THE HEALING POWER OF ISLANDS

'...through adolescence, medical school, and working as a doctor in specialty training, it began to dawn on me that I sought out islands to recalibrate my sense of what matters. Their absence of connection, their isolation, was therapeutic in a way I found difficult to articulate.'

Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession, p.18.

HOW YOU REST DEPENDS ON HOW YOU WORK

'A man who works with his mind should sabbath with his hands, and a man who works with his hands should sabbath with his mind.' 

Abraham Heschel in Justin Whitmel Earley, The Common Rule, p.142. 

AN UNTOLD STORY OF OUR TIME

'Increasingly, one of the marks of a fully and uncompromisingly secular environment is the notion of undifferentiated time. There are, for mature late capitalism, no such tings as weekends. The problem with this kind of secularism is not so much a denial of the existence of God as the denial of the possibility of leisure - of time that is not spent serving the market. That is to say, for a particular mindset, acquisitive and purpose-driven, the passage of time is precisely the slipping away of a scarce, valuable commodity, every moment of which has to be made to yield its maximum possible result, so you can't afford to stop. This kind of secular understanding of the passage of time is perhaps one of those areas where there is most open collision between the fundamentally religious and the fundamentally anti-religious mindset - and I think that's one of the untold stories of our time.' 

Rowan Williams, Being Human, p.78. 

THE POWER OF A GOOD WALK

'All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.'
Friedrich Nietzsche in Claudia Hammond, The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age, p.97. 

A LIFE OF PLAYFUL SERVICE?

'A life of Christian ministry. service, sacrifice and worship that does not embody, as part of it, the joy and delight of a playful relationship with God will become a duty bound and moralistic life that will have difficulty in developing a close, intimate relationship with the one who is our chief and best Friend. This is because a playful attitude lies at the heart of all close relationships. The absence of this kind of relationship has meant burnout for far too many Christians. Just as in everyday life work without play makes one dull, in the Christian life service without a playful relationship with God leads to spiritual dullness.' 

Brian Edgar, The God Who Plays, p.8. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF REST

'Birdwatchers seldom get nervous breakdowns.'
John Stott, Challenges of Christian Leadership, p.37

DEEPER SPIRITUALITY

'If we accept Paul's view of "spiritual", as that which pertains to the Spirit of God, then such a view includes our bodies, since God's Spirit gives life to them. This challenges us to think again about what we count as "spirituality." It certainly suggests that we should include physical well-being under the heading of spirituality. Taking time to care for our bodies is a spiritual discipline and needs to be placed alongside prayer and worship in our thoughts about spirituality: sleep, exercise, pampering in a spa, having a well-cooked meal with friends are all part of spirituality and we should take care to ensure we do them regularly. They are not an indulgence, they are life giving.

It might also mean that we learn to listen to our bodies in order to discover the state of our spiritual well-being. Extreme exhaustion or regular illness may have nothing to do with our spiritual well-being but they might do. Taking the time to listen to our bodies, to feel how they really are in more than a merely cursory way might tell us something important about our life with God in the Spirit.' 

Paula Gooder, Body, p.129.

SOUL-MAKING

'Soul-making implies a deliberate intention on our part to pay attention to who we are called to be and to seek regular refreshment so that we can grow more and more into the people God yearns for us to be. There is and should be an emphasis on the regularity of this refreshment. Just as we cannot give up breathing, so we should not give up deliberate and intentional soul-making.

This soul-making is something that includes our bodies - that active seeking out of refreshment that animates us and brings new life only makes sense if it includes our bodies as well as "inner" beings. Intentional soul-making involves paying attention to those events, activities, and relationships that animate us and seeking to engage in something that brings life to as many aspects of our being as possible, as regularly as possible. Then we will begin to see that we are not "just" keeping body and soul together but living out of a richly animated, integrated existence that brings life and refreshment.' 

Paula Gooder, Body: Biblical spirituality for the whole person, p.42. 

BE IDLE TO WORK HARD

'To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.' 

Samuel Butler in David Murray, Reset: Living a Grace-filled Life in a Burnout Culture, p.103. 

IDLENESS

'Idleness is not just a vacation, and indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets...it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.' 

Tim Kreider in Cal Newport, Deep Work, p.143. 

