Growing impatient

I've learned in multiple contexts, and have firmly believed, that two out of three almost always wins out.

There are three primary aspects of our basic personality.  The most important, and the one over which we have the most direct control, consists of our decisions and behaviors.  Another is our feelings, and the final one is what we think and believe.  When my behavior, my beliefs, and my emotions are in sync with one another, life is generally pretty harmonious.  That isn't to say that there aren't circumstances and bumps in the road, but they have a peaceful framework to fall into, and end up being pretty manageable.  Part of the importance of making decisions based on a truth greater than our feelings is that, when there is a conflict, the odd-aspect-out will shift to fit in with the other two.  So if my feelings and my beliefs are in harmony, I will generally act in accord with them.  If my feelings and my beliefs are at odds, whichever one I act in accordance with will ultimately bring the other along for the ride, so to speak.

I've held a conscious belief about myself for a long-assed time now that has been at harmony with the rest of my life.  It turns out that it was previously an unconscious belief that wound its way through my life in frustrating and ultimately hurtful ways.  Overcoming that unconscious belief was an important part of my former program of therapy.  I've since concluded - I think correctly - in the absence of being able to eliminate it, at least owning it consciously has been key to keeping it from driving unhealthy decisions.  My conscious internalization of that original and mostly negative belief about myself has worked with my decisions and my emotions to allow me to live in the way I believe I'm supposed to, to be the person I think I'm called to be.  It has also made it hard for me to know when I'm being a pushover, to my wife's great frustration.

But it turns out that this belief about myself is very likely wrong.  Useful, but wrong.

So I'm now trying to live out the same kind of healthy decisions that I've been making for years based on this wrong premise, only now to do so in harmony with a new understanding of the truth about myself.  But I don't fully believe it yet.  I guess I've never learned how to cut myself some slack.  And my feelings will just not line up with a belief that I don't fully embrace just because I'm making the right decisions about it all.

Modern gnosticism

"The core of the gnostic impulse is the belief that we are not really part of the creation, that we are not really creatures.  Put differently, it is the refusal to accept the fact that we are not God . . . So what is wrong with that? someone might respond.  Isn't that precisely our human calling and destiny, to be like God? . . . Yes, but the quintessence of original sin, as it is also reflected in gnosticism, is the desire to be like God on our own terms.  It is to deny our status as creatures and assume that we can be like God by nature rather than by the gift of divine grace." Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon.

No, I haven't been neglecting this wonderful book.  

And how are we most determined to try to be like God on our own terms?  I believe it may be in our insistence on defining for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.  What I want, what seems right to me, what I cannot help doing, the way I can't seem to help being, these things cannot possibly be wrong!  My experience - especially when consistent with that of those who I also know to be good, caring, loving people - must be more accurately revelatory of right and wrong than God's inspired word or the teaching of God's church.  In fact, to the degree to which they disagree with the experience of my enlightened self, Scripture and the Church must be outdated artifacts reflective of the ignorant perspective of a primitive, simplistic, and unenlightened people.

I have engaged in this arrogance. 

Yet I must be careful of the equal arrogance of judging those whom I might tend to believe are yet under its influence.  Christ's love alone matters, and in Him I need put all my trust.  He is God, the derelict on the cross somehow reconciling us to God in ways I do not understand, in areas that I may be unaware are in need of reconciling.  More . . . 

"Note that in everyday language the word 'creature' is hardly ever used today except negatively . . . This is a triumph of gnosticism in our popular culture.  It is the most elementary fact about what and who we are - creatures.  We are not the Creator; we are not God." 

We interpret our independence as the freedom to do what we want, what we think is in our best interest, even what we have decided is right, free from the restrictions that others might place upon us.  When our desires, interests, and judgments encounter an obstacle, we seek a way to make our conclusions okay.  And if that means diminishing God's authority in our lives, then that is no great loss to such modern thinkers as us, is it?

Saturday's cooking fail

(I hate it when a communication channel I depend on doesn't work.  I get so frustrated when that happens.  Thanks, Facebook.)

So on Saturday I was trying to make french fries - simple enough, right? - for the first time in years, to have with the sirloin patties I was grilling.  I apparently let the oil get too hot as, when I immersed the first batch, the oil ended up all over and down inside my stove, and caught fire.  I got the surface flames extinguished right away, but the fire under the cooktop took a few minutes.  You'd think that eleven years of Air Force safety briefings would have taught me to have an extinguisher in my kitchen, BUT NO!  I finally realized that I could probably smother the thing by covering each burner with a pot lid, and a few seconds later it was all over but the cleanup.  

It would've been easy enough to misinterpret my "almost burned down the house" Facebook comment as hyperbole, even if you saw it.  A simple supper was ruined, of course, but I really am grateful I didn't burn the house down; I was growing concerned for a minute there. I suppose I should also be thankful, given our current finances, that I didn't destroy the range.  In truth, I partly wish I had.  Then I'd've been forced to buy a new one and make everything work out, somehow.  

