planners

We need to baptize our planners, our calendars, and our PDA’s. For far too long we have compromised to the (truly insane) pace of life in our culture. Our culture is so geared toward productivity and efficiency which are necessary to sustain the radically materialistic lifestyles that are preached by the advertising agencies and the corporations that are funding them that it seems impossible to live differently. The regrettable fact is, however, that such a pattern of time is destroying us—destroying our ability to reflect and think deeply, destroying our ability to relate genuinely and selflessly, destroying our ability to realize life while we live it.

We need to find ways to make what David Ford calls “a habitable pattern of time.” We need to find ways of ordering our lives according to a rhythm of life that enables us to truly live—a pattern of time in which we can live as God intended us to live.

good work

At the end of each day of the creation, the Creator affirms the goodness of His creation. How many days can I, at the end of the day, say of my work, "It is good"? What if we started to see our work--the whole sum of what we make/create through the day, week, month, year--as one significant way in which we re-present the image of God? This would then fold our 'job' into our vocation. Would it eliminate the kind of compartmentalization that goes on--even for those in a so-called 'bi-vocational ministry'?

humanizing rest

What if God's resting on the seventh day was not because he was in need of rest, but because creation was in need of rest? What if, in resting, the Creator was implanting into His creation a certain rhythm to time and life? It would seem to me that to ignore these rhythms of work and rest would be dehumanizing--a failure to fully re-present the image of God. In working too much (i.e., busy-ness), we do not give the creation the opportunity to function according to the rhythms of the created order. In working too little (i.e., laziness), we do not engage in the kind of sub-creative (i.e., creating under God) work to which we were called.

grateful

There is a line in the play "Our Town" that inquires whether or not people realize life while they live it. I believe that we can. And when we do realize life while we live it, we are brought to a response of gratitude. To realize life while we live it is to be grateful for it all--sorrow and joy, suffering and comfort, pain and pleasure, failure and success. It is to be grateful for life and to live our lives as an expression of that gratitude: to share that gratitude with others, to celebrate the beauty of the ordinary and the small, to break through our callousness and numbness, our blindness and dumbness, with wonder and awe. To worship

time management

You cannot manage kairos (God's Time). Just as you cannot 'manage' or control a conversation with a friend. It takes you where it will, and lasts as long as it has to. You cannot lose kairos-time; you are lost (and found) in it.

lost arts

These are some lost arts in the arranging of our time. We have lost the art of the spiritual direction of our schedules--there are no 'divine hours' anymore. We have lost the art of scheduling as an act of worship--we do not arrange schedules that serve God. Few of us even arrange schedules that serve us well. We have lost the art of discerning kronos from kairos. We have lost the art of living from vocation--we live at the mercy of impulse. We have lost the art of being present in the moment--we are always in the next place or the past place. We have lost the art of understanding the proper place for efficiency--creativity is very inefficient.