- Jamie wrote the other day, thinking of her terminally ill brother-in-law who passed away shortly thereafter:
It is shocking to me that someone I was joking around with in January will not see the end of March. It is a bracing reality: when I find myself wringing my hands about -- I don't know, the kids' failure to put their laundry away or my students' failure to prepare for an exam, I have to pull myself up short. Is my husband expected to die in the next few days? Time to shut my mouth and offer up my little (teeny, minuscule, absurdly small) sufferings for their family.
I've been carrying The Imitation of Christ around in my bag for Lent. Yesterday I came upon a passage that made me think again about those small crosses -- the ones that we still can choose to bear or not to bear, if we are comfortable, healthy and generally at peace.
They don't seem like much, compared to what some have, but they are what we have.
From Chapter 20 of Book 3, some words about "trivial" sufferings and "slight" temptations.
Lord, I will acknowledge my sin before you and confess my instability. Often some trivial thing depresses me, leaving me dull and slow to do good works. I resolve to stand firm; but at the slightest temptation, I am set back.
Sometimes from a mere trifle a grievous temptation arises; and just when I feel sure and think I have the upper hand, suddenly I am almost overcome by the least thing.
...But this is what disturbs me ... that I am so prone to fall and so weak in resisting my passions... And [even when] I do not give in to them altogether, yet their assaults are troublesome to me, so that I am wearied by the daily conflict.
Thomas á Kempis adds to this prayer an acknowledgement that the conflict helps us see our infirmities more clearly, and a prayer for God's strength in resisting these "trifles."
Note : He does not say, "God, forgive me because I ought to be able to resist them all by myself."
The chapter goes on to speak of what sounds like much less trifling, much more terrible sufferings:
...And what kind of life this is, where troubles and miseries are never wanting and everywhere there lurk snares and enemies! For as soon as one temptation or trouble goes away, another comes; and while the first struggle is still on, many others suddenly rise up unexpectedly.
How, then, can this life be loved, which is so full of bitterness and subject to so many trials? How can it even be called life, since it brings forth so many deaths and spiritual plagues? Yet it is loved and many seek all their pleasure in it...
...A little pleasure dominates the minds of the worldly.
But especially today, it isn't hard to figure out why a little pleasure dominates our minds... Few of us suffer constant "miseries" anymore. We can go weeks, months, years, with hardly a serious suffering to glance at.
(Although they can rise up and throttle us sometimes, seemingly out of the blue.)
Maybe what we need are smaller words for smaller sufferings. Then the passage might go something like this:
Often some petty thing depresses me, leaving me dull and slow to do all the things I should be doing.
Sometimes I get an awfully strong craving to have something that isn't even very good... and just when I think I have successfully put the craving out of my mind, I totally lose it. And even when I DO resist, it makes me crabby because it's so hard.
And you know what? It never stops. There is always some little thing that annoys me or irritates me, no matter where I am, and I am always ready to snap at some person, or lash out in anger, or even hurt myself by giving in to something I said I wouldn't do.
That is, as the book says, life.
We moderns, I think, see no contradiction or surprise in that such troubles coexist with pleasures. It seems to make no sense to Thomas á Kempis, but it makes sense to us -- the reason we run after pleasures is in part to deaden us against the annoying, no-fun parts. Heck, the pleasures wouldn't even be so bad, except that we end up using them in that way -- as an escape from people and things that bug us, irritate us, get on our nerves, give us sinking feelings in the pits of our stomachs, or make us flush with humiliation.
Skipping back to chapter 12 of the same book:
DISCIPLE: O my Lord, God, I can see that patience is very necessary for me, for this life is full of many disturbing things. No matter how I may plan my life so as to have peace, life cannot be without struggle and sorrow.
CHRIST: ...This is true. It is not My will that you look for peace without temptations or difficulties; on the contrary, you must believe that you have found peace when you have been tried by... adversity...Try to bear the evils of this life patiently...
...Do you think that worldly persons suffer little or nothing? You will find this is not so, even among the most privileged.
I think Thomas has let his hand show a bit: he is writing to an audience who thinks they suffer a LOT. This is kind of a giveaway that maybe I do not have the right disposition to be reading this book.
Can't disagree with it, though. Here is a report from the too-worldly, aware-of-my-vast-privilege point of view: Yeah, I still complain a lot. Isn't that what I started out writing about? That we still get led astray by things that bug us even when we really have nothing terrible going on?
But perhaps you will say that others have many pleasures and follow their own will so much that they count their adversities as small.
There is a faint, troubling implication here: beware if you count your adversities as small. It could be because you find so much comfort in God. But it could also be because you "follow your own will so much."
The more you withdraw from creature comforts, the sweeter and more lasting will be the comfort you find in Me. But in the beginning you will not attain to these without struggle and labor; for your old habits will stand in the way, but better ones will overcome them...
Our ancient enemy, the devil, will tempt you and hinder you, if he can, but devout prayer will drive him away; and by useful employment, his way will be blocked and he will not dare to come near you.
I am pretty sure I have heard this prescription -- which amounts to "Ora et labora" -- before.
Most of the advice in The Imitation, it seems, amounts to "Learn patience." I wonder if this is, really, all that it takes -- at least, in the imitation of Christ. And it makes me wonder: If we are so blind to our little crosses that it doesn't seem worth the trouble to carry them, how privileged can we really be?
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