How to Get the Urgent Off Your Back
These are Dallas's notes for a 1994 workshop with some of his earliest teaching on the subject of Hurry.
Texts from Isaiah on the beautiful life in God:
Isaiah 25:3-4, 28:16, 29:15, 35:10, 40:31
What is hurry?
Dictionaries use phrases such as “excessive haste,” “a recurrent agitation of sound,” “a state of eagerness or urgency.” In its verb form: “to carry or cause to go with haste,” “to impel to greater speed, or prod,” “to perform with undue haste.” “Hurry” is associated with words such as “hurl,” “hurry-skurry,” “hurdle,” “hurly-burly” [meaning uproar or tumult], “hurrah” and “hurricane.” You can almost feel it!
I would say hurry is a state of frantic effort one falls into in response to inadequacy, fear, and guilt.
We should take as our aim to live our lives entirely without hurry. The peace and joy and strength which God intended for human life, the well-being and health of mind and body, is inconsistent with living in a hurry. (Of course, occasional bouts of hurry may be reasonable in such a world as this. But chronic hurry is not.)
The simple essence of hurry is: TOO MUCH TO DO!
The good of avoiding hurry is not just pleasure, but to enable us to calmly and effectively do the things that are truly important with strength and joy.
To get the urgent off our backs we must:
On the basis of that:
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