Rose of the World

I had better write something. I'm trying to engage more fully in life during this season of the Nativity. Mostly, I'm remembering why I sometimes like to live on the periphery of my own consciousness: it's easier. The thing about fasting, about any kind of willing self-privation, is that it leaves you feeling empty. That is how I felt all day today. I wandered through my day, wander is the only appropriate word, feeling hollow inside. I kept asking myself why I felt that at the very center of myself all that existed was emptiness. This is why I fast--I fast so that I can come more quickly to the end of myself. If I am not distracted by food or media, by things that bludgeon my spiritual awareness with their facade of pleasantness, then I cannot escape a great awareness of my own lack. It's not a good feeling, but it's a true one.

There is this George MacDonald fairy story I like, "The Wise Woman", in which two horrid little girls--Agnes and the princess Rosamond--are kidnapped by a mysterious woman and thrown, separately, into a room of mirrors. In the room they are naked, left entirely to their own selves. It takes very little time to discover how ugly the world is if you are the only thing in it.

Nothing bad could happen to her--she was so important! And, indeed, it was but this: she had cared only for Somebody, and now she was going to have only Somebody. Her own choice was going to be carried a good deal farther for her than she would have knowingly carried it for herself. . . .All at once, on the third day, she was aware that a naked child was seated beside her. But there was something about the child that made her shudder. . . .The moment she hated her, it flashed upon her with a sickening disgust that the child was not another, but her Self, her Somebody, and that she was now shut up with her forever and ever--no more for one moment to be alone. 

Well, that is how I am beginning to feel. That's how I feel during every fast. When I strip away the things that distract me from a sober knowledge of my own self, I feel trapped in a world of mirrors. And at the center of the world is only my own Somebody. This is unpleasant. I wonder what it feels like to be in solitary confinement, are there any distractions then? Is there any way to turn away from a vision of your true self?

I think, eventually, after looking so deeply into the well of my own soul, I'll see something glimmering at the bottom. This something is grace, I think. It is the evidence of God working in my soul. The presence of the Holy Spirit, given to me as an inheritance, shining constantly through the murky, stagnant waters. In the meantime, I will try to see myself without flinching.

"My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad."

The Nativity Fast

 

Today is the first day of the Nativity fast. Christmas is actually coming! I have a really bad attitude about the fast just now because I don't want to give up any creature comforts. I've been feeling so tired and drained lately, and the things I have given up for the fast are the things I most typically use to comfort myself. But last year, I found that participating in the fast and using an advent wreath kept me grounded and unstressed in the midst of all that holiday frenzy. If there is anything I need, it is the space to be focused and calm. 

I need to compile a good reading list for the next 40 days. I'm hoping I'll write more regularly during this time as well. Here is a happy thought for the next forty days: "This is a joyous fast in anticipation of the Nativity of Christ." Jesus is coming!

I found the following tips and the aforementioned quotation on the website for the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (http://www.antiochian.org/node/18518): 

The Purpose of Fasting
The purpose of fasting is to focus on the things that are above, the Kingdom of God. It is a means of putting on virtue in reality, here and now. Through it we are freed from dependence on worldly things. We fast faithfully and in secret, not judging others, and not holding ourselves up as an example.

• Fasting in itself is not a means of pleasing God. Fasting is not a punishment for our sins. Nor is fasting a means of suffering and pain to be undertaken as some kind of atonement. Christ already redeemed us on His Cross. Salvation is a gift from God that is not bought by our hunger or thirst.
• We fast to be delivered from carnal passions so that God’s gift of Salvation may bear fruit in us.
• We fast and turn our eyes toward God in His Holy Church. Fasting and prayer go together.
• Fasting is not irrelevant. Fasting is not obsolete, and it is not something for someone else. Fasting is from God, for us, right here and right now.
• Most of all, we should not devour each other. We ask God to “set a watch and keep the door of our lips.”

Do Not Fast

• between December 25 and January 5 (even on Wednesdays and Fridays);

• if you are pregnant or nursing a newborn;

• during serious illness;

• without prayer;

• without alms-giving;

• according to your own will without guidance from your spiritual father. 

