Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

We’re making a lot of our Christmas gifts this year, and buying less stuff. So I have made a lot of different things in the past week or so, but I can’t say what any of them are because gift recipients read this blog. But here are a few materials we have used:

  • butter
  • acrylic paint
  • sharpie
  • wrapping paper
  • nutmeg
  • laptop

Slight digression: We’ve been studying the Advent Conspiracy at church, and yesterday the topic was “give more,” which emphasizes “relational gifts” rather than the easy and impersonal sweater or gift card. Back when Robert and I were newly married, we did the Hundred-Dollar Holiday for several years. I’ve loved Bill McKibben’s stuff for years and wish we were related; I suppose we are if you go back far enough.

We didn’t stick to $100 strictly, but we bought very little other than supplies for whatever we were making. We did it because we resonated with the concept of simplicity and spending less, particularly at Christmas. We also did it because we had more time than money back then. Now the exact opposite is true—it’s time that’s scarce, and the time we have is measured in little fragments between piano lessons and dinner, or kid bedtime and adult bedtime. So it feels more sacrificial, in a way, to make things. The Advent Conspiracy folks are really big on making gifts ultra-personal: thinking about each specific person, what he or she means to you, and what would make the person feel loved. We’re not really doing that, but I like the place we’re standing nonetheless.

Back to reverb: one thing I want to finish is a shawl/poncho that I started a year ago and have worked on in fits and starts. It’s been a bit of a disaster, as much of my knitting turns out to be. It’s a little short in the torso—the pattern in the book had a mistake in it, and the correction makes everything a bit more compressed (it’s a lace pattern). I have no idea what I’m going to do about that so I’ve been in this sort of perfectionistic denial about the whole thing. I really need to just finish it already and figure out what to do.

I’m thinking fringe. Fringe makes everything better.

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Parental Quality Assurance

Mondays are my day off and are usually a blend of low-key play with the kids, plus an errand here and there. The kids also have a surrogate grandmother who comes over many Mondays, which allows me to do some writing, errands, etc. But she is out of town, so yesterday was just Mommy time.

In the morning the kids watched a video while I caught up on chores after a busy weekend, and then we played. We built a “Fancy Washington DC” out of blocks which morphed into a “Fancy Paris” (pictured here). The Barbies met Strawberry Shortcake for lunch and a trip to the Eiffel Tower, while James brought various Noah’s Ark animals to join the fun.

Caroline and James desperately needed new shoes, and I couldn’t figure out when else to do it, so we went to the shoe store(s) between school and piano lessons—about a two hour window.

I was determined to be focused but not stressed. When Caroline didn’t find anything at Stride Rite that fit and felt good and was less than $50, we went to Target. I hate buying shoes at Target—the shoes are always unorganized and they never have the size we need. At one point I sighed loudly and Caroline said, “Mommy, this is what shoe shopping is all about.” True.

Aside from this irritation, I really tried to go with the flow and not convey that we were short on time, even though we were. I realized afterwards, however, that just because I was trying to be relaxed doesn’t mean I actually succeeded. So on our way to piano, I asked them, “So would you say that Mommy seemed very stressed and in a hurry back there, or only medium stressed and in a hurry, or not at all stressed and in a hurry?”

The consensus was “medium.” I was glad that they put me where I would have put myself.

I think it’s useful, as a self-reflective person, to see where the disconnects are between intentions and reality, and my outsides vs. insides. But I have to say, I can’t remember a time that I’ve ever asked for feedback from my kids. I’m not gonna give them a form to fill out or anything, but it was an interesting moment.

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Getting It Done

Re-entry after vacation is always tough.

Robert is having a really heavy week. Me, I managed not to overload the early part of the week, and now have a day with 19 to-do items on it. Oops.

It’s hard to feel like you’re getting anywhere with 19 items on your to-do list, especially when some of those items are people oriented things like pastoral care and phone calls, the quality of which suffer when you reduce them to items on a checklist. They take as long as they take.

My challenge today (and every day) is to move through this stuff as graciously as possible. One trick I’ve heard is to look at the to-do list and ask, “What are those things that, if I only did those items, I would feel satisfied with my day?”

David Allen of Getting Things Done fame talks about having a “mind like water”—putting processes in place such that your mind isn’t cluttered with stuff, but focused on the task at hand. I’d rather spend mental energy researching a four-week adult study for Advent than trying to remember where I put the stamps, for example.

What do you do to cultivate a ‘mind like water’? Aside from a general GTD approach to my work, here are a few of my organizational tricks that make my life more harmonious… with no claims of originality:

1. Each night I organize my to-do list for the next day, organized by “context”—e-mails I need to send, errands, stuff I need to think about/write, paperwork. This way I can batch like items together and get into an e-mail groove, or a phone groove, etc.

2. Laminated morning lists for the girls: they use a dry-erase marker to check off each item (breakfast, brush hair, put homework in backback) so I don’t have to nag them as much.

3. Related to that: I put everything on the table they’ll need: hairbrush and rubber band, toothbrush and toothpaste, vitamins, etc. And I do it the night before because I’m always rushed (and often cranky) in the morning.

4. I put my workout clothes beside the bed so I don’t even need to have the light on in order to get dressed.

5. I keep all note-writing and bill-paying supplies in a single basket: note cards, envelopes, checkbook, church directories, stamps, address labels.

What about you? Any tricks to share?

Image is of the GTD collection process.

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Little House in the Big Woods

Recently I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series to Margaret and Caroline (who loves the fact that Laura’s Ma shares her name). I was taken by this ending of Little House in the Big Woods and thought it had something to say about Sabbath and the passage of time. Laura is in bed and listening to her Pa sing “Auld Lang Syne.”

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, “This is now.”

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

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About this series of posts: One of my major areas of interest (personally and professionally) is Sabbath-keeping. Since this trip I’m on is a sort of extended Sabbath experience, I’ve collected some quotes and thoughts about the topic to share while I’m away. Ah, the miracle of scheduled posts…