The Friday Habit!

I am thinking about Fridays. I love them. They make me feel hopeful, imbued with a sense of accomplishment and anticipation about what possibilities are held in the next two days of freedom.

I didn’t always have this view of Fridays. As a pastor, Friday was the last day to prepare everything needed for the busy, overwhelming stuff that was the weekend of worship.

I’m not sure how many people realize it; the hours a pastor puts in. During my tenure as an ordained woman, I had my share of those folks who asked “What do you do during the week?” I always laughed between clenched teeth and explained that being a pastor was a full time job, oh sorry, vocation, calling.

Right. Forgot, not a job, a calling. I digress.

I have had free weekends since the spring of 2008. At first it was strange and uncomfortable. I felt like a truant child who was cutting class. It was as if something was wrong with the extra hours that were now mine to decide how to use.

I got used to it. It’s a totally new universe, one that I now adore and enjoy. The weekend has allowed for more time with my kids, late night and morning intimacy with my husband and the ability to sleep in which has allowed for parties! Saturday and Sunday’s are great for long run’s, bike rides and reading uninterrupted. Love ‘em. That’s their job, to rejuvenate and give reasons for joy.

Now I have a new job for Fridays: an experiment to form The Friday Habit. Here it is. Every Friday wake up with this intention: To concentrate on the good in you and in others around you and Tweet, Facebook, Orkut, Blog or otherwise announce it.

We focus too much on the bad, the violent and awful. We come by it honestly. Christianity and the Doctrine of Original Sin laid the foundation of Western culture and our ideas about humanity. We have practiced and rehearsed that the “bad in us” dictates and rules.

Father Augustine, the author of this ground-laying opus, declared that humans are born ensconced in sin, wrapped up in the dirty reality that our first human inclination is to choose that which is bad. We lie, cheat, harm, are selfish, greedy and are overcome with the desires of the flesh.

Of course, the answer to such a state of affairs is God and the Church. Convenient, I know. We can never escape this cycle of sin until we die and then are judged as to how well we did managing it via God, Jesus and the Church. In other words, we need them and it. We cannot handle our bad or create our own good, so that we must go looking for it in the divine entity which apparently created us with this wanting for good, which is concurrent with this same divine entity. Clever.

The marketing plan is actually pretty ingenious. It provides for a life long need to buy what the Church is selling.

I want a new plan, and it begins with The Friday Habit: Concentrate on the good in you and in others around you and Tweet, Facebook, Orkut, Blog or otherwise announce it.

We need to let go of the thousands of years of practicing the idea that we sin first and we gotta get the good from outside of us.

We need to replace the old confession of sin with a new affirmation, a new, powerful sentence. Yup, a sentence!

Here it is: I affirm that I am by nature good, and have within me the power to make choices that create good for me and others.

That’s it. One sentence.

It takes 21 days to form a habit. We could change the world by making this sentence our new habit. Seriously. Think about how the ground of our world, built on the Doctrine that we are first sinful and need God and Church to manage it, would shake and turn if we practiced that we are all good and already have the power inside of us to do and make more good!

I am good, you are good. We share the same core of good potential and ability to make and create more good. Imagine it! It would change the world – change how we see one another – how we interact – disagree – worship – think – plan – solve problems.

No, it’s not a formula for utopia or perfection. Ick. We don’t’ want that, it’s not reality and it’s boring. What we want and need for the sake of our society and our future is to reframe our vision of ourselves and each other.

It is harder to focus on the good in each of us and our potential and responsibility to use that good to make more of it, than it is to default to the easy excuse of “well, we are all naturally sinful”, or “I guess I just haven’t been praying enough” or, “God is telling me no, because there is no change in the situation.”

Focusing on the good makes us responsible and full of amazing possibilities!

21 days. One sentence. Change the world.

Let’s begin today with The Friday Habit! See you in cyberspace and all your good!