The Confederacy of the Humbled

Count Rostov, the uniquely charming protagonist of A Gentleman in Moscow, experiences the loss of stature, influence, and the world he has known.  (Not a spoiler!  It begins on page 1.)  By way of recovery from this loss, he casts a new narrative and describes his inclusion in the “Confederacy of the Humbled”: 

“a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile.”

When live’s losses come for us, we have a choice.  We can rehearse and resent them, living within their confines.  Or we can pray for the grace to acknowledge and integrate them, reengaging life as wisely as the Count. 

God Made That!

For me, one of life’s finest joys is to be so thrilled by the creation of a book that I can’t imagine how it did not exist before.  

With unique thoughtfulness and passion, Kat Hoenke and Bill Jacobs, both professional ecologists and lay Catholic leaders, invite young people on a journey with the saints and through the bioregions of North America, in God Made That!. 

(Oh, and they also lead St. Kateri Conservation Center, championing biodiversity on church land.)

Thank you, Kat and Bill, for this generous work.

Missing the Meaning

It is possible to have an experience that means to teach us – be it something wonderful or something difficult – and to miss its meaning.

Maybe our attention is fragmented or stretched too thin.  Maybe we willfully resist the lesson. 

We should not be surprised if life keeps offering us this lesson because we have, as yet, been unable or unwilling to learn it.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Fix

When we feel threatened, our brains click over to fight or flight or freeze mode.  We attack, run, or seize up.  And this does not help us address the “threat” intelligently.

Ok, we have heard this before.

But there are two more (tricky) manifestations of this that also counterproductive, but less obviously so.

(1) FAWN: If the threat is coming from a specific person, we might fawn, resorting to flattery to appease the person and diminish the threat.

And

(2) FIX: If the threat is a situation, we might jump straight to try to fix the situation before understanding it in its totality.

The challenge, then, is to sit with the discomfort of the thing we perceive as the threat (that is, to resist whatever manifestation of the fight-flight-freeze-fawn-fix we are prone to) and to take the time we need to respond (instead of react) to the situation at hand.    

Leading for Lent

I’ve heard that action is the antidote to anxiety.  Recently, I’ve been wondering if it is not a little more specific. 

What if agency, exercising intention and leadership in an uncertain situation, is in fact the way that uncertainty becomes less intimidating and more manageable? 

And in situations where we seem to have no agency, we can learn to see that we do have a quite powerful opportunity: the possibility of gathering people together.  More than we know, we are capable of convening a meaningful gathering serving a need of people we live, work, or pray with. 

(I’ve recently picked up this book again to get better at this skill.)

Committing to convene a group of folks who need you is a cool thing to do for the liturgical season that started this Wednesday. 

That is, what if we chose to lead for Lent?

Too Expensive

Even if we were given a smartphone for free, it may still be the most expensive thing we own.

Our most precious resources are our time and attention.  Smartphones manipulate these two resources in ways that we do not see or even realize.

“Here are all the things to buy,” says the phone, “that will never satisfy.  Here is all the curated outrage and anxiety… and here is unlimited access to work (even compelling work!) at all hours at the day or night.”  

Unless we take measures to stop them, these things will distract us so thoroughly that we no longer know what we want to want.