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Photo by Alexandra Khudyntseva on Unsplash

A parent's life sometimes feels like it is constantly ricocheting from one interruption to another.  Just after you have organized and settled your children around a boardgame, or established quiet time with a book, and you try to steal a few moments for yourself or return to whatever it is you had hoped to accomplish that day, they are at it again. They are squabbling with their sibling, or hungry for a snack or want to show you the latest trending Tic Toc video.  

In monastic communities, the monks and nuns would also be interrupted in whatever they were doing - whether preparing food in the kitchen, or working in garden, or repairing tools in the workshop - by the ringing of a bell. The bell would call them to stop whatever they’re doing to enter a time of prayer or faithful practice.

  In Domestic Monastery: Creating a Spiritual Life at Home Father Ronald Rolheiser suggests that the family is in its own way, a bit of a monasery. He 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.”

In her newsletter, Liturgies for Parents, Kayla Craig invites us to ponder:

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?

Here is a prayer from her book  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.