Do Less, Be More

“You should bother less about what you ought to do and think more about what you ought to be, because if your being were good then your works would shine forth brightly.”

Eckhart von Hochheim

“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

Seneca

I’ve spent a lot of time turning over in my mind Mary MacKillop’s oft-quoted words, “Never see a need without doing something about it.”

These words are tossed around a lot in ministry, especially in the social justice scene. And they’re good and beautiful words – as Christians, we should open our eyes to the unique poverty and dignity of every human soul (and animals and the environment), recognise opportunities to make Love known, and do what we can to alleviate injustice and suffering in our world.

However.

However.

We are not God. We're not : a) omnipotent; b) omniscient; or c) all-loving. We don’t have unlimited problem-solving resources – not wealth, not time, not personal capacity. Not even willpower.

And living in a metropolitan context and internet age where our exposure to world issues is comprehensive and unceasing, we simply cannot be all things to all people. We can’t be in charge of every social justice organisation, and be an advocate for every cause, and be fully present to the needs of every single person in existence. Not merely because we will burn out, but also because it is literally impossible.

We are finite. We are limited. And without Christ we can do nothing.

Too often in striving for holiness, we equate ‘more generosity’ with ‘more activity’. “Life grows by being given away,” therefore we need to spread ourselves out over a vast number of tasks and fill every hour to prove that we care about God and the world.  

In the three years since I finished NET, I’ve been in something of a cycle with this mentality: see the needs in the world, panic that I’m not being generous enough, accumulate obligations, strive to get everything perfect, confront my limitations, burnout, cry, sleep, repeat.

It’s an exhausting cycle, and I know I’m not the only one stuck in it. So many young Catholics cling to Pope Benedict’s words “You were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness,” as a mantra for relentless slave-driving their own souls.

We were made for greatness. But not in human terms. Not in academic success and fruitful ministry initiatives and well-executed service projects and perfectly-sung psalms and infallibility in our relationships and perfectly-shaped eyebrows and Instagrammable experiences. That’s the kind of greatness we’re actually comfortable with.

We were made for Greatness – for the One who is Great to fill our emptiness with His love and mercy. We choose not to be comfortable in earthly terms because we know that true comfort is found in His arms. We give our life away freely because He gives back one hundred fold.

The spiritual life isn’t about ticking off another set of criteria or doing ALL THE THINGS. It’s about being who you were created to be. And we discover who we were created to be when we remember whose we already are.

There’s so much I want to fix in the world – the ecological crisis, and the way we receive asylum seekers, and the Church’s relationship with LGBTQ people, and the way children learn about the sacraments, and our approach to money and disposable culture, and high rates of mental health issues and suicide, and human trafficking, and the fact that so many people don’t actually know how to pray in a way that connects them relationally to God, and the seeming inability of humans to listen to each other with love.

There’s so much to fix. But that’s not my job.

“The poor will always be with you,” Jesus said to Judas. There will never come a time when everything need has been solved and every tear wiped away (until the new heaven and the new earth). And while that’s not an excuse to stop caring about humanity’s needs, it’s a reminder to surrender those needs back to God.

I want to propose a Beatitude-based blueprint for getting out of the ‘activity = generosity’ mindset, one that’s founded not upon doing more but upon being more. 

At every turn, we have a choice whether to be our own or to be God’s. Relentlessly cramming our lives full of activity in an attempt to justify that we're doing what we ought to be is not being God’s. It’s an agitated attempt to be in control and to save the world by our own efforts.

If we focused less on what we ought to do and more on who we ought to be – better yet, who we already are in Him – then Love would have a chance to overflow. Peace would be multiplied in our world because the instrument of peace – our heart – would actually be filled with what it proclaims.

We don’t need to be everywhere. We just need to be found in Him.

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A Beatitudes-Based Approach to Doing Less and Being More

fewer things well

Blessed are the poor in spirit

Poverty of spirit can mean a lot of different things. Right now, for me, it means accepting finiteness and the limitations on my personal resources and time.

I’ve always been a broad-spectrum, finger-in-eighteen-different-pies kinda gal. But spreading myself across a multitude of commitments often means spreading myself thin and not being fully present with the reality of any of them. I want to invest my love deeply into the things God has called me to. And that actually means doing fewer things, but doing those things well and with great love.

