A message from Father Ben — September 2024

How do you start your day? Do you begin with a smile? A prayer? A mantra? Do you think through all that you hope to accomplish or that needs to be done? Some intentional contemplative still time? Is it all a blur until you have that first cup of coffee?  

What about the close of your day? Do you reflect on what has been? Is there gratitude? Is there processing or putting away disappointments and stresses? Is their deeper breathing, exhaling the day, so that you can venture into the next.

Is there a cadence or defined start to your week? Do you have a day or time or process where you set out your week, center yourself, plan meals, goals, seek balance?

I am really feeling the need for more intention in order to reclaim direction and focus. I plan to turn to some of our church’s more meditative practices.

My mind these days feels like it must bear a striking resemblance to my office. I have long claimed at least a smidge of ADHD, but my level of distraction and inability to focus on just one thing is startling. I fear that I am far from alone in this, as others have expressed experiencing the same. We not only have a lot on our plates, and have taken multi-tasking to new heights, but are inundated with ever more carefully curated information and solicitations to capture our attention along with various immediate modes of communication. Even if a text, email, advertisement, post, or news brief doesn’t require anything of us, it stays with us and becomes part of the jumble. And the more scattered we get, like a moth to a flame, the more we pick up our phones seeking direction from the very source of our fractured attention.  

When I teach the fifth graders centering prayer, I am always struck by the deep release of going five to seven minutes without thinking about anything, intentionally resetting whenever a thought, good, bad, profound, or mundane interrupts the nothing. I am realizing that I need much more decluttering, like defragging a computer.

I also realize that I am clinging more and more to the order, direction, and support I find in my faith community. The habit of beginning each week with church, and, for me, the many touchstones (Wednesday noon service, Thursday service and Bible study, school services, Saturday Bible study) help me refocus and reclaim more intentionality and meaning in my life.  

My discipline this year is to frame my year, my seasons, my weeks and my days more intentionally. I intend to lean in even more to the balance that church provides and let church not only kick start my week but foster deliberate daily disciplines to guide me toward that life that God dreams for me, and for which my deeper being longs.

As we stand at one of those starting posts, the beginning of a new program year, I pray for each of you greater balance, clearer focus, more intentionality, a deeper appreciation for and presence in each moment, and a growing confidence in God’s guidance in your life.

God speed,

Ben+

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