I can't listen if I'm busy. When my schedule is crowded, I am not free to listen: I have to keep my next appointment; I have to get to the next meeting. But if I provide margins to my day there is ample time to listen.
"Yes, but how?" The appointment calendar is the tool with which to get unbusy...The authority once given to Scripture is now ascribed to the appointment calendar. The dogma of verbal inerrancy has not been discarded, only re-assigned.
The trick of course is to get to the calendar before anyone else does. I mark out times for prayer, for reading, for leisure, for the silence and solitude out of which creative work - prayer, preaching, and listening - can issue.
I find that whenever these central needs are met, there is plenty of time for everything else. And there is much else, for the pastor is not, and should not be, exempt from the hundred menial tasks or the administrative humdrum. These are also pastoral ministry. but the only way I have found to accomplish them without resentment and anxiety is first to take care of the priorities. If there is not time to nurture these essentials, I become a busy pastor, harassed and anxious, a whining and compulsive Martha instead of a contemplative Mary.
The Contemplative Pastor, p22-23
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