On Being Here Now (or, Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi Craves Not These Things)

One of the guys at Ace Hardware back in the day was on cashier duty, and business must have been slow. He tied a small metal nut to a piece of string two or three feet long, tied the other end to a hook on the impulse-buy candy rack by the exit door, and attached a magnet to the same rack, two or three feet higher. Then he adjusted the length of the string such that the nut couldn't quite reach the magnet, but was so close that it literally hung in midair, levitating, maybe a quarter of an inch beneath its goal. Four years I worked at that store, and our little magnet display never stopped being cool. Thing is, though: if anybody jostled the candy rack, even a little bit, the nut instantly fell. Hard not to be reminded of the spiritual life.

I've got problems. At the end of a good day, I can look back and only check off half a dozen of the Seven Deadlies. But I wonder sometimes if my greatest failing mightn't be my tendency to coast through the work day, waiting for it to be over, instead of engaging it, living it. Rarely is my mind on where I am, what I'm doing—and if it is, I resent the necessity of focus, the intrusion on my private thoughts. My favorite tasks are ones like pulling weeds or stacking chairs, that draw no cerebration. And sometimes that's okay! As long as the work gets done, it's not awful if you happen to be composing goofy couplets in your head at the same time. But.

"Whether you eat or you drink or whatsoever you do, do it all to the Glory of God" (Corinthians 10:31). Any task, every task, becomes holy if one simply remembers to consecrate it. At the beginning of the day (on a good day) I say a prayer that goes like this: "O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in union with Your Most Precious Blood poured out on the Cross and offered in every Mass, I offer you today my prayers, works, joys, sorrows, and sufferings, for the praise of Your Holy Name and all the desires of Your Sacred Heart, for the conversion of sinners, the union of all Christians, our Holy Father the Pope, and our final union with You in Heaven." It's a beautiful prayer, and it starts the day in a beautiful way. Except then something horrible happens. I have to get out of bed. And when I'm petty or petulant during the day, I fear that it's worse than it would be if I hadn't dedicated my actions to the Lord. Aspiring to the height always means a longer fall.

A Christian should look forward to death. It's a bad thing in itself, but it's been transmuted into a doorway to all Good. And I do look forward to it. But I don't want to find myself in a nursing home (like the place where I spend every working day) looking back on a life spent looking forward to the grave. When He finished writing the world, God looked on all that He had made and found it good. It's not a place we should be coasting through.