#197: Book Club | The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

In this week’s episode, I’m diving into one of my all-time favorite books, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer — a gentle but radical call to slow down and live with more peace, purpose, and presence. 🌿 I share how this book has shaped my family’s rhythm, deepened our Shabbat practice, and reminded me that we’re allowed to live differently — unhurried, intentional, and grounded in what really matters.

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Transcript

Welcome And Book Reveal

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Hello everyone, and welcome to The Raw on the Cooked, a weekly podcast that provides simple routines around the home plus raw and honest book reviews. My name is Dara. I'm a Midwestern stay-at-home mom to four young kids, and I thrive on simplicity. Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode. Today is going to be a book club episode. You're listening to episode 197, and I wanted to talk about The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. It is a book that I find myself returning to again and again and again, especially when life is loud and busy, and just I feel like something in my soul needs to be recorrected and refocused. I discovered this book a handful of years ago. It was a recommendation by my friend Amanda, and it was, it is one of my favorite books and the best book recommendation I think I've ever received. And so I wanted to share it with you. I'm actually surprised. We're like five seasons in on this podcast, and I haven't brought it up. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe in passing, but I've never actually devoted an actual episode to it. So I figured no time like the present. And so I find myself craving this book. I I have it as an audiobook, um, and it is narrated by John Mark Comer, the author himself. And he is just very punchy, very, you know, quick and clever, and has a very lovely voice to listen to. It's very well narrated. And I find myself gravitating towards it when I'm yearning to live a slower pace. Uh, I've shared a little bit about my cell phone journey with you in a couple episodes back, how I want to live like it's 1995 and treat my cell phone essentially just like a phone, like a one-purpose device, as opposed to using it as a mini computer in my pocket, something to shop on, something to browse the internet, something to take photos with, check the time, to do all these different things that I don't want it for. And this book really encompasses a lot of that and so much more about our culture and just this over-consumption, over-indulgent lifestyle that all of us have just easily fallen into. And it's no one's fault, right? Like these apps and these algorithms are designed to keep our attention and suck our soul, right? Like it's not our fault. But if we don't take a big step back and really focus on why we're here, it's so easy to just live in this like oblivious, checked-out, sleepwalking attitude. I don't know, I can't quite describe it. And I've been thinking so much lately about our souls and our bodies and what we're doing here and why we're here, right? And the purpose, of course, is like to create goodness and relationships and be with one another and serve God and be the best person that we can be and treat the planet beautifully and and you know, just like care for God's creations. Like He gave us this world to enjoy and and have, but I don't think it means what we think it means, and just like the lifestyle that we're all living today. And like so many people are just so quick to, I don't know, it's like if even just like walking around outside, it you see people with their heads down in their phones, like no one's just no one's paying attention, no one's really making these connections anymore. Everyone's just like on the next app, and I don't know, like anyway, okay. So I mean I could go on about this for so long, but my point being, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, it's like that kind of book that again, I just like read in a season where my days just feel like a sprint between little kids, constant noise, endless to-dos, and I just find myself bouncing from one thing to the next. And this book sort of like whispered something radical. You're allowed to slow down, you are allowed to live differently. And I think our family does a really good job of that. We are observant Jews, we're not orthodox per se, but we are one of the very few secular Jewish families that we know that observe Shabbat. And it has been soul-giving. I look forward to it every single week and on weeks where we can't quite do it because maybe we're out of town or something happened, or you know, like we don't, I wouldn't say we do it every single week, but we try very, very hard. And it is just, it builds into that rhythm of like creation and what God designed for us. Like our bodies are not meant to go, go, go. And this book, Through the Semination of Hurry, it has an entire chapter on the Sabbath and just stopping and unplugging and reconnecting, resting, stopping, taking delight in all that God has given us and a little bit of room for contemplation. And it has radically changed my life, my husband's, and I know that our kids are feeling it too, the positive effects of the Sabbath. This book just encompassed everything that I just feel so deeply in my soul. It was a beautiful story. Uh, John Mark Homer is a very famous uh megachurch pastor living in Seattle, and he experienced burnout culture firsthand and decided to do things very differently and came around to a completely different way of life and wrote this book on the ruthless elimination of hurry. And oh, it is so good. It is so good. And I am saying this as an observant Jew. This is one of my favorite books written by a Christian pastor, and it is, I think, for everyone. Everyone should listen to it at least once, read it, listen to it. It