Category Archives: Accompaniment

Probably not the best idea.

Here is a quote I think about a great deal that gives a hypothesis about why:

“…[T]he mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict, like a small rider sitting on top of a large elephant. The rider represents conscious or controlled processes, the language-based thinking that fills our conscious minds and that we can control to some degree. 

The elephant represents everything else that goes on in our minds, the vast majority of which is outside of our conscious awareness. These processes can be called intuitive, unconscious, or automatic, referring to the fact that nearly all of what goes on in our minds is outside of our direct control… 

The rider and elephant metaphor captures the fact that the rider often believes he is in control, yet the elephant is vastly stronger and tends to win any conflict that arises between the two.

…[T]he rider generally functions more like the elephant’s servant than its master in that the rider is extremely skilled at producing post hoc justifications for whatever the elephant does or believes. Emotional reasoning is the cognitive distortion that occurs whenever the rider interprets what is happening in ways that are consistent with the elephant’s reactive emotional state without investigating what is true.

The rider then acts like a lawyer or press secretary whose job is to rationalize and justify the elephants preordained conclusions rather than to inquire into or even be curious about what is really true.”

The Coddling of the American Mind, Chapter 2, emphasis added

So. Shall we absorb every feeling and integrate every thought?

Far better to cultivate the ability to “note” our thoughts and feelings and grow the prudence to hold onto only what is helpful.

We recently moved to Germany and, upon moving, I found myself to be incompetent at basic tasks.

Examples. I made several mistakes in the disposal of our garbage. (The system is fairly intense here!) I did not know how to go about finding a doctor. I am not sure what many of the street signs mean. I can struggle to find basic things at the grocery store. I still miss the subtlety in most communication.

All of this habituates me to the experience of feeling, well, kind of dumb! I can welcome it, though, as an opportunity rather than react neurotically against the feeling, as is typically my default.

And what is the opportunity? The experience of incompetence helps me to embrace the need to attend to the stuff of my life as always fresh and new. This is the habit I need in order to see the wonder of who my loved ones are becoming.

Is our life in the church meant to be a celebration or a competition?  

Well, what do the Gospels say?  Fifteen times is the gathering of the Body of Christ described as a feast, banquet, or the like.  Only once (Matthew 25 – “When did I see you hungry, naked, in prison…”) is a scene of judgment described.  (And that one scene is important.  How we treat the poor and marginalized matters.)

I think, too often though, we do not share this vision of celebration given by the Gospels.  There is sense of competition, an unspoken understanding that we can win or be better than another at a life of faith.  The narrative of competition can be implicit and subtle and exists in both progressive and more traditional tribes of the church.  (The irony is, those who are most developed in faith know acutely that they are not better than anyone else.)

Certainly, life is not a celebration all the time, nor is it meant to feel that way.  There is work, sometimes very difficult work, to be done to be ever more hospitable at the celebration.  

But we do not do this work to win.  We do the work because we have been loved first… and then we celebrate.

Our son was home sick from school this week, so (over Legos and audiobooks) he got to see me running around, trying to do too many things, and stressed out about work.

At one point in the morning, he asked me, “Papa – are you mad at me?”

Oof.  It hurts to hear this.  And I honestly wasn’t.  He was occupying himself brilliantly.  So what was going on?

I think that my face and my tone were leaking stress and tension.

My eyes can’t see my face (not without a mirror) and so I cannot tell when my face shows strain.  And the part of our brains (the superior temporal sulcus) that reads emotion in tone of voice actually switches off when we ourselves are speaking. (More about this in chapter 4 of this brilliant book.)  So, I leak emotion all the time, and I am blind to the emotion I leak.  Yikes!

For me, the next question is: Will I get curious about what I am leaking?  That is, will I slow down and acknowledge what I am feeling?

And then another: Who can help me see what I am blind to?  For honest answers, perhaps best to start with a child.  

Imagine if a spiritual director were to do the following:

-Convince the directee to continually steal time from their contemplative practice, and even subtly doubt the worth of such a practice at all.

-Fan the flames of dead-end, obsessive thought.

-Rationalize habits that are not life-giving.

-Cast doubt on one’s ability to find and follow their vocation.

-Cast doubt on one’s basic goodness or the fact that one is loved.

It is laughable to even imagine, right? We would not put up with such talk even for a short time from a spiritual director.

We do, too often though, put up with such talk from our mind’s inner chatter.  

Put another way: It is possible that, sometimes, we may be our own worst spiritual director.

Of course, it does not have to be that way.  Simply seeing such chatter drains it of its power, and then we can ask for the grace to act like a fine spiritual director… one who can self-empty, see compassionately, and gently welcome the directee into the graced mystery of their life.

After college, I moved with some other recent graduates to a fairly rural town in Eastern Uganda.

When we would meet local folks for the first time, they would not infrequently toss the word mpolampola, often translated as “slowly, slowly,” into the exchange.

“Wait, what?” I would think. “How did that make sense as part of this conversation?”

But it makes perfect sense. It is a fantastic reminder for a Westerner generally, and especially one encountering a new place and culture.

Moving too quickly, either outwardly or within our own heads, we miss the remarkableness of where and when we are living. 

Moving slowly, though, we can experience the richness of the vulnerability of life, particularly at a transition.

An older priest at our parish growing up used to work the following aphorism into homilies a few times a year.  He would say, “If you can spot it, you got it.”  

That is, if you notice a flaw in another person, chances are, you have the same thing going on.

Not super scientific, but so often true.

This is another way into the reality that advice is autobiographical.