Contribution – Page 14

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.

Tea for the Missions

I once heard a Mennonite missionary tell the following story.

When he was growing up in the US, their family would, after steeping a tea bag, dry it out on the counter. When they had a good number, they sent them overseas to families doing relief and development work with Mennonite Central Committee. The idea was that the missionary would enjoy the tea left over in the bag.

Yes, the gesture was rooted in a place of generosity and one has to marvel at this superlative frugality. But the error is fairly obvious. Why didn’t the supporting family just send new tea bags? Then, the recipient could enjoy the first use themselves, as well as the subsequent use.

While this seems obvious, I am often guilty of a similar mindset. That is, generosity often does not receive pride of place in my plans.

In our culture, big things (career, large projects) are often dedicated to the accumulation of money or status. The leftovers (of time, money) are for generosity. Sometimes.

But what if we committed to the opposite? What if we offered the big things to generosity?

This is the idea behind our dedication of all profits of Sorin Starts a School to the work of the Holy Cross in Dhaka, and namely the flourishing of Notre Dame University Bangladesh.

We are pumped to share that we are on schedule and set to ship out the books this May. Here’s to offering the big things to generosity, to love.

Not Choosing Functions as a Choice

Today, there are far too many things to pay attention to, and there is far too little time to attend to them.

On my better days, I aspire to deal with the above problem accordingly: I desire to consider what I value most, and to structure my time accordingly.

Often, instead, I allow my attention to be scattered by the next email, the next text, the next darn thing, instead of ordered by what I consider to be of ultimate importance.

In this second instance, my failure to choose functions as a choice.

Later

My younger son (almost two) has started to do something fascinating.

When I ask him to do something that he does want to do, he doesn’t say, “no.”

He says, “later.”

I know that I can do this too, in tasks I desire to have done, but often fail to start. Reaching out to a friend, thoughtfully planning for the future, general household maintenance… I don’t tell myself that I won’t do it. I say that I will do it later. This dynamic does not enhance my life.

“Later” can be a trap, a way to avoid a strenuous but generous path.

Restaurant or Kitchen?

Is our relationship with the church more like that of a restaurant or a kitchen?

Is it a place where we wait to receive something that another prepares, and then evaluate the offering?

Or is it a place where we are part of a creative team with a mission? A place where we hone productive habits and generously share our gifts?