🔔 Divine Interruptions: Ring the bells.

Year of Breath: How Might Interruptions Become Invitations?

For centuries, community bell ringing has played an important role in many monastic traditions. As the daily bells toll, marking the passing of the hours, members of the monastery stop whatever they’re doing to enter a time of prayer or faithful practice.

“The bells stop us in midflight to prod us to ask ourselves again if what we are doing is what we are really meant to be doing,” Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister writes in The Monastic Heart: 50 Simple Practices for a Contemplative and Fulfilling Life.

As parents, what if we reframed our interruptions—a baby crying in the night, a kindergartener demanding a snack, a teen texting you during your workday—as a monastic bell to reorient your heart back to where (and who) God might be calling your attention toward?

Responding to divine interruptions isn’t just for the super religious, for monks or nuns belonging to a particular order.

The family is, in its own way, a bit of a monastery.

In Domestic Monastery: Creating a Spiritual Life at Home, Father Ronald Rolheiser writes, “A parent hears the monastic bell many times during the day and has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because they want to, but because it’s time for that activity and time isn’t one’s own, but God’s.”

A Prayer for Interruptions

You can find this prayer, along with 100 others, in Every Season Sacred:

O God, we’re familiar with the many interruptions of life—the sights and sounds that distract us from focusing on what we think is important.

When the world is loud, whisper into our souls that the most important work is to stay awake to love.

Help us to find You in all the parts of our lives, especially the ones that seem like distractions—in the dishes that need washing, the floors that need sweeping, the appointments that need keeping.

Jesus, You are welcome in our home. Who would You have us love? Where would You have us go?

Grant us sacred curiosity to ask where You are in our changed plans and our interrupted routines.

Help us to make space in our hearts and in our schedules to experience Your presence in the people and places that fill our days.

In the forest of our lives, slow down our days so we might marvel in the trees.

Help us to pay attention to what You have to teach us.

Help us to remember what matters.

Amen.

A Prayer for August

This Week’s Edition Includes:

• Breath prayers

• Scripture

• Reflection Prompts

• Weekly Playlist

• Wallpaper

• Benediction

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Photo by Luis Felipe Lins on Unsplash

Breath Prayer

As we navigate the daily interruptions that life brings, let these breath prayers serve as a gentle reminder to pause and reconnect with God’s presence.