Back to Reflections
It is Monday morning and the city is waking up. At 6:30a.m. I’m sitting in bed cupping a mug of hot water with lemon and gazing out the window. As I watch the first stirrings of human life I am aware that for many this day is a dreaded day; a day when life hastens and familiar, perhaps monotonous or stress filled routines, begin again. I hear cars back out of driveways as they make their way toward busy streets. Their drivers stop for ‘caffeine fill ups’, then continue to distant offices, factories, schools and hospitals. Windows light up and I imagine young children with sleepy eyes being called for breakfast, while mothers fill lunch boxes, they themselves already ‘made up’ for the hectic day ahead. I see teenagers slowly dotting the sidewalks, slouching their way to bus stops half heartedly hoping to make it on time for sunrise music or sport practices. The first day of the work week is dawning.
For me Mondays are quite different. This is the day I slow my pace, stop, sense what is happening in my body, and consciously subtract or reduce all that is unnecessary. I’ve coined these days Monastic Mondays, for they are the day of the week when I become a self proclaimed hermit and the order of the day is to read, write, walk and pray my way through the hours between waking and sun set. On this day there is time to breathe deeply and take in moments as they come; there is time to discover what is here, now.
The inspiration for establishing Monastic Mondays arose while offering, Taking Time retreats. Taking Time was a popular retreat because the theme easily resonated with people across generations, locations and gender. Time, is something the modern world is grappling with, and James and I offered this retreat as a way of pondering the questions and struggles that most of us experience.
It is true we teach what we need to learn and I discovered during those retreats that I needed to learn about my relationship with time. For me, there is truth to the adage, ‘time moves more swiftly with age’. For example, my day timer, once a measure of what was happening today, is now likely to be filled weeks and months ahead. Often the future seems as close as the present and this convergence is overwhelming. There are many reasons for this shift including: the multiplication of years, the bombardment of technology and information, and ever growing personal and professional demands that result in an almost combustible level of multitasking. Participants on the Taking Time retreats echoed this experience. Questions arose including: What are the challenges of time? How do we try to resolve them? How do the struggles make us feel? And, what might support us as we work to relate more consciously to the mystery of time? The line of inquiry was sobering. Participants often described time as an enemy and felt helpless to change the relationship.
In response to this line of inquiry, I instituted Monastic Mondays as a personal attempt to address the feeling of being ‘swallowed’ by time. Essentially, Monastic Mondays are days when I rest and am nourished. On Monastic Mondays it is not necessary to answer phone calls, check emails, turn on the radio or television, talk, attend to the work of running a home and, other than walks in the park, leave the house. This is the day when home is my sanctuary. It is the day when I rest and gain perspective on what my life is about.
As my contribution to the Reflection section of the Mosaic Retreats web page I have decided to journal about my Monastic Mondays. I look forward to sharing my journey.
To be continued next month
