Any bush will do
There are a lot of people in my circle of friends these days who are struggling with burnout.
Bob Dylan may have been the first to use the term in any culturally influential way — he was always a trendsetter — back in 1974, or so suggested Jonathan Malisec of the Washington Post. The term probably originated in the 1960s, but entered the mimetic mainstream of the language in the 1980s. Now everyone knows the term, and it’s interesting to me that those who are the most ethical, the most caring, the most dedicated are also the most subject to the phenomenon. When you get right down to it, each of us is either Warren Buffett or Jimmy Buffett, either type A or type B. Those who care the most about doing their best are most prone to exceeding their capacities.
I still remember, though I no longer allow myself to dwell at length upon it, the exhaustion and devastation of Diane’s two periods of illness, in the summer of 2019 and the winter of 2020-2021. At both times, I got almost no sleep, and I’m a person who needs a lot of sleep to function. I did what had to be done, and I’ll always be glad I did — I cared for her, and was someone to watch over her, until she left the circles of this world for the glories of Heaven. And then, in my depression and my desperate loneliness, I slept a lot — which is sometimes all a person can do, until their brain has begun to recover.
Burnout is a problem that is endemic in our culture now, in part because we so often treat it as a badge of honor. “You only work 80 hours a week? I see your 80 and raise you 20. Table stakes only!” People often feel guilty for “doing nothing”, although sometimes keeping busy is more of a distraction than a strategy. I read an article recently about a woman who, though retired, still felt ashamed of reading during the day. “Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, be doing something?” she imagined her friends saying to her. Well, you can familiarize yourself with Plato or you can regrout the tub, but it’s difficult to do both at the same time, as we learn from the famous “allegory of the caulk”.
At age sixty-nine, I believe increasingly in accepting my finitude and my limits. I can only do so much before I need to allow myself a break, which is why I haven’t vacuumed the carpet recently, or at least that is one reason. The cats don’t seem to mind, as long as they get fed regularly. That’s one thing I like about cats: while they are fussy about some things, such as insisting on high-end brands of canned tuna, they are remarkably tolerant about environmental disorder. I seek balance, the via media, the middle path that is productive but not obsessive, reflective but not lazy, order-seeking but (within appropriate limits) chaos-accepting. I recall C. S. Lewis’ famous dictum that the devil sends us errors in pairs of opposites, hoping that in our zeal to avoid one of them, we will overcorrect and fall into the other. He doesn’t care whether we are judgy legalists or morally lax libertines, as long as we are focused on ourselves and our own performance.
I’ve always liked the works of Major Ian Thomas, who once wrote about this problem in his exposition of Exodus 3. Moses, by the time he had spent forty years as a shepherd in Midian, was feeling understandably tired when, on the day that changed his life (and so much of subsequent history), he saw in the far distance a bush that was burning continuously, without being consumed. “How can this be?” he imagined, in Thomas’ rendering. “I flamed out so quickly, yet this bush burns on and on. What does it have that I don’t have?” And when he went over to investigate, he learned that there was nothing unique or special about the bush — except that God was in the bush; and that makes all the difference. It’s not who we are — we are all cracked jars of clay. But when we hold a precious treasure, the indwelling presence and power of Christ, we can burn brightly even in times of crushing sorrow and near despair. It has nothing to do with our own intrinsic resources.
Susan and I have been watching The Chosen, and I’m very impressed by the quality of the narrative, which goes well beyond the Scriptural narrative but remains faithful to it. The disciples, like me, were so often clueless, and a motley group — a tax collector, some fishermen, an insurgent, and so on — who would never have found enough in common with each other to merit spending any time together, except for the Rabbi they were following. Like me, they made many mistakes. They got things wrong and pursued blind alleys. But they persevered despite themselves — because any bush will do, if God is in the bush.
So I remember that now when I feel inadequate, which is often — when I ponder the enormity of the new commitment (though it’s also wonderful) that I am making now, or when fatigue and emotional dysregulation set in, or when the only option available for purchase is a store brand of tuna. “I can has toxic mercury levels?” complains the head cat, who speaks for the entire group, or at least meows plantively. “Will ye not save my liver?” she asks, channeling Captain Ahab. God is with me when I am on the mountaintop and when I am in the deep valley; he is ever faithful, in joy and in woe. So I keep on seeking to do the things that I am called to do, and I exercise what gifts I have been given until I feel the burn.