Be Careful or Pay Attention

A month ago, our family spent a week on a ranch with a group of lifelong friends and their children.  As a group of our children scaled a rock wall together (and I became increasingly nervous), I asked another dad how he considers the physical risks that his children take.  He responded with the following.  

“My wife and I don’t really say ‘be careful’ to our kids because we don’t want them to be fearful, or necessarily careful, as they interact with the world.  Instead we say, ‘pay attention.’  We want them to pay attention to their surroundings and how they are feeling at any moment.  To be able to assess risk clearly and learn from any situation that they encounter.”

That sounded right to me, and honestly like advice that I should take.

Now, as I remind my children to “pay attention” when they take risks, I am reminded in return of a profound hope for them and for myself. I hope for our ability to attend to the world and the inner life with sensitivity and intuition, rather than with fear.

Control or Mastery

When our youngest son was about 9 months old (and would wake up very early in the morning), our family spent a few days of vacation just north of San Diego.  When our son would wake up, my wife and I took turns putting him in the carrier, leaving the condo, and walking on the pier built a quarter mile out into the Pacific Ocean.  

From the pier, even at 6:00am in mid-November, one could easily see a hundred surfers, tiny to our sight, bobbing up and down in the waves.  Each time a solid wave would approach them, a few surfers would stand up and take the wave, riding it masterfully to shore. 

I often wonder about the difference, in my own life, between mastery and control.

From the pier, the surfers showed us that control of one’s circumstances is not possible, but mastery of those circumstances is beautiful.

More of What Does Not Satisfy

Addictions make us think we need more of what, in the end, does not satisfy.

Yes, the obvious addictions, but also the more subtle ones.  

Avoidance of necessary or salutary conflict.

Destructive thought patterns.

Status.

Control.

Addictions are a trap, and seeing them with clear eyes is the first step toward freedom.

Fingerspitzengefühl

I am learning German, and so am developing a deep affection for the language’s compound nouns.  

Three words combine to make one of my favorites: Fingerspitzengefühl.

Finger is the noun for finger.  Spitzen is the verb for to sharpen.  Gefühl is a noun meaning sensation or feeling.

Literally, it means “the sensitivity in the tips of one’s fingers,” but is also understood more broadly as intuition or a sure instinct.  

So, let’s pray for the grace of Fingerspitzengefühl, in our interior lives, our relationships, and our work.  May our attentiveness and compassion be sharpened to be as sensitive as the tips of our fingers.

The Cultivation of Solitude

In our senior year of college, a group of friends began hosting “professor dinners” in which we crowded around a mediocre meal and asked a beloved teacher an impossibly difficult question.

In the final weeks before graduation, three professors were asked, “what is the greatest challenge of our generation?”  

The first answered, “the ability and conviction to speak truthfully.”

The second answered, “solidarity with the poor.”

Then, the third answered that “the cultivation of solitude” was to be our greatest challenge.

Wait… the WHAT?

Largely an overzealous, justice-minded bunch, reactions ranged from sceptical acceptance to muffled horror.  Didn’t this guy know about the urgency of the struggle for justice?  

Of course he knew.  But, he also knew that without solitude, we would not be centered within ourselves, be capable of sharing this center with others, or authentically build communities worthy of trust strong enough to bear the challenges of our age.

Neither Faith nor Works

In Scripture and Tradition, the conversation of “faith or works” is a well trod path.

Sometimes, though, it strikes me that a more present danger of our age is that we have neither faith nor works.

Certain ideological narratives can masquerade as faith, but have nothing to do with trust in a loving God.  And often this narrative only serves to whip up self-righteousness instead of actual work on behalf of real people. 

Let’s work and pray with each other instead.

Saving Frogs from the Pool

A friend once told me that, when he would visit his mother’s home, he found her preoccupied many times a day with searching her pool and screened porch for tiny trapped frogs.  When she found one, she would catch it in a net and release it into the yard.  

For her, the house was the extent of her sphere of influence.  This assumption limited how she considered the possibility of her life and thus bound how she chose to spend her attention and energy.

Certainly, to engage the world productively, we have to judge what is actually in our control, and then make prudential decisions about how to engage the world.  None of us is infinite.  

Too often, though, we encounter too little, and spend time stressing out over frogs.

Far better to encounter actual suffering and address it actively and compassionately.