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.

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. 

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.

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....

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.

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. 

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.