Contentment, Crisis, and Contemplation
Nathan (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:05)
and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister. In this episode, what we really talk about is how we deal with life on the ground in our culture where it feels that so many of us are in survival mode. We're tired. We're emotionally exhausted. We're just trying to survive. And so how do we, in the midst of all of that, make time to think well about all of the normal crises that we have to deal with, relationships ending, death.
you know, damages to our property, you know, just the routine calamities of life, you might say. So we think this will be very helpful to you. And as always, like, share and subscribe. And if you like what we do and you find value in it, you can support us by going to www.toltogether.com.
Nathan (00:07)
Want to talk about the preparation for the future and frame this in terms of having air in your spare tire, because you know, one of the real bummers in life is when you have a flat tire and then your flat and then your spare tire is also flat. ⁓ you know, that, takes a little extra level of work and the, the, the sense is this, I think Cameron, that the conversation you and I were having that inspired this line of thinking is that if you look at a culture,
of young people or everybody that is seemingly stressed out. ⁓ and oftentimes for very legitimate reasons, just the, the grind of staying alive and then whether it's financial, relational, housing, academic, certainly health medical, like there are lots of things that we can be focusing on in life. And it's not like it's a sin or it's bad to recognize the difficulty and the struggle and trouble here. I just think when you live in a
When everybody's going full bore all of the time, just trying to keep their chin above the water, that the way that you spend your reflective time is probably going to be through entertainment and distraction, not thinking about deep questions in life. And you, and you had pointed out to me, you know, the number of people that you've bumped into in the last several months that you've, somebody else says like, I wish God would do this. You say, know, how do you define God? Or have you ever thought about
you know, what faith is. And then they just look at you with salsa eyes of like what in the world of people who have not thought at all about some fairly deep ideas or not even deep ideas, but just like important things to as a human to ponder. And then I think as a result of not having done that, culturally speaking, ⁓ you suddenly run into something in life. ⁓ Pain, death is a big one.
Cameron (01:47)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (02:00)
and you suddenly have no resources to deal with it because you've never even thought in categories that are remotely like that you would need to have formed some kind of opinion in order to handle the situation. And I don't think it's like, ⁓ your spare tire goes flat immediately. So in my analogy here, you're running a long one life and you get a flat tire and then you find you don't have the resources to keep yourself going because you haven't thought in advance of what's going to happen when I get a flat tire.
Cameron (02:13)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Nathan (02:30)
⁓ Back in the day, you know what a Volkswagen Bug is? The Volkswagen Beetle, ⁓ know, kind of a very classic German but well-known in America car. One of the weird features of the Volkswagen Bug was that the pressure for your wiper fluid ran off of your spare tire. ⁓ So this is just a weird concept. So you would pump up your spare tire and the Volkswagen Bug, the engine was in the back, so your trunk was in the front. And in the front, there was a spare tire.
And there was a that after you pumped up your spare tire, there was a hose that came down from the reservoir from your wiper fluid that screwed onto the valve of your spare tire in the front. And so the pressure in your spare tire would then when you used your wiper fluid would squirt the wiper fluid up onto the windshield. So very simple ⁓ system. Like there wasn't a electric pump in there, but it also meant that the more you used your wiper fluid, the less air you had in your spare tire.
Cameron (03:17)
you
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (03:29)
You'd probably have to pump up your spare tire. So if you need it in a hurry, who knows? it's a, it's just, I think there's a slow bleed off of the pressure in our reservoirs to process some of the more.
necessary deep conversations to have. And it's wild that we live in a culture of so much information and so little thought about things of the future, of death, of happiness, of relationship, of like the things that truly matter, meaning and purpose. And obviously everybody's talking about there being a meaning and a purpose crisis, but I'm not sure that we really have the intellectual space outside of people who are very, very intentional about like going to church and like
really buckling down on some personal quiet time and solitude and devotions, which is hard to fit into the busyness of life. Outside of that, I think we're living in a culture that really isn't prepared to handle a lot. And then you run into a crisis like a flat tire, and then you don't have a spare. Or you run into some sort of existential crisis in your life, and you don't actually have the resources to deal with that. And so, I wondered if you would like play with me for a little bit on that metaphor.
of not spending the time investing in keeping your spare tire pumped up or how do we proactively invest in building around ourselves the resources that we need in order to handle difficulties in the world around us.
