Pre-Lenten Pause

[Insert appropriate virtual greeting here.]

I can't seem to stop thinking about what I'm doing with my life, that I want to do something ultimately meaningful, and not waste any time. And yet there is something delightfully ironic in that same anxiety: I want so badly the thing that I can never have by wanting it. The way I think about it is more a matter of realization, living action, than desire. What I end up doing as a result of this feeling is doing a lot of small things frantically in order to set myself up for feeling productive, smart, and feeling like I am where I should be. And yet...

Recently I downloaded the program EverNote or All Notebooks for PC, and so I am trying to explore ways to reduce inefficiency and increase productivity. Beneath my productivity will always need to be a set of goals, desires, targets to be reached requiring the productivity in the first place. And that is where I am mulling at this point in my life. I am wondering what exactly is the point of all the wasted time, the time that I feel like should be used for action, realization of who I really am before God and the world.

I am able to make some progress into my wants and desires: for union with God, union with my wife, to be in loving community with family and friends, to contribute to a more just society. And then how those realized themselves in daily action: making my wife's lunch, planning my day, Catholic Mass, Centering prayer, home to eat breakfast, start laundry, get to work for a few hours, exercise, back to work, prepare and make dinner, choir practice, talk on the phone with a friend and/or family member, etc. So many things that I want and so many things to do, not all aligning at the same time and at the right places, but still coming through me somehow.

As Lent approaches I am weary of my own lack of discipline and how my sins will get in the way of what I really want. I am refreshed by the amount of resources available to support my spiritual life. I will always need to remember God's grace as the primary spiritual nourishment that may appear in so many unfamiliar ways through temptations and answered prayers.

Never Alone

Some Reflections on Chapter 1, "Alone" of Joseph Girzone's Never Alone: A Personal Way to God (Doubleday, 1994)

Joseph F. Girzone recounts his personal experience of friends leaving him as a child and the acknowledgment formed over years of experience that he was alone in the world. "All of us, no matter how extroverted we might be, are very much alone, not necessarily lonely, but alone, unable to share with anyone the deepest secrets of our hearts" (5). His childhood was also permeated with an experience of the presence of God given to him by his mother and the Eucharist. His growth in understanding the way of Jesus leads him to a very personal approach to Christianity: "If Christianity is merely a theological system, it will at most produce a highly educated elite devoid of anything resembling the living Christ in their personal lives" (7-8).

Girzone's realization of the universality and "epidemic" nature of the spiritual need for God (partially indicated by the multi-religious response to his Joshua series) is left wanting when the Church fails to share or teach the lived way of Jesus and of the Christian mystics and ascetics. Though he believes that the Christian way of life can be taught, it is still not something to be simply mistaken for "religious activities and pious exercises": "The spiritual life is something that grows slowly, imperceptibly, way beneath the surface of our lives. ...Real spirituality begins by finding God, feebly perhaps, in the beginning, but more confidently as we travel along the way. ...That is the beginning of spirituality, recognizing the need for God in our lives and placing ourselves in His hands with complete trust, confident of the tenderness of our Father's love for us" (14-15).

There is a real sense of wisdom in Girzone's writing (even only after one chapter) that comes from years of life experience, talking with other people about their lives and understanding the barriers and hang-ups that prevent people from meeting the gratuitous goodness, mercy, and love of God in their lives. Girzone notices the tension, rightly I think, between the sometimes mindless experience of Christian rituals and our need for God in Jesus and God's love for us that can and does come into our lives in the most non-religious of circumstances rather than only in the context of religious rituals. (of course this an assumption of Christianity, but perhaps not conveyed very well by most.)

By emphasizing the personal approach of God to each of us through Jesus, Girzone may help us to re-approach Christianity in the same way that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI also did in the introduction to his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est: "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (Section #1, Paragraph 2; emphasis added). Let us constantly remember that God always accompanies us, always seeks us through the Person of Christ, meeting each of us as the persons that we are.

Blogging Again

I have wanted to get back writing on this blog for some time, simply to continue to write without the pressure of obligation that exists within the context of academic commitments. There is something about free writing that eases the process, and lets it flow easier. Why do I write? Because I want to express myself in a public fashion, and reflect on life rationally, as well as reveal something of my own spirit. What do I write about? Anything at all. Nothing too personal, nothing slanderous, nothing overly narcissistic, nothing discomforting or too comforting. I am just writing for writing's sake, to get back in the habit, to make it a habit. I don't have to worry about quality, or expectations of readers. I am attracted to write in this way.

Of course I will try to write well. There is certainly a way to be clumsy in writing, and a way to be graceful. I hope to attain some hint of grace.

