This past weekend, we had a ultimate frisbee game during our men's session and it was great fun to compete with and against some new friends and acquaintances. There was one round, however, that I remember a lot of turnovers happening, where one team had the frisbee, it dropped within five seconds and then five seconds later, after the second team gained control, the frisbee dropped again. This happened maybe six or seven times within a couple minutes.
It wasn't until Daily Mass yesterday, when I looked back at this moment in the game, that the inspiration for this post occurred to me. In our society, people usually rush into things. People speed down the roadway to get to wherever it is they are going. People rush out of bed and out the door to get to class or work because they wait until the last second to start their day. People rush becoming romantically involved with someone because they feel good about the relationship and want to keep that good feeling. People also apply this style of mad rush to their spiritual lives, though it may not be recognized as rushing.
After Bible Study, people quickly go about their normal lives and by the next day the scripture passages they examined are forgotten. After Sunday Mass, people go back home and lounge about until Monday morning, when they forget what Bible passages were read and what the priest discussed in his homily. After a retreat experience, whether a day retreat or a full weekend retreat, people go back home and rest and when it comes time to start normal life on Monday morning, people forget what they had experienced and how it changed them.
Now, perhaps I need to clarify something. All of these statements I'm making are generalizations and may not apply to every person's experience after a retreat or bible study. Secondly, I believe that these statements are incredibly applicable to my own personal experiences with the knowledge that it is a generalization of these experiences.
Sometimes in college, after Bible Study, I would go back to my dorm and fall asleep and the next morning probably wouldn't have been able to recall what passage I had just studied. Sometimes at Mass I have a hard time concentrating on what is being read and what the priest is saying. Sometimes I come back from a retreat exhausted yet enthusiastic, but by Monday morning (like yesterday morning) I may wake up feeling ill, tired, and struggling to live the way that I had just invited the youth to live their lives.
I think this is because I quickly rush into the next thing that I do in my life. I do not take the appropriate amount of time to pause and reflect on what I experienced in retreat or at Mass. I do not just sit back and think about how these things I hear and see will impact the next hour, the next 24 hours, the next week of my life. I'm constantly moving to the next thing, unless I do not have any agenda to accomplish in which case I distract myself and lose focus.
Back to the ultimate frisbee game. The best moves I saw were the ones where people took their time, where players examined their options and slowly moved their way up the field. In a game like ultimate, players know that moving fast most likely increases chances of avoiding interference by the other team and that is why rushed plays are made. Often times a team loses control of a frisbee because of rushed movements. In our game, whenever I just took five seconds to examine the field before throwing the frisbee, not only did it give me enough time to look at how to best move forward but my teammates also had time to make themselves ready to catch the frisbee.
The same should be done in my spiritual life. After Mass, I should take some time to reflect on what I had experienced and what I had heard. Maybe I need to go look up the scripture readings again to better understand how they apply to my life. After a retreat, I need to take a little bit of time (once I'm all rested of course) to examine what I had experienced, what the youth experienced, and understand how to move forward with my life while applying those experiences and any changes that come with them to my life.
That's how it is in sports. In games like ultimate frisbee, I learn how rushing a move can benefit the other team greater than mine. Once I figure that out, then I need to apply a calmer pace to my actions in order to better benefit my team and benefit myself through the way I play the game. In my faith life, I need to take more time to examine my experiences and understand how to move forward because of them.
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