on accompaniment, attentiveness, and contribution
In Scripture and Tradition, the conversation of “faith or works” is a well trod path.
Sometimes, though, it strikes me that a more present danger of our age is that we have neither faith nor works.
Certain ideological narratives can masquerade as faith, but have nothing to do with trust in a loving God. And often this narrative only serves to whip up self-righteousness instead of actual work on behalf of real people.
Let’s work and pray with each other instead.
A friend once told me that, when he would visit his mother’s home, he found her preoccupied many times a day with searching her pool and screened porch for tiny trapped frogs. When she found one, she would catch it in a net and release it into the yard.
For her, the house was the extent of her sphere of influence. This assumption limited how she considered the possibility of her life and thus bound how she chose to spend her attention and energy.
Certainly, to engage the world productively, we have to judge what is actually in our control, and then make prudential decisions about how to engage the world. None of us is infinite.
Too often, though, we encounter too little, and spend time stressing out over frogs.
Far better to encounter actual suffering and address it actively and compassionately.
Years ago in Chicago, we had a friend who, on someone’s birthday, would put them on the spot and ask: “So, now that you are x years old, what do you have to say for yourself?”
I came to love the exercise, to watch others take account and share a bit of their distilled wisdom.
My birthday was this week, and my brother challenged me to answer the beloved question on the blog. So, for 2021, here is my answer.
It has been of great value to me to discover my story, to understand who I am and how I tend to engage the world.
It has also been of great value to me to discover our stories, to understand the narratives of the tribes of which I find myself a part.
And it is of ultimate value to me to consistently lay both my story and our stories into the narrative of The Story, the mystery of a loving God. This movement saves my story and our stories from becoming idols over which I obsess.
Put another way, kenosis before The Story returns me to my story and our stories with power, clarity, and the freedom to love, tuned to what is of ultimate value.
Trying to keep a toddler relatively chill during an hour-long liturgy can be a uniquely punishing experience.
The little human often grasps neither the rhythm of the mass nor the utility of whispering when communicating. He is quite heavy, a thirty pound bag of rice that wants to move, point, be held a little higher, and be balanced in odd ways on my body. The setting is quiet and public, and so visibility (and potential for embarrassment) is high.
All of these details sum to a basic and physical reminder, during the mass, that I am in need and not in control.
For a long time, I regarded this strain with varied levels of resentment. Now, I try to see it as an asset to prayer.
I try to recall, during this strain, that the worst disposition I can carry into the liturgy is one of self sufficiency… that I am basically okay on my own and do not depend, each day, on the grace of God.
The presence of a toddler, then, is a very physical antidote to this lie of self-sufficiency. The strain can actually crack me open to experience the grace of the mass and of my life.
If we let them, toddlers can act as an antidote to our self-sufficiency before God.
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