Cameron (04:58)
Yeah, a friend of mine, a friend of ours, hey, Corinne, we were talking about this recently. We were talking about specifically how hard it is to lead what we were calling a contemplative kind of life. So we're both big Eugene Peterson fans. Eugene Peterson had a lot of very bad things to say about busyness. And especially, he's writing often for pastors, but also more broadly for spiritual leaders and also more broadly for Christians as well. But talking about how business
busyness just crowds out your ability to do some of the necessary thinking on some of these very important topics because we are all going to experience, we're all going to go through what we can call them paradigm experiences, relationships ending, people dying, stuff breaking, your roof needing replaced, your body getting older. That's a big one actually, Nathan, because I'm seeing so, I am seeing more age anxiety.
Nathan (05:47)
your body getting older.
Cameron (05:57)
than I can ever remember. And I've just turned, I'm in my early forties now, which if we're just being honest, forties, it's still fairly young, but there's so much age anxiety, you know, talking about, well, you got to turn the clock back. there, you know, you better start working out like crazy now, you know, but eventually you, know, Lord willing, you will get older and you won't be able to do everything that you once did. And that's okay. But so,
Nathan (06:27)
Someday
this beard will be gray.
Cameron (06:29)
Correct. there's that, but what we were talking about is how the socioeconomic factors, some of which you mentioned, do make it difficult to be contemplative. yeah, I mean, especially if you're younger, let's just spell some of this out. Let's say you're recently graduating or you've just graduated with probably sizable student debt. Your prospects of owning a home aren't what they used to be. Your long-term
economic prospects. If you're just paying attention to numbers alone and crunching all of that, don't look that optimistic either. There's huge pressure to try to do side hustle. Relationships are weird. Navigating those is difficult. There's huge pressure to do more work, to be more available, to prove yourself. The other thing that I think doesn't get mentioned ... Yeah?
Nathan (07:11)
Relationships are weird.
and
Well,
and at the same time, you have ⁓ instant digital access to everybody else's wonderful lives. So the comparison factor is at an all time high.
Cameron (07:32)
that self-comparison
factor. Well, I think another factor that doesn't get mentioned enough is how competitive that work environment is now too. mean, if you don't have a family or are willing to sacrifice time with your family to do more hours to prove your worth, that can work to your advantage these days. I mean, you do have an advantage over somebody who's going to try to prioritize a family or try to have, basically to try to prioritize any kind of a life outside of work.
All of that's real. So with those factors in place, yes, it is difficult to be contemplative, to step back and think. I will also say though, and this is something our friend Corinne says, if you truly value something, you'll find a way to do it. You'll make it work.
Nathan (08:20)
so,
well, yeah, so this is a good distinction to make here because I'm not saying that we don't have time to do it. I'm saying that the time that we would normally do as a result of the other stresses of life, what we lean toward is distraction rather than contemplation. You're not busier than your ancestors were.
Cameron (08:26)
Right.
So.
No. Well, I always think of, I don't remember where I heard this, but I remember here, it was when I was on a trip to Minnesota and I remember he, no, no, I read about this in an article in Hedgehog Review of all places, but I thought of it when I was in Minnesota because it was about Minnesota farmers who were Dutch transplants. And so these Dutch farmers would be out laboring all day and know, Minnesota is fairly unforgiving terrain in the summer and in the winter.
Nathan (08:39)
and you don't have more time.
Cameron (09:07)
And so they'd be out there laboring in the fields doing their work. And then they would go in and they would light their kerosene lanterns and they would read Soren Kierkegaard by night. And then that was when they got to the joy of their. So think about that. mean, your sweatier brow work all day long, back breaking work all day long. And then you go in and read a very intellectually demanding thinker at night before you turn in.
But I think there's something else happening here, Nathan. Yes, do we have the time to have those kinds of contemplative pursuits? We do. But I think something else is happening too. I think people are so existentially exhausted. And I think this goes beyond fatigue. It's not just that people are tired. I think so many people in our cultural moment, this is just what it's like on the ground. This is the vibe.
