Nonproductive Delight
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 27, 2019
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Busy.
I’m busy.
We’re busy.
Things are busy.
How often do you offer or receive that reply or some variation of it in response to the question, How are you? or How have you been?
Busy.
What do we mean…what are we communicating to the world and ourselves when we say we’re “busy”?
Are we claiming or projecting an image of self-importance, popularity or perhaps worthiness? “I’m busy!”
Are we offering a reason or excuse, an apology, or expressing guilt? “I’m… busy.”
Or maybe it’s an echo of internally held stress or anger finding its way into the outer world. “I’m busy!!!”
What about… laziness?
What? Laziness?
How can that be? Isn’t busyness the opposite (or near opposite anyway) of laziness?
Not according to the Dalai Lama; indeed, the Dalai Lama has said,“Busyness is a form of laziness.”
Now, busyness, in this context does not simply refer to physical activity, but includes the direction or focus of our attention. When we’re busy we’re on autopilot. And when we’re on autopilot, we don’t have to, and often don’t, think about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, whether it’s worth doing or even the right thing to do. We just do.
As I was driving home from here recently, I set my car radio via Pandora to a 70’s station and after some Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan the “Logical Song” by Supertramp came on,
“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, playfully watching me.”
Lyrics very much in the spirit of the poem Jack and Zoey read this morning,
“Every time I climb a tree…
I find some ants
Or dodge a bee…
I like it best to spot a nest
That has an egg
Or maybe three…
I see a lot of things to see
Swallows rooftops and TV
And all the fields and farms there be
Every time I climb a tree.”
Notice the focus in both the song and poem is not on doing, but being, which is not necessarily inactivity, but is nonetheless different from busyness. The writer Ross Gay gets as close as anyone to describing this experience of being succinctly with words. He calls it, “nonproductive delight.”
It is hard to imagine a more absurd, and indeed threatening, idea to the dominant ethos of our time, and the unshakable faith in the absolute virtue of productivity and consumption to which it is yoked.
A faith the musician, having recalled the experience of being when young, now laments,
“But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical”
The same faith that moves the poet to wonder,
And every time I climb a tree
Where have you been?
They say to me
But don’t they know that I am free
Every time I climb a tree?
Related or complimentary to Ross Gay’s concept of nonproductive delight is what the writer Thomas Moore calls, enchantment. Moore describes enchantment as, “a spell that comes over us, an aura of fantasy and emotion that can settle on the heart and either disturb it or send it into rapture and reverie.” Like falling in love, rounding the bend on a densely wooded road to discover an open, wide vista where you can see for miles, witnessing an act of kindness, or pausing and taking note of how the afternoon light has changed with the season.
“An enchanted life”, says Moore, “has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed by beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place or a person.” In such moments, Moore observes, “The literal concerns of survival and daily preoccupation at least temporarily fade into the background.”
Enchantment then, like nonproductive delight marks a shift from busyness to being, from pursuing ego generated activity to resting into a place of receptivity to the world around us.
Yet, as Thomas Moore notes, “Our culture often takes pride in disproving and exploding the sources of enchantment, explaining away one mystery after another and overturning precious shrines, dissolving the family farm that housed spirits of civility for eons, or desecrating for material profit a mountain or stream sacred to native residents.” Adding, “We have yet to learn that we can’t survive without enchantment and that the loss of it is killing us.”
And indeed only in a disenchanted culture is the planet treated as an exploitable resource rather than revered as a life force.
Only in a disenchanted culture does net worth determine human worth and worthiness.
Only in a disenchanted culture must sex be for procreation, not merely enjoyment.
Only in a disenchanted culture is playfulness, imagination, and mystery something to outgrow.
And only in a disenchanted culture is, as Ross Gay reminds us, being nonproductive and nonconsumptive, even temporarily, a crime. Particularly if you’re among those who are also seen and treated as consumable.
