bearing blog

"On death as a blessing" --- and as a model.

"Dad?  Mom?  Does God love the people in Hell?"  

That's Milo, always with the theology questions at bedtime.  It would be easy to say "You're supposed to be in bed; go back upstairs."  

"Hmm.  We don't know for sure if there are any people in Hell.  But if there are people in Hell, then God must love them, since He loves every person."

"Then why are they still there?"  

There's nothing child-ish about children's theological thinking -- haven't the greatest minds among us been grappling with this stuff for two thousand years and more?   What good is this omnipotent omnibenevolence stuff anyway, if it can't or won't stop suffering, temporal or eternal?

"That's an answer nobody's sure about,"  I said.  "We know God's mercy lasts forever, but we also know that people might choose not to want His mercy.  Some people say that this must mean, either that any people in Hell must stay there because they really want to stay there, or else, because God knows that it is really the place where those people will be the most happy -- that because of their choices they would not really be happier anywhere else."

That was a couple of nights ago.  I thought of that conversation again this morning when I picked up the Office of Readings while I waited for the bread machine to make bagel dough for me.  The second reading was from "A treatise on death as a blessing by Saint Ambrose, bishop."  He writes about dying to self (this translation is from my dead-tree breviary, not the link):

Death must be active within us if life also is to be active within us... [The Apostle] therefore teaches us to seek out this kind of death even in this life, so that the death of Christ may shine forth in our lives---that blessed death by which our outward self is destroyed and our inmost self renewed, and our earthly dwelling crumbles away and a home in heaven opens before us.  

The person who cuts himself off from this fallen nature of ours and frees himself from his chains is imitating death...

The Lord allowed death to enter this world so that sin might come to an end.

I thought about that conversation with Milo, how some theologians suppose that Hell exists to provide a place of the most mercy possible for those who in the end don't want Heaven -- a concept that, though it's borne of logical argument from the premises that Hell and a merciful God both exist, probably seems odd to a child (why would you not want Heaven?  and also, can it really be so that Hell can be something merciful?)  Such an idea can only make sense given the terrible flaws in human nature, flaws that we can choose to cling to.

Physical suffering and death in this life often gets the same question, of course, and the good bishop Ambrose's comment got me thinking about the mechanism by which physical death could be a similar mercy in this life.   I've thought of it one way for a long time:  It's a sorrow because it's necessary even for the best of people only because of sin; it's a mercy because it does bring sin and sorrow to an end, at least in the here and now.  

But it had escaped me till now that, since our nature is so flawed as it is, we must learn to cast off those flaws and cut away that diseased part of the self.  To understand how to do this, maybe we needed something in nature to imitate, to understand -- something to which the analogy could be made.  So many of the truths of our faith have been taught to us through concrete imagery -- sowing and reaping, eating and washing, begetting and birthing.  The reality precedes the concrete:  "fatherhood" is what it is so that we could understand something about "God the Father," i.e., natural "fatherhood" was modeled somehow after what we call the Fatherhood in the Blessed Trinity.  

So perhaps natural death was created as a model for us to follow, itself after the process of cutting away the sinful part of ourselves, what we are told we must do with the help of Christ.  Perhaps death is what it is because of mercy, because it shows us something like what we have to go through during our physical lives, in order to come out the other side more alive than before.

Yokes.

From Disputations, a bit that I think might help me as I ransack my schedule for a spot to stick some of the Divine Office:

Jesus' yoke is easy and His burden light because they are the means for us to become what His Father created us to be -- viz, His sons and daughters, not His servants or oxen. They lead us to freedom, and with each step we take we become more ourselves. Other yokes, other burdens are unnatural for us, and so weigh us down in ways we weren't created to support.



The hard part... is not bearing Jesus' burden but picking it up in the first place, since to do that requires setting down the unnatural burdens we've gotten used to.

This leads to the obvious question:  Which of my "burdens" weigh me down unnaturally, and which are part of His yoke?

Linky liturgy list.

Liturgy of the Hours resources gathered up helpfully by Melanie.  I need to read through a lot of this stuff, but I'm not sure when I'm going to get a chance.  

What I learned during Lent.

I gave up a few minor things during Lent as well, but my main Lenten discipline was 

1. to give up trying to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day, and
2. to pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary instead every morning, or at least a decade and
3. not to use the computer before noon, or at least until I'd accomplished my Rosary prayer.

