bearing blog

Coming up on Lent.

One weekend left, and in a few days it'll be Ash Wednesday.  

All this spring I've been coming back again and again to this passage from The Imitation of Christ (Book 2, Chapter 12, "On the Royal Road of the Cross").   

What I like about it is that it answers a question I have often had:  But my life is actually pretty good; so many people are suffering so much more than I am; what does it mean to carry my cross when things are going so well for me?

 There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way of the holy cross and daily mortification. Go where you will, seek what you will, you will not find a higher way, nor a less exalted but safer way, than the way of the holy cross.

Arrange and order everything to suit your will and judgment, and still you will find that some suffering must always be borne, willingly or unwillingly, and thus you will always find the cross.

• Either you will experience bodily pain
• or you will undergo tribulation of spirit in your soul.
• At times you will be forsaken by God,
• at times troubled by those about you
• and, what is worse, you will often grow weary of yourself.

You cannot escape, you cannot be relieved by any remedy or comfort but must bear with it as long as God wills.

I think this passage kind of functions very similarly to the famous passage from First Corinthians about love ("Love is patient, love is kind...") which we heard in the readings last Sunday.  It's a description that can be thought of as a definition.

Just as "Love is patient, love is kind" can be thought of as implying a definition of love ("Love is that which is patient, love is that which is kind, etc.") or as setting the boundaries of love ("What isn't patient, can't be loving.  What isn't kind, can't be loving, etc.") --- so this can be a sort of description of the cross.

Whatever suffering must be borne is the cross.

Even if it's very small.

The small crosses can be the hardest to bear correctly, because we can brush them off so easily without thinking... and when we do, they -- since they must be borne -- land on someone else.  

Because I was grumbling about some little inconvenience, I've snapped at some poor cashier and ruined her day.   Because I'd failed to plan ahead, I've dragged cranky, tired, hungry preschoolers to the grocery store.  Because I was feeling too tired to cheerfully do the dishes, I've sneaked upstairs and left them for my spouse.

Somebody had to bear a cross here, and in each case it wasn't me.

If we imagine that we don't have any "real" crosses, and wonder why we've been so lucky as to do without them -- disabilities, bereavements, chronic pains -- we can fail to take up the cross we've been sent.

Does your body feel bad or painful in any way, or are you sick or injured?  If you can't make the suffering go away entirely, that can be the cross -- whether you know why you're sick, or whether you don't.

Is there any kind of "tribulation of spirit in your soul" -- any sort of interior turbulence, depression, grouchiness, fear, or any other discomfort, whether from an identifiable cause or whether it seems to come from nowhere?  If you can't quite shake it even after reasonable effort -- trying to gain perspective, count your blessings, cheer yourself up, take your meds -- that can be the cross.

Do you lack spiritual consolation?  Does your prayer seem to do nothing?  Does your meditation yield no fruits?  That, too, can be the cross.

Do your kids drive you crazy?  Do your parents bug you?  Does your spouse annoy you?  Is your co-worker chewing his gum too loudly in the next cubicle?  Is anybody anywhere getting on your nerves?   That, too, can be the cross.

Finally, don't you get on your own nerves sometimes?  Don't you ever say to yourself, "Self, you're an idiot?"

 (This is, in my opinion, the single wisest point in the whole Imitation.  Go read No Exit again:  Sartre didn't get it completely right.  It should have been "Hell is other people.  And yourself too.") 

If it must be borne by somebody, it's the Cross.

The cross, therefore, 

• is always ready; 
• it awaits you everywhere. 
• No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it, for wherever you go you take yourself with you and shall always find yourself. 
• Turn where you will–above, below, without, or within–you will find a cross in everything, 
• and everywhere you must have patience 

if you would have peace within and merit an eternal crown.

It's probably a good idea to look out for these things.

If you carry the cross willingly, it will carry and lead you to the desired goal where indeed there shall be no more suffering, but here there shall be. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it. If you cast away one cross, you will find another and perhaps a heavier one. 

It's also possible to choose voluntary crosses, which is part of the point of Lent:  to practice, so that we may better carry the involuntary ones.  

