*sigh* Man
Uggh
Hello Ascension Presents
(sipping)
I'm sleepy.
This is coffee.
I like it.
It's in a cup
which is my preferred way of drinking coffee
out of a cup
as opposed to
any other container of sorts
but I need it!
Because I don't sleep!
I'm stupid.
Let's talk about that, actually. Let's talk about that.
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So, a number of years ago, there was a man who is a psychologist
who came to present to all the priests and deacons in our diocese
and one of the things he said was—of all the many things he said that were really wise and really helpful—
one of the things he said was, he said, as adults, two of the things we struggle with the most
are the things that someone else told us to do when we were kids
and they were really simple. He said the most basic tasks:
Feeding ourselves
and putting ourselves to bed.
I mean, if you think about it. When you're a kid, someone else tells you it's time to eat now, come on in for dinner.
Or come on in for whatever. Get up for breakfast.
Here's what you're gonna eat, they put it in front of you.
And when you're a kid someone tells you, OK, it's time to go to bed now. You have to go to sleep.
But when you become an adult,
you have to do those things for yourselves and one of the actual tasks of becoming an adult
is learning how to feed yourself well and
learning how to put yourself to bed on time.
I want to talk about that second one.
Putting ourselves to bed, because this is just remarkable.
You probably know this already
that most Americans, most people in the West, we are overtired.
We under-sleep.
We are working at a kind of a deficit when it comes to the amount of sleep that we get
and the remarkable thing is not just that we don't sleep but are two things:
One is, we know that our performance suffers when we don't sleep.
In fact, it used to be the case that people who were, you know, at the top of their game,
like they used to brag about getting very little sleep.
I was reading a book by a man named Greg McEwan called Essentialism
and he said that used to be that the bragging rights was "I don't sleep very often."
He said now the new status symbol is someone who gets eight hours of sleep
and that's actually what scientists say is the required amount of sleep
or the proper amount of sleep which is between seven and ten hours of sleep
that we should be getting every night for optimal health.
The top performers, like the experts in their field, those are excellent, those who are at the top of their game,
they're the ones who get, on average, over eight hours of sleep
and those who are not excellent, those who are mediocre to poor,
they're getting less than seven, less than six, they're the ones who get the least amount of sleep.
That's one thing- we know it and we know that top performers get more sleep.
The second thing is this:
we like sleeping!
Sleeping is enjoyable, sleeping is pleasurable,
getting to bed is very difficult, getting out of bed is also very difficult. Why?
Because
sleep
is great.
We love it,
so why don't we do it?
Here's one theory.
I was talking to a priest, who's like this Rambo priest,
I mean, this guy, he's a missionary and just completely intense: devoted to the Lord, devoted to his ministry
and we were kind of just sharing some of our experiences and at one point he was like,
"You know, you ever find yourself not going to sleep at night?" and I'm like, "Yeah, totally!"
and we're talking about like, why do you think that is?
and he says, the work ends and I'm just sitting there, reading articles online
or flipping through the channels on the TV or just staying up late, it's like, "Wow, I'm exhausted.
Why don't I just go to bed?" and his insight to himself was this.
He said, because I know, and this blew my mind like, oh my gosh, this is totally true.
He said, "Because I know
the moment I go to sleep,
tomorrow has already started."
He says, "At least right now, I have some free time where my time is my own
but the moment I go to sleep,
the next time I wake up will be tomorrow morning and it'll be time to work again."
And that could be a struggle for a lot of people, where it comes to OK, A) can I put my work down?
B) if I go to bed,
all that there will be left for me is just more work.
So what do we do about this?
I want to submit two things.
Two things.
One is this: I was talking to some of our FOCUS missionaries the other day about sleep
and I asked them —FOCUS stands for Fellowship of Catholic University Students
(we have four missionaries on campus here at the University: two women and two men).
And I asked the four of them, I said, "So do you guys have a goal time for when you get to bed?"
And all of them named off a time. "Yep, I try to get to bed here."
And I said, "OK, now when you actually go to bed?"
And every single one of them
the answer was about an hour to two hours after their goal time.
So they knew
like I really need to get to bed at this time if I'm gonna be fully functional the next day,
but I don't do it.
What do you do in that gap time?
Like what goes on?
So I talk to the missionaries and they're like, "Well, I like to watch YouTube videos."
Or "I scroll through Netflix,"
or "I go on to the big three," Big three: "I check Facebook, Twitter, Instagram."
Like, what-? Someone said, "I clean."
Like what is it you do in the gap time between your goal time of getting to bed
and your actual time of getting to bed?
What that will do, knowing what you do then,
will reveal a lot to you about how to eliminate the gap time between your real time and your goal time.
The second piece. The second piece is this
(I have trouble counting right now apparently) is this:
You realize
that going to bed is an act of faith.
I think to actually realize, this can be a spiritual exercise,
not something like if you fail at, you're a failure in life
or a failure with your spiritual life, but I mean, actually getting to bed when you need to get to bed
can be a spiritual discipline. It's an act of faith.
Scripture talks about this in Psalm 127.
It says this, "Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build labor in vain."
"Unless the Lord builds the house,
they labor in vain who build.
Unless the Lord guards the city,
in vain does the guard keep watch."
and here's the next one:
"It is vain for you to rise early
and to put off rest at night
when the Lord gives to his beloved
gifts in their sleep."
It's vain to put off sleep.
Why? Because we're super busy.
We need to do stuff. We need to produce. We need to contribute. We need to build.
We need to ... all these things. We're super important, right? We can't sleep.
Yet, in the Scripture, it says this: Do you have the faith in God to just go to bed?
At the end of the day to say, "OK, this is my goal time.
There's more stuff to do."
Yep, I know. There's always gonna be more stuff to do
but right now, I'm gonna place my trust in God. I'm going to say, "Lord, I want to create these things,
I want to build these things, I want to care for these things
but unless you're there, in vain would I be working."
You know, it reminds me of the story of St. John XXIII.
Apparently, what he would say every night when he was the pope, and the pope is kind of a big job.
I don't know if you knew this about the pope. He has kind of a lot of responsibility on his shoulders.
That St. John XXIII that he would say
as he turned off the light,
"OK, Lord, it's your Church.
You take care of it. I'm going to sleep."
And, in many ways, a lot of the things that are our concerns, we can say the same thing.
As we roll over to bed, say, "Lord, listen. The projects you have me to do, the people you have me to take care of,
all the work you have me to do, that's yours. It's yours. I entrust it to you. I'm going to sleep."
Here's my invitation to you:
Get to bed tonight.
You know you want to.
What's your goal time?
What's your real time?
What are you doing during that gap time?
Cut it down, get some sleep.
My name's Father Mike. From us here at Ascension Presents,
God bless.