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Good morning

When I hear discussions about the huge implications developments in Artificial Intelligence are already having on employment patterns, my mind goes back over thirty years to a meeting I attended. It was entitled The Problem of Leisure; one of the participants was heard to mutter he’d never really seen leisure as a problem.  Behind it was the notion that with the coming of new technologies, we would find ourselves with a vast amount of time on our hands- and so we would need outlets for our energy in new activities like gardening or playing the recorder.

Well, it didn’t quite turn out like that for everyone although I fancy many who are without a job, would happily trade their free time for work and the growth of artificial  intelligence will place an increasing number in that position. Yet the problem for others isn’t filling time but finding it.  They never have enough time to do what they’re supposed to be doing. Emails and mobile phones mean that they’re be on call every hour of every day. The potential problem of leisure seems to have been replaced by the very real problem of stress as people buckle under the strain. Finding space to rest is difficult.

And yet, never-ending activity isn’t good for us. I suspect that most would agree that we do need to rest- to step back from constant activity- the problem is that we never seem able to find space. Or is that just an excuse we make?

In St Mark’s Gospel there’s a description of how the apostles told Jesus all about what they’d been doing. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ Come away and rest.