So you say that you realize life is so rich that you are unable to encompass it all. Good for you! A little humility and wonder is step one.
Step two I borrow from Robert Morneau, auxiliary bishop in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay. It was during a lecture on C.S. Lewis that I heard Morneau promulgate the advice to spend your time only on the best. There are too many books for any of us to read them all, he told us, so we should search out the very best and read those. I don't know where this advice came from first. Like most good advice, it is so obvious that it needs to be repeated frequently.
The third step, which I nearly forgot, is to live in "Indian time". Indian time was originally a pejorative term used by Euro-Americans to denigrate Native Americans who didn't make themselves slaves to schedules. But someone turned the tables by defining Indian time as giving each task the time it deserves. No doubt it was a Native American who came up with this redefinition, and I'm pretty sure that it was a Native American who gave the interpretation to my parents, who repeated it to me. Other people have the gift of doing this, including my friend Travis.
My own step four is to remind you, and thus me, that what is most important should come first. Whatever has secondary importance can come later, assuming there is an opportunity. Why this advice is so hard for me to put into practice I have yet to learn, but I do frequently quote myself when planning events for others. You may notice that I'm not offering advice on what actually is the most important. Partly you already know and partly, I think, it varies by person and time, which leads me to ...
... the fifth step,
which is to listen to the instructions of the Spirit.
I first wrote "the advice of the Spirit",
but realized that I personally don't recall
ever getting any advice from God.
I have had the experience of being told what to do
and of being told I can't do something that I intended to do.
Overall, life is better following those instructions.
I don't like being told what to do
and typically raise every psychological barrier
I have available at the first hint of it.
Instructions from God can overcome those barriers,
much like a 25-foot flood overcomes a 3-foot pile of sandbags.
(Thus God acts in all his saints:
he makes them do very willingly what they do not want to do at all.
Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans.
Translated by Wilhelm Pauk; Westminster Press, 1961; page 327;
commenting on Romans 12:2.)
Despite giving this advice, I don't quite believe
that I want to live in the flood all the time.
Maybe I do, but I don't believe it.
Finally, I paraphrase advice which I believe also comes from Martin Luther (commenting on resolving the discrepancies between the gospels of Matthew and Luke). If you make a wrong choice, let it go; you won't be damned to hell because of that. So, if you pick up a book that isn't very good, let it go. If you order your tasks in reverse, let it go. If you don't listen when the Spirit speaks, be chagrined but not consumed.
Well, what do you think? I always appreciate when someone asks me for advice. I learn so much by creating it.
01 Mar 2008