Hell on Earth

I'm still working my way through No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton and this week I came across two selections that have been gnawing on me. My previous post dealt with the business that is life lately for us.

There are times, then, when in order to keep ourselves in existence at all we simply have to sit back for a while and do nothing. And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform: and often it is quite beyond his power. (166)

Jesus established a pattern of regular periods of rest for himself. A pattern that is necessary for anyone to truly be human...in the fullest since of the word. I find in my own life that regular periods of NOT doing, what the Bible calls Sabbath rest are necessary for me to be the Christian, husband, father, friend, and minister that I am supposed to be.

The Eagles have a song that says "I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell." What I have been reminded of is that if I don't take time to simply BE rather than DO then I cheat myself and God out of my best. In addition to that I create my own prison in which I feel the need to do stuff all the time based on pressure to constantly look busy and feel busy and a drive for productivity. What I really need to do is break that cycle and find contentment in periods of non-doing.

Merton also had this to say, "Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth" (171).

Are you helping to create heaven on earth or hell on earth?