Day 216
You know the look. It's that special stare a baby or child gives you when they're trying to figure you out, deciding whether or not to smile or cry. Maybe you've made a funny face, or tried to, and the child gives you a look of confused wonderment, before either laughing or just totally freaking out.
This weekend, I caught part of a program on my local Catholic TV station, and they were discussing Pope Francis. Apparently, the pope decreed 2015 as a year to commemorate the consecrated life, meaning those who have given their lives to the service of God as a sister or brother (nuns and monks). Strangely, my ears instead heard the phrase, Concentrated Life. I spent the next minute marveling at how awesome this was, that Pope Francis had asked us all to live a more concentrated life in 2015. Then of course I heard the phrase again, and quickly learned I was mistaken.
The consecrated life? Eh, been there, done that, got defrocked, changed my life, yada, yada, yada. But the concentrated life? Now that's something I'm absolutely being called to more and more all the time, and it's something I think we could all use more of in our lives.
Imagine having that same focus as babies and small children do when they give you that kind of concentrated stare. They look at you and try to figure you out. They absorb you. They try their best to understand who you are and why you're doing whatever it is you're doing. If we all had this level of focus, if we were all doing as Jesus asked us to, "becoming like little children", imagine how incredible our world would be.
Instead of planning out our response to a person's comment, what if we actually listened fully to the person speaking now? Instead of jumping to conclusions about a news story, what if we spent a little more time thinking and praying on it? Instead of passing judgment on others for the way they live their lives, what if we looked more at our own life, and what we're doing with it?
Living a concentrated life means taking more time before speaking, before judging, and before even thinking. It means allowing Truth to settle on our soul like the first flakes of a new snowfall. It means giving up the need to speak, the need to be right, and even the need to know, in favor of patience and love. The pope may not have decreed it, but I think it's a very worthy pursuit for all of us, both in 2015 and beyond.
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