Fifteen Minutes of Contemplative Activity a Day

 Moving Forward on Any Project in a Contemplative Manner
Using Fifteen Minutes A Day

In his Pastoral Letter, A Flourishing Apostolic Church, the bishop encourages each of us io deepen our friendship with God by spending at least fifteen minutes of day in whatever form of prayer we find most conducive. My blog, Saint Gabriel Hours encourage everyone to use virtual resources for the Hours at least fifteen minutes a day to discern the place of the Hours in their live 

One of my graduate mentors, Robert Boice, wrote a book Advice to Young Faculty members demonstrating from his research that is young faculty member who spent small amounts of time regularly in writing, preparing lectures, or interacting with their fellow faculty members were more likely publish, be successful teaching, and get the approval of their colleges. Setting aside large amounts of time did not work as well. Boice collected a number of principles to guide faculty members in how to use small amounts of time on a daily basis in these areas. 

The bishop asks everyone to do five things: 1) read his letter at least once, make notes, and begin conversations with others about the letter, 2) to spend at least fifteen minutes developing their relationship with God through prayer activity, 3) to develop or become a member of a support group for sharing our faith 4) to be able to tell the story of our relations with God, and 5) to identity their specific concrete mission in life. 

On the CLC website there is a post Models for Reinventing Commonweal Local Community.

The Project: 

The Place of CLCs as Small Supportive Faith Related Groups

1. Read the bishops letter through once taking about fifteen minutes to underline and make notes about what is has to say about small groups.

2. Read the post on Reinventing CLCS taking about fifteen minutes to underline and making notes of how CLCs might engage many people in the diocese beyond.  Commonweal subscribers. 

3. Reread the bishop's letter slowly taking fifteen minutes a day to understand his whole project, underlining and making notes so that each of us will be able to interact with people at all levels on the diocese about the letter in the coming year. Most importantly to decide for yourself if, when and how you might want to respond to his invitation to start these conversations, especially about inviting people to consider a CLC as their support group.

4. Reread the Model's Post underlining and make notes on how the various models might be use separately on together to promote a Flourishing Apostolic Church in this diocese.   

Boice's Principles for Using Small Amounts of Time