Author: Steven Hovater

The isolation demanded by COVID-19 clarifies a distinction I’ve been wanting to make for a while regarding our most precious resource—what it is, and what it isn’t.

Many people will say that our most precious resource is time, and for good reason. Time is finite, and we often feel ourselves needing more of it. We call it being “busy”, and we do fill our lives with time-demanding activity, but I think that is actually a mask of the real problem.

In this moment, when we’ve had a significant number of demands on our time stripped away, the angst of being low on time has been just as quickly replaced. The same feeling is there, but now attaches itself to other causes. Although many of us have had to do our work in different ways, and that certianly takes a new share of time, the reality is that many of us now have something of a time-surplus. And yet, the thing that we used to name “I just wish I had more time” still remains.

I suggest that the actual scarcity has never been time, but attention. It is that resource which is impinged upon from countless directions, and this has not relented even in the midst of our physical isolation. Even as our activity calendars have drastically changed, we are presented with new pulls on our attention, and these are even more fierce than before.

This moment presents an opportunity to be truthful about our scarcity of attention…and to reclaim it with intention. One of the most significant things you can do through this crisis is become more purposeful in how you spend and invest your limited attention.

The isolation demanded by COVID-19 clarifies a distinction I’ve been wanting to make for a while regarding our most precious resource—what it is, and what it isn’t.

Many people will say that our most precious resource is time, and for good reason. Time is finite, and we often feel ourselves needing more of it. We call it being “busy”, and e do fill our lives with time-demanding activity, but I think that is actually a mask of the real problem.

In this moment, when we’ve had a significant number of demands on our time stripped away, the angst of being low on time has been just as quickly replaced. The same feeling is there, but now attaches itself to other causes. Although many of us have had to do our work in different ways, and that certianly takes a new share of time, the reality is that many of us now have something of a time-surplus. And yet, the thing that we used to name “I just wish I had more time” still remains.

I suggest that the actual scarcity has never been time, but attention. It is that resource which is impinged upon from countless directions, and this has not relented even in the midst of our physical isolation. Even as our activity calendars have drastically changed, we are presented with new pulls on our attention, and these are even more fierce than before.

This moment presents an opportunity to be truthful about our scarcity of attention…and to reclaim it with intention. One of the most significant things you can do through this crisis is become more purposeful in how you spend and invest your limited attention.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all experiencing an extreme disruption. In case I’m misinterpreted in what I’m about to write, let me be crystal clear at the beginning: that disruption is bad. A lot of people are going to be hurt by the disease and by the societal problems cascading from it. Everyone, please take care of yourselves and your community by honoring the physical distancing steps recommended by public health experts.

But disruption also creates opportunity. Sometimes, by forcing us to reconsider “normal” and all that comes with what we usually call normal.

One way I’m using this time of disruption is to check on some vital signs for my life. Not just the pulse, BP, temp, and other signs that my body is functioning well, but the vital signs of my spirit.

This pandemic, with its forced isolation and the disruption of activity, creates the opportunity for us to really consider our inner lives. It invites us to reconsider the quiet places of our hearts, the parts that are usually drowned out by the bustle of the lives we sustain. As we withdraw into private spaces, we also have the opportunity to experience quiet. And in the quiet, we confront the vital signs of the spirit.

Capacity for stillness. When I am still, do I easily become restless? Can I remain still for a moment without becoming anxious?

Patience. Can I endure inconveniences with an appropriate emotional reaction? In other words, do I fly off the handle because a child is being louder than I like, or become enraged when I’m forced to wait for moment?

Clarity of Concern. It’s okay to have concerns. A healthy spirit is not simply without any sort of desire for things to be different in the world! Indeed, we easily become too comfortable with injustices or the presence of broken systems! But a healthy spirit can discern what it is actually anxious about. It understands what is making it uncomfortable, precisely, without remaining anxious in a general, diffused way.

Joy and Gratitude When I am healthy in my spirit, I have joy! I may have struggle and pain right along side of it, but I can also consider the things which bring me life, facets of my life that I can name with thankful joy. The lack of elements of joy in my life is a sign that my spirit has been distorted.

Healthy Detachment A person with a healthy spirit is engaged with the issues of her community, but can also recognize that what is happening around her is not the same thing as what is happening in her. there is a way of engaging without becoming passively entailed with the emotional currents around me.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all experiencing an extreme disruption. In case I’m misinterpreted in what I’m about to write, let me be crystal clear at the beginning: that disruption is bad. A lot of people are going to be hurt by the disease and by the societal problems cascading from it. Everyone, please take care of yourselves and your community by honoring the physical distancing steps recommended by public health experts.

But disruption also creates opportunity. Sometimes, by forcing us to reconsider “normal” and all that comes with what we usually call normal.