Something to think about as we plan for the next few weeks.

 

Tagged: Ephesians 5. (Part II - Okay, but like I said, what does "wives, submit to your husbands" mean?)

So Darwin tagged me and asked that question about Ephesians 5, and I went and wrote a post of several paragraphs of, er, scriptural analysis.  Which everyone knows is the easy part.

Now I'm sitting down to try to answer the hard part.

Even though I liked my fellow taggee Dorian's ranty post about it , and I wish to validate her with a "Yeah!  What she said!",  I repeat:  "Wives, submit" isn't about paid work or childcare.   Sure, in a given marriage, paid work may be a big issue.  So can sex, money, whether to have another child....  Ephesians 5 gives us the framework for discussing the issues, not the issue itself.

Thinking that it's about assigning the woman the stay-at-home job (an error peculiar to our age) can even lead us in opposition to Ephesians 5.  In this model we sometimes think of the husband ruling in his providerly way over the external-world sphere, while the wife rules in her nurturely way over the domestic sphere.  But guess what?  The wife doesn't get to rule over the domestic sphere anyway.  Just as the church is subject to Christ, so must women be subject to their husbands in everything.  Everything!

And anyway, does the domestic sphere even count as subordinate to the external-world sphere?  Only in the eyes of the world.  

+ + +

Darwin writes:

It makes sense and seems true to me, and yet I can't think of specific rules as to what "headship" means in our household, much less formulate some sort of universally applicable principle which must apply in all circumstances.

I think it's hard because the only universally applicable principle is apparently "in everything," which either means nothing or it has to be applied uniquely and individually to almost every point of contact between the spouses.  So, no un

I think it's hard because it's exquisitely intimate.  When I try to write about specific ways I "submit" in marriage, I feel unacceptably laid-bare -- I am not writing about sex, but it feels as if I am trying to write about something equally interior and private.  I don't have the right to explain how it is between us.  

And I think it's hard because we're both trying to think of things that we should do.  I think that submitting is more about things that we should not do.

So I come back to this idea that it must mean something  that sets us apart from the "pagans" around us, from those who haven't internalized the Christian message.  Does he order Christian wives to submit because it's natural and right to submit.... or does he have to order us to submit because it does not come natural to us?  Does he perhaps have to tell us to submit because to do so is not natural, but supernatural?

It's within the domestic sphere that this matters, when wife and husband are together, and so perhaps he's warning us against becoming the petty ruler of the home, treating our husband as if he were an intruder or worse, one of our children.  Haven't we known women to say things like this?

It's like I have three children instead of two.

or

I can't get it together on the weekends when he's home, he messes up all my routines.  I don't know how I'll stand it when he retires.

Yeah, we want to be avoiding an attitude like that.

+ + + 

So what is "not submitting" like?

One way would be to undermine his authority with the children:  denigrating him in any way in front of them, or colluding with them against him.

Another would be to undermine his standing outside the family:  denigrating him to your friends.  I know.  Many of us do this.  It's a cliche of the culture that women complain about their husbands.   Especially in a group, it's extremely difficult to avoid joining in on the husband-bashing.  Maybe there exists some fine line between husband-bashing and confiding your troubles to a trusted and close friend.   Maybe it depends whether you're trying to find an answer, or whether you're just complaining.  I'm not exactly sure about that.  But it's definitely something to be cautious with.

Yet another would be, ironically, to demand he take a more assertive role in something.  Erm, to put it another way, don't top from the bottom.  "I want you to assert your spiritual headship of this household more forcefully!"  Doesn't really work.  

I once tried to make Mark be more "involved" in the homeschooling decisions.   It didn't go well.  I finally had to accept that I have been blessed with a husband with a very hands-off managerial style, who trusts me to make wise decisions in this area.  Homeschooling is delegated very firmly to me, and in this case, submitting means I don't get to pass the buck to him on day-to-day operations.  

And then there's decision-making.  Often we discuss submission in terms of the hypothetical Big Decision That You Discuss And Discuss And Can't Come To An Agreement On.   Someone has to give, the theory goes, or the marriage can't survive; and if marriage is to survive, the "who's gonna give" must be pre-decided.  Might as well be the guy, for reasons explained in Eph 5.

