Color Me Bored With Colorless Tasks

The colors have been beautiful these past weeks, and the many sunny days have really let them blaze. It’s only now that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of all that, giving us even more reason to be get outdoors whenever we can before November grey takes over.

Maybe it’s the weather’s fault, but more and more I’ve been seeing life as kind of a divided business: the colorful, rich, invigorating part versus the part that consists of all the minor stuff we’re supposed to get done, accompanied by our general lack of enthusiasm for doing any of it. Often I feel negligent for not carrying out enough of the latter with a positive spirit; but that’s generally followed by the haunting thought that it’s really the former kind of activity that gets short shrift. How to know? Is there some right formula to keep in mind as the sand rushes through the hourglass?

You may well have your household act together and have barely anything that needs paying or tending or fixing – I do know people like this, and they’re often very nice people, too, which is exasperating — but around here a very partial list, in no particular order and jumping around from inside tasks to outside ones, might look like this:

1)   Complete the fascinating transfer of cell phones from AT &T to Verizon

2)   Replace all the malfunctioning blinds on windows

3)   Prune the wisteria vine encroaching on the barn

4)   Transfer medical records, make overdue appointments

5)   Find someone to take away the chain link fence that husband took down

6)   Renew passports, with no particular trip in sight

7)   Extricate the extensive roots left in ground from bushes husband took down

8)   Find someone to fix the caning on the rocking chair that has sat idle too long

9)   Get a new dog license

10) Dig through boxes in basement to get important documents on desk

You’re probably so bored just from reading that, you might part company with me right here. I understand. A relative of mine, someone with plenty of vitality and imagination, recently said, upon the occasion of taking some furniture for minor repairs:  “If we’re going to spend our days doing this kind of thing, we might as well be dead.” Kind of morbid, but you’ve got to admit there’s a kernel of truth to it. Some days, don’t we just feel we’re mired in the mundane?

Needless to say, most people in the world are too occupied with just trying to survive to sit around wondering, Thoreau-like, whether or not they’re drawing out the essence of life and could benefit from shaving off some unappealing tasks. Still, everywhere there must be this perception of “When I do this I feel like I’m really living” as opposed to “When I do this I can barely stand it.”

Being a pastor’s (an election to bishop doesn’t really change that) wife, I like to find out what the Bible might offer on a particular subject when it comes up and stares me in the face during regular living. Being a pastor’s wife who did not grow up immersed in scripture, I also like to tap into some of my husband’s knowledge on such matters.  So, in this case, I asked him to point me towards verses about people doing basic chores. There might be a zillion of these, actually, but one rose to the top of his list:  Jesus visiting with Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). Here, as you well may recall, Mary is the sister

who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying  But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?  Tell her then to help me.’  But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

Now you don’t have to be Ms. (or Mr.) Busy Bee all the time to see that this passage raises some thorny issues. If everyone put aside their pesky chores to sit down and listen to tales, there would be trouble. Somebody’s got to clean up the kitchen, after all. And how many of us women would describe ourselves as “distracted by many things”?  Sounds like a perpetual condition, more or less. Back to my question from the beginning, how can we tell whether we are choosing “the better part”– when we face the cacophony of stuff on our desk or when we ignore it for another day and head out to hear the honking geese over the fields in the day’s last light while picking apples?

I don’t for the life of me know the answer, but I sure hope that in another month from now, when all of those 10 things I listed up above are still not done, I will have at least taken in some colors of the best kind before they fade.