Jen's got a post with an excellent insight, one I hope I'll remember. I try to "pray without ceasing," turning to God regularly as I go about my days, but lately I'd been increasingly apathetic about having any kind of set prayer time where I give God 100% of my attention. Even though I recognized that when I pray the Liturgy of the Hours it helps me on every level, even when I tried setting simpler goals like just focusing on freeform prayer for five minutes per day, it still wasn't happening. I have a very similar problem. I love the LOTH. Every time I pick up the breviary and begin to pray an office, I am instantly happy and thankful that I am doing it. It's like discovering thirst only at the moment that you begin to drink. The reward is immediate. But I seem to forget, in between, how much I enjoy it and am glad for it. I put it off and put it off and never get around to it. And my goal is only to pray one office -- any office, whichever one is appropriate for the time I pick up the breviary -- per DAY. You pray before battle.... If I were going into battle tomorrow -- a real battle, facing bloodshed and mortal danger -- I would pray. I wouldn't have to remind myself why it's important. I wouldn't whine about it. I wouldn't drag my feet. And I dang sure wouldn't forget. In fact, if I were doing anything of great importance, I would naturally turn to prayer. This is a good insight, and something I have noticed before in myself. Anecdotally, I have heard many people who are not particularly religious or even some nonbelievers tell of impulses to pray that have bubbled up in times of great fear or stress. We look for help from anywhere, I suppose, at such times. It's the source of that old saying "There are no atheists in foxholes." But the key insight Jen went on to point out is, I think: A big problem with my prayer life is that I'd stopped feeling like I do anything important on a day-to-day basis. Now, I've always known that my job is the most important job in the world; I've never doubted that my role as a mother is critical in the grand scheme of things. But on the average day? Hmm. Not so much. Somewhere along the way my attitude had become saturated with ennui, and I came to see my days as consisting of "make breakfast," "clean up after breakfast," "try to keep the house from getting destroyed between breakfast and lunch," "make lunch," and so on. Not very exciting. I'd made the dangerous mistake of forgetting that every day is a battle, a war of good against evil, that every time I choose love instead of sin it's a victory on a cosmic level that I can't imagine. There are plenty of other consequences of failing to appreciate the true nature of things like work, including misplaced shame and disrespect for other humans engaged in dignified labor, and societal problems too. But what Jen's pointed out is something I hadn't noticed before, that it can lead directly to neglect of prayer life.
This is a theme I keep coming back to again and again: Respecting the work you do -- the work others do -- in service of our vocations. And by "respect" I don't just mean "remembering not to look down on the menial tasks of our livelihoods." I mean standing in awe of these tasks, for what they accomplish, at least a little bit, all the time.
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