Routine

The Kingdom of Heaven is for the children of God – not for His robots…

Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets (Kelly Latimore)

I tend to do the same things every day.  I tend to go through the same habits and processes every single day.  Sometimes, I change things up, but mostly I follow a routine.

There are many good things about following a routine.  Some of those things are that you can work out an efficient way to fit everything into your life.  I use routine very well to maximise the events of my life to make sure that everything is going according to plan.  I can use routine to fit things in the way that I need to, to ensure that everything gets done in a day.  This means that I might wake up early and brush my teeth, then, while I am waiting for the kettle to boil, I might go and wake up my children for the day.  Then, I might get dressed and circle back to making breakfast.  Then as my children are getting dressed, I might start cleaning the house.  This is a little example of a routine that I could use in my own life where I could try to get more efficiencies into my morning.  And this is a good thing.

However, there is a problem with routines as well.  You see, when someone has a firmly established routine, that person is unable to adapt as easily as they would like.  They may become more entrenched in current practice than they should be and become unwilling to listen to nuances that happen at different times and in different ways and instead lock into focusing on the wrong things.

Saint Josemaria warned against giving way to routine.  He believed that routine can kill the natural enthusiasm and love of God.  He advised…  “Go about your professional duties for Love's sake. Do everything for the sake of Love and (precisely because you are in love, even though you may taste the bitterness of misunderstanding, of injustice, of ingratitude and even of failure in men's eyes) you will see the result in the wonders that your work produces — rich, abundant fruit, the promise of eternity!” (Saint Josemaria, “Friends of God”, at 68-69).

And I have been thinking about that.  Because it seems that life must be a balancing act.  I must be able to balance the efficiencies of my routine with the importance of flexibility and variability.  I must be able to look at the world with new eyes and decide what to spend my time doing and how to spend my time in preparing for eternity.  After all, I am the child of God.  And this means that no matter how much I can get done on this Earth, I was not built for this Earth.  I was built for Heaven…

And looking at Heaven today, it seems to me that there is some merit in being wary of routine for routine’s sake.  For the Kingdom of Heaven is for the children of God – not for His robots…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.