But how often does this happen in a marriage?  Three or four times, maybe?  A dozen, if one or both of you is exceptionally dramatic?  But aren't there daily or weekly tiny decisions where the wife gets to decide if she's going to do things the way her husband has asked her to or if she's going to do it her own way?   Don't we all do little things that drive each other crazy?  Can we not actually try to stop doing that small thing that we know bugs him so much?    Would it be so hard to try?  

But how about when it's the other way around, when there's something we really think he ought to do that he's not doing?  Demanding that he change is apparently right out.  Is there then nothing we can do?  

On the other hand... "men ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies..."  We can, I think, ask to be loved and provided for in the way we wish to be loved and provided for.  

I remember a disagreement Mark and I had in the past year, one of those situations where I was absolutely, positively sure I was right and he was wrong, and looking back on it I can see how I tried to put my foot down about it and how uncomfortable and awful and wrong and upsetting that felt.  How much better it would have been had I simply ... asked for what I needed, and trusted that he would want to find a solution that would work for both of us.  

(Even without my asking, he did find a solution.  So.)

So what have I come up with?

1. Don't be bossy about how to interact with the house or the kids.
2. Take all his suggestions seriously.
3. Don't undermine his authority with the children.
4. Don't undermine his standing outside the family.
5. Try not to do that thing that drives him nuts.
6. Ask for what we think we need.

Yeah, that's a start.

Tagged: Ephesians 5. (part 1 - general considerations)

Darwin tagged me yesterday morning, along with several other married women bloggers, in a post asking opinions about Ephesians 5.  For context, read his whole post  -- but the main question is, what are we to think of "Wives, be submissive to your husbands?"

Here are a few points, in no particular order.

No, I don't think this represents a "high" or symbolic or unearthly ideal.  This is a piece of pragmatic advice to husbands and wives living out their relationships in the world.  As evidence I point to the context of Ephesians 4-6:  "Be humble and gentle and patient," "give up living as pagans do," "if you are angry, do not... let sunset find you nursing your anger," "have done with spite and bad temper, with rage, insults and slander," "no coarse, stupid, or flippant talk," no "fornication and indecency of any kind..."  

No, all these injunctions are about Christian conduct in a pagan world, the same in which we largely find ourselves today.  So it is with "Wives, be subject to your husbands."  He is calling Christians to live differently from the wider culture around them.  If it didn't manifest itself in distinctive behavior of some kind, it would not be the uniquely Christian life.

Any relevance to working inside or outside the home, acquiring or eschewing advanced education, or taking responsibility for child care is a red herring.  These (yes, even the child care, when we speak of how its duties are to be divided) are economic activities.  We live today in a vastly different economic system from the one in first-century Ephesus.  The meaning of "men's" versus "women's" work, the boundaries of "the home" with respect to the economy, the nature of education available to people of each gender -- totally foreign system.  If
I may go so far as to interpret the text, it is a practical instruction in Christian conduct, but it is not really speaking of economic activity -- it is giving us no instruction in how we ought best to support our families.  Again, it's telling us how to distinguish ourselves from the pagans:   avoid the sinful excesses that are common among the pagans, and have Christian relationships -- that is, relationships that are marked with the special features unique to Christians.  Husband-wife, parent-child, and servant-master relationships are to be palpably different in Christian households than in pagan ones.

I want to stress this because I see a fair amount of confusion between these two concepts.  Yes, there's probably a big overlap between "people who take this passage seriously" and "people who believe wives, or at least mothers, should minimize work outside the home."  Yes, there's an undeniable tendency to connect the two emotionally, as for many of us the decision to change our lives in response to Ephesians 5 and the decision to abandon a career or an education in the service of our marriage are intertwined in time and in intention.  But they aren't the same argument.   No, Ephesians 5 has little if anything to say about who should bring economic value into the home from outside and who should generate economic value from within it.