  

So simple, and yet sometimes so difficult.  I love the Liturgy of the Hours, a.k.a. the Divine Office.  I love praying the prayers of the whole Church.  I love the daily readings in the Office of Readings.  I agree with Flannery O'Connor who wrote in one of her letters,

Anyway, don't think I am suggesting you read the Office everyday. It's just a good thing to know about, I say Prime in the morning and sometimes I say Compline at night but usually I don't. But anyway I like parts of my prayers to stay the same and part to change. So many prayer books are awful, but if stick with the liturgy, you are safe.

I have never been a big fan of the Rosary, even though I usually do get something out of it.  But I have difficulty fitting the longer prayers of the LOTH into my day, and you have to be able to find the breviary (another thing I've not gotten into is Divine Office podcasts or reading it off the computer), and stuff.  The Rosary's easy to pick up, easy to put down, and a single decade takes hardly any time at all.  I am pretty adept at counting on my fingers if I don't have the beads with me.

Why did I do this?  I was looking for a way to get more into the habit of prayer, and the somewhat more complicated (though lovely) LOTH was difficult to do in short bursts with kids clamoring for me, and the Rosary was a lot easier even though it doesn't appeal to me as much.

On the solemnity of St. Joseph (March 19) I decided to pray the Office in honor of him, after having put it aside for weeks.  It was like water to the parched, let me tell you.  I had missed it so much.  It gave me a real appreciation for it and made me more and more resolved to use what I learned from the Rosary to re-establish the LOTH---somehow---in my life.

So.  What did I learn?

First, that avoiding the computer until my morning prayers were complete was a pretty good strategy.  I may adopt it as a general rule.

Second, that I can pray a Rosary in almost exactly the amount of time it takes me to drive to either of my two friends' houses, something I do about twice a week.   Bonus!  (No LOTH possible there, unless I learn to use podcasts.  Balancing a breviary on your knees while driving 55 mph:  not recommended.)

Third, that a single decade can be as fruitful as five.  Which makes me think:  Perhaps I can adopt an abbreviated form of each Office to be used when I am short of time.  Surely part is better than none at all, and if I planned ahead to use an abbreviated form, maybe I'd feel less frustrated when the children interrupt me and I don't "finish."

Fourth, that the Rosary is not nearly as tedious as I thought it was.  After days and days of praying the Sorrowful Mysteries alone, I kind of thought I would have stopped finding new things in them, at least for that season.  I know they are a bottomless well, but still---wouldn't they say to me everything there is to say here in this particular Lent in my particular life?  And it's true that some days I didn't see any remarkable insights.  But they still kept giving me a steady supply, every couple of days or so, of new things to ponder and take to heart and learn from.  In the future, I don't think I will feel slighted if my schedule "only" allows me to use the Rosary.

And other good wishes.

"On the occasion of your inauguration as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America I offer cordial good wishes, together with the assurance of my prayers that Almighty God will grant you unfailing wisdom and strength in the exercise of your high responsibilities.  Under your leadership may the American people continue to find in their impressive religious and political heritage the spiritual values and ethical principles needed to cooperate in the building of a truly just and free society, marked by respect for the dignity, equality and rights of each of its members, especially the poor, the outcast and those who have no voice.  At a time when so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world yearn for liberation from the scourge of poverty, hunger and violence, I pray that you will be confirmed in your resolve to promote understanding, cooperation, and peace among the nations, so that all may share in the banquet of life which God wills to set for the whole human family (cf. Isaiah 25:6-7). Upon you and your family, and upon all the American people, I willingly invoke the Lord's blessings of joy and peace."

--Benedictus PP. XVI

h/t Whispers in the Loggia

The long dark bedtime snack of the soul.

Meanwhile, Jen at Conversion Diary gives us something else to chew on regarding detachment, food, health, pregnancy, and weight loss as a motivator (maybe the "wrong" motivator for many of us).

Since the weight loss ended for me a couple of months ago, I've been at loose ends spiritually, and I'm certain that the two are connected.  A friend told me this morning, about her own spiritual life, "I need a jump start;" I practically had to restrain myself from grabbing her about the shoulders and wailing "ME TOO!"

 I wonder if it's as simple as this:   I had a big problem, a spiritual obstacle that consumed my attention, and now that it's been mostly lifted from me, the next problem has fallen into its place in line and I don't know how to attack it or even where to start or what the problem is.  It's like...

...no, don't say it.  

Spiritual debugging.

Yeah, okay,  like that.  

Occam's razor suggests that I've merely replaced gluttony with more than a dash of good old-fashioned vanity.   Not necessarily the most serious of vices, and one that I plan to shake off eventually... after I am done shopping for all my nice new clothes, and admiring myself in them in the mirror.  The winter wardrobe is done, but I'm not quite done yet.   Spring is just around the corner, after all.

