Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Holy leisure vs. unholy sloth

"Idleness is the enemy of the soul." Thus begins Chapter 48 of the Rule of St. Benedict, in which he lays out a schedule balancing manual and intellectual labor. Yes, we think with a private groan, we should keep busy. We should be productive! But wait -- that same schedule, that same paragraph in the Rule, also has time for a daily nap! St. Benedict's monastery was in Italy, after all. And then, there's my favorite commandment, the one about resting on the Sabbath. Idleness is the enemy of the soul, but rest is holy, and it is mentally, physically, and spiritually healthy.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Practical Asceticism: Get Bored

One of the quickest triggers for compulsive behavior, in my experience, is boredom. Learning to do absolutely nothing, even for a few seconds, is one of the hardest and yet most important lessons for me in the hermitage. It is also a very, very common challenge in our modern times, when we've all got a perfect little rectangle of constant distraction in the form of a smartphone. 

I'm 53 years old; I grew to adulthood without a PC, let alone a smartphone. We used to use phone books, big, thick, paper phone books. We used to buy maps at the gas station to figure out how to get where we wanted to go. If we got lost, we'd have to pull off the road to look at the map again, and if a road was closed for construction or the map was out of date, we'd have to find a pay phone to call for directions. If we had car trouble, we'd have to get out and hike to the next rest stop on foot to call AAA from a pay phone. We had a complete set of Encyclopedia Brittanica at home, a 3" thick unabridged dictionary, and library cards. We used to write our school papers longhand. It's incredible how remote those memories are. It's almost as if I read about that life in a book (an e-book, borrowed from the virtual library), instead of having actually lived it myself. 

I'm typing this on a Chromebook. I've closed the sudoku tab, the two Gmail tabs, the journaling app tab, and the tab for the article I was reading that was not relevant to this topic. My phone is on the table next to me. As almost always, it is on do-not-disturb mode. I have no notifications coming to my lock screen; I unsubscribe from almost every mailing list; I don't do Facebook or Twitter or Instagram at all. And still, I struggle with the temptation to lose hours playing solitaire or browsing endless web pages. There's nothing wrong with playing solitaire, and there is certainly nothing wrong with letting my curiosity roam freely around the fascinating resources on the internet. But I've lost something, and I think that it is something really crucial to the contemplative life: boredom. 

I think of boredom as what Thomas Merton called the point vierge, a pause that is empty in itself but poised with infinite potential. I think of it as "fallow mind," a pause in which the mind can rest, unmolested, and regenerate its creative fertility, the way a field does when it is left fallow for a season. It is a very uncomfortable state, itchy, littered with the burs and twigs of whatever came before, groping around semi-blindly for what might come next. It is really surprisingly hard to do nothing, even for a minute. It's surprisingly hard even to do just one thing at a time.

I want to share with you some books I've read that have made me think about disconnecting and quieting my mind. One is What the Robin Knows, in which the author pretty much blows me away by describing how he has learned so much about bird behavior: by just sitting still and watching them. So simple, but so hard to sustain! Another is How to Eat, by Thich Nhat Hanh, about how to pay attention to what you are doing, and only what you are doing, for as long as you are doing it, and how valuable that is. Nir Eyal's Indistractible and Manoush Zomorodi's Bored and Brilliant are both specifically about asserting a right relationship to the gifts of technology. Check out this TED talk by Zomorodi.

My phone and my Chromebook are tools. They are amazingly useful. I use them to keep me on track with my horarium, ringing bells at the different hours of the day to call me to prayer time, meal time, chore time, bedtime. I have much of my library on Kindle. The phone is a tool for citizen science, for learning about and contributing to knowledge of the natural world around me. I've got weather forecasts and tide tables. My calendar is there, to-do lists, grocery shopping lists. Medical records and communication, banking, shopping, recipes -- on and on and on. But it takes mindfulness to keep the tool from becoming the master. 

And (this is supposed to be practical asceticism, right?) OK, here are some things I do that help to keep my phone under control:

  • I have multiple e-mail addresses, and they have separate notification settings. I don't get pop-ups for newsletters, shipping confirmations, etc. 
  • Unsubscribe! Even if I have signed up for a news feed of some kind, I usually end up unsubscribing from it. If I don't want to, I have it sent to a separate inbox, so I can sit down and browse through it at a time of my choosing.
  • Use the Do Not Disturb setting on my phone. I can customize that setting to let through calls and notifications of my choosing. Ditto notifications on the lock screen.
  • Remove icons from the home screen. If there are shortcuts I want there, I group them into folders to reduce visual clutter. 
  • I don't use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or anything like that. If you don't want to give them up completely, I'm pretty sure you can customize your settings so that they don't bombard you with information you aren't looking for. Either way, maybe schedule a specific time or times in your day for looking at them. The point is to choose how you want to use them, not just to react to constant clickbait.
  • Ditto YouTube, which I do look at sometimes -- just turning off Autoplay is all it takes. 
  • There are games I've had to just uninstall. Sometimes more than once. I know I'm not the only one! 
There are no doubt other settings and apps designed to help us turn our devices from soul-sucking monsters back into useful tools. If you have any to suggest, please comment! I am definitely not as free as I want to be. I'm a beginner at learning to let my mind float free, but I've come just far enough to be convinced that it's very much worth trying to do.

Peace and joy to you all

Monday, December 14, 2020

Practical Asceticism: Lose the Whip

Following up on this post, I want to start off with this first, fundamental precept: stop beating yourself up. Self-flagellation is really no fun! But more important: it does not work. Think about it: when you screw up, which you inevitably do because you are human, does self-recrimination actually keep you from screwing up the next time? Not only doesn't it help, by breaking down your self-confidence it actually makes it harder to change. 

You may ask, isn't beating yourself up a venerable old monastic tradition? Well, no, actually, it's not. It might be a medieval monastic tradition, but if you go farther back, to St. Benedict and back before him to the old Egyptian desert monasteries, it really is not the way. St. Benedict says that during Lent, each monk may freely offer some extra penitential sacrifice, of his own free will -- but only with the approval of the Abbot, because "anything done without the permission of the spiritual father will be imputed to presumption and vainglory and will merit no reward." The desert fathers and mothers would have said the same thing. 

In my personal experience, what St. Benedict says is absolutely true: self-imposed penitence is more likely a sign of pride than humility. Why? Because getting all worked up over doing something wrong kind of implies that I expected myself to do everything right! Other people may be miserably imperfect, but if I slip up it's worthy of all kinds of drama and wailing and wringing of hands. Not! I'm human, and I share a whole set of very common weaknesses with all the rest of the human race. I'm also as unique as every human being, and therefore I am more likely than average to slip in some ways, less in others. I'm not a monster, and neither am I such a paragon of virtue that any little screw-up deserves sackcloth and ashes. 

On the other hand, I'm not suggesting brushing off my bad behavior as if it didn't matter. Examination of conscience, confession, and making amends are very fundamental to the good life. But "contrition" is not "conversion." Acknowledging that we've done wrong is a necessary step in changing, but it's only the very first step, and getting stuck in it doesn't help. If what we want is to change a bad habit, then we have to do something more than just be sorry about it.

What does help is to approach self-examination with a spirit of curiosity instead of blame. You ate the whole carton of ice cream, bummer. Why? Yeah, I know, because "yum," but that's not good enough. The devil made you do it? Hah. Yeah, you wanted it, but you also wanted not to eat the whole thing, or you wouldn't be beating yourself up over it. So why did you do it?

So the first thing is to get really clear about your standard of behavior. That means, think about ice cream, and the role you want it to have in your diet. How much, how often, what time of day, what days? Would you like to have some ice cream every evening for dessert? Or is it just for birthdays, or would once a week be just about right? Define the portion size. Be specific. Make a rule for yourself

This rule is not a lifetime commitment. It's a hypothesis, not a conclusion. Hypothesis is what scientific experiments are based on, and that's what this is for: exploration. So make a very clear, very specific ice cream rule for yourself to try out: "I may eat 1/2 cup of ice cream for dessert on Sundays and holidays (list them); I will eat it in the evening after dinner. I may also have up to 1/2 cup of ice cream, if it is offered with birthday cake. I will not eat ice cream otherwise." Note that the rule codifies indulgence, not just abstinence. Then, when you are in the grip of the ice cream temptation on a Wednesday afternoon, you can tell yourself "yes! I will have ice cream on Sunday!" and it makes "not now" easier to take.

Try it for a month. Pay attention to how it goes. When temptation hits, instead of reacting with either indulgence or resistance, react with curiosity.  What was going on when you felt the urge? How were you feeling right before it hit? Where do you feel the temptation in your body? Are you actually hungry? Do you feel tense? Bored? Anxious? Upset about something else? Are you tired? Has someone hurt your feelings? Have you been concentrating on your work for too long without a break? And remember, since this is an experiment, failure is a possibility. If you slip, examine that in the same way. Ask those same questions. Don't judge, don't wallow, just pick yourself up and pay attention.

Also, think about how you can make it easier to act the way you want to act. Do you have fresh fruit handy, to snack on when the sweet tooth strikes? Can you buy ice cream pre-packaged in little single-serving portions? Could you negotiate with your spouse who's not willing to give up ice cream, so that he maybe agrees to store it in the freezer down in the basement, where you won't have to see it every time you go looking for ice cubes for your healthy unsweetened iced tea? Etc. Be creative.