This requires discernment. It means separating the wheat from the chaff and being honest with yourself about what God’s call on your life actually is. What brings you alive? Where are you most effective? Where are you irreplaceable? What has the Lord spoken over your life, and how does your use of your hours reflect that?

Beatitude Exercise: Make a list of every role you play (e.g. student, daughter, youth group leader, choir member… etc.), including all social roles. For each of these roles, outline what is expected of you on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Look carefully through this list of expectations, and be honest with yourself about what aligns with 1) God’s word in your life, 2) a healthy, balanced, and realistic approach to self-care, 3) a willingness to invest deeply in what matters. Examine whether there’s anything on your list of roles that is more indicative of pride, a desire to be in control, or an inability to say no, than an actual concern for God’s will. Cull as necessary. Do fewer things well.

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be real about your humanity

Blessed are those who mourn

Emotions are an inescapable part of what it means to be human. We experience pain and suffering. We empathise with others and bear their suffering. We get annoyed and angry and overwhelmed and exhausted.

Denying these things never fixes them. A healthy and mature response to our emotions is not burying them or pretending they don’t exist. It’s addressing them strategically and with mercy towards yourself in your human limitations.

I was recently watching an episode of the 90s sitcom Dharma and Greg. Dharma’s (somewhat unorthodox) approach to dealing with a negative emotion – in this case, jealousy – is to greet it as a personified friend, saying:

“Hello jealousy, I embrace and acknowledge the message you are bringing me.”

Okay, we can’t all be Dharma. But we can take a leaf out of her book – recognising that Jesus calls our mourning blessed. When we’re real about our human emotions, and willing to hear the message they bring us – the wisdom they can teach our souls – we benefit a lot more than if we bottle things up.

Beatitude Exercise: Think about the last time you experienced a negative emotion (stress, sadness, anger, annoyance, etc.). What was your response to that emotion? Did you let it explode, attempt to hide it, or find a way to process it maturely? Spend a few moments giving yourself permission to re-feel that emotion, and be merciful to yourself in your response. Try ‘embracing and acknowledging the message’ it can bring you.

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stop chasing the horizon

Blessed are the meek

Everything about our culture praises growth. We demand bigger, better, stronger, faster, shinier, happier, more people, more products, more success. We bully ourselves when we don’t see instant results in our specific enterprises.

But Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek.” In those words are a challenging question: am I content with littleness? Am I okay with not grasping at ‘bigger, better, more successful’?

It was a thoroughly disconcerting experience to sit in a chapel a few months ago, and hear the Lord say to me, “You’re not actually listening – because you expect every silence to be filled with an answer.” He was right – I expected prayer to necessarily engender spiritual growth in an immediately observable way. I wanted an ever-increasing version of myself.

But as John the Baptist reminds us, that’s not actually what it’s about: “He must increase, and I must decrease.” Our Church gives us a powerful tool for learning meekness in the Litany of Humility:

From the desire of being approved – Jesus, deliver me.

From the fear of being ridiculed – Jesus, deliver me.

That other may be praised and I unnoticed – Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may become holier than I, provided that I become as holy as I should – Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

etc. etc.

Beatitude Exercise: pray the Litany of Humility.

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choose intercessory prayer

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

A defense mechanism I notice in myself and others is to react to burnout with shut-out. We’re overwhelmed by all of the needs we see in the world that we need to do something about, and so we block our vision to absolve ourselves of responsibility. We binge-watch Netflix. We delete the news app from our phone. We stay in bed hiding from the pain and suffering in the world.

I think this Beatitude offers an alternative to the fight-or-flight mechanism of seeing needs in the world. By telling us that our very hunger and thirst for righteousness (not just what we do to fight for righteousness) is a good thing, Jesus is leading us to understand that God sees our desires and hears our prayers. 

God is so much bigger than our efforts to create a just world. We are often too little, too ill-informed, and too selfish to truly make a difference everywhere we want to. But we're never too little to pray. Hunger and thirst for righteousness, and pray they might become the culture of the world. 

Beatitude Exercise: The next time you encounter a need in the world that causes you worry or makes you deeply discontent with injustice, pause for a moment. Rather than seeing your options as a dichotomy between executing a multi-step program to fix it, and running to hide under the covers, kneel down. Take up your rosary beads or your journal or get yourself to an Adoration chapel and offer your heart in union with Christ for the sake of righteousness in our world. 