As I have written before, my identity as a married Catholic man (still need change the subtitle of the blog) takes precedent over any other relationship or identity, though functionally there are certain givens that need to be assumed. I exist in a specific type of geography, culture, government, economy, society. I cannot presume to have made some overly conscious decision concerning these contexts. We are given a place to be in the world, and that's that. It is a gift for better or worse. Existence here and now - no choice about that. Perhaps there is an ongoing choice to remain in existence, once it is recognized that there is the possibility of intentionally leaving existence. That possibility does not entertain me in the least. Perhaps I will comment on it later, perhaps not. It is no doubt a dark subject which I do not wish to broach at this juncture. I intend such a beginning to demonstrate some levity and free-ness of presentation and reception both with others and myself.

And so, I wish to write about something that has been preoccupying me for some time now before it gets lost in my bad memory. I believe it would be called personal spiritual meta-narratives. These personal spiritual meta-narratives are those ways of understanding our own lives self-reflexively with respect to God. These meta-narratives grasp at life's entire meaning, only speculatively of course, but still with some degree of confidence from the one reflecting. It is an always in-the-works story about the ultimate meaning of our lives.

 (Note: I understand that there are subconscious conceptual histories that find their way into my writing of which I am unaware: a long tradition of the intersection between Greek ontological philosophy and Hebrew theology. So long as I remain unlearned with respect to the intersection of these two traditions and their long history, I will not be able to address the matter of how exactly they arise in my own writing. Getting around such a concept is obviously not easy to anyone; that word has such a pervasive history that I can only do such as I have: note that the depth of its meaning and history is beyond my own knowledge, and move on with my writing.) 

Well there it is. That's really all I wanted to write for today. It certainly took me much longer than I intended, but that's what happens when the gears haven't been turning for a while.

A Healthy Case of Spiritual Materialism

Recently I feel like I've been hung up on trying to figure out how to put holiness into a box more than I ever have before in my life. And not only that, I have wanted to own it, like control it/own it, and possess it as if it were some physical object. And as it is a case of spiritual materialism, the subjects of the books I was purchasing without any real possibility of reading in the near future were contemplation, prayer, the catechism, happiness, faith and of the authorship of a priest well read and with a lot of experience in the topic. It was a real shopping spree - I must have bought a book every two weeks or so, not just online, but in actual stores, too. On top of that, while I would love the titles and ideas behind them, I really don't have time or energy to sit down and read all of these in such a way that would actually benefit me spiritually. I went on buying thinking that within one of these "holy" books I would be able to find a definitive idea or concept that I could just read and become enlightened as to realizing heaven on earth. The other problem was that I was trying to read a book on contemplation already but not actually practicing it at all - which is exactly what one needs to do in order to grow: spend time in prayer with God. In other words, I didn't want to change myself, but God to change for me and to accommodate to my need to put God in a box.

As I understand spiritual materialism, I think this is a good example. It was a feeling and perspective I received that lead me to think that I could find God in a book like that. I mean it would be easy to gain heaven: the physical world defines you and all you need to do is to acquire the right physical objects. I suppose that could lead to an hypothetical analysis of whether or not it would be easy to gain whatever objects they were, but that is not why I'm writing this post. Basically, what I want to say here is that in this state of me becoming a temporary spiritual materialist, I became more and more anxious about feeling like I had done enough for God and done the right things. And through this whole process of buying the books, it just so happened that one of the books would not fit through the mail slot in the door of the row home that I'm residing at for part of the week, and a slip was dropped off to notify me that it would be at the post office waiting for me. One of the days after that, I very quickly made a decision to try to pick up the book from the post office, though the office was closing at 5pm and it was already 4:45pm. Reflecting my own anxious mislead desire for holiness by owning the book on prayer and the desire to fulfill that desire I raced out of my work building and over to the post office, only to get there a minute or two after 5pm and walk up to ask the lady at the door if it was closed. Of course it was. Thus endeth the lesson... for now. It was a great help in revealing where my own desires lay. I was able to get that I didn't really have a good sense of what was necessary to achieve heaven in the here and now, but that I was way off and that the actions I was taking in order to express that misguided notion were only making my thirst for satisfaction and fulfillment worse.

Hopefully I can learn from this lesson and move on to a different way of approaching God and opening up to the Great Mystery that cannot be contained, even in a book on prayer or contemplation.

Everything I Want to Do Is a Sin... Don't Worry, Pun Intended

Big sigh. I'm an emotional fellow, what can I say? I am the middle child between two sisters, give me a break. But lately I've been stressed that I am not doing enough... in all areas of my life. Actually, it's more that I feel like I myself am never going to be worthy of satisfaction, and of rest from trying to be more than I am. The most satisfaction and contentment I feel is being with my fiance, family and close friends, nothing against any of those whom I love the most. It is a daily battle especially now that I am trying to live a dream that I had: teaching religion at the high school that I attended. But even when I'm with my fiance, my family, and close friends, I want to be even closer to them, to be even more than their friend, brother, son, and fiance. Even when I am most contented, I desire that much more happiness and fulfillment.

