Good morning all,
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days and decided that now is a good time to implement these things.
As far as Lent goes, I made myself a plan.
This plan started out very simply. I wanted to learn to do the Daily office, and incorporate table blessings into my family's life.
Well, it sort of got bigger from there.
Rob Brown challenged me to do the Daily Office every day for a wweek using the Daily Office online from Mission St. Clare. http://www.missionstclare.com/english/ So, the mobile site that I use on my ipod is a Lot easier to use, but I guess that means I should do some investigating of the desktop version as well. Maybe I'll learn something.
As far as the table blessing aspect goes, I thanked God for everyone that had anything to do with the preparing of what I ate for breakfast. PB&J and a bananna. Not elegent, but there ya go.
So as I started to think about Lent as a whole I stumbled upon something awesome last week. In the newsletter that the Diocese puts out every two weeks by email, there was a link called 'Monastic Internships'.
My first reaction was "Oh wow, that's awesome!" I find it important that what actually got me considering the priesthood in the first-place was a TLC Documentary series called The Monastery where five ordinary guys went to live in a Monestary for 40 days.
So when I saw the link, I immediately felt this urge to learn everything I could about it. So while investigating the site, I found that even though it's a Monastery that consists of men, they're offering the monastic internship experience to women as well. So I was like, "oh yeah, gotta check this out."
The more I read, the stronger my urge became to give it a try. My gut reaction was to fill out the application right there and then. But cooler heads prevailed and I waited. I sent the email to my spiritual director and told him about it and my feelings on it and asked if we could talk about it.
Some of the things drawing me to it are the sense of community where the main focus is their developing a deeper relationship with God, the ability to learn more about the Anglican tradition (I figure if I'm considering being a priest in a church that I don't know much about, I can't really make the best decisions), the structured way of living, and the opportunities to participate in their ministries.
So I talked to Roy about it and I emailed Charlie about it and they both thought it was a great idea, so I filled out the application. Interestingly I ran into a bit of a good problem while filling out the application. They wanted two references, one a clergy-person that knew me very well. Therein lies the problem. The number of clergy I have surrounded myself with could have easily been four or five. So, what I decided to do was to put Roy down as my reference and my best friend Wes as another. I figured with our conversations on lots of things and Roy's understanding of why I found this internship opportunity beneficial would hopefully go a long way.
As with last year when I was applying for Episcopal Service Corps internships, a good reference may not get you into the internship. So I remain gardedly optimistic.
So, back to Lent.
I mentioned the internship because looking at the monastery's website, it gave me an idea. I need structure. In fact, I feel like I'm yearning for some sort of structure. So using their daily schedule as a model, I created my own with a couple goals in mind.
To make space for God every day, to spend quiet time with God.
To give myself a little bit of freedom within the structure. Having choices for things to do helps a lot.
If I'm going to continue on in higher education, I need the GRE. It's all paid for, I just have to take it, I have no more excuses, other than I've been Really lazy. So, I have study time set out to either study the GRE or read some books that I've gathered on spirituality and such.
Other than that, I think just seeing the schedule will make sense.
7:30 Morning Prayer
8:00 Breakfast/ shower
9:00 Quiet time/ walking dogs
10:00-12:30 Study
Housework
Free time
Etc.
12:30 Lunch and clean up
1:30-5:00 Study
Housework
Free time
Etc.
5:00 Feed Dogs/Evening Prayer
5:30-8:00 Dinnertime
8:00 Family time
10:00 Compline/Quiet time
So, I wanted to create a routine that could flex if it needed to. Dinner time in-particular is not a static thing. Especially with my parents working, it could be as late as 9 o'clock.
I've been trying out various aspects of this since Monday. My schedule may change a bit here and there bases on how things are going, but for now I'm going to stick with this basic template.
So now my friends who read my blog, I'm curious, what are your plans for Lent? Don't feel bad if you don't have any, I'm the only one in my house who does.
Blessings to you all.
Leave a Comment with what you're thinking for Lent.
Nancy
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