People are in, a lot of people are in survival mode all the time, or they're in crisis mode all the time. And any kind of military personnel will tell you if you have men who are in permanent crisis mode, eventually it's not a sustainable frame of mind. It begins, the person begins to break down, their reasoning begins to break down. it's not that, so I want you to hear both Nathan and I carefully. We're not saying, well, if only people were, you know,
Nathan (10:08)
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
Cameron (10:33)
Things aren't the way they used to be. People used to be really smart and intellectual. Look at those Dutch farmers. And now just people are superficial and stupid and they don't, they don't like to use that. Nobody likes to think anymore. I've actually heard people say some of this stuff before. That's not what it is. They're at a point of such emotional and spiritual exhaustion that the idea of anything more than a glass of wine and a television show or a true crime show or something, something entertaining.
just seems crushing. I think that's part of what's going on too.
Nathan (11:06)
Yeah.
Do you think also there's a sense of like, you choose to read, like books don't just, well, actually that's not true. People give me stuff to read, but I was going say like ⁓ a book is less likely to just show up in your house. Usually you buy it, you go get it, you select it, you go to the library, you order it or something where a lot of the things that we consume as far as our down intellectual time are the algorithm presents to you. ⁓ so they, yeah.
Cameron (11:29)
They find you like you say, rather than you finding them.
Yeah. Yep.
Nathan (11:32)
Right. It's so you're
the Netflix show is finding you. You're not thinking, you know, when I get home from work today, I want to really wrestle with something that's going to help me think deeply about XYZ issue. so there's more of a passive, ⁓ marketed receptivity, I think too, like it's just so yeah, cause you can't make a virtue thing. Like those Dutch farmers. Yeah, buddy. they had Disney plus or Paramount plus as a streaming service, they probably wouldn't have been reading Kierkegaard by kerosene lantern. So I'm not making a virtue distinction here, just saying it's.
Cameron (11:55)
Right. Yes?
Nathan (12:02)
It is different.
Cameron (12:02)
Can I tell you a story that illustrates exactly what you just said from my own life? So I just wrote, I wrote a piece on this for Christ in Pop Culture about escaping our comfort zones. But what happened to me was, so the algorithm got me and I realized it one day. So I've always liked scary movies, you know that. so I really like horror movies. So I got it perfect. I got the algorithm perfectly tricked out.
all the TikTok influencers who made the perfect recommendations. And so one night I was watching a film and this film just ticked every one of my boxes and it had all the qualities that I cherish. And I was so bored by it. And I thought, what's happening? Is this too much of a good thing? It wasn't really a problem with the film itself, but I realized I was, I call it the unbearable lightness of always getting what you want.
You are a whole lot less interesting than you think you are. We all are a whole lot less interesting than we think we are. You know, forever since Sigmund Freud and his kind of mystical, not mystical, but his very interesting view of the subconscious, we have assumed that we are like an oasis, but we're more like a desert. Our horizons need to be broadened. We need other voices.
We need stuff that will pull us out of ourselves. It really is like travel. Travel broadens the horizons because it shows you there are other ways of living. If you learn another language, find out very quickly, it's not just you translate, you don't just translate words, you find out that there are other ways of approaching reality. Other languages look at reality differently. So the same is true in our entertainment.
Nathan (13:56)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (14:00)
And the same is true really in works of art. Works of art, if something rises to the status of a work of art without getting into that whole discussion of what makes something a real work of art or anything, I don't want to go down that road. But if something has withstood the test of time, let's say it's George Eliot's Middlemarch. Well then you can kind of take for granted, you look at George Eliot's Middlemarch, that's a big imposing book, right? It's going to make demands on you. It's going to make demands on your time.
It's going to make demands on your patience. You're going to have to stick with it. It's going to, in some ways, it's going to challenge you. Not everything in there is going to happen the way you want it to happen, but that's part of what's so good about it. It's going to stretch you. It's going to challenge you. And that's part of what I was missing. That's why what I was doing felt so hollow. thought, if I'm going to watch, so what I did was I thought, all right, I'm scrapping this for a little bit. I'll come back to things I like, but I'm going to watch, if I'm going to watch a movie.