Did I say that?  This is Minnesota.  

And no, even though spiritual dry spells seem to be going around like influenza this season, that's not my problem.  "Dry spell" tends to refer to the situation where even one's most fervent prayers seem to be met with no response, no peace, no consolation.  The case where one is apparently too preoccupied or self-important to find time in one's day to pray at all, well, that's rather a different sort of problem.  

At least I have learned by now that a bowl of Cocoa Krispies will certainly NOT help.  I also suspect that the answer is to be found in doing something rather than in thinking about what to do.   Which probably means it's high time I ended this post.

Tipping point?

Productivity web-guru Merlin Mann recently explained  on 43folders how he's gone out of the business of providing "productivity tips" and into the business of hard -- as in challenging -- advice.   The article is called "Real Advice Hurts," and it couldn't have come at a better time for me.

Today, the web is littered with sites pumping out a high volume of advice on every conceivable topic. And a lot of the pathological patrons of these sites will tell you that a daily surfeit of snack-sized information helps them with what they really need in order to be successful and happy in life — to be better at their job or to be a well-rounded person or to become a more talented programmer.

I don’t doubt for a moment that the right tip at the right time can make all the difference in the world. And I have certainly been both a (reformed) producer as well as an ardent consumer of “tips,” by any definition of the word. But, here’s the problem:

In more instances than we want to admit, tips not only won’t (and can’t) help us to improve; they will actively get in the way of fundamental improvement by obscuring the advice we need with the advice that we enjoy. And, the advice that’s easy to take is so rarely the advice that could really make a difference.

The whole article is worth reading.  Please go read it and come back.

Operating definition of a "tip" or "trick:" A suggestion for a new behavior, a new gadget, or a new mindset, that is relatively easy to try out and that gives results that are immediate, helpful, and -- essentially -- small.   Used in the context of a winning (and therefore probably challenging) strategy, a "tip" might help you solve a sub-problem that's cropped up along the way.  It's not how you win the game; it's one good play.

Here are some examples of very good tips:

• If you want to eat less at meals in order to lose weight, it helps to buy smaller dinner plates.
• If you want to take your temperature at the same time every morning for effective use of the sympto-thermal method, it's a good idea to use a clock with two alarms.  Set the first one for the same early time every morning for your temperature, and the second alarm for whatever (variable) time you want to get up.
• If you want to "get something" out of the sermon or liturgy at church, but you never get to pay attention to them because you're always taking care of small children, try praying that you will hear just ONE word or phrase that you can really chew on and that will teach you something that day.  (Thanks Jen at Conversion Diary) 

 All are great tips.  But they're only going to work in the right context.  Buying smaller dinner plates is only going to help you eat less if you're already committed to trying to eat less, but you tend to eat a large plateful at meals.  A dual alarm clock will only help you get consistent temperatures if you WANT to take your temperature at the same time every day, but a difficulty is that you tend to get out of bed at irregular times.   Taking home from church a single word or phrase to ponder, if that's what you can manage, will be food for your soul; but first you have to care enough to want to pay attention when you get a chance.

Any "tip" can be defeated if you don't really want to do the hard work.  If you don't really want to use your small plates to help you eat less, you'll just pile your food higher (maybe you'll make more pizza, which stacks impressively).  If you don't really believe that taking your temperature at the same time every morning is necessary -- heck, I don't bother with it anymore --  you'll just hit "snooze" on your fancy alarm clock.  If you don't really care about hearing something significant in church, you'll just grab the first phrase that filters through the kid-distraction and then immediately forget it.

Everybody loves tips.  I love tips.  They're fun.  They make big promises.  There is nothing wrong with reading them for entertainment and there is nothing wrong with trying them out.  But they can't solve your problems for you -- you have to do that yourself.  If you want tips to really work for you, I guess you have to figure out the answer to What would really solve this problem?  and be choosy -- don't go chasing tips that don't help get you there.  

If you like, you could try an alternative formulation that Mark likes to use, one of his engineering superpowers.  He says:  Imagine it's [some time] later, and I have solved this problem.  How did I solve it?  

Chances are the answer will not fit in two lines on a magazine cover.

Self awareness.

Here is a thesis that occurred to me over the weekend as I mused about success and failure, about weakness and willpower, about competing selves:

Could it be that... once you KNOW what you should do...   moral behavior, or "good" behavior, or "healthy" behavior (take your pick) is nothing more than the setting-up of the right incentive structures for oneself? 

