The Knitting Theologian

Today’s Gospel is Mark 4:1-20, the parable of the seed that is sown. Today’s Meditation in Magnificat, ”The Fruitfulness of the Seed Sown,” struck close to home for me, and so I wanted to share it here. 

 First, remember a principle of God’s grace: God often withholds from us the grace to avoid a lesser sin because we are in danger of a greater sin. To avoid pride, he sometimes lets us fall into lust, since lust is usually obvious, undisguised, and temporary, while pride is not. So to conquer lust, we should focus less on lust and more on pride. Only when we are truly humble does God give us the grace to conquer lust. 

Second, remember Saint Thomas’ diagnosis of lust, which I think he must have learned from Saint Augustine: “Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.” God is not a substitute for sex, as Freud thought; sex is often a substitute for God. The deepest passion of the soul is meant for God. When the true God comes, the false gods go. To conquer lust, forget about lust and love God.

Third, we must lay the axe to the root by operating on our very thoughts, as Saint Paul advises, “bringing every thought into captivity to Christ.” We need a good brainwashing. Brainwashing is not propaganda; brain-dirtying is propaganda. Our thoughts are wild animals; only Christ can tame them. All we can do, all we need to do, is bring them to him — immediately.

Thought is the rudder of life. As the poet Samuel Smiles says:

Sow a thought, reap an act. 

Sow an act, reap a habit.

Sow a habit, reap a character.

Sow a character, reap a destiny.

 

Peter Kreeft, quoted in Magnificat, volume 9, number 12, January 2008, p. 410. 

From a wonderful blog called "Et Tu":

Daily Decalogue of Pope John XXIII

1. Only for today, I will seek to live the livelong day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.
2. Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behavior; I will not criticize anyone; I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself.
3. Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one.
4. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.
5. Only for today, I will devote ten minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.
6. Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it.
7. Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and it my feelings are hurt, I will make sure no one notices.
8. Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will be on guard against two evils: hastiness and indecision.
9. Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances, that the good Providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in this world.
10. Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for twelve hours I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life.

I haven’t had much time (read: any time) to go blogging around lately, so this post is almost a month old. And I’ve read this before, and appreciated its wisdom. But I wanted to capture it. So it’s here, and I also printed it out so I can put a copy in my prayer space where I’ll see it every day.  One thing I really love about this particular blog is what I learn about this faith I was born with from someone who came to it, eyes open and heart ready. I am grateful to have–finally–embraced the totality of my Catholic faith, and to have discovered just exactly how difficult it is to just live out my faith every day. It makes me laugh ruefully when I remember how I used to feel slightly uncomfortable that my life was so easy, and pray to God to give me something hard to do. Living out my faith was so not what I had in mind. I had no idea.

Because, you know, it’s the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, who had the sort of definite conversion experience that really couldn’t be anything but. He was surrounded by a bright light–so bright it temporarily blinded him. He was thrown to the ground. A voice from heaven spoke to him. In my 20 minutes this morning, one thing I wondered was why God granted that kind of conversion experience to St. Paul. No, I didn’t get an answer. Maybe I’ll ask St. Paul myself someday.

I just finished reading a book called “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong,” by James Loewen, for my Ministry in a Multicultural Context class. This is an eye-opening book that I would recommend to anyone, particularly anyone who found US history to be one of the most boring classes ever. The book challenged me to think about the stories we leave out of US history and why we do so. The class I am taking is challenging me to confront my own biases, and in a way is also calling me, as a student, to conversion of a different sort. Not religious conversion but a social conversion.

But can reading a single book in a weekend trigger a genuine conversion? Was my experience reading the book, in its own way, as significant and attention-getting, for me, as what St. Paul encountered on the road to Damascus?

I hesitate to describe myself, after reading “Lies,” as newly awakened and ready for action. The book opened my eyes, made me aware of my own Eurocentricity and bias, but I feel that the awareness is, as yet, superficial. It’s not a part of me yet. I feel a need to sit with it some more.