I'm going to watch a movie that's a great masterpiece that's going to make big demands on me. I'm going to watch something by, know, Ozu, the great Japanese director, or something by Andre Tarkovsky, or something by Terrence Malick. Not to be pretentious and sip my espresso and put my little pinky out, but to have myself challenged to see, basically to get a more capacious vision.
My point, Nathan, is to what you were saying, it requires more intentionality these days than it did in the past. in the past, mean, had a little bit of, you didn't have algorithms working this out for you. You had to take the initiative, you had to search yourself, you had to, so yeah, I think, yeah, there's that.
Nathan (15:47)
Okay, but here's the point.
So that's all great. Thumb up. Although capacious, you know, what did you say? Capacious vision? What was the? Anyway.
Cameron (15:59)
Well, yeah, something that's
more more capacious vision, something that's broader, something that's bigger than just your own narrow range of interests.
Nathan (16:07)
So here's what it so you that's I was going with this is that okay? If you're reading Kierkegaard at night, you're not going to be surprised by death Like that that's the that's the difference to those so I'm saying it so there's there has to be an intentionality and an intentionality here, but also there has to be a a Stretching beyond in order to think about you said middlemarch like I love the I think it's the 39th chapter There's a little poem at the beginning when I come back to I think is great in the apologetics world. It's something like the
Cameron (16:14)
No, no.
Nathan (16:41)
it's something. How does it start? No, it's not the unmarked grave. It's something about the Squire's action brought about. It's easy casting stones and wells, but who shall get them out? And the idea that it's way easier to ask questions than it is to answer them. So you think about tossing a stone ⁓ in a well. That's an easy thing to do. You can throw a rock in a well. Super easy. Getting a rock out of a well is a different task. And so you can take a little phrase like that out of a book and just...
Cameron (16:41)
the unmarked graves piece.
Mm.
Nathan (17:09)
Ruminate on that and it helps you think about okay. What's the value of like asking a good question? Sure, but then there's a deeper ⁓ Ministry and amount of effort that it takes to respond and answer that well and to the work is different there ⁓ And so I would I would imagine that somebody reading Kierkegaard at night and then has eight hours ⁓ behind the plow the next day is Probably processing what they read the night before in a different way
than you are when you're sitting in your car or commuting to the office of something that, fill in the blank, a show said the night before. So it seems like there's possibility for deeper level of engagement with things that then shape us in our character that then give us the ⁓ spiritual capital necessary whenever there's a charge against that account.
Cameron (18:02)
I want to ask you a question here, Nathan, because I think you're very good on the subject of skilled living. That's wisdom. I think Gerhard von Rade once described wisdom in the biblical sense, he was a great Old Testament scholar, as competency with regard to the realities of life.
And I see Nathan as somebody very skilled in competency with regard to the realities of life. So as, I also think of you as a pastor, Nathan. So as a pastor who frequently talks to these weary people who are very existentially exhausted, who are in survival mode all the time, how would you go about talking to them about cultivating
Nathan (18:30)
Hmm.
Cameron (18:58)
thoughtful habits when at the end of the day, you know, so you and I are apologists. We, by God's grace, we get to do a lot of this stuff. We get to read a lot of books and it's a privilege. I don't take that for granted. It's a different kind of life that we both live, but not everybody has that advantage. Most people are working at least eight hours a day, probably more, and carrying that work home with them a little bit. When those people who are just in survival mode, exhausted, just trying to keep their head above water.
How would you go about helping them to discover the joys of contemplation when they feel so empty? You know what mean? I'll take a stab at it at some point here too, but I think that's, because I think that a lot of people listening are gonna have a question along those lines.
Nathan (19:45)
Yeah, well, so let's start with some of easier ones. ⁓ And the first one definitely is the comparative element. And so one of the values of the contemplative life, actually, one of my favorite characters in fiction is Li, the Chinese cook in East of Eden. So Li.
Cameron (20:05)
He is an absolutely
fascinating guy. What he says about being a servant, I'm wondering if that's where go anyway.
