This past week I made an interesting discovery. I found that it is easier for me to nap when my children are awake than it is when they are also napping. This is scary, I know. I could easily curl up in Hayden's tiny toddler bed and quickly dose off while the kids are playing in his room. Of course, it's the kind of sleep where you are still vaugely aware of what's going on around you (good thing!) while at the same time having random thoughts and images go through your head sort of like dreams. Still, it's somewhat restful. However, the other day I tried to nap when both kids were sleeping and even though I was exhasted from Hayden being up all the night before, I was dissapointed to find that the moment my head hit the pillow, my mind began to crank. The silence was like a lighting bolt that struck my brain causing trillions of neural impulses and a mad array of thoughts, questions, anxieties and emotions that I could not begin to sort through or make sense of. I couldn't handle it. My response: do the dishes....or anything for that matter but I needed to DO something to end the stillness that was making way for my impending cranial explosion. But my preffered level of noise while napping is not the interesting part of this discovery. It's the fact that I seem to do my best thinking and am most focused while doing something rather than being still and when there is a signficant level of distinguishable noise. This is when I am best able to enter into a quiet place inside of me either to rest, sleep, think or read. The stillnes and silence that one would typically expect to conduse these kinds of "quiet" activities produces a kind of schizophrenia in me. This has not always been the case and this change in the way I function has profound spiritual implications. The last year of my life has been characterized by my stuggle to regain a sense of consistency, intimacy and progress in my spiritual life without having those luxurious morning hours at the coffe shop with just me and God or ANY significant length of quiet day time. In effort to improve this situation, I have recently revisited a subject I dabbled in in college, "practicing the presence of God", to borrow the term from Brother Lawrence whose book (so titled) was what inspired me to strive for such spiritual loftiness. This new effort has allowed me to see that over the course of the last year or so, I have indeed begun to adapt to the limitations this present season has put on my life. In his forementioned book, it is said of Brother Lawrence "that he was more united to God in his outward employments than when he left them for devotion and retirement." This idea seemed so foreign to me when I first read it but now I can actually relate. Not that I claim to have achieved the same kind of consistencey in my communion with God that this man had but I am making progress forsure. Looking back on what usually seems like the "glory days" of my spiritual life, I now begin to notice how very compartmentalized things were then. Deep intimate communion was most often limited to quiet morning hours and I was lacking in the knowledge of how to genuinely experience or relate to God throughout the rest of my day. Now, after months of being burdened by guilt and remorse over my inability to have these regular, "standardized" quiet times, I have no choice but to adapt and do what I can do to once again, feel connected, rooted, to "abide". By the grace of God alone I am making headway. I now posess a greater ability to read, meditate and pray during the menial tasks of my day and even with interuptions from my kids. I can have "quiet time" even when it is not quiet and I am not physically still. In fact, its almost easier that way. Strange......... The whole nap experiece is what really opened my eyes to God's incredible faithfulness to me in allowing or causing (I dont know which one) me to begin to grow and change in this way. I will close with my favorite quote from this book because of how surprisingly (he was a monk from the 16th century) applicable it is to my daily life with my kids. ""The time of business," says he, "does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament."" (He was in charge of the kitchen in the monestary where he lived) Goodnight.