Overburdened With Spiritual Practices

Sometimes with all good intentions, I add a spiritual practice. Then maybe a physical practice. Maybe I want to add more study to my meditation practice and then look for another service. Then I feel a need to run further (which means take more time for my morning workout). And then when do I find time for some additional Yoga practice to try new poses?

Our pastor started this line of thinking a few weeks ago when he asked if we’ve added so many spiritual practices that we feel like we’re batting a bunch of balloons trying to keep them all in the air. Leo Babauta, a writer who focuses on how to live each day, talked about how we tend to overplan. We sort of overlook how much time it takes to do things. We lay out a plan for the day–or maybe for a vacation–only to find that there aren’t enough hours in the day.

This happens to me frequently. I feel like the guy in the old FedEx commercial who kept answering the phone–“I can do that”, “I can do that”, “I can do that”, “How am I ever gonna do all that?”

So we all need to release the inner OCD and learn to just do what we can, relax, go with the flow. Pick the most important thing for the moment and do it, not worrying about the other stuff.

I sometimes say, only half-jokingly, that part of my philosophy of life comes from the old Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Newman, who would say through that goofy grin, “What? Me worry?”

By the way–OCD=obsessive-compulsive disorder–you’ve got it, you know it. And where else can you find a Christian blog that quotes both ZenHabits and Mad Magazine in the same post? Enjoy the day, one moment at a time.

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