is so good. And yes, it does get a little heavy with Jesus, who I personally do not believe is my savior. However, I have a lot more in common with an observant Christian than I would, let's say, someone who doesn't believe in God. So I feel like I'm able to put some of that stuff aside. And if you're atheist or secular or and and I'm sorry, I'm like blanking on the word, agnostic, right? Like you are still able to connect with this book in a way that is just like we all know that something isn't quite right about the way that we are living and have been living. So I could not say more about it. And again, the fact that I have listened to it at least twice a year, every year for the past five years, I feel like should say enough. Okay, so basically breaking down this book, there are several key ideas. And I'm gonna just go ahead and like list my top three, I think, for this book. Key idea number one is that hurry is the enemy of a spiritual life, right? Like hurry shows up every single day, especially if you have little kids, getting them to hurry with their socks and their shoes, that they insist on doing it themselves. Like patience and little kids are very, very challenging. But I think the the whole goal of this is to like not live in a way that demands you hurry through every single task, just mindlessly going through the motions and just rushing off from one thing to the next, and to like really fully live in the moment and live in the present because that's really all we have, right? And so one of my best friends had mentioned something a couple of weeks ago, and this really stood out to me. She said that if she she said that if she has to hurry and rush or accepts an invitation, let's say, to meet a friend for, you know, coffee, but it's a it's gonna be a little tight and she'll probably have to like rush from here to there. The answer is just no, because no one wants to rush. It is a terrible feeling. And also not to mention, because we're most of us are in listening to this podcast or we're in America, a lot of our events and appointments and you know, things to do involve a car. And what is more dangerous than hurrying behind a 30,000-pound vehicle, right? Just like made of like glass and metal. And I think about that a lot. I have turned down so many invitations recently because I just can't do it. I don't want to rush through dinner with my kids to be at an event at six o'clock and I'll have to be in bumper-to-bumper traffic for, you know, 15 minutes of that journey. I don't want to have to cut it close to school pickup for my son at preschool. I don't want to have to do certain things. And I feel like I'm okay with that. I accidentally joined the PTO for preschool. Um, I I don't know, I don't know what I was thinking. I just thought I would be passing out cookies and lemonade and you know, calling it a day. And somehow this turned into like an email position where I had to like email people that I didn't really want to email, just like be like a liaison between like the PTO and the teachers and whatever, and you know, invite all these people to all these events. And like as someone who's like sort of tangentially involved in this, I have to like show up to these events. But a lot of these events are now I've I find on the Sabbath. I can't do it. I have said no to everything. I don't want to do like play dates and uh, you know, book fair and meet and greet and this event and that event. I I'm not going. It's Sabbath. I want to sleep in. I want to drink coffee. I want to be in my pajamas until three o'clock with my family. I want to play with my children in the morning. I don't want to go anywhere. And it's very counterintuitive because you know, you you want to be involved and you you want to, you know, do all these things. But I just find I find my soul feeling so much more fulfilled and better by not hurrying and not rushing. And could I do all these things? Absolutely. I could totally wake up on the Sabbath, put on some mascara and go. But I don't want to. I don't want to hurry. I don't want to rush my Sabbath. That's like my one day a week that God has given me. And so I don't know. And that's just like a really small example, but I am changing a lot about the invitations I accept and just how I'm going about life. And I'm okay missing uh, you know, the moms at my kids' older school, like a, you know, a date night out with I don't want to do it. I don't want to rush, I don't want to hurry. And so this book I feel like gives me permission to say no to all these invitations. Okay, so I was getting a little uh ranty there, but uh let's move on to key idea number two, and that is the Sabbath and just silence in general. And I've touched upon this a lot. I have several episodes dedicated to the Sabbath, and I feel like I just touched upon it earlier, but it is so important in my own weekly rhythm. It is a phone boundary. I put my phone away in a drawer. I don't want to look at it, I don't want to touch it. And sometimes there are exceptions that I have to make. Um we have turned down a lot of birthday party invitations. I've said no to a lot of sports and extracurricular activities for my kids if they are on a Saturday morning. We do make a few exceptions, like a super close family friend. I'm going to go to their birthday party or a family's birthday. I mean, there are exceptions. I've traveled now twice on the Sabbath to and from different family events. And so there are little exceptions that we'll make, but for the most part, our Shabbat rhythm is so sacred and important to me. And this book really drives home the point of creating and making space for the Sabbath and how it is so refreshing to the soul. And on weeks where I don't get a Sabbath, you guys, it messes up my entire week. And I just oh, I don't know. There's just something so delicious about knowing a Sabbath is right around the corner. I'm recording this week's episode on a Tuesday, and I am already yearning for Friday night