Occupy our calendars

As a new year stretches forward, there wait 365 square blocks of open calendar space to fill up with our living.  These calendars are an unscribbled canvas filled with all the possibilities we can dream and imagine for the year ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a minor deceit, however, in this belief, the mistaken notion that each square is ours for the having.  The wisdom of the ages is this: all we are promised is one square – today.

As I enter this new calendar year, I’m trying to live with the understanding that nothing more is promised me than the gift of today, to offer the whole year up to God and receive it back, day by day.

How long can I sustain that sort of mindful living?

Not sure, but here’s a fine prayer from Walter Brueggemann to regularly pray throughout the year.

Our times are in your hands:

But we count our times for us;

we count our days and fill them with us;

we count our weeks and fill them with our busyness;

we count our years and fill them with our fears.

And then caught up short with your claim,

Our times are in your hands!

Take our times, times of love and times of weariness,

Take them all, bless them and break them,

give them to us again,

slow paced and eager,

fixed in your readiness for neighbour.

Occupy our calendars,

Flood us with itsy-bitsy, daily kairoi,

in the name of your fleshed kairos.  Amen