  

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watch your self-talk

Blessed are the merciful

Oh, how mean our minds can be! The moment we make a mistake, do less than we feel we ought to, or observe emotion or exhaustion in ourselves, the spiral of negative self-talk begins:

"See what a bad Christian you are! Everyone else is doing so much more for the Kingdom than you. You're so bad at everything. Why do you even bother? Come on, woman, pick up the game."

I'm gonna call this one for you - those words are not from God. They might not be purely diabolic, but they're certainly not the voice of Mercy breathing love into your life. And furthermore, they're not going to breathe mercy into anyone else's life. Bullying yourself helps no-one, and neglects the Mercy God is wanting to pour into your soul.

Beatitude Exercise: Listen carefully to your inner monologue - is it condemning? Self-critical? Relentlessly task-oriented? Start writing down key phrases that do not seem to be from God, and try to combat these with Mercy-based messages. 

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carve out and safe-guard retreat time

Blessed are the pure in heart

In this beatitude, Jesus says to us, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." I think this tells us a lot about what "purity" actually means: it's not a further imposition or set of tasks to achieve, it's a process of singularization, of cleaning our eyes from all the layers that have accumulated on them in order to have clarity of sight.

Christ wants us to see His face, to contemplate that face, and only then to communicate Him with the world. If we spend our whole life showcasing the Beloved, we'll cease to know Him. 

Make time for Him. Even if it means saying 'no' to something else. You're saying yes to so much more when you carve out and safeguard the intimacy with God from which all other things flow. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.

Beatitude Exercise: Commit to one solid block of time (preferably at least an hour or two) each week that is just about you and God. Don't let anything infiltrate that time - not social commitments, work or uni tasks, not Instagram or messenger. Seek first to see God, and let Him purify your heart.  

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breathe calm into your community

Blessed are the peacemakers

The list on my bedroom mirror of ‘the woman I want to be’ includes, “someone who promises by her witness that all shall be well, and radiates God’s peace amidst chaos.” My deepest ambition in life is to be a sanctuary for others – one in whom they can find refuge, reassurance, and transcendent peace.

Now I’m far from achieving that goal. I’m a basket-case most of the time. I forget to be present with others. I complain, scrutinise other peoples’ flaws, and am often on edge myself. I project perfectionism and dissatisfaction rather than deep calm.  

But my hope, with Christ, is to grow more and more into a Peacemaker. I think an important step to doing this is becoming aware not only of what I actively say to others about their obligations, but how my witness sets a vision for them about what they have to do in order to "be a good Christian." 

If I'm constantly on edge, dissatisfied, and judgmental, others will hear the message, "You're not good enough for God." If I operate out of a place of peace and the mindset that all shall be well, others hear "God is enough." 

Beatitude Exercise: Speak with one or two close friends who know you well, and ask them honestly if there are ways in which you are operating as something other than a peacemaker in their lives and your community. Be receptive to their feedback, and discern with the Holy Spirit the ways in which you can better abide in God's peace.

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learn to say ‘no’ in order to say ‘yes’

Blessed are those persecuted because of righteousness

Living out these beatitudes - choosing to "do less, be more" - isn't going to be popular. In fact, you'll probably encounter a lot of internal and external opposition. Nobody likes the feeling of letting people down, and saying "no" to things for reasons like dealing with burnout, prioritising prayer time,  and learning how to invest deep love in fewer things doesn't exactly seem like the most heroic option.

But in actuality the most important thing any of us can do is God's will. If we're saying "yes" to things purely to please others or appease an overactive conscience, we might in fact be neglecting what God is wanting to do in us and through us. 

If we want to start a discernment-based culture, we need to stop assuming that more is better, and start listening to each other as we come to understand what God is asking of us. The more authentic you can be with people in your life - whether or not that leads to persecution - the more we will together create a culture of authentic discipleship. 

Beatitude Exercise: Stand your ground when you've said no to something. If you believe your 'no' to be a 'yes' to God's genuine will in your life, the voice of protest from others should not make you compromise that. Stop hoping for their approval of you, and instead pray for their own faith in God. It may well be that your refusal gives them an opportunity to trust Providence in a way they never have. 

  

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Maybe we can’t do something about every need. But we can be something about every need.

Never see a need without being something about it. Be God’s. Strip back from agitation and activity and your attempts to have it all together at every turn. Invest deeply in the opportunities the present moment and circumstance affords you to live with faith, hope, and love. Choose a life not of busyness but of beatitude.