Coyote Watching, School-Zone Reunions,  
and Other Cool Alternative Benefits  
of the New Economy

Time and the Spirit

My poor friend Daphne. Whenever we get together for lunch on the patio of the office building where she works, I always get the same litany of complaints. About how she’s being expected to do more for the same pay. About how she’s not sure her department is going to survive the next ax-fall. About how she’s working longer hours and not spending as much time with her husband and church friends as she’d like.I can sympathize with Daphne because I used to work in that office building myself. Until I wised up and left to work out of my home. Yes, I joined the exodus of workers from traditional workplaces, and I did it not to make more money but to have more life.

We’re riding one of the longest economic booms in American history, with unemployment as low as it’s been since the Johnson administration. Meantime, new technologies are enabling people to take more varied approaches to their work than ever before. And yet to hear most people talk, what’s important about these circumstances is that they may give us a chance to buy a bigger house or pump up our 401(k).

What turns me on is that people now are freer to take charge of the biggest time consumer in their lives: their work. I’d like to see more people focusing on uses of their time that take them deeper into themselves, deeper into relationships with others, and deeper into a relationship with God.

You’ll never see Entrepreneur magazine printing a story on “Starting a Home-Based Business for God,” but the fact is, today’s new workways are filled with great possibilities for developing humanness and spirituality.

Today you can . . .

·         Keep your traditional job but negotiate a nontraditional work schedule so that your time off occurs when you can make the most of it. If you can afford it, you can even drop down to part-time. Or . . .

·         You can work for a regular company but do some or all of your work out of your home. This enables you to live where you want. And it lets you work without the distractions of the cubiclopolis. Or . . .

·       You can go to work for yourself. You can be a one-person business working out of your home or even start a multistaff company and be the boss.

·         I can’t guarantee you’ll make more money in a nontraditional work arrangement, or even that you’ll make as much. But then, as Solomon Davidson said, better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

·         At one time (or so this part of the American myth goes) there was security in a career. Companies didn’t change much, and if you were reasonably competent, you could expect to stay in your job as long as you wanted to or until retirement and the gold watch.

Nowadays, whole industries seem to appear and disappear overnight. Companies are broken up. Divisions are sold off. Employees are let go. It’s not heartlessness; it’s the nature of business today.

Yet people can be excused for thinking that, if they’re going to have a risky career anyway, why not do it on their own terms? And so they are not waiting to be downsized; they are downstressing themselves. They are quitting and going off to earn their bread some other way that’s more compatible with who they are as human beings.

And thus, many people who are not naturally risk-takers are more willing to take charge of their careers. They would have settled for security, but that security is no longer there.

In today’s economy you’ve got to be nimble, Jack.

What passes for security in this world is often undependable and always provisional. Better to embrace risk openly than to rely too much on economic “security.” In risk you find God, for risk restores to vividness your sense of dependence on that which is beyond you. And risk shifts your focus from the future to the present, where you are actually living.

So do not worry, saying, “What shall I eat?” or “What shall I drink?” or “What shall I wear?” For your heavenly Father knows that you need these things. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

And as you give up worry, prepare to feel more alive. When you embrace risk, your life takes on a sense of movement, a dangerousness and a hopefulness, a playfulness and a seriousness you never felt before. Your life becomes a whopping good story.

To quote Ignatius, “The glory of God is a person fully alive.”

Creativity, Individuality, and Integration

Since becoming a freelancer, I’ve felt as though I’ve been on a journey from the left side of my brain to the right. Even though I was in a supposedly creative business (publishing), doing supposedly creative things (product development), the whole tendency of the business was toward fitting in, obeying the rules, doing number-based analysis . . . snore.

But work doesn’t have to be that way. There’s following dreams. There’s letting your gut cast the final vote.

Unrealistic, you say? I don’t know about that. Sometimes decisions made by intuition are better than those that come as a result of a carefully worked out business plan. And almost always the pursuit of business goals with personal passion leads to better results than doing it because some higher-up told you to.

Not all of us are highly creative or like doing creative work. But most of us are more creative than we are allowed to be in traditional business. And that squelching is a shame, not only because nearly every kind of work can benefit from a measure of creativity, but because there’s something enriching and ennobling, something very human, about self-expression.

