To Do List
It hangs over my head, an ominous cloud.
It portends a great flood.
I haul out an umbrella of fear,
a great rain slicker of guilt,
the life jacket of despair.

Yet God’s hope for me is not to do,
but to be.
Even if I fail at everything
life will go on,
I will be whole,
God will love me.

So, my list:
   • be trusting
   • be present
   • be grateful
   • be kind.
Then, if there’s time and energy,
all that other stuff.

There is no storm cloud.
It’s only fog.
It passes.

I enter the deep, secret peace.

Dear Saint Philip’s,

Poet-Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes presents us with a diagnosis of an unhappy American society that seems to exert pressure through unspoken messages on us all.

The great “To Do List” ominously dominates many lives, keeping bodies tense and tempers short. The great To Do List is an idol, unseen yet pervasively present. It haunts and lies in wait to pronounce “Failure.”

Its overarching power lies in wait to accuse and force its adherents back into line. Sometimes it screams, “You’re not doing enough…You aren’t enough.”

This is its “great flood.” Fear, guilt, and shame accompany this flood. True believers are left exhausted and diminished.

The prescription is faith. Faith that disconnects from allegiance to the To Do List religion.

Relinquishment of loyalty to drivenness and striving 24/7 creates space for God. Holy space.

The poem is a reminder of basics Reorder priorities. Discern warning signs when “The List’ attempts a reentering. You know them well. A tensing in the body. Anxiety that would separate a person from self, others, and all that is holy. Time to pause and recommit. As the poem reminds, “It’s only fog.”

The higher calling trumps “The List” any day of the week: “Be trusting. Be present. Be grateful. Be kind.”

Your fellow traveler,

Richard