"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."
- G.K. Chesterton
This was going to be the summer I wrote a whole ton. (That matters little. Every summer was going to be the summer I wrote a whole ton. When will I learn that people simply don't write a whole ton in summer? That's the beauty of summer.)
The laptop broke in June, so I've got an excuse, anyway. Not sure when we'll be able to get it fixed. Everything's backed up, so that's okay, though. What I've mostly been doing is wandering in the yard, listening to music, reading books, and writing the occasional poem.
What I'm really doing is praying more. I'm always procrastinating when it comes to prayer. There's an odd tendency in me to put off the things I most need to do with the most vehemence--I feel guilty about putting them off, so I kind of just let them stew while I brood about not doing them. This isn't logical, but it's human. I do the same thing to my writing. Maybe I'm almost relieved to let the leaves grow over my laptop and swallow it up. (Figuratively, I mean. I keep it inside.)
Then I think of Chesterton's quote up there. It's one of my favorites, but I never remember it before I write. Saying a grace before writing might keep me on track. And now I think , maybe I should say a grace before prayers? A sort of grace before grace.
And if I said a grace before that, and a grace before that, and a grace before that...
And now I feel another quote coming on. The priest at my last confession said something that I think will always stick with me: "If you have gratitude, you have the spiritual life."
Life should be less about setting time aside to do things separately and more about a series of graces, one after the next.
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