That said, I agree with Darwin that casting the wife in the "primary-provider" role probably creates some tensions because it runs against some of the nature of husband-hood and wife-hood, of fatherhood and motherhood.  A stereotypical example of this might be the perennial complaint that working women have to pull a "second shift" of child care when they get home, a workload that seems never to fall on Dad in quite the same way.   But if they exist, these tensions arise because the family's choices (however prudent and correct) run up against the natures of fatherhood, motherhood, and childhood, not because they demonstrate lack of submission on the part of the wife. 

Besides, casting anybody, husband OR wife, as the primary provider creates tensions when either spouse is still very invested in the equality/sameness model of marriage rather than the reciprocity/complementarity model, or when either spouse is still very invested in a vision of one's economic work or education as being largely about self-fulfillment and not about serving the best interests of the family.   

The triple-dipole structure of the chapter is obvious and important.  The three paired injunctions must be taken in the context of each other.  Wives, be subject to your husbands; husbands, love your wives.  Children, obey your parents; fathers, do not goad your children into resentment.  Slaves, obey your masters; masters, do not threaten your slaves.   Is it irksome to see "wives" set in parallel with "children" and "slaves?" Sure.  Doesn't mean we can ignore it.  I think the reason these are set parallel to each other is that these are the three hierarchical relationship-pairings within a household.  Paul is calling for Christian households to be radically different from their pagan neighbors, transformed from within because of their vision of the purpose of human life -- not least because of an equality they know they possess in the eternal sense.

+ + +

The specifics of what "Wives, be subject to your husbands" means is worthy of another post, which I'll get to later.  UPDATE.  Here is the second post.

On making do with the Liturgy of the Hours -- interruptibly.

Commenter MelanieB wrote a great comment on the post waaaay back here, the one with St. Francis de Sales's advice on praying a devotion appropriate to one's state in life.  Totally worth reposting, especially since you might miss it if I don't.

I had written that although the Liturgy of the Hours (LOTH) appeals to me tremendously, I have a hard time fitting it into my day, and was beginning to resign myself to the idea that I should try something different.  Melanie says, don't give up:

I agree that you shouldn't force yourself to stick with a devotion that simply isn't working. However, I have had some success with modifying my ideas of how LOTH should work s that it meshes better with my life as mom of little ones. So you may find that LOTH just doesn't work for you; but perhaps you might also have some success by tweaking the way you approach it.

I have found that I can mostly fit LOTH into my chaotic life but I have had to learn to be very flexible and interruptible and loosen my expectations. I did already have the habit of saying morning and evening prayer before I was married, so I did have a leg up in that regard, I suppose. I also started praying LOTH by being loose in my expectations. I was in grad school at the time and kept very irregular hours and very short in discipline. I said morning prayer whenever I first got up, no matter how tired I was and if I fell asleep a dozen times as I tried to pray, well that's just how it went. And evening prayer I would say last thing before going to bed, also falling asleep many nights multiple times before I got through it all. For me developing the habit of daily prayer was more important than the quality of the prayer on any given day. So yes my concentration wsn't what I'd like it to be; but I think one can pray the hours with reduced concentration and there is still much good that comes from just saying the words even if it feels very empty. But like I said, I was single, so I did push myself to finish each hour.

These days those habits do stand me in good stead. Still, some mornings I only get through part of one psalm before I'm interrupted. And I've learned to count that as my morning prayer time and just pick up on the next hour and do the best I can. It's been very hard to overcome my perfectionist tendencies which try to insist that it doesn't "count" if I don't say the whole hour's psalmody and reading and intentions and prayers; but I've definitely made progress in that regard in the past couple of years.

Like Kate suggested, I print out some of my favorite hymns and post them on the cabinets and sing as I cook breakfast and wash the dishes. They are my backup plan. On mornings when LOTH is interrupted or disappears completely, I try to at least start with a mumbled morning offering, try to say the Invitatory Psalm (95), which I've memorized, and then sing a few hymns as I go about my morning, making breakfast and doing dishes.

