A Meaning-Full Advent

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We are on the verge of Advent, four weeks that tend to be a flurry of activity in preparation for Christmas. This week Jen Deshpande, who is on the parish staff of St. Dominic, wrote a reflection for our parish email that I needed to hear and thought you might too. She allowed me to make it my blog post today. I especially liked the last sentence:
 
I saw a good friend a few days ago. I stopped by to ask her how she was doing. She looked up, voiced lowered, and said, "I'm so busy, I have so much going on." Almost immediately after, I ran into another friend and asked him how he was doing. Again, same tone, same response, "I'm just so busy." Busyness is a widely accepted part of our society today. We even consider it part of our identity. If you are not busy, then what are you?
 
We may think being busy is good; we are accomplishing so much, checking off all the boxes on that to-do list! Yes, some of our commitments are really important. Spending our days doing what we love and with the people we love shows that we are living according to our values. And I believe that much of what we do during the day aligns with a good and holy life. The problem comes when we wear our busyness as a badge of honor and status symbol. We think busy people must be more important. Why are American's so impressed with busyness? What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measure of importance?  Click to continue

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