And so, I have come here to write and breathe as freely as possible, venting and grumbling, trying to make sense and find direction in my life. So, here goes: I just read the beginning of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin, and I am finding myself much more dissatisfied than I was before I had begun to read. I simply don't have a good grasp of reality, and finding out how strict legislation is, 7-8 years after the fact means that I am almost completely out of touch with how the world works and what is really going on in my life - at least with regards to where my food comes from. In college I got away with poorly reflecting on the current disintegration of the philosophical underpinnings of some industrialized-food systems and the more integrated underlying philosophy of fairly out-dated guidelines for monastic living. But now, I am trying harder to get more to the point: my own dissatisfaction with my day-to-day experience. I am not who I want to be for my fiance, family and friends. I want to fulfill them, and make them happy, but I can't. I want to be in constant community with them. I am trying to keep from being as dramatic as saying that I want eternal life, I want heaven now, but that's just it. I am so much of a product of my culture that I cannot help but feel the anxiety of instant gratification breathing down my neck to feel better about myself.

And now I am dissatisfied with my own blogging... who would have guessed? What a downer this is! I don't know why I do so much of this writing: do I write and think this way in order to give myself impetus to try harder, to motivate myself by anger at the injustice I am causing by not letting myself be loved properly by God, by my fiance, by my family, by my friends? Or, maybe that's even an oversimplification of the daily complications that help me to let go in the midst of confusion and frustration. It is a daily struggle for me at this point in my life not to beat myself up for failing to attain the loftiest dreams that I created in my imagination up to now: to be God (How ridiculous?! I know!). I can't remember at the moment how I got to that point.

Yesterday I was thinking that I am constantly seeking certainty about how I am fairing, always wanting to know that I am doing ok, to know that I am doing something good in my life or for someone of my place in the world. Inherently, that is backwards and mixed-up because I am seeking to compare myself to others, not accepting the mystery of the Future, a Future that is wrapped up in its own beyond-ness and other-ness. On a positive note, my mind drifts off to the words of a well-noted prayer of Fr. Louis, Thomas Merton:

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my

perils alone."

Somehow, to read someone else's experience of the uncertainty of the future, and to read them and take another perspective enables me to relax and ease back from being tense, always needing to be ready for anything so that I might be the first to pounce on that one opportunity of a lifetime... though I haven't the slightest clue what that might be or why I might have such an attitude. Hold up! I brake to a stop from riding the roller coaster that are my thoughts sometimes, about the adequacy of my life and my actions and my thoughts, and my words, and everything that I am. I just realized that it was this effort at trying to account completely for myself in the world, in anticipation of giving a full account of myself to my creator at the end of my days, that I came to write. Bound still by my own narcissism and self-centeredness, I realize a little bit more of my enslavement. I am not God, and delight in being the particular, the limited, the bound being that I am. I am grateful for my disintegration that I can be held by You, Integrity Entire and Final, that I can be with others who are like me and rest in their company. One hour of hard work here I come!

Goal for the next post: Be specific about reflecting on a real world experience.

Make no small plans...

Well, though I made such large plans for the study of Newman, I have yet again daunted myself with the task after recently checking out a few books to read more about him. In addition, to slow things down, I just found a blog where someone considers major points from Newman and I am just going to read them instead. I think, then, that it is time to reconsider how I am using this blog and why I am writing. Good idea for the next post.

Irony?

I think it is sort of ironic in trying to start something, I may have actually stopped something. And that thing is true inner conversation, of which I know very little. It is partially in my relationships and partially in my career as a student that I have been able to find out how I have a lot of trouble having my own point of view. And so I began to use the Catechism as a facade for my own opinion and began to lose myself even more because I didn't need to think if I was getting all of my answers from the Catechism or some Church teaching. I think that I really need to figure out what's going on in my own spirituality and thinking if I'm going to try to lead others in their own spirituality and thinking as a teacher too.

One of the things that really troubled me about how I was getting my spirituality from the Catechism was exactly losing myself... and gaining static answers that could not come to life because I had suffocated my own voice for that of another: the Church. On this topic, similar or equal to the topic of conscience and Church, the Catechism actually has some things to say that might help me find my own voice again. Connected through George Weigel, I would like to read some of Cardinal John Henry Newman to get a better sense of where I can go and what I can do as a result of my interest in the Church. I'm not trying to do something huge this time, like how I approached the first post. Instead, I hope to get some small bits of wisdom here and there reading and writing about some of the information. I'll just see what happens from this intention.