Two quotes I heard over the weekend have been rattling around in my brain. One is from Father Robert Barron's Catholicism series, from the first episode, I think. I can't quote it exactly, but I found something much like it from his other writings: "Truly to love is to move outside of the black hole of one's egotism". The other is from St. Therese, speaking of her daily life: "I have never heard Him speak, yet I know He is within me. He is there, always guiding and inspiring me; and just when I need them, lights, hitherto unseen, break in. This is not as a rule during my prayers, but in the midst of my daily duties."
Over the past months, I've been slogging through a sullen, arid desert landscape of my own making, confronted at every turn with trials no bigger than grains of sand. Woe, I'm tired -- because I don't get enough sleep because I stay up too late because the kids go to bed late because I feed them late. Poor me, my house is a mess -- because people used to keep servants to clean a house this size, and I can't be organized enough to make the kids help, and we have too much stuff anyway. The kids are undisciplined and destructive -- and whose job, exactly, is it to ensure that they lead a structured and creative life? I'm gaining weight, which is generally what happens when I can't be bothered to exercise and yet can't be bothered to police my eating. I have one of the easiest, happiest, most carefree existences, not just by the standards of my acquaintance, but on an historical scale. The sandstorm of minor frustrations and tiny inconveniences has been scouring away a lot of my easy illusions about who I am, and revealing a core of spiritual and personal ugliness that ought to be galvanizing, if I wasn't too apathetic to do more than contemplate it in disgust. The hole of egotism isn't black, but mirrored, and every mirror reflects every flaw.
And yet this description is too dramatic. I don't wallow in despair all day; I just kinda do my work. "Kinda" is the operative term, as doing one thing and doing it well seems an unachievable luxury, or just too much work anyway. So schoolwork slides, the house grows dingy, the laundry builds, and as I run just to stay in one place, I'm constantly reminded I'm not actually running as hard as I could be because I don't really want to. I get the impression that St. Therese might have applied herself more diligently to her daily duties than I do to mine.
That's not to say that there isn't a certain peace in sweeping the floor. It can have a nice meditative quality, especially when the big kids are all outside and the baby is napping and I have a cup of tea, still hot, on the counter. But it's hard to feel it when one sweeps up the cheerios that are crushed on the floor because one didn't sweep them up immediately the moment the box was overturned, and why do we even buy cheerios anyway when people are just going to dump them out, and the same thing will happen tomorrow morning because cheerios are an easy breakfast and I didn't get up early enough to make everyone eggs or biscuits (for which there's no butter because I didn't go to the store). Some people glow with Christian joy in the midst of trials, but I feel like the soldier in the trench, grubby and disheveled, waiting with gritted teeth for the shelling to end not so that I can patch the trench and fortify my position, but just so I can smoke in peace.
Of course Christian joy comes from abandonment of self, but that's just what I don't want to do. I want to live on my own time: taking twenty minutes more than I should to read the newspaper; rolling over and pulling up the blanket when the alarm goes off; taking an hour of school time to write a post; everything leisurely and unhassled. Oddly enough, life doesn't cooperate with my agenda. Turns out I can't roll through the day with no schedule and expect my children to just pick up some discipline. I can't slide through my spiritual life doing little more than murmuring petitions and little ejaculations, and then expect to be supported by the core I haven't developed. I can't hoard time and energy for myself without becoming cold and unresponsive to the needs of those who need me. And I know this. I know lots of things that I don't put into practice. I know the solutions to my discontents. I just haven't chosen to implement them.
Yesterday I encountered another quote, from Mother Teresa: "Don't give in to discouragement. If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers." Yes, I do trust in my own powers -- if not powers of will to effect change, then powers of perception about my failings. And it grates on me that I can't just bootstrap my way to being a better person -- although how do I know when I won't try? Couldn't I do it if I really wanted to? What does it say about me that I don't want to try? And see what I did here -- everything is, as always, about me. Once again I'm stuck in the mirrored pit of egotism. It would be a joy if I could abandon myself and relinquish, just for a time, the weight of responsibility for fixing all of my problems.
That's not to say that there isn't a certain peace in sweeping the floor. It can have a nice meditative quality, especially when the big kids are all outside and the baby is napping and I have a cup of tea, still hot, on the counter. But it's hard to feel it when one sweeps up the cheerios that are crushed on the floor because one didn't sweep them up immediately the moment the box was overturned, and why do we even buy cheerios anyway when people are just going to dump them out, and the same thing will happen tomorrow morning because cheerios are an easy breakfast and I didn't get up early enough to make everyone eggs or biscuits (for which there's no butter because I didn't go to the store). Some people glow with Christian joy in the midst of trials, but I feel like the soldier in the trench, grubby and disheveled, waiting with gritted teeth for the shelling to end not so that I can patch the trench and fortify my position, but just so I can smoke in peace.
Of course Christian joy comes from abandonment of self, but that's just what I don't want to do. I want to live on my own time: taking twenty minutes more than I should to read the newspaper; rolling over and pulling up the blanket when the alarm goes off; taking an hour of school time to write a post; everything leisurely and unhassled. Oddly enough, life doesn't cooperate with my agenda. Turns out I can't roll through the day with no schedule and expect my children to just pick up some discipline. I can't slide through my spiritual life doing little more than murmuring petitions and little ejaculations, and then expect to be supported by the core I haven't developed. I can't hoard time and energy for myself without becoming cold and unresponsive to the needs of those who need me. And I know this. I know lots of things that I don't put into practice. I know the solutions to my discontents. I just haven't chosen to implement them.
Yesterday I encountered another quote, from Mother Teresa: "Don't give in to discouragement. If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers." Yes, I do trust in my own powers -- if not powers of will to effect change, then powers of perception about my failings. And it grates on me that I can't just bootstrap my way to being a better person -- although how do I know when I won't try? Couldn't I do it if I really wanted to? What does it say about me that I don't want to try? And see what I did here -- everything is, as always, about me. Once again I'm stuck in the mirrored pit of egotism. It would be a joy if I could abandon myself and relinquish, just for a time, the weight of responsibility for fixing all of my problems.
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