You're on Tiree Time

Teapot at the Beachcomber Cafe near the Tiree airport

It reads: "You're on Tiree Time" ("Tiree" being represented by the outline of the island)

"Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit."  This is one of those pithy sayings of John Wesley that is frequently cited as a reminder that we should aim to get as much done as possible without getting flustered and out of sorts. 

It is usually quoted in a somewhat scoffing manner as if to say that we have it so much harder than did John Wesley.  After all, he lived in a simpler age, as they say.  He wasn't surrounded by the hustle and bustle of automobiles and trains and planes.  He didn't have to contend with the relentless expectation of being reachable 24/7 because of the advent of email and cell phones.  He didn't have the demands of a parish full of needy congregants, nor did he have the clamor of babies or the moodiness of teenagers to contend with at home.  He wasn't subject to answering machines or voicemail and the constant babble of voices pressing him to do something or be somewhere every minute of every day.

Well, I'll let you be the one to tell him that you have a more pressing schedule or a more activity-packed life!  The recipient of his letter tried that, and it didn't work well.  This is a man who consistently got up at 4 or 5 AM, prayed, preached, rode a horse/walked/took a carriage to another place where he again preached, and then traveled even further down the road only to preach again.  Without the climate-controlled comfort of a car gliding along on nicely paved asphalt roads, he itinerated around England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, day in and day out, year after year, propelled by his call to preach the gospel to as many people as possible for as long as possible.  Sometimes his timetable was disrupted, and he had to go with plan B,C, or even Z in order to accomplish his tasks.  Yet in the midst of all the hubbub, he never dispensed with his hours of prayer or regular time devoted to reading and meditating on scripture.

Even today, travel is unpredictable.  Planes don't always arrive or take off on time.  Trains may be halted by bad weather.  Cars sometimes refuse to start.  Life itself doesn't follow a strict schedule, and our best-laid plans often don't pan out the way we wish.  There's just so much that has to be done!  With all the busy-ness of everyday life, it's hard to make time for daily prayer and scripture reading.  It's not easy to arrange things in order to visit a sick friend or take a meal to the homeless shelter or attend a meeting at church.  Being a Christian is just so challenging! There's only so much that one can do, right?

This is not an excuse that is exclusive to our age, and it would not have been an unfamiliar complaint to John Wesley.  In his rounds of preaching, teaching, and nurturing the faith of his Methodists, he frequently had to gently or sometimes not so gently correct, direct, and even push people into sorting out their priorities so they could be examples of holiness of heart and life.  Consider the letter to Miss J.C. March from which the quotation above is taken. 

In Wesley's wholistic understanding of salvation, there is no room for NOT making time and space in one's life for works of piety like studying scripture, praying, and attending worship and for acts of mercy like visiting the imprisoned, caring for the sick, or providing for the poor.  Such acts were considered means of grace by which one grew ever more into the likeness and image of God, and they simply weren't optional for those desiring to be disciples of Jesus Christ.  He frequently wrote to women and men who were struggling in their Christian journey to encourage and prod them into action.  Often those admonitions took the form of leading by example, by giving a rationale of  his own use of time, as seen here, and he was not above needling the person into reflecting upon the question of whether or not they are settling rather than seeking to be made perfect in love.

Such is the case in his correspondence with Miss March.  Over a span of fifteen or more years, she wrote to him with her concerns, and he responded, sometimes bluntly, by pointing her beyond her life of ease and wealth and her desire for seclusion in order to tend to her spiritual life.  Apparently she told him that she couldn't add tending to the poor and sick to her schedule lest she become overly busy as poor Mr. Wesley himself clearly was.  His response is a masterpiece of explaining that he found occasions for seclusion and for calmness of spirit even in the midst of his whirl of activity and that both are necessary for a robust Christian life.  He writes:

You do not at all understand my manner of life. Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit. It is true I travel four or five thousand miles in a year. But I generally travel alone in my carriage, and consequently am as retired ten hours in a day as if I was in a wilderness. On other days I never spend less than three hours (frequently ten or twelve) in the day alone. So there are few persons in the kingdom who spend so many hours secluded from all company. Yet I find time to visit the sick and the poor; and I must do it, if I believe the Bible, if I believe these are the marks whereby the Shepherd of Israel will know and judge His sheep at the great day; therefore, when there is time and opportunity for it, who can doubt but this is matter of absolute duty? When I was at Oxford, and lived almost like an hermit, I saw not how any busy man could be saved. I scarce thought it possible for a man to retain the Christian spirit amidst the noise and bustle of the world. God taught me better by my own experience. I had ten times more business in America (that is, at intervals) than ever I had in my life. But it was no hindrance to silence of spirit.

Mr. Boehm was Chaplain to Prince George of Denmark, Secretary to him and Queen Anne, principal manager of almost all the public charities in the kingdom, and employed in numberless private charities. An intimate friend, knowing this, said to him when they were alone, 'Sir, are you not hurt by that amazing hurry of business? I have seen you in your office, surrounded with people, listening to one, dictating to another, and at the same time writing to a third; could you then retain a sense of the presence of God? ' He answered, 'All that company and all that business no more hindered or lessened my communion with God than if I had been all alone in a church kneeling before the communion table.' Was it not the same case with him to whom Gregory Lopez said, ' Go and be an hermit in Mexico'? I am concerned for you; I am sorry you should be content with lower degrees of usefulness and holiness than you are called to. But I cannot help it: so I submit; and am still, my dear Miss March,

Yours in sincere affection.
J. Wesley

How like Miss March I sometimes am!  I am easily enraptured with the thought of silence, of time devoted to reading, of retreat and contemplation, and I, too, am prone to think that more important than actively getting my hands dirty, so to speak, by engaging with real people and their real struggles.  But Wesley -- and Jesus! -- are not content with that, nor do they wish you or me to be content with that kind of lazy thinking.  Engagement with the poor, the sick, the prisoner, the refugee, the outsider, the needy and broken is an important, no, necessary aspect of Christian living not only because it leads to love and providing relief for their needs but because it causes us to grow in grace.  It fashions us into people who are not simply forgiven but who want to be made holy, people who are daily growing more like the One we follow.  It is to live a life in the Spirit that renews and remakes us, giving grace upon grace upon grace.  My time with the people of Tiree gave me an opportunity to slow down, to live on "Tiree time," which is much less harried than my usual life.  There were times of simply looking with wonder at the beauty of the natural world with gratitude; there were also times of planning worship without the aid of a computer and of sitting at the beside of someone drifting slowly on the borders of death, and grace was there in and through it all. "Tiree Time,"  like the journey of Christian discipleship, includes both.

I invite you to examine your own life and how you spend your time.  Look at your calendar or cell phone or whatever you use to track your schedule.  Are you balancing your days between inward and outward acts of holiness?  How might you arrange your time differently in order to live more faithfully?  Do you have companions who assist you along the way, friends who will lovingly hold you accountable?  If not, talk with a pastor or other Christian friend who can help you figure that out, and pray for the grace to allow the Spirit to help you make any necessary changes in your pattern of daily living.  May you find that your sense of communion with God is strengthened, not lessened, by it!