Shaping Families

Enjoying Leisure

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EVAN: People that really care about working and helping other people have the most problem with burnout. When I began, I worked eight days a week, and 26 hours a day. I couldn’t get away from it. There was so much to do.

BURTON: Hi, I’m Burton Buller and this is Shaping Families. You’re hearing from our guest today, Evan Oswald, who may have been exaggerating just a bit. But he’s now retired in Arizona, truly enjoying himself, and he’s here today to help us focus on leisure time in families.

MELODIE: And I’m Melodie Davis. Evan has published a book called Christians and Postmodern Leisure: What We All Have, But Know Little About. I’m as guilty of neglect on that topic as anyone—how can we slow down and truly enjoy the leisure we do have?

BURTON: Dr. Oswald, who completed his doctorate looking at the topic of leisure, taught at Hesston College, Kansas. There he helped build a physical education and athletic program from the ground up so he knows about hard work and long days. Later he spent ten years as director of activities at Glencroft Retirement Community in Glendale, Arizona, where he has now retired.

MELODIE: Currently 85, Evan has spent a lifetime enjoying as much recreation and leisure as possible, and encourages families to put an emphasis on taking time to have lots of fun together.

BURTON: So what is leisure?

EVAN: It’s time left over after work, after school, after maintenances of life. And if we don’t use it, we lose it.

BURTON: What are some of the values of leisure?

EVAN: The first one is family activity. Almost all family activity is done in leisure time. I was privileged to hear a college president of a four-year church college get up before a group of students and say—and he was a very strong church man, he’s on many boards—he got up before us and he said if he had to do it all over again, he would give a lot less time to the college and a lot less time to the church, because what happened in his family situation was he was away from home so much he lost almost all his family to the church because he did not have a family structure and togetherness.

BURTON: Evan says a second value of leisure is how it offers time to participate in and enjoy art.

EVAN: The creative things—art, music, creative pursuits like quilting and sewing and all those types of pursuits—that comes in leisure time. And if you don’t have leisure time, many of those things are cut out.

BURTON: A third part of leisure is how it enhances our religious life or faith.

EVAN: Leisure brings in time for worship. Sunday is a day of worship and change and rest, but it’s a leisure time. It’s after work.

BURTON: Another aspect of leisure is recreation and exercise.

EVAN: In the good old days of farming, in the good old days of heavy survival type of work outside, in the outdoors they got their exercise through their work. But in today’s world, where we’re sitting behind desks and we’re doing a lot of non-exercise types of activity for our work, we need to have time to exercise and to stay healthy. 

BURTON: Evan notes that many of us associate leisure time with volunteering—and that’s not limited to retired folks. A lot of high schools and colleges emphasize and sometimes give credit for volunteer activities in the community.

EVAN: Leisure then in our culture where we press and we’re under a lot of stress and a lot of our work opportunities, leisure helps us balance life.

BURTON: I’m hearing that leisure is more than just recreation.

EVAN: Recreation is one way we use leisure. All batteries need to be recharged. Physically we need to be recharged. Spiritually we need recharging. Psychologically and sociologically, we need recharging; we need to relate to people. And so recreation is one of those things that helps do that. The dad that works 70 hours a week, does he have time for the family? Seventy hours a week also has a tendency to push people to burnout in their inner selves and their psychology and the way they relate to people. Then you have all kinds of things happen in the family.

BURTON: Evan recognized the burnout factor in his own life when he and his first wife, now deceased, were raising their family. He was deeply involved in work in those years.

EVAN: One of the things that I began to say was that I’ve got to give time to my family. And so in my situation where I was so occupied in the college program, that when summer came, we headed out for the mountains. We took trips, we camped, we went to the national parks, we did a lot of exploring. In doing that, it gave me a chance to give full time to my family. That was full time. When you’re living outdoors, you’re full time together. And it became a healing thing for us. One day—I marvel at this when I think about this—one day we took an 8-hour hike up into the glaciers, back in the Alpine meadows with those wonderful flowers growing, way back into the valley and then back again. Eight hours of hiking. Wonderful! One of the great experiences of our life.

BURTON: Evan learned firsthand why it is so important to pay attention to potential burnout. During World War II, he did alternative service, called Civilian Public Service, at a mental hospital with 5,000 patients.

EVAN: They were doctors, they were lawyers, they were clergy, they were CEOs. Authorities who have studied this problem, now say this: that doctors, lawyers, and clergy have the most problems with drug abuse, alcoholism, and suicide. Why? Because the people who have the most interest in helping others, there’s no end to that help. They work and they work and they overdo and they worry about these responsibilities that they have. People that really care about working and helping other people, have the most problem with burnout.  

BURTON: Evan cautions that service or volunteer work can also be approached in an unhealthy fashion.

