It would seem I have lost ten days of events to the pace of life…or at least I’ve lost the telling about those ten days worth of events . The pace has not been unmanageable, but I have not learned fully how to work with slow, constant, intentionality and still get everything on my bloated list done. Maybe that’s the point, eh?

Tonight I sit listening to an Epic Playlist On Youtube.

I am contemplating several words I have received from the Lord recently, and one I received at the beginning of the year when I was attending my son’s wedding in The Philippines.

At that time God told me that I had entered a new season of life. He told me the year would be divided into four parts. The first quarter would be about me entering the new phase of life. The second quarter was about settling into the new rhythm of life. The third would be about accomplishing the new phase, and the final quarter would be about finishing the work of the new phase.

This has been a unique year for all of the obvious reasons. It would have been a new season simply because the whole world has changed. In that respect, 2020 is a whole new ball game for everyone. In addition, the Lord told me I was to embrace a lifestyle of living by faith financially for this year. It has been an amazing journey. While I know no one can do this without God’s command behind them, I wish everyone had the opportunity. I have been so liberated by God being my paycheck for the last ten months.

Beyond that I thought the new was going to be about me finishing my book and becoming a full time writer. As it turns out I will finish my book by year’s end and I may just end up becoming a full time writer, but the change has not been primarily about that either. Writing, living by faith financially these are all just parts of the season which I expect will fade as seasons do. The permanent change has been to this rhythm of slow, constant, intentionality. It is something I have been working on for twenty years, and God has used this year to complete the work of transitioning to this rhythm even as the world continues to increase its speed of living..

We are in October now. The beginning of the finishing of this permanent change. I do believe I am carrying this with me into eternity….slow, constant, intentional. I have entered it. I have settled into nicely. I have spent the last three months practicing the form. Now these three months are about perfecting the skills I have learned and applying them to every area of my life. Here we go!

In July and August I participated in a two month experiment called “The Celtic Spiritual Journey” with a group of people from several different churches through the region. The goal was to experiment with the lifestyle many Celtic monks used in ages past. The disciplines we attempted were three times of daily Scripture reading and prayer as well intentional commitment to one of seven daily disciplines.Sunday: Sabbath Monday: Study/learn something new; Tuesday: Work; Wednesday: Silence/Solitude; Thursday: hospitality; Friday: Pilgrimage; Saturday: Artistic expression.

I found the actual devotional aspect of the journey easy to incorporate into my lifestyle. I have lived by bells on my phone for several years. In fact I am doing it right now. As I write this piece I have my timer going for a thirty minute writing session. My day is divided into: Prayer, exercise, rest, work, writing, studying and relationship.All of those things are ordered according to the ringing of bells set into my phone.

The journey simply helped me to orchestrate my day into three blocks, starting with morning prayer I would follow the pathway through trying to divide the morning up into blocks so that I would have time to spend in each of the seven goals up until lunch. Then after lunch would come Mid Afternoon prayer and that would lead into an afternoon session of the goals until supper and then evening prayer and so on.

What I discovered is that the final time of devotion in the evenings and the final turn around the seven goals was very hard to bring myself to because I really just wanted my evening to myself to watch TV.

I also discovered that if I was to do the daily disciplines outside of the prayer and Scripture reading, they almost always called me away from the life of devotion I have come to call slow, constant and intentional living.

I write all this to say, this week has been busy. Finally today I got to simply pull back from all the doings outside the Vicarage and have a day that did not fight the bells. I have been able to get a lot of prayind and writing and studying done. It has felt good to be able to spend the time at my desk I need to in order to accomplish my writing and studying and praying tasks. It has been nice to be able to take breaks to do some household chores but to know I didn’t have to rush in order to get them and my writing done before having to run out of the house.

I really do think I would have made a good monk. Well except for the TV thing. and wanting my evenings to myself….Yeah I think I would have struggled with that…..

Well I am looking forward to tomorrow Dear Friends.

Pastor J