Routine Sunday Quotes

Fridays are absolutely without a doubt the best day of the week, five grueling days of the same routine seem to melt at three o'clock on Friday afternoon. There's a sense of magic there, everything smells better, tastes better, and the colors are brighter. As opposed to Sunday evenings when everything begins to get dim all over again.

It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy. "He was on his way home from work — happy, successful, healthy — and then, gone," I read in the account of a psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941; without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an "ordinary Sunday morning" it had been. "It was just an ordinary beautiful September day," people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note: "Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.

Great people become great due to the framework, routines and habits they have set for themselves

In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and the pleasure routine. Man becomes a 'nine to fiver', he is part of the labour force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organisation of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organisation, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction. Fun is routinised in similar, although not quite as drastic ways. Books are selected by the book clubs, movies by the film and theatre owners and the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is also uniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session, the card game, the social parties. From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening - all activities are routinised, and prefabricated. How should a man caught up in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and separateness?

It has often been suggested to me that the Constitution of the United States is a sufficient safeguard for the freedom of its citizens. It is obvious that even the freedom it pretends to guarantee is very limited. I have not been impressed with the adequacy of the safeguard. The nations of the world, with centuries of international law behind them, have never hesitated to engage in mass destruction when solemnly pledged to keep the peace; and the legal documents in America have not prevented the United States from doing the same. Those in authority have and always will abuse their power. And the instances when they do not do so are as rare as roses growing on icebergs. Far from the Constitution playing any liberating part in the lives of the American people, it has robbed them of the capacity to rely on their own resources or do their own thinking. Americans are so easily hoodwinked by the sanctity of law and authority. In fact, the pattern of life has become standardized, routinized, and mechanized like canned food and Sunday sermons. The hundred-percenter easily swallows syndicated information and factory-made ideas and beliefs. He thrives on the wisdom given him over the radio and cheap magazines by corporations whose philanthropic aim is selling America out. He accepts the standards of conduct and art in the same breath with the advertising of chewing gum, toothpaste, and shoe polish. Even songs are turned out like buttons or automobile tires--all cast from the same mold.

I wanted Sundays in wintry colours, the smell of soup drifting from the kitchen. I wanted our lives to be like other people's. I wanted everyone to have their place at the table, their time for the bathroom, their part in the domestic routine, for there be nothing to do by let time drift by.

Do you want any breakfast, Sam?” my mom asks. I never eat breakfast at home, but my mom still asks me every day—when she catches me before I duck out, anyway—and in that moment I realize how much I love the little everyday routines of my life: the fact that she always asks, the fact that I always say no because there’s a sesame bagel waiting for me in Lindsay’s car, the fact that we always listen to “No More Drama” as we pull into the parking lot. The fact that my mom always cooks spaghetti and meatballs on Sunday, and the fact that once a month my dad takes over the kitchen and makes his “special stew” which is just hot-dog pieces and baked beans and lots of extra ketchup and molasses, and I would never admit to liking it, but it’s actually one of my favorite meals. The details that are my life’s special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced.

Keating leaned back with a sense of warmth and well-being. He liked this book. It had made the routine of his Sunday morning breakfast a profound spiritual experience; he was certain that it was profound, because he didn’t understand it.

I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning. And if I knock off from this routine for as long as a day, I’m frantic with boredom and a sense of waste. Sundays I have breakfast late and read the papers with Hope. Then we go for a walk in the hills, and I'm haunted by the loss of all that good time. I wake up Sunday mornings and I'm nearly crazy at the prospect of all those unusable hours. I'm restless, I'm bad-tempered, but she's a human being too, you see, so I go. To avoid trouble she makes me leave my watch at home. The result is that I look at my wrist instead. We're walking, she's talking, then I look at my wrist - and that generally does it, if my foul mood hasn't already. She throws in the sponge and we come home. And at home what is there to distinguish Sunday from Thursday? I sit back down at my little Olivetti and start looking at sentences and turning them around. And I ask myself, Why is there no way but this for me to fill my hours?

(Rather in the way that the Roman Empire continued in a certain fashion to run itself even when there was no one left to run it and the reason behind it was entirely gone, much of this routine remained intact even during the terrible days after Bunny’s death. Up until the very end there was always, always, Sunday-night dinner at Charles and Camilla’s, except on the evening of the murder itself, when no one felt much like eating and it was postponed until Monday.) I

Only people who live their lives very routinely, who have never known abject grief, can love Saturdays and Sundays. For me there was a rickety lonesomeness to them. It always seemed everybody had escaped somewhere I hadn’t been invited to.

The difference could be grouped into categories of mature and immature love. Preferable in almost every way, the philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person, it is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated (and perhaps explains why most people who have known the wilder shores of desire would refuse its painlessness the title of love). Immature love on the other hand (though it has little to do with age) is a story of chaotic lurching between idealization and disappointment, an unstable state where feelings of ecstasy and beatitude combine with impressions of drowning and fatal nausea, where the sense that one has finally found the answer comes together with the feeling that one has never been so lost. The logical climax of immature (because absolute) love comes in death, symbolic or real. The climax of mature love comes in marriage, and the attempt to avoid death via routine (the Sunday papers, trouser presses, remote-controlled appliances). For immature love accepts no compromise, and once we refuse compromise, we are on the road to some kind of cataclysm. 6.

I want to make you so happy, Jane,” he says, voice choked. “I want to bring you coffee with cream in bed every morning, and I want to make you laugh, really belly-laugh the way you hardly ever do, and I want to read books and eat cinnamon buns and know what outfit you like to wear on a Sunday. I want to be part of your routine. I want to stand next to you in a crowded party and hold your hand tight and make you feel safe. I want to know you, all your habits, all the secrets you’ve held in. You’re not on your own now, Jane. You’ve got me. Always

Do you want any breakfast, Sam?” my mom asks. I never eat breakfast at home, but my mom still asks me every day—when she catches me before I duck out, anyway—and in that moment I realize how much I love the little everyday routines of my life: the fact that she always asks, the fact that I always say no because there’s a sesame bagel waiting for me in Lindsay’s car, the fact that we always listen to “No More Drama” as we pull into the parking lot. The fact that my mom always cooks spaghetti and meatballs on Sunday, and the fact that once a month my dad takes over the kitchen and makes his “special stew,” which is just hot-dog pieces and baked beans and lots of extra ketchup and molasses, and I would never admit to liking it, but it’s actually one of my favorite meals. The details that are my life’s special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced. So many things become beautiful when you really look.

Taki As a prolific author and journalist, Taki has written for many top-rated publications, including the Spectator, the London Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, National Review, and many others. Greek-born and American-educated, Taki is a well-known international personality and a respected social critic all over the world. In June 1987, I was an usher at the wedding of Harry Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, to Tracy Ward. The wedding and ensuing ball took place in the grand Ward country house, attended by a large portion of British society, including the Prince and Princess of Wales. Late in the evening, while I was in my cups, a friend, Nicky Haslam, grabbed my arm and introduced me to Diana, who was coming off the dance floor. We exchanged pleasantries, me slurring my words to the extent that she suddenly took my hand, looked at me straight in the face, and articulated, “T-a-k-e y-o-u-r t-i-m-e.” She mistook my drunken state for a severe speech impediment and went into her queen-of-hearts routine. Nicky, of course, ruined it all by pulling her away and saying, “Oh, let him be, ma’am; he’s drunk as usual.

5. Move toward resistance and pain A. Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

What to Do Tonight Tell your child, “You’re the expert on you. Nobody really knows you better than you know yourself, because nobody really knows what it feels like to be you.” Give your child a choice about something you may have previously decided for her. Or ask her opinion about something. (If they’re young, you can frame it as, “Do you think we should do it this way or that way?”) Have a family meeting where you problem solve together about what chores need to be done and who should do them. Give them options. Could they walk the dog instead of doing the dinner dishes? Take out the trash instead of cleaning the toilet? Do they want to do it each Sunday or each Wednesday? Morning or night? Keep a consistent schedule, but let them choose that schedule. Make a list of things your child would like to be in charge of, and make a plan to shift responsibility for some of these things from you to him or her. Ask your child whether something in his life isn’t working for him (his homework routine, bedtime, management of electronics) and if he has any ideas about how to make it work better. Do a cost-benefit analysis of any decision you make for your child that she sees differently. Tell your child about decisions you’ve made that, in retrospect, were not the best decisions—and how you were able to learn and grow from them. Have a talk in which you point out that your kid has got a good mind. Recall some times when he’s made a good decision or felt strongly about something and turned out to be right. If he’ll let you, make a list together of the things he’s decided for himself that have worked well. Tell your teen you want him to have lots of practice running his own life before he goes off to college—and that you want to see that he can run his life without running it into the ground before he goes away. Emphasize logical and natural consequences, and encourage the use of family meetings to discuss family rules or family policies more generally (e.g., no gaming during the week).

LEAD PEOPLE TO COMMITMENT We have seen that nonbelievers in worship actually “close with Christ” in two basic ways: some may come to Christ during the service itself (1 Cor 14:24 – 25), while others must be “followed up with” by means of after-service meetings. Let’s take a closer look at both ways of leading people to commitment. It is possible to lead people to a commitment to Christ during the service. One way of inviting people to receive Christ is to make a verbal invitation as the Lord’s Supper is being distributed. At our church, we say it this way: “If you are not in a saving relationship with God through Christ today, do not take the bread and the cup, but as they come around, take Christ. Receive him in your heart as those around you receive the food. Then immediately afterward, come up and tell an officer or a pastor about what you’ve done so we can get you ready to receive the Supper the next time as a child of God.” Another way to invite commitment during the service is to give people a time of silence or a period of musical interlude after the sermon. This affords people time to think and process what they have heard and to offer themselves to God in prayer. In many situations, it is best to invite people to commitment through after-meetings. Acts 2 gives an example. Inverses 12 and 13 we are told that some folks mocked after hearing the apostles praise and preach, but others were disturbed and asked, “What does this mean?” Then, we see that Peter very specifically explained the gospel and, in response to the follow-up question “What shall we do?” (v. 37), he explained how to become a Christian. Historically, many preachers have found it effective to offer such meetings to nonbelievers and seekers immediately after evangelistic worship. Convicted seekers have just come from being in the presence of God and are often the most teachable and open at this time. To seek to “get them into a small group” or even to merely return next Sunday is asking a lot. They may also be “amazed and perplexed” (Acts 2:12), and it is best to strike while the iron is hot. This should not be understood as doubting that God is infallibly drawing people to himself (Acts 13:48; 16:14). Knowing the sovereignty of God helps us to relax as we do evangelism, knowing that conversions are not dependent on our eloquence. But it should not lead us to ignore or minimize the truth that God works through secondary causes. The Westminster Confession (5.2 – 3), for example, tells us that God routinely works through normal social and psychological processes. Therefore, inviting people into a follow-up meeting immediately after the worship service can often be more conducive to conserving the fruit of the Word. After-meetings may take the shape of one or more persons waiting at the front of the auditorium to pray with and talk with seekers who wish to make inquiries right on the spot. Another way is to host a simple Q&A session with the preacher in or near the main auditorium, following the postlude. Or offer one or two classes or small group experiences targeted to specific questions non-Christians ask about the content, relevance, and credibility of the Christian faith. Skilled lay evangelists should be present who can come alongside newcomers, answer spiritual questions, and provide guidance for their next steps.

Indian Express (Indian Express) - Clip This Article at Location 721 | Added on Sunday, 30 November 2014 20:28:42 Fifth column: Hope and audacity Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Tavleen Singh | 807 words At the end of six months of the Modi sarkar are we seeing signs that it is confusing efficiency with reform? I ask the question because so far there is no sign of real reform in any area of governance. And, because some of Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are now beginning to get worried. Last week I met a man who dedicated a whole year to helping Modi become Prime Minister and he seemed despondent. When I asked how he thought the government was doing, he said he would answer in the words of the management guru Peter Drucker, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” We can certainly not fault this government on efficiency. Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. The Prime Minister’s Office hums with more noise and activity than we have seen in a decade but, despite this, there are no signs of the policy changes that are vital if we are to see real reform. The Planning Commission has been abolished but there are many, many other leftovers from socialist times that must go. Do we need a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in an age when the Internet has made propaganda futile? Do we need a meddlesome University Grants Commission? Do we need the government to continue wasting our money on a hopeless airline and badly run hotels? We do not. What we do need is for the government to make policies that will convince investors that India is a safe bet once more. We do not need a new government that simply implements more efficiently bad policies that it inherited from the last government. It was because of those policies that investors fled and the economy stopped growing. Unless this changes through better policies, the jobs that the Prime Minister promises young people at election rallies will not come. So far signals are so mixed that investors continue to shy away. The Finance Minister promises to end tax terrorism but in the next breath orders tax inspectors to go forth in search of black money. Vodafone has been given temporary relief by the courts but the retroactive tax remains valid. And, although we hear that the government has grandiose plans to improve the decrepit transport systems, power stations and ports it inherited, it continues to refuse to pay those who have to build them. The infrastructure industry is owed more than Rs 1.5 lakh continued... crore in government dues and this has crippled major companies. No amount of efficiency in announcing new projects will make a difference unless old dues are cleared. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Does he know that a police check is required even if you just want to get a few pages added to your passport? Does he know how hard it is to do routine things like registering property? Does he know that no amount of efficiency will improve healthcare services that are broken? No amount of efficiency will improve educational services that have long been in terminal decline because of bad policies and interfering officials. At the same time, the licence raj that strangles private investment in schools and colleges remains in place. Modi’s popularity with ordinary people has increased since he became Prime Minister, as we saw from his rallies in Kashmir last week, but it will not la

It was the rust of routine, which he had despised and feared so much, but which had protected him from an awareness of his age. However, one Sunday in December, when the rosebushes on the tombs had already defeated the garden shears, he saw the swallows on the recently installed electric wires and he suddenly realized how much time had gone by since the death of his mother, and how much since the murder of Olimpia Zuleta, and how very much since that other distant December afternoon when Fermina Daza sent him a letter saying yes, she would love him always. Until then he had behaved as if time would not pass for him but only for others.

Your entire morning routine works this way — always drink water upon waking, always check calendar and commitments on waking, block the internet with the Freedom app or block specific websites with the SelfControl app to start the day — these are all easy to entrain.   Doing a weekly review every single Sunday, and making that the first thing you do on Sunday — entrainment.   Default

Ray credits this success to their highly disciplined focus on profitability. He has led the company as CEO for thirty-five years, and throughout that period Ray has followed an extraordinarily consistent routine. He wakes up at 5:30 A.M. every single morning, including Saturday and Sunday (as he’s done for more than fifty years). He then exercises for an hour. He eats breakfast at 7:30 A.M. and arrives at work at 8:15 A.M. Dinner is at 6:30 P.M. with his family. Bedtime is 10:00 P.M. But what really enables Ray to operate at his highest level of contribution is that throughout the day, his routine is governed by a single rule: “Focus on the hardest thing first.” After all, as Ray said to me: “We already have too

You are killing your life if you are just going through the traditions and routine of church services with no product to show for it.

The difference could be grouped into categories of mature and immature love. Preferable in almost every way, the philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person, it is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated (and perhaps explains why most people who have known the wilder shores of desire would refuse its painlessness the title of “love”). Immature love (which has little to do with age), on the other hand, is a story of chaotic lurching between idealization and disappointment, an unstable state where feelings of ecstasy and beatitude combine with impressions of drowning and fatal nausea, where the sense that one has finally found the answer comes together with the feeling that one has never been so lost. The logical climax of immature (because absolute) love comes in death, symbolic or real. The climax of mature love comes in marriage, and the attempt to avoid death via routine (the Sunday papers, trouser presses, remote-controlled appliances). For immature love accepts no compromise, and once we refuse compromise, we are on the road to some kind of cataclysm.

It’s Sunday morning. My wake-up routine has been completed. What am I now to do? Here is my answer. Do what the Scriptures require and what Christians have done for 2,000 years. Go to the public assembly, gathered under the discipline of Christ’s appointed officers to be ministered to by the word read, preached, sung, prayed, and displayed in the sacraments.

We had gone back to San Diego for her last months, and I slept with Gaga while my mother spent most of her time over at the hospital. Early each morning, as the planes started up their infernal diving, the phone would ring and a conversation ensue, after which I would ask if my other grandmother was still living. The question grew to be reflexive and almost meaningless, just part of the daily routine, until the Sunday that Gaga shocked me by shaking her head, putting down the phone, and breaking into tears.