As recently as Wednesday there was still residue on at least one of the burners, as I walked in to a very smoky house after work while Teri was trying to cook dinner.  No such problem for me last night, though, which was a relief as we had the grandkids here by then.

Graceland

"The way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky"
"I'm lookin' at ghosts and empties."
"Who am I to blow against the wind?"
"So, what are you gonna do about it?  That's what I'd like to know."
"You're taking me for granted because I please you."
"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard."
"This is the story of how we begin to remember."
"Somebody cry 'Why, why, why?'"
"I have no opinion about me."
"But let's get that straight."
"That's why we must learn to live alone."

The first station: Jesus is condemned to death

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you,
because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.

(The first in a series?)

Who would dare to condemn to death the one through whom all life - and every thing - came to be?

It seems to me that I am probably that presumptuous judge:

• Don't I lament the things that are wrong in the world and rail against God for not doing anything about them?
• Don't I think my own ways are better than those God has revealed, that what I want is better than what God is providing?
• Don't I get dissatisfied with the goodness God has provided me, envious of those whose problems I judge as not so unbearable as my own?
• Don't I struggle to beat back my tendency to think myself better than others, even when I've proven otherwise?
• Don't I grumble against God, as the newly-freed Israelites did in today's first reading (of year A, for the RCIA Scrutinies, Ex 17:3-7), forgetting his past providence and doubting that he will meet my every need in the future?
• Don't I hesitate to share the Gospel with those around me, judging the acceptance of others more important than the Good News of his love and mercy?

Today's Gospel reading (again, year A, the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4:5-42) illustrates how Jesus acts toward us.  Rather than judge us harshly for our shortcomings, he draws us into his mercy, into relationship with him.  Eventually, before Pilate, he would accept the judgment that is rightly ours.  But it is my own day-to-day judgments that I think I'm to be aware of, now.

I've long tended to judge myself over my failings, but this not the same thing.  Instead, I hear Christ calling me this Lent to recognize how he longs to draw me more deeply into his love.  That will require that I take an honest look at how I might be resisting his grace.

(An interesting shoe which fits me too often: it isn't just others that I must be careful about judging.  If we are the body of Christ, transformed in him by grace over our lifetimes, then when we judge ourselves harshly, do we not condemn him, too?  Or maybe I'm merely denying his work in me?)

The Shack

For a moment, on page 51, I put it down, hardening my heart in defense against the accusation I read in the first sentence of the last full paragraph.   The thing is, I knew the author was merely expressing the words and the viewpoint of the protagonist, who was deeply wounded by someone whose offenses far exceeded any of my own.  My old self-condemnation arose reflexively.  But I was pretty certain this author wasn't going to leave me there.  In a few minutes I took a deep breath and, cutting myself some slack, picked it back up and read on, walking with Mack through his pain and his anger to his encounter with the Creator, the Healer, the Counselor.

I'm so pleased that the author preserved the traditional names and roles for the Trinity, while at the same time choosing non-traditional images to represent two of the Persons.  It's as if he was trying to challenge both traditionalists and modernists at the same time.  And while there seems to be a degree of putting down formal religion, this seems carefully crafted to focus on its shortcomings, the ways many use it to exercise control and self-righteous judgment over others.  I doubt that a community that truly seeks to serve Christ will feel insulted, though I'm a little concerned that anti-religionists will find their own prejudgments reinforced rather than being led to a community that truly seeks to grow in the Lord together.

All that said, I found myself encountering God's mercy and love in these pages.  That is always a very good thing.

The nth time

"I lift up my eyes to the hills.  From whence shall my help come?  My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth." - Ps 121, 1-2 (RSV)

(in an unrelated note, yesterday's Dilbert is a tad close for comfort.)

My strength and my hope are not of myself, not in my intelligence, talent, creativity, personality, fitness of body, strength of character.  Also, not in my family, friends, job . . . okay, I think I've got the idea covered, if not all the specifics.  If God has gifted me in any of these areas, I must yet put my hope in the Giver, not the gift.  And yet I must accept these gifts, as well, receive them as God would have me be blessed by them, make use of them as God would intend.

"God will not suffer your foot to slip." - Ps 121, 3 (NAB)

When I fail to turn to my strength, for whatever reason, I will stumble.  Yet neither is my hope in my ability to turn to God, or to not stumble.  I'm going to have to accept the reality that I'm gonna stumble.

There seems to be a difference between this and the defeatism of already thinking the worst of myself, so either no other misstep matters by comparison or every one serves to reinforces my poor self concept.  It also seems different from the permissiveness that says that nothing is any big deal.  Time will tell.

I'm tired of stumbling, though.