Making a rule separates the decision from the impulse. Temptation and denial are best friends forever. It's amazing how our minds can justify really stupid behavior when in the grip of a strong temptation, how easy it is to blank out the good intentions. So, the rules you make for yourself can be negotiated, but -- here's another rule -- not impulsively. You can make exceptions to your rule, but only planned ones, and well-defined ones. Not "I can eat anything I want just this once," and not "I can eat anything I want on my month-long vacation," but maybe "I can eat anything I want for dinner on my birthday."

And maybe your first hypothesis doesn't work out, and you need to try something else. Maybe you find that you're verging on diabetic, and your system really can't process sugary desserts at all. Maybe you would do better on a low-carb diet, or a vegetarian diet, or intermittent fasting. And maybe your ice cream temptation has nothing to do with ice cream or diet at all. You might be depressed, you might be worried about money, you might be unhappy in your relationship and subconsciously trying to make yourself fat and unattractive to your partner. Looking the real problem in the eye, with self-compassion, maybe with counseling, often takes the zing out of self-sabotage.

One more thing: focus. Don't try to tackle all your bad habits at once. It's not so much because changing a lot of variables at one time blows your scientific experiment. It's that it takes energy to change, and energy is limited. When we resist a temptation that we are used to indulging, we literally re-wire our brain. Well, OK, they're not literal wires. But we do actually alter the default pathways in our brains when we push back against impulsive behavior. I mentioned "dopamine addiction" in the last post, and it's a real thing. We have to wean ourselves off of instant gratification, and that takes energy. Think about starting with diet, sleep, and/or exercise, the ones that directly affect how much energy we have for everything else.

There are many, many possible reasons why you ate that whole carton of ice cream, or why we do any of the many things we wish we didn't do. But I'll tell you some reasons that are not true. You are not a loser, you are not worthless, you are not hopeless, you are not bad. You are not weaker than everybody else. You don't lack character, and you don't have a willpower problem. You're just human, and humans are wired to go for instant gratification. It's normal! 

So lose the whip, burn the hair shirt, pull on your lab coat and start figuring yourself out. It's totally worth it!

PEACE

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The power of weakness

I hate being weak. I hate being vulnerable, insecure, getting sick, needing help. I hate getting angry, scared, moody, not having all the information, and not being in control of outcomes. No, I don't like being weak. Who does?

So the really stunning thing about the Christian God is not the power and glory, but the human weakness, frailty, littleness. The Incarnation of the most high God came in the form of an absolutely dependent, powerless being: an embryo, son of a girl who was barely old enough to get pregnant, in a time when infant mortality was exponentially higher than we can get our heads around in this era of high-tech obstetrics. She wasn't married yet, and her fiancĂ© very nearly ditched her when he found out she had gotten pregnant, not by him, before the wedding. The damn Romans forced them to travel to Bethlehem --by donkey if she was lucky, or maybe on foot-- when she was 9 months pregnant; she gave birth to the baby in a stable; and then they immediately had to get up and run away to Egypt to escape another tyrant. When they came back they lived in Galilee, working-class citizens of an especially distressed province of a weak little nation under the boot-heel of a big strong empire, with all the brutality, all the brave but futile resistance, all the corrupt collaboration by both civil and religious local elites that goes along with that. 

When God decided to become human, it wasn't as a great big strong hero. Baby Jesus embodied all the weakness and precariousness of the human condition. And mother Mary, she was not just a vessel, not just a pass-through between Heaven and Earth. Mary was a partner in the Incarnation. She was given a choice, and she chose to participate. Jesus's humanity is Mary's humanity, his flesh was her flesh. Mary didn't supply muscles and weapons and armor. She gave her smallness, her weakness, her vulnerability, and her mortality, to the singular merger of Divine and Human that took place within her frail body. 

And after that encounter with Gabriel, having said "yes," what did Mary do? What would I have done? Even if I had had the humility and trust, in the presence of the angel, to say "yes," as soon as he disappeared I'm pretty sure I would have curled up, freaked out, and melted down. OMG what did I just agree to?? What am I getting into?? What will Joseph say?? How am I going to explain this to him?? He'll never understand!! Nobody's going to believe me!! I'm going to end up on the streets ... die in childbirth ... stoned to death.....  You get it. I'd be "catastrophizing." It's the control freak's answer to the inescapable reality that we are not in control.

Mary didn't do that. She didn't freak out. She went off to celebrate the event with her cousin Elizabeth, who had a new miracle pregnancy of her own. What can I learn from that? What is the essential difference between Mary's response to the Annunciation and my response to being confronted with my own smallness, weakness, and vulnerability? OK, today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which says that from the moment she was conceived in her own mother's womb, Mary was kept free from the burden of original sin. And what was the original sin? Eating the apple, yes, but why? What the snake tempted Eve with, in Genesis 3:5, is this: "when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods." Being free of original sin, then, is the humility to accept being merely human, and let God be God. Mary is "full of grace," as Gabriel says; she says, "I am the handmaid of the Lord." But I've been baptized, and the whole point of the sacrament of baptism is that it purifies us of original as well as personal sin, right? So can't I be full of grace enough to accept my own weakness, ignorance and vulnerability, with Mary-like uncomplicated simplicity, humility, and trust?

There is an essential mystery here, a fundamental paradox, that I am struggling to put words to. Trusting in God does not mean believing that I will be safe. It doesn't mean everything will work out fine. The essential fragility of the human condition is just what God took on in the Incarnation. Jesus was crucified! There is nothing safe about that. And yet ... it's not just that Heaven is fabulous enough that it's worth everything we go through to get there, everything Jesus went through. 

It's that a part of embracing God, of becoming united with God, is embracing my own humanity as Jesus embraced humanity. It means embracing my own and others' weakness, taking pain by the hand, looking vulnerability in the eye with compassionate love. It means embracing my neighbor's weakness and brokenness, not with strength and answers and competence so much as with my own honest vulnerability. It means taking my frailty to God in prayer, going there with my anger and fear, my fleeting enthusiasms and superficial pleasures, my hurt feelings and confusion, all my paltry, sordid self. Not trying to pretty myself up, as if I thought God was looking at the image I try to project instead of the total reality of who I really am. There's a kind of radical acceptance in Mary's example that challenges me profoundly.

God, grant me the grace to let go and let You be God, as Mary did, and to love weak humanity -- my own and my neighbor's -- as You do. Amen.

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Practical Asceticism in the Modern World: Intro

According to Merriam-Webster, asceticism is "the practice of strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline : the condition, practice, or mode of life of an ascetic : rigorous abstention from self-indulgence." 

That doesn't sound like much fun, does it? It seems crazy, in a modern culture that celebrates the opposite: strict self-indulgence, and a rigorous abstention from self-denial. 

And so what's wrong with self-indulgence, and what's so great about self-denial? Well, there's nothing mysterious about that. Overindulgence in food and drink leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, addictions, etc. ad nauseum. Inappropriate sexual self-indulgence, lust without love and commitment, is another way to contract nasty diseases, but it's an even better way to wreck relationships, break hearts, and erode self-esteem. Covetousness, as in impulse shopping or "keeping up with the Joneses," can get us into serious financial problems and leave us insecure in the long run, not to mention the degradation of natural resources and the exploitation of "third world" producers of cheap consumer goods. I could keep going through the seven deadly sins, but you get the point. Some amount of ascetical practice is just "being a grown-up," something for all of us to aspire to. 

In the modern world, we are blessed and cursed with resources that St. Benedict couldn't have dreamed of. Social media is allowing us to sustain close relationships in a time of pandemic, but it can also be viciously superficial. The availability of seemingly infinite information is a gift to curious minds, but I wonder if it doesn't discourage us from slowing down to absorb and think deeply about one thing at a time. The convenience and variety of online shopping is great, but cheap consumer goods are seldom made to last. Processed and globally-sourced food is easy and affordable, but it's not very nourishing.

There are also deeper benefits to ascesis. Marie Kondo's Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is all about letting go of the excess possessions that weigh us down, so that we can be surrounded only by the things that "spark joy." That's not so much about having less as it is about really valuing all of the things we have, not acquiring or holding onto things that we don't really need or want. It's not so different from St. Benedict's teaching that we should treat all the tools and property of the monastery as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar. It is about letting go of the superficial pleasures that clutter up our lives and distract us from the things that really bring us joy.

For monastics and other religious ascetics, there is a still deeper value in asceticism. Communion with the Divine is easily overshadowed by worldly desires, worries, resentment, ambition, etc. Buddhists call it "the monkey mind." The more we follow every whim and satisfy every impulse, the wilder the monkey gets, and the harder it is to hear the still, small voice of God. The voice of God is never raised to shout down the monkey mind. It is we who have to be still, and know God, and that means breaking the cycle of distraction and superficial self-indulgence.

Are you depressed yet? Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions, your diets never last, your resolutions are broken within days or weeks, the wagon seems designed to be fallen off? Yes. All that, and plus I have ADD, which means that I am even more prone to impulsivity and even weaker in self-discipline and will-power than people with typical brains. My brain is chronically starved for dopamine, and since "working memory" is one of the central deficits of the disorder, I literally can't remember my good intentions when I'm distracted by an instant reward.

