Paul Mitchell

Pebble Crayons

When our first son was two, I would take him to a toddler Montessori classroom. At the art station, there were a few crayons each shaped like a large pebble.

Our son did not yet know how to hold a regular crayon, but the form of these crayons taught him to. There is just no other way to hold a pebble if you want to write with it. He had to grip it correctly, at the tips of his fingers.

Our interior lives, too, benefit from us finding and using similar tools. Take prayers of thanksgiving, for instance. In this mode of prayer, we tune to the gifts of our lives and orient toward the God who is their origin. Simply by engaging the tool, I am productively oriented toward the stuff of my life.

This was also our hope, also, with the structure of Audacious Ignatius. We aimed to create stanzas and art that stick in the memory and then, when recalled, gracefully and productively orient the reader toward a gem of our tradition. Take for example:

“First, know well that I’m loved even though oh so flawed.
Next, spend time with the Lord and to walk where he trod.
Offer all I possess, beg for my stony-heart thawed,
And act from a deep love, the love that is God.”

These are only three (pithy?) sentences. But when held, they may remind the reader of the depth of their experience with the Spiritual Exercises or uncover a desire to engage with them.

Whatever the topography of our interior lives, let’s find and use the pebble crayons that orient us gracefully and productively.

Deferred Maintenance

Last summer, we bought a 2003 Honda Odyssey from another Foreign Service family who was about to move. I think that they thought they were not going to be able to sell it. They had deferred a great deal of maintenance.

We cleaned the car inside and out. Twice. We replaced the tires, oil, filters, windshield wipers, antifreeze, antifreeze cap, shocks, struts, brake fluid, and brake pads. We greased one of the sliding doors and peeled all the old stickers off of the dash.

The van now runs great and facilitates our on-going family adventure. If we had deferred its maintenance for much longer, it would not have been able to do so.

We can defer maintenance on things that are much more fundamental to our life’s adventure than a vehicle. Our interior lives. Our closest relationships. Connections to the communities that formed us.

Let’s not defer maintenance on these most important things.

Waiting for the Light to Come

For most of her early writing career, Toni Morrison had a nine-to-five job, taught university classes, and raised her two sons as a single parent. She wrote books during this time that won her a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Morrison reported that she would write in the evenings, but especially in the mornings. She would rise as early as 4am, and “wait for the light to come.”

When we tell ourselves that we don’t have the time to do that generous thing we think about, we may, in fact, be correct, based on how we are currently choosing to spend our time. But if we, like Morrison, make the time for the light to come, we will not be disappointed. The world will be better for our having protected and offered that time.

The Roots of Our Stories

That story that helps you begin the day with energy, to engage the world with insight and empathy… Where did that story come from? Can attending to the roots of that story amplify it, or help you to grow similar stories?

And that story that closes you off, makes your thoughts spin without effect or love… Where did that story come from? Can naming and letting these stories go then release you from their negative effects?

The stories we rehearse form us profoundly. It is right to inspect their roots.

More Than God Requires

I once had a spiritual director tell me the following.

“You know… It is possible to do more than God requires, and less than God desires.”

While infuriatingly vague, the maxim has stuck with me and functions to pose the following productive question.

What, in fact, does God desire?

More than we can comprehend, surely, but perhaps essentially this: that we know how profoundly we are loved.

Truly knowing oneself as loved by God changes everything, and enables clearer vision of what, then, God requires.

The Retreat House, in Winter

Before we had kids, I would make a silent retreat every summer at the guest house on the campus of St. Mary’s College in South Bend.

My favorite room in which to sit, read, and pray was a thin room that wrapped around the south wall of the house. On the second floor and with giant windows, the room welcomes visitors right in the trees, into a world of leaves and light. The depth of field in the summer months is about forty feet, obscured by vegetation.

After a few years of summer retreats, I then spent one winter weekend there. The view from the room was completely different. The leaves were gone. The sun was filtered through many clouds. And, most strikingly, the depth of field was much greater. I could see over a mile now, through the leafless trees, all the way down to the river.

Winter, then, afforded an enhanced perspective.

The “winters” of life, moments of loss, conflict, or pain, can be a challenge, sometimes of uninterpretable ruthlessness. Only with good company, I think, can we navigate these winters, and tune into the unique perspective that they offer, the expanded depth of field. This transformed vision can fuel a life of remarkable compassion.

Teaching That Takes Something Away

When both of our sons were learning to eat solid food, they would occasionally stuff so much in their mouths that they could no longer eat. The only way forward was to take all the food out and start again. Teaching them to eat, then, meant taking food away.

The best teachers, I think, do something similar. If a learner is stuck on a limiting belief or an idol of the mind, the savvy teacher does not add more input. Instead, she works to relieve the learner of the limitation. Once this idol is removed, the learner has more space to see what is real.

Frustratingly, our brains protect these idols with brutal force, namely through confirmation bias, making giving up limiting beliefs uniquely difficult. The idol’s bodyguards can live inside the texture of our own thinking.

While difficult, relinquishing a limiting way of thinking is some of the most important learning we can do. Giving up the “information” that limits our intelligence, imagination, and love can save our lives.

Beginning With Joy

Most afternoons, I take our sons to a neighborhood park. Our two-year-old is fascinated by the basketball hoop there.

He will take our mini soccer ball out of the stroller, square up to the hoop, and shoot the ball. The hoop is regulation size, so his attempt falls well short. Sometimes it flies backwards over his head.

Two bits to note:

First: He loves this exercise. He knows he is not “doing it right,” but delights absolutely in the attempt.

Second: He is actually getting better. He is jumping and releasing the ball at (more or less) the right time. The ball flies a little higher.

When we start any new thing, we are not going to be awesome at it. A new flavor of empathy. Communication in a new context. Navigating the interior life after major life events. We will surely stumble. How could it be otherwise?

But if we accept the newness with joy and gentleness, a new world can open up. And absent this gentle joy, it can be very difficult to begin something new.

Who Is Thriving?

When I am at my worst, I consider the constraints in my life with the mindset of a victim. (“This is terrible! I don’t have x! I cannot do y!”)

Two things help break this cycle:

First, I realize that many other people have the same constraints that I do.

Second, I realize that many of these people with the very same constraints are thriving.

I escape from my impoverished mindset when I ask: Why are these people thriving? Can I do the same?

Feel Good or Think Hard?

When we choose where and how to learn about the world, (i.e. a news source, a podcast, membership in a community) what guides this decision?

Do we seek to feel good? Perhaps morally superior?

Or do we seek to learn? To think hard and cultivate an expansive vision of the world?

It’s up to us to strike a balance. This balance takes courage and serves the common good.