On time

I've been wanting to write about Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek cover story about Jesus.  Then, I read Fr. Robert Baron's  response about why Catholics stop going to church and the America magazine article that prompted it, and I wanted to write about that.  Then there is the business about the Vatican's crackdown on nuns in the U.S.

But I don't have enough time.

Sometimes I get caught up with the notion that I am going to have a Voice and take part in the Big Conversation.  I'm skittish about getting political as you might notice here and also here, and yet I have a lot of opinions.  Writing about them in this forum, in public (however small the readership may be) gives me a sense of personal agency.  I feel less oppressed by the other voices outside of me and in my own head.

But it takes time.

There is input -- reading, praying.  And then there is output.

What I know is that whatever God really wants me to do to fulfill my mission in the world, I'll have time to do.  Sometimes it doesn't feel that way.  But it's true.

That means if I feel too busy, if I feel like I don't have time for something, one of two things must be true:  Either that something is not really for me to do, or I'm doing something else that is taking up the time that ought to go to that something.

I want to have time, first, to listen.  When you call or e-mail, when my kids come home from school, when my husband drags in from work, I want to have time to listen. 

Right this minute my eight year old is waiting impatiently for us to finish a game of Monopoly over a bowl of popcorn.

So for today, and maybe tomorrow, the Big Conversation will have to continue without me.