Living in the present
Lent – Week 3 – Clock
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.
As I write this, many of us are living in a new and possibly scary world of being largely confined to the house, as the world copes with a pandemic. This will greatly affect how we use our time. Many of us will have more time in which to do everything, as a result of so many things we usually do not being able to happen. Others will feel they have much less time, because their work role has got much busier; because they’ve taken on extra helping roles; or because everything now seems to take longer to do. This means that how we manage our time is just as important as ever.
So this week’s course theme and daily reflections 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)]
