At the beginning of the New Year I did what many of you were doing. I ate black-eyed peas, hoping for good luck, and cabbage, praying for more money. Luck and money and a treadmill. That's all it takes to be happy, right?
I’m not so sure. My grandmother makes me rethink this popular misconception.
We celebrated her 85th birthday in January. She is at the age where she is perfectly happy to sit in her nice warm yellow kitchen with her coffee pot and word puzzle books. Family and friends frantically worry that she isn’t active enough. Such is the frenzied pace and mindset our society has programmed us to embrace.
Amidst the frenzy, she is perfectly content. She still shops for her own groceries, goes weekly to the beauty shop, receives friends for visits, hosts the family every Sunday morning for coffee, and goes out to eat with friends each week. Oh, did I mention the inevitable doctor visits that come with aging?
Yet there is a frantic expectation for her to “do” something more. Whatever more is. Now I know these social networks merely want what is best for her. They want her healthy and happy and today’s world (ie: statistics, doctors, motivational gurus) tell us that the only way to “be happy” is to be active. Certainly the way we feel physically is very important to our mental state, but doing too much physically and focusing too little on our mental state is the same as focusing on our mental well-being and neglecting our physical state.
Stephen Covey’s motivational talks and books, Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and many of the desert monks look at the other side of the coin and focus on the mental state over the physical state. Not that our physical state is of any less importance.
As I contemplate this, I’m finally realizing why I’m always in a frantic state, why I'm always restless, why I never feel I'm doing enough and why nothing I do is ever "good enough.” I’m amazed at what I've been trying to “squeeze” into my day.
My social networks would applaud the whirlwind of activity I spin around in. Yet I look longingly at the lifestyle my grandmother resides peacefully in wondering, as I do so, why I do so.
I know that part of the attraction I find in my grandmother’s yellow kitchen is that I am so far removed from it. I don’t have it so it looks really good. The spaghetti always looks yummier on grandma’s stovetop, doesn’t it?
Yet, in the same aroma, I love the cyclone of life around me because I know that one day it will stop as suddenly as Dorothy’s house did, landing somewhere in the middle of Kansas. A hushed stillness will envelope me and I will not recognize the land I have landed in. And I will long to go home…back to the time when small children climbed on my lap, dogs wagged tails to be fed, teenagers woke me at midnight, and my second home was my car.
So I bless and embrace my days. The Lenten season is the perfect time to look back on those New Year resolutions and commitments and reevaluate how we are spending our time. I sit down for a date with my Stephen Covey planner and hack away at all the things that hinder our relationship because we, like so many American families, are over-programmed.
While gazing over my planner, which looks like Webster’s Dictionary with ADHD, my mind still tells me I should be doing more.
When is enough truly enough?
I fear what I'm really doing is “squeezing” the life right out of my days. I’m sucking the fruit until it has no pulp, no juice, and no rind with which to resemble anything close to what it was when I woke up in the morning. And that makes it lifeless. That makes it deprived. My busy lifestyle looks, to me anyway, as devoid as my grandmother’s lifestyle looks to the outside world.
Yet, still I suck and I squeeze. I know there has to be a focus to the way I spend my days. I should be taking my days and turning the grapes into wine, the lemon into lemonade, the watermelon rinds into preserves, and the day old bread into bread pudding. But, perhaps, that’s over-production as well.
So I go back to contemplating my days. How can I squeeze life back into them? What is missing? Then it dawns on me.
In this over-riddled lifestyle of mine, I’m not even praying like I mean it. I’m certainly not praying as though I feel it to be the best part of my day, much less the most important part. I realize my prayer life has become just as frantic and fast-paced as all the other things in my life. Forget praying the whole breviary or more than a decade of the rosary every day. It just isn't going to happen.
Without prayer my life is void and meaningless. Without prayer our days our days are just dog-eared days on top of dog-eared days.
And so, in place of my hyper-planner and my idealistic prayer life, I reach for a safe bookmark with which to gently mark my prayer time...something do-able, something reverent, something that builds upon itself, something that brings me peace instead of guilt, something I can use to pace myself, some sort of spiritual guidance that will guide me throughout my day at a steady fulfilling pace, some sort of pause in an otherwise harried day. Pauses I can handle. Something that breathes life back into my days.
I am relieved to read what writer Flannery O'Connor told a friend (HT: Amy):
"Anyway, don’t think I am suggesting you read the Office everyday. It’s just a good thing to know about, I say Prime in the morning and sometimes I say Compline at night but usually I don’t. But anyway I like parts of my prayers to stay the same and part to change. So many prayer books are awful, but if you stick with the liturgy, you are safe."
I won't tell you to read the Office either. What I do want to share with you is the bookmark I found. It can serve as a prayerful pause in your day. The author of SevenSacredPauses (Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day), Macina Wiederkehr, writes that the seven pauses are not exactly a Liturgy of the hours but, rather, a special time for us to focus on the Spirit of the Hours. So I look mindfully at the “pauses” in my day and commit to “dwelling in the possibilities” and “opportunities of the day.”
I find my bookmark in the Magnificent and in focusing on observing seven sacred pauses throughout the day.
Pause I (Night Watch): Perhaps it is a child’s whimper for a glass of water or a race to the restroom that awakens me. As I fulfill the need for which I am called, I am mindful of my family’s protection and all the lost souls who are not at peace during the night watch. The Prayer to St. Michael is within arm’s reach at my bedside.
Pause 2 (Awakening Hour): In the thanksgiving of a new day’s dawning, I am mindful of making my day holy and meaningful. I begin my awakening with the morning prayers found in my Magnificent, my morning offering, and the prayer to my Guardian Angel.
Pause 3 (Blessing Hour): As I arise to a new day, I am thankful for what God has given me and mindful of my children. I find my little blue card and whisper its blessing upon my children. No matter where they are or what they are doing, I send a parent’s blessing to keep them protected from the world and faithful to faith and family. About this time---before, after, or inbetween---I begin a decade of the rosary. A decade is a safe pause...ten knots on the ribbon that is my bookmark.
Pause 4: (Hour of Illumination): As the sun reaches its fullest peak in the sky, the noonday demons come out in full force and I am mindful of my duties in life. How are the noonday demons seeking to rip the joy and meaningfulness from my life today? Have I fought the good fight? Have I armed myself well? In order to subdue these noonday demons (and perhaps in defiance), I commit my noon hour to the Angelus and make a mindful Act of Contrition.
Pause 5 (Wisdom Hour): As the day wanes, I am mindful of the holy examples God has set before me. This is my chance to turn my attention to the saints of the church to read and breathe their wisdom. There are a thousand and one ways to do this. If my days are being excessively “squeezed” I can focus on a simple mindful quote by a saint. My Magnificent gives me sections on “Saint of the Day” and “Meditation of the Day” which I truly love.
Pause 6 (Twilight Hour): As the sun bids its final adieu, I am mindful of my Lord and Savoir. This is the hour in which I “pause to see the face of God.” I read the Mass section of my Magnificent and focus on the Hymn of the day.
Pause 7 (The Great Silence): In the purple dark before the bedside lamp is put out, I am mindful of the Great Silence and nothing more. The day has been squeezed. What did I do with it? What did I make of it? Did I answer God’s call? During this pause, I meditate on the Evening Prayers from my Magnificent.
These are mere pauses in an otherwise busy day. I cannot stop for long without interruptions, phone calls, errands, school work, laundry, etc. But I can pause. And it’s the pauses that will guide me through this Lent and bookmark my days while preparing me for the day I can sit and breathe in the sacred liturgy of slower days.
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