  
  
  Oh, here is one more quotation that sums up my thoughts on the subject:
  
  

  In light of the gross materialism of the secular Advent - the Christmas shopping season - the season of Advent has a valuable place in our spiritual lives. Through this season's emphasis on prayer, fasting and charity, the spiritual reality of Christ's Incarnation is brought to bear on our daily lives, thereby preparing us to welcome the Messiah into our hearts at time of His Advent.  -Fr. Lawrence Barriger (http://www.acrod.org/readingroom/spirituallife/on-the-nativity-fast)

   It's time to say, "see you later," to Ordinary Time.  
   
  Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways. 
  
  

A Living, Rushing Wind: On Creativity

Even in California, it's springtime. Birds are singing from the depths of their quick-beating, tiny bird hearts.

I'm re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water, and I'm discovering reality again. Why do I, a creative person, produce so little? Why isn't all of my free time given to writing diligently, like I ought to do? It's because I often choose to consume rather than to create.

Every day, every moment, I have to choose between consumption and creativity. I rarely choose creativity. In this materialistic world, it's really, really easy to waste your life consuming things instead of creating them.

When a person creates they are giving life, adding cosmos/truth/beauty to the world. When a person consumes they are using up resources--killing and destroying--ushering in a state of chaos. Cooking, reading, writing, loving, praying, worshiping--these create. Shopping, eating, Facebook, watching The Office, hating--these consume.

 Facebook and shopping are not evil, but they take away from the world. I am a consumer of life. Most of my existence has been spent taking.

Perhaps it's a question of balance. Consuming is all right, some forms of it are all right, if most of my life is spent creating. 

I think creativity is a way--a quite natural and simple way--to give to the world. The problem is that creativity is often difficult, exhausting, and frustrating, while consumption is easy and entertaining.

But, I would be a life-giver.

Creating is life giving, and holy, because it is an aspect of God's own Self. God benevolently gives. He lives. He creates life. If we are to reflect his nature, we too must create generously. Creation is an act of worship because to create is to imitate God's nature, and what is more worshipful than living in imitation of the One you adore?

It is much, much easier to consume when I come home tired at the end of a long day. To create I must be ready and attentive. It's hard to push past all of the noise and movement until I reach that still place, the still point, where creativity comes like a rushing wind.


Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.

My Tender Pioneer: On Work and Leisure

Life—is what we make of it—
Death—we do not know—
Christ's acquaintance with Him
Justify Him—though—

He—would trust no stranger—
Other—could betray—
Just His own endorsement—
That—sufficeth Me—

All the other Distance
He hath traversed first—
No New Mile remaineth—
Far as Paradise—

His sure foot preceding—
Tender Pioneer—
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture—now— 

Emily Dickinson

What is life, but to be near you?

 Do you think Jesus ever sought entertainment for himself when he was bored? Was he ever bored?

 I am a base coward.

Thoughts. I'm sure I have them. This week I've been wallowing in worldliness. Instead of attending to pain and emptiness, letting those things bring me to a better place, closer to the heart of God, I watched a couple seasons of The Office. Yes, that's what I did. During college, when every Christian I knew was watching the Office, I saw only two episodes of that show. Once, the British version during my study abroad in Oxford, and the second time, the American version, the following summer. When things are cool I do not care for them. That being said, why is it that the sight of the first 4 seasons of the Office sitting on my roommate's bookcase became the opiate for the masses of my weariness? When I don't even like television? In college, there were some memorable discussions about the nature of rest, work, and leisure. It makes sense now, these talks we had. I'm harkening back to one class session on the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass and one class lecture on Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis Of Culture, specifically. I have not yet read Pieper's work, though I ought to.

The general idea is this. Work and leisure are both times of productive, abundant activity. Leisure is a time for creativity and culture. According to both Douglass and Pieper, at no time should one's soul be deadened or one's intellect dulled. Life--rushing, brilliant life--should happen all the time. Leisure is not idleness: no more is it debauchery, no more is it dissipation. Leisure is contemplative, creative work.

