What are you doing—for the next 90 days?
Here’s what I’ve been doing, and what I recommend to others: focus on the next 90 days.
How much do you love your work?
Even a job you love can become a drag–witness much of pastoral ministry during lockdown, or ministry through a time of church conflict. There is much you can’t change about the reality of this ministry challenge. Still, consider how you might change what you bring to it.
The pleasures of routine—even in prayer
There can be a lot of “should” in the spiritual life—I should pray more, go back to in-person worship, read the Bible more. What it would be like to make pleasure rather than duty one of the motives for spiritual practice? What spiritual activities do you enjoy, and can you do more of them? Can you make a routine of them?
Are you worried?
I still worry. But at least I understand more deeply that it is a waste of energy. God gives me the ability to make choices in the present to make at least a small difference in the world.
A Pentecost experience with Italian
Learning Italian in my 60s reminds me that Pentecost, and every day of the year, I have the opportunity to connect with people who speak, live, and think differently than I do.