attention

When you make your bed, make your bed for God

At night, my wife is always cold and I’m always hot. We used to try to share blankets, but inevitably, one or both of us was uncomfortable. For this reason, even though we sleep in the same bed, we sleep with separate blankets. This is our low-tech way of adjusting our personal heat settings. 

Because of our schedules, we both wake up fairly early, but I tend to wake up earlier. In fact, if my wife wakes up and I’m still in bed she knows I’m either exhausted or sick. In these rare instances, she is kind enough to just let me be and she gets our daughter ready for school, which is usually a task that we share. 

Each morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, the first thing I do is get on my knees to pray. I thank God for another day, I ask him to remove the things that are blocking me from being of service to him and my fellows, and I ask that he guides my thoughts, words, and actions so as to bear witness to his love, power, and way of life. 

After my initial prayers, while trying to remain quiet as to not wake my wife up, I fold the blankets on my side of the bed and go downstairs. This morning, however, when I looked at the blankets, I simply didn’t feel like folding them. I got up, looked at them, and turned to walk away, but then the thought popped into my mind, “When you make your bed, make your bed for God.” 

With this thought, I was overcome with a sense of great peace. For a moment, it was all so clear. Whether making my bed, brushing my teeth, cooking breakfast, washing the dishes, or giving my daughter a goodnight kiss, if done in a prayerful manner, it is all prayer. 

By setting my intention toward God and focusing my attention on the task in front of me, I’m no longer just folding of a blanket. I’m participating in an act of thanks, praise, and supplication. Maintaining this attitude of constant prayerfulness is not easy, but acknowledging the possibility and desirability of such a posture is a step in the right direction. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Making time to love God and my fellows

Having a disciplined prayer life is essential if we want to establish and maintain a relationship with God. Prayer is the act of momentarily forgetting the world in order to put our mind on God. It is a decision to leave everything else behind so that, even if for a moment, we may seek union with our creator, to spend time with him, and to get to know him. 

While God is constantly reaching out for us whether we know it or not, it is up to us to reach back to make the connection. We cannot manufacture grace or salvation through effort, but we can develop a relationship with the source of grace and the giver of salvation. We have to do some of the work.

By setting aside time for God, we are telling him that he is important to us, that our relationship with him matters. This will mean that other things are going to have to wait. If our relationship with God is our priority, we must act like it. 

This is not easy to do. There are an infinite number of distractions in this life vying for us to choose them over God. When the world is not trying to get our attention, our own minds come up with things to worry about, to desire, or obsess over. It is as if we are wired for an inattention on God. 

This morning in prayer, for example, my daughter, my wife, and my phone were all trying to draw me away from God. None of it was malicious, except maybe the phone. I’m becoming ever more convinced that my phone and everything it represents it a tool of the devil, but I digress. 

My daughter and my wife were not even trying to get my attention. I do my best to take care of them and, in turn, they try to respect my prayer time. It’s just that I could hear them getting ready for school and work, respectively, and my mind started to wander away from God and toward what I could do to help them or to get involved with their interactions. 

They didn’t even need my help. I had already made breakfast for my daughter and her lunch was made the night before. She was fully dressed and everything was packed for school. My wife was simply doing her own thing and getting herself ready for work. Everything was fine, but my mind insisted upon engaging with them which meant not being open to receive God’s quiet presence. 

My own brain was trying to keep me away from God and my silent prayer. It wanted to do anything but sit still in God’s presence. It told me that, by sitting quietly in prayer I was being a bad father, a negligent husband, and that I was being selfish. Again, neither my daughter nor my wife actually needed me. 

I had already done my part for my family before sitting down to pray and they were perfectly fine in that moment without me, but my mind rebelled at the silence and rejected the idea that I could simply be still for a while and allow God to be God. But this was my prayer time. That means, before I even sat down, it was decided that all I was going to do for the next hour was to pray, read, and pray some more. 

This decision, made long before I even sat down, meant that, no matter what excuses and distractions my mind wanted to come up with, this was prayer time. This was as true today as it was the day before and as it was the day before that. Also, God willing and barring any emergencies or catastrophes, it will be equally true tomorrow. 

I am not a naturally disciplined person. That is why I have to have a dedicated time for prayer. If not, I will simply never get around to it, at least not with the attention and intention it deserves. For me, my prayer time has to be pre-established so that I have no excuses. In fact, I don’t even have to think about it. 

I don’t pray when and if I feel like it, although sometimes I do that also, but because it is time to pray. Because I made the decision once, I don’t have to make it again. I pray at prayer time. By being disciplined in this way, not only is my prayer life improved, but I have also found that the world can actually get along just fine without me for a while. 

Life doesn’t stop going simply because I am praying. The world keeps spinning and the clock continues to tick. What does happen, however, by having an established, disciplined prayer schedule, is that I slow down. 

By being disciplined about my time with God, by regularly practicing stillness in his presence, I am telling him that my relationship with him is important, that even if only for this one hour every day, I am able to love God with all of my heart, soul, and mind. This, in turn, makes me more loving toward my fellows. In the end, isn’t this the most important thing any of us can do, to love God and each other? Isn’t this worth our time? 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Our primary purpose

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was working at a bank as a floating teller. As a floating teller, I traveled from branch to branch to fill in as needed. On this particular day, I was working in one of the Annapolis branches and I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled at lunchtime, so I was going to be leaving work early. 

