By Starlette McNeill
So, it appears that I have slipped into a series and that this is now one of three parts on the body of Christ. I assure you that this reality was not planned. Maybe I should call it an ongoing conversation.
Beyond the first date, we are “going steady” now. It’s getting serious. Perhaps I could categorize it as a guided meditation, a reading for the practice of lectio divina, an examination that needs to be taken slowly. I hope that you don’t mind if we continue, if we move beyond first base.
“Busy, busy, busy.” A busy signal is what I have become. Good for the body, I walk fast. Frustrating for the hearing impaired, I talk fast. A test of faith during my morning and evening commute, I drive fast. My faith is increased while speeding. I pray, “No cops, no cops, no cops.”
I want to move slower but I have so many things on my plate. Correction: plates. And they are all spinning.
It is a seemingly endless cycle of laundry, dinner and dishes, bath time, story time and bedtime, date night and family time, preaching, praying and singing, deadlines, themes and word counts. It is without ceasing, which makes my time sound like a really good joke. I have to laugh to keep from crying.
Driven and, frankly, a recovering people-pleaser, I must finish them all. Wanting to thank the chef, I lick the plate clean. It does not matter if I did not take the time to delight in the finished product, that the moment of satisfaction was cut short by the next thing to do, that I don’t even remember what it looked like or what she said, that I didn’t fully embrace the moment but gave it a quick glance and a pat on the back. I suppose that I will celebrate it all when I retire. Should be satisfied by then.
More often than not, when asked how I am doing, the word busy is my response. There is a sense of guilt, satisfaction and frustration in this acknowledgement. I want to be busy as it suggests need and need implies worth and worth equates to importance. I am busy; therefore, I am valuable and important.
And with a name like mine, I have to be important. An unknown starlet does not make sense.
But, this mix up was all I knew for a time. Voted most likely to get beat up everyday, I was bullied by neighborhood children because I was bussed to a magnet school. Apparently, you can’t live in an impoverished community and be smart either.
We were also voiceless, as children in the South are “seen and not heard.” Maybe this is why I write. I began journaling at the age of 12 when the bullying began. My grandmother would later put a pen in my hand, asking me to do what she could not. “Write down all the Scriptures that the preacher says,” she requested.
Pen and paper, screen and keyboard have been my crew and my crowd for a long time. They have kept my mind engaged and my fingers busy. Now, the fear is that I cannot stop and I dread the fact that there is always something to do since my need to write is also attached to the expectations of my vocation.
Unfortunately, I am not alone. The Church is a busybody. The worship swapped for the work of the Church, our external busyness makes us forget our inherent blessedness. Now, our reverence is implied and our relationship is understood. Of course, we love God. We come to church, don’t we?
However, with multiple weekly services for multiple personalities in an attempt to be “all things to all people,” could we be losing our sense of self (1 Corinthians 9:22)? Blurred movements, our lives are but a vapor in an attempt to keep up with the speed of Internet connection. Do persons even see Christ’s body anymore? Or, are his hands and feet moving so fast that we appear to be a ghost, an apparition and in effect, a character in good old stories of what once was?
Are we so busy that we don’t stop and touch the members of our flock? Instead, we count them. Are we so busy that we don’t stop to talk to the pastor? Instead, we dart out of the doors so that we can update our social media accounts: Church service over. God be praised.
Have we become so task-oriented in preparing to talk to others about God that we forget to talk to God for ourselves? Have we forgotten the words of prayer and confession, the way of silence and meditation, the sound of praise and worship? Do we even remember how to slow down and put down the spinning plates in order to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34.8)?
Brother Lawrence encouraged us to practice the presence of God. He wrote, “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work but the love with which it is performed.”
But, we are not focused on the little things. The Church has been supersized. We are a mega-Church and we do things big because we have been told, “Bigger is better.”
However, bigger is also more time-consuming and comes with lots of moving parts, more spinning plates. Bigger keeps us busy so the love of God might have been expressed by a quick glance and a pat on the back. Ironically, we can’t stop and show more love because we are busy doing the Lord’s work.
So, I wonder what callings we have missed, what invitations have gone unanswered, what doors remain unopened because persons got the busy signal when they reached out to us while we were serving as the busybody of Christ.