In this post about ways to celebrate the long season of Ordinary Time, I came across this quote:
"Today, choose one everyday action: a chore that grates at you or a task you’ve been putting off. Tomorrow, try to do it as prayer. Slowly, mindfully, sacrificially.
See what happens when you open yourself to a deeper awareness of God’s presence with you. Right now in the ordinary moments of your life."
If we could be successful in following this suggestion, we might attain a more sacramental frame of mind, by which I mean we might see the presence of the Divine in the everyday, seeing ordinary objects/tasks as pointing us to evidence of God's grace.
I have managed a sacramental frame of mind when I do housekeeping chores, like preparing a meal or washing the dishes. It's a different sacramental frame of mind from the one I often attain when doing yard work.
But when I read this suggestion, I thought about what I've been putting off. I thought about my e-mail inbox, which is always overflowing. My AOL mailbox never shuts me off, so I rarely delete e-mails. My work e-mail system, on the other hand, only lets me get away with this for so long.
How could I approach the e-mail inbox more reverently? Where do I see evidence of God's grace?
Likewise, at my school, we have just entered a time period of lots of forms and paperwork. In advance, I know that we will be completing the same form over and over again. I will be making lots of copies. We will copy some of the same information across forms that don't always want to speak to each other.
I would like to approach these tasks with a different prayer. I usually pray for patience and then at some point, my prayers shift to asking for deliverance. What if I changed my prayers? I could say a prayer of gratitude for all these great people in my department, all these accomplishments collected on the forms.
It's an experiment worth trying.
thinking too hard
4 years ago
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