At noon I have my cell phone set to ring and we all pray the Angelus (the 2 yr old and 4 year old know most of the prayers and often join in; but I don't require it of them.) I just pray regardless of what I'm doing, I don't necessarily stop momming changing a diaper, dishing out lunch, moderating an argument, etc.

If I can, during nap/afternoon quiet time I pray either the short midday or midafternoon prayer or the longer Office of Readings.

Then evening prayer usually doesn't happen these days till after the kids are in bed, which may be 8 or 9pm. I'm often nodding off or very distracted; but I do my best to get through. If I'm really tired, I just skip evening prayer and say the much shorter night prayer and if I'm super tired I do a shortened version of night prayer that omits the psalm and just says the responsory and canticle and closing prayer.

I've also had success in getting the kids involved in praying LOTH with me instead of fighting to keep them away, make them be quiet. I allow myself to be distracted and figure God will give me quiet prayer times when I need it and at other times praying in the midst of interruptions and the circus is undoubtedly good for me too.

I have a big pile of holy cards in my prayer book and hand them to the toddlers to look at as I pray. Sometimes that becomes my prayer as I use the cards for an improvised litany of the saints: that's St Patrick. St Patrick, pray for us...

The girls have both learned how to repeat antiphons and like praying with me. Another way to get them involved was to listen to the LOTH at divineoffice.org I was totally able to feed the baby and listen to that while I got stuff done. Not optimal to multi-task while praying; but better than not praying, no?

When I've got a new baby I try to use the nursing sessions as my monastery bell and say at least a part of the nearest hour whenever I sit down to nurse. Having a laptop nearby allows me to access universalis. Or with the latest baby I did the readings on my ipod touch. Very handy technology which lets you scroll with one finger and works until baby is old enough to be fascinated with the shiny thing in mama's hand.

Sorry if this is too long and not helpful. [(note  from Erin -- you've got to be kidding!]) But I think I might have given up early on if I hadn't had some cheerleaders telling me it could still work for me if I reduced my expectations of what LOTH requires.

It's kind of the same thing I've learned about attending Mass. I may be very distracted by keeping the baby and toddlers from screaming and fighting and I may not hear the readings and miss the homily and even have to leave to change a diaper and miss the consecration; but there is a grace at simply being present as much as I am able and allowing God to be present even in the midst of the distractions and interruptions. I've become convinced that liturgy doesn't require our full attention and concentration to be a source of grace for us-- though it is good for us to try to give it as much as possible.

(All emphasis mine)  

What do you think, readers?  Should MelanieB expand this blog comment into a whole SERIES of how-to-pray-LOTH-with-toddlers on her own blog?  Is this not absolutely chock full of wonderful advice and don't you want to read more?

So, Melanie... thank you for the reminder.   The "all or nothing" perfectionism is bad for most people, but especially poisonous for mothers of littles... most of our "all" is spoken for already.

And look... more reinforcement of my thesis that strengthening habits is the foundational skill for all kinds of self-reform...

And of having a backup plan... love the idea of hymns as backup plan for prayer!  

In the meantime, remind the young single Catholic woman you might know that there's no better time than the present to learn to pray the LOTH... 

Running off the rails.

Jen at Conversion Diary spent a week in retreat at a monastery.  (Check out the photos at this post -- wah, I want to have lattes on retreat too!)  Here she posts "6 things I learned from living on a monastery prayer schedule."  In part

4. It makes you surrender your life to God at the micro level

I always try to better surrender my life to God, but I often think of it at the macro level alone: e.g. I'll work on trusting him with what I'll be doing 10 years from now, my children's vocations, my writing projects, etc. But living according to a rule of prayer involves even deeper surrender. There have been quite a few times since I've been here that I was really into whatever I was doing, and the last thing I wanted to do was set it aside and go back to the church to pray. To let go of my activities requires an act of trust: trust that God will give me the grace to pick up where I left off if whatever I was doing was important in his eyes, that this "interruption" won't irreparably derail whatever I was doing, etc. I find myself taking these little leaps of trust at almost every prayer time, whereas back at home I simply push back my prayer or meal times to accommodate whatever it was I was doing -- no trust necessary.

This was something I needed to read.