But I've started to learn the art of monkey-whispering. Here and there, in one area of my life and another, I'm starting to find ways to live a more orderly, disciplined life. I'm still a mess, still a beginner, still backsliding, still figuring it out ... but I've made some progress. So I want to write some things about what I've learned so far, and maybe figure some more out as I go along. Maybe someone reading will find something useful, too.

It's a huge topic, so I have it in mind as a series, not one huge brain-dump. Just a few quick teaser thoughts, that I intend to get back to in more depth later. In no particular order:

  • Will power is a limited resource, easily depleted
  • Getting motivated is overrated
  • Habits, once formed, don't require will power
  • Some habits are more fundamental than others (diet, exercise, sleep), because they affect how much energy and focus we have available for the rest
  • Dopamine addiction is a thing, worth pushing back against
  • Decision fatigue is a thing. Constrain choices, and plan ahead. 
  • Plan treats -- anticipation extends the pleasure and defuses impulsivity.
  • Ditto breaks in routine: Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy -- "give yourself a break" is a commandment 
  • Mindfulness is powerful stuff: meditate; single-task; acknowledge impulses without indulging them, and they will pass
  • Habit and routine do not make a boring life -- they make the boring stuff automatic, so I can stop thinking about it and free up head-space for more creative and interesting stuff
  • Pray for help and guidance every morning and when facing a challenge
  • Examine conscience with curiosity rather than judgment, to learn from both successes and failures 
  • Maybe most important of all, for me, is to remember to aim for progress, not perfection. Take it slow, don't try to change everything at once. Good intentions are not magic wands. Rely on the grace of God, ask for human help when I need it, and humbly accept that I can only grow up gradually.
It's worth saying that for most people, peer pressure -- buddy systems, support groups (or obedience to a Rule and an Abbot) -- seems to be really key to keeping good intentions. If you find it easier to keep your commitments to others than to yourself, roll with it and find yourself an accountability partner or group. It's not really a big motivator for me, though, so I won't be having a lot to say about it. It is helping me to get this posted ... having publicly stated my resolution to work on my writing and post to this blog weekly, here I go..... For what it's worth. 


I place it in Your hands, God. Fill up my defects, and may it be pleasing to You.

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Happy New Year!

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. For us churchy types, that makes it New Year's Day. I actually bought some little miniature bottles of bubbly and had one with supper yesterday ;-) I also bought my Christmas tree and set it in its stand, though so far it is decorated with nothing but a great big angel on top. I mixed some of the cut branches with some holly from my yard on a little table with the Advent candles, purple and pink. And I've started listening to Handel's Messiah, King's College Choir, and the Nutcracker Suite. The house is fragrant with fir, woodsmoke, and hot spiced cider.

I haven't posted here for a while. I've tried.... Two things: brain fog, which turned out to have a physical cause and seems to be solved, yay! And two, my tendency to think about everything, all at once, so a simple blog post starts to turn into a whole encyclopedia. In my last attempt I was trying to write about all the feasts this past week rolled into one great theme: the Presentation of Mary last Saturday, then Christ the King, then Thanksgiving, and now Advent. It didn't work. I got bogged down right on the first of those, in my evolving understanding of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the Incarnation, which is a huge, huge topic all by itself.

So this is my resolution: to work at my writing! To work at constraining, mostly, constraining my writing topics into chunks that are big enough to be worthwhile but small enough to digest. Small enough to actually have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If the most interesting thing is how a bunch of disparate topics are connected in my thinking, then I need to present the disparate topics first, one or two at a time, and draw the connections after or as I go. I will post weekly, at least during Advent. Then I'll reassess.

Writing has the potential to deepen my contemplation and reflection on the Divine, on God's presence and action in my life. But when my thoughts start to spread out like my beloved wetlands, in every direction at once, it may be enriching but it can also become frustrating and confusing. This exercise in constraint should be a kind of ascesis, the kind of discipline that fosters growth. And I hope that I will be able to write and post something that will give readers food for thought, also.

So happy new year, my friends, and God's peace be with you.

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Zealots and Lost Causes (not political!)

Today is the feast of Sts. Simon and Jude. That's "Simon the Zealot," and "Jude, the Patron Saint of Lost Causes." Both of them were among the original 12 apostles chosen by Jesus. I'm going to take a minute for some basic catechism on the communion of saints in general and patron saints in particular, and another minute on these two saints celebrated today. But if you will keep reading, after that I want to say something about our own personal "lost causes," and reflect on "zealotry" as one of the ways we respond to them. I am NOT here to talk about zealotry in public causes, not a week before an election. In any case, I hope everyone reading this has already voted!

So first of all, some basic catechism on patron saints for the non-Catholics out there. What is a patron saint? Why do Catholics pray to saints, and why isn't this idolatry? So ... Catholics pray to saints, but not because they themselves have power, as if they were minor deities under God. We pray to saints for "intercession." It is exactly the same as asking your friends and relatives to say a prayer for you when you're about to go into surgery or take on a major challenge. Since we believe in everlasting life, whatever fuzzy ideas we may have about what happens to us basically good but flawed people (and Purgatory seems to be in a kind of doctrinal limbo these days), when it comes to the obvious saints -- apostles, martyrs, and others whose sanctity is generally recognized -- we believe that they are with God. And they are still with us, as God is with us. We can't see them, but they can see us, and being saints, they care about us. They pray for us, and we trust that such holy people's prayers are heard.

So that is the "communion of saints" in a nutshell. As for patron saints, they are understood as saints who take a special interest in particular human needs. Just like saints on this side of mortality, who have particular vocations. St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Benedict, were all holy people with very different ways of living out their holiness. A doctor might pray to St. Luke, because he had the same profession. If you're going on a journey, or out in a boat for pleasure, you might pray to St. Brendan, who made an epic sea voyage from Ireland westwards, maybe even as far as Greenland. You could say a prayer to St. Isidore the Farmer when you plant your vegetable garden in the Spring. I sometimes talk to my great-uncle Henry when I'm down in the marsh, because he had such a great love for the Great Dismal Swamp. And so on. 

What I love is the weirdness of some of the attributions of patronage. For instance, St. Agatha, whose martyrdom in the 3rd century included having her breasts cut off, is the patron saint of bakers and bellmakers. Why is that funny? Just, she's typically portrayed in art carrying her severed breasts on a platter, and people seeing the image without knowing the story thought they were loaves of bread or bells. Because unless you know her story, it would never occur to you that a pious image of a saint would show her holding a tray of breasts. And even knowing what a twist-up that is, she's still invoked as a patron saint of bakers and bellmakers. 

St. Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of aviators and astronauts, because he is supposed to have levitated during periods of intense prayer. St. Ursula is a patron saint of archers, not because she was one, but because she was shot and killed with an arrow. And St. Bibiana, the patron saint of hangovers (I'm not making this up!) -- not because she was a drunk, but just because her name is related to the Latin word for "drink." 

++++++++++++++++

And so, back to St. Jude. Why is he the patron of lost causes? It's another convoluted one: his name is too close to that other apostle, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. In fact, they have the same name, it's just anglicized differently so that pious people can think of Saint Jude without danger of mixing him up with Sinner Judas. That's why he's the patron of lost causes. In the old days, people would shy away from calling on Jude for fear of invoking the bad guy instead. So he would only be called on as a last resort, by someone really desperate. I don't know just when those "old days" were, but nowadays he's a popular guy.

OK, and then Simon the Zealot. We know that Judea in Jesus's time was an occupied territory, annexed by Rome. It was not a gentle occupation, and the Jewish people were not reconciled to it. "Tax collectors" were so reviled because they were collaborators who collected taxes on behalf of Rome, and moreover, stuffed their own pockets by extorting even more than the emperor required. "Zealots," on the other hand, were fanatical resistance fighters. I say "fanatical" because despite the overwhelming military advantage Rome had over little Judea, the Zealots seem to have opposed all accommodation with that power, either by the Jewish leaders or even by ordinary men and women. There's that little episode in Matthew 22:15-22, where the Pharisees try to trap Jesus into saying something that would discredit him with one of these two parties, the Zealots or those who accommodated themselves to the reality of the occupation, by asking him "is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?" His answer is to point to the image of Caesar on the coin, saying "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's." And really, it is one of the marks of Jesus's greatness that he was able to hold within his inner circle, apparently harmoniously, both Simon the Zealot and Matthew, the tax collector. 

++++++++++++++++

So ... that's a whole ton of background! I'm finally ready to get to the idea that occurred to me in the conjunction of these two saints. It has to do with how we experience lost causes in our own lives, and how we respond to them sometimes overzealously, sometimes giving in to accommodating the unacceptable. 

I wrote a month ago about how discouraging it can be to repeatedly fail to live up to one's good intentions. This is how I experience the "lost cause" most sharply, by feeling that I myself am a lost cause. It's also where the abbot has done me the most good in spiritual direction, by encouraging me to ease up on myself. In practice, in my experience over the previous decades of my life, I could never become holy and sustain a holy way of life until I really internalized not just forgiveness but renewal, rebirth. My past is still my past, but I am not defined by it in the present. I still experience that kind of hopelessness on a smaller scale, in more limited ways, with various things I fall down on over and over until I gradually lose faith in my ability ever to succeed. That's probably pretty universal, isn't it? 

