TEXTS: Proverbs 14:1 – 10 and Tao #2 (Stephen Mitchell, translator)
Please look at your hands, front and back. Look at each finger and the web where your fingers meet the palm and back of your hand. Hands are amazing. They are intricate … complicated. Now make a fist. What does it feel like to make a fist? Did you make a gentle loose fist or a tight fist? Now open your hands again. Put them together. Now pull them apart.
Such an easy exercise for most of us. We can do it without thinking about it. We don't have to tell our eyes to look at our hands or tell our fingers to move. It's actually odd to stop and take time to feel your hands as they move. For most of us, we don't have to concentrate on moving our muscles in a particular direction.
Last Wednesday I went bowling with the teens from Good News Community Church. We had a good time, bowling for 2 hours. That's a long time for a non-bowler to bowl. Because this is not something I do, I found myself having to think about my movements. I had to be conscious of where my arm was swinging and of holding on to the ball ... letting the ball go and following through. It was hard. There were some guys in the lane next to ours. They were bowlers. I could tell they were concentrating, but not in the same way that I was. They didn't have to think about their bodies moving, they were just focusing. Strike after spare after strike, they focused and moved their bodies.
They knocked the pins down and then the machine in back would reset them so they could do it again. My pins didn't always have to be reset, but often enough at least some of them did.
My hand and arm are still sore from using them the way that I did. The weight of the ball and the motion of my arm were all unfamiliar for me.
There have been times when I have had to really concentrate on what would normally be simple movements. Things like walking and not falling down due to pain in my leg, or grasping a doorknob to open a door because of pain in my hand. There are times when performing a relatively simple function requires attention.
In the second chapter of the Tao Te Ching we hear about acting without doing. It's like what we did with our hands. We were able to look at our hands, move them around, close and open them, without doing it. Wednesday, when I was bowling, I was doing bowling. The guys in the lane next to ours were acting without doing.
It's a beautiful thing to watch, acting without doing. Singers, dancers, actresses ... the really good ones, act without doing. The 2nd Tao say, "Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go." It's magical and intimate.
I remember being a line cook. There was one guy that I always liked to work with on the line. We flowed. We didn't like anyone to interrupt us ... to try to help us. We had a rhythm and a way to communicate that was not something we even thought about. We just let it happen. We were like athletes in the zone.
I want us to live in the zone. I want us to move effortlessly through life. Not passively and not without intention, but effortlessly because we are acting without doing. We have and don't possess.
Verse 10 of Proverb 14 says, "The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy. I came across this verse earlier this week and thought, isn't that the truth. We can walk with someone ... we can hear someone's story ... we can learn and listen ... but there's a point where what's in our heart is ours alone.
That is so true for me of my journey from ex-gay to ex-ex-gay. The bitterness and joy of it all is mine. I can share my story, but it is mine to carry and to know and love. When I am aware of my own story, without having to think about it – the bitterness and joy – I'm in the zone.
Your heart has its own story. The heart of this community has its own story. When we know it and own it, when we live it and love it, we are in the zone.
There is another verse in Proverb 14 ... it has been a favourite of mine for years. Verse 4 says, according to The New Revised Standard Version, "Where there are no oxen, there is no grain; abundant crops come by the strength of the ox."
This translation of the verse is good, and maybe it's more accurate than the other translations, but when I fell in love with this scripture in my early twenties it was when I was reading The King James Version and the New International Version
The King James Version says this, "Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox."
The New International Version puts it this way, "Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest."
I have cleaned out my fair share of mangers ... or stalls as we called them. It's nasty work. But we did it because it was worth having the cow. We had tractors to plow our land, so the cows were mainly used for milk and to sell for meat. Still, it was worth it to us. I was well aware that there was a time in my father's living memory when farm animals were used like we used tractors. The strength of an ox really meant something when you needed to plow a field or move heavy rocks or timber.
But this is a proverb. It isn't trying to convince us that cleaning up after an ox is worth it. The writer is assuming that we already know that and is using this as an illustration of a bigger learning. The learning that I hear is that getting important work done creates messes we have to clean up.
So often we think of messes being the result of a mistake made or something gone awry, but often messes are simply the result of life. There is both bitterness and joy in our hearts. There is an abundant harvest and a soiled pen to clean up. The cleaning up part can be nasty smelly work. The bitterness in our hearts is no fun to claim as our own, but it is keeping company with the joy in our hearts.
The Pride Parade is a lot of work to put together and I can't imagine the clean up afterward. But they do it year after year. It must be worth the mess and work.
We can keep things neat and clean ... but no oxen means no harvest. There would be no prep work and no clean up afterward if there wasn't a Pride Parade. But, then there would be no Pride Parade.
For me, it goes back to being in the zone. It takes a lot of effort to make something effortless. Can the mess of the accomplishment help to define the accomplishment? Can the accomplishment support us when it's time to pick up the shovel and clean up? Can we get in the zone of acting without doing when we are plowing or harvesting or shoveling?
We have choices. We can do what we want. We can keep things tidy by keeping them empty, which may result in our eventual hunger or starvation as we won't have a harvest, or we can organize to work for a harvest knowing that we are creating not only our intentional work but also some messes to clean up along the way; messes that may seem totally unrelated.
If through prayer and intentionally loving one another we can find our zone where we have but don't possess; when we do our work and then forget it so that it lasts forever; then we will have both messes to clean up and a harvest to gather. Both are hard work, but not work that we have to do if we are in the zone of acting without doing ... of letting things arise and come, and then disappear and go.
We work so hard doing this life and putting in our time and being in relationships. But the more that we can we need to trust, like we did with our hands moving – we just moved our hands and used our eyes to see our hands. We didn't analyze what it might be like to look at our hands or to move them. Most of us didn't have to make a great effort to command our bodies to pick up our hands and to direct our eyes to look. A long time ago we did have to make such efforts. When we were babies our hands moved around, but at some point we realized we wanted to pick something up. We had to learn to direct our hands and that took concentration. When we are ill or disabled, we have to make concentrated efforts.
Can we, as a community, act without doing? Can we find that zone? Can we allow our movements to be fluid and then when we notice our movements, not stop and wonder ... but instead just keep moving. When the messes need to be cleaned up, can we pick up the shovel and just clean. Not think about the cleaning. Not look at the mess too hard, but just enough to know it's there and to know what to clean ... to let ourselves be in the work rather than doing the work.
This requires trust – trust of the God who is Presence, trust in ourselves as individuals and trust in ourselves as a community. It also requires time – time for the work toward harvest, time to clean up the inevitable and seemingly unrelated messes that will occur, and time in prayer to prepare us and support us to act without doing. I think it also requires love – love for ourselves, love for each other, and love for the work.
When we get in the zone, the work becomes less exhausting; the messes become less annoying; and the harvest is less a goal to strive for and more a delight to be savored. Burn out happens outside the zone.
We know the joy and the bitterness in our hearts. We want to add to the joy and not to the bitterness. There is less bitterness in the zone of acting without doing; and much much more joy. My prayer for us is an increase of joy in our hearts.
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