Category: Personal

DV – Lenten Grab Bag

There’s been a lot on my mind lately, and I’ve opened wordpress to write something, and the words wouldn’t come. So today instead of writing a lot about a few topics, I’m going to write a little about a lot of topics. Lets get started.

Lent So Far

When lent began, I wrote an Ash Wednesday reflection for my substack, the Peasant Times-Dispatch. It includes a line that has gotten stuck in my mind and been swirling about since lent began, and I would say has colored my experience of this penitential season. The line is this: “Life is to Death as Lent is to Easter”.

Life is a time of preparation and prayer and penance, and then we die and (God willing) find our way to Heaven. Eternal glory, a lifetime of waiting. Lent is a season of preparation, prayer, and penance, and at the end is Easter. Finite season of glory, a finite season of waiting.

This lent has been fairly difficult. Life is busy and frantic and changing. It’s going how God wants it to go, not how I planned for it to go. Which is true about life, also. And if there’s a lesson this lent is teaching me that I can apply to my life as a whole, it’s the value of letting go.

Future As Liability

This is an axiom that has returned to me over and over this lent, and is written in the language of accounting but is not a new idea. The Future is not an “Asset” that can be depended on. The Future is a Liability. Nothing future is certain, nothing future can be counted on. God might call us home as we finish reading this sentence–we just never know. So the idea is to not count on tomorrow. Count on today, only. God gives us grace enough for today.

How this has changed my behavior is that I have a tendency to think too far into the future, or to put a lot of my worries there. By focusing on today, I can focus on what the next specific thing is that I need to do towards those worries that live in tomorrow. And if I can’t do anything, that means do nothing. It’s been primarily a call, in my life, to worry less and to be more present to people in my life.

Live in the present– St. Josemaria Escriva has been working hard in my life. When I chose him as my patron for the year, I didn’t realize how much of an activist he would be. St. Therese of Lisieux let me figure it out on my own, I feel like St. Josemaria is really putting some stick about. It’s been good because I’ve thought a lot about how I can listen to the people in my life, enjoy their company, and otherwise be present for and to people in whatever it is they need. I don’t know how successful I am, but the fact that I think about it a lot tells me it’s doing something.

Mary Is Real

For many reasons, I’ve been thinking about Mary. I prayed the Rosary for the first time in a long, long time this past weekend, and I realized that the Rosary is properly addressed to Mary. I know, crazy right? It’s an act of love and devotion to Mary. I think I was getting distracted by intentions, intercessions, by desperate striving for God to hear and answer my prayers. Have you ever talked to someone who wants something from you? It can be off-putting. But something clicked in my mind, about how I haven’t really expressed my love to Mary the way I would express my love to particular people in my life. Mary is “more real” than they are, as some have said. How do I tell Mary I love her? The Rosary is the way. The Rosary has been such a difficult devotion for me to get into, and it’s too early for me to say this shift in perspective is a success. But the Rosary has been an endurance hunter, stalking me across life, and I’ve felt it’s presence and finally lay down exhausted, and let it win. I prayed the Rosary a second time yesterday. I intend to pray again today. Because I love Mary, and I want to tell her.

Blessed Takashi Nagai

At the recommendation of Hambone, I’ve been listening to the audio book “A Song for Nagasaki” on Formed, a book about Bl. Takashi Nagai. It’s been a revelatory read, contains a lot of nuggets about the peasantly idiom in their perfected, active form–no longer theory, but observed practice.

Notable in the book is Bl. Nagai’s devotion to the Rosary (and that of his wife, Midori). Notable in the book is