As we set up the branch, getting all of our cash drawers ready for when the doors opened to the public, we saw the news that a plane had just crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. We were all shocked and not quite sure what to do, but it was time to open. Then, just after we opened the doors, the news came in that another plane hit the World Trade Center and we all sensed that the world as we knew it had just changed forever. 

There was a haunting sense of concern and confusion throughout the branch as we did our best to do our jobs as usual, but as the towers collapsed, we all just wanted to go home. I tried to call the doctor’s office to confirm my appointment, but no one answered the phones. I soon realized that, whether the doctor’s office was open or not, I still had an appointment, I still wanted to go home, and this was my chance to do so. So, when it was time for me to go to the doctor, I left work as planned and went home instead. 

At home were my two roommates, both older than me but also very good friends of mine. In fact, we are still friends to this day and stay in touch often. We briefly discussed what had happened and kept our eyes on the news. As the day went on and the initial shock wore off, the realness of it all started to sink in. 

That evening, like every other Tuesday night at that time in my life, we had a meeting to attend in a church basement. Every week a bunch of us gathered together to discuss our lives, our relationship with God, and the spiritual experiences we had each had, through which we shared a common bond. We met regularly, and still do in a different forum, so that others who may be interested in what we have to offer may find us and a way to change their lives. 

As was our custom, we gathered, had some coffee or tea, talked for an hour, said a prayer, and then began to part ways. Before we left, however, one of the members of our group pointed out that no one, not a single person, had spoken of or even alluded to the events of that morning in our meeting. In spite of the severity and gravity of the event, it simply never came up, and the reason it never came up was because that was not what we were there for. 

We knew our purpose for being together, which was to carry the message of the profound change that had taken place in our lives after we gave our lives to God, cleaned up our pasts, and then shared this good news freely with others. We were not there to talk about current events, no matter how tragic. For that hour, the only thing that mattered was that we share with each other and whoever else wanted to listen, what our lives were like, the spiritual transformation we had experienced, the process through which we experienced that transformation, and what our lives were like as the result of that transformation, and, as this gentleman pointed out, we stuck to that primary purpose, even on what is now infamously known as 9/11. 

I think about this experience and the lesson it offers quite often. If I know my purpose in life or in specific relationships or situations, and I stick to that purpose, I am much less likely to get caught up in all of the other things going on in life that either don’t concern me or that I cannot do anything about. This is not the same as apathy, however. I care a lot about a lot of things. Rather, it is about purpose and effectiveness. 

If, on that day, we had allowed the events of 9/11 to seep into our gathering, we would not have been able to do the work we were there to do. It would have made us less effective. And, the work we were there to do was and is extremely important. It literally changed my life and the lives of many others. By talking about the events of 9/11, we would not have been talking about God and spiritual transformation, and that would have been a shame. 

I have found that this principle carries over quite well into other aspects of my life. For example, when I am with my family, if I focus on my family and not on current events or politics, I am much more useful to them and we enjoy our time together more fully. When I’m at work and my attention is on the work itself and on my relationships with my coworkers, as opposed to gossip or personal opinions for example, I not only get more work done, but it is also much more satisfying and fulfilling to be at work in general. Likewise, when I’m at jiu-jitsu, my primary purpose is to teach or practice jiu-jitsu, and when I’m at church my primary purpose is to worship and praise God. 

In every aspect of my life, if I can define my purpose for being there and give my attention to that purpose without being distracted by extraneous issues that I have no control or influence over, my life is better and I am able to serve others more effectively. Of course, there is a time and place for current events, politics, etc. and for having an opinion on these things. There are even people whose purpose and profession it is to do so. However, I find that when I adhere to my life’s primary purpose, which is to love and serve God and to love and serve my fellows, I don’t actually have much time or desire to get caught up in those things or to drag them into places they don’t belong. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

I have more time

A funny thing happened when I lost access to my Netflix account. I decided to do nothing about it to see if I would really miss it. While there have been moments late in the evening when I am restlessly looking for something to do besides what I should be doing, which is sleeping, for the most part I haven’t noticed. I haven’t missed it.

More importantly, however, I have had more time. I have had more to work on things that I’ve been putting off, things that matter. I’m writing more, doing more creative projects, and having more ideas. I feel more open and receptive to what I’m called to do from, as opposed to feeling like my attention is being pulled toward some distraction.

While there are movies and series I enjoy watching, the truth is that I’ve lived long enough to remember a time before Netflix, or streaming services in general, and I kind of yearn for it. I miss being bored. I miss not having immediate access to so many options and having to find something to do. I miss doing nothing, having no distractions, and enjoying the quiet.

As I write, I’m reminded that this isn’t about Netflix. Netflix is a service, a symptom. I could be talking about YouTube, Facebook, or Disney+.

This is about distractions and what we do or who we are when we don’t have them. It’s about is finding ways to create more space and openness in our lives so that we have the energy and attention for that which truly matters to us.

When I think about the things I want to accomplish and experience in this life, binge-watching Black Sails or re-watchingThe Matrix for the hundredth time is not high on that list. But distraction is more convenient and more comfortable than doing work that matters because work that matters means that I might fail.