Think about it in the context of Triduum, much on my mind these days. I take those days off, and I participate in all the Triduum liturgies. I believe that I need the time on Holy Saturday to sit with the pain and despair of Christ crucified, before I move to the joy of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

I used to be impatient to skip ahead to Easter. I did not like the suffering and sorrow of Good Friday, and I did not want to enter into it meditatively. After all, Jesus rose from the dead. I knew that. Why not just skip to the joy? Well, for me, the answer is that if I take the time to sit with the suffering and sorrow, if I take the time to stay with the disciples during that time when they did not know that Jesus would return, then my experience of the joy of Resurrection is deeper, more joyful, and more nuanced. It stays with me more. 

I recently finished reading “An Infinity of Little Hours,” by Nancy Klein Maguire, the story of five young men who entered a Carthusian monastery as novices in the very early 60s. I picked it up partly because I enjoy hearing other people’s stories–that’s one of the reasons I chose the Spiritual Direction track for my degree in Transforming Spirituality. I also picked it up because deep within me is a great longing for a life of solitude. I love being alone anyway, and the idea of a life of solitude, devoted to prayer, living with God, is very attractive to me.

The book follows these five men from the time they enter the monastery as novices until they leave or take final vows. As it happens, of the four only one takes final vows and remains at the monastery at the time the book was written. But all five men have a significant journey where they confront their relationship with God at a very deep level, and the story of those confrontations is fascinating. 

I recently acquired a new cell phone, which is a Windows Mobile SmartPhone. (I refer to it as a “smarty-pants phone,” a term I picked up from a friend, to demonstrate that, although I am technologically savvy, I retain my sense of humor and am not entirely geeky.)

One reason I decided to switch to such a gadget, as opposed to a regular old cell phone, is so that I can see my calendar anywhere I am and get alerts whenever I need.  I want to do that because I am experimenting with using my time more intentionally. I want to avoid those days where I fritter away my time and can’t figure out, at the end, what I’ve done.  I’m trying to make sure I have adequate time scheduled for prayer, study, and work so that I can properly focus on each of those activities and attempt to keep them balanced. (People who know me well perhaps will be surprised to see that I’m even thinking about sleep, but trust me: I know how little sleep I can get away with on a regular basis.) I’m planning to use calendar reminders to help keep on track.

While I was on retreat in December, I found that I adjusted readily and well to the daily retreat schedule of meals, meditations, prayer sessions, Mass, and free time. I used my time effectively and wondered whether applying such a schedule to my own life back in the world would be helpful. I know of no other way than to try

I’ve built a timetable in an Excel spreadsheet (technology again! I love Excel) that lays out my waking hours, roughly from 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM. I’ve done this before, but what’s different now is I’ve scheduled my time away from work, dedicating slots to prayer, exercise, study, chores, music practice, and so on. I’ve assigned time goals for each of these high-priority activities. I have another spreadsheet from a friend of mine where I can track what I actually do on a day to day basis. That way I can see how I do, which I hope will reveal to me whether my goals are unrealistic

I have always been busy, and enjoyed being that way, but graduate school, at which I want to do well, has forced me to think about how everything fits into my life. Truth is, I don’t have any more time than any other person, and so many things I want to do. I just want to make sure that I spend my days on the things that are most important to me. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

I think other people would think that I pray a lot, if they knew what I do. I spend about an hour in prayer each morning, and an additional hour spread between noon and evening on any workday where I can manage it. Here’s what I do:

• Morning Prayer, from the Liturgy of the Hours
• Review of the daily readings for Mass
• Twenty minutes of mental prayer
• A novena for the seriously ill (this is for a friend)
• The Rosary
• Evening Prayer

Why do I pray so much?

1. To try to stay close to God
2. To help discipline my thoughts
3. To refresh myself from the battles of the world (this is a particularly important aspect of prayer during the day)
4. I just really like it. 

Is this too much prayer? What do other people do?

My spiritual journey has been chronicled at http://stmn00b.spaces.live.com/default.aspx, and now that I’ve figured out how to make links in WordPress, that’s a pointer to it. If you care, you can see what I have been thinking about over the past year or so. The next step is to figure out how to move the posts over. I probably won’t even think about that until the quarter is over.