There are other kinds of lost causes that can bring us to our knees: terminal illness; broken relationships in which forgiveness and reconciliation are withheld for years; a loved one spiraling out of control with drug or alcohol addiction, or with the kind of severe mental illness that has, as one of its symptoms, the inability to recognize it in oneself. And yeah, OK, I'll say it: the ever-worsening polarization of U.S. politics, that we all suffer from but no one knows how to fix.

We can respond like a Zealot, raging away at a problem without strategy, moderation, or respect for our own or others' weaknesses or uniqueness. We can respond by giving up, which tends to lead to depression when what we are giving up on is something or someone really important to us. Or we can look for a third way. 

We can reclaim a vision, and then take the time to map it out, breaking down the first steps smaller and smaller until even in our dejection we are able to start moving forward. A little bit of forward motion can be a very powerful thing. Sometimes, when we've beaten ourselves up against a brick wall, if we step back and try to look at it with a new perspective we may find a door through it.

As for broken relationships, or loved ones spinning out of control ... I'm afraid this sounds weak, but what comes to mind is to recognize that we are connected in the communion of saints not only with those super-holy people who have died and gone to Heaven, but also with those beloved of God in this life. And being, say, a heroin addict, or a heroin dealer for that matter, does not take a person out of that category of "beloved of God." We are all beloved of God. And being unforgiving and judging does not forfeit God's love, it only awaken's God's compassion for the wound that is not being allowed to heal. It doesn't matter where the blame lies or how it's divvied up between estranged and bitter relatives. In the communion of saints, we are held together in the all-encompassing Love of God. That doesn't mean your lost daughter or brother or friend is going to all of a sudden start texting you hearts and smiley faces and pics of the grandkids. It doesn't, on the surface, change anything -- which is why I'm afraid it sounds weak. But for me, it's not weak, it's deeply meaningful. Just as I sometimes talk to Great-Uncle Henry, or my dad or my grandmother, I can talk to an old friend whom I still love even though the relationship is broken, while they're still alive. I can talk to them, and I can talk to God about them, and send them all my love and care and wishes for their welfare, and it really means something. The connection between us in that way is real, no matter how irrational and impalpable it is.

The crucifixion of Jesus is the perfect example of a lost cause that wasn't. He was expected, by many, to somehow bring about a restoration of Judea's sovereignty from Rome. Calling him "son of David" was code for "the person destined to re-establish, and lead, the kingdom." That's what Pontius Pilate meant by tacking up the sign (John 19:19-20) over the cross on which he was killed, that said in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews." He meant, "THIS is what mighty Rome thinks of your paltry pretensions to sovereignty!" It's what the Roman soldiers meant by the crown of thorns and the purple cloak (Jn 19:2-5); they meant to mock Jesus. These Romans and a whole lot of Jews were so caught up in the conflict between the two nations that it's all they could see when they looked at Jesus. Even Jesus, in his last moments, cried out the anguish of the ultimate lost cause: "my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" 

The crucifixion of Jesus left his disciples and the movement he had led in chaos and despair. On the night of the arrest, Peter tried to blend into the crowd to watch the horror unfold, but being recognized he repudiated Jesus three times before finally running away. The conversation between the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-24) was all about their bewilderment and distress in the aftermath of the crucifixion of their hero. Encounters with the risen Christ in the first few days were scattered, and did not restore hope but only added more confusion. 

But it wasn't over. The true meaning of the Kingdom of God finally came clear at Pentecost, when the disciples received the Holy Spirit. It is in the Spirit that we can see impossible things, that they can be transformed into positive truths, that we ourselves can be transformed into living vessels of the Divine. It is in the Spirit that lost causes are turned around. It's not in zealotry, flailing away regardless at the intractable problem. It's not in giving up and settling for mediocrity. It's in acceptance of the present reality, vision for the future, and openness to divine (and sometimes human) help and guidance. 

*Whew* this got long. I guess I could have summed it up in three lines of someone else's words:

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Amen!

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Toxic

So in case y'all haven't noticed, Election Day in the USA will be this coming November 3, two Tuesdays from now. And you know what? It can't be over soon enough. I mean, I'm really glad I live in a democracy, but man, is it toxic!

I don't watch or read or listen to the news. I'm not on social media. I'm aware that it's really ugly out there, but -- well, that's exactly why I don't partake of it. It's too toxic. I'm not an undecided voter, in fact I already voted. I don't need to see and hear all the nastiness. When I am not sure which way to vote, in a primary or on some local issue, I look it up on the internet. Preferably on some non-partisan voter education website that can give me the information on the issues straight up, without all the hype and hysteria. 

I'm not going to rant on and on about this, just -- I miss my monks! I watched Mass livestreamed from the monastery this morning, but then I also went to Mass at a local parish so that I could actually receive the Eucharist. At the parish, the sermon was given by a deacon I had not heard from before. *sigh* Poor thing. It was not a good homily. I mean, it wasn't even a well-done bad homily, it was disjointed and rambling. He seemed, at the beginning, to be lamenting the way the media drive conflict and polarization, but then he went on to say a whole long series of such offensive things -- no, I am not going to list them. I'm not going to pass them on. Well, hell, you all have heard all of them already, anyway! You know. 

Meanwhile, at the monastery, my very dear Fr. Christopher preached about (go figure!) the gospel reading of the day. Which, by the way, is one of the very best passages in all of Scripture, and why anyone would want to ignore it in favor of rolling around in the pigsty of politics I don't know. It's Matthew 22:34-40, in which Jesus is asked "which commandment in the law is the greatest?", and he answers, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." That's what it's all about, and Fr. Christopher worked it. 

I miss my monks. I am reminded that there were plenty of parish churches in Italy when St. Benedict was a young man, but he didn't find spiritual sustenance in them. He left town and became first a hermit, then a coenobite (a monk in community). I don't know, there's just a different kind of wisdom -- maybe it's that they are first brothers, and only then, perhaps, sometimes preachers. Diocesan priests are first of all pastors. They are there for the people, people look to them for guidance, which maybe risks engendering a certain arrogance? Whereas monks are all monks together, community life is humbling. Only the abbot has a position above the rest, but unlike a parish pastor he's chosen by his own community, his own brothers who know him, warts, cracks, and all. 

For whatever reason ... *sigh*  Well, let me stop here and count my blessings. I have not gotten sick. I haven't lost a job. I'm not stuck at home with an abusive husband. I'm not trying to work at home while simultaneously directing my kids' schooling at home. I'm not depressed. I can watch one or another of my monks preach every day, through the miracle of the internet. There are dozens of parishes within easy driving distance of me, most with more than one Mass every Sunday, most with multiple priests and deacons alternating preaching duties -- and while some of those preachers make me want to give up and go convert to Hinduism or Wicca or something, some of them are the best kind of Christian saints. And I do live in a democracy, which may be pretty toxic these days, but you know -- Rachel Maddow hasn't disappeared, Joe Biden hasn't had any mysterious fatal accidents, and if Donald Trump tried to declare a state of emergency and call out the National Guard to avoid having an election when he's down in the polls, the National Guard would say "dude, no." This IS a democracy. And the election is almost over!

I'm sorry, that's as uplifting as I can get tonight. The bell has rung for Compline, and if I don't click "publish" now, it's just going to get more rambling, not any more inspiring. God bless you all, and let's keep the faith.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Theology

I have learned that the place wherein You are found unveiled is girt round with the coincidence of contradictories, and this is the wall of Paradise wherein You abide! The door is guarded by the most proud spirit of reason, and unless he be vanquished, the way will not lie open. --Nicolas of Cusa, Vision of God (15th century)

I am a contemplative, not a theologian. I am distrustful of "theology," and generally opposed to "doctrine." I am a Christian, and it is through the story of the Incarnation that I relate to God. I find great riches and depth in Christianity. It has to be admitted, though, that there's also an awful lot of garbage encrusted around it. Neither do I believe that Christianity's sacred Scripture and Tradition together, even at their best, give me any more than an obscure view "as through a glass, darkly" of God.

I object to theology, to the definition of doctrine, because it treats God as an object, or some kind of mechanistic process. We cannot "know" God the way we can "know," say, biology or history. Those are subjects which no candid scholar would ever aspire to reach the ends of, or ever claim to "know" in their totality. Nonetheless, they can be studied objectively and known rationally.

But God is not a thing, not a process, not a concept. God is a Person, to be "known" not with the mind but with the heart. It's kind of odd that English should have one word for such different kinds of "knowing," isn't it? And yet, in some ways, they are not only distinct but actually opposed.

In any close, long-term relationship, there tends to be a "getting-to-know-you" period at the beginning, which gradually turns into comfortable familiarity. There's nothing wrong with comfortable familiarity. It's what allows us to turn some of our energy and attention from the shiny new relationship, and get on with everything else in our lives. It's what gives us enough sense of security with one another to risk more self-revelation and vulnerability.

The danger is only when we start to think we "know" one another, and stop discovering one another. That is when "I know you" moves from the heart to the head. Then it ceases to be you that I know. It becomes: what I expect from you, what I have seen in you so far, what you believe about yourself, what you have been willing to reveal, and the pattern or role in my life into which I have slotted not you, but this fragmentary image of you that I can only ever see, really, "as in a glass, darkly."

When we allow "knowing" to move from the heart to the head, we shut the other person up into a box. To the extent that our "knowing" is very sure and fixed, as the other continues to grow and develop in life, they may either allow themselves to be stunted and deformed by the box or else bust out of it in a way that hurts both knower and grower. And we also box ourselves in, since it is through relationships that we principally grow. By defining the other in relation to ourselves, we simultaneously define ourselves in relation to the other.