Nathan (20:12)
So, out a little bit on his life. Basically, you have somebody who's a fairly accomplished philosopher who works as a household cook because that job allows him to have a contemplative life.
Cameron (20:27)
That whole conversation
is one of my favorite parts of the book. It's crazy.
Nathan (20:30)
So,
that um, so he's structuring his economic reality so he's prioritizing the contemplative life over the economic reality and I mean he's hiding a whole lot of what he knows and can and can't do In order to pursue what he sees is action Even the way he talks. Yeah, so he I mean he fakes an accent for what decades? So that's that's an interesting thing is that
Cameron (20:47)
yeah. Even the way he talks.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (20:59)
Primarily, if you look at ⁓ the Gospels, they are centered around virtue ethics, not economics. the zooming back is to... My grandpa was talking about this one time of working with somebody who was in debt. And they were always trying to figure out how to be able to spend and borrow more. And he's like, it's interesting if you're talking to somebody in that pattern that it never crosses their mind that possibly spending less
Cameron (21:20)
Hmm.
Nathan (21:28)
is the solution. And so, I think this is where it starts of saying, who am I doing this for? And what really matters? And it's going to turn out, Cameron, you and I have talked about this, like, let's just get gritty and personal about it. ⁓ Both of us live in houses, both of us have lives that are just wide open.
And right now, if you walked into our mudroom and looked at our kids shoes and coats, you would be like, this place needs some attention. Like clearly there are various forms of dirt and manure and debris that are unrecognizable. And I'm not even sure who's coat and why is it upside down? Like there is disorder in my life in some categories. And you know what? Somebody might stop by and be like, they really don't do a good job of keeping their shoes lined up. And for me right now, that just is way down on the list of priorities.
Cameron (21:56)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (22:26)
So, of it is like, what are the things that I'm doing that I'm just doing for somebody else who probably doesn't even care that this is a self-imposed, and I'm not against tidiness, like, order is fine, don't hear me saying, I'm just picking an example of something that we're living under the compulsion of trying to meet everybody else's standards without the resources to actually do that. ⁓ It's like the whole idea of Betty Crocker.
Cameron (22:38)
Sure, I know, you, yeah.
Nathan (22:52)
⁓ There were 20 Betty Crocker's back in the day. They all had regional accents because Betty Crocker as there wasn't a Betty Crocker There are 20 of them ⁓ and it all they all wanted it to sound regional and this is how you have the perfect house and Everybody in that era who was writing about how to keep your house perfectly had a staff of like 15 people and It's the same thing is true of the social media influencer that you see who's running their kitchen all perfect
They have a staff of 20 people with full-time jobs running that as a production thing. Like that's not a, that's not real life. So I think a starting point, and this isn't even on the spiritual part of this, it's just like, let's be honest about what is the normal human capacity to achieve something. And then like my brother was working with somebody who was working a another part-time job in order to pay for better childcare for their kids in the evening. And he's like, it was just wild that there was no part of that conversation was like, maybe I
Cameron (23:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (23:46)
don't work the part-time job in the evening and I spend the evening at home with my kids and then I don't have to pay somebody to watch my kids in the evening. So I, I, I, so it's, we're not talking about like, you really need to be, you need to be reading Kierkegaard at night. I think it's just slowing down to say what actually is really important to me when I look back on life and that podcast that we did with, ⁓ or the interview that I did with KJ where he said, most of us are living our lives.
Cameron (23:55)
Imagine that.
Nathan (24:16)
trying to think about the things that will go in our resume, and we should be living our lives thinking about the things that will go in our eulogy.
Cameron (24:22)
Mm-hmm. The haunting words, Mm-hmm.
Nathan (24:24)
Those are very, very different haunting words. so,
you know what? Cameron and I both drive old cars.
Cameron (24:35)
Yeah, we do.
Nathan (24:36)
cars just can't be an
important part of, sometimes the same parts break on our cars at a distance. know, we had Sienna vans losing alternators there in sync at 900 miles apart. There's quantum entanglement theory for you. ⁓ So it's like, okay, so is having a nice car back? No, it's not. But there are other things that I'm prioritizing in my life right now. And cars not want them. I don't watch any football games, Cameron. Not that I think watching football games is bad. I just don't have time in my life to do it.
