Finding More Time to Pray During a Busy Day at Work

Our last two posts referenced the opening lines to a song from the Rogers and Hammersteing musical The Sound of Music. It occurred to me some of you may not be familiar with this work. So we'll reveal the name of the song at the end of today's post. Until then, we focus on finding more time to pray during a busy day at work.   

As we have in recent posts, let's start with those two rules that help us create time during our day to build our Interior Life, even as we attend to the duties of our state of life:

1. I will always take more time than is necessary to do everything. This is the way to avoid being in a hurry and getting excited.

2. Since I will invariably have more things to do than time in which to do them, and this prospect preoccupies me and gets me all worked up, I will cease to think about all I have to do, and only consider the time I have at my disposal. I will make use of that time, without losing a moment of it, beginning with the most important duties; and as regards those that may or may not get done, I shall not worry about them.

We saw some of the successes we've had following these rules. We've also recognized that not every day affords the time we might think we should have for our spiritual lives. Today, we'll consider some roadblocks that can deflect our efforts on a regular basis, even when we've carved out time for God in the midst of a busy day.

Our focus is on "regular" items. We're not talking about crises that arise in the normal course of business, or occasionally being sick or injured. Rather, we're considering human nature - specifically fallen human nature. We won't attempt to cover all possibilities; but let's look at a few. These come from a wise monk who wrote a relatively famous book about contemplative prayer. He notes that it's not unusual for us fallen creatures to be subject to the following, sometimes on a daily basis: "daydreaming, vainglorious thoughts, vindictive thoughts, imaginings of pleasure of sense and so on." Let's look at each.

Daydreaming

Different people have varying propensity towards daydreaming. Some spend inordinate amounts of time star-gazing. Others might, from time to time, become distracted by random thoughts consisting of just about any subject you might imagine. Whatever your tendency, take a few minutes to think about this. Assess how much time daydreaming might fill your day. Unless you're independently wealthy and don't need to work, you likely can't afford huge chunks of time out of your day daydreaming. But you might be surprised how much time daydreaming can suck up in a day or a week.

Vainglorious Thoughts

"Vainglorious" isn't a term much used anymore. It means being excessively proud of oneself or one's achievements. I'm guessing it's not used much these days because of our "me" culture. We're typically encouraged to take pride in ourselves and our achievements. Taken to extremes, this turns vainglory into a virtue! Now, there may be a time and place for self-congratulation. But in my experience it's way too much exaggerated. It's similar to our constantly congratulating and rewarding our children for everything from waking up in the morning to finishing 4th grade, etc. It's just excessive, isn't it? Anyway, you may not think you're "vainglorious" but do consider whether you may not be spending too much time and energy patting yourself on the back.

Vindictive Thoughts

Maybe you don't consider yourself an especially vindictive person. But if we broaden this term a bit, it can include being resentful, even being annoyed, with another person's behavior. Then there's gossip. It's just so ubiquitous. If we cut out gossip or even thinking about others in a judgmental manner, I suspect it would free up a chunk of time and brain-power for many or us. As for being actually vindictive, if you have that tendency, or are currently vindictive toward a particular person, do your best to quell it. It's eventually going to lead to sinful thoughts and behaviors if it hasn't already.

Imaginings of Pleasure of Sense

Isn't this a pleasant, ralther delicate description on the part of our holy monk? But you know what he means here. And such imaginings can be anything but delicate. We're surrounded by all sorts of sense pleasure in this world of ours. It's not easy to avoid. And, worse, sometimes we're enamored of one or the other forms of sense pleasure and become hooked by temptation, worse, sin. How much time does this sort of thing take up during the course of a day?

Moving on, even if we spend little time on each of these, they add up. And that time could be spent with God, even in the midst of the busiest day. Don't you think?

Which means that even if we follow our two rules, we've still go to be on the look-out for these time-suckers. Each minute our thoughts and emotions stray where they shouldn't is a minute you could have spent on either of the two areas we need to exert our best efforts: prayer and work.

Make sense?

There are likely more items that could serve as roadblocks to creating those chunks of time for God, for building our Interior Life. The more we're aware of them, the more we dig them up and toss them out of the way, the more time we'll have to pray during a typically busy day at work.  

Oh, and about that song, here it is: