on accompaniment, attentiveness, and contribution
We use the word “church” to mean a lot of things. The people of God. The structure where we meet to pray. The hierarchy that leads. The tradition handed down.
What if, when we said church, our default definition was “a network of spiritual directors”… a tribe bound together by the tender cultivation of another’s (as well as their own) journey to know themselves as loved sacramentally?
If this was the default definition, how would this shift our priorities? How would this shift our inner lives?
Say that each day is a beautifully baked loaf of bread. Twenty-four hours, fresh every day.
What gets the first bite?
Prayer? The cultivation of solitude? The creation of something generous? Attention to our dearest relationships? Nature? Physical health?
The demands of work? Internet platforms that sell your attention to advertisers? Obsessive worry?
We rarely have the ability to control our days. We often have the ability to choose what gets the first bite of our time.
Flannery O’Connor once said, riffing on John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you strange.”
I love this quote.
If what we say in the creed is true, we are going to have a wild journey… an adventure to know God as love and to act out of that knowledge. It will certainly, and thank goodness, be unpredictable, leading us little by little to a profound interior freedom.
If we are not comfortable being strange, neither should we expect to be free.
The first class I ever taught, in rural Uganda, had about sixty students. My most recent class, some years ago in Chicago, had fourteen.
Even in the class of fourteen, it was a challenge to shepherd each of their individual journeys toward growth.
Now think about the challenge of teaching as a Catholic parish. Maybe there are 3 full-time equivalent positions dedicated to formation and education. And, say, that there are 1,000 parishioners. That is a tough ratio for the educators. How could the staff possibly know what you, individually, need?
To my mind, in this situation the best way for a parishioner to ensure their solid formation is to first develop the capacity to know what they need and then to seek it out.
What can we do to make this easier? That is how can we build structures that invite engagement as a kitchen and not a restaurant?
PS – This is a different point, but here are some brilliant folks working on a development that would be a sea change for how we teach with integrity. Check them out!
In February, Secretary Blinken made a “Zoom visit” to all serving in the US Foreign Service in Mexico. In the general session, his parting message was to recall that “the world does not organize itself.” The upshot is that if we do not, with wisdom and intention, attend to the justice of international relationships, entropy and/or bad actors will cause chaos in our world.
This is certainly true in the context that he means, and in other places of work, business, and ministry. And, now more than ever, it is true of our interior worlds.
If we do not, with wisdom and intention, attend to our relationships with the stuff of our lives and order it according to what is most important, a crush of inputs will fracture our attention and ability. Overcommitment will overwhelm us. The endless scroll of social media and outraged news leaves with our attention spent and no energy to reorient it.
Our interior world will not organize itself. And, if we do not order them, we cannot effectively serve the justice of our city, nation, and world.
It took me a long time to appreciate St. Augustine of Hippo, whose Confessions were assigned to us a few times through college and graduate school.
Here was a man who was clearly holy, writing with singular insight about the journey to know God, and, in the same volume, wrote a fantastic amount about how imperfect he was. This appeared to me, at first blush, to be indulgently self-critical.
But some years ago, I heard someone remark that an inescapable part of the journey to holiness is knowing that precious little separates us from truly destructive behavior and self-dilution. And the ability to see this reality clearly liberates us to approach others with deep compassion. We are not, in fact, any better than that person we may feel superior to.
I think that this is what Augustine knew, and why he wrote so much about his imperfection. He knew the particularity of his interior life, his capacity to be self-destructive, and, ultimately, the experience of amazing grace. I believe that it is this completeness of vision that undergirds his holiness and his life of erudite service.
When I was home caring for our first son, our mornings were structured around an adventure outside the apartment. We would walk to the library, a museum, or a park, and then head home for lunch and a nap.
One day, I noticed that I always seemed to be rushing to and from these adventures. Rushing to catch the light before it turned red. Always trying to find the fastest way through the city to my destination.
Out of curiosity, I timed myself en route to our farthest adventure at a leisurely pace and then going as fast as I could while still walking.
The difference was 70 seconds.
70 seconds! This was what I gained for giving my attention over to rushing instead of mindful enjoyment of the journey.
I am still often guilty of speeding in this way. It is an ongoing challenge to remind myself that this rushing is not worth that which it sacrifices.
My dad’s dad’s mom used to say this thing when someone was feeling quite wrapped up in the emotional urgency of a difficult situation. He would remind the person that “you don’t have to drink the soup as hot as it boils.”
For a long time, I took this to mean that I just needed to give a tough situation a few minutes before throwing myself back into the mess, back into the emotional emergency.
But the other day, my dad reminded me that, often, the situation is not worthy of the emotional emergency I place onto it. That situation? Hey, it’s just soup.
Taken this way, the first seven words of my great-grandmother’s sentence also suffice as quality advice. You don’t have to drink the soup.
I don’t take this as license to be aloof. Rather, it is an invitation to hold my inner chatter and my emotional response to a given situation a little less tightly. And this stance, in reality, frees me to be more thoughtful and generous, rather than obsessed with my own stress response.
So, hey, it is just soup. And there will be more tomorrow.
Consume accordingly.
We are always teaching.
By how we choose to engage (or not).
By what we notice of the world.
By how we carry ourselves.
By the words we choose.
What have you been teaching lately?
One morning when I was learning to program, I was given a problem and told to write an algorithm to solve it. I dutifully cobbled together a tangle of code and was approaching a workable solution.
Then, one of the instructors looked at my monitor, highlighted every line, pressed delete, and walked away.
At first, I felt panicked. (That had taken me so long to do!)
And then, I felt relieved. I was free to consider the problem in a fresh way, and solved it in a few crisp lines.
It is often difficult to embrace an invitation to step back from “the way I (or we) do things.” But when I do, I am often rewarded with the freedom that comes from simplicity.
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