Overcoming the addiction to activity

For a guy who professes to be a lover of contemplative spirituality, I sure do have a lot of activity in my life. Contemplative is just a way of saying, well, be still and experience God. There are other ways to explain it, but that will do for my purposes. And there is a whole lot more to it than just sitting still, but then again it doesn't, so that will do as well. But several years ago I was indeed a faithful practitioner of contemplative spirituality and I became very fond of practicing it. I became pretty fond of Thomas Merton and the Trappist monks too. The Trappist do a nice job of combining contemplative prayer with simplicity and manual labor.

There has been one big problem with my affection of sitting still and experiencing God: for the past 3 years I've been so busy I don't hardly take time to do it. Now don't judge me too harshly yet, I've got really good excuses. (I mean, reasons). You see, when I went back to graduate school full time and ended up continuing to work full time there just wasn't much time for sitting in stillness. Not that I didn't do some of it here and there, but I certainly had let it go as a daily activity in the name of mere survival. It won't always be this way I told myself, and I trudged on ahead, ever active and always on the move. All writing was school work and all reading school books. Sometimes in life you've got to do what it takes to break through to the next level.

Which brings me to my next problem: I graduated almost a year ago. At first it seemed that I was just having trouble switching gears and, well, there is just always so much to do. But here comes the evidence that I have a good ole American addiction to "doing"- I think I've created things to do. My mind creates projects faster than I can complete them, assuring me that I will never actually get caught up. Even though I may have gradually regained the ability to prayer the daily office and even spend some time in recreational spiritual reading, I am fully aware that I've grown accustomed to the constant activity. We Americans are known for attaching our self worth to our activities and I can see in my own identity my attachment to what I do and how it defines who I am. But in God's eyes I am valued because I am me, and the only thing I have to do to be loved is to sit in the nothingness of who I am before the great and loving God and bask in the warmth of his Son. So today, as I take time to sit and blog and journal and do those things I can't quite make myself slow down long enough to do, I will sit even when my feet say it's time to go. I'll make one less trip to the store and I'll do without for another day, just to create a moment of stillness and not movement. I won't take on the extra project which will lead me further away from time with family and time in prayer. It may mean I won't make as much money, it may mean that my ministry work won't be as grand, but hopefully it will mean that I can begin to soak in the only thing that ever was, this very moment, and this very day. So go and sit and listen and be. Just be.