It is in such a culture that nonproductive delight is not only necessary, but an act of resistance as well.
Now, whether you’re ready to commit to the resistance or rolling your eyes at what sounds to you like naive idealism, Moore is quick to point out, “There is no essential conflict between enchanted living and practical, productive activity; they can serve each other: one delighting the spirit of ambition, the other comforting the heart.”
Indeed, Moore has called for and even written a book, entitled, “The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life”, in which he stresses the need to balance, not obliterate, our rationalist, literalist, self-conscious approach to the world with its emphasis on doing or imposing ourselves onto the world with a more open, relaxed and spacious approach. As Moore notes, “The enchanted world requires that you let go of all that ego and let the world have its own being. It requires us to be more receptive than active.”
Re-enchantment lies at the heart of Ross Gay’s declaration, “Loitering is delightful.” For as he shares, “Another of the synonyms for loitering, which I almost wrote as delight: (is) taking one’s time.” He notes, “Ownership of one’s own time, …must be, sometimes, wrested from the assumed owners of it, who are not you, back to the rightful, who is.”
Both re-enchantment and nonproductive delight requires the reclamation of time from systems, cultures, attitudes and ideas, the assumed owners of our time that keep us busy, lazy, distracted, disenchanted. That don’t want us to wonder, let alone sing, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”
And yet that is the essential question isn’t it? What is this life?
Thomas Moore tells a story about a trip he took and how after the plane had landed and the passengers were about to disembark, the pilot wished everyone a “productive day.”
It seems an odd way to send people off, but then again I’ve had days when I’ve berated myself for not getting anything…or enough… done.
But why?
Is life about having productive days?
How many? And for whom?
What about consumption? I suppose I don’t need to even ask the question, Is life about accumulating things? There’s tons of books, sermons, blogs and television shows exploring and exploiting that question.
I will say, however, I can recall times when, in my previous work as an appraiser of art and antiques, sparsely decorated gray, beige or white spaces sometimes felt oddly cramped and confining regardless of the square footage. Whereas a home filled to capacity with objects inherited or collected sometimes felt inexplicably spacious and timeless, even when the room itself was physically small.
Certainly there were also times when the reverse was true, but that observation nonetheless offers a cautionary and valuable point that is too easily and often overlooked in sermons, blogs, books and TV shows that offer advice or simple, formulaic solutions. We can no more manufacture enchantment or nonproductive delight through force of thought or will than by the power of the purse. We have to make room, make time, make space for it in our individual and communal lives. It is something to welcome into our lives by getting out of our own way, by receding or pausing, even if briefly, from doing and ease into being.
Think about it.
We can’t make ourselves feel awe at the sight of a majestic vista. We can however take a scenic, even if longer, route where that might happen.
We can’t plan moments of laughter or special connection ahead of time when we gather with others, even friends. But we can open ourselves to the potential for such moments by what we chose to hold onto or let go of when we gather.
And its true we can’t know for sure that setting aside something we are “supposed” to do, whether for a while or forever, in favor of something else calling to us, will turn out to be just what we needed. But we can dip our toes into mystery and perhaps find we can accept certain things in life without having to understand or explain them.
Nonetheless, in a world where we’re the center of our own attention, where we’re used to generating our own answers and making things happen, it can seem improbable that the larger world, the world we’ve tuned out has anything to say, let alone teach us about life.
And so poets, writers, singers and songwriters write about climbing trees (David McCord) speak hard truths, like, “the darker your skin, the more likely you are to be “loitering.” (Ross Gay) and ponder and extol the gift of life, reminding us, “The world is shouting to us, offering us guidance, but when we’re too busy making up our own inadequate answers, we can’t hear its voice.” (Thomas Moore).
Busy.
I’m busy.
We’re busy.
Things are busy.
Too busy.
Still, the question remains, “What is this life?”
A question to which only a disenchanted world would presume to have us produce an answer but which an enchanted world invites us to experience with nonproductive delight. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 27, 2019
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Busy.