Douglass' narrative describes the slaves' holidays: the slave masters offered up their slaves to drunken tomfoolery, knowing that just as backbreaking labor could not be sustained indefinitely, neither could Bacchic celebration. These kinds of tactics made the slaves happy to go back to their slavery, deceived into believing that leisure, or freedom, was not a good to be desired.

We talked in class about how Western culture follows this exact principle. Work too hard in your 9-5, give up all of yourself--too much of yourself--to your career, but then, the weekend comes. On the weekend, or even the day's end, pushed past healthy limits of productiveness, you seek drunkenness, sex, noise: any manner of over-the-top "leisure" to bring you back to balance. "Leisure" exists to make you forget that the rest of the week you have lived as a slave.

This, sometimes, is how I live. I don't really drink and I don't sleep around--I truly hate noise--but this is America: there are lots of opportunities for dissipation. This week, I chose to bludgeon my senses with the Office and too much Panang curry, instead of drowning my heart and soaking my spirit in a couple yellow mango margaritas and a one-night stand.

I need to live differently. Please understand, I love my job. I love my job as much as I could love a "for the time being until I figure out where I'm going to go to grad school and how to make a living not being a computer programmer/engineer/doctor/lawyer/physicist". It could just be that I'm too tired for the work that I do, that I'm not really up to it, or that this week was especially difficult. Or, it could be that I approach my job with the wrong attitude, that while I enjoy it, what I'm really waiting for is the weekend, or the end of the day, so I can "really" live. The problem with this is that when I get home I'm too spent (this is exactly the right word) to live according to my creative, child-of-God nature. I ought to be writing. I ought to be preparing papers to present at conferences, I ought to have friends over to cook or bake, and I ought to be baking and cooking whether or not anyone else is here. I ought to be reading poetry, trudging through French short stories, and cultivating my awareness of God's presence and favor. I ought to be building community with my roommate. I ought to be working on low-stress craft projects.

But this isn't what happens, or it is not what happened this week, when I come home.

When I come home I need to throw off the world, peel it off like a soiled skin, throw it outside to be burned, locking the door tight. I need to let my soul expand, and then feed it nourishing food. Steve Carrell cannot do this for me. Only Jesus can. There is something about satire, about watching other people live and work and worry, that is comforting (in a bad way) to my soul on a weekday evening. But what if I had instead written more on this blog? What would I have discovered? What if, in a week spent reading Lauren Winner's latest book about embracing life in the middle, I had actually been brave enough to live in the middle of my own twenty-something angst?

Sometimes I worry about the things I miss.

 I did read my Bible everyday. That's something. And I liked it. That's something else.

I want to be like St. Therese of Lisieux. I want to like only what God likes.

I need to do work-work and leisure-work more joyfully.

For next time. . .on bearing fruit and needing to be buried in the earth before you do.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things (turn my heart from wanting to watch the Office) and give me life in your ways.

Lenten Preparations

I'm trying to decide what I should give up for Lent. This will be my second year actually observing all forty days. It's so strange to consider giving up something I'd rather keep. It's also strange because I remember how very endless Lent felt last year, and how the best part of that experience, was growing in an awareness of my own wickedness. It's terrible to contemplate one's faults. But, this is the point I think. I want to give up an unnecessary thing that I have come to believe is necessary. Something I turn to for comfort, entertainment, or solace instead of turning to God, or simply sitting in the presence of my own emptiness. There are some options spinning around in my head right now, but I sometimes find it hard to choose wise self-denial over masochism. I also learned last year that fasts really reconfigure human relationships. If I give up, say, going to the movies, or eating out, then I'm denying pleasures for other human beings besides myself. Lent is great, I tell you, because it also made me aware that my actions happen in community. Maybe I should just decide to do everything more slowly. I want this year to be about slowing down in meaningful ways. I want to calmly savor life, instead of swallowing it whole and running for the door.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.