On Monday I went to do what I like to call some writing reconnaissance. You might know it as wasting time. Or a very inefficient cup of tea.
I’ve definitely spent a lot of my life very focussed on efficiency. I love a really good system. In January I reorganised my planner into a writing journal with spaces for all the different things I collect notes on: people, places, fun ideas, quotes by my children.
When I was a primary school teacher I had to become military-efficient in order to get everything done I was being asked to do.
I found the inefficiency of having small children immensely frustrating at times, so I imposed systems on them too and found things to do to make it feel like I wasn’t wasting time.
With ME, my body itself is inefficient. I can do things. But not fast and not back to back. My brain does not go as fast as I want it to, no matter how much b12 I spray into my mouth.
But why do I avoid it so much? Inefficiency. Is it really a massive problem not to get where we're going, the quickest way we can?
Monday’s journey to Llandudno was one of the most inefficient of my life. Firstly I arrived 50 minutes early so I had to wait on the platform for all that time, then I accidentally got the slow train to the wrong station, so I had to wait in the middle of nowhere and mountains, for another train to take me to where I actually wanted to be. It was three times longer than I would have taken in the car, and I also had to walk at the end. All this to walk along the beach for 20 minutes, look at some Victorian houses (which I could have looked up on google) and like I said, have the world’s most inefficient cup of tea.
Very inefficient. But also glorious.
A story about ceilings
“The ceiling up in the spare room needs painting, still. You need to get it ready for the grandkids to come stay,” she said.
“I know love,” he said as he flicked on the kettle. “I’ll get on to it later.”
A few days later she asked how it was going.
“Yeah good thanks love, I think I’m getting somewhere,” he said.
A week, on she asked him again. Surely it was nearly finished by now.
“You nearly done with that ceiling now?” she asked. “I want to get the new bedding on.”
“I’m getting there,” he replied, scratching his head, but she wasn’t convinced he was doing anything at all.
Weeks passed and he still wasn’t finished.
“Are you seriously still not done with that ceiling?“ she asked him with barely concealed frustration. She decided to vacuum the stairs so she could watch whether he actually went in to paint.
What she saw when he went in, made her heart start pounding and her fists ball up.
“You’ve been painting the ceiling, with that?!” she yelled, pointing at the small paintbrush in his hand and storming up the stairs after him. “No wonder it’s not done yet, you absolute idiot. Don’t you want the grandkids to come and stay? It’ll take you a month of Sundays, a YEAR of Sundays if you use that tiny, stupid, inefficient…”
She stopped talking as she walked into the spare room.
Only the corner of the ceiling was painted, but it was covered in intricate lines, patches of ever-deepening blue. Everything alive and a glow. There were tiny golden stars and a great blue whale twisting around the naked lightbulb.
Her husband climbed down from the ladder and came to put his arm around her as she stared, open mouthed.
“Do you think they’ll like it love?” He asked her quietly.
I mean, the Sistine Chapel has got to be one of the biggest wastes of time in the world if you are talking about painting a ceiling. Any painting is inefficient when you think about it. A photograph is much faster. Especially on a phone.
But this inefficiency makes space for beauty doesn’t it? For depth.
When we go on holiday in our families caravan, even though it has power, I always want to use the kind of kettle that sits on the hob. The one where you have to wait for them to sing. The one that takes the extra two minutes. Not just because I like the way it looks, but because its inefficiency slows me down.
Normally rest is so frantic. We drink coffee to give us the illusion of being refreshed, watch tv, drink alcohol because it gives the illusion of being switched off. Actually doing nothing seems so inefficient.
Other things that are inefficient and great:
Hot air balloons
Slow cookers
Reading an actual book instead of an Instagram quote
Toddlers
Hedgerows.
I love a good hedgerow. Aren’t they so often the most beautiful bit of our countryside? The wildflowers spilling from the margins of our fields. Not very efficient use of land for crops though, you could argue. And yet...here is where the wild things grow. Here is where wildlife and abundance live. This is the place where life and creativity and wonder happen.
I tell myself I should love inefficiency. I know that walking and going on the bus is slower and is better for my hearts pace. I know that camping is good for my soul because it teaches me to slow down.
But what about the life journeys?
I want to make decisions and make them quickly. I want to know where I am going and get there as soon as possible. Preferably now.
I want to write more quickly. Why is my book taking so long to finish? And where on earth is it going to end up? Can't we rush to the end of that journey?
And don’t even get me started on church planting. Why have we tried so many things only to see them not work? Why has it taken so long to see so little transformation? Why is Jesus being so INEFFICIENT????
The pattern of Jesus in my life is not that as we mature we get better at things and work out a system and get faster. If anything I seem to be getting slower. Making big decisions with our church, including people, talking things through, praying, slowly pinpointing and discerning the next right thing… it takes FOREVER.
