WEDNESDAY OF THE THIRTEENTH WEEK OF ORDINARY TIME
Feast of St. Barnardino Realino (1616), Priest

Dear Father:

My, it has been a long while since I have talked to you. Shame on me! I really need to get into the discipline of more regular entries to this Journal.

Maybe this is a good time to tell a story. We all get so busy. The 20th and 21th centuries are, I believe, plaqued with "busyness". Perhaps busyness is among the top five sins of our time.

A story is told of a couple of archeologists wanting to go to a dug in the jungles of Central America. The professors hired local native peoples as porters to guide them to the site and carry equipment and supplies.

The caravan of archeologists, porters, and grad students marched quickly through the jungle for most of the day; the professors were anxious to get to the site as quickly as possible. Then, all of a sudden, the porters just stopped and sat down. The professors did not know what to think. They ask the head porter why they has stopped, but the porter refused to answer. The professors asked a couple more times and still the head porter refused to answer.

Finally and suddenly, just as suddenly as they had stopped, the porters got up and bagan to continue the march to the archeological dug site.

One of the professors asked the head porter, "What was all that about? Why did you stop, and why have you now just as suddenly started again?"

The head porter explained, "We were walking so fast that we left our souls behind. We stopped to allow our souls to catch up."

There is a major lesson in that story that we all need to take to heart. Busyness will not bring us happiness or make us more spiritual. It will tear us down. It will "leave our souls behind".

Our Lord tells us, "Be STILL and KNOW that I am God." We cannot do that in the midst of hurry, hurry, hustle, hustle lifestyles. We all need to make a promise to ourselves to be in solitude and silence for a few minutes each day, and to disciple ourselves to be good stewards of the time God has given us.

I joke about asking God to make the day 52 hours instead of 24, but He always denies the prayer. It is frankly a sin for me to be so busy that I cannot make entries in this Journal for two months, or to pray as I ought, to read and study, to mediate and contemplate the glory of God.

There is NO business, NO job, NO project, NO apostolate, NO ministry, NO anything that is worth losing intimacy with God. We cannot have that intimacy on the run. We must stop and "smell the roses" as the old saying goes, we must be "still and know that God is God," we must appropriate the time to "not busy".

We can do it if we want. And if our schedule has us already overcommitted, then work off the schedule and DO NOT RE-SCHEDULE more that would intrude on the time one needs with God (and family), then begin to practice good stewardship of time from then on.

I am resolved to do that for myself. I must do it since my Rule of Life requires me to do it. I challenge others to try it too.

Father, I pray that you will enlighten all God's children the prudence of good stewardship of time. Help them and me to resist the temptation to overbook our schedules that would cause us to be too busy to notice the flower growing in the crack of the sidewalk, or the hummingbirds fluttering near a a honeysuckle rose bush.

This world our God has created is so beautiful and the people He created are so beautiful, help us to not be so busy that we miss just how beautiful they are for lack of time to notice.

Thank you Father Elijah for listening. Amen.

Your miserable servant,
Brother Bubba

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