On this Thanksgiving Eve (our church celebrates Thanksgiving Eve with a cool family service, so even the "Eve" seems like a holiday), I want to bring this series on the Spiritual Discipline of Hanging Out to a close by summarizing a few observations for us to consider.
First, you can’t hang in a hurry.
The problem with everyday life is that we spend so much of it racing to “real life.” How many of us rarely have breakfast with our kids, or a nightly dinner together as a family, let alone a good lunch, long walk or deep, uninterrupted conversation with a friend? Does this sound at all familiar? We begin the day after hitting the snooze on the alarm twice so that when we finally get out of bed, we are already late. We jump in the shower, grab breakfast on the go, race to work, rapidly check our emails, (scan our favorite weblogs) and go headlong all day from one assignment to another, one meeting to another, until we race back home, returning phone calls while negotiating rush hour traffic. Once home, we are actually not. There are all manner of soccer practices, violin lessons, (even church events!) to which the kids need shuttling. Then we squeeze in a meal while helping with homework, get the kids to bed, watch some TV until we doze off in the chair and stumble to bed. And then it seems like only a minute when the alarm sounds again. Everyday life is lived in a hurry.
What hanging out requires is slowness. It requires what my Italian cousins call “la dulce de far niente” (the sweetness of doing nothing). It requires “white space” (as one comment on this blog called it), “margin” (as Richard Swensen of his book of the same name calls it), or “basking” (as my wife calls it).
As I finish up this post, I am doing so in a small condo in my favorite ski town of Mammoth Lakes, CA. While I love the thrill of skiing, my wife is teaching me to love the way that “going skiing” in its entirety (including both the beauty of the mountains and all the hassles of snow chains, rental lines and getting the kids hands into mittens and feet into boots) gives us the time as a family to do nothing but spend time together. While I am prone to charging into the day to rack up as much vertical feet as possible, she reminds me to “bask,” to slow down, to enjoy the time hanging out together in a beautiful place.
Second, hanging out and commuting don't mix well.
Hanging out is best done with those with whom we can hang regularly. When we have to travel more than a few minutes to hang out with someone we won’t. (Instead it turns into an “appointment.” ) We need to have people in our lives on whom we can “drop in” or “stop by.” This is a lesson that I learned from hanging around a south Hollywood barrio for a few years. For these folks, their neighborhood was everything. For what were admittedly economic reasons (at least in part) the people who lived there went to great lengths to have as many friends and extended family members live in the same neighborhood. They looked after each, helped each other and insured that their little neighborhood was their refuge in the middle of the mean streets of the city. (Of course, there were lots of dark parts, like gangs, poverty and crime that were rampant in this neighborhood, but what stood out in the darkness was the strength of care they exhibited toward each other.
This is also why neighbors and neighborhood churches are more important than ever. For ten years I worked at a large “commuter” church. We had over 4000 members, a television ministry, a world-wide reputation and some genuinely great ministry. I feel privileged to have been a small part of that great church. But, as church leadership, we were also proud of the fact that people drove up to an hour just to attend our services. We often commented to each other that “we must be doing something right because people drive by ten other churches to come to our church.”
Over the years, however, I became disenchanted with the commuter church. The vast majority of people were only involved on Sunday mornings. It was difficult to get people to invest any time in any activity, service or even relationship during the week. It took literally years to find friends and build friendships. And it was difficult to invite your neighbors to join you for church if it was a long commute every Sunday to get to worship.
Today, I am pastor of a deliberately “local” church. Our focus of our ministry is roughly a ten mile circle of local communities and we work very hard to be a neighborhood church. We encourage those who live a bit further away to instead invest in and be part of a church that is conveniently close to home. Hanging takes proximity.
Lastly, for hanging out to be a true spiritual discipline, you have to invest more than just your time.
You have to invest more and more of yourself. I know far too many buddies (both male and female) who golf, ride bikes, take walks, go on play dates with the kids and even spend time in small groups who never get beyond small talk to the larger issues of life and faith. I am always amazed that a marriage can fall apart and the couple’s closest friends feel as if they can’t say or do anything about it. I know too many people who have lots of work friends that they “hang out” with at the office everyday but can’t share a health concern. We build bridges of relationship but we never cross them to a deeper friendship, moal accountability and a genuine spiritual partnership. Of course, doing this will take not only time, but vulnerability, not only hanging out with another person, but also hanging out with God in prayer for the sake of others in our lives. The result of our hanging out is that we who hang become more like Christ through the hanging. Or to put it another way, if we truly want our lives to be different, we need to hang out for Christ’s sake.
Happy Thanksgiving, Blog-world friends. I am taking a few days off from blogging to run a Turkey Trot 10 K, eat with friends and kick off the first Sunday of Advent. I'll write again on Monday.
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