I’m busy.
We’re busy.
Things are busy.
How often do you offer or receive that reply or some variation of it in response to the question, How are you? or How have you been?
Busy.
What do we mean…what are we communicating to the world and ourselves when we say we’re “busy”?
Are we claiming or projecting an image of self-importance, popularity or perhaps worthiness? “I’m busy!”
Are we offering a reason or excuse, an apology, or expressing guilt? “I’m… busy.”
Or maybe it’s an echo of internally held stress or anger finding its way into the outer world. “I’m busy!!!”
What about… laziness?
What? Laziness?
How can that be? Isn’t busyness the opposite (or near opposite anyway) of laziness?
Not according to the Dalai Lama; indeed, the Dalai Lama has said,“Busyness is a form of laziness.”
Now, busyness, in this context does not simply refer to physical activity, but includes the direction or focus of our attention. When we’re busy we’re on autopilot. And when we’re on autopilot, we don’t have to, and often don’t, think about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, whether it’s worth doing or even the right thing to do. We just do.
As I was driving home from here recently, I set my car radio via Pandora to a 70’s station and after some Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan the “Logical Song” by Supertramp came on,
“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, playfully watching me.”
Lyrics very much in the spirit of the poem Jack and Zoey read this morning,
“Every time I climb a tree…
I find some ants
Or dodge a bee…
I like it best to spot a nest
That has an egg
Or maybe three…
I see a lot of things to see
Swallows rooftops and TV
And all the fields and farms there be
Every time I climb a tree.”
Notice the focus in both the song and poem is not on doing, but being, which is not necessarily inactivity, but is nonetheless different from busyness. The writer Ross Gay gets as close as anyone to describing this experience of being succinctly with words. He calls it, “nonproductive delight.”
It is hard to imagine a more absurd, and indeed threatening, idea to the dominant ethos of our time, and the unshakable faith in the absolute virtue of productivity and consumption to which it is yoked.
A faith the musician, having recalled the experience of being when young, now laments,
“But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical”
The same faith that moves the poet to wonder,
And every time I climb a tree
Where have you been?
They say to me
But don’t they know that I am free
Every time I climb a tree?
Related or complimentary to Ross Gay’s concept of nonproductive delight is what the writer Thomas Moore calls, enchantment. Moore describes enchantment as, “a spell that comes over us, an aura of fantasy and emotion that can settle on the heart and either disturb it or send it into rapture and reverie.” Like falling in love, rounding the bend on a densely wooded road to discover an open, wide vista where you can see for miles, witnessing an act of kindness, or pausing and taking note of how the afternoon light has changed with the season.
“An enchanted life”, says Moore, “has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed by beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place or a person.” In such moments, Moore observes, “The literal concerns of survival and daily preoccupation at least temporarily fade into the background.”
Enchantment then, like nonproductive delight marks a shift from busyness to being, from pursuing ego generated activity to resting into a place of receptivity to the world around us.
Yet, as Thomas Moore notes, “Our culture often takes pride in disproving and exploding the sources of enchantment, explaining away one mystery after another and overturning precious shrines, dissolving the family farm that housed spirits of civility for eons, or desecrating for material profit a mountain or stream sacred to native residents.” Adding, “We have yet to learn that we can’t survive without enchantment and that the loss of it is killing us.”
And indeed only in a disenchanted culture is the planet treated as an exploitable resource rather than revered as a life force.
Only in a disenchanted culture does net worth determine human worth and worthiness.
Only in a disenchanted culture must sex be for procreation, not merely enjoyment.
Only in a disenchanted culture is playfulness, imagination, and mystery something to outgrow.
And only in a disenchanted culture is, as Ross Gay reminds us, being nonproductive and nonconsumptive, even temporarily, a crime. Particularly if you’re among those who are also seen and treated as consumable.
It is in such a culture that nonproductive delight is not only necessary, but an act of resistance as well.
