October 2021 – Paul's Blog

Telling Our Stories

One of the finest gifts that we can offer another is a generous, compassionate space into which they can tell their story.

Perhaps such a space opens up between old friends, catching up after a time apart.

Or maybe it is in the context of a silent retreat, where a director helps a retreatant to deeply perceive the presence of grace and use this perspective to tell again their life’s narrative.

Katie and I were given such a gift recently from the folks at the Notre Dame Alumni Association who run the digital ministries of FaithND when we recorded an episode on their Everyday Holiness podcast diving into our ongoing formation and the creation of Sorin Starts a School. For this generosity, we are immensely grateful.

How we tell our stories matters a great deal for how we live. Let us offer to each other a loving space into which we can tell our stories.

I Can’t Know How!

When our 2.5 year old has difficulty with a task, he will exclaim, “I can’t know how!”

He, of course, means that he doesn’t know how, but I have found myself thinking about the comical phrase that he does use.

Too often, we operate implicitly out of the assumption that we can’t know how to do something. (That challenge in front of me… it is… impossible!)

Except, in almost every case, it isn’t impossible. Yes, I might have to change how I dedicate my time. And, yes, I may have to take some vulnerable risks and show up consistently with emotional endurance.

If I do those things, I realize that I can, in fact, know how.

How Good Can This Be?

I can often fall into the following trap. Faced with a constraint, I try to overcome it with all of my power. The trickiness of the trap is that the constraint binds how I think about the situation. I focus only on it, and how to attenuate it. The constraint defines my vision.

One day some years ago, as I was caught in this trap, my dad posed a liberating question. He asked, “have you ever thought about how good this situation can be?”

Aha! I had been so focused on how to make a situation less bad, that I had forgotten that it could be good.

By focusing on the possibility, I was freed to think differently. That little question changed the story and, thereby, the situation. It helped me play to win rather than play not to lose.

If, like me, you are ever mired in a battle of wills with a constraint, I wonder if you’ll wonder how good the situation could be?

Cozy or Compelling

Steve Jobs died 10 years ago this month. To mark the anniversary, one of his closest collaborators, Jony Ive, reflected on his relationship with Jobs in the Wall Street Journal. Ive remarked that:

“I had thought that by now there would be reassuring comfort in the memory of my best friend and creative partner, and of his extraordinary vision.”

“But of course not. Ten years on, he manages to evade a simple place in my memory. My understanding of him refuses to remain cozy or still. It grows and evolves.”

This type of dynamic, compelling memory is a remarkable thing to consider.

Are we able to say the same about our memory of mentors who made us dream of significant lives? Or of our “favorite” saints? Wasn’t it Dorothy Day who said she hoped she would never be considered a saint because she did not want to be dismissed so quickly?

Let us pray for the grace of memories that compel us to lives of significant generosity.

Who Loves?

Let’s think about the Good Samaritan story for a second and see something cool.

The story starts with the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, and the young man’s follow-up question: Who is my neighbor?

And you know the middle. Man is beaten, left for dead. The “holy” people pass by. The outsider acts mercifully on the beaten man’s behalf.

Good.

Now notice the end. Jesus asks: “Which one of these was neighbor to the [wounded man]? Neighbor = Helper Samaritan.

But wait! The commandment is to love the neighbor! If we can trust the syntax of the translation, the one who is doing the loving, then, is the beaten man!

The point, for me, is this: Robust, expansive love can begin when we are able to bear our wounds, in vulnerability, to people we trust. In this sense then, yes, the wounded man plays an important part in the relationship.

Shall we go and do likewise?

Straw Man or Steel Man

When we consider a person that, at this moment, we do not agree with, what is the story that we tell about them?

Does it resemble a “straw man?” That is, do we pick only the flimsiest parts of their perspective and rail against it?

Or do we set up a “steel man?” That is, do we consider their position with cognitive empathy and fill out their narrative as strongly as possible?

One strategy will help us productively and compassionately engage the world as it is. The other will inflate our ego’s self-righteousness.

Effort and Effortlessness

An integrated interior life certainly requires an element of effort: to show up each day in silence, to carve out time in defiance of all of life’s distractions, to conquer the resistance of “Oh, I will just pray tomorrow.”

But, truly, a bigger and trickier part is the commitment to effortlessness. If the point is to tune to how deeply we are loved and to trust in this love, then a massive egoic effort will not help us. We need effortlessness, a sense of abandon, as in love or sleep.

This effortless effort is certainly a paradox, but a fruitful one, worth engaging.

Seasons

This weekend, our family moves from Northern Mexico to Greater DC.

I believe that, if we pay attention during life’s transitions, the seasons of our lives can reveal themselves with unique clarity. That is, it is possible to harness the emotional intensity of a transition and, holding the moment gently, to gather the meaning of the past years.

I often need help to pay attention in this way, and one song in particular helps me achieve this disposition. It was written and performed by former colleague, master teacher, and dear friend, Michael Crean. It is from an album that forms the musical backbone of the audiobooks for Audacious Ignatius and Sorin Starts a School.

Here is the song, entitled “Seasons.” (It is registered on SoundCloud under his pen name.) For an optimal experience, listen with good headphones after everything the day requires has been done.

Here’s to attentiveness, whatever the season.

Halten

A German verb for “to hold” (halten) can be used as the verb “to think,” as in: What do you think about that idea?

This structure illustrates a healthy relationship with our mind’s activity. I am holding a thought in awareness. I do not over identify with it. I can let it go. I can share it. I can do something about it. But I am not the thought.

So. Was hälst du? What do you think? (That is, what do you hold?)