EVAN: Here in Phoenix, at our church, we have what we call SOOP (Service Opportunities for Older People). The idea about SOOP is that the people come here on a vacation, and about half the time’s to be spent on vacation, and the other half on service. And so in the program of SOOP, you offer them many good service opportunities here in town, and it’s been a very good experience. But we had a medical doctor and his wife come here—and they’re very nice people—but probably he spent 120% of his time working, serving. He served, served, served! And there’s no time that you can take for yourself, like to go out and go to the Grand Canyon and go to Sedona, that is a wonderful place, and the many wonderful things you can do in in leisure time. I’m real concerned about our pastors and their burnouts. They’re the church leaders, but they need to take time to recharge their batteries too. We want to have vacations, so we can regroup ourselves and refresh ourselves. We want that. We should want that for our church leaders also. And so our church leaders need to take that and they need to be exemplary and they need to promote the idea to study this whole problem of leisure.

BURTON: Thanks, Evan, for sharing from your life’s experiences. You will find information about Evan Oswald’s book on leisure at the Shaping Families website, ShapingFamilies.com. And now we’ll hear from Sam Heatwole thinking about leisure in Frog Hollow.

SAM: Frog Hollow would be a lot bigger if it was ironed out flat. Texans brag about big. But our neighbors in the hollows of the Appalachians swear there’s more land in the mountains of the Virginias than a crow can fly over in Texas.

Mountain bikes iron it out a little. We acquired a pair of 15-speed bicycles, although most pedaling in our area is uphill, so we use only the lowest gears, with an occasional modest incline to remind us what flatlands could be like.

Shep likes to go with us. Bring out the bikes and he skitters around like a pup, his tail going around in circles. Norma is first after Shep down the lane and Shep shoots out onto the road at the bottom of our lane, heading up past Ivy Moyer’s toward the Brethren Church. Like any sensible dog, he heads uphill while he’s fresh. Still coming down the lane, I follow in third place, ducking the quail that Shep stirs up in his race to get the first half mile behind us so we won’t change our minds.

This morning it’s good he hustles on ahead. Norma stops at the culvert carrying the spring branch under our lane. She has a finger to her lips. A muskrat is cooling himself, legs astraddle the damp mud. Shep would be embarrassed if we told him he’d missed the muskrat, so we don’t mention it. He chases one of Ivy’s guinea hens under the fence; it’s safe there with Ivy’s pet turkey. Nothing on feet frightens that bird, as he’s all too willing to prove; the thing’s a menace.

Up on the hill by the Brethren Church we hit hard top. The little white clapboard building commands a view of the valley as far as the Massanutten Mountain on the horizon. It’s worth a stop today, a quiet moment with morning mists making islands of hills and meadows and fields. The red ball rising over the Massanutten ridge will burn away much of the mist, but now the serenity of this familiar scene fills me with its enduring peace.

Cycling lets us share the life around us. Birds can cope with our sedate pace; there are no reckless attempts by a robin to fly through a windshield. We can hear the warblers if we can’t see them, and be moved by the cathedral-echo song of the veery in the deep woods as we pedal silently by.

I’ve often wondered what the old timers think of us as we cycle past, going nowhere in particular. As Norma and I pump our way in low gear up beside Willard Shiflett’s garden, the sun-dried old man leans on his hoe to watch us.

“Nice morning for a little exercise,” I offer, feeling guilty cause I’m not on my way to work.

But Willard isn’t going to bail me out and agree with me. He waves his hoe at the rows of old vegetation he is clearing out for next year’s planting. “This is exercise,” he says. His nod takes in our slow moving efforts to climb his hill. “But that looks like a lot of work for nothing to me.”

Lilies of the field, Willard, I mutter. Lilies of the field.

BURTON: I’ll remind listeners that Frog Hollow is a real place,  near our studios in Harrisonburg and I always appreciate a journey down Frog Hollow Lane with Sam Heatwole. There are links to the book, Frog Hollow Journal on our website, written by Sam’s father- in-law, Jim Fairfield.

MELODIE: For our free offer this week we have a simple little booklet called Work Therapy by Daniel Grippo. It is easy to read with illustrations and pithy lines about work, such as, “Even God took a day off.” It is free and we’d love to send you one. Just click on the Current Offer button at our website, ShapingFamilies.com .

BURTON: The title again is Work Therapy. Write and request it from Shaping Families, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22803. That’s Shaping Families, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22803.

MELODIE: We appreciate your gifts, comments and prayers. One woman wrote recently at our website regarding caring for aging parents: “It is such a hard process to watch. I’ve been watching my parents go through this with my grandmother and it’s been challenging for everyone involved.” We love hearing from you, so I hope you’ll be in touch. Until next week when we’ll look at the topic of Teens and Substance Abuse, this is Melodie Davis …

BURTON: … and Burton Buller, reminding you to spend a few leisure moments each day—and breathe a prayer of gratefulness to God. Shaping Families is a production of the Mennonite churches.