 Figuring out what situations, or habits, give you strong incentives to succeed and strong disincentives to fail, and staying in the success-producing ones as much as you can; creating and modifying the incentives in the pre-existing arenas where your life's story unfolds; stepping back one level and creating meta-incentives to lure your self into the places where you feel the power and  the desire to do the right thing, and away from the places where you feel weak, where you do the things you hate yourself for doing.

This is a big topic, and I need to think more about it.  But I just want to say that, as psychobabbley as that sounds, there is certainly precedent for it in Catholic moral teaching.  Remember "avoiding the near occasion of sin?"  That's the idea that you should stay away from situations that strongly tempt you to sin, or activities that have been the precursor of sin in your past.  

It's really rather remarkable that so much writing on willpower, on avoiding temptation, is framed in terms of a kind of splitting or separation of the self.... there's the "me" who wants to lose weight  keep my weight down and the "me" who wants to eat entire sleeve of saltine crackers; a college kid has a "self" who wants to get good grades and a "self" who wants to party tonight... a drinker may have a "self" who decides to go to AA and a "self" who hates every sober minute.  Last month's Atlantic had a thought-provoking article that explored this phenomenon (of one "self" deciding to tie the hands of the other, untrustworthy "self"):

We used to think that the hard part of the question “How can I be happy?” had to do with nailing down the definition of happy. But it may have more to do with the definition of I. Many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves, with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another. This theory might explain certain puzzles of everyday life, such as why addictions and compulsions are so hard to shake off, and why we insist on spending so much of our lives in worlds —like TV shows and novels and virtual-reality experiences—that don’t actually exist. And it provides a useful framework for thinking about the increasingly popular position that people would be better off if governments and businesses helped them inhibit certain gut feelings and emotional reactions....

The multiplicity of selves becomes more intuitive as the time span increases. Social psychologists have found certain differences in how we think of ourselves versus how we think of other people—for instance, we tend to attribute our own bad behavior to unfortunate circumstances, and the bad behavior of others to their nature. But these biases diminish when we think of distant past selves or distant future selves; we see such selves the way we see other people. Although it might be hard to think about the person who will occupy your body tomorrow morning as someone other than you, it is not hard at all to think that way about the person who will occupy your body 20 years from now. This may be one reason why many young people are indifferent about saving for retirement; they feel as if they would be giving up their money to an elderly stranger.

and then of course there's Romans 7:

What I do, I do not understand. 

 For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.   Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good.  So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.  For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. 

For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.  Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.  So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  

Miserable one that I am!   Who will deliver me from this mortal body?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.

Boy, if that doesn't describe a sense of competing versions of the self, nothing does.

So my question is... is that all there is to it?  Is the "answer" to overcoming temptations of all kinds really for the "inner self" -- the one who "takes delight" in moral or correct or healthy or Godly behavior -- to set up the kind of structure around the "members" that cajoles them to behave?  To offer to the weak flesh, in return for good behavior, the short-term goodies it craves? 

And if so... knowing what I have done and how I did it...

...what else am I capable of overcoming?

Question and answer.

Lovely post at Light and Momentary about knitting, and giving, and praying.  Really.  Go read it right now.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting when I started knitting these socks, but it was not a rapid and dramatic answer. 

Rapid and dramatic answers:  for me, few, but memorable.  They have never come when I expected them, or even when I hoped for them (in the sense of:  Gee, every once in a while I seem to receive a rapid and dramatic answer.  Maybe this time I will too!) Just enough, though, that I almost always have in the back of my mind:  yes, even this improbably crazy hope could be granted, even this lost cause could be moved just a little bit farther, even this long stony silence could be broken, even this tiny offering could increase an already-infinite treasure.   It's a huge temptation to believe that prayer does nothing outside of the self.  The gift of even one "rapid and dramatic answer" -- besides the answer in its own time -- is the memory:  No, wait.  At least once, I know Someone was listening and responded to me.  With the knowledge that it's not a thing you deserve, not a thing you earn, that it's a gift -- then you can keep speaking, keep asking, keep offering, not so much in the hope of a response but in the awareness of a Listener.

One of the things about Catholicism I particularly like is that our oral tradition is full of extremely dramatic answers to prayer, even to the point of, um, melodramatic ones.  Kooky-sounding ones, even.  Of course none of them are required belief or even required reading -- if it doesn't help you to believe in St. Rita's festering stigmata then fine, just go about your business -- but having all those stories in the back of your mind does, I think, insulate against the notion that the only kinds of "answer" you should hope for, and ask for, are invisible ones. 

 Not that it's small potatoes to have God answer your prayers by, say, increasing your fortitude, or nudging you toward forgiveness, or granting a grace.  

