A Lifestyle change may be needed

Have come home from Nexus, a bible study group at Church, totally fired up to sort parts of my life out and encourage some change so thought if I blogged about it, it would help set the wheels in motion.

Keith who is a retired minister who is part of our Church was speaking on Praying the Celtic Way and The Monastic Ideal alongside Desert spirituality. He is part of a dispersed community called the Order of St. Cuthbert and he was talking about the principles we can learn from Monasticism - it was pretty stirring stuff. Perhaps because I've been feeling gentle promptings from God lately about the amount of time I commit to spiritual disciplines/quiet times and about my work/life balance from all directions and this was like God was saying 'Ok Hannah, I've been saying it quietly now I'm going to shout louder so you pay attention.'

Keith used three key words to sum his talk up:
Withdrawal - into the desert
Encounter - with the Holy
Vocation - the call of God to ministry in the world.

We discussed withdrawal in four key areas: prayer, study, work and mission. Keith described work as being that which we do which we fell obligated or obliged to do and which consumes our energy and which if we're not careful can remove us from walking a way of prayer and withdrawal from God. This was like a hammer in my head! I spend all my time rushing about being a workaholic teacher, trying to cram in Church things like rotas and PowerPoint's and actually all of it means that I'm having a spiritual cash flow problem - giving out more than I take in and I know this has to change. I've already begun to think of times in my diary that I can block off to devote to prayer and study but I also think another side to it is going to have to be giving up the things I do because I feel I have to, when actually God hasn't necessarily called me to focus on them.

Some of it I guess ties in with my exploring my vocation within the Anglican Church and how that relates to me as a teacher but also on another level to my need to be helpful and to be 'busy' just for the sake of being busy!

I know it's going to be tough to put into practice but I do feel a conviction that I need to give this area of my life great priority at the moment and so I'm going to go with that.