Cameron (24:43)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (25:06)
Um, and so I think it's just, it's just starting with saying everything that I am not intentionally thinking about probably is a bit of a waste of time and that all my time will be filled with something if I'm not using it strategically and that the way that I use my time either helps me live in a more God oriented and centered way. So I've been using this phrase for me, Cameron, is that one of the things that I
Because, okay, well, here we go. We started it. We got to go down this. And we talk a lot about ⁓ being conformed to the image of the sun. So that's Romans 8, the whole idea of Jesus being like, we're all made in the image of God, Jesus being the perfect image. Ken's, ⁓ Boa's book conformed to the image. It's there. And then my grandpa and I have been having this conversation of saying that actually being conformed to the image of the sun is downstream of being a beholder of the glory of God.
And so I've been trying to think about what does it mean for me to be a beholder and a reflector of the glory of God? And certainly growing in Christ's likeness is the mechanism and is the way in which that happens and manifests itself in the physical world around me. But actually it starts in my capacity to worship and to understand what is actually true and real. And then as a derivative of that, orient my life around that. And so when we're crazy busy, I think it is very easy for things to creep in there that
Cameron (26:22)
Hmm.
Mm.
Nathan (26:35)
I'm starting to ask myself, so when I was in seminary, so I was working a full-time job, wife, two kids, traveling and speaking like 85, 87 times a year, taking more than a full seminary course load. And there were people who sometimes asked me like, what are you doing today? And I would tell them and they would just like start crying and say, can I pray for you? Like that's how busy my life was. And my secret in all of that was I said, I'm going to do seminary and not care about my grades, which was hard for me to do because I like.
doing well at things. And I'm going to see my study as an act of worship and as a hobby. I'm not going to take this too seriously. And turned out academically worked out all right in the end anyway. doing the same action as an act of worship or seeing it as for fun is totally different than I'm clinging on white knuckled by the skin of my teeth trying to survive. The economic reality was totally the same.
Cameron (27:23)
Mm-mm.
Hmm.
Nathan (27:34)
Yes, there are questions there when you're still driving old cars and the whole thing. so there, guess there's a freedom that comes from the contemplative side that you can't access just by gridding it out. And so we, like I know about myself and the way that I'm wired. Everything would fly apart in my life if I didn't have a Sabbath. If I did not take a day off of work and go to church and sit and be reminded of who God is and sit there with my.
Cameron (27:46)
Hmm.
Nathan (28:01)
wife and my children on the pew and it's not meaning that church isn't busy too, but I have to be, it's, I guess the argument that I'm making is that to live contemplatively and behold the presence of God is not a neat accessory. It's the starting point that everything else flows from. And so I think that is the, I'm talking personally here, not just pastoral and how I would counsel other people, but everything is downstream.
Cameron (28:19)
Hmm.
Nathan (28:31)
from our inner state of being. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content in all circumstances, whether it's prosperity or chaos. Both of those are impressive. ⁓ Both of those are the starting point of what does it mean to be there? I'll go this far. I don't know any people who are content who aren't contemplative.
Cameron (28:31)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm
Nathan (28:51)
And it comes back to my
mom's dad used to say, my other grandpa, who I get my grandpa quotes mixed up. He used to say, if you're not content with what you have, you won't be content with what you wish you had. And what's that quote doing? It's decoupling having from contentment, which is true. so the thing that drives me a little bit crazy, even myself, is all of this is known. All of these resources are there.
Cameron (29:07)
Hmm.
True.
Nathan (29:19)
This is the history of literature and philosophy and Christian writing and thinking. It's all there spelled out. It's just we're too busy to access the thing that we need in order to make sense. I think there's almost like a quasi chronological arrogance here of like, no, we're busier now. Like our problems are more real than they were in 1683. know, like civil war.
Cameron (29:27)
Mm-hmm.
Things are different. This is more complicated. Yeah.
