One of the best things about writing this inspirational piece on a daily basis is I have to remain attentive. I am convinced many folks (most?) lives their lives inattentively. Of course, at some level they know what is going on. But a great example of what I mean is driving a car. You would think we would have to be attentive to drive down the highway or even in the midst of some inner city traffic. But if we are honest, we confess that amazingly we can manage to drive without that much attentiveness.
Seldom do we drive without some form of music or entertainment. A scary form of that entertainment now is the cell phone. How many times I pass someone and see them blowing along at forty miles per hour and looking down at the cell phone! When we are stopped at a stoplight, it is nearly instinctual to tap in the password and check email, text messages and the like. I agree this is attentiveness, but the wrong kind!
This is what I mean by living inattentively. Again if I am honest, I spend hours this way. Anytime I watch tv, I do it half-heartedly. I sit in a coffee shop and watch folks scroll down their Twitter accounts or Facebook pages. They probably could not tell you what they really are looking for. But they are inattentively hooked. Their attention has been hooked, as if it were on drugs.
One way I try to avoid this is to read. I read books. Of course, I read a great deal online. I have books in electronic form. I read articles I find on Twitter. And clearly, some of this stuff I am reading, but rather inattentively. I probably could not really tell you what I just read. But overall, I do think I read more attentively than some. I actually would like to learn and retain. As I get older, it is the retaining part that seems more elusive!
I read some things with regularity. I read things which I am not really expecting will lead to something other than I just want to know. I am still quite curious. It would be in this vein that I read a short piece talking about Sister Carol Zinn. I have never met this nun, but I know about her. She is a past president of LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious). This is an umbrella group representing the majority of religious women in the American Catholic Church. It is a group for which I have immense respect. And I have a sense of what Sr. Zinn has brought to it.
The little essay offered her reflections on where she thinks religious life in the Catholic Church will go over the next decades. She shared a couple sentences, which leaped out at me. I prefer to take out the reference to religious life as it pertains to nuns and talk about religious life as it pertains to all of us who are on a spiritual journey. Let’s hear what Zinn says.
The larger picture of religious life is God's project, not ours," Zinn said. "God does the calling. Our work at the detail level is to create the space for God to do what God needs to do.” Allow me to frame these two sentences. I like her idea that God has a project. The creation stories in Genesis gives us the big picture of this God-project. God created a world that was declared to be good. And God created humans, who are declared to be very good. We were created by a loving God and created to be loving---loving of God, the world and each other. That is the project of God. It is God’s project and ours by inclusion.
This is both a challenge and a relief. The challenge is to engage the project---to do what we are created and called to do. The relief is we are not actually in control. After all, Zinn is correct to say it is God’s project. We are the helper bees. Fortunately, it does not all depend on us. But it does depend on us. God gave us free will. We need to opt into the project. God is not some puppeteer just pulling the strings. We are not mere puppets. We have agency---there is work to do.
As Zinn says, our work is creating the space for God to do what God needs to do. I really like that idea of creating space. At one level, this means getting our selfishness and self-will out of the ways so God’s desires can be present and prevail. This sounds simple---and it is. It is just not easy. Getting out of the way is a bit like becoming attentive when we are driving the car. It sounds simple, but most of us are not doing it.
We don’t create space for God to do what God needs to do. We fill the spaces of our lives with our own junk. Space allows for possibilities and for creativity. We carelessly can go about our business leaving no space for any of this future stuff. We seem too content to deal with present-tense junk.
If we are inattentive, we will assume whatever junk we are dealing with is valuable. But God’s work will not be found there. All I can do is work on myself. That means becoming more attentive. That means creating space for God to do the divine work---which is love.
Seldom do we drive without some form of music or entertainment. A scary form of that entertainment now is the cell phone. How many times I pass someone and see them blowing along at forty miles per hour and looking down at the cell phone! When we are stopped at a stoplight, it is nearly instinctual to tap in the password and check email, text messages and the like. I agree this is attentiveness, but the wrong kind!
This is what I mean by living inattentively. Again if I am honest, I spend hours this way. Anytime I watch tv, I do it half-heartedly. I sit in a coffee shop and watch folks scroll down their Twitter accounts or Facebook pages. They probably could not tell you what they really are looking for. But they are inattentively hooked. Their attention has been hooked, as if it were on drugs.
One way I try to avoid this is to read. I read books. Of course, I read a great deal online. I have books in electronic form. I read articles I find on Twitter. And clearly, some of this stuff I am reading, but rather inattentively. I probably could not really tell you what I just read. But overall, I do think I read more attentively than some. I actually would like to learn and retain. As I get older, it is the retaining part that seems more elusive!
I read some things with regularity. I read things which I am not really expecting will lead to something other than I just want to know. I am still quite curious. It would be in this vein that I read a short piece talking about Sister Carol Zinn. I have never met this nun, but I know about her. She is a past president of LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious). This is an umbrella group representing the majority of religious women in the American Catholic Church. It is a group for which I have immense respect. And I have a sense of what Sr. Zinn has brought to it.
The little essay offered her reflections on where she thinks religious life in the Catholic Church will go over the next decades. She shared a couple sentences, which leaped out at me. I prefer to take out the reference to religious life as it pertains to nuns and talk about religious life as it pertains to all of us who are on a spiritual journey. Let’s hear what Zinn says.
The larger picture of religious life is God's project, not ours," Zinn said. "God does the calling. Our work at the detail level is to create the space for God to do what God needs to do.” Allow me to frame these two sentences. I like her idea that God has a project. The creation stories in Genesis gives us the big picture of this God-project. God created a world that was declared to be good. And God created humans, who are declared to be very good. We were created by a loving God and created to be loving---loving of God, the world and each other. That is the project of God. It is God’s project and ours by inclusion.
This is both a challenge and a relief. The challenge is to engage the project---to do what we are created and called to do. The relief is we are not actually in control. After all, Zinn is correct to say it is God’s project. We are the helper bees. Fortunately, it does not all depend on us. But it does depend on us. God gave us free will. We need to opt into the project. God is not some puppeteer just pulling the strings. We are not mere puppets. We have agency---there is work to do.
As Zinn says, our work is creating the space for God to do what God needs to do. I really like that idea of creating space. At one level, this means getting our selfishness and self-will out of the ways so God’s desires can be present and prevail. This sounds simple---and it is. It is just not easy. Getting out of the way is a bit like becoming attentive when we are driving the car. It sounds simple, but most of us are not doing it.
We don’t create space for God to do what God needs to do. We fill the spaces of our lives with our own junk. Space allows for possibilities and for creativity. We carelessly can go about our business leaving no space for any of this future stuff. We seem too content to deal with present-tense junk.
If we are inattentive, we will assume whatever junk we are dealing with is valuable. But God’s work will not be found there. All I can do is work on myself. That means becoming more attentive. That means creating space for God to do the divine work---which is love.
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