REST

'Elton worked hard and worried hard, and he was often in need of rest. But he had a restless mind, which meant that he could not rest on his own place in the presence of his own work. If he rested there, first he would begin to think about what he had to do, and then he would begin to do it.

To rest, he needed to be in somebody else's place.'

Wendell Berry, 'Are You All Right?' in That Distant Land, p.367. 

THE PULLEY

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
   Contract into a span.”

   So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
   Rest in the bottom lay.

   “For if I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
   So both should losers be.

   “Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
   May toss him to my breast.”

George Herbert. On line at: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173635

REST

'Anyone who cannot obey God's command to obey the Sabbath is a slave, even a self-imposed one. Your own heart, or our materialistic culture, or an exploitative organization, or all of the above, will be abusing you if you don't have the ability to be disciplined in your practice of the Sabbath. Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom. It means you are not a slave - not to your culture's expectations, your family's hopes, your medical school's demands, not even to your own insecurities. It is important that you learn to speak this truth to yourself with a note of triumph - otherwise you will feel guilty for taking time off, or you will be unable to truly unplug.' 

Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour, p.236. 

REST

'Rest is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.'

Charles Spurgeon, 'The Minister's Fainting Fits' in Lectures to My Students, p.187.

MINISTRY & REST

'He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the woodpigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows weary. A day's breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours' ramble in the beech woods' umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive. A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind's face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is next best.'

Charles Spurgeon, 'The Minister's Fainting Fits' in Lectures to My Students, p.184.

REST

'I can rest in the midst of busyness because:

• trusting God to be my Saviour sets me free from the pressure to prove myself
• trusting God to be my Master sets me free from the weight of other people's expectations
• trusting God to be my Provider sets me free from the fear that things will get out of control
• trusting God to be my Refuge stes me free from the compulsion to hide behind my busyness
• trusting God to be my Joy sets me free from the vain pursuit of satisfaction ibn possessions
• trusting God to be my Hope sets me free from the frantic need to make the most of this life.'

Tim Chester, The Busy Christian's Guide to Busyness, p.151.

REST

'Rest for the mind in his word.
Rest for the conscience in his blood.
Rest for the heart in his care.'
Mrs Perry in Tim Chester, The Busy Christian's Guide to Busyness, p.77.

HOLIDAYS

'It is doubtful whether holidays are good for us. Eight out of ten people work extra hours before going away. One in three finds the days before a holiday the most stressful of the year. Most say they feel as stressed as ever by the end of the first week back. When you pattern is 48 weeks work and four weeks rest then your holiday is everything. People speak as working for their holidays. Christmas letters typically consist of holiday itineraries. That is the the sum of people's lives. Life has become week after week of toil for two weeks in the sun.'

Tim Chester, The Busy Christian's Guide to Busyness, p.29.

REST

'Have you placed your little hands in the huge and capable hands of your heavenly Father? Have you realized that your life is played out in the middle of a rowdy and overstimulated crowd? Have you accepted how small you really are? Has that made you panic? Or has it given you rest? You will only ever know the rest God can give you in the broken world when you begin to accept your limits.

You have real and obvious limits to your wisdom, power, and righteousness. But your heavenly Father is infinite in wisdom, and infinite in power, and is the only source of true righteousness. You God has no boundaries, edges, or limitations. In his power and authority, he bows to no one. You are riddled with imperfections, but God is perfect in every way. Therefore, they key to rest is not continually lying to yourself in a futile effort to convince yourself that you are strong. No, it is when you humbly embrace your foolishness, weakness, and sin that you are in the best position to know peace of heart and to live productively in this broken-down house.

So let your smallness drive you to the One who alone is great.'

Paul David Tripp, Broken-Down House, p.75.

LEISURE

'Think back to when you were a child. You loved going to the park or playing football or drawing. You have to find leisure activities which provide the same level of absorption. First and foremost, that almost certainly means that they are not self-improving. If you have always wanted to read Tolstoy in the original Russian because it would bring you joy, join that evening class. But be very wary of such of such plans, for they can easily seem to be intrinsic but really be closet people-pleasing, unwitting attempts to curry favour with past authority figures in your mind. In doing these activities, your sole arbiter should be whether they are absorbing, exciting, stimulating.'

Oliver James, Affluenza, p.182.