I've been reading some blogs. Well, actually, a blog today. The blog post that I want to share with you today comes from Amy Welborn, who is a Catholic author and who lost her husband about a month ago or so. The blog post is called "
Giving up something for Lent"
In her blog post, she talks about how we as church workers face a temptation for to let our work become our spiritual lives:
That is- you are tempted to let all sorts of things fall by the wayside in your personal life because those things are a part of work. They fall to the wayside either because you decide that since these things somehow characterize your work or make up part of your workday...been there, done that..scratch that off the list for today.
So perhaps because you led a bunch of kids in prayer several times in school or you (yes) said Mass or because you led a prayer service before a meeting or even participated in a prayer service before a meeting...you neglect personal prayer time.
Or because you do Scripture study or instruction with students, you almost never sit with the Word of God yourself anymore, by yourself, just listening.
Or because your paycheck is so small and your hours are so long and the problems never really end you figure....well, that's my almsgiving.
The other, slightly more negative reason that the spiritual lives of church workers goes to pot is that work sometimes goes to pot and worst of all, "ministry" becomes a job, then a job that is endured and even disliked and when you can finally get away from it, the last thing you want to do is think about religion. Or even, you know, God.
I hope to never lose my hunger for the spiritual despite the "I already know it" attitude that I can sometimes posses and the always present temptation of letting my work be my spiritual life. It's easy to tune out that which is familiar: a favorite Scripture passage, the Holy Mass, sometimes even our friends or our community members. Each of these familiar things is an encounter with Jesus, or at least it can be if we're open to it.
Personally, one way that I like to keep things exciting and fresh in the spiritual life is by writing. More specifically, by blogging. (Yea, spiritual blogging) I find that whenever I sit down with the Gospel for the Sunday and go through it, seeing what everything says, the implications, the stories, the backstories, the textual context, the historical context, I can come to a better understanding of how God is at work in the world. If I know that someone else is going to read it -- or at least that someone, anyone, could read it -- I have the accountability of the community of the Internet (more likely my friends and family). I will spend more time struggling with the text in order to produce fruit.
So I guess that's why I blog, for spiritual reasons. How do you keep away from the attitude that Amy describes above?
