Writers write, right?

Somehow I’ve got to carve out some time each day to write; posting on this blog might be that only time for a while. I’ve got to leave the television during this fascinating election season, leave the political readings and writings, leave the silly little writings I do now and then, and focus on my writing “career”. Hopefully I’ll post here more frequently, even if only short posts.

I want to go back to the quote from one of John Wesley’s letters, which I wrote about in a couple of post recently. Here’s the quote, with particular part I want to focus on today highlighted.

“…I am afraid of nothing more than of growing old too soon, of having my body worn out before my soul is past childhood. Would it not be terrible to have the wheels of life stand still, when we had scarce started for the goal; before the work of the day was half done, to have the night come, wherein no one can work? I shiver at the thought of losing my strength before I have found [it]; to have my senses fail ere I have a stock of rational pleasures, my blood cold ere my heart is warmed with virtue! Strange, to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark behind them, without our being able to trace them in our improvement!”

“Before the work of the day was half done”–that is written for me. I feel like so much of my time is not productive, is not seeing results. It is the true “arrow through the air”, doing nothing but move invisible gases. At work, much of what I do now is self-starter stuff. I work alone, waiting for people to call of come by my desk with their most difficult engineering problems. Yet almost all the people who came by on a regular basis, who cared about learning how to solve their problems, have been laid off. Now, with few exceptions, I only see those who want me to solve their problem for them, not teach them how to solve it. When waiting for these problems to come my way, I have my own residual projects with soft, self-imposed deadlines, and I have work to keep our corporate engineering standards up to date. It is all self-starter stuff, and I find myself not self-starting the stuff.

My writing is all self-starter stuff, except for this Life Group study I’m developing, writing, and teaching; well, I guess that is self-starter stuff, cause I self-started it. But all the other stuff I want to write, I have to make myself do it. In the words of Emerson, “the good world manifests very little impatience” for my writings. If I don’t go after it, I’m not even moving invisible gases.

In all this self-starter stuff, especially the non-vocational stuff, something must yield to make way. Yet, with a fixed number of hours in the day, little is left to yield. While in my mind I embrace that “there is time enough for all that I must do”, reality is that the days are clicking off toward that time when the night comes, “wherein no one can work.” The road to publishing is so long and arduous, that right now I truly fear “the wheels of live [will] stand still” long before my self-starter stuff is done.

An arrow through the air.

One of John Wesley’s most famous quotes is, “Leisure and I have taken leave of one another.” I found this quote in his letter to his older brother, Samuel Wesley Jun. The letter was written 5 December 1726. Those familiar with the chronology of Wesley’s life will recognize this as very early, during the Oxford Holy Club days, long before the Wesleyan revival, long before his missionary time in America, long before doctrines developed that would become the foundations of one of the greatest Christian movements of all times. Wesley was just twenty-three years old when he wrote this. Sixty-four years of fruitful ministry lay ahead.

I don’t know if Wesley might have written this many times in his works, rather than just this once. Possibly this was sort of a life motto for him, possibly this shows up regularly in his writings (which I will find out over the years as I read more of them). But I find it most interesting he wrote this so early in his life, and that he seemed to have done what he said. Even a cursory biography shows that he was not a man of leisure, and seldom did what we would consider leisurely things. I don’t know that he ever took vacations. His occupation caused him to have to work on the Sabbath, so did he take another day of the week as a day of rest, or did he just plow right on with his work? Did he have any sort of a weekend as we know it? Of course, the times he lived in were much more work oriented than ours. The four day work week was unheard of—actually, the five day work week was unheard of. Six days a week was the norm, and I imagine some workers found themselves working all seven just to make ends meet. The European concept of a month-long vacation was unthinkable. Even the American concept of two weeks of vacation, with a trip to the beach or the mountains, was something maybe the idle rich could afford, but no one else. Yes, Wesley’s taking leave of leisure was quite a bit different than it would be today.

So how does this affect us now? If Wesley gave up so much leisure and accomplished so much, what of us, who in the 21st century have much we want to accomplish? If we take leave of leisure, we will be branded “type A personality”, whatever that is, and looked down upon by most of those we encounter. But so what? Most of them have nothing they want to accomplish beyond a good bracket in the NCAA tournament, or calling the automated tee-time reservation system the very second reservations for a new day become available. If they don’t want to accomplish much, why should that deter me?

I am impressed that Wesley established this pattern of intensive ministry long before he accomplished most of his life goals. Aldersgate Street is about twelve years in the future. The revival followed that. Fifty years of fruitful ministry accompanied the revival. But those twelve years of having taken leave of leisure must have somehow been essential for that to happen. Again, Wesley was twenty-three when he made that statement. I seem to be thirty-three years behind him. Yet the need to accomplish much outside my chosen profession didn’t hit me until somewhat late in life. Have I time to take leave of leisure and accomplish something? And how does this mesh with what I wrote of Emerson’s words, “There is time enough for all that I must do”?

No answers, only questions to be pondered and hopefully answered in the next couple of months.