Our series looking back twenty years enters its ninth month. Last month I shared the August 2006 issue, which, in the way of August, had a vacation quality to it. September 2006 is louder. Everyone is back, school is starting, and the newsletter is twelve pages

of a parish clearing its throat for a new year.

Fr. Tom's message is addressed to parents. He starts with a newborn's forty-day blessing, jumps to SAT prep and "driving and heading off to college," and then asks if, among "the hours of time at baseball, soccer and Lacrosse tournaments throughout the year," parents were putting energy towards their children's spiritual life.

I'm a parent and my youngest is still in school. For those of us in this stage of life, the September transition back to the school-year routine has a scrambling intensity. There's calendars from the school, the sports, and the extracurriculars to funnel into one coherent overview. There's shifting back into a more rigid, and painfully early, start time. Our youngest is old enough to work, so there's his job schedule, my husband's job, my outside commitments to consider. There's setting aside intentional time to maintain relationships with our own aging parents, which on my husband's side means regular weekly visits with his mother, and on mine means a regular week-long trip to Oklahoma.

There is absolutely nothing unique about any of this. This is the shape of life for most of us who are in midlife. In fact, since my husband and I have only one child left at home, if anything our particular version of midlife is sloping towards an ease not yet enjoyed by peers with younger kids who still require more hands-on school and activity support.

The point is, when Fr. Tom tells parents—who are all juggling this much and more—to start and maintain "a commitment to Sunday morning worship and prioritizing our

children's religious education," it's not a guilt trip, it's more like a life ring being thrown. Like any good modern efficiency expert, Fr. Tom is reminding us parents that life balance comes not from jugging more faster and better, but by first identifying what's actually critical and allowing everything else to fit around that.

You have probably heard the story of the rocks and the empty jar. I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

Imagine your life and the time it contains—we have perhaps eighty or ninety summers if we are very lucky—as an empty jar. Next to your jar are large rocks, pebbles and a pile of sand. The rocks represent what matters most: faith, health, relationships, purpose. Pebbles represent other important things that require our time like work, home, play, fun, finances, and other commitments. The sand is the minor tasks, distractions, things that may feel urgent but have very little lasting importance.

If we fill our jar with the sand (and the world will provide us with a limitless amount of sand if we let it), then we may find ourselves able to wedge a few pebbles in at the top, but there won't be room for the rocks. If, however, we start by filling our jar of time with the rocks of our life, we will find the pebbles and then the sand are able to fill in those gaps that still remain in the jar, and take up an amount of space that is appropriate to their true value.

It's a simple analogy to drive home a message that's been handed down in many ways in our tradition: a full and rightly-oriented life starts by making space for that which matters most. "You are worried and upset about many things," says Christ (Luke 10:41-42), "but few things are needed—or indeed only one."

So in amongst all those things that clamor for our September attention and which feel deeply urgent, Fr. Tom is asking parents to slow down and remember that all we do, and all we pour out, is made possible first by centering our lives around faith, prayer, and the rhythms of the Church. He is asking that we start by putting the rocks of Christ and of Christian worship into our jar, and the jars of our children.

Where's your rock? is a very good reminder in a season where one can easily feel sandblasted.

The full September 2006 PDF is below. Click on the cover image to download. I'll see you next month for October.

Warmly,

Erica