{"id":2678,"date":"2014-01-27T08:03:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T15:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=2678"},"modified":"2014-01-27T08:03:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T15:03:02","slug":"monday-morning-confessional-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2014\/01\/monday-morning-confessional-85.html","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Confessional"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I confess that I have been a terrible Sabbath breaker for the past few months. I have allowed myself to work on Mondays in order to knock out the manuscript<\/a> I was working on, and to work on filling a staff position at church. The funny thing about being a Sabbath breaker is that it is a completely acceptable form of decadence, so nobody really cares. What makes it so destructive is that you can never get those days and weeks back. If you disengage from tithing for a few months, you can make it up later. Just give a little extra for a few months and you are back on track. But if you don\u2019t take a Sabbath, you can\u2019t get back the weeks you spent working more than you should work. You can\u2019t take back the extra hours you spent in frustration or anxiety because you didn\u2019t let your body rest. We always pay the price for flouting the way we are designed to function. So,\u00a0today marks the beginning of my re-engagement with Sabbath\u2026 hoping for an unproductive day.<\/p>\n

I confess that I was a terrible blogger last week.<\/p>\n

I confess that I am in search of new good music for my practice of centering prayer. Last summer I scrapped my rule of life for awhile, and built it back slowly, starting with the Divine Office, and a few of the daily and weekly routines that have become second nature. Centering prayer has been more sporadic for me over the years, but since the summer it has been more of a regular thing. Music is a big part of my centering prayer ritual. It\u2019s one of the few things that will consistently help me turn my brain off. I have my four or five standard artists I can play, and it\u2019s so familiar that I can completely ignore them. My parameters are that it needs to be calming (usually tempo needs to be subtle and in flux), and it either needs to have no words, or words in a language I don\u2019t understand. Last week I was exposed to some good music for centering prayer, and I realized how important this is to my practice, and how I\u2019ve become a big stagnated on that account. So I gathered three year\u2019s worth of itunes gift cards, cashed them in, and started buying some new stuff. I would love to hear what some of you listen to when you pray, study, or want some music on that you can ignore. Here\u2019s my standard fare:<\/p>\n