I am not, really, a time-waster (most days).  I don't, for example, think that I spend "too much time on the Internet."  I enjoy blogging and reading blogs and other interesting things, and I spend some time on it most days, and I don't think the total time is  excessive.  It's perfectly ordinary to have a hobby, and to use leisure time to do something that's fun (or to multi-task, as I am doing now as I blog on my netbook while nursing a baby to sleep in a quiet bedroom).

But I don't always like the focus I have on it.  It's hard for me to tear myself away quickly to attend to my children or to begin some task I ought to do.   And it's a distraction.

It's a self-indulgence.

I keep hinting about wanting to use what I've learned to defeat gluttony, to combat my next most besetting vice, which is letting this leisure-time activity of mine (and it's really not just internet use -- reading in general is part of it too) consume my attention.  It's possible that part of the problem is overconsumption, devoting too much time to it, and I guess I haven't exhausted the possibilities of self-limitation of total hours.  But honestly, I don't think it is "total time" that is the trouble.  It's the totality with which I get absorbed, even in taking a very short break to check e-mail or to dash off a quick blog post.  It's the reluctance to be interrupted.  I think Jen may have put her finger on it a bit in her post. 

Part of my vocation as mother demands that I make myself available to be interrupted when my children need something from me.  I am terrible at this.  Yes, I also need to train my children not to interrupt me for trivial matters, but you know, I want to be a mom who says "Sure, I'll read you a story" or "Yes, I'll help you settle that argument" or "Okay, I'll feed you breakfast."  I don't want the first thing I say to my kids in the morning to be "Aaaargh!  What are you doing up already?  It's not even seven o'clock yet!"  Even if I'm not done with my blog post.

I am struggling with how to put the pieces together for a strategy to change myself.  If I can do what I've already done, what can't I do?  But I still am not sure how to go about it.  I feel like I need a plan.

Bland and cautious: Two posts that say something I meant to say.

First, from Darwin, a few weeks ago.

[T]here are a good many people who know me in real life who read the blog. More than that, after writing a blog for four-and-a-half years, you get to think of a number of your long-time readers and commenters are friends. The blog becomes like a corner coffee house or bar where the same characters assemble regularly -- with the occasional stranger dropping in as well -- and discuss a range of topics, with everyone knowing the basic terrain of who everyone else is and where everyone is coming from.

The way in which a blog can serve as a combination magazine and coffee shop is, to me, one of the most appealing elements of the medium. It's more personable than simply sending one's words out into the void, knowing that someone out there is reading them but seldom sure of what others think about them. 

At the same time, however, this community element to blog writing makes one particularly aware of the difficulties of writing within a community. As the number of people I know (whether locally or online) who are blog readers increases, I increasingly find myself thinking, "If I write about that, so-and-so might be offended."

Next, from Betty Duffy, and indirectly Pentimento, more recently.

On one of the shelves in the bookstore, I picked up a book for grown-ups that looked interesting. I read the back cover, absorbed the synopsis, then looked for an author bio. “Well what do you know,” I thought, “It’s that angry man on the internet,” and re-shelved the book. I’d recently happened upon the author’s blog, on which he peeled apart the writings of some bad Catholic with whom he took issue.

The author bugged me, not because of his lack of charity. Mean people are a curiosity. He bugged me because his self-appointed Catholic gate-keeping functioned as a sort of literary terrorism, scaring anyone who writes with a “Catholic” next to his or her name out of writing anything interesting.

As Pentimento suggests in a recent comment here:

“If your Catholicism is an openly-stated aspect of your writing and your consciousness, you may find that some of your equally open and self-conscious co-religionists are standing by waiting to judge the way you express your faith and tally how well you live up to it…. I was surprised a year or so ago to receive deeply hurtful criticisms in my comboxes from some who thought my writing was inappropriate, and from others who called my faith into question and even slandered me in the comboxes of a friend. My best friend in real life… took me to task after that because she thought my writing had become bland and cautious.”

Who wouldn’t write cautiously when our writing about our personal experiences as a member of this Catholic Community faces such vicious scrutiny? 

