sabbatical – Notes From the Potting Shed

Cynicism and parenting

‘I’d rather be gullible than cynical’

Sometimes you hear a phrase that feels a bit like a punch to the gut – striking unexpectedly and leaving you reeling. I had that sensation a bit over a year ago, listening to Pete Greig reflect on a podcast about the Asbury outpouring. It has stuck with me since.

The slow dismantling of a weary cynicism was a major arena where I experience God’s gentle grace during my sabbatical last summer. It was a fight I then carried into the months that followed as I returned to ministry with all of the frustrations, stresses and tensions inherent to all meaningful work this side of new creation.

I long to be more buoyant and less reserved. I long for more delight, laughter and play. And I long to worry and brood a whole lot less.

I want to live with the unspeakable, effervescent joy of someone who believes in the resurrection. But all too often, I live deflated, turned inwards, pre-occupied by my little concerns and hurts, frustrated at things that don’t go exactly how I want them to, or just a bit scared and worn out by so much in our world that is not right.

I grow cynical.

I grow old.

Now, there is a type of growing old that I long for – a maturation, a softening of hard-edges, an uninhibited intimacy with God and others, an eroding of ego, a confidence in who I am and a disinterest in trying to be anyone else, a depth of peace and poise – the kind that comes not from comfort and ease, but from the long obedience of showing up and giving yourself away. Some people call this sort of holy aging a ‘second naivete.’

But holy aging is rare. It does not seem to be a given. More often, growing old seems to come with unresolved baggage, festering wounds, a narrowing of horizon and a raising of drawbridges. A turning in on oneself rather than out to others. Cynicism.

Right now, parenting feels like it presents me with a daily choice. Which sort of aging do I want? The way of cynicism, or the way of the second naivete?

It could wear me down, I could despise the monotony and seek refuge in escapism, I could lick the wounds of my exhaustion, cultivate self-pity, fantasise all the ‘what-ifs’ of different life decisions, and see these years as a struggle for survival. Honestly, this feels like the pull of the tide.

Or… or I could see these precious days before the routine of school as opportunities to nurture attachment, to attune with and delight in this awesome gift of a boy who God has entrusted to our care. And I could see the monotony itself as a deep invitation.

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father in younger than we.

GK Chesterton

Another punch to the gut.

But a good one. A welcome one. One that I need to hear over and over.

I don’t know if it will get easier over time. Perhaps. But right now making this choice to become the father and the man that I want to be, not the one that my apathy and lethargy drag me towards, is hard. I’m very much not nailing it.

But if being clear on the destination is a big part of the journey, then I am at least progressing. As always, it’s a long obedience in the same direction.

Reflecting on Sabbatical

Having been back at work for a few weeks now, it feels like a good time to reflect on my three-month sabbatical. I came into sabbatical excited but also in quite a cynical and exhausted place. I hoped for a time of deep rest – a slowing down to be present to God and to my family. I wrote in the first week about a desire to go back to the basics – to simply receive and delight in God’s goodness.

So, how did it go? My workplace’s sabbath policy did not require me to accomplish anything to justify my sabbatical. I’ve been hugely grateful for that freedom. Overall, I have loved this time. Sabbath rest in its various forms is always a gift – God’s gift – which I am grateful to receive. I have loved the simplicity and spaciousness of it. It was precious to have time to play with my son without worrying about getting to the next meeting, time to go for long walks and bike rides, time to read books just because I wanted to read them.

And yet, in many ways, it did not go how I had hoped. Midway through I had to return to work because our funding looked like it was in trouble. I didn’t return full-time, but it meant that the second half of sabbatical was very different from the first – less present and restful, more distracted and stressful and hurried. It felt like my mind, body and soul were just beginning to recover from the toll of a difficult season of work and life, and then I was unexpectedly thrown back in again.

There was definitely some grief there. Grief that my sabbatical was not going to not match up to the years of hopes and dreams I had invested in it. I found myself frustrated at God. In the Hebrew Bible, the practice of sabbath is an act of trust in God’s provision – trusting that God will provide even when we stop work. And, honestly, it felt like God had not kept His side of the deal. There were some hard days processing that disappointment, but I was able to land with some perspective, remembering that sabbatical is a gift, not an entitlement, and a gift that the vast majority of people do not get to enjoy. I could be angry and frustrated that it did not go to plan, or I could make the most of the time that I had. I tried, imperfectly, to choose the latter.

There are no great achievements from my sabbatical – no book, no qualification, no dramatic spiritual breakthrough. I did read quite a few books and got myself a bit fitter. And I think sabbatical has changed me.

Chatting with my spiritual director earlier this week, the theme that kept coming up as we reflected on sabbatical was that I think it humbled me.