Now, whether you’re ready to commit to the resistance or rolling your eyes at what sounds to you like naive idealism, Moore is quick to point out, “There is no essential conflict between enchanted living and practical, productive activity; they can serve each other: one delighting the spirit of ambition, the other comforting the heart.”
Indeed, Moore has called for and even written a book, entitled, “The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life”, in which he stresses the need to balance, not obliterate, our rationalist, literalist, self-conscious approach to the world with its emphasis on doing or imposing ourselves onto the world with a more open, relaxed and spacious approach. As Moore notes, “The enchanted world requires that you let go of all that ego and let the world have its own being. It requires us to be more receptive than active.”
Re-enchantment lies at the heart of Ross Gay’s declaration, “Loitering is delightful.” For as he shares, “Another of the synonyms for loitering, which I almost wrote as delight: (is) taking one’s time.” He notes, “Ownership of one’s own time, …must be, sometimes, wrested from the assumed owners of it, who are not you, back to the rightful, who is.”
Both re-enchantment and nonproductive delight requires the reclamation of time from systems, cultures, attitudes and ideas, the assumed owners of our time that keep us busy, lazy, distracted, disenchanted. That don’t want us to wonder, let alone sing, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”
And yet that is the essential question isn’t it? What is this life?
Thomas Moore tells a story about a trip he took and how after the plane had landed and the passengers were about to disembark, the pilot wished everyone a “productive day.”
It seems an odd way to send people off, but then again I’ve had days when I’ve berated myself for not getting anything…or enough… done.
But why?
Is life about having productive days?
How many? And for whom?
What about consumption? I suppose I don’t need to even ask the question, Is life about accumulating things? There’s tons of books, sermons, blogs and television shows exploring and exploiting that question.
I will say, however, I can recall times when, in my previous work as an appraiser of art and antiques, sparsely decorated gray, beige or white spaces sometimes felt oddly cramped and confining regardless of the square footage. Whereas a home filled to capacity with objects inherited or collected sometimes felt inexplicably spacious and timeless, even when the room itself was physically small.
Certainly there were also times when the reverse was true, but that observation nonetheless offers a cautionary and valuable point that is too easily and often overlooked in sermons, blogs, books and TV shows that offer advice or simple, formulaic solutions. We can no more manufacture enchantment or nonproductive delight through force of thought or will than by the power of the purse. We have to make room, make time, make space for it in our individual and communal lives. It is something to welcome into our lives by getting out of our own way, by receding or pausing, even if briefly, from doing and ease into being.
Think about it.
We can’t make ourselves feel awe at the sight of a majestic vista. We can however take a scenic, even if longer, route where that might happen.
We can’t plan moments of laughter or special connection ahead of time when we gather with others, even friends. But we can open ourselves to the potential for such moments by what we chose to hold onto or let go of when we gather.
And its true we can’t know for sure that setting aside something we are “supposed” to do, whether for a while or forever, in favor of something else calling to us, will turn out to be just what we needed. But we can dip our toes into mystery and perhaps find we can accept certain things in life without having to understand or explain them.
Nonetheless, in a world where we’re the center of our own attention, where we’re used to generating our own answers and making things happen, it can seem improbable that the larger world, the world we’ve tuned out has anything to say, let alone teach us about life.
And so poets, writers, singers and songwriters write about climbing trees (David McCord) speak hard truths, like, “the darker your skin, the more likely you are to be “loitering.” (Ross Gay) and ponder and extol the gift of life, reminding us, “The world is shouting to us, offering us guidance, but when we’re too busy making up our own inadequate answers, we can’t hear its voice.” (Thomas Moore).
Busy.
I’m busy.
We’re busy.
Things are busy.
Too busy.
Still, the question remains, “What is this life?”
A question to which only a disenchanted world would presume to have us produce an answer but which an enchanted world invites us to experience with nonproductive delight. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be