We are busy people ruled by clock and calendar. For too many of us, being busy provides meaning and justification in our lives. Until. Until it doesn’t.

Corinne Ware invites us to merge the instincts to rule our lives by slicing and dicing the day and the “something more” we seek.

I am indebted to John Najarian for giving me a copy of Ware’s Saint Benedict on the Freeway. She asks us to adapt the daily practice of Benedictine communities to contemporary conditions. She takes the ancient practice of prayer at specified times during the day and shows how it can be applied to a contemporary setting.

We know some of the terms—such as lauds, prime, and vespers—but we can hardly reproduce the daily life of monks in the Middle Ages. The world we live in is no longer agricultural, no longer governed by sunrise and sunset, and our lives are not bounded by a monastic community..

But precisely because our mental state is stretched and stressed, the discipline of the hours makes sense. Looking at the rhythm of your day and building in reflective pauses can do for us what the Hours does for the Benedictines.

I’ll divulge my day in the next message.

Join us online on Friday mornings @ 8 for 25 minutes of silent meditation. Register here or send me a message and I’ll see that you are registered.

Photo by Amarnath Tade on Unsplash