I have been reading a lot of self-proclaimed "Guides to Spiritual Enlightenment" lately. I don't know why.
The amusing thing to me is that they pretty much all say, 'if'n you're serious about your spirituality, you will get up very, very early in the morning.'
...the hell? Does God only keep office hours from 5am-7am?
About 75% of the time, the guides go on to say, "It's a discipline, it's the quiet part of the day, you'll have no distractions, and it will make you a better person. Just try it for a while, you'll learn to love it!"
I know now not to try it for a while, but back when I didn't understand who and what I was, I would go through phases where I would tell myself that TOMORROW I would totally wake up at 5am, say my prayers, go out exercising, come home and shower and greet the day with a smile. I'd set my three alarms for 5am, and go to sleep.
And then wake up at about 7am, having hit the snooze button a billion times, and rush off to work.
I ran across an article today at
Focused Distractions, which is a blog written by a person with ADD who helps others deal with their ADD. I, too, have ADD, a real-true diagnosis with all the associated hyperfocus and time management issues. She describes her day thus:
Many of us with ADD brains are not very pleasant in the morning. We are often night owls who find it nearly impossible to:
- Shut off our computers
- Turn off the TV
- Close the interesting novel
- Turn off our non-stop brains
That means, we generally are up LATE and try to sleep in as late as humanly possible without getting fired or kicked out of school.
ADD is why I do my second-best praying after 11pm*. I've found that there's nothing better to wind my brain down than Evening Prayer followed by Compline. It has all the things that an ADD person loves: structure, a schedule, and singing.
Ok, well, maybe the singing is just me.
We're coming up on Advent, which is one of those times of year where people start looking at their faith and spirituality and discovering lacks. It's tempting to go running for the spiritual self-help books. God created us as individuals, however, which means that we all have to come up with our own individual schedules.
*I do my first-best praying when I'm on an airplane. My turbulent flight from Baltimore to Detroit last week may cause world peace or a cure for cancer.