Write your routine, Ronan. Now. While I watch. I want to see it." 7:45 A.M.: The most important meal of the day. 8:00 A.M.: Feed animals. 9:30 A.M.: Repair barns or house. 12:00 P.M.: Lunch @ that weird gas station. 1:30 P.M.: Ronan Lynch's marvelous dream emporium. "What does this one mean, Ronan?" It meant practice makes perfect. It meant ten thousand hours to mastery, if at first you don't succeed, there is no try only do. Ronan had spent hours over the last year dreaming ever more complex and precise objects into being, culminating in an intricate security system that rendered the Barns largely impossible to find unless you knew exactly where you were going. After Cambridge, though, it felt like all the fun had run out of the game. "I don't ask what you do at work, Declan." 6:00 P.M.: Drive around. 7:15 P.M.: Nuke some dinner, yo. 7:30 P.M.: Movie time. 11:00 P.M.: Text Parrish. Adam's most recent text had said simply: $4200. It was the amount Ronan had to send to cover the dorm room repairs. *11:30 P.M.: Go to bed. *Saturday/Sunday: Church/DC *Monday: Laundry & Grocery *Tuesday: Text or call Gansey These last items were in Declan's handwriting, his addendums subtly suggesting all the components of a fulfilling grown-up life Ronan had missed when crafting it. They only served to depress Ronan more. Look how you can predict the next forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours, ninety-six hours, look how you can predict the rest of your life. The entire word routine depressed Ronan. The sameness. Fuck everything. Gansey texted: Declan told me to tell you to get out of bed. Ronan texted back: why He watched the morning light move over the varied black-gray shapes in his bedroom. Shelves of model cars; an open Uilleann pipes case; an old scuffed desk with a stuffed whale on it; a metal tree with wondrously intricate branches; heaps of laundry curled around beet-read wood shavings. Gansey texted back: don't make me get on a plane I'm currently chained to one of the largest black walnut trees in Oregon

Write your routine, Ronan. Now. While I watch. I want to see it." 7:45 A.M.: The most important meal of the day. 8:00 A.M.: Feed animals. 9:30 A.M.: Repair barns or house. 12:00 P.M.: Lunch @ that weird gas station. 1:30 P.M.: Ronan Lynch's marvelous dream emporium. "What does this one mean, Ronan?" It meant practice makes perfect. It meant ten thousand hours to mastery, if at first you don't succeed, there is no try only do. Ronan had spent hours over the last year dreaming ever more complex and precise objects into being, culminating in an intricate security system that rendered the Barns largely impossible to find unless you knew exactly where you were going. After Cambridge, though, it felt like all the fun had run out of the game. "I don't ask what you do at work, Declan." 6:00 P.M.: Drive around. 7:15 P.M.: Nuke some dinner, yo. 7:30 P.M.: Movie time. 11:00 P.M.: Text Parrish. Adam's most recent text had said simply: $4200. It was the amount Ronan had to send to cover the dorm room repairs. *11:30 P.M.: Go to bed. *Saturday/Sunday: Church/DC *Monday: Laundry & Grocery *Tuesday: Text or call Gansey These last items were in Declan's handwriting, his addendums subtly suggesting all the components of a fulfilling grown-up life Ronan had missed when crafting it. They only served to depress Ronan more. Look how you can predict the next forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours, ninety-six hours, look how you can predict the rest of your life. The entire word routine depressed Ronan. The sameness. Fuck everything. Gansey texted: Declan told me to tell you to get out of bed. Ronan texted back: why He watched the morning light move over the varied black-gray shapes in his bedroom. Shelves of model cars; an open Uilleann pipes case; an old scuffed desk with a stuffed whale on it; a metal tree with wondrously intricate branches; heaps of laundry curled around beet-red wood shavings. Gansey texted back: don't make me get on a plane I'm currently chained to one of the largest black walnut trees in Oregon

Mate. He’d told Hayden he would stick to his routine. That meant watching the game at her apartment on Sunday and maintaining their friendship. His logical mind fought against his growing urges. Last night, he couldn’t have a simple conversation without touching her. And she didn’t make things any easier. He could smell the desire pouring out of her. It took every ounce of his self-control to hold himself back. At times, it was painful. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got the situation under control.” Cam laughed. “Like you did yesterday? Dude, we both know it’s only going to get worse. You’re like a ticking sex bomb.” Deep down, Kaden knew he was right. Annabelle would become an irresistible, unquenchable thirst. Ordinarily, she would feel the same pull, but there was no way to know how a human would react. “There’s no such thing as a sex bomb.” Cam spread himself flat across the sofa with his arms crossed behind his head. “Yeah, well, there definitely should be.” “Be serious.” He sat up. “I’m trying to tell you, it’s foolish to fight the bond between you. You’d be better off going with it and letting the panties drop where they may.” And what would happen if he did bond with her? There was no chance it would ever work out between them. He had to hide who he was from the world. A life with him meant Annabelle would have to lie to her friends and family about their relationship. He would never be able to marry her or give her the children she wanted. They’d talked about her dreams for a white picket fence and a family. Even if she were willing to give up those things, wouldn’t he be putting her life in danger? A dull ache formed in the pit of his chest. “You know that’s not possible.” If he could somehow push away these human emotions of his, maybe he stood a chance of keeping her in his life. Maybe someday he could actually be happy for her if she found a suitable mate. He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands at the thought of her with a human. “I have to go. She’s waiting for me.” “Don’t forget the condoms,” Cam shouted out. “Matter of fact, you might want to double up. With all your pent-up frustration, there’s bound to be an explosion.” “Hilarious,” he replied, shutting the door behind him as he made his way toward his truck. Once inside, he slid his seat belt on and leaned back against the head cushion with his eyes closed. Filled with self-doubt, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle it. But he had to. For the sake of everyone he loved, he had to find a way.

Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

Turn the actions in achieving your goals into systematically repeated things and make them your routine

The chronically embittered person only noticed his illness once a week, on Sunday afternoons. Then, with no work or routine to relieve the symptoms, he would feel that something was very wrong, since he found the peace of those endless afternoons infernal and felt only a keen sense of constant irritation.

Melanie woke to the familiar pressure of Darcy touching her belly. Using the width of his fingers as a ruler, he stacked hand over hand until two fingers came to rest at the place where her baby bulge met her sternum. It had become part of their Sunday morning routine in the month they’d lived at Skibo. “Ye’ve added three fingers since we came to Dornoch,” he said. “Your bairn is growing fair well, I’d say.” His soft gaze caressed her face as he leaned over her. She reached up to smooth his sleep-mussed hair behind his ear. The soft skin at his temple heated her fingers, and she was tempted to trail them all over his body in initiation of the more blush-inducing part of their Sunday morning routine. “You chose the wrong occupation,” she told him, pushing herself up to kiss his nose. “You should have been a midwife.” “Och, ’tis only your legs I care to look between.

Taki As a prolific author and journalist, Taki has written for many top-rated publications, including the Spectator, the London Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, National Review, and many others. Greek-born and American-educated, Taki is a well-known international personality and a respected social critic all over the world. In June 1987, I was an usher at the wedding of Harry Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, to Tracy Ward. The wedding and ensuing ball took place in the grand Ward country house, attended by a large portion of British society, including the Prince and Princess of Wales. Late in the evening, while I was in my cups, a friend, Nicky Haslam, grabbed my arm and introduced me to Diana, who was coming off the dance floor. We exchanged pleasantries, me slurring my words to the extent that she suddenly took my hand, looked at me straight in the face, and articulated, “T-a-k-e y-o-u-r t-i-m-e.” She mistook my drunken state for a severe speech impediment and went into her queen-of-hearts routine. Nicky, of course, ruined it all by pulling her away and saying, “Oh, let him be, ma’am; he’s drunk as usual.” We occasionally met after that and always had a laugh about it. But we never got further than that rather pathetic incident. In 1994, I began writing the “Atticus” column for the Sunday Times, the bestselling Sunday broadsheet in Britain. By this time Diana and Charles had separated, and Diana had gone on the offensive against what was perceived by her to be Buckingham Palace plotting. As a confirmed monarchist, I warned in one of my columns that her popularity was enough to one day bring down the monarchy. I also wrote that she was bonkers. One month or so later, at a ball given in London by Sir James Goldsmith and his daughter Jemima Khan, a mutual friend approached me and told me that Princess Diana would like to speak with me. As luck would have it, yet again I was under the weather. When I reached her table, she pulled out a seat for me and asked me to sit down. The trouble was that I missed the chair and ended up under the table. Diana screamed with laughter, pulled up the tablecloth, looked underneath, and asked me pointblank: “Do you really think I’m mad?” For once I had the right answer. “All I know is I’m mad about you.” It was the start of a beautiful friendship, as Bogie said in Casablanca.

The challenge for us is to make the gospel the center of our lives not just on Sunday mornings but on Monday mornings. This means ending distinctions between “full-timers,” “part-timers,” and people with secular employment in our team and leadership structures. We need non-full-time leaders who can model whole-life, gospel-centered, missional living. It means thinking of our workplaces, homes, and neighborhoods as the location of mission. We need to plan and pray for gospel relationships. This means creating church cultures in which we see normal, celebrating day-to-day gospel living in the secular world and discussions of how we can use our daily routines for the gospel.

Sloth is a sneaky sin that quietly creeps into the lives of people, even religious ones, and gradually chokes out true spirituality. It diverts our attention from the things of heaven to a myriad of other things until we find ourselves bored with God, making only routine and mechanical efforts to “fulfill our Sunday obligation.” There is no passion, no zeal, no desire. Just lots of excuses.

