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Lazy Busy

Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 27, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak

Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, tells a familiar story of contemporary American life. He writes, 

“I was sitting in our living room a few days ago, with my laptop on my lap, doing what I always do “after work” — answering emails that don’t stop at 5, catching up on business.

My little girl, a real love of my life, came into the room in that beautiful way she does. She doesn’t so much walk as she skips, she glides, she dances. She walks on her tippy toes, because she is, as she says, a “for real life” princess. As she came dancing into the room, she started to say in her own sing-songy way, “Baba, would you like to…”

At that very moment she saw me, laptop in lap, locked into my jihad against email. The smallest jihad. The struggle I always lose.

She cut herself off. Her dancing came to a halt. Her sing-songy voice changed to something else, something not even resembling disappointment. 
It was resignation, more like surrender to the rhythm of her Baba’s life, knowing the scene she had seen countless times before.

Without waiting for my response, she cut herself off mid-sentence, pivoted on her beautiful feet, and walked out. I heard her say, with her back turned to me, “Oh, you’re busy.”

“Busy.”

How quickly and effortlessly that word departs from our lips or the tips of our fingers each day, sometimes several times a day. 

“Busy.”

What exactly are we saying when we say we’re busy? 
What is busyness, anyway?

To many, I suspect, busyness is a “necessary evil”. The way of the world, so to speak. A lamentable side effect of the industrial revolution that has only worsened with the advent of runaway capitalism, consumerism, and technology that ironically was supposed to make us less busy.  

In cutting herself off mid-sentence, turning away and saying, “Oh, you’re busy.”
Omi Safi’s daughter seems to be well on her way to internalizing an understanding of busyness as a necessary evil of modern life. 

Then there’s the Dalai Lama, who recognizes three forms of laziness:
The laziness of indolence, which is the wish to procrastinate; 
The laziness of inferiority, which is doubting your capabilities; 
And the laziness that is attachment to negative actions, or putting great effort into non-virtue…aka the laziness of busyness.

The tone of Omid Safi’s story suggests he’s feeling some resonance with the Dalai Lama’s observation. One can almost here in Safi’s telling a gnawing awareness that in choosing his work over his daughter in that moment he’s attached to what needs to be let go of and that his efforts are misdirected.

Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul writing on busyness observes,"We seem to have a complex about busyness in our culture. Most of us do have time in our days that we could devote to simple relaxation, but we convince ourselves that we don’t.” To which he adds, “Unfortunately, we don't get a lot of support in this culture for doing nothing. If we aren't accomplishing something, we feel that we're wasting time.”

And again, in Safi’s story, we have the sense that he knows there’s a better way, but can’t quite get there.

We’ve all been in Omid Safi’s shoes.  And more than a few of us have mercilessly berated ourselves for not being able to pull them off at will. 

We should be kinder to ourselves. 

The fact is it’s not really a matter of willpower.  Indeed, it begins with what we believe. For as we read to each other in our first reading, 
“Some beliefs weaken a person's selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness. Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth.”

You see, the busyness we’re talking about isn’t simply having a lot to do, it is a way of life rooted in our response to a profoundly spiritual question:
How do I know I matter?

At this point, I should admit it’s something of a trick question in that it’s not really a question at all, or shouldn’t be, anyway. It’s really a matter of faith. 

Unitarian Universalism takes on faith that all people have inherent worth and dignity and our congregations covenant to promote and affirm this basic principle. In Unitarian Universalism you matter because you are. Full stop. 

However, the dominant culture, here in the US, as well as in other parts of the world isn’t so sure. 

Indeed, while we may solemnly place our hand over our breast upon invocation of this nation’s founding assertion that all [men] are created equal we’re often otherwise found dutifully engaged in service to another, decidedly more Orwellian notion, “All [animals] are equal, but some [animals] are more equal than others.” 

In other words, culturally, we are suffering a crisis of faith. Our inherent worth and dignity is no longer a given, but must be proven to ourselves, to others…to a whole society relentlessly keeping score. 