Every one of us created refrigerator art with joy and abandon when we were kids. What happened?

I don’t know what moon causes the tides of our creativity, but it’s got an erratic orbit. At different times of the day, and on different days of the week, I’m at my most creative. Other times, I can get work done, but it had better be pretty rote.

So I’ve learned that when my creativity is flowing, I’ve got to go with it. That’s what’s happening when you find me up at one or two o’clock in the morning typing madly. Try that in a traditional job.

Fortunately my energy levels are not as unpredictable as my inspiration. My plan, when I began working on my own, was to put in the same hours I used to work when I was a corporate hack. But my body had other ideas. I’m glad I listened to it.

Normally, my most alert and creative hours are from early morning through early afternoon, and so that’s when I do my most intensive work. By midafternoon my mind is faltering and my body is getting restless; I know it’s time to go for a workout or run errands. After dinner I’m feeling calm and focused, and so I go back to my desk for two or three more hours of work.

That’s the Eric schedule. Your natural schedule is probably different from mine. But unless you have a work arrangement that lets you be yourself, I doubt you even know what your natural schedule is.

I’ve been watching a building go up in the Denver Tech Center. This particular building has curved walls and looks like it’s falling on you as you drive past on the interstate. I love it. It’s made of glass and steel like all the others in the Tech Center, but at least it’s not a box.

One problem with traditional businesses is that they tend to force their workers into behavioral boxes as rigid as the buildings where the work gets done. This happens through stated rules and through that more wispy constraint known as “corporate culture.” Result: people become about as distinctive as those tract houses where the paint options range from beige to taupe.

I’d like to see people working in ways that allow them to unfold into something more like how they were created to be. Maybe they’ll start recognizing themselves in the mirror again. God knows, they’ll be more interesting to meet.

My way to the gym for my afternoon workout takes me through the school zone at Frontier Elementary. I don’t mind slowing down to 20 mph. I like seeing all those young moms (and some dads) reuniting with their kids among the colorful gabble. I’m glad they can do it. I wonder how many of them have rearranged their work schedules so they can be there for their kids after school.

I’ve learned a lesson from those moms and dads. I used to be proud of how I separated my work life from my personal life, discouraging calls from friends to my office, never bringing work home with me. Now I think, what an idiot. Instead of giving each part of my life its just due, I was splitting myself in half. And that isn’t pretty.

Not the least of the problems with compartmentalizing a life is the ethical schizophrenia it all too often induces. More than one kindly grandma could give lessons on back-stabbing in the office 

With permeable boundaries and flexible schedules, and particularly with working out of the home, we can be ourselves on a full-time basis.

There are, of course, dangers in nontraditional work if you don’t learn proper ways to manage your time. For one, you could let your “personal” life swamp your business concerns. Or for another, if you’re the workaholic type, you could let your work take over all your life. The ability to work anytime, anyplace can easily become the compulsion to work all the time, everywhere. For most people, I suspect, this is the greater temptation.

Of course, people are working longer hours anyway. At least if you’re doing it on your own schedule and for a job you care about, it’s less of a strain.

Natural Living

Life is a gift. We should receive it as such.

Unfortunately, the artificial environment of a traditional workplace too often makes its denizens feel that life is passing them by like landscape seen from a car. In a regular job, you can’t come and go when you please, because there’s a rigid schedule in place for your work. Meanwhile, you’re living in a box with sealed windows, climate control, and white noise.

Being able to set my own hours, I give myself permission to take the day off if we get some ravishing weather and the outdoors are beckoning to me through the open window. What’s the big deal? Maybe it will rain on Saturday, and I can make up the time then.

I feel closer to the patterns and rhythms of life—closer to the daily peak of sunshine and warmth and the subsidence into darkness and coolness, closer to the annual cycles of the seasons through my mountain town’s sunny, cool fall and winter, into our snowy spring, and finally on to our splendid summer.

I look back at last summer or last year and I feel that I was there. And it’s because I took the time to keep in touch with living things.

I like how, in the Bible, God made his rainbow covenant not only with Noah but with all living creatures. And how the angel of the Lord waxed indignant at Balaam for beating his donkey. And how the horses of Nineveh wore sackcloth when the city mourned for its sin.

