"A great God is the Lord,
over the gods like a king."
Psalm
95
The Lord is over
all the other gods. That was from the days when people had all kinds of gods.
We don't think that way any more.
But don't we? Any
time we think we are so different from the people who went before us, I get
suspicious. So I ask myself, do I have any of those other gods ruling parts of
my life? Not all of it, just parts?
They say that the
fundamental religious question is: Why get out of bed in the morning? Maybe
another religious question is, "What will control my life today?
I reflected on my
years of teaching. That was easy. What controlled my day was the goal of
excellence. I had to come up with original, creative, remarkable insights for
every moment I was in front of a class. There was fear involved. I was afraid I
wasn't going to be able to do it.
Then when the
teaching day ended, something else controlled my day: the idea of leisure. I
would have time to do anything I wanted.
The best day of
the year for me was always the day in May when I turned in the grades for the
semester's classes. Three whole months of leisure! It couldn't get any better
than that.
All that was years
ago. I'm retired. What controls my life today?
Scheduled events.
Mass I am scheduled to preside at. I must preach creatively, with remarkable
insight. The same is true for every other thing on my schedule. I must be
excellent.
Excellence is an
idol for me. It controls me. I sacrifice to it. I fear terrible things if I
fail to measure up to its demands.
Leisure is still
my other idol. When I see a day on my schedule when I don't have to do
absolutely anything, I rejoice. But when the day comes, I flounder
around. I worry that I am not using that wonderful time well. I can't believe
that I'm looking around for things to do. Something is wrong with me. Maybe
Leisure is still ruling my days.
It was a few days
ago that I began thinking about Excellence and Leisure as my idols. When
Excellence loomed up before me, I thought: "Wouldn't it be better with the
Lord as my lord?" It was a remarkably freeing experience. Suddenly the day
seemed more free, more open to how other people might intrude into my schedule.
When I was letting
Excellence rule my life, every person was a potential intrusion. I kept my
office door open, but I really hoped no one would walk through it. Eventually
people must have realized that, because few people did.
A close friend of
mine is in full agreement with me when I say that the most important thing in
my life is my schedule. I never realized that behind my schedule are lurking at
least two demons: Excellence, and Leisure.