Slowing down and being more present at home are lovely in theory, but I found them hard in practice. Maybe for the first time in adult life I could not avoid the question of who I am when I am not working hard and achieving things. I liked to imagine that I was basically quite a kind and patient person, but I was humbled to discover that it only took a few days of childcare or bad sleep or my wife being ill to break that façade. My son is wonderful, but he is two, and that comes with a whirlwind of big feelings and an endless supply of energy. The mundanity of parenting confronted me with my deep selfishness. To my shame, I would catch myself fantasising about how much more fun sabbatical would be without a child.

The humbling came on other levels too – the humbling of achieving far less than I’d hoped for even after I’d tried to manage my expectations and ambitions, and the humbling of realising that I had not done enough to set my team up to thrive while I was off. It wasn’t what I expected from sabbatical, but at the same time, the humbling was not unwelcome. There haven’t been dramatic moments of spiritual encounter over this time, but I’m confident that God has been at work in me – and I think there is grace in the way that I’ve been confronted with my own weakness and self-reliance.

I was nervous about returning to work, but I’ve actually really enjoyed returning fully into the swing of things over the last few weeks. Where I was quite tired and cynical in May, I’ve come back with a fresh energy, vision and passion for work. In the final weeks of sabbatical I re-read some of the books that got me excited about a radical pursuit of Jesus and justice when I was an undergraduate and I felt a re-affirmation of vocation – a renewed clarity that this role and this movement is where God is calling me right now. Being confronted with my selfishness has helped me, very imperfectly, to love my wife and my son better. And on a very simple level, I love Jesus more. I’ve been angry at him, for sure, but I’ve also been wooed again by his beauty and goodness. I don’t need to justify sabbatical, but if I did, I’d say those are good outcomes.

I don’t want to try to force a positive spin on this. Parts of it have been really hard, sad and frustrating. But that is the reality of life this side of new creation. Many more parts have been gentle, precious and deeply restful. It may not have been exactly the gift I had anticipated, but it was most certainly a gift.

Setting Out On Sabbatical

My sabbatical has begun. As I’ve spoken to people about it, especially people outside of the church-y world, I’ve noticed that it is a word in need of definition. Either people haven’t heard of a sabbatical before, or maybe they remember their minister taking a year out to do some study, or something more akin to an academic sabbatical. Though I’d be excited by the prospect of study leave, I’ve been convinced that these next three months of sabbatical require a different approach. At its root, sabbatical (like sabbath) derives from the Hebrew shabbat, which means to stop. It is a ceasing from work in order to rest and delight, to re-root my true identity in God, and to resist a culture of overwork, frantic busyness and joyless anxiety. Reading over notes I took from Ruth Hayley Barton’s Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest, I was particularly struck by these lines:

‘Knowing that sabbatical is a gift from a loving God – and not merely a gift from one’s church or institution – makes quite a difference… Rather than feeling guilty or entitled, I was able to gratefully receive sabbatical as God’s care for me, a beloved child’

I have not struggled to recognise the immense privilege that it is to work for an organisation that has a generous sabbatical policy, and that has allowed me the freedom to design this time according to what I need. But I had, perhaps, been less alert to the basic goodness of God – who wove rhythms of sabbath rest into creation and whose invitation to me in this season is to rest in his goodness.

This last year has been tough. Adopting has been joyful but also the hardest thing we have ever done. I love my job but this has been the toughest year of work I’ve known. Changes in our team, transitioning into our second decade as a movement and financial struggles have presented big challenges. My response to those challenges has been to be strong and rely on hard work. I have taken it upon myself to find solutions and save the day, and as a result I have lived at a pace that is not sustainable or healthy.

As I settle into sabbatical, my temptation is to try to optimise – to freight it with expectations, goals and ambitions. I have drilled myself in a self-centred, industrial mindset that frantically seeks to extract the maximum productivity from every opportunity. If my sabbatical is about stopping work, then I think it will require me to go deep down to the roots and to part ways with this industrial mindset.

I want this sabbatical to be a time of slowing down enough to love others well, of being present and interruptible and unhurried. I want to cultivate what John Swinton calls ‘timefulness,’ an alertness to God’s presence in the every-day and a simple delight.

Perhaps that simplicity is key. I’ve had fads on minimalism but my life over the last year has felt cluttered and complicated. My faith is fragile and distracted. Scandals and frustrations at older leaders I had looked up to have bred a creeping cynicism and distrust. I worry that I am becoming harder, sharper, and more judgemental rather than softer, wiser and kinder.

I’m hungry for simplicity. I walked on the beach a few days ago and the words of psalm 23 came to me. I sang it over and over into the wind. If this sabbatical is to have any aim (and I am very cautious of loading it with the goals that my industrial mindset craves) then I think it is this: to go back to the basics. To return again to the Lord who is my shepherd. To strip away the baggage, the ego, the pride, the self-reliance, the frustration, the cynicism, the shame – and to know that I lack nothing, that I need fear no evil, that his goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life.

This sabbatical is an incredible gift and I want to choose simply to receive – without needing to justify or earn it. I want to simply receive and to delight in God’s goodness. If that is all I do, that will be enough.