When we "know" we cease to "wonder." We stop listening. We have claimed "mastery" over the other person's character, personality, thoughts and feelings. To judge based on what we can know of a person is to close off the infinite possibilities of that person's next move, change, choice. Rational knowledge is a kind of domination, of control. We "master" a subject in school, it is not a healthy thing to aspire to in relationships. 

I remember years ago, a young Capuchin friar laughing wryly at having achieved a "Master of Divinity" in seminary. It's so wrong ... just as wrong as aspiring to "master" a beloved human friend or lover. That kind of attitude closes off all possibility of real mutual knowledge, or of the self-knowledge that is gained only through relationships, through the mirror of the other's knowledge of oneself. 

The same is true in the relationship with God, with Divinity, who is not a subject to be "mastered," but a Person to be known and loved, Who knows and loves me. And just as in any relationship, the way to know this Lover is by:

listening, without preconceptions, with a willingness to be taken by surprise, an openness to wonder, trying not to project our own ego onto the Other;

being transparent, self-revealing, willing to look hard at ourselves and be seen and known exactly as we are; 

being willing to step up, to accept demands on our time and energy, to sacrifice, do things we don't like, stretch beyond our comfort zone.

To really know a person, whether human or divine, is to know them with the heart rather than the head. To know You is to love You!

Saturday, October 10, 2020

The pandemic is not the wrath of God

After posting to this blog two Sundays in a row, I was feeling very pleased with myself and thought that that would be a good schedule, and I meant to post again last Sunday. I started a post on Saturday, riffing off the Sunday Mass readings, but going again into my favorite theme of self-knowledge and self-actualization. I thought I'd finish and post it on Sunday.

And then I went to Mass. I hadn't heard this pastor much before, but I had a good superficial impression of him. But when he started to preach, I was appalled! I was so shocked that I just pulled my cowl down over my eyes and shut him out with a private meditation until the homily was over. 

The man was comparing this coronavirus pandemic with Noah's flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the horrific conquests of the kingdoms of Israel by Assyria and Judah by Babylon. He said that when the world, or some part of the world, is irredeemably saturated in sin, God sends some cataclysmic event to "reset" society -- by razing it to the ground and letting it rebuild from the dust, chastened.

The last part of the sermon, as far as I could tell from the little bit that filtered through my determined efforts to block it out, I think had some value. That is, the overwhelming, global disruption of this pandemic may well provide the opportunity for a broad, society-wide rethinking of some of our negative cultural norms. I have said, for instance, that I think of George Floyd as a holy martyr, because his death has seeded genuine change. His helpless sacrifice has become an effective challenge both to the powerful and to the oblivious masses. And the great social "pause" brought about by the pandemic has laid us open to that challenge, in a way previous incidents failed to reach us. Likewise, I expect that the stay-at-home mandate will effect a deep change in family relationships, broadly, across all of society. And hopefully, we will be left with some new cultural norm for starting romantic relationships, since it's no longer possible to jump straight from "hello" to sex. 

But to say that God has visited this plague on humanity as a punishment for our sins ... NO. Just, no. No! Look, I'm not going to argue this from Scripture, because there are too many contradictory passages on either side. No, I am going to argue from the evidence of your own eyes and common sense. 

Who suffers most in this pandemic? Who is being punished? The destruction is indiscriminate, too broad a stroke to be punitive. Sure, it has raged through prison populations, but it's been even more devastating in nursing homes. The death toll has been highest in the rich U.S., and relatively low in poor Africa, and yet the economic impact worldwide is mostly a grinding down of the poorest of the poor. Here in the U.S., the middle and upper classes can work and study from their uncrowded homes, while the relatively poor are those who have lost their jobs in the face-to-face service and retail sectors, and whose housing is more crowded. 

This isn't to say, either, that the poor or the old are more virtuous than the young and rich. It is to say that the pandemic is discriminating according to vulnerability, not wickedness. And look around you: do you see virtue rewarded and evil punished, generally, in the world? Of course not. We struggle always, we will always be struggling, there will always be sin and oppression, inequality, undeserved good and bad fortune.

But I come from a religious tradition that recognizes a preferential option for the poor. This is understood to be God's preferential option, not merely a mandate for our own attitude toward the powerful and the vulnerable. All through the Old and New Testaments, there is unrelenting emphasis on justice, equity, mercy, and care for the most vulnerable. God brought the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. This is the foundational story of biblical history. The core Mosaic law is fundamentally about justice, about preventing the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands, about ensuring the protection of women and children within a whole network of family and clan and tribe, about defending the rights of resident aliens. So how can we ascribe to God a motive of vengeance and punishment for a phenomenon that so disproportionately affects the already vulnerable? 

But there are two things here that are really, deeply the matter with this punitive point of view. One is what it expresses about God, and the other is what it says about us. First, about us: if God is punishing the wicked and rewarding the good, first we have to define who is wicked and who is good. Which are you? How can you say? Aren't you a mixture of both? Isn't everyone a mixture of both good and evil? Where do we suppose that God draws the line? Most of us are generally well-intentioned, but most of us are also pretty complacent about our participation in an inequitous, exploitative global economy. We may look at someone else and think that they are truly saintly, or rotten to the core -- but what are we looking at? Only the visible, their outward show, their actions. But God does not see as we see or judge as we judge, because God sees inside us, He sees the heart. He sees our insecurity, and our ignorance, and our fear, and our loneliness. He sees our woundedness, and our blindness. He knows of what we are made; he remembers that we are dust. 

And then, you know, the whole point of the Christian story is that Jesus came to save sinners, and not the righteous. Sts. Peter and Paul, the two pillars of the church, were deeply flawed men. It is to Peter that Jesus said "get thee behind me, Satan!" -- three verses after he had called him "the rock on which I will build my church." Paul wasn't just some neutral, random member of society when Jesus called him, he was actively engaged in rounding up Christians for execution. Jesus was constantly in conflict with the religious authorities, befriending instead people outside the pale of official Judaism, prostitutes and tax collectors, people who could not help but be painfully conscious of failing to live up to even the minimal moral standards of society.

If the idea of dividing people into saints and sinners is problematic, so is the idea of God as angry and punitive. Jesus came for us, died for us, for us sinners. He did not come to pluck off some mythical sinless, deserving stratum of holy people. He came for us, us paltry, muddled, mixed bags of moral mediocrity. He came to us in love, to us who do not "deserve" God's love, because God is unmixed goodness and unmixed love. 

There is no wrath in God. As my favorite saint Julian of Norwich says, there is no wrath in God ... she points out, in God "we live and move and have our being." We exist, and continue in existence every moment, by the grace and favor of God. If God were to be angry for one instant, how could any of us continue to exist? How could the wrath of God not completely annihilate us, if we exist only through His love? 

Jesus came not to abolish suffering, but to embrace suffering alongside us. Jesus did not deserve a horrific death. Neither do you, neither do I, neither do the prisoners nor the old folks nor the doctors and nurses and ambulance drivers dying from this pandemic. Julian of Norwich had her visions, her "revelations of divine love," on what was expected to be her deathbed, in middle of an even worse pandemic of bubonic plague. She lived to old age, and then she died, and neither her survival of the first illness was a reward nor was her eventual death a punishment. 

Everyone dies. Despite the legends, Enoch and Elijah and Methuselah died, too. Jesus died. Death is sometimes swift, sometimes slow. Sometimes it is painful, some go easily in their sleep. Some die in the womb, some in the cradle, some in the prime of life, some few live 100 years or more. Some die from violence, some from disease. Death is universal. How can there be a judgment in it? 

Neither is death final. We die into peace and bliss and the boundless love of God, and there the veil of unknowing will be lifted, that veil that leaves some people wondering whether a global catastrophe like this 2020 pandemic is a divine judgment on the sins of humanity. The only really substantial "revelation" I have ever had is this, that to the soul after death, everything will make sense, and it will all be good. I guess that is my link with Mother Julian, whose most famous line is "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." The longer quote is this: 

"Our Lord God shewed that a deed shall be done, and Himself shall do it, and I shall do nothing but sin, and my sin shall not hinder His Goodness working. It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

God bless you. Keep the faith.

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Paving the road

Today's Mass readings (link)

If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and the streets of Heaven are paved with gold, what about the road to Heaven? Mud. Mud and potholes, and the signposts are faded, slanted, and often printed in some totally unfamiliar script. And it's uphill! Hell is "down there" somewhere, and good intentions are so slippery you can just sit down and slide to Hell on your sofa cushion. Heaven is a hard climb. 

OK, I'm in danger of getting hopelessly lost in this metaphor, so let's just move on.... 

This is what I want to say: Always we begin again. It's a motto of the Benedictines. My spiritual director used to repeat to me a quote from one of the desert fathers, who when asked how the monks lived, answered, "we fall down and we get up ... we fall down and we get up." The Mass readings today are all about the possibility of change -- for the better or for the worse. It's a really important theme for me! 

I wrote a few weeks ago about ADHD. It is still my hot topic. I'm learning loads about it, reading and reflecting and getting to understand myself better. Not too surprisingly, something that people with ADHD (especially people diagnosed later in life) commonly struggle with is discouragement. We're out-of-the-box thinkers, coming up with genuinely creative ideas and often getting really enthusiastic about them. The down side is that once we've come up with that brilliant idea, we're still out of the box, which can make it really, really hard to follow those creative ideas all the way through to completion. We can imagine an end goal, but we can't figure out how to get from here to there, with a workable plan, with realistic, sequential steps. Even if we come up with a plan, we are incapable of keeping the shiny goal, the overall plan, and the current step in that plan, all in mind simultaneously. Then, too, coming up with a creative idea doesn't stop the flow of other creative ideas, which get more and more distracting as the excitement fades and the implementation work starts to drag on. We get bogged down, we lose interest, we quit. It happens over and over. Failure to achieve, starting strong and dropping out, becomes a pattern. We start to think it's no use trying, because we're bound to fail. It ends up being "I always fail ... I am a failure." And that's a bad place to be.

In today's gospel, Jesus is talking to people, "the chief priests and the elders," who have the opposite problem: they're complacent. Or maybe they are just too good at keeping their dirty laundry private, they can't grow because they can't admit -- to others, maybe even to themselves -- that the righteous mask is a mask. The people who do change and grow are the prostitutes and tax collectors (which in the New Testament context really means "traitors") who heard John the Baptist's message of conversion and believed. They believed -- it's not about believing that they'd better repent before God comes and casts all their sinful souls into fiery Gehenna. It's about believing that they aren't defined by, or limited to, their past sins. It's about believing that they CAN change, that they have the potential within them to be better than they have been so far.

It's not only about believing, of course, but it's a surprisingly important piece of the puzzle. There's a concept called "self-efficacy," that means something like your belief in your ability to rise to a challenge, to learn new things, to perform hard tasks, to accomplish big goals, that kind of thing. It's narrower than self-esteem, but of course it feeds into it. My battered self-efficacy has gotten better over the past year and a half in solitude, for a few reasons. One, I am now living a lifestyle that largely cushions my weaknesses and gives scope to my strengths. Two, I have been focusing a lot on getting to know myself better, to have a much clearer understanding of my strengths and weaknesses, separating what's innate from what's learned from what I only wish were true. And three, I've learned more about how to learn, how to grow, how to change, a step at a time. How to take a step at a time without losing sight of the goal, how to keep my eye on the happy goal without stumbling over the steps. 

My bell has just rung for Compline, so I'm going to stop trying to hammer this blog post into perfection and let it go public. That is, in fact, one of the big lessons I've been learning for self-efficacy. I'll leave you with two books I've found really helpful, both by author Stephen Guise: How to be an Imperfectionist and Mini-Habits. OK, make it three: Better than Before, by Gretchen Rubin. 

Good night and God bless you. 

Sunday, September 20, 2020

The parable of the day laborers

Today's Mass readings (link)

In today's gospel reading, Jesus tells the story of a vineyard owner who goes down to the local Home Depot (or was it a 7-11? my translation just says "the marketplace") early in the morning, and there finds a bunch of men loitering around hoping to pick up a day's work. He agrees on a standard day's wage, loads them into his pickup truck and takes them back to the vineyard, where they immediately start working. He goes back a few hours later and brings back another pickup-truckload of day laborers, again at lunchtime, again in the afternoon, and then again just an hour before the working day is finished. When time comes to start paying them off, the boss tells his foreman to call the workers forward, starting with the last hired. Each one is paid the standard day's wage. Seeing this, the ones who had been there first perked up, thinking that they would no doubt get paid more since they had been working hard for many more hours than the later ones. But no, every worker received the same wage, one day's pay, whether the day had been long or short. The early birds grumbled about it, but the boss said, what's your beef? Isn't that the wage you agreed on this morning? You got exactly what was promised. So what if I choose to pay these other men the same amount, even though they started later? It's not coming out of your pocket - it's my money, to do with as I please.

So ... to put this into the context of the other two readings. Paul is in prison in Rome, facing the very real possibility of execution. He writes to the Philippians, and in this excerpt from that letter he is telling them that he doesn't know whether to wish for death or a reprieve. He longs to go home to Jesus, he looks forward to it eagerly, and yet he is so very aware of how much work there is left for him to do, and how much good he could do if he stays. How many of us have ever heard someone say they wish they were dead -- not because life has become intolerable, but because the next life, life after life, holds such a bright attraction for them? 

And in the first reading, Isaiah tells us to turn, turn around, let go of our evil ways, seek the Lord, "who is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts."

God's ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. We, in our short-sighted mortal way, fear the future, fear death, and hate suffering. We, in our self-centered human way, have a keen sense of justice (it should always be in our own favor). We are not content to have enough for our own needs, we want to have as much or a little more than the next guy. And we, in our ordinary mortal way, think that suffering and death are "bad," and peace, prosperity, and pleasure are "good."

Why, why, why? We want to know --- Why do bad things happen to good people? But what does God answer? Well, I can't be so presumptuous as to place my thoughts up there with God's above your thoughts, but this is what I think. I think it's the wrong question. I think there isn't even any question. There is only an answer, and the answer is only Love. God's answer to "why do human beings suffer and die?" seems to me to be ... to become a human being, and suffer, and die, with us. God's answer to suffering is to walk right into suffering, look it in the eye, take it by the hand, and embrace it. And to embrace us, each one of us individually and all collectively, in our sorrow and in our joy, in our birthing and in our dying, in our stumbling and in our soaring.

God's answer is "I have given, am giving you enough." Not necessarily enough food or money or human affection, not necessarily enough to keep us out of suffering and struggling and dying, but enough of Himself to keep us in existence, enough of Himself and of His infinite Love to let us, finally, rise far above this "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" mortal span of life. And what can we learn from this? When confronted with another's suffering, when the vast sea of human suffering seems so to dwarf our feeble efforts to combat or redress it? 

ONLY LOVE.

It is more important, more valuable, more right to love, and if possible to make that love known, than it is to fix any visible problem. My mother taught me, when I was just a little girl, when I would fall down and skin my knee: wash it, squirt it with Bactine, and slap a Band-aid on it ... but none of that is what stopped me crying. No, Mom would "kiss it and make it all better." That's what I remember. That's what healed my hurts when I was a child, and it's the best thing we can do to heal one another today, and it's how God makes it all better, too. Love, only love. Amen.

Sunday, September 6, 2020

Binding and loosing

Today's Mass readings: 

Ezekiel 33:7-9, in which the prophet is told that he has the obligation to call out evil -- that if he sees someone doing wrong, and fails to call them on it, then they will be punished for their sin and he, too, will be held responsible for their guilt. If, on the other hand, he calls them out and they ignore his warning and continue in their sins, then they will be punished but he will be held guiltless.

Romans 13:8-10, in which Paul says that everything in the Law -- thou shalt not lie or steal or kill or covet -- is rolled up in the one commandment: "love your neighbor as yourself." Don't get hung up on details, just love.

Matthew 18:15-20, in which Jesus tells his disciples: if someone wrongs you, confront him (or her, etc.) privately. Maybe he'll hear you and apologize and change his ways, and you will have done him good as well as yourself. If they don't listen, then talk it over with some friends, and if they agree that this person is in the wrong, then bring them along and confront him together. If he still won't admit his fault, then make it public, and let the entire assembly judge. Then if the person still persists, you give up, let the relationship go.

So, I have a few thoughts about this. First of all, let me just point out that in biblical times, especially in Ezekiel's day but on up through Jesus and Paul as well, the word "sin" did not automatically make you think of SEX. There were sexual sins that were condemned, but other than adultery, which most of us still consider cheating and lying and bad, they just weren't what the prophets were paying attention to. Sin meant oppressing the poor, enriching yourself at someone else's expense, lying, cheating, stealing. And idolatry, especially in Ezekiel's time, but I'm not going to try to get into that today.

Second, we have an obligation to confront sin. That may mean better communication with your partner, not expecting them to read your mind when something upsets you, allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to say "when you do that, I feel as if you don't care, and my feelings are hurt." Or it may mean speaking truth to power, signing petitions for change, using our voice at the ballot box or as a shareholder or as a consumer, to advocate for justice and right. 

Third, we have to give the other person a chance to respond. This means, one, giving people the benefit of the doubt as far as motives go. Like Paul says, all the Law is really about LOVE. Two, speaking to them in a way that gives them room to admit the wrong, not boxing them into a corner or making them defensive, not demonizing them, allowing them room to save face while still making the change you're asking for. Similarly, in public discourse, we should keep an eye on our own motivations -- it's really easy to confuse showing off how enlightened and virtuous I am with making a public statement of conscience in order to raise the public consciousness about an issue. It might end in the same action, but one is vanity and feeds divisiveness, the other is integrity and inspires emulation.

Fourth, we have to be willing to let go. We cannot control our neighbor or force them to do good. We must have the courage of our convictions, but we also have to recognize our limits. Again, this looks different at different levels ... one on one, it might mean letting a relationship end. On a larger level, it might mean taking the time and effort to research the corporate practices of the companies we buy things from, in order to really turn our backs on ones that really don't care about anything but enriching themselves. 

In politics -- Ezekiel wasn't going to give up his citizenship if corruption and oppression didn't end, he wasn't going to shake Judah's dust off his feet and go petition for asylum in Moab or Edom. But, well, I'm thinking of a relative of mine who has, in recent years, gotten so demoralized about the state of American politics that I really worry about him becoming depressed. He works and works for truth and goodness and right, and then things go wrong in an election and he seems to feel as though he, personally, has failed. It's a burden of guilt that is totally understandable, but definitely inappropriate. We cannot solve all the world's problems single-handedly, we just can't. It's like St. Augustine said: "Pray as if everything depended on God. Work as if everything depended on you." Both/and. 

