To Leave
Undone…
Turning
off my hot staggered engine, time for that hot metal transport to get a break.
I grabbed my bag with my head full of stuff- some of it feeling real important
and the rest more futile. It was another blurred edge day with serrated in-between
and it cut through me like I was the room temp butter.
Days
like these come and go and at the end I simply feel like an overused tool, a
gadget that can do just about anything…maybe more like the multi-tool on my
brown belt. A valuable thing in a time of crisis but nothing you would build a
house with. Jack of all trades- like Jack Bauer of the TV show “24” I can come
through in just about anyway needed to get the job done. I am necessary, functional,
true tested, creative at solutions done on the go. I can deliver the goods.
But I
cannot enjoy my work…the work coming to my hands does not pause or stop to
consider me…it is never, ever, ever completely satisfied. Each task is
all-important, time sensitive and persistent and it always leaves me with a
reminder that at some level all my work will remain, as I remain on earth, at
some level forever and irrevocably undone. That leaves me undone in many ways,
and my soul suffers unaware. I have become a well worn tool within a world of
projects swirling around my head, “You Complete Me…NOW!”
Pulling
myself from the matrix I learn just how lost I have become and where I have traded
my Sonship for a toolbox.
That is
why I am being trained in the surrender of Shabbat, which in Hebrew understanding
and teaching is “to leave undone”. It does NOT mean to complete and then leave.
Nor is it to take the “undone” with you so that you can finish it later. It is unapologetically
vacating the premises, leaving the handle, and all that needs to be finished...unfinished.
Picture
that you are a farmer and it is time to plant seeds today so you may have a
harvest tomorrow. You are plowing your field towards the end of the day and you
have finished only half of what you intended to because some pesky birds came
and stole some of the seeds. 3 rows of beans are still uncovered, and the time
comes to stop. You know you must leave the beans, the rows, and the field. It
is the time to rest and lay down the plow and take the team home. But you want
to rush back and cover over the beans from those birds and maybe plow one more
row before the night falls.
We are
pulled into some fear of the undone. Something linked heavily into our interior
belief system- that we are only valuable if we finish something. Tie it tight
with a bow and set it in the corner, nail it shut, paint it to match, seal it
from rain…or else! Something wars with us and it masks itself as
responsibility- but this has nothing to do with the noble pursuit of being
responsible. It has everything to do with how my value is welded into my
ability to produce.
What I
am asked to leave is more than a task- for embodied in that task is my system
of certainty, of controlling my value to the world that the world cannot take
away from me. It is my daily grinded proof, my earned star, and my achieved credentials
that I can point on the day they may be questioned to lock in my value based
only on the fact of this completed task.
And as I
am holding up my partially finished task #11245 of #36882 my Father speaks to
me and says, “My son, leave it undone.”
The
tears come and warm my eyes just at the mention of these words. I am awakened
by the voice of my Father asking me to leave the day and this task undone while
the world is screaming, “Finish it now…or else!!”
I argue
with him “But Father I must finish this, for this very task says I am so
valuable to them- it is my ticket to financial success and it will secure my
future.”
Kindly
with confident renderings He smiles and says, “If you don’t leave it undone,
you will become it and you are far more valuable than a completed task to me.
Let’s leave it together.”
Leaving
something undone is no small thing. It is a good thing to complete our work and
we receive pleasure from a job well done. Yet to learn Shabbat, to fully rest
and be restored, we must leave so many things undone.
But it
is the way of the daughter who’s Father is delighted in her simply because of
who she is, nothing more or added is necessary. The Father enjoys the son not
because he finishes the work, but only because he is his son and they are
together. They work hard together and share the weight of the day. Then at the
end of the day they put down the plow and leave it undone- together. The
demanding voices inside and outside the son’s head fade as they walk away
together laughing about the day, away from simmering tasks and charted maps…and
away from cooling engines.
