While I put effort into staying focused on the Mass, the effort escapes into a menagerie of thoughts: solving problems, outlining my day, and smiling at the baby in the next pew, Realizing I have no attention on the Mystery before me, I focus again only to become distracted the next second. Etty Hillesum claims that a quiet hour isn’t simple: “A lot of unimportant inner littler and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside with irrelevant distractions.” As Hillesum writes about her desire for “a vast empty plain, with none of that treacherous undergrowth to impede the view so that something of ‘God’ can enter you, and something of ‘love,’ too,” it seems appropriate that the title of her autobiography is An Interrupted Life.