...Here then, is one Catholic blogger who will say without shame, I write this blog only because I enjoy doing it. It is not my apostolate. I might lead you astray. I might cuss. 

I've been a little stilted lately. Like Darwin, I don't conceal my identity terribly hard on my blog. I'm not trying to shield it from friends and family. But I recognize the signs of hesitation sometimes when I write about politics, morality, sometimes even the petty arenas of judgmentalism that arise from parenting style, schooling style, liturgical preferences. No wonder I take refuge in posting so many recipes.

I appreciate posts like this by Darwin and Betty, whose writing I have admired for its candidness. It's nice to be reminded that others are dealing with the same kind of internal censor. And I am beginning to appreciate the value of the blog as a learning environment for... what -- sensitivity maybe? There is a balance to be learned:  a balance between honesty and truth, and charity to the real people who might see themselves (rightly or wrongly) between the lines.

What is the good and true purpose of this blog? It is not my apostolate, either (though see Betty's followup to her post quoted above). I don't write in an attempt to entertain others -- not much anyway -- nor to have a soapbox -- okay, I do my share of venting, I admit it. Even though I pad it with a lot of fluff and kid-pictures and recipes and "funny things that happened to me" bits, things that would be better suited to Facebook if I was the sort of person to have 293 "friends," there is a "main purpose" belied by the actual word-count I spend on various side purposes.

Once during Christmas vacation midway through graduate school, I sat down with a pencil and a new legal pad and I wrote the date at the top and a title, "On the isotropic and unidirectional compactions of compressible packed spheres" or something like that, and I began at the very beginning and I wrote for hours and went straight through, as if I was explaining to someone with absolutely no background, everything I knew, guessed, and was trying to demonstrate about my thesis topic.  I made few corrections and I drew a lot of pictures along the way.  I filled the legal pad over the course of a few days.  With surprisingly few changes, that legal pad became a large chunk of the explication my doctoral thesis, and I still consider it one of the most viscerally satisfying pieces of writing I ever did.

The reason I want to blog is the same reason I have always used that kind of derivation, and also the reason I have always journaled, and also the reason I have always savored (when I can get them) long conversations over a bottle of something or other: figuring something out, breaking sloppy reality down to its elements and reconstructing it into a model that I can wrap my mind around and say "This much I understand."

Lately I think I have been overwhelmed by the thought of who might be reading, and have lost some of the courage I need to lay out what's on my mind.

Well then.  PASS THE BOTTLE.

Thinking about Lenten fasting?

A nice attitude check is available courtesy of the Holy Father, whose Lenten message is specifically about that practice.  Check out this paragraph:

In our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning, and has taken on, in a culture characterized by the search for material well-being, a therapeutic value for the care of one’s body. Fasting certainly bring benefits to physical well-being, but for believers, it is, in the first place, a "therapy" to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God. In the Apostolic Constitution Pænitemini of 1966, the Servant of God Paul VI saw the need to present fasting within the call of every Christian to "no longer live for himself, but for Him who loves him and gave himself for him … he will also have to live for his brethren" (cf. Ch. I). Lent could be a propitious time to present again the norms contained in the Apostolic Constitution, so that the authentic and perennial significance of this long held practice may be rediscovered, and thus assist us to mortify our egoism and open our heart to love of God and neighbor, the first and greatest Commandment of the new Law and compendium of the entire Gospel (cf. Mt 22, 34-40).

I was telling a friend after Mass that I gave up giving up food items for Lenten discipline a long time ago, because what with the history of eating disorders and all, it seriously messed with my head.   The guilt associated with the binge/purge cycle, and the guilt associated with breaking my Lenten promises, got all mixed up with each other.  On fast days I could think of nothing but eating, and would feel angry and resentful all day.

   I have some hope that those are all behind me now, but I'm still cautious about food-related penance.  I have chosen a non-food-related Lenten discipline to keep for forty days, and hope to look for opportunities to give up food items in the moment, here and there, a little bit each day.  Maybe next year I will not be so nervous about it.

