Hodie, non Cras

Hodie, non cras!

Procrastination

When I was a youth minister, I took a group of my students to a nearby Catholic youth camp, called Catholic Youth Expeditions. This organization was started by a priest of the diocese of Green Bay who was inspired by John Paul II’s  outdoor adventures with a group of young adults in Poland who became his friends and inspired many of his greatest works. This camp was geared at teens and young adults, and run for the most part by college age students who volunteered their summers to grow closer to Christ. One of the years I attended, the theme of the summer was ‘Hodie, non Cras,’ which is Latin for ‘Today, not tomorrow!’—and this theme was proudly yelled every few hours by different members of the staff, which delighted the teenagers (who doesn’t love being encouraged to yell at the top of your lungs?), who soon picked it up. Needless to say, this theme has stuck with me.

Most recently, this theme has come into my head with beginning to blog again. I have a million excuses in my head for why I haven’t started until now, most of which are just stupid: ranging from, ‘I don’t have anything to say’ to ‘I don’t have time’ to ‘no one wants to read what I write.’ What I’ve had to realize is that in the end, these things are either not true or they don’t matter. For some reason, God will not let this idea die from my brain…

With all of these excuses, I’ve had the chance to analyze (to death), why I feel like God is calling me to blog. At first, I tried to tell myself that a desire to blog is just a misplaced desire to feel important- a call to others to ‘listen to me, because I know so much!’ And to a certain extent, I’ll admit, this is part of it. This is something I need to work on, but it’s also not the main reason this idea won’t die.

Instead, I’ve come to realize that much more than that, I need to blog in order to force myself to think deeply, and to hold myself accountable spiritually. For, as much as I love my 3 month old, he needs my body and presence a lot more than he needs my intellectual gifts at this time in his life (more on that later). And while journaling works for this to a certain extent, I am not disciplined enough to maintain this depth without some sort of audience (even if it is only a mental perception- or the chance that someone could read it). For whatever reason, that’s the way my brain works.

Sadly, it seems that C.S. Lewis is right in the Screwtape Letters-- the devil does not manifest himself openly, but rather works through more subtle means. In my life, this means distraction (I can’t write now, I HAVE to plan my week, or go on facebook, or…) and procrastination (I have too much to do today, but it’s on my list for tomorrow…). The sad thing is, often I realize this, and still allow myself to be distracted. But today, not tomorrow, I am starting- and though this is nothing very deep or profound (how many people have observed this before me…), it is a beginning:  and that’s farther than I was yesterday.