God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by subtracting. – Meister Eckhart
This summer my wife Tammy and I spent a couple days cleaning out our downstairs storage room. The task was prompted by a crisis: water in our basement due to all the flooding around us. But it created an opportunity to do some much-needed purging. It’s amazing how much we accumulate over the years.
As we emptied soggy cardboard boxes, I came across several of my high school yearbooks. I paged through them, caught up in nostalgia, seeing familiar faces long forgotten. I flipped to a page (my senior year) where titles had been awarded by classmates, based on votes. You know, things like “best dressed” and “most athletic” and “most talented musician” and “class clown.”
I saw my 18-year-old self, a head full of thick hair and my face so youthful. Beneath the photo the caption read: Brian Keepers, voted “most active” of the Class of ’94! It then listed all the activities I was involved in.
Tammy peered over my shoulder, saw the photo and awarded title, and said, “So, you’ve always been this way, huh?”
Yes, I suppose I have. I love being involved in things. Lots of things. Too many things. I’m not very good at saying no. The result is that I’m often busy, over-extended, and seriously lacking margin.
I’m sure some of this has to do with my first formation and my own well-rehearsed dysfunctional patterns. Things like a strong desire to please and the fear of disappointing others. My deep need to be needed. And there’s a good amount of fomo (fear of missing out) mixed in too.
But it’s not just that. I really do find so much life and joy in getting to be active in a variety of activities, task groups, projects, and creative endeavors. My family makes fun of me that I’m always reading anywhere from 20 to 30 books at once. But it’s the intersection of ideas, the cross-pollination, the “tying together of all the clouds” (as one preacher put it) that I really love.
However, recently it’s become clear that God is inviting me into a season of subtraction, not addition. A season of learning that less is more. An opportunity to practice the discipline of saying no. (Even as I write that sentence, I worry that you’re working on something really cool and now you’re not going to ask me to be a part of it!)
Photograph by William Gottlieb / Getty
In the church I serve, we’ve spent the fall engaging with John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way material. It’s been a gift to so many in our church. Together, we’ve been growing in our awareness of the ways in which we’re always being formed (by the forces within and outside us), and therefore Jesus’ invitation to be intentional about being formed as his apprentices, into a people of love. The last few months have been deeply transformational for me on multiple levels.
Most significant has been this invitation to subtract things from my life, to cut things out rather than keep putting things in. To take responsibility for slowing down and creating more margin.
The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth once wrote, “a being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.” Already I’m discovering the truth of these words. Yes, there’s always the risk of missing out, of disappointing people I care about, of possibly not getting asked to do things in the future. And there is also the risk of looking and feeling less important (maybe even less holy—I know, that’s messed up) because people stop saying, “Pastor, you’re so busy!” For too long, I’ve worn busyness as a badge of honor. But there truly is freedom, joy, and contentment in learning to embrace limits and utter the words, “I’m sorry, I need to say no for now.”
As my therapist pointed out recently, the goal of saying no and doing less is not to disengage with life or retreat into the cult-de-sac of “self” but to bring a greater quality of presence into my relationships and into the things I’m already doing. It’s to rest my heart more fully in Christ, to ground myself more deeply in my identity as his beloved, and to live out of that place of fullness (instead of emptiness) with a greater love for God, my neighbor, and myself.
My face is much older now than it was in that yearbook photo. Most of my hair is gone. I certainly don’t have the energy I once did. Yet I’m stepping into a renewed vigor, a kind of spaciousness, a freedom that comes not from denying limits but embracing them with humility and grace.
And I think I like the guy I’m seeing in the mirror. Even more, I like who he’s becoming.
