Sometimes the summer “break” feels a little weird because our kids are grown up and I’m running my [...]]]> I’m really enjoying God’s gift of yearly cycles.  During the summer, especially, is my time to refresh, re-energize, and re-commit.  This is possible because so many things slow down during this season as people focus on vacations and family.

Sometimes the summer “break” feels a little weird because our kids are grown up and I’m running my own business, but that’s a topic for another day.

For the last three years, I’ve gone to the Sacred Music Colloquium.  It’s totally consuming and draining, but my spirit is renewed for the coming year.  I’ve been able to work with so many deeply talented and spiritual people, and have ideas I can take back to my parish.

It’s also a time to connect with each member of our Schola one on one, to see how things are going for them.  Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to call this week, though, as most people were out in connection with the upcoming holiday.  That’s OK – we’ll connect over the course of the coming month.

I’ll be looking at doing another parish chant workshop this year, as that was so well received last summer and helped double the size of our schola.  I’ve got some wonderful ideas to work with that came from the instructors and attendees at the Colloquium.

It’s also a time of reflection and planning for our upcoming RCIA year.  I’m excited that we’re going to take a day to focus on this next week, to see what needs to be adjusted.  We’ve been doing this during the summer for many years, and it’s always a great exercise to get the RCIA team aligned and focused on the most important thing:  Bringing people to God.

What could be more important?

That’s a huge change from the way we usually think.  We tend to focus on what organizations do through their employees, and by money changing hands.  But [...]]]>
Here’s an interesting idea I get from Clay Shirky’s video above (if you can’t see it, try this link):  Many useful things these days are being done purely by volunteers.

That’s a huge change from the way we usually think.  We tend to focus on what organizations do through their employees, and by money changing hands.  But in fact, the new economy is doing more and more based on volunteers.

Let’s think about this for a moment.  You spend, say, 40 hours a week doing things that someone pays you for.  That’s 24% of your 168 available hours in the week.

Let’s say you sleep 8 hours a night – that’s another 33%.  So this means that 43% of your time during the week – 72 hours – is available for doing things that nobody’s paying you for.  And because we’re massively connected, you can make a difference to people who are anywhere in the world.

Presumably much of your time is spent on contributions to your family and maintaining your mental, physical, and spiritual health.  But for the remaining time you have, here are my questions:

• Who do you want to make a difference to?
• How will you connect with those people, so that you do in fact make a difference to their lives?
• Who will you build upon, and partner with, in order to make a difference in the world?

These kinds of questions can help you to put some laser focus onto your precious discretionary time and effort.  And when you team up with others who share similar goals, amazing things can happen.  World-changing things.

I love the vibrant sacred music community over at www.musicasacra.com because they’re focused on achieving amazing things for the Catholic Church – almost entirely just building on each others’ volunteer efforts.

And when you’re a volunteer, you get to make the contribution that you decide is most important – unconstrained by the power of the paycheck.