July 14, 2014
It seems as though too much of our life is taken up by things that move fast. When we travel we often take planes that roar along at speeds higher than 500 miles per hour. A beautiful afternoon on Lake Michigan (a Sunday like the one we had just last week) is punctuated by the roar of motors which get boats rocketing along at sometimes unhealthy speeds. In the latest incantation of my cell phone I have an app called Flipboard. It makes it easier for me to fly through the news. Jimmy John’s delivers sandwiches ‘Freaky Fast.’ Isn’t ordinary delivery OK? Why does everything have to be fast, fast, fast? More and more we seem to forget what leisure is all about.
When I was a student studying philosophy I discovered Josef Pieper. His book Leisure: the Basis of Culture was published in 1947 during Germany’s post-World War II reconstruction. It seems an odd time to be writing a philosophy of leisure, but Pieper’s thesis is that if we do not understand the nature of leisure we will never work well. Pieper asks some difficult questions, and I believe they are questions we need to answer well or we will be subject to running everywhere and getting nowhere.
Is it possible that the current entanglement with work, career, achievement, and technological solutions is the reason why people find it more and more difficult to accept gifts graciously? Have we convinced ourselves that everything worthwhile must be acquired, earned, or achieved? God gives us great gifts in our lives – our life itself is a gift. But if we are unable to accept God’s gifts, then we are turning our universe upside down.
Everywhere I turn I see that it is increasingly difficult for all of us to deal with leisure. Young people often say that they are not religious nor do they need religion. Could that be an increasing alienation from being able to receive gifts graciously, an alienation from leisure, an alienation from silence, prayer and worship? While I see an increasing awareness of the need for service to the poor I am also aware that such service is usually “doing” for them, rather than being with them. Jesus was with the poor as much as he was doing things to assist them. Leisure helps us to be with the poor.
Leisure is not an easy parcel of life for us to get our arms around. But the questions raised by JosefPieper many years ago are still important in our lives because they push us to ask ourselves what is this race we are in and is it a part and parcel of being Catholic Christians? Should we instead be looking to the gifts that God is giving us and accepting them with the care and grace with which he gives them? The gift of silence. The gift of prayer. The gift of being able to worship with a community. Silence, prayer and worship are amazing gifts and we need to make room in our lives to accept them. Recognizing the importance of leisure will help us to be better people in a society thatis too deeply work and career oriented.