Spiritual Reading

Too often I find myself distracted by the everyday happenings in my life -- going to the grocery store, returning phone calls and emails, remembering to stop by the pharmacy.  The list can seem endless.  My thoughts become anxious and resentful.  I am losing focus. 

Like many people who are not in religious life, my solution is to turn to things that bring me immediate relief.  So, I find myself searching the pantry for something to eat (not a piece of fruit, but usually a mound of potato chips) and then make my way to the TV room to flip endlessly through 300 channels, hoping to find something that will entertain me and make me forget my life.  As you can imagine, nothing works for very long.  Soon, the potato chips are gone (I'm hardly aware that I even ate them) and I have a dull headache from all of the noise.  Too many words and pictures bombarding my already overly stimulated mind.

As I sit in my room at the end of one of those days, I reflect back on what happened to bring me to that point.  Where did the day begin to go wrong?  I generally know the answer even before I seek it out.  I didn't take enough time to pray in the morning.  I lost my focus even before my day began.  It is so difficult, if not impossible, to bring God into all of the activities of my life if I don't first start the day with Him.

This morning, instead of my usual habit of getting a cup of coffee and watching CNN (God forbid I miss the details of the latest disaster or of Chelsea Clinton's wedding), I've returned to my formative years as a brother and started spiritual reading again.  This is not to say that I haven't prayed or read anything in the past 20 years.  However, the routine sometimes becomes old and stale, no longer life-giving.  This morning, after weeks of agony, I realized how much I need the quiet spaces in my life to recollect myself and nurture my relationship with God, especially through his son, Jesus.

On this beautiful Sunday morning, I began to read a book I bought on retreat several years ago.  I found it in the gift shop at the Trappist monastery in Georgia.  I wasn't ready for the book when I bought it.  I was still too busy and unfocused.  Looking back, I realize that the book has been waiting for me.  I need to read it.  Even as I begin to read the introduction and the first few pages of the opening chapter, my mind begins to become a bit more calm and my heart a little more alive.  The book is "Jesus, the Teacher Within" by Laurence Freeman, a Benedictine monk and director of the World Community of Christian Meditation.  I look forward to his insights about who Jesus is as I try to answer that very same question for myself.

What are you reading these days?  Can you make some suggestions?

Thanks.

Bro. Jonathan