Nathan (29:45)
You know, that was easy. Cold War, World War II, like those people had it. Like if only they had had like the busy life that I have. What are we talking about here? So here's the line that I find myself using more more cameras. Somebody will sit down and they'll list out all of their problems to me and I'll lean in and I'll say, no, this means you're human. And it gets a chuckle out of them because there's a little bit of like, have to normalize this as, as human tendencies.
Cameron (30:07)
Yeah. All right.
Nathan (30:15)
to get stuck in these frantic ruts and we're jumping on the hamster wheel and we're going to run that thing until the bearings blow out on it. ⁓ or the hamster has a heart attack and that's not new. That's just, that's, that's part of, part of the way things go. So I think normalizing it as like, yes, the thing that you're experiencing is real. There is real busyness. That's a real part of being human. And then in order to human well, it, which we talked about is that as a form of wisdom in the past that I have to have.
Cameron (30:26)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (30:45)
I have to have the picture to make sense of it. It's like I have to have the box top of the puzzle to make sense of the pieces. And in most of our lives, feel like a lot of people feel like they have a box full of puzzle pieces. They have a box full of questions. They have a box full of problems and they have no sense in what the big picture is. And so I think that is the work of the church, of the pastor, of the friend, of the apologist, of the teacher, of the neighbor, of the parent, ⁓ of the spouse is to
Cameron (30:52)
Hmm.
Nathan (31:14)
of the Christian. This is the ministry of anybody who's listening to this as a Christian to take the box top of the puzzle of life and say, here's the big picture. And you know how this works. You look at the box top and then you look down and you look at the puzzle pieces and you can hold that picture in your mind for a little bit, but then you've got to look back up at the box top to reset, to find where does this thing go and where does it fit in? And so I think the contemplative life is staring at the the oddness of reality.
Cameron (31:22)
Hmm.
Nathan (31:44)
And then we work within the shoulds and the way things are. And it's that constant play back and forth between what is real and then, and what am I shooting for? What am I aiming for? How does this all fit together? And then what are the pieces that are in front of me? And in doing so, that constant back and forth, that staring at the picture, that's when you're inflating your spare tire. That's when you're building the resources and the momentum ⁓ that will sustain you through a crisis. ⁓
Cameron (31:53)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (32:12)
you have the picture embedded in your mind and you know what you're shooting for and what you're longing for and you're working toward. And then that's what gives you the energy, the vision, the light and the wisdom to do that. And so I don't have a way to do that other than through devotion and study and coming back to saying this is the... And it's not like, you know what's crazy Cameron? We're talking about, you know, and I quote my grandpa all the time on this kind of thing. ⁓ He drove a bus route.
in the second half of his life, which meant that he had to leave his house at 630 in the morning. So he's like, so I just knew if I wanted to pray for an hour, I had to get up at 530. And so everybody's like, know, grandpa written house, he has all these great quotes, you know, and it's like, he has these ideas and stuff comes to me. like, no, it doesn't. What were you doing at 530 this morning? So it's there. There's that aspect in that element of it is like.
Cameron (32:43)
Mm.
Nathan (33:08)
We watched the Olympics and we're wowed by somebody running the 400-meter hurdles and we're like, well, that was neat. Isn't that cool? They can do that. Do you have any clue what went into that training? Do you have any clue that went into, or you see somebody who goes through the death of a child and they continue to function. Their marriage sticks, holds together. They, um, don't become bitter and just crawling. And you're like, wow, that's a strong, do you know what it went into that? Like, do do know that the train Job? Oh my goodness.
Cameron (33:23)
Hmm.
Nathan (33:38)
Everybody looks at Job and all the things that went bad in his life. What is the one... So he had all these camels and donkeys and houses. What is the one activity that Job did before all of the calamity came? He worshipped.
To me, like one of the answers to one of the greatest riddles of one of the greatest books. Job had a life characterized by worship before all of that happened. And that's how he made it through. So.
Cameron (34:04)
Hmm.
Nathan (34:08)
That was a little bit of a rant, and it wasn't a specific answer to your question, but it's more of a sense of...
