Category Archives: Contribution

Order or Control

As much as I think I would like to, I am unable to control all the circumstances of my life. It is simply not possible.

Same thing with the mystery of God. Trying to control the Trinity? That is a tough road.

But what is possible is order: to orient myself toward the stuff of my life such that I am able to react masterfully, faithfully, with love. This may likely mean doing less things and/or, on a given day, doing the important things first.

We Only Get a Vote When We Show Up

Last year, a friend witnessed the following interaction in a Zoom meeting about how to handle her child’s school year given the reality of COVID-19.

The conversation was heated, quite divided between those who wanted in-person school and those who wanted remote learning. A decisive policy would come down to a vote.

One parent was so furious that she said destructive things to the group and then signed off abruptly, minutes before the vote.

The vote was taken and tallied, not in her favor.

She signed in a few minutes after the vote, and asked to be counted. That was not what the process that group decided on, and so her vote was not registered.

The world tends toward disorder, so there are everywhere chances to make things better. We only get a vote about how our shared future unfolds when we show up. And our vote counts exponentially when we show up generously and with grand imagination.

Furious or Curious

The experience of anger can be quite involuntary. Something happens, trespassing against our expectations of how things should be, leaving us furious.

Okay. But then what happens.

Anger can quickly turn into self-righteousness, to barricading oneself on the moral high ground. And anger can take the legs out from under our ability to listen perceptively and to relate imaginatively to people who think differently from us. And because of this, anger can handicap any attempt to accurately perceive and productively improve the situation that made us angry in the first place.

We do not always have the choice to be furious. But we can, afterwards and always, choose to be curious.

(Hey!  The above reminds me of the dear Fr. Michael Rossmann, SJ’s recent post on his new Substack blog.  Check it out!)

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.

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.

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?

Insurance Policy or Treasure Map

These are two very different pieces of paper.  Humans relate very differently to each one.

Sometimes I wonder: Is my relationship with the Gospel more like that of an insurance policy or a treasure map?

An insurance policy makes me feel secure for minimal input.  It leads me nowhere and exerts no attractive moral force over my life.

A treasure map leads us on an adventure and gives us hints about where the good stuff is.