Sometimes I feel like the hobbits, just trying to keep my eyes open while the Ents take about 14 chapters to decide to go to war.
But somehow, this seems to be a God pattern. In the Old Testament God sends the Israelites on the most inefficient journey in history to go from Egypt to the Promised Land. It should have taken them, on foot, with no drama…11 days. They were in the desert for 40 YEARS. And I think church planting is slow.
As I sat on the train platform in the welsh mountains, having a staring contest with a massive yellow-eyed seagull and listening to the banter of the train guards, I was wallowing in the beauty of inefficiency. I had a snippet of a verse from Sunday’s church service going round my head:
“Follow the way of love…” 1 Corinthians 14:1
Follow the way of love. Is this the inefficient way perhaps? Surely God wants us to be useful and powerful and have massive impact. Quickly.
Follow the way of love
Man: We were both born in the same hospital.
Woman: Nineteen twenty one.
Man: Seven days apart.
Woman: In the same hospital.
Man: We both grew up one block away from each other.
Woman: We both lived in tenements.
Man: On the lower east side.
Woman: On Delancey Street.
Man: My family moved to the Bronx when I was ten.
Woman: He lived on Fordham Road.
Man: Hers moved when she was eleven.
Woman: I lived on a hundred and eighty third Street.
Man: For six years she worked on the fifteenth floor as a nurse where I had a practice on the fourteenth floor in the very same building.
Woman: I worked for a very prominent neurologist. We never met.
Man: Never met.
Woman: Can you imagine that?
Man: You know where we met? In an elevator. In the Ambassador Hotel, in Chicago, Illinois.
Woman: I was visiting family. He was on the third floor I was on the twelth.
Man: I rode up nine extra floors just to keep talking to her.
Woman: Nine extra floors.
(When Harry met Sally)
Nine extra floors is inefficient.
In lockdown I would get endlessly frustrated with Eva when she spent more time staring out the window than doing her work. But why?? Because I wanted to get on and do something else? What?!! I had literally NOWHERE TO GO.
It was the days when I allowed her to be a human we got on best.
Humans are inefficient. And we all need space to be human.
Back in Wales, I eventually got on the train. I watched a lady help her older dad in his wheelchair, sort out his baggage and his extra milky coffee. Their journey was full of inconveniences and complications and love.
I love the idea that as I become more and more inefficient, I become more and more human.
Relationships, dependency, intimacy with all its complications. They’re inefficient.
Perhaps one of the markers of the way of love is inefficiency.
It makes time for depth, and beauty and interruptions.
Inefficiency makes time for being human, for making mistakes, trying things and letting go of them, for failing and getting back up again.
It makes time for seeing things, for noticing. It makes time for creativity. For intricacy.
For turning our eyelids into the sun. For enjoying who God is. Enjoying his love.
When God takes the Israelites into the desert for 40 years they are in absolute chaos. And chaos is the most time draining thing of them all. But I want to be a person who will step into someone else’s chaos with them and watch God carve it into constellations. Just like he does with my chaos. Because if he was all about efficiency, he wouldn’t be bothering with me.
When God takes the Israelites into the desert, it isn't a waste of time. He is teaching them, he making them his own, he is revealing himself to them. He spends time with them. It’s inefficient but it’s also deep, deep connection. He loves them there.
Inefficiency seems to be a pattern of Gods. Who else would bother painting opals only to bury them and put phosphorescent jellyfish in the deeps where where it will take us countless generations to find them? What a waste of time.
Jesus too seems inefficient. He was a one person at a time sort of man. He gathered crowds but most of all he inefficiently loved the one person in front of him.
And how about the cross. Pouring out his blood unasked for, for a world of people, most of whom aren’t interested, let alone keen. Grace is about the least efficient thing the world has ever known. A waste of time.
But as my brother in law recently said to me, after my long tirade about why I should give up on writing… “you need to look up the definition of a waste of time.”
So maybe our little church experiment, my story book, the wanderings of my interrupted days, are growing exactly as they should be. Inefficiently.
Perhaps it’s time I started aiming for exactly that. A church with enough space for humans to be human, for chaos to be acceptable, for creativity that inevitably includes trying more than one thing. Art with time for ideas to deepen and grow and bloom. And a life that has space for connection, interruptions, people. Space for God to teach me, and make me his, and reveal himself to me. I want hot air balloon travelling and wildflowers in my margins. I want beautiful ceilings. Even if no one ever sees them.
This is the Jesus way.
The inefficient way.
The long and winding way.
The time-wasting way of love.
Katy x
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© Words, images and audio, Katy Hollamby 2022