when we light those candles as the official start to the Sabbath. And so the key idea number three that I've taken away, just like the big takeaway, is just to live as steadily as I can an unhurried life, like to the best of my abilities. That is just adding some buffer time in my day and some windows and not jamming it full of activities and to-dos and whatever. Um, it is a slow morning. It is waking up early before my kids now that our 14-month-old is sleeping through the night and waking up usually around 7 a.m. That's you know, give or take 30 minutes on either direction. If I'm up at 5, 5:30, which I don't know why, but that is what my body has been doing for me. I am up, I am in our living room, I've carved out a really cozy corner for myself. I have two lovely Sherpa chairs, I have a plant, I have a little desk, and I have a handful of books that I'm reading every single day. I have my Godlia Fenster book, Surrender. I love Gedalia Fenster. You will never not see me listening to his podcast. He released a book recently and it's like one of those like 365s, like a page a day of like soul inspiration. I have another book that goes through uh Perkay Avos, which is the ethics of our fathers. It is sort of like wisdom from the Bible that ancient rabbis have pulled together. I have a book that again does like a 365 thing, it's like a page a day. I have another page a day that connects with our daily prayers and psalms and scripture, and I have the Bible itself. I have all these books that are just feeding my soul. John Mark Comer does something very similar, but like, you know, again, dedicated towards Jesus and learning scripture and in his own way, and it is so beautiful and inspiring. And I, you know, you read these things and you're like, you know, you want to you want to live like in the divine presence, and like what would Jesus do? And and like how does Jesus live and like how do you replicate that? And I want to do my own version of that, like in with a with a twist and a spin of Judaism, right? And I feel like almost anyone can connect that, especially if you are a God-fearing and God-believing human being. I feel like what else can you possibly do than read scripture and prayer and the Bible itself? Like, right? Like, what like what else are we here for? And many mornings I will turn on the fireplace. It is now fall. It is we actually it feels like winter right now. We are in the middle, the middle of an Arctic blast. I'm turning on the fireplace, and I'm just opening up my books and reading and just soaking in the word of the Lord, and it feels very good. And I just, I don't know, that's just what I've been doing. And I'm just trying to live like one day at a time because we're promised nothing, right? And just trying to make the most of it and know that I'm showing up for my family. I'm we're cooking our meals. You know, I just, I don't know. I just don't want to live in a fast-paced society, and I feel like it's so counterintuitive and like so going against the grain to live in this type of way. But these are the small, little specific rhythms that have made a big difference in my life. Waking up around 5 a.m. and just sitting down and reading and thinking and studying and trying to make sense of all of it and get closer to God in the small ways that I can, and paying attention to, you know, the little things around me, taking notice and joy and things that are just so light and happy about the day. And I don't know, I feel like this book is just so powerful. I listened to it recently, a couple of weeks ago, and I feel my soul calling me to listen to it again. Uh he just makes so many excellent points about how our culture has just completely gone off the rails in the last few decades. And he's not wrong. I yearn for a time where we didn't, we don't have a, I mean, like, don't get me wrong, like electricity is awesome and like what a cool gift, right? But like, I don't know. I just I feel like our bodies are like not meant to live like this. And um it ties into another book that I recently finished that I will have a book club episode about in a couple of weeks, um, when I like gather all my thoughts and you know put together some notes. It's um Good Energy by Casey Means, and she makes very similar points as well about how like LED lighting and the fact that like we mostly live indoors and set our thermostats to like 70 degrees, and we get very uptight and upset if our our indoor temperature variants more than a couple of degrees away from 70, right? Like it's just so interesting, like and and we're we're so sick and so riddled with comorbidities, and our life inspectancy is going down, right? Like all of these factors like kind of go intogether, and like you can't pinpoint and blame one thing, right? It's a lot of different factors, but the fact that like what we are living now compared to even like 70 years ago is drastically different and not for the better. Like, yes, we have Instagram and X, and we can order something incredibly obscure and it'll get to our doorstep in less than one business day. Like, that's really cool, but I don't know if it's worth the cost of how we're living today. And I think that is what the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is trying to like talk about and tackle. And so I'm sold. It is just one of those books that is just like so deeply profound. And so if you're going to take any book advice from me, period, end of story, it's this one. Please download it, listen to it, read it, get it on Kindle, like whatever you have to do, I'm begging you, it will change your life. It has changed my life. It totally sold me on the idea of the Sabbath. Not that we weren't before, but we weren't totally observing it the same way when I first started reading the book, like all those years ago. So thank you guys for listening and tuning in. And um yeah, I appreciate you guys showing back up week after week. So thank you, and I'll see you back here next Thursday.