Decision

 Fifth Monday of Lent

Lectionary texts:

Mark 11:1-33

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 (UMH 839)

Monday is Faith Journey Narrative day. Having written that narrative for you covering from the time I was four until the present, I had run out of things to say. The last few weeks I've written about things that were important to me. Today I actually have a new installment of my Faith Journey. 

People's lives are so different. Many people now or at any time are facing huge decisions with life-long consequences. People in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and southern Mexico are facing the decision of whether to stay in violent, drug lord controlled, desperately poor home areas or to try to come to the United States, the country of hope. American twelfth graders are facing decisions about college or no college, which college, which college will accept me, how can my parents and I pay for it. Others are wondering, should I marry him/her. Should I make a lifetime commitment.

 

My current decision seems utterly inconsequential in comparison. I realize that I am leading a deeply blessed life now. I'm joyously married, have two adult children who are doing really well, a wonderful daughter in law, and two delightful grandchildren. We are financially comfortable and secure. Marianne is healthy. Although I have a terminal lung disease, it's progress has been really slow. I have shortness of breath from any sort of exertion, but no pain.  What bigger decision do I have than what to cook for dinner tonight or what book to read next? 

All this is to say that I want to regard myself in some kind of reasonable perspective. What is my big decision this week is not much to anyone but me. But it is to me. The decision is whether I should take on this Daily Office writing project. The evidence is not entirely one-sided. I need you to help me on this. 

Here are some cons and pros (I'll go negatives first):

Cons:

1. I'm a Biblical scholar, not a liturgical scholar. I have no formal training in liturgics. In other words, I don't know what I'm doing.

2. This is going to take a lot of time. I can't get done what I need to get done now. Why should I be adding more?

3. I have no idea how long this project will take. I could dash off something in a few months that would be largely copying and pasting together prayers and liturgies from the Christian past, or I could do something largely original, which would likely take two or three years. 

4. Wilson's rule #462 is "Everything takes longer than you think it will."

5. This work will likely be of benefit to only a very small number of people. There doesn't seem to be any groundswell of support for this project from my blog readership.

6. Am I avoiding moving my life from one of action to one of contemplation? 

 

7. I'm not going to gain any enhanced reputation or make any money from this. 

8. Why can't I just avoid this whole thing, sit on the beach with Marianne, and re-read Susan Howatch novels?

 

Pros:

1. I am a Biblical scholar. A lot of this work deals with the Bible.

2. I like to write, when it's not scholarly stuff with footnotes every sentence and constantly finding lost references, when it's not finding a publisher and getting rejection letters, when it's not dealing with editiors who want to pare down my writing to half its size. I also like not having deadlines.

3. Who would have planted such an idea in my head other than God? 

4. Why did that Mark Thibodeaux Daily Examen app, that one day happened to be on decision making, lead me to all positive answers on the ten sets of questions it asked about any decision you need to make?

I feel like I need to make a decision on this by the end of the week. So far I have seven people who have expressed interest in the project. That's a reasonably sized cohort, but I would like to have about three more people. Three of you have emailed me that you're not going to participate. All three said that they already have a full complement of daily devotional resoureces. There's still about fifteen of you who read this blog regularly, whom I haven't heard from. It's fine to say No. You're commitment, if you say Yes will be fairly minimal. If I decide to do it, I'll make a separate e-mail list of the cohort and give you weekly updates. 

 

Lord of our prayers,

Help me and us to make this decision. Amen.

 

Faithfully,

Christian