A Different Way Home

While riding home on our bike after dropping his brother off at school, our younger son turned to me and asked: “Can we take a different way home?”

I am programmed to optimize for efficiency (“Must find quickest route possible!”), often to the detriment of my quality of life.  Our son was opting for something else, a new adventure.  

Productive routines and healthy habits are great, as far as they go.  But routines also limit what we experience and see.  It can be enlightening to take a different way home.

The adventure our son eventually chose was to go give his mama a hug at work.  Not a bad choice considering our true home is in the heart of a God who is love.

Mood Follows Action

I do not believe that I have ever felt unequivocally positive prior to a session of exercise.  Even if I am mostly looking forward to it, there is always an underlying dread of pain.

If I had to wait for the unequivocal feeling of wanting to run (or lift or whatever), I would never do it.

And so it is a good thing that mood follows action.  Once the running shoes are on and the warm-up is over, my feeling always improves.

I think the same can be true of showing up to a habit of prayer, meditation, any interior practice… or anything representing generosity, really… Even that stack of dishes, paper work, or emails…

Beginning is the first step toward a breakthrough.

Slack in the System

It can be tempting to maximize every system to its limit.

To squeeze as much productivity out of our minds and bodies selves as possible…

To be satisfied only with the best (whatever it might be)…

To overanalyze every moment to make sure it is producing maximum pleasure…

To take from the earth without regard for ecological limits…

At some point, this is going to break down and we will bear the cost.

And this maximization mindset actually makes us unhappy, pounding our interior lives dangerously thin.

Keeping the slack in life’s systems is a worthy and indispensable discipline.

The Infinite Game

Yesterday, for an hour or so, I tossed a plastic stingray, lobster, and octopus onto the floor of the community pool for our 6 year old to swim down and return triumphantly.  He loves this game, and so does his younger brother who also took turns throwing the “sinkies” while splashing around in his floaties.  

This is an infinite game… a game you play because the game is the point.  The practice itself is the source of joy.  

It is not a game in which you beat everyone else and feel momentarily superior.  (That is a finite game.)  

The things that actually give us joy resemble infinite games: learning to love someone, the works of mercy, showing up generously to one’s vocation.  

And all of these are sacraments of the infinite game – participation in the love of the Trinity.  

Whoa – but what is that like?  Meister Eckhart described this love of the Trinity this way:  

Imagine a baby looking up at his mother,

and the baby laughs at his mother,

and the mother laughs back at the baby.

And the laughter produces pleasure,

and the pleasure produces joy,

and the joy produces love.

And the love is the Holy Spirit.

The parent, the baby, and the laughter between them – that is the Trinity.

(I nabbed this from a Trinity Sunday homily by the good Lou DelFra, CSC at Notre Dame a million years ago in 2006. I’m still in search of the original quotation.)

For Eckhart, the point of our life is to be open to and shaped by this texture of the Trinity, which enlivens our wonderful world.  Tuning to this reality instills in us an infinite mindset that gives meaning and purpose to whatever comes our way.

Religion DTR

In college, we used to jokingly talk about “the DTR”… where two people, with unspoken interest in a romantic relationship need to take time to “define the relationship.”

It’s a great turn of phrase and a useful tool.  

It is worth it, too, to periodically have a DTR with one’s practice of religion.

That is, does my practice of religion:

Pad my ego and sense of superiority?

Narrow what I am willing to see?

Or does it represent a humbling preparation to enter a mystery of love, to engage a life more abundant than we could have imagined or engineered?

1984 or Brave New World

In school, we were introduced to two classic dystopian visions of the future: 1984 and Brave New World.

In 1984, the tyranny of a fearsome dictator reduces humans to submissive beings.

In Brave New World, humans are so preoccupied with pleasure and trivialities, they subdue themselves into submissive beings. 

In your world, which one is coming true?

Talking About the Problem

Talking about fixing problems… is not the same as actually addressing them.

Yes, talking about strategy is important.  It should also not be confused with the action, the actual fixing.  

Here may be the hard part: Talking about a problem, finally getting it out in the open can feel good.  A sense of relief follows.  But if we let the tension of the moment drain all the way out, we will never do the thing we said we would do.

Lurk or Lead

At work, at church, in your family, or online… Do we typically lurk (that is, sit in the back without interacting, watching what other people do) or lead (by connecting with one or more people, by starting a conversation about what is important)?

Lurking is easy to fall into.  It can be scary to speak up, especially in the presence of a difficult problem.

But difficult problems are the only ones that are left.  All of the easy ones are taken.

And so, leadership, not lurking, is really what we need from each other.  

What does leadership look like?  To risk having the generous conversation, to offer the next best idea to move the issue forward.  To see someone as they are (and not as we want them to be), and then inviting them to be generous as well.  

Leadership does not have to be loud or in front of everyone.  We can lead from any chair in the “orchestra” of a community… as a conductor, an oboist, or the person who stacks the chairs at the end of the day.  We each see something important and can make things better.

We need to lead, not lurk.