The point is, we have a responsibility to try, to reach out. We do not have a responsibility, or even a right, over the other person's response. We have to try, but we also have to be prepared to let go. 

Anyone want to contribute any other thoughts to this topic? Feel free to comment.

Peace out....

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Love is an Action Verb

LOVE is a word with a lot of definitions. It gets confusing! In fact, I don't think we have nearly enough words in English to cover all the things "love" is used for.

from Dictionary.com:

noun

  1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
  2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
  3. sexual passion or desire.

verb (used with object), loved, lov·ing.

  1. to have love or affection for: All her pupils love her.
  2. to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for (another person).
So this covers filial love, romantic love, friendly love, sexual attraction ... all nice, warm, pleasant feelings. Nothing to do with the Christian definition of "love," actually. Nothing, really, to do with the grown-up definition of "love." 

St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13:4-6, says:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The ten commandments start out with "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus says, "love your enemies." 

You can't "love your enemies" according to the dictionary definition. It's an oxymoron. Then again, that dictionary definition, which defines love as a feeling, excuses the man who slaps his partner around because he sees her smile at another man. He "loves" her, and therefore it is natural that he feels jealousy; and if "love" is nothing but a feeling that brings and keeps a couple together, if a mere feeling can motivate pair-bonding, then why shouldn't the mere feeling of jealousy motivate violence? 

Christians, and grown-ups generally, aren't meant to be driven by our passions. We are meant to act in accordance with our conscience and our principles, sometimes in opposition to our feelings. Ask any truly happily married couple, and they will tell you frankly that love is an action verb. Love is a choice you have to make every day. Love is patient, love is humble, love compromises, love is vulnerable, love forgives, love listens

Exodus 23:4-5 says, 
When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.

To paraphrase: if you see a car on a narrow shoulder, at night in the rain, with someone struggling to change the tire, and that car has a big bumper sticker on it advertising the evil, wicked political candidate of the evil, wicked party that you hate -- then you shall pull over and help, at least by pulling up behind them with your flashers on to shield them from getting hit by a car while they change the tire, or at the very least, you shall call #77 and alert the state troopers that someone needs help. Even if it's election day and they're on their way to vote for the evil, wicked, bad guys, you still help. THAT is love, in the Christian sense, in the grown-up human sense.

And sometimes, it's not possible to actually help someone, even someone we feel loving towards. Some illnesses are incurable. Sometimes, love is a nothing more than a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes, there's a pandemic on, and you can only video-phone or send a card. Sometimes, love is looking straight into the eyes of a panhandler, whose material needs are way beyond your ability to meet. Sometimes it's listening, with attention and an open mind. 

THIS is ultimately why I remain a Christian, despite all the glaring shortcomings of my Church. God loves us, so much, so deeply, so completely, so intimately. This is how I experience God's love. It's not about making everything OK. God's love doesn't keep things from going wrong, it doesn't keep people from getting sick and dying, it doesn't keep me from screwing things up, it doesn't keep pandemics and wildfires and hurricanes from happening, it doesn't keep war and rape and child abuse from happening. It's about holding my hand through it all, holding me in a loving embrace through it all. It's compassionate love, love that goes through the pain right along with me. Christianity describes a God who chose, out of compassionate love, to enter into my suffering with me, to show me that suffering is not the the ultimate meaning of life, that it is finite, and that it is smaller than love. 

The Christian God is incarnate, carnal, messy, bloody, weak, betrayed, physically overcome. He feels pain and anguish and betrayal and fear, and He chooses to stay, He is not defeated by the pain. And then He does it again every single day, in the Eucharist -- I'm not saying the wafer feels pain when we chew it up, I just mean it's so small, so insignificant, so meek and mild, like Elijah's "still, small voice." And yet, it's Love. It's intimate. It is Communion, two-way union, between the limitless God and limited me, and all-encompassing, although it looks and tastes like nothing at all. 

Some of the most loving people I know are atheists, so I can only put this in the first person. For me, it is in knowing myself loved by God, in feeling how God embraces suffering to embrace me in my suffering, in seeing how small, how paltry, how unimpressively God presents Himself to us, that I am somehow enabled to embrace my paltry, obnoxious, stubborn, wrong-headed self, and my neighbor, and even the ones who might be my enemies. To love, with my actions, by the grace of God, no matter what my feelings might be. Amen.

Saturday, August 29, 2020

ADHD and me (getting to know me, part 99)

I never heard of ADHD until I was 30, when my dad was diagnosed with the disorder. Immediately, the whole rest of the family recognized ourselves in the same diagnosis, and some of us (myself included) went out and got diagnosed, too. Still, although I am now 53, I have a very superficial understanding of ADHD and how it has affected my life. Back when I was first diagnosed, science was only just beginning to see ADHD beyond hyperactive boy children, so the diagnosis didn't really provide me, a spacey (that is, "primarily inattentive type") grown woman, with a lot of guidance. Then again, I could never tolerate the stimulant medication that is typically prescribed for ADHD at anything like a useful dose. So basically, I have been untreated and uncounselled for ADHD all my life. 

This past week, I got intensely frustrated with one of the ways this brain-kink manifests in my life, which is something I call "stuckness" or "an excess of inertia." I just can't get started on things, or switch from one thing to another, even things I really want to do and know I'll enjoy. I very much wanted to go for a walk in the park, which is literally right outside my door, and does not require any special preparation or equipment or planning. I wanted to go in the morning, but it was 1:00 in the afternoon before I finally managed to get out the door. I was literally crying with frustration before I left. It felt like literal paralysis, like being stuck hip-deep in marsh mud, as if I were exerting every ounce of energy in my body to move a muscle that just would not move. I try and try, so hard, to go and I just can't go.

So later on, when I got back, I started to Google around about ADHD and what I guess was the state-of-the-art term last time I talked to anyone about it (a dozen years ago): "executive function." And I am finding that the state of the art has progressed a whole lot since then. I'm finding that some things that I never would have connected with ADHD are now considered part of or closely related to it.

There's a thing they're calling "Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria," that sounds familiar, but I always attributed to being ostracized in 4th grade. But according to this article on WebMD, "up to 99% of teens and adults with ADHD are more sensitive than usual to rejection. And nearly 1 in 3 say it's the hardest part of living with ADHD."

Here's another author who has coined the term "Emotional Distress Syndrome." As I understand it so far, he means something like Complex PTSD, which is a kind of PTSD resulting not from a single traumatic event, but from a prolonged series of events or one long drawn-out event. Neurologically, spending too much time in "fight or flight or freeze" isn't good for you, it can cause lasting harm. Now, I've said I have complex PTSD from having had major depression from the age of 9 to ... 24? 26? however old I was when I discovered Prozac (and not remembering when that most life-altering thing took place is also typical of ADHD). But again, yes, the depression was a real and crushing thing, but I also had undiagnosed, uncomprehended, untreated ADHD all my life. And I really have no idea how it has affected me.

And there's more. Sensory overload is another piece of it -- I have a very low tolerance for noise (the washing machine can really stress me out), and now I find that that, too, is strongly associated with ADHD. For some people it's smells, or textures, or light, though I think maybe noise is an especially common stressor. And you know, I've always said that clocks and I just don't get along, and now here I find they've put a name on that, too: "time-blindness."

But let me skip over any more details, for now, and say a little about how I'm feeling about it. Pretty emotional! I'm feeling a lot of things about it, all mixed up together.

One, there is a consolation in knowing that some of the things I struggle with are part of a bona fide "disorder" (although I think I still prefer "syndrome," since some of the aspects of it are positive, at least sometimes). It defuses the shame I feel at not measuring up to some standards that are not, after all, reasonable for me.  

Two, it's discouraging to realize that some of those things I'm still, always, going to have to struggle with. I may cut myself slack because I'm just wired the way I am, I may be able to laugh at my "time blindness" instead of beating myself up for being late everywhere I go -- but I still have to try really hard to be on time, because it puts other people out. And it's always going to be hard, in a way that "neurotypical" people can never understand.

Three, after all, I'm proud of myself for managing as well as I do. I'm proud that my laundry is folded and my furniture is dusted and my dishes are done, and I almost never go to bed without having brushed my teeth, and I spend a little less than I bring in each month, and my car maintenance is up to date. Those things are real triumphs for someone with ADHD, they are all things that I didn't use to do.

Four, I'm aching, grieving for all the struggle having ADHD caused in my life, and for all the pain having so little understanding of it caused in my life. It's given me a new perspective, especially, on all the stress of my working years.

Five, I regret how I've hurt others, especially the way I reacted to my dad's temper in his last years -- it was ADHD-type temper, and I inherited it from him and know damn well how quick and ephemeral it was, and that it didn't reflect his real feelings about me. I trust he understands, now -- forgive me, Dad. And for those I blew up at in the same way, I'm sorry.

Six, I'm interested, fascinated even, to learn more about this phenomenon. Of course, studying with ADHD, even studying a topic I'm interested in, is anything but focused and linear. And that's fine, because honestly, there's a lot to process. Only being able to read half a page or a page at a time allows me time to reflect on the information as it relates to my own life, past, present, and future.

