I feel called to live contemplatively in the world. I also feel like I am frequently trying to juggle a hundred different small to medium projects, trying to keep ninety-nine in the air -- while I focus in the present on one at a time.... But the other ninety-nine are still up there and gravity is pulling them back to earth, at which time I will either shift my attention to the closest one and hurl it skyward again, or risk one (or many more than one) hitting the ground.

As I juggle, I sometimes find myself hurtling through the day from one task to the next, and suddenly my cell phone alarm will ring, announcing that it is 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., or 6 p.m. -- that is, time to stop and keep the hours (either Lauds, Terce, Sext, or None). Increasingly my response to this alarm is slight anxiety (do I have time for this?!) following quickly by gratitude that this spiritual discipline gives me permission to pause and take 10 minutes or so every three hours to practice the presence of God.

My practice of The Liturgy of the Hours is usually something like the following:

Pause - as close to the hour as is possible, depending on what I am doing)

Song - either on guitar or piano

Liturgy - I currently use The Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Shorter Breviary, but I started with Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours.

Psalm - I pray one Psalm. It takes me about a little over a month to pray all 150. I shift translations from time to time, but I'm currently using Nan Merrill's Psalms for Praying.

As I sometimes hurtle through the day, the hours feel like anchored poles in the ground that I can grab firmly, come to a stop, and intentionally re-center myself in God's presence -- hopefully allowing that contemplative sensibility to spill more and more into all of my life, those times between the assigned hours of the day.

Grace Church in London has a Lenten blog. I've found two entries already that I will be using soon for a Contemporary Reading, which we frequently have in our Sunday morning worship.

As a congregation, we have given up orders of worship for Lent!

The worship leaders and choir have a bare-minimum version, but everyone else is given paperless. We are inviting the congregation to be more present in worship -- and not be distracted by looking down at a piece of paper, or worrying about what is coming next.

I love it.

Thanks to my friend Daniel Wolpert, who recommended this idea. You can read Daniel's excellent second book filled with many other such ways of being in the world: Leading a Life With God: The Practice of Spiritual Leadership. His first book is a great, too: Creating a Life With God: The Call of Ancient Prayer Practices.

Below are a few other creative Lenten practices (this time not from Daniel). These are based on the premise that, for Lent, one is invited to (1) give up something that is keeping you from being who God created you to be, and (2) take on something that helps you become more fully who God is calling you to be:

Give up interrupting (practice taking a full breath after someone finishes speaking before replying for the next 40 days)Take on memorizing a favorite poem each week.

Give up unnecessary stuff (donate one item to Goodwill each day for 40 days).

Take on a daily, random act of kindness (Let a car move in front of you when you're driving, pay for the lunch of the person behind you in the fast food line.)

Give up TV, radio, and internet at home for 40 days.

Take on a twenty minute, leisurely walk each day and notice what you see.

Give up speeding (go the speed limit or under) for the next 40 days!

Take on biking one place a week when you would normally drive (see www.geezmagazine.org/demotorize)

I biked to work in the first time since Daylight Savings Time ended. I love it! It takes me around 20 minutes to bike, and around 10 minutes to drive. And, on my bike, I save gas (and c02 emissions!). And since I'm moving slower, I can actually notice Creation around me.

I must confess, however, a twinge of temptation to use my iPod while biking, which would be, not only dangerously distracting, but multi-tasking -- distracting me from noticing the world around me.

Also, consider this my official vote in favor of having daylight savings time all year round.

I just listened to a podcast of LeRon Schuts from the National Pastors Convention. The most resonant part of his talk was (I'm adapting and paraphrasing here) a contrast between "Satan's 'But'" and "Jesus' ears." Satan's "but" is when we say things like, "I really think that God is calling me to do something, BUT...that's just not realistic." Instead, we should have "Jesus' ears to hear" and "Jesus' eyes to see" ways to live out the dreams of God here and now.

It is not so much the brilliance of the analogy that struck me. Instead, I heard it as a challenge to be aware when I am preparing to speak in public of what parts of my talk/sermon will be the most vivid and memorable -- and how, in general, to construct my speech to be heard in a vivid and memorable ways.

I don't watch television. That's mostly true. I don't have cable -- just a broken set of rabbit ears for an antennea. So, for the most part, there's not anything to watch.

I do watch netflix. However, the television shows that I occaisionally watch on DVD don't have commercials.

In the last few months, I have also been watching Comedy Central and sometime the Sci-Fi Network (does that make me a stereotypical male nerd?) while running on the ellipical machine at the gym. This practice has reminded me how much I hate commercials, especially the same commercials over and over and over -- especially long infomercials that repeat almost every commercial break. No I don't want your diet pill, exercise machine, or financial advice. And I'm fine with my hairline.

Seeking an alternative, I have recently begun downloading sermons and other talks from various folks in the Emergent Church movement. This morning, I listened to Brian McLaren's talk on "A Christian Response to War." This feels like a much better use of my time -- and I can fast forward through any commercials at the beginning or end of the podcast.

I was particularly struck by McLaren's challenge that before declaring war, we should commit to spending twice as much on humanitarian aid for the people of that country (and to rebuild the infrastructure that we bomb!) as spend on the actual violent part of the war. That would make war three times as expensive, and it would make going to war more cost prohibitive. It might make us think more critically about whether it is worth it to go to war, and it would also likely bring healing in the aftermath of war.

Along these lines, McLaren convincingly argues that any way is already a defeat for all sides because any act of violence is always already a failure to live out God's dream of peace: "God shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Micah 4:3).

To end with a sign of hope, the lead story in the local paper today reporting on the statewide smoking ban that began on January 1, 2007. You can't smoke in restaurants in Louisiana. That's unbelievably awesome. I am grateful that sometimes good does triumph, sometimes systemic change does happen.

Click here to read my sermon from this past Sunday based on my first three week intensive in San Francisco Theological Seminary's Art of Spiritual Direction program.