The phrase “self-care” doesn’t just give off weird vibes. Its fundamental flaw is contained in the wording itself.
For those of us in organized ministry, we are most often stuck with an obnoxious catch-22. We tend to be workaholics. And we are called to embody the teachings of a God who abhors workaholism.
We use words like “self-care” to describe the need to rest and actually take care of ourselves. Words that sound ridiculous to the ears of people bombarded by a message of grit and resilience. That we must always work harder. A message that originated from the church as the Protestant Work Ethic. Because of course it did.
But even those of us who believe in “self-care” hate the language around it. Here are two reasons:
- We associate self-care with pampering and self-indulgence rather than maintaining health and a responsible relationship to our whole selves.
- And it comes off as external pressure to impose internal work on ourselves without help.
In other words, self-care comes off like an excuse to be selfish or just another thing I am supposed to do without help.
Sabbath is non-negotiable.
That’s the thing about it. You don’t take working vacations. There’s no taking the work home. No getting up early and hustling while others sleep. That junk doesn’t fly on the Sabbath. And people that are doing that are breaking community.
This, of course, is not what’s really behind blue laws, though. Closing a store on Sunday while not paying a living wage isn’t the positive example.
Self-care is something more like an unfunded mandate. We say we want it, but we aren’t going to pay for it. And on top of that, we’ll probably reward people for “paying for it themselves”.
Its like the store manager I had years ago who was trying to figure out what to do with staffing. The regional manager told him he needed to cut hours. But the new hours allotted would not allow for the store to follow corporate’s rules for staffing. When he brought this up to the regional manager, the response was “figure it out.”
Break the rules or break an order. He had to pick one.
Self-Care is an invitation. And an order.
Optional and required. Self-directed and mandated.
All while the operating impulse of the world is to treat vacations as privilege. And taking time off as a sign of weakness. Like the common response to debtors: either don’t take the debt or suffer for it because I did.
Our view of work is unhealthy. But we’re acting as if health is optional. Otherwise, we’re requiring health, and therefore imposing on our freedom. Which is a false vision of freedom and dishonest rhetoric.
We can’t handle all of this junk! Why can’t we even have a simple conversation about work? Because our brains are broken. This is all so stupid!
Yes.
- We all need to learn how to care for ourselves.
- But some of us suck at it.
- And some of us physically or emotionally can’t.
And our world refuses to deal with that complex reality in which all three are true.
The real thing we refuse to deal with:
We have an evil view of work.
We fetishize the severity of the struggle. Working hard becomes heroic. Which means those who wilt are cowards.
We also champion our leaders: rewarding them for the success of their teams. Or else blaming them for their failures. From GOATS to goats.
And in the end, people work to unhealth; sacrificing, not for exceptional outcomes, but for normal ones. Not to give something special, but to offer what they already have. Our student loan system is impoverishing the middle class so their children can remain middle class.
Today, the average family with two parents are working three jobs. Overwork is now normal.
Pretending this has anything to do with self-regulation is willfully delusional.
For many clergy, that delusion is fueled by a system that encourages us to see our very work as saving the church. So often alone. And then how do we care for ourselves? Alone. We draw from the same empty bag.
The irony, of course, is this norm sounds exactly like heresy.
Because we can’t handle it…
I wanted to leave it there with a sort of down ending. I’m really fond of them. It’s like good punctuation. But I also know that a lot of people just can’t constitutionally handle them.
So what am I supposed to do instead? Well…offer a list of things any of us could do to help ourselves! And I just could not resist pointing out the delicious irony.
Our desire to fix this “personal” problem is always with a “personal” fix. Because we can’t handle the idea that there are systemic problems that require systemic fixes. And then some of us who can handle that, can’t handle the idea that we can’t give them a personal fix to the systemic problem. To help them walk away with a personal goal.
The problem, of course, is the personal. Because we always frame everything in the personal.
The best thing we can do is to make this systemic. Demanding more from our judicatory bodies, for sure. But also from our congregations. We are trying to change a malformed culture, not malformed individuals. Our goal is not to persuade individuals to make personal changes only.
But this also can’t only come from clergy or the leaders of organizations. That is, again, a personal solution hoping will get upgraded to a systemic one with the right “buy in”.
It takes people, not an individual, to ensure we all are healthy. Because we, as a people, are ensuring that none of us is very healthy right now.