More that, we live in bodies, in a physical world, among other humans, and it's perfectly all right to hope that answers come to us visibly.  A sight that shocks us into perspective so that our own complaints seem small and we can bear up under them; an spoken message that displays that person's human weakness and awakens pity, the midwife of forgiveness; a token, some object, that passes into our hands, a thing that is in some way exactly a manifestation of the asked-for grace, a thing that we can turn over in our fingers and read the clear message:  I was listening.

Can we go too far in our expectations?  Yes, most of us can, I think, but more by expecting in the wrong way than by expecting too much.  If you fall into the answer-me-or-else trap, then you've got a problem.  I imagine, though, that some of the great mystics (St. Teresa of Avila comes to mind) were granted the gift of a conversational relationship with God -- something more nearly face-to-face -- one where they could "expect" responses to everything they ask.  (If you have read the autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who had a special love for her "older sister" St. Teresa, you know the sort of audacious expectation of familiarity, of intimacy, that I mean.  On one level it's charming and childlike in St. Thérèse, but there's a real edge to it too.)  

I guess you could also go wrong by tending to see a message in everything.  As far as I know, there's no reason not to believe that there's no such thing as a coincidence and everything is connected and woven together in a well-orchestrated Plan.  (Me, I think that probably lots of things are unimportant details, but that it's pritnear impossible from a human perspective to know which ones are truly unimportant.)  But even if there's no such thing as a coincidence, and that means that you're constantly receiving a stream of personal Messages, um, well, then, so is everybody else so don't let it give you a big head, OK?  Or worry you a lot, either.  It's easy to see how certain personality disorders interact with a reasonable belief in the efficacy of prayer to produce serious trouble.  (There's nothing specially destructive about religious belief here. Personality disorders interact with all sorts of reasonable beliefs to produce serious trouble.  Witness the interaction between OCD and standard hygiene recommendations.)

It seems to me that the proper attitude toward "answers," whatever their form is to regard them as gift, pure gift, like all graces.  Or maybe not exactly like all graces... because answers to prayer are unusual in that, by definition, one must "do something" to merit them.  That's "merit" only after a certain fashion:  By definition, an answer is the kind of free gift you do not get unless you first ask.

ADDED:  I recently came across this post at Et Tu Jen which is related.  Key quote:

...to be a Christian is not to make God part of your story, but to realize you are part of God's story.

Worth reading the whole post, which is about trying to read "messages" into everyday life.

Asymmetric coverage.

This article in the Star Tribune about "Buddhist Christians" (or was it Christian Buddhists?) is one of many I've noticed in the last fifteen years about Christians co-opting Buddhist-style meditation techniques.  Not ever having tried it myself, and not really knowing much about Buddhist-style meditation, I won't offer any comments about the practice itself --- except to note that Christianity already has a long and diverse history of meditation techniques, and I often wonder how much of these have been explored by Christians who eventually turn to techniques drawn from other faiths.

But the thing that I really noticed about this particular article was what was missing from it, and what begged to be covered.  The article includes numerous references to Christians who are critical of this thing embraced by "Christian Buddhists" (or "Buddhist Christians"), and answers the criticism like this:

What Meadow [a retired religious studies professor] will explain to her critics -- at least the ones who do her the courtesy of letting her respond -- is that there's a distinction between Buddhism as religion and Buddhism as a meditation technique. One is a belief system; she doesn't teach that. The other, the one she focuses on, is a process.

So what I want to know is:  What do Buddhists think of this?  Of Christians, who say they don't believe in Buddhism, taking up meditation technique and calling themselves "Buddhist?"  Not a single Buddhist is quoted in this article, nor is there any information in it about Buddhism as a religion.  Talk about a dropped ball!

Oh, and there's one more thing that I just can't let go by.  We have in this article -- completely unchallenged by the journalist -- a quote from the featured "retired religious studies professor," described as "one of the world's foremost experts on Buddhist Christians," as follows:

"Christianity includes a call to meditate, but it never provides a method of meditating, a step-by-step guide on how to do it," she said.

That is, um, bullshit.   Off the top of my head I can think of two methods of Western Christian meditation that have provided a step-by-step guide, for, oh, at least a few hundred years.  Lectio Divina anyone?   That dates to 220 AD.   Rosary?  Since the 1200's at the latest, and it's had a "step by step" form since 1569.  There are of course upstarts like the Divine Mercy Chaplet, very timely since the feast is tomorrow, born in Poland in the early part of this century.  And then there's Eastern Christianity.  Hello?  Icons? 

Journalists should beware of the word "never," and not let it slip by unchallenged.