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Chapter One

Procrastination

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well. — Mark Twain

I am such a champion procrastinator that this book was pitched to me about two years ago. It took me a year to sign the contract. Did you notice the date at the end of my introduction? As I write this, I am contractually bound to deliver this manuscript in about four weeks, and yes, I only just started it this morning.

It’s all outlined and in my head, you see, but typing it out is such a drag.

If you were a nice person, wanting to encourage me and validate my life choices, you might respond, “So, you’re a procrastinator. So what? We’re all a little like that! It doesn’t make you a bad person! It’s not as if you’re hurting anyone!”

Well, I’m not so sure about that. The editor who suggested I write it has been forced to go into editorial meetings where he undoubtedly endured the repeated inquiry, “And how is that Scalia book coming?” I imagine him raising his hands to heaven and saying, “I don’t know what her problem is, but she seems like a good person and people tell me she’ll deliver. But no, I haven’t heard from her.”

Already my “little” sin of putting something off has made life difficult for someone other than myself. Editors are waiting; schedulers and designers are waiting. My bank account is waiting.

I can hear you thinking, “But this is not a sin; it’s just an inconvenience. It’s maybe thoughtless, but you’re not, like … evil.”

Thank you for saying I’m not evil. There is no “maybe” about my thoughtless inconveniencing of others, though, and yes, my procrastination is in fact a “little sin” because it is a by-product of a bigger sin, and a deadly one: sloth, which the poet Horace called a “wicked siren.”

Procrastination is a refusal to engage in the world that is before you. It is an RSVP of “no” to the big and small invitations life is continually offering us. It is also a show of ingratitude toward the gifts and talents that are the source of so many of those (actually flattering) invitations:

• “You want me to write a book? Oh, okay, I’ll sign the contract, but really, blogging is so much faster and less structured, so I’ll do that for a year, until I really have to think about the deadline.”

• “Yes, of course I am still bringing that dessert you love to your dinner, tonight. I just have to go shopping for those ingredients that aren’t always easy to find, and it needs six hours to set so … I’ll try to get to that this afternoon.”

• “You want me to volunteer to work with the scouts because you’re shorthanded and you see that my kids are fairly well functioning? It just means two hours a week and maybe a little prep? Can I get back to you on that? How about next September?”

The life we are given — the only one that you or I will get — is ordered and sustained on the Almighty Affirmation of the Creator. The ever-expanding universe exists and grows through the force of one all-encompassing and wholly intentional idea of YES. “Let there be life” and then bang! — or a more slowly evolving baaaang! Everything came to be, including you and me.

By your very creation, you and the giftedness that has been bestowed upon you (because we all get at least one gift) have been invited to be a part of the ongoing world: to engage, to grow, to create, to explore; to take everything that comes your way — the good, the less-good, even the mundane — then filter it through your strengths, and share what you’ve gleaned from it all, with the people around you.

The procrastinator looks at the daily invitation to engage and says, “Mmnnyeah, no” or “I have a thing; now’s not a good time” or “Monday. I’ll start that on Monday.”

“Your first words were not ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada,’” my husband has said to me. “Your parents wanted to believe you were addressing them, but you were actually saying ‘Mañana, baby,’ because with you it’s always ‘mañana.’”

He might be right. Mañana is just a way of saying no until circumstances absolutely force you to say yes. And that’s a tepid sort of response to an invitation from God, isn’t it? It might even be called “cold.”

Is it a sin to say no to God? I’m writing this on the feast of the Annunciation — a day commemorating the visit of the archangel Gabriel, who appeared to the young virgin, Mary, and told her that God’s plan for her, were she amenable, was to put her at risk to doubt, ridicule, possible death-by-stoning, and a lifetime of things she would never fully understand:

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God….” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. (Lk 1:26-35, 38, NAB)

The Annunciation is the feast of Mary’s great fiat, her wholehearted yes, which put into earthly motion the entire pageant of our salvation. I’ve often wondered, what if she had said no? What if Mary had listened to Gabriel’s words and said, “Say, whuuut? You’re telling me I’m going to be unwed, and pregnant, and have a crazy-weird life? You can get yourself another girl!”

We know that Mary was gifted with an abundance of graces. Trained in faithfulness, those gifts very likely left her entirely disposed to place herself at the service of whatever God, through his messenger, would propose. Her response was a choice, yes, but one that the intensity and richness of her gifted graces might not have permitted her to reject under any circumstances. (“She believed by faith,” wrote St. Augustine, and “she conceived by faith.”)

Still, though, for the sake of argument, suppose she had said no. Would it have been a sin?

My instinctive answer would be no. Beyond the gift of our life itself — the one gift so sacred that it is not ours to refuse or end — God’s gifts are freely given and ours to use, misuse, or altogether ignore. Had Mary said no, God could have gifted another.

Then again, God had a plan for Mary, and her gifted graces were meant to help her conform to the plan. All she had to do was access what she had been given, and use it.

Which she did. Mary’s yes was immediate. She didn’t hem-and-haw. She didn’t suggest Gabriel come back at a better time. She didn’t say, “Let me think about this for a year….” She didn’t look for a means of supernatural contraception to ensure that nothing happened until she was good-and-ready for it, if ever.

Mary said yes, and then she immediately engaged, heading off to visit her cousin Elizabeth and pronouncing her Magnificat with perfect trust in God’s plan.

I think procrastination is a manifestation of fear that betrays our lack of trust. We believe God has plans for us but still put off doing what it takes to allow the plan to unfold, because we cannot perfectly control the outcome, or control how others will respond to our efforts, or even how we will respond to our own success or failure.

Quintilian said, “We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.” Yes, it is easier to say, “This is hard to do,” than to bruise our pride by admitting, “I am afraid.”

Because that is true, we stew in our little sin of procrastination. We wait for circumstances to force us out of this cousin to sloth, and then, finally, thrust into projects we have been reluctant to take on, we begin to make our efforts.

And what happens, once we begin? Nine times out of ten, we find ourselves enjoying the thing we’ve finally gotten around to doing, and that’s precisely because we are engaging with our own giftedness, and in a very real way, that is a cooperative engagement with God. We discover, not for the first time, that the thing we’d been putting off was not anywhere near as difficult as we thought it would be. In fact, the most difficult part was simply beginning. Once started, the undertaking we had been dreading became a source of fulfillment.

St. Augustine, who famously asked the Lord to make him chaste, “but not yet,” would agree, I think. It was when he finally began to embrace his long-delayed chastity that his faith, and subsequently his theological thinking, flowered into its fullness.

I have found this to be true all of my life: whether it involved schooling, a dental appointment, or a big writing project, the hardest part of my undertaking was always just settling down to actually doing the thing I had been putting off — and in the end, the job was usually a snap. I feared I was terrible at science and could never pass an anatomy and physiology class, until I actually took the course and found myself so fascinated that studying and pulling off an A turned out to be a delight and a breeze. I put off having a cracked tooth filling replaced because when I’d gotten it 30 years earlier, dentistry was a lot less pleasant than it is today. When I finally kept my appointment, the thing was done painlessly, in two shakes, and I remembered why I liked my chatty dentist too.

Oh, yeah, and writing. Writers are the biggest procrastinators in the world, because that blank page before us holds a world of possibilities within all of that co-creative engagement — and who can guess where that opening line will lead? The great unknown is terrifying. You can tell how much work a writer has to do by how much time he or she is spending doing other things. My house, for instance, is never cleaner than just before I absolutely, positively must begin to write for a deadline.

When we procrastinate, we make excuses about why so many other things need to be done before we can do the thing we’re called to do — the thing we are probably made to do. How often have you heard someone say, “Sure, I want to have kids, right after I do this other thing?” It is just so much easier to go do something (or nothing) else, rather than face our fear with Mary’s perfect trust and say, “Behold, I am the hand-servant of the Lord,” and then get cracking.

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What Does Catholicism Say About Procrastination?

One can sin against God’s love in various ways: …

— acedia or spiritual sloth goes so far as to refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness. — Catechism of the Catholic Church (N. 2094)

Let the idleness of vain imaginations be put to flight, let go of sloth, hold fast to diligence. Be instant in holy meditations, cleave to the good things which are of God: leaving that which is temporal, give heed to that which is eternal … the sweet contemplations of thy Creator’s immeasurable benefits toward thee.

— St. Anselm of Canterbury

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

— St. Augustine

The appetite of the sluggard craves but has nothing, but the appetite of the diligent is amply satisfied.

— Proverbs 13:4 (NAB)

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How Do We Break the Pattern, or Habit, of Procrastination?

Begin: I don’t know whether I heard it from one of my forthright Irish aunties or from a film version of Agatha Christie’s hardy Miss Marple, but in my memory resides the voice of an older woman pronouncing six words that always made great sense to me: “Begin as you mean to continue!” It’s good advice that orders us to do the hardest part first: Begin! Just walk up to the thing you know you want to do, but are dawdling about, and get started. Once you connect with the divine spark within you — that giftedness that inspired the project idea to start with — the chances are you will discover that you’re enjoying yourself, that you’re glad you’ve begun, and that the thing really isn’t terribly difficult at all. How sad that it has taken me the better part of my life to realize this.

Do not be afraid: Now that we’ve established that there is an element of fear connected to our procrastination, we can acknowledge it, identify what precisely it is that we are afraid of, and then push through that fear, confident in the knowledge that whenever we consent to a co-creative engagement with God and the gifts he has bestowed upon us — whether we do it immediately, like Mary, or after some reluctant dawdling, like Augustine — we can trust God with the outcome. We know that our acquiescent engagement with what is before us will not leave us deprived of anything but, rather, enriched in surprising ways because that is how God works. As Teresa of Ávila said, “God withholds himself from no one who perseveres.”

Hand your hesitancy off to heaven: St. Benedict of Nursia recommended to his monks that before undertaking anything — be it cooking, studying, or even a leisurely walk — they first offer a short prayer, asking God’s blessings upon the focus of their energies. We don’t do this enough, and that is particularly sad when you consider that we have heaven and its occupants at our disposal. Our guardian angels are always with us, and if we ask for their assistance it is always given; the saints in heaven are assigned patronages to assure that we are never left without spiritual guidance and intercessory prayers, no matter what the task. So, if you are putting off going to confession, St. John Vianney’s companionship is yours for the claiming. When my husband put off a woodworking project for several years, I gave up asking. Consigning him to the intercession of St. Joseph was effective in finally getting things started. As I have buckled down to write this book, my icon of St. Francis de Sales, patron of writers and journalists, has been ever before me, and I only wish that the tale of St. Expeditus were true. In Latin America, Expeditus is usually depicted holding aloft a cross, inscribed with the word hodie (Latin, “today”), while simultaneously stomping on a crow (or, sometimes, a snake) labeled cras (Latin, “tomorrow”). In Germany, he points at a clock, reminding us not to waste time. No “Mañana, baby” for him!

Regrettably, the hagiography of Expeditus is one of those delightful bits of bungling that occur within a 2,000-year history of a worldwide church. According to John Delaney’s Dictionary of Saints, Expeditus may have been created by some nuns whose Latin was a bit shaky.

St. Expeditus (no date), Patron saint of UPS, FEDEX, DHL, and USPS?

“Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology as one of a group of martyrs who were executed in Militene, Armenia, there is no proof he ever existed. The popular devotion to him may have mistakenly developed when a crate of holy relics from the Catacombs in Rome to a convent in Paris was mistakenly identified by the recipients as St. Expeditus by the word expedito written on the crate. They began to propagate devotion to the imagined saint as the saint to be invoked to expedite matters, and the cult soon spread. [Feast day,] April 19” (Dictionary of Saints, by John Delaney).

I confess, I love the idea of a St. Expeditus, dedicated to helping us deal with the little sin of putting things off — but, lacking him, perhaps St. Augustine will do, coupled with St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron of desperate causes.

Pray (This prayer or your own)

Lord, you created the universe on the strength of your own intention, and sustain the world throughout space and time, which, for you, are neither linear nor limited. Please look upon me, your sometimes time-and-space-challenged child, with patience. Help me to overcome the fears and bad habits that so often prevent me from setting to the tasks you have placed before me, that I might know and serve you better. All good things come from you, and the requests for my help, for my assistance, and for my participation in the world and among my neighbors are good things I need to better appreciate. In your mercy, give me the strength, the energy, the firmness of resolve, and the trust I need so that I might move forward into my work, at the center of which I will discover the depths of your mysterious love for me. I ask this, as ever, in the name of your Son, Christ Jesus. Amen.

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St. Augustine and St. Jude Thaddeus, unofficial patrons of slacking-off procrastinators,

Ora pro nobis; ora pro me!