Living in the present
We’ve just had a week looking at CHALLENGE. One of the greatest challenges, that was voiced loudly and often during almost all of the video interviews conducted for the Faith at Work course, was the challenge of how to use time – how to fit everything into what seem like increasingly busy lives. So this week’s reflections, and the course theme itself, are all based around the idea of CLOCK:
- how we use our time,
- how we decide what our priorities about use of time are,
- how we balance work, rest and play,
- how and if we live out the Biblical idea of Sabbath.
These are issues that seem to affect everyone, whether in work or not, whether young or retired, whether active or less so. One of the keys to the use time and gaining an appropriate work-life balance might be to try and make sure that we live in the present….
“Where shall I look for enlightenment?” the disciple asked.
“Here,” the wise one said.
“When will it happen?” the disciple asked.
“It is happening right now,” the wise one answered.
“Then why don’t I experience it?”
“Because you don’t look.”
“What should I look for?”
“Nothing. Just look.”
“Look at what?”
“At anything your eyes light on.”
“But must I look in a special way?”
“No, the ordinary way will do.”
“But don’t I always look the ordinary way?”
“No, you don’t.”
“But why ever not?”
“Because to look, you must be here. And you are mostly somewhere else.”[Source: ‘There is a Season’ by Joan Chittister, (Orbis Books, 1999)]
