"We Need to Waste Time"

"We Need to Waste Time"

I want to look at the experiences in your lives of people who’ve deeply touched you, who’ve deeply changed you. They’re always people who are not afraid to be personal. Ideas really don’t change people. People change people. Those who are truly bringing good news are people who know how to be in relationship, who know how to waste time with you. We need to waste time with the Lord, too. This is the foundation of our prayer lives. You’re not being unproductive when you wait for God, when you listen for and seek the Holy One. The Judeo-Christian tradition gives us the Sabbath, a sense of sacred time in which to be, to listen, to be personal and not to “work at it.” The Sabbath idea is that at least one-seventh of your life needs to be fallow, useless, empty and expectant-person to person. Cardinal Newman wrote, “So much sanctity is lost to the Church because brothers [sic] refuse to share the secrets of their hearts one with another.” He put that in his coat of arms (“cor ad cor loquitur”), which doesn’t sound like what a cardinal should put on his coat of arms. He’s no sloppy sentimentalist, but a great intellectual. But it’s obvious Newman was a man who put it together. He was speaking from an educated heart. He knew the power of sharing the personal. The truly personal is usually the most universal.

from The Price of Peoplehood