Inventing Threats

Our car has a common safety feature. When the system perceives danger in the driver’s path, it will apply the brakes and flash tiny red lights in the field of vision.

This feature is often helpful. 

It is, also, often wrong. A non-conscious system throws on the brakes to “protect us” from a danger that is not there.

Our brains can do this too, every day… amplifying social slights or sorting ideological difference as active threats to be countered. These misperceptions then create divisions small and large.  This does not lead to an abundant life.

Without grace and a commitment to be mindful of this reality, I don’t think we can overcome it.

Let’s pray for the grace to get close enough to love.

The Banality of… Goodness?

In ethics class, we learn of “the banality of evil”… the idea that systemic evil is often perpetrated not by moral monsters, but ordinary, uncritical people. 

But what happens, though, when we consider the “banality of goodness”… the reality that some of the most important moral habits we might develop are, at first blush, fairly banal.

***pause for a story, not my own, but borrowed from a friend***

My friend was working with the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Theresa’s folks) in a home for the dying.  One day, as it was his job to clean the floor (of all of the gross bodily fluids), the drain (through which the grossness was to go) backed up conclusively.  While he stared at the drain, pondering what to do next, a little nun approached the drain, rolled up her sleeves, resolved the blockage with her hands and, washing her hands, looked at my friend and said, “You think too much,” and took her leave.

***end of story***

So, yes.  

Shall we ask for the grace of the growth of our (boring) habitual goodness?  The consistent, attentive care we offer to a child… the cleaning of one’s habitat… loving the earth… learning from someone different from us… not packing our schedules within an inch of their lives…

The banality of goodness may just turn into a life of ultimate value, of deep love.  That is, it becomes anything but ordinary.  

Our Father is pleased to give us the Kingdom (sayeth the 12th chapter of Luke), after all.

Preventative Maintenance

On our daily commute, some humorous Jiffy Lube associates have crafted the following.

this a post about balance, not petroleum

The statement is witty, obviously supportive of their business model, and easily applicable to the human need to honor priorities and balance.

It has never been easier to postpone maintenance on our relationships, bodies, and souls… to overextend ourselves, to give ourselves over to so many competing demands that we lose focus on our most important commitments.

Put another way… if we do not attend to our interior lives and the health of our bodies, we should expect costly damage to things that matter.

Blind Spot Buddy (Or: What Am I Missing Here?)

Let’s agree that humans are not good at seeing their blind spots. After all, how am I supposed to see what I don’t see?!

Enter the AI “blind spot buddy.”  

So.  Log into Claude (or whichever platform).  Choose the issue you are having trouble with.  Explain the situation as if to a friend or coach.

I can’t seem to communicate effectively with [enter person’s name]….[enter context]…

(or)

I am stuck with [enter technological problem]….[enter context]…

What might I be missing here?

Make sure to explain the issue thoroughly, and then be astounded by what your personal blind spot buddy comes up with.  Ask follow up questions.  Follow through in real life. 

Resistant to Care

“Resistant to care” is a general clinical term used to describe a patient who opposes or impedes the interventions made on their behalf.  (In this scenario, their caretakers must be more creative in their care for this individual.)

As it concerns our development as loving persons, on some basic level, we are all “resistant to care.”  We resist providing the body with what the health it truly wants.  We rush by explosions of natural beauty.  We don’t adequately attend to children. We get in our own way, complicating our reception of the love that life offers to us.

Our task, then, is to pray for the grace to become less “resistant to care.”

And Let It Begin With…

At home, growing up, we would jokingly sing the refrain to the church hymn “Let there be peace on earth” as follows:

“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with *you*…”

While silly, this is too often how we approach all kinds of conflict.  

Understanding my role in the system of the conflict can help untangle the situation and provide a path forward.

Conversation during the extra mile

Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. (Matthew 5:41)

Walking the extra mile (after that initial distance is completed), what is the conversation like?

Does the conversation change?  And how?

Perhaps one’s inner chatter (about what that person must be like) quiets down, defenses fall, better questions are asked and answered…

And as understanding deepens, patience is extended to the irrationality and incoherence present in everyone’s story.   

This sort of transformation (becoming human, poor in spirit) is on offer for the compassionate and curious traveler. 

The Foundational Home

Aristotle explored ethics “[not] in order to know what virtue is, but [that we might] become good.” 

With what does it begin?

The household – our management of it and the formation we internalize while in it.

When I am able to see the home not as a not a chore to begrudge, rush through, or outsource – but as a foundation for a deeply good, abundant life, a new way of living opens before me.