Create a Journaling Ritual If you’re having trouble sticking to your planning and organization habits, dedicate a specific time into your daily, weekly, and monthly routines to do so. Personally, I fill out all my trackers and transfer any leftover tasks before I get ready for bed. I fill out weeklong trackers, such as my goal reflection journal, on Sunday mornings. Just like brushing your teeth after eating is a habitual task you barely need to remind yourself to do, adding bullet journaling to your routine will ensure that you actually journal.

Here’s my protocol for my usual monthly 3-day fast from Thursday dinner to Sunday dinner: On Wednesday and Thursday, plan phone calls for Friday. Determine how you can be productive via cell phone for 4 hours. This will make sense shortly. Have a low-carb dinner around 6 p.m. on Thursday. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, sleep as late as possible. The point is to let sleep do some of the work for you. Consume exogenous ketones or MCT oil upon waking and 2 more times throughout the day at 3- to 4-hour intervals. I primarily use KetoCaNa and caprylic acid (C8), like Brain Octane. The exogenous ketones help “fill the gap” for the 1 to 3 days that you might suffer carb withdrawal. Once you’re in deep ketosis and using body fat, they can be omitted. On Friday (and Saturday if needed), drink some caffeine and prepare to WALK. Be out the door no later than 30 minutes after waking. I grab a cold liter of water or Smartwater out of my fridge, add a dash of pure, unsweetened lemon juice to attenuate boredom, add a few pinches of salt to prevent misery/headaches/cramping, and head out. I sip this as I walk and make phone calls. Podcasts also work. Once you finish your water, fill it up or buy another. Add a little salt, keep walking, and keep drinking. It’s brisk walking—NOT intense exercise—and constant hydration that are key. I have friends who’ve tried running or high-intensity weight training instead, and it does not work for reasons I won’t bore you with. I told them, “Try brisk walking and tons of water for 3 to 4 hours. I bet you’ll be at 0.7 mmol the next morning.” One of them texted me the next morning: “Holy shit. 0.7 mmol.” Each day of fasting, feel free to consume exogenous ketones or fat (e.g., coconut oil in tea or coffee) as you like, up to 4 tablespoons. I will often reward myself at the end of each fasting afternoon with an iced coffee with a bit of coconut cream in it. Truth be told, I will sometimes allow myself a SeaSnax packet of nori sheets. Oooh, the decadence. Break your fast on Sunday night. Enjoy it. For a 14-day or longer fast, you need to think about refeeding carefully. But for a 3-day fast, I don’t think what you eat matters much. I’ve done steak, I’ve done salads, I’ve done greasy burritos. Evolutionarily, it makes no sense that a starving hominid would need to find shredded cabbage or some such nonsense to save himself from death. Eat what you find to eat.

What would make these people break from their regular Sunday routines to search for a woman they don’t even know? He certainly wouldn’t do it.

I wrote each weekend task on a small plastic sticky about half the size of your typical Post-it. I placed all the stickers on a laminated page that was labeled WEEKEND TASKS. Now my typical routine on Saturday mornings is to get out the laminated sheet and put it on the kitchen counter. Simple. This sheet becomes my checklist for the weekend. As I do each task, I move the sticker to the back of the sheet so I see only the tasks I haven’t completed. On Sunday, when I finish the final task, I flip the laminated page over, put the final sticker on the page (victoriously!), and store my laminated sheet of tasks for the next weekend.

In her book Leaving Church, former parish priest and award-winning preacher Barbara Brown Taylor describes what it was like to feel her soul slipping away. She says: Many of the things1 that were happening inside of me seemed too shameful to talk about out loud. Laid low by what was happening at Grace-Calvary, I did not have the energy to put a positive spin on anything. . . . Beyond my luminous images of Sunday mornings I saw the committee meetings, the numbing routines, and the chronically difficult people who took up a large part of my time. Behind my heroic image of myself I saw my tiresome perfectionism, my resentment of those who did not try as hard as I did, and my huge appetite for approval. I saw the forgiving faces of my family, left behind every holiday for the last fifteen years, while I went to conduct services for other people and their families. Above all, I saw that my desire to draw as near to God as I could had backfired on me somehow. Drawn to care for hurt things, I had ended up with compassion fatigue. Drawn to a life of servanthood, I had ended up a service provider. Drawn to marry the Divine Presence, I had ended up estranged. . . . Like the bluebirds that sat on my windowsills, pecking at the reflections they saw in the glass, I could not reach the greenness for which my soul longed. For years I had believed that if I just kept at it, the glass would finally disappear. Now for the first time, I wondered if I had devoted myself to an illusion.

