Is Your Phone Ringing?

I don’t know about you but I can get easily distracted during prayer.

I can pray the rosary devotedly only to find my mind starting to drift away. One moment I’m focused on the prayers and the specific mystery. The next moment, I’m thinking about that load of laundry I need to do, a work deadline or a household chore.

Likewise distractions can evade my participation at Mass. In an instant I go from my intent focus to thinking ahead about errands for later that day, menus to plan, phone calls to make, or worries about medical appointments for myself or a loved one, pending bad weather, or thoughts of schedule conflicts start to creep in.

Distractions are everywhere. We live in a society with demands,

self-imposed or otherwise. Deadlines loom, stress prevails, schedules demand our time and attention. Add to that the simple fact that human nature is often weak, even with the best of intentions. No wonder we fail to be attentive, even in prayer.

Expressing my concerns about a ‘spiritual attention deficit” to a local priest helped. He gave me an analogy to ponder. He said spiritual distractions are similar to the phone ringing. You can be deeply engaged with someone face to face when suddenly the phone rings. Of course, the noise of the phone is distracting. Momentarily you might have the urge to answer it. Minimally you’ll start to wonder who is calling. But then, you opt to let it ring and refocus your attention on the conversation in front of you.

Sure, the ring is annoying and distracting, but you are giving the person before you top priority.

This same principle can be applied to our spiritual distractions. Yes, we have other thoughts that creep into our prayers or focus at Mass. We can acknowledge their presence, much like we register the sound of the ringing phone in the background. But we can also choose to refocus, front and center, and prioritize our thoughts and attention back to the spiritual moment before us. Just like the ringing of the phone, the distractions will be waiting for us after Mass, after the rosary, after our devotional reading. They (the distractions) can wait.

The real action we need to take is to make an effort to ignore that ringing phone.

Can you let the answering machine of your mind take a message the next time those distractions lure you away?