麻豆约拍

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Canon Angela Tilby

Good morning.

These days of late July can sometimes seem quite lazy and even languid. I鈥檝e known many wet Julys but my childhood image is of overburdened trees boughs bent to breaking point with their burden of green leaves. There鈥檚 often a heaviness in the air. And there鈥檚 either hazy sunshine, or piercing blue skies with banks of dark threatening clouds. I often feel even now that there is a tiredness about July, as though all the effort of spring and early summer has run out and nature is no longer fresh but dusty and overblown, ready to nod off for a while.

To my childhood self, July sometimes seemed interminable. I can remember lying in the grass looking up into the sky for hours, not absorbed, but bored, the only thrill was the promise of a thunderstorm. July reminds me that our subjective experience of living in time is that it speeds up and slows down. The slowing of time often reflects our sense that life has become monotonous. We are bored perhaps with our job, bored with those we live or work with, and above all bored with ourselves. Even distractions don鈥檛 help when time itself seems to have slowed down to a crawl.

But over the years I have come to think that learning to live with boredom is one of the most important lessons we have to learn. It is an essential ingredient of the spiritual life, of learning to live in time and learning to pray. A lot of prayer is repetition, habit, just carrying on faithfully. But it is a habit which builds character and ultimately brings us freedom.

In the words of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Mine O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain".