Time Made Holy

On growing prayer through work

“You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets. You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled. You’ll have fish left over.” –Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Vincent van Gogh, The Flowering Orchard, Public Domain, Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The first book I bought my son before he was born was called The Monk who Grew Prayer. It opens with the lines, “A monk prayed deep in the forest. It looked like he spent the day chopping wood, drawing water from the stream, repairing his best and only chair, and growing vegetables in his garden. But as he worked, he was really growing prayer.” What appears as ordinary work is transformed into prayer through the monk’s posture of presence, receptivity, and work. As the rhythms of day and night and different seasons pass, the monk indeed draws closer to holiness.

Now this might seem like a strange first book to give a newborn. But I think I probably bought this book more for me than for him because I knew time, which was once my own, would become shared. Days and nights would become switched and swaddled in hazy memories of half-awake surviving. But I didn’t want our days and minutes spent together to be something measured by the ticking of the clock. (This might be why I have such a hard time filling out “memory books.”) But this little picture book showed me something of how time didn’t need to mark successes, failures, or milestones, but rather could be something that just held together ordinary tasks—tasks that could be made holy.

Today’s culture is much different than this ancient way of understanding time. But I still grasp that sense of ancient time—time that isn’t doled out by a blinking smart watch. We bounce from activity to activity without seeing that something is lost when we miss the rhythms and seasons—the first crocus as a sign that winter will end soon; the first cherry blossom as a sign that spring has arrived. Of course the liturgical season also gives us the beauty of seeing the cadence of time as an ebb and flow of feasts and joy as well as fasts and quiet. This is how time is familiar to the inner life.

Through my editing work, I accompany writers on their writing journey. For some, confronting the inefficiency of writing can be frustrating and daunting. We can practically snap our fingers, and an Amazon truck arrives with our groceries. But there is no quick or easy way to revise, and many good revisions come from a period of waiting. I talked to a songwriter recently who said that the important part of creativity is simply showing up to do the work. Showing up doesn’t necessarily equate to a finished product. It might even result in a product that will need to be changed completely. Showing up simply means you are prepared and present to start the real work of writing. In Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, she mentions an insight from Flaubert: “‘Talent is long patience, and originality an effort of will and of intense observation.’” Oliver says to notice what he is not talking about—namely, “the impulse toward writing, the inspiration and the mystery.” Instead, consider what he says about patience, the will, and observation. She calls these skills, but I would say that they sound more like virtuous activity shaping our very character.

In The Monk who Grew Prayer, we don’t see a clock, but his days are punctuated with prayer and very specific times of the day. Time is a reminder, but the monk isn’t beholden to its demands. He does his work, and his own flourishing becomes the measure of whether his work amounted to something good.

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To Ponder

What signs of beauty break into your life and serve as a gauge for holy time?

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Reading

From Ekstasis Magazine:

“The Island with No Words,” Paul Pastor

What is the thing that happens? An emptiness happens, sufficient to bring words out of the bard. He begins to sing his tales, to practice his craft of poetry. He plays with slanting rhymes and the beat of words, discovers the magic of language. Because of the emptiness, both days and nights are given to the bard. And the final result? Not only mere creation, or that kind of pseudo-creativity which those who only know the superficial silences may practice. No, Väinämöinen remembers.

Updates:

Fiat Self-Publishing Academy is open with two different membership levels. Last week, I offered a writing coaching session for fiction and nonfiction. Workshops like these and other events are available to members.

1) Self-Publishing 101 Roadmap ($347 for 1 year access)

A checklist, workbook, and course for those wanting to learn how to self-publish a good, true, and beautiful book through the lens of the Catholic faith.

Roadmap information

2) Monthly Author Membership ($35/month)

For Catholic self-published authors who want high-end business, marketing, and book coaching for a fraction of the cost. Plus community, instructor access, and so much more!

Author membership information

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