Bits on a rainy day

This has been a rainy week.

On Monday I met Rachel Mander for lunch, and afterwards we walked a little way to get gelato. It was grey and dreary, but sometimes you have to be a radical and disobey the dictates of the weather. I got coffee and she got apricot+thyme and chocolate, and we licked it as we exchanged music (rather, she told me about the fantastic band Harvest)

Yesterday it was rainier - the kind of rain that flicks up from the road when you cycle, and gets your dungarees all wet. When I got to the library, I went straight to the bathroom and stood in my t shirt while I dried my dungarees under the hand dryer. (something I would have never dared to do in Cambridge but SOAS relaxed culture and my desperation meant I'd left any embarrassment behind at my door approximately 30 minutes ago, pre-drenching)

Speaking of rain, I've been reading Gilead, and the narrator recounts this beautiful moment:

“The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

This last week I've encountered lots of beautiful moments on this interesting planet:

I've heard a track coach say he'd just become a great-grandfather for the fourth time.

I've seen a path cleared leading to bushes laden with almost-ripe blackberries.

I've tasted a blueberry cheesecake almost too good to be true.

I've heard a man whisper to his tutor, 'It's so beautiful being in a library surrounded by trees.'

I've walked with friends and gazed at the moon.

I've received a wedding invitation, a postcard from a dear friend, and a pair of jeans that make me feel comfortable and adventurous (let's go on adventure, my friend!)

I've stood out in the garden and inhaled morning air and done a little stretch.

After the sun the rain, after the rain the sun...glad that I live am I.

Lead us not into productivity

On Wdnesday I woke up in a lot of pain. My stomach had swelled up and I was shivering. (I later put the food poisoning like symptoms down to having probably eaten a little bit of a mouldy carrot last night.) Anyway, that took me out for most of the day, as I lay in bed watching videos and reading and listening to music. By mid-afternoon I was feeling a lot steadier, and did some laundry and cooking, and then tried to do some thesis work. But I felt utterly unable, and after cutting some words out here and there, I stood up in frustration and headed back to my room. 'I've been so unproductive,' I said out loud.

Then I mentally wrestled that thought back. Just before leaving Singapore, I'd had a conversation with Leonard about how damaging that word 'productivity' is. Leonard said he preferred the word 'generative', but today I was even far from generative - closer to gestative. But that's how life works, how the seasons work. The woman keeps the child in her womb for nine months before it is born. No one would call that child r woman 'unproductive'. The earth nurtures the seeds during the cold winter before they creep out in spring, but that period of rest is part of the preparation for flourishing.

I recently read a post by the Jubilee Centre about how the ancient Biblical law on gleaning speaks to our society today. The article was directed towards environmental sustainability, but its premise was that productivity is a false (and damaging) goal. The article looks at Leviticus 19:9-10:

‘When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.’

The idea of not going to the very edges, not wringing out every last resource, is compared to the law God gives to Moses to keep to Sabbath as a holy day of rest - here time is the resource, to be lived in not used and spent efficiently and entirely like a commodity. The article explains:

'There is a sense in the Bible that humans are predisposed to overwork – not because we’re innately hard-working, but because we like accumulating wealth. And when you don’t put limits around that, it inevitably results in injustice and oppression. [...] Just as the Sabbath and Sabbatical laws limited the time in which the Israelites should do productive work, so the gleaning laws limited the space of their productivity.  [...] The Bible warns us that an obsession with the ‘good’ of productivity actually prevents us from doing real good: looking after the alien, the orphan and the widow. Permitting gleaning served a kind of double purpose in this respect. It offered direct benefit to the most marginalised in society, who could come and gather leftover crops – just as Ruth does in Boaz’s fields. But it also served as a visible and tangible reminder to better-off Israelites that they were not to prioritise their own harvest and prosperity at the expense of those who struggled to find their next meal.'

A second thing I noticed as I was ill was my predisposition to selfishness. Even when I was hurting (and actually more so because I was hurting) I was thinking of how to make situations work for me, how to save my time, how to do my thesis, how to get my shopping, and as I thought inward, I walked past a homeless man and ignored him. I think this is a really important part of thinking about the rest that radically opposes ultra-productivity - it is not a selfish rest. It is not about making yourself comfortable - it is about gestation, preparing yourself to love and give and respond to God's call to love where he puts you, not where it is most productive for you. Just as productivity is selfish, so can rest be, unless it is seen as resting in God, for God's purposes. If I don't obey God's commandment to leave room in the margins for love and compassion, then I won't practice love and compassion - not on myself and not on others. But those margins must exist in my rest as well - I am leaving the grain not for me to pick up when I am tired but for others.

So this week I wrote a list of All the things I'd rather be than 'productive':

Thoughtful
Creative
Kind
Encouraging
Passionate
Joyful
Beloved
Faithful
Strong
Gentle
Full of integrity
Adventurous
Wise
Empathetic
Peaceful
Curious
Honest

Change my heart O God, make it ever true. Change my heart, O God, may I be like you.