I have a tendency to procrastinate. I'm much more efficient working on a deadline. Projects that I know about months in advance tend to get my full attention in the last week (or 48 hours) before they are due, no matter how important they are: term papers, sermons, financial paperwork. I have a lot of trouble escaping the tyranny of the everyday, the tyranny of the semi-urgent to deal with the truly important. I actually think the same fear is the reason I can't ever completely clear out my e-mail inbox: I'm afraid, for whatever reason, of completing everything in it. Of being completely caught up. It's a different sort of fear, I think, but it controls my actions nonetheless.
Needing fear to crack the whip and force me to work definitely impacted my long absence from blogging.
As I've thought about that this week (in response to working on my loan deferment paperwork and student IEPs at work), I've begun to realize that I'm easily motivated by fear. Fear of failure, fear of public shaming, fear or financial consequences.
In 1 John the confident assertion leaps off the page: "Perfect love casts out fear."
What does it mean for me that I can't do my work until I'm afraid of failing? Do I love my work? Or do I love success? Do I work for the Lord, or for human approval? Why do I wait so long to do my IEP prep work? Do I love my students, or just my job / paycheck?
Perfect love casts out fear.
Must I have to face my fears before I can overcome them?
Perfect love casts out fear.
Can I overcome my fears? How should I pray to overcome my fear? How will my life and work look different when that fear is gone?
One thing I've wondered is whether or not my thoughts on this topic lean towards some pop-psychology need to be a "self-actualized individual." Should I be totally in control of my own motives and desires and actions? It seems unlikely I can achieve such a state.
I don't yet have answers, or even direction. What I do have is the collect for the Second Sunday in Lent:
"O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from thy ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of thy Word, Jesus Christ thy Son; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever."
In response to the collect, I want my prayer to be: "Father in heaven, have mercy on me for all those things I have left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart, and have not loved my neighbor as myself. Cast out my fear and help me to work for you with gladness and singleness of heart, being strengthened by your Holy Spirit. Change my heart God, so that I may repent and turn to you. In your perfect love, cast out my fear. Amen."
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
When Perfection Stands in the Way of Competence
I got scared of blogging.
I remember when I was a senior at Houghton and I was following the blogs of a few friends who went to different seminaries from my program. I was excited at first to keep up with their lives, how they seemed to be changing and how excited they were about starting the next track in their lives. I quickly became frustrated: it seemed like their blogs became sermon blogs, and I didn't hear anything else from them except the assignments they were preparing for classes. It wasn't the same feel, and I (for the most part) quit following them.
When I started this blog in Advent '11, I was determined not to let the same thing happened to me. I wanted to blog at least every other week, to keep the discipline of writing a part of my (spiritual) life. Instead, it became exactly what frustrated me about my former peers: a sermon blog.
Much more than I expected to, I loved preaching. I loved using / finding / feeling my voice in a community, helping and challenging and maybe even changing people (by God's grace!). I liked to quietly call my community out on some of their ~smaller~ sins. I liked to challenge people's common (mis)perceptions about God. I liked to articulate the unique ways that I saw my life of faith. My dad predicted when I was at Houghton that I would love it: "You've taken all this in like a sponge since you were little, and now you need to start letting some of it out!"
Loving preaching, I started appreciating my own writing. That should have been good for my blog!
However, I got a lot of very positive feedback on my preaching as well, from peers AND even from professors. It fed my not-exactly-small vanity. Since I graduated, I've only written once or twice. I've attempted and thought about writing many more times, but never actually sat down to write. My mind was working, but I wasn't applying myself.
Just recently I've started putting all this together. Essentially, I've realized I quit writing here because I'm not putting up material that has been checked and edited... and most importantly, that has been praised. In my vain (note the double meaning here) desire to be a good writer - to be a perfect writer - I've become a complete non-writer!
Perfection stands in the way of competence. The vain desire to be perfect paralyzes effort. The need for praise inhibits self-esteem. Fear of failure, or worse yet, success, feeds laziness. I'm struggling with all of this: in my writing, in my teaching, in my relationships, in my prayer life. In the words of an inspirational video that made its way through TFA circles at the beginning of the year, I need to give myself permission to suck. I need to be willing to try and fail. I need to embrace the laughter that came after the following exchange during my CPE:
Supervisor: "What's the problem with being wrong?"
Me: "You... I'd... I'd be wrong!"
*~laughter~*
Well, a new season of the church year, a new commitment. I commit to writing here once a week.
I remember when I was a senior at Houghton and I was following the blogs of a few friends who went to different seminaries from my program. I was excited at first to keep up with their lives, how they seemed to be changing and how excited they were about starting the next track in their lives. I quickly became frustrated: it seemed like their blogs became sermon blogs, and I didn't hear anything else from them except the assignments they were preparing for classes. It wasn't the same feel, and I (for the most part) quit following them.
When I started this blog in Advent '11, I was determined not to let the same thing happened to me. I wanted to blog at least every other week, to keep the discipline of writing a part of my (spiritual) life. Instead, it became exactly what frustrated me about my former peers: a sermon blog.
Much more than I expected to, I loved preaching. I loved using / finding / feeling my voice in a community, helping and challenging and maybe even changing people (by God's grace!). I liked to quietly call my community out on some of their ~smaller~ sins. I liked to challenge people's common (mis)perceptions about God. I liked to articulate the unique ways that I saw my life of faith. My dad predicted when I was at Houghton that I would love it: "You've taken all this in like a sponge since you were little, and now you need to start letting some of it out!"
Loving preaching, I started appreciating my own writing. That should have been good for my blog!
However, I got a lot of very positive feedback on my preaching as well, from peers AND even from professors. It fed my not-exactly-small vanity. Since I graduated, I've only written once or twice. I've attempted and thought about writing many more times, but never actually sat down to write. My mind was working, but I wasn't applying myself.
Just recently I've started putting all this together. Essentially, I've realized I quit writing here because I'm not putting up material that has been checked and edited... and most importantly, that has been praised. In my vain (note the double meaning here) desire to be a good writer - to be a perfect writer - I've become a complete non-writer!
Perfection stands in the way of competence. The vain desire to be perfect paralyzes effort. The need for praise inhibits self-esteem. Fear of failure, or worse yet, success, feeds laziness. I'm struggling with all of this: in my writing, in my teaching, in my relationships, in my prayer life. In the words of an inspirational video that made its way through TFA circles at the beginning of the year, I need to give myself permission to suck. I need to be willing to try and fail. I need to embrace the laughter that came after the following exchange during my CPE:
Supervisor: "What's the problem with being wrong?"
Me: "You... I'd... I'd be wrong!"
*~laughter~*
Well, a new season of the church year, a new commitment. I commit to writing here once a week.
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