"Stay awake... You do not know when your Lord will come."
 
In a bit of a nostalgic shrine to my life pre-mid-course-redirection, one shelf of books in my office is still devoted to the time management and leadership tomes so prevalent in the business pop culture of the '80's and '90's. Who could possibly send Seven Habits (of all those Highly Effective People!), The One Minute Manager, The Road Less Traveled, or Who Moved My Cheese? to the recycling bin? Will the discipline of spending A-level time on A-level goals ever go out of style? At their heart, the cumulative wisdom from my bookshelf is a reminder to devote, with intentionality, the precious resources of my time and passion to the things that really matter. No MBA required.
 
Our Gospel reading today joins the many 'unknown day and hour' admonitions of Jesus at the end of his ministry. His wake-up call, his wisdom, is challenging us -- me -- to make a serious time/values assessment. His urgent message: the time for the luxury of a lazy eye or merely skimming by on leftover good intentions is coming to an end. John Shea, theologian and storyteller, writes that "Jesus was a wide awake man in a world gone to sleep." Awake, aware, attentive.... Doesn't that mantra describe his ministry? Jesus saw the man born blind, the bent-over woman, Zaccheus, Matthew the tax collector, Nathaniel; he saw hungry folks with some bread and a few fish; he saw the women of Jerusalem on the way to the cross. His parable stories of village and farm life, his miracles of healing, his tender care of the outcast and the overlooked -- he saw, and he acted.  
 
Paying attention, being present -- these are the virtues we celebrate in our Ignatian call to seeing God at work in the world. Celebrating with reverence as we find the extraordinary in the ordinary; attending to how we use our time and resources in fostering a world of mercy and justice, taking on some of the pain of the world -- this is our curriculum when we surrender to seeing with the eyes of Jesus. These commitments go well beyond the mere 'mindfulness' that might be our culture's latest thing to fill bookshelves.
 
A poem we chose as part of Loyola's "Love Letters to God" Day of Prayer last year -- Mary Oliver's Singapore -- was introduced by Fr. Paul and has become a treasured favorite of mine. The poem tracks the journey of the narrator as she first turns away in disgust, noticing a woman cleaning the toilets and the filthy ashtrays at the Singapore Airport, and how she eventually sees the human being present before her as an expression of beauty more lyrical than any poem could ever be. The third step in the Daily Examen review of our spiritual day asks us if we have taken this same journey. "To whom and to what did we pay attention? When did we love?" How will we answer the Examen this evening? How will we commit to our A-task of love today -- awake, aware, attentive?