If you think in life, I will probably get a flat tire at some point.
you're going to check on your spare tire every once in a while. ⁓ And I live at a place that's far away. I don't carry a spare tire. I also have a cordless impact wrench and sockets that fit a whole realm of other people's tires that I can help change. ⁓ The sense is like, from looking at human nature in my own life, I know the types of things that are prone to happen. Like it's not a mystery. I will...
Cameron (34:49)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (34:50)
I would, and part of this comes from hanging out with people who are older than me too, like in the church helps me see what, what are the challenges that I'm going to face in 10 years or sitting down with somebody who's a wise biblical counselor who will say, okay, you're beginning your thirties right now. You don't have this, this, and this problem, but in 10 years you will, what are you doing now to prepare for that?
That's a good question. need to work on that and think through it. Our friend, Tom Terrence, one time asked him how he was doing. said, well, I'm in between crises. It's such a wise answer. So it has the joy of like, Hey, everything's fine right now. But there's no, like, if you look at the teachings of Jesus, there's no guarantee that the future of most of the things that our culture is infatuated with are going to work out. So what does it mean to lose your wife? Like, what does it mean to love your wife when you don't have any money? What does it mean to.
Cameron (35:36)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (35:45)
⁓ love your children when one of them has a chronic illness. What does it mean to, ⁓ your house burns down? What does it mean to.
And so building the reserve, I think is, the, and none of this happens. always joking and say the worst time to train for a marathon is in the middle of a marathon. That's like the worst time to pack a parachute is after you've fallen out of the plane. And it's, and it's not that we can foresee all of the circumstances, all of the things that are going to happen to us. Like you can't, the future is totally unknown, but the formation that happens in our, who we are.
Cameron (36:05)
right.
Nathan (36:24)
as we reflect on and try and put ourselves in a posture beholding the Lord's glory, reflecting on his goodness, being thankful for what we have been given. It's like a small layer of paint is added continuously that then builds up into a critical mass that becomes very valuable. So it's not like this is not Preparism, I guess, where it's like, I have, you know, 400 pounds of dried beans in my basement.
⁓ Or like I'm doing this and therefore I have the care. I'm building the character that can withstand my mom getting cancer It's it's not that it's just That might be the byproduct of it of just being asked to like Lord in light of the goodness of who you are What do you want me to see you know for today? And how do you want me to grow and be shaped and be formed right now? and give me the strength to live well the moment that I have and
That doesn't sound complicated, but the people that I know, that I respect, that I have watched live well long term, have all functioned from that posture of starting off by a place of asking the big questions first, sitting in the presence of God, daily being shaped and formed by that, and then by God's grace, doing the best that we can with what it is that God has given us ⁓ to be useful in the world around us.
Cameron (37:28)
Hmm.
Nathan (37:44)
There are other parts of this Cameron that if you're, if you're chronically busy, chronically tired, ⁓ chronically up against the wall financially, you start missing out on a whole other litany of things of what it means to be a satisfied human. So your capacity to give your capacity to spend time serving other people, your capacity to offer hospitality, your capacity to, ⁓ weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. You're missing out on all of that. If you're running things all the way to the wall.
Cameron (38:14)
Mm.
Nathan (38:14)
and have
no other marginal time in your life. so it's, it's the thing that is frustrating to me about this is that it's parasitic on itself and that the things that bring us the most satisfaction and joy in life are the things that we sacrifice first in our pursuit of being human by somebody else's standards. And that we need each other to be slapped upside the head sometimes. ⁓
Cameron (38:42)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (38:43)
to break loose of that idea of... So it starts with the expectation of bad things will happen in life. God is good. ⁓ And in this moment, how can I be shaped and formed and make the most of the opportunities that he puts before me today? And I will leave the future to him and try to be faithful with what's in front of me and live within my means, not just financially, but also with my attention span and try to grow from there. That's...
a challenge that I'm striving for and won't and don't claim to have mastered myself. But those are some of the general categories that I'm trying to grow in myself and encourage others to do the same.
Cameron (39:13)
Mm-hmm.
Well, as you can hear, there's a reason I asked Nathan this question. He has so many wonderful things to say about it. And I think I'm going to think a lot about especially I've never known a person who's content who isn't also contemplative. That's definitely an arresting way of putting it. Well, thank you for tuning in once again. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.