The Church of Saint Clarence Odbody

 If I were prone to attend an affinity church it would be something like:

The Church of Saint Clarence Odbody

formerly known as 

The Church of the Blessed Mess

It would have a sign (probably misspelled): 

“Welcome to the screwups, the not-good-enoughs, the awkwards and clumsies.  Welcome to the morons, the barely-made-its, and the can’t-you-be-on-times.  Welcome to the criticized, mocked, and ignored. 

Don’t expect that it will be better here, but we’re broken too.  

So perhaps we can share our brokenness.”

Religion and Relationship

“It’s not about religion, it’s about a relationship.” Have you seen that saying? Or maybe you have heard it; or both. I have heard it many times, and lately I pass this posted up on a church billboard. My first response, mental, but it IS also about what we BELIEVE, therefore, yes, it is “about religion” too. I may be reacting a bit, but I am a bit skeptical of anti-religious claims. Religion is hugely important. What we actually believe affects what we do, what we say. It would help ourselves and likely the people around us if we were more clear about what we believe and why.

So, what do you believe? Why do you believe it? Seriously, what stands at the core of your belief?

It is not that I came up with this question on my own. Some years back, my father asked his children this very question, challenging us to write it out. What do you simply accept, what is the undergirding, the foundation stones on which you rest everything else?

I started with, “God exists.”

I think I may have written about a page on just that, mostly copying scriptures. I did not continue writing out my beliefs, but that exercise in faith, reason, and belief had an impact on me. I realize that whether or not I fulfill my purpose in being, or even just understand it, God is God. He is and He is Good. I may never understand this world, but I am confident in that. Descartes began with, “I think, therefore I am,” and reasoned to the existence of a God outside himself. I am grateful for his reasoning, but must begin with God. He is our author.

I am a bit part in this play called life. I recognize that ultimately I hope to experience it as a traditional comedy—a story that ends well, has a happy conclusion. I recognize that along the way will be losses. I am not in control. I do get to choose how I act, though, and if I am sensitive to the Great Author’s promptings, maybe I will do the right things and say the right words at the right time. I am often slow. I am like the child who, after five rehearsals still does not even remember when it is her turn to step on the stage. How is it that God is still patient with me? I do not even know that, but I trust myself to his goodness and mercy because I believe.

This is my relationship with God. He calls. He opens my ears and mind and heart. I listen. He loves. I must love in return. “Must?” you might complain, but yes, “must” is the word. I do not understand how I could not love God. My earliest thoughts of him are connected to his death for me and because my sins. My earliest remembrance of him is connected to the Communion. “Why can I not eat and drink?” My mother explained what the bread and grape juice meant, that Jesus had died because of our sins to make us whole; that he rose again from the dead and wants to live in us so that we could be complete, we could inherit eternal life. I believed. Jesus loved me, enough to die for my sake. How could I not love him? I had to respond somehow, so I accepted his invitation to join him.  I would become his disciple, his daughter. When I turn to some sin that would separate me from God, he calls me by name.  When I would despair of ever "getting it right" he shows me one step and then another; one thing at a time, he teaches me.  It may take me three years to "get it", but he still continues to work with me. How can I not love him?

Is “it about relationship”? Yes, and it is also about religion. What I believe about God affects my relationship with God. What I believe affects what I say and do. I know a lot of what I believe.

Do you know what you believe? Do you know why?

1440

Regardless of how clever I am, I only have twenty four hours in each day.  I cannot delegate my way to more.  I cannot multitask my way to more.  I cannot expect that God will alter the course of the solar system to give me more. I cannot get more by force of will or superior argument.  Twenty four hours.  One thousand four hundred forty minutes: that is all anyone has to work with in the daily cycle.  

Subtract seven hundred twenty minutes for meals, hygiene, prayer, sleep.  Leaves seven hundred twenty minutes to do things.  

Each day.  

Only seven hundred twenty.

An eight hour job is usually longer at five hundred twenty two minutes.  One hundred ninety eight is all that’s left.

Subtract fifty one minutes for driving  to and from work .  One hundred forty seven remain.

Laundry, dishes, floors and such take another sixty six minutes leaving eighty one.

If I have meal prep, subtract thirty three.  Forty eight remain.

Forty minutes for Facebook (this is the American average): Eight left.

Fifteen minutes on necessary email. Nothing is left. Not even nothing.  Less than nothing.  

…

And I have not talked with you, yet.

Ora et Labora

Pray and Work.  
How do you keep your relationship with God active, integrated with the rest of life?  That is really difficult in the regular busy work life.
Something I've been using to help keep me on track is the Liturgy of the Hours.

It consists of prayers, hymns, psalms,, readings from scripture.  These are visited early, 6 am, 9 am, noon, 3 pm, 6 pm, and 9 pm.  Seven times a day! 

  I haven't (save in the most stressful times) prayed through the whole set each day, but I usually manage two or three times a day.  

I use an app iBreviary, but there is an web based version at http://divineoffice.org/  .  There is also has a podcast, but I don't find that the audio works as well for me.