Just listen to the language politicians, CEO’s, self-help gurus, marketers, and many of the rest of us use to describe “good” people. Not “good” traits, but “good” i.e. “worthy” people.  People, that is, who matter: responsible, productive, driven, creators, innovators, influencers. All busy sounding words. 

How do you know you matter?

In the dominant culture you matter if you’re one of those “good”…aka BUSY people. Fall outside of this definition of good and you might be labeled a taker, underachiever, or worse. 

Indeed in today’s world, the busy are the more equal among equals, for…
Busy means you’re important.
Busy means you’re successful.
Busy means you’re better.
Busyness means you’re worthy.

You’re busy. Congratulations! 
Now what?


Ah, the million dollar question.  The question the fisherman in our second reading keeps asking the businessman as the businessman’s plans for his life get bigger and busier, stretching decades into the future. 

Oblivious to the hollowness of the vision he offers to the fisherman in exchange for decades of his life, the businessman triumphantly explains to the fisherman, in essence, you’ll get to return to the life you have now, but you can be assured now, in the eyes of the dominant culture, that you deserve it because you’ve sacrificed 15, 20 or more years of your life for it.  You’re worthy! 

Now, a cynical reading of the story of the fisherman and the businessman may hear it as tale of unwarranted caution in the face of opportunity or a lack of ambition on the part of the fisherman, but I hear it as a story of faith. 

The fisherman doesn’t need to prove anything to himself or the world. He is confident of his right to exist. His worth and dignity is a matter of faith; it is unconditional. This is not to say that’s there’s nothing important to do with his time on earth. But what the businessman fails to recognize is that the fisherman is already doing it. "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, spend time with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and maybe play guitar.” 

“I have a full life,” he says.  

Note, he is not idle. He works, takes care of his family, and socializes. 
His life is full. It’s just not lazy busy. 

Back at Omid Safi’s house, when his daughter turns and says, “Oh, you’re busy”, he recalls,  

“As she walked out, I stared at this blasted laptop screen. Silver frame. Plastic, shiny screen. Cursor that blinks like a heartbeat. But it is not alive, this laptop. There is no heartbeat here, as there is in that delicate angel of mine…

I ran after my little love and held her in my arms. I wanted to apologize not just for being busy in that moment, but for all the hundreds of other times she must have come into the room, dancing and prancing, singing…”

He continues, “People talk about #FOMO: Fear of Missing Out. I don’t fear it; I know it. I am missing out. I’m missing out by being so busy.”



Ironically, #FOMO is one the reasons people over schedule their lives. For many it is a direct path to a life that is lazy busy.  But what Safi fears missing out on is something different entirely. “Somewhere we read love is patient, love is kind. Real love is also often undocumented, but lived,” he observes. 

His point, of course, is to love…another, ourselves, our world, we have to be there. We have to show up…that is, we have to be present to life. And we can’t be present to life if every moment is spoken for, if every hour is scheduled. If we don’t set aside some time to away from the harping, soul deadening, dogma of busyness of the dominant culture. For as the hymn asks, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”

As Omid Safi reminds us, “There is a whole eternity present inside each of these moments, these breaths, in which we are truly present. And there is a thief that robs the grace inside these moments. That thief is scattered-ness, busyness.”

Safi calls busyness a thief. 
The Dalai Lama calls it a form a laziness.
Thomas Moore suggests it is a cultural complex.
And we can imagine the fisherman in our reading this morning is, at the very least, unimpressed by what seems a waste not only of time, but of life itself.

Still many seem resigned to the idea that it’s just how things are…the way of the world, so to speak, from which there is no off ramp.

Which is why I see it not only as Safi, the Dalai Lama, Thomas Moore, and the fisherman sees it, but also as a crisis of faith. A crisis that calls us to question our fundamental beliefs about life and our place in the world.

For while faith and belief are not the same, they nonetheless inform each other. Indeed, as we read together, it matters what we believe.

And this I believe:
Life is not a never ending to-do list.
Life is a miracle to embrace.
You don’t have to prove your worthiness. You’re here. You made it.
All that’s left to do is to live fully.

Let our lives then be full and not lazy busy. 
May it be so.

Amen and Blessed Be

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