The animals and we are made of the same clay, after all. Only the breath of God in our nostrils makes us different. I don’t know why we’ve taken to cutting ourselves off from animals. (Wild animals, not Rex and Fluffy.)

On the park trail where I’m wont to run, there lives a species of beetle that seems to enjoy standing on its head. I don’t know why they do it, but it’s interesting to observe. One day, on that trail, I encountered a coyote. He and his pals had kept me awake more than one night with their yipping, but I’d never seen a sample close up before. Shaken hands and discussed the weather, so to speak. He grew bored and loped off before I did.

What people who come to Colorado only for the skiing don’t know is that this state is a paradise of wildflowers in the summer. But to enjoy the full palette, you have to be in the right place at the right time.

My favorite wildbloomer is the Explorer’s gentian, a small, intensely blue flower like a five-point crown. The only place I’ve found it to occur in abundance is around Geer Pond in the mountains above my home. Of course I make an annual pilgrimage up there. But I have to time my trek just right because the Explorer’s gentian opens for only a short period sometime around late August, the exact time depending on how hot and how wet the summer has been.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. To be there when it happens, you have to have charge of your time.

Others and God

Cutting across the patterns, the cycles, the rhythms of life are the human tragedies that show up like an unwelcome thunderstorm on a summer’s day. In contrast to the high points of joy in our lives (births, graduations, weddings, and so on), tragedies like illness and accidents come unexpectedly. And so, when the circumstances call for laughing with those who laugh, you may be able to work it into your schedule; but to weep with those who weep takes flexibility.

I know Sandy, a single mom, from the Bible discussion group I’m a part of every Tuesday night. For months now her voice has been going out, and the doctors are having a hard time figuring out why. Her employer got tired of making accommodations for her and recently released Sandy from her receptionist’s job. That same week, her car refused to work without an infusion of money she didn’t have.

All of us in the group prayed with Sandy and paid the mechanic’s bill. But because I don’t have to keep normal office hours, I was the only one who could offer her rides to the hospital and to job interviews while the car was in the shop.

Children don’t know hurry. Hurry has to be taught. “Get those shoes on! We’re going to be late for Sunday school.” What children are focused on is not a schedule but making the most of whatever play they’re involved in.

Something similar happens among adults in the so-called undeveloped societies, but here it’s not about play but about people. If you’re a visitor to a village, your hosts are not concerned about getting you to your appointment on time. They’re concerned about getting to know you over coffee in the shade of the baobab tree.

Relationships take time to develop. And aren’t they worth it?

Try the deathbed test. Imagine that it’s many years hence and you are lying on your deathbed thinking back over your life. Can you imagine yourself wishing you had spent more time in the office so that you could have traded up your vehicle or your house more frequently? Or does it seem more likely that you would be wishing you had devoted more time to your wife or husband, your kids, your pals, needy folk?

I wonder what response we’d get if we asked a scientific sampling of pastors, “Which does your church need more—50 percent larger offerings or 50 percent more volunteer-hours from church members?” I’m betting, if they could have only one or the other, almost all of them would rather have the time than the dollars.

When spiritual gifts are used, the servant and the recipient both get something out of it. No surprise there. But has it occurred to you that, if “lay” members would participate more frequently and more consistently in ministry, a church wouldn’t have to hire so many professional staff members? And then the church would become more personal, more in touch, more effective. 

Those Christian devotional books that promise a rich spiritual life “in just five minutes a day!” are very helpful. If you know anything at all about spiritual devotion, their claims will make you guffaw so hard, it will add months to your life.

Christian tradition bequeaths us an array of useful spiritual exercises—prayer, contemplation, and so forth. But what they all have in common is that they require our time. (Some energy and a settled spirit don’t hurt either.) They take regular, sustained exercise over a period not less than one’s Christian lifetime to bring us to our potential as believing people.

Maybe more people would practice the spiritual disciplines, as opposed to just talking about them, if they would free up time by managing their work life differently.

Taking control of your time by taking control of your work can let you become a more spiritual being, just like it can let you become a more relational being and a more human being.    

But what if you didn’t stop with taking control of the employed portion of your limited time on earth? What if you gave up recreational shopping? What if you did an Elvis on your TV? What if . . .?

But now I’m getting personal. I’ll just go.

[The paraphrases from the book of Ecclesiastes and the Sermon on the Mount are based on the New International Version.]