For Shame: I Make Jesus Sleep On My Couch

Renowned Catholic philosopher, Peter Kreeft, recently published an article regarding the initiative to pray. Like many of the faithful, I struggle with “finding time to pray,” which Kreeft says is as unlikely as it is difficult:

The major obstacle in most of our lives to just saying yes to prayer, the most popular and powerful excuse we give for not praying, or not praying more, or not praying regularly, is that we have no time.

The only effective answer to that excuse, I find, is a kind of murder. You have to kill something, you have to say no to something else, in order to make time to pray. Of course, you will never find time to pray, you have to make time to pray.

Indeed, finding time to pray has rarely been successful in my own life. I often hit snooze in the morning, promising myself that I’ll pray during lunch or my planning period at school, but those days are invariably ones that require all of my spare time, leaving mere seconds for the Lord. Many nights after a murmured bedtime prayer, I set my alarm to sound early with the intent to pray, which only initiates the cycle again. Kreeft continues:

… [T]hat means unmaking something else. The only way to install the tenant of prayer in the apartment building of your life is to evict some other tenant from those premises that prayer will occupy. Few of us have any empty rooms available.

This analogy got me thinking. Most common among evaluations of time is the beloved timeline – one dimensional. But what if the hours of the day were to be evaluated spatially in two dimensions? I cracked open Excel and counted the time spent on various activities throughout the five days of a work week:

Please note that the size or placement of each room doesn’t imply priority.

A five-day work week has 120 hours – five daytime periods and five nighttime periods (including the half-nights preceding Monday morning and following Friday afternoon). For the diagram above, I gave each hour 10 square-feet of space, which provided a 1,200 sq/ft floor plan. In mapping my week, I strove for the reality of my schedule, not what I would like or what I would like for you to believe about me. Essentially, each room, except the dark green ‘living room,’ is a non-negotiable part of my day; I have to sleep, I have to work, when I’m home the kids require constant supervision and attention until a relatively early bedtime, I have to eat, prepare myself to go out in public, as well as transport myself from one place to another. I realize that my house-week may look radically different than someone with older kids who stay up later or another person who commutes an hour to work rather than 15 minutes – but this will have to do.

The most standardized tenants of my house-week, Work, Sleep and Kids, have dedicated space as do a few of the requirements for maintaining a first-world lifestyle.  Please also be aware that though my wife doesn’t have her own room above, it’s more of an illustration that our time together, while substantial, is more sporadic and flexible than organized – it’s not a lack of priority.

So what of prayer?  There have been times in years past where I carved out an hour a day – 50 sq/ft – from Sleep’s room and gave Jesus a regular holy hour (in reality, 50 sq/ft is nothing for a bedroom, but I suppose it’s plenty for the Eucharist…).  As I evaluate my current weekly blueprint, I’ve discovered that Jesus is basically the guy who sleeps on my couch, wandering from room to room, interacting with the other tenants – reading lives of the saints with Kids, praying during free moments at Work and inconsistently sacrificing a little bit of Sleep twice a week for a dreary offering of my day.  And still, I have not made a place for him.  Sure, Jesus is welcome anywhere, but dude, nobody’s moving out anytime soon – here’s your sleeping bag.  This is a lack of priority, remedied in several ways, most easily through going to bed earlier (generally sacrificing entertainment) and committing to waking up earlier or stop by the Adoration chapel after work, though that would cut into time with the kids.  Regardless, it can be done – it has been done – and like Kreeft said, it’s just a matter of deciding which tenant to send packing.