Contemplatives at Work

Musings of a man of prayer on work, life, and all that.

For some time, now — well, decades, actually — I have been trying to write a book. It will get done, I am sure, as I am sure that others will follow in its train. I was in recent conversation with a friend with whom I have been discussing the spiritual life for the last five or six years and he said to me, “Look, just start writing articles. Write daily reflections. Write a devotional. You’ve been talking about the book for years. Just get your stuff out there.”

And he was right. The old saw is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In waiting until we have it just right, all in order, perfectly ordered, and perfectly defensible, much time is lost. Frustration builds. Momentum ebbs and flows. That’s been my story for several years — and if you are on this initial list, you have hard me say it and you have seen it, too.

Another friend once told me when I told him, years back, that I wanted to write a book, “now’s the perfect time.” I asked him, “Really?,” and then he gave me all the reasons why.

What about you? What is right now the perfect time for? Don’t delay any longer.

As I begin this project, Contemplatives at Work, my goal is to build a readership that becomes a community of people whose work is the fruit of their prayer, and for whom the point of it all is not the work: it’s the prayer. Prayer first, not when we “have time,” or second or third, after checking the news and the email…

Prayer is the purpose of our life. We were created for communion with God. That initial communion was ruptured by sin, and it is restored through the work of Christ, who redeemed us from slavery to sin and inserted us into his very life, such that we live communion with God by living union with God. We live this union, we reach its fullness, only through prayer that arises from the depths of our hearts and the depths of our lives.

I expect I will be posting quite a bit: at least twice weekly, and maybe more, as my rhythm develops. Free subscribers get the overview, the general points; my paid subscribers get nuts-and-bolts content in which I share with them what, specifically, has worked and not worked for me, how to local prayer and its related disciplines more centrally in their lives, and how to deal with the obstacles that invariably arise when one sets out upon the arduous and beautiful work of authentic prayer.

Why prayer, when one can write on so many things? Well, for one, I think that right now there is a surfeit of good to great material on the virtues. An acquaintance of mine, Dr. Andrew Abela, Dean of the Busch School of Business at CUA, has just written a book on the virtues called Superhabits, and, from the looks of the excerpts he is currently publishing on LinkedIn, it looks to be terrific. My first spiritual director, the Episcopalian Very Rev. Dr. Kenneth B. Swanson, has also just published Entering the Kingdom: Embracing Christian Virtue. It, too, looks to be excellent, even taking into considerations some refocusing I might make of the material through a Catholic lens.

And, as I say above, prayer is the purpose of our life. When we put first things first, everything else falls into place.

Ok, that’s it for now! I’ll find a header and “pretty it up.” Today’s complete read is free: future reads follow the format of general insights for free, details for subscription.

Spread the word! This is going to be fun.