The whole problem is further complicated by the fact that there were two distinct musical units on the Titanic, not just a single eight-piece orchestra, as is generally assumed. First, there was a quintet led by violinist Wallace Hartley and used for routine ship’s business—tea-time and after-dinner concerts, Sunday service and the like. There was no brass or drums. Vernon and Irene Castle had introduced the foxtrot, but it hadn’t reached the White Star Line yet. In addition to this basic orchestra, the Titanic had something very special: a trio of violin, cello, and piano that played exclusively in the Reception Room outside the À la Carte Restaurant and Café Parisien. This was all part of White Star’s effort to plant a little corner of Paris in the heart of a great British liner, and appropriately the trio included a French cellist and a Belgian violinist to add to the Continental flavoring. These two orchestras had completely separate musical libraries. They had their own arrangements, and they did not normally mix. It is likely (but not certain) that on the night of the collision they played together for the first time. Hence whatever they played had to be relatively simple and easy to handle without sheet music— the current hits and old numbers that the men knew by heart.

I wanted Sundays in wintry colours, the smell of soup drifting from the kitchen. I wanted our lives to be like other people's. I wanted everyone to have their place at the table, their time for the bathroom, their part in the domestic routine, for there be nothing to do but let time drift by.

Leucate. New homily on the Covenant. First act: Moses sprinkles his people with the blood of three young bulls. Then, at the Passover, Christ says to the Jews: 'Eat, this is my body. Drink, this is my blood'! (The Jews are taken aback by this: we are not cannibals! ) Lastly, to crown the triptych, it is Christ who sacrifices himself. But, according to the good cure, we should not believe this sacrifice frees us from original sin (yet that is what the worshippers secretly believe). Silent, rural horror of those same worshippers (who stand up, sing and cross themselves like mechanical birds) at the mention of the sacramental. The idea that the Mass is a sacrament in which the Lord's sacrifice is renewed is like water off a duck's back to them. They come every Sunday to absolve themselves of their everyday existence, and that is the whole of their liturgy. As for the cure, I've never seen him succumb to routine. He even seems at one point to take himself for Moses, when lamenting that holy water has been substituted for bulls' blood. The Christ of Lagrasse: lascivious death throes.

different than they were, and they appreciated having five shovels working rather than four. He no longer lived at home, but still spent a good portion of his rare free time with his family, especially on Sundays. His new residence was the room in the pump house that had been previously occupied by Horace Breedlove. Horace Breedlove hadn’t gone away as quietly as John Wittemore had hoped and after he was officially replaced a year later and sent back to the coal face eight hundred feet below the ground, he had more than once expressed his displeasure to Dylan when he caught him alone. That very real danger pushed Dylan into purchasing a Colt Baby Dragoon pistol two years ago. He kept the .31 caliber pistol in his jacket pocket which was usually in his office residence. He didn’t advertise that he had the five-shot revolver, but still managed to do quite a bit of practice with the gun inside the large pump house. Even with the engine shut down at night or on Sunday for maintenance, it was only quiet when Dylan wasn’t inside. The routine clanging and ringing easily disguised his gunfire. When it was time for their lunch break, Dylan and Bryn each took one of their mother’s sandwiches in hand, but rather than sit down, as they munched Dylan began giving his younger brother a tour of

would I ever use ayahuasca again after that? Here’s why: Over subsequent weeks, I realized that some of the most critical relationships in my life had been completely repaired. I saw things differently, reacted differently, and interacted differently, as if I had been reprogrammed. Those changes all persist to this day. So, there’s a huge potential upside but equally huge potential downside if taken lightly or done with the wrong people. I mention this cautionary tale because ayahuasca has become terribly trendy. It’s THE thing to talk about at cocktail parties, and I shudder every time I hear something along the lines of “I’m going to my friend’s place in Manhattan for an aya ceremony this Sunday night. She mail-ordered some brew from Hawaii, and we’re doing it together. It’s going to be amazing.” There are now hundreds of new-age folks—out-there yoga instructors, didgeridoo players, whatever—who decide to “play shaman

He still attended every Sunday. It was as much a part of his routine as buying the same two Sunday newspapers at the same stall on his way home, the luncheon taken from the fridge and heated up in obedience to Erik’s written instructions, the short afternoon walk through the park, then the hour of sleep and the evening of television. The

A plan is not a routine that a man does every day; it is not even a time table