Last Weekend in Jersey

I’m back from vacation, getting ready to head back to Seattle on Tuesday night! As I prepare to transition from the novitiate experience to full time ministry, I’m of course wondering how I’ll manage the transition. Will I find time for the prayer and contemplation I’ve come to value so much? That’s my main question, although there are others that have to do with a new ministry situation, new living situation, new town, etc ….

I have to admit that when I was reading The Book of the Blessed Ones, written by our founder in 1874, I was struck by the fact that she felt it necessary to address the busyness of her time!

It is impossible to have God’s peace unless we obey God’s law, unless we meditate on it. This great truth is easily forgotten in all the hurry and excitement of the age in which we live. It is an age which not only loves excitement, but which can gratify its desire. …

How can people who are perpetually changing from place to place have time to meditate? How can people who are living in a constant state of excitement have inclination to meditate? …

And yet one will sometimes hear such persons exclaiming with the air of victims that they are so tired of all this change, or that they really are so sorry they have not more time to think of serious things. ...

Yet, as we have said, through and because of this very self-deceit, persons are persuaded that they “cannot help” a course of conduct which is threatening their spiritual life with ruin, they are not indeed without some dim misgivings. But they do not look to them; self-deceit quickly clouds their thoughts; or their very restlessness, the incessant change, actually prevents them from discovering the danger to which it is driving them.

They say they have not time to think, but it is precisely this misuse of time which may be so fatal. We never hear people saying they have not time for any pursuit or occupation on which they have set their hearts.

~ M.F. Cusack, The Book of the Blessed Ones, 1874

So, in the end, I suppose it does really come down to intention. Good to remember. My guess is Margaret Anna knew that of which she wrote.