Seven, I'm feeling very, very grateful for the life I have now. Working for a living isn't supposed to be easy, I know, but I think the ADHD just made it a whole lot harder than it would have been otherwise. My vows of Silence, Solitude, and Simplicity would drive most people crazy, but for me, it's pure peace and freedom. It's a relief, making up for all those years of feeling like Atlas carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. 

Having ADHD must be why I love the Liturgy of the Hours. It's definitely not for the content. There are gems in it, sure, lots of them. But it is also very often infuriating. The language ignores women when it's not actively insulting us, the psalms and prophets are full of blatant political propaganda and insults against neighboring tribes, and I've always been uneasy with what seems to me the arrogance of dogmatic statements of theology (because God is a Who, not a What, and how do we get off thinking we can define the inmost nature of God?). But, the liturgy has a strong structure, it gives my days a strong structure, and it has rhythm (even music), and just enough variation to stay interesting. Everything I need is available in one place, for when my ADHD brain is feeling overloaded, but there's plenty of flexibility to go outside the breviary when it starts to get too hard to stomach. And after all, however clumsily, it does keep constantly referring me back to my Invisible Husband, God, the center and ground and delight of my life.

I feel like I'm tapping a can of worms here.... there is a lot I could say about why I am a Catholic in spite of everything. But that's a harder blog post to write, and writing any blog post at all is one more thing that having ADHD makes really challenging. I'll get to it, though. Probably soon.

Meanwhile ... thanks for sticking with me. God bless you. 

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Follow Your Bliss

 "I really care about how humans smell smells in the environment and how insects smell smells in the environment, and how they smell humans." -- Dr. Leslie Vosshall, a molecular neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, as heard on the Nature podcast.

I got to do one of my favorite things in the world over the past few weeks: dress up in heavy chest waders and slog through sticky, stinky marsh muck, craning to see the next plot marker over head-high thorny vines and occasional poison ivy, during a humid Mid-Atlantic heat wave, carrying a heavy backpack, a clipboard and pencil, for the biennial emergent vegetation survey. Ah, what bliss! My ecologist friend thanked me profusely and repeatedly, and I just kept on assuring her that I love this! But she says -- and maybe this won't surprise anyone but me -- she can't get anyone else to go out more than once on this project. To me it is almost as hard to grasp that most people would pay money NOT to have to lie down and wet their hair in muddy water to stave off heat exhaustion (whereas I just sit there with my phone trying to get a good enough picture of the snails crawling all over my waders to enable me to identify the species) as it is for me to believe in those old Merry Maids commercials, with the women dancing around with feather dusters and huge smiles on their faces ("house cleaning may not get you going, but it really moves us!"). *shudder*

And that is how I know that this is my vocation (and in fact, I wrote "study of the natural world" into my Rule of Life as a hermit). Not merely that I love it, but that my love for it is weird. It is peculiar to me. House cleaning is not my vocation (if you ask me, enjoying house cleaning is weird). I try to keep my house reasonably clean, but I definitely don't love it. I do love being a hermit, living a prayerful life in substantial solitude. I love it so much that it was totally worth it for me to retire with half a pension -- so I'm not going to be paying Merry Maids to dance their dusters around my house, either. 

In secular culture "vocation" is generally equated with "career," which means it is limited to one dominant kind of activity that pays well enough to support the other aspects of life. Some women (and fewer men) consider parenting to be a vocation, but again, generally that implies that it's a full-time job, in this case supported by the other parent's paid work. In the Catholic Church, on the other hand, "vocation" means a "religious vocation;" e.g., priest, nun, hermit, that sort of thing. 

Both definitions are more limited than the sense in which I understand vocation. My vocation, for example, includes being a solitary religious contemplative, and it also includes direct study of the natural world around me. I don't get paid for either of these aspects of my vocation. Then again, to one who loves God, all of life is religious life; and if one discerns one's true vocation in prayer and the humility of clear-eyed self-knowledge, then that vocation is a religious vocation, whether it is the priesthood, or nursing, or painting, or football, or molecular neurobiology and the study of how insects smell humans. And/or, I should say, since vocation may as well branch out like streams in a marsh (some paid, some not) as flow together in a single, purposeful channel. Depth vs. breadth is just one of the aspects of vocation to be taken into account in the discernment process.

I'm not sure I've ever actually read a whole book by Joseph Campbell, but his phrase "follow your bliss" lodged itself in my psyche many years ago. I am deeply convinced that God calls us through joy and passion, and that He calls us one at a time, individually and entirely uniquely. We are so used to thinking of, and hearing about, the virtuous life as battling our natural inclinations, and sure, in another sense that's true, too. But let me just take the example that St. Paul uses in his letter to the Philippians (3:13-14), that of the athlete single-mindedly pursuing victory. Elite athletes push themselves through pain and exhaustion and frustration. They must battle their natural inclinations to rest, to give up, to settle for good enough, to have one more cookie or one more beer, to skip practice in favor of hanging out with the exciting new boyfriend or girlfriend, to roll over and go back to sleep on a cold morning. Why do they do it? Because they have a passion for the sport, surely. Because no joy, for them, compares to winning that gold medal or tournament. Because playing at the utmost limits of their ability is elating, exhilarating, and nothing else can compare to it, for them.

There is no real contradiction between self-denial and self-realization. If we are doing what we are called, what we are uniquely designed and motivated, to do, then we will find the burden light, we will naturally want to press on toward the goal. But it's still a burden and a pressing on. We still have to discipline ourselves. It's just that we give ourselves a far better chance if we are disciplining ourselves for the sake of something we love and want, something that we find compelling. Bad habits still have a strong pull, especially when they are first challenged. We are naturally inclined to anger, to sloth, to gluttony, to lust, etc., and we do have to battle those inclinations. But we give ourselves more of a fighting chance if we can oppose them with whatever sparks bliss in us. 

And what sparks bliss in each one of us is totally unique. Each one of us has a combination of history, temperament, gifts, interests, strengths and weaknesses, as unique as voice and fingerprint. None of us is ever going to be able to fulfill all of our unique potential. Most of us are so side-tracked, so early in life, by social expectations and the imperative of making a living that we have at best only a vague idea of our deep, unique vocation. And then again, vocation is not static. We grow and change and move on to new challenges and new circumstances. But for a whole lot of people, this pandemic has blasted so many of our expectations and so many ways of making a living, that this might be a fine opportunity for a lot of people to think about turning in a completely different direction. 

I'll leave you with this gem that I just discovered recently: Wishcraft, by Barbara Sher, whose unique vocation in life was to help other people discover their own unique vocations, and then find a way to follow them. What God makes you for and calls you to, God will make a way for you to do. 

God bless you.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Weeds among the wheat

In one of my first posts on this blog, I wrote about over-aggressive weeding. I confessed to a tendency to hyper-focus on trying to pull out every single weed, even when they get so entwined with the garden plants that I do more damage than good.  That happens to be the theme of the parable in today's gospel reading (Matthew 13:24-30). Jesus cautions his followers not to be too zealous in weeding. He says, "if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest." 

Now, at the first level (OK, the 2nd level -- the first is my poor garden), I think of this as meaning that we should not rush to judgment of people, not label people as "good" or "bad," "wheat" or "weeds." Not try to exclude the people we consider "bad" from, let's say, our church. I think that's a pretty standard interpretation, actually. But as I've gotten older, and especially as I've been growing into this religious vocation, I have begun to look at it on another more personal level.

I am learning to be more patient and gentle with myself, the weeds in my own character. My  garden needs weeding, and also watering, and pruning, and staking. It needs me to put in a considerable amount of careful effort. But it also needs time, and sunlight and rain, none of which I provide. Likewise my inner garden. It requires me to work at establishing good habits and breaking bad ones, to spend time in prayer, in reading, in housework and yardwork, to get enough sleep, and a decent diet, and some exercise. But it also requires grace, that part of the formula that is out of my hands. Some weeds I have to get down on my knees and pull -- the chickweed and the stiltgrass -- and some, like the bindweed, I can only keep breaking off at the ground because its roots are 10 feet deep and I'll never get them out without plowing up or poisoning the whole garden, or both, and even then it'll probably come back. 

I once told my brother that I struggle with perfectionism, and he startled me by exclaiming, "I would hate to be perfect! How obnoxious would that be?" I assumed everyone, like me, wished to be (and even more to appear to be) perfect. But he's right, of course. Perfection is obnoxious. God Almighty inspires awe and even fear. It's God as needy infant who inspires love, and God the tortured, dying man, who inspires compassion. And it is the mirror of our weaknesses in others that inspires us either to love or hate them, in proportion to how we love our hate our own weak selves. 

So I learn. I'm a better gardener than I used to be, both with my vegetable garden and with my inner field of intermingled weeds and wheat. I spend a little time most days watering and weeding, but I am no longer so apt to damage the crop by attacking the weeds too aggressively. I am less proud, less rigorous, and more gentle with myself. I'm more willing to wait on the sun and rain, in whatever time and proportion they come, and to accept that some plants will thrive and others die off, and that it is not all in my hands. Even, sometimes, I find that what I considered a "weed" turns out to be beautiful or useful, and what I planted on purpose is a waste of space. There is another Gardener who tends me and my garden with infinitely more wisdom and skill and care than my own.