One way I’m using this time of disruption is to check on some vital signs for my life. Not just the pulse, BP, temp, and other signs that my body is functioning well, but the vital signs of my spirit.

This pandemic, with its forced isolation and the disruption of activity, creates the opportunity for us to really consider our inner lives. It invites us to reconsider the quiet places of our hearts, the parts that are usually drowned out by the bustle of the lives we sustain. As we withdraw into private spaces, we also have the opportunity to experience quiet. And in the quiet, we confront the vital signs of the spirit.

Capacity for stillness. When I am still, do I easily become restless? Can I remain still for a moment without becoming anxious?

Patience. Can I endure inconveniences with an appropriate emotional reaction? In other words, do I fly off the handle because a child is being louder than I like, or become enraged when I’m forced to wait for moment?

Clarity of Concern. It’s okay to have concerns. A healthy spirit is not simply without any sort of desire for things to be different in the world! Indeed, we easily become too comfortable with injustices or the presence of broken systems! But a healthy spirit can discern what it is actually anxious about. It understands what is making it uncomfortable, precisely, without remaining anxious in a general, diffused way.

Joy and Gratitude When I am healthy in my spirit, I have joy! I may have struggle and pain right along side of it, but I can also consider the things which bring me life, facets of my life that I can name with thankful joy. The lack of elements of joy in my life is a sign that my spirit has been distorted.

Healthy Detachment A person with a healthy spirit is engaged with the issues of her community, but can also recognize that what is happening around her is not the same thing as what is happening in her. there is a way of engaging without becoming passively entailed with the emotional currents around me.

My team went down hard tonight as Clemson plowed Bama in the championship game.The ups and downs of sport fandom is a crazy ride, and while this stretch with Bama has been fun, it still stabs me between the ribs sometimes…that’s part of the spirituality of sports. They challenge you to invest, toy with you, then ask why it really matters, waiting to see if you can, at the end of the day, hold it lightly.They ask, “You don’t care too much, now do you?”Then they patiently wait for an answer.Then they put you through the cycle again.

Diana Butler Bass tells a story of a conversation with an executive from a popular coffee chain and asking, after the various combinations, how many different choices were possible from the menu. The answer: eighty-two thousand! (You can see why the person in line in front of you may stumble a minute figuring out what they want.) She writes, “Americans , even those of modest means , exercise more choices in a single day than some of our ancestors did in a month or perhaps even a year.”Think for a moment about the wide array of choices you’ll face in the next year, from how you want your coffee to how you’ll handle obstacles and challenges. Some of those choices will be life-changing, and others may seem trivial—though it may be that the sum of a lot of seemingly trivial choices shifts our lives as well. I want to suggest two factors to consider as we dive into the next year and its staggering menu of choices.First, our skill in navigating those choices depends on our capacity for wisdom. Wisdom helps us perceive what’s at stake in our choices, helps us sort out the information we need to consider in order to make good decisions, and helps us think more broadly about the impact of our decisions. Wisdom is an important virtue, as it helps guide us so that our good intentions are converted into reality. Our desires to love our neighbors or to live truthfully are impotent without the wisdom to discern between what is or isn’t really true, or the wisdom to understand the impact our actions really will have on our neighbors. It’s one thing to have the desire to be good—but we also need to cultivate wisdom so that we may indeed enact actual goodness in the world.Second, before we dive back into the world of choices, let us remember that every other choices we make is subordinate to the first choice—our commitment to following Jesus. For those who have given our lives to the Lord, we have an orienting compass for the choices we face—we meet them with the commitment to see the Lord’s will be done. When it comes to some of those more challenging questions, that commitment may be just the key that helps us see clearly what must be done.

Wisdom is a tricky concept to define, in part because of the meaning field it shares with words like intelligence, or understanding. Teasing what distinguishes Wisdom from those words requires careful consideration.For my part, I’ve been thinking about Wisdom over the past few years as the quality of knowing how to live in the present because of an understanding of both the past and the future.In other words, wise people understand that their actions today shape the future…and that helps them live well. Furthermore, they often gain that understanding because they have reflected upon the past. They understand the trajectories that led yesterday to become today, and that will carry today into tomorrow and beyond.

Wisdom is a tricky concept to define, in part because of the meaning field it shares with words like intelligence, or understanding. Teasing what distinguishes Wisdom from those words requires careful consideration.For my part, I’ve been thinking about Wisdom over the past few years as the quality of knowing how to live in the present because of an understanding of both the past and the future.In other words, wise people understand that their actions today shape the future…and that helps them live well. Furthermore, they often gain that understanding because they have reflected upon the past. They understand the trajectories that led yesterday to become today, and that will carry today into tomorrow and beyond.