I'm kind of looking forward to Wednesday.  I guess it's not till then that I'll learn whether I've been freed, not just from my day in, day out Ordinary Time disordered attachment to food, but from all the other heavy obstacles that made fast days intolerable in the past.  I was so fearful and weak, I always broke the fast in the end, one way or another.  This year I have hope.

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?

Speak, show, argue, listen, rebut, correct, pray.

Doctrinal Note On Some Aspects of Evangelization, a clarification on the faithful's responsibility to evangelize, produced by the CDF.  (link is a pdf file of 14 pages).  It's an argument that positive evangelization is still necessary, as well as a caution against attempts to put dishonesty and coercion at the service of the Gospel.

This is the quote that I noticed most, from the introductory paragraphs (page 3 of the pdf):

Often it is maintained that any attempt to convince others on religious matters is a limitation of their freedom.  From this perspective, it would only be legitimate to present one's own ideas and to invite people to act according to their consciences, without  aiming at their conversion to Christ and to the Catholic faith.

The implication is, of course, that other things are also legitimate, and that these are not enough.  And that's kind of shocking.   It's hard enough to "present one's own ideas" sometimes, that is, to freely speak about what one believes, because it's frowned upon in the workplace, and in certain company religion and philosophy is a tasteless unmentionable.  And if you've been through a conversion/reversion/reawakening so that in your life there's a before and an after, it can be extremely awkward in the presence of people from your before even to acknowledge your change.  (This last isn't limited to religion of course -- ask dieters, vegetarians, recovering addicts -- you name it).

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that "presenting my own ideas" is about as far as I feel comfortable with, most of the time.  Hey, I thought that was "attempting to convince!"

So if we're to "attempt to convince," and if "presenting your own ideas" and "inviting people to act according to their consciences" isn't enough, what's implied?

"Presenting your own ideas" is only the first part of "attempting to convince."  There are four parts.  The second is to give evidence for those ideas -- that is, to lay out a set of observations, events, or facts, that the other agrees happened, or are, or can see; a set of observations, events, or facts that in your view support your thesis.   It almost goes without saying that we also have to be evidence of Christ.  The third is to show the connections between the agreed-upon area and the thesis you wish to promote:  in ohter words, to argue in the classic sense.  The fourth is to rebut, that is, to answer the other's objections.  This last bit is uncomfortable because, no matter how you finesse it, it means having to say "You are wrong."

Speak, show, argue, rebut:  why, that's a debate!  Or, because rebuttal implies listening to and endeavoring to understand the other's arguments, call it  a "dialogue" in the classical sense, not the mooshy modern sense in which we all are supposed to listen and understand and validate and never, you know, say anything.

How about "invite people to act according to their consciences?"  A moment's thought shows that there's something wrong with that too.  Shall we invite people to act according to a grossly malformed conscience?  No, we can never invite people to do immoral things even if they think they are right.  (Comes to mind the folk a few generations ago who thought race-mixing was immoral and enforced separation was right.)  We can, however, invite people to act according to a  well-formed conscience.  Seems to me that part of our duty is to spot the malformed consciences and attempt to form them, one rhetorical prod at a time.  Once again, this implies having to say "You are wrong."  Or, since we only see a malformed conscience through the moral choices a person makes, "What you are doing is wrong."

(Mind you, Christian belief and well-formed conscience are not universally correlated.  There are lots of faithful Christians with screwed-up consciences, i.e., who are easily confused by sentimentality or hard cases, and who can't derive clear moral guidance from the the Christian principles they hold; and there are plenty of non-Christians, atheists, etc., who do have well-formed consciences and easily make moral choices that are logical extensions of their beliefs.)

Speak, show, argue, rebut, correct.  Lastly, we are to do all this with the aim of conversion:  and that means to do these things only if we can do them well.  Which means discernment on our part of when to speak and when to be silent.  If we choose to remain silent, let it be because silence in that moment on our part best serves that aim of conversion, not for any other reason.   Such discernment implies that we need the help of the Holy Spirit, both on our lips and in the hearts of our interlocutors.  Ask for it.

Speak, show, argue, listen, rebut, correct, pray.