just enough light

I do not play chess. I’m not a quilter. I’m not a bird-watcher nor do I collect spoons from different states. Yet, I know people who do these things. And they do them passionately. I often wonder, how? Why? These activities seem uninteresting, even boring to me.

Lenten disciplines remind me that any activity done consciously and with attention is, is what? That’s the question.

One of my top 5 books of all time is Running and Being by George Sheehan (right). I jogged regularly when I read it many years ago, which accounts for some of why it was important. I have reread parts of it many times since then. One of the lessons I took from Sheehan was: There is no such thing as a boring activity. There are only boring people. That’s my simplistic distillation of his thought.

If I find an activity boring or full of drudgery, it is because I have not chosen the activity consciously, and therefore I am not open to what the activity has to show me.

My friends who are bird-watchers and quilters have taught me enough for me to know that one reason I don’t do those activities is not because they are boring, but because they involve far more than I am willing to learn.   And they involve a greater commitment of time than I am willing to give. They have stories about bird-watching excursions they have taken, quilts they have sewn, and the nuanced experiences of engaging in those activities. I only see the obvious. I am not willing to learn the subtleties. I choose to put my time into other things, which they might find boring.

Therefore, I suspect it does not matter what we chose for a Lenten discipline. It only matters that we choose something and devote the time to discover what it means to do it consciously. I do believe that the world opens up in even the most mundane task or object if we have the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it.  I think even Jesus said something about that.