It is not easy to unplug from our busy schedules, or our pattern of modern life so consuming as it is of our human resources and so promising as it is of rewards such as leisure, comfort, and love. I found Alana Levandoski’s journey from mainstream musician to monastic motherhood illuminating.
Part of her journey involved a healing 6 months with Benedictine Nuns. Today she is a powerful witness to how a liturgical calendar, or monastic schedule, can center us in Christ so that all we do, or all we fail to do, in the course of a day becomes a prayer.
Alana writes,
“We use a regular calendar but were also recently given a liturgical calendar that operates on the Christian narrative instead of the months. It’s a reminder to us that we choose to live outside of the dominant narrative of this culture. And the other part that makes our days sacred is that we try to see the whole of what we do, whether interacting with Oliver, writing an email or doing laundry, as incarnate, holy activity.
It’s definitely a freeing schedule – not a binding schedule. You wake up in the morning and you are excited to be alive. You look forward to the day ahead, knowing that your day is intentional.”
http://www.kolbetimes.com/behold-i-make-all-things-new/
It is never too late to be truly tethered in a liturgical life no matter what your vocation so that each day becomes a Eucharistic encounter with Christ. A change in calendars will help us do just that.
In our daily mayhem it is good also to remember that God want’s to give us more than we can steal.