Finding the time

Almost everybody I know is much too busy, yours truly included. Finding quiet time alone is hard. “I’m just too busy to pray,” I will often hear.  It makes busy people feel guilty, at first, to sit in silence when they could be doing something.  It is important to remember, though, that when you sit in contemplative silence you are doing something: you’re tending your soul.  You’re working on the framework in which you live your life.  You need some time to listen to the Spirit.  In my experience, the time I have taken to do this has never ruined mu schedule.  “Deus providebit” (God will provide) I tell myself when I am worried about time.  And God always does.  Just as a laidback graduate school classmate from the South chided me, “You Northerners need to learn – when God made time, he made lots of it!”

Perhaps you will not be sitting motionless is a quiet room.  It may be that the time God provides will be time that you used to use in another way: staring into the distance while a passenger, or during exercise, or in a waiting room.  Washing dishes. Taking a shower.  It is often true that the mind and soul are quite available while the body is doing something repetitive.  This elegant economy should gratify even the most driven among us: you can put your previously unused spiritual energy into a more focused use while performing mindless tasks.  So even the most mundane activity can become holy, if it is accompanied by prayer. 


If you need a quiet place to pray, St. Mark's Church is open daily from 8 AM until 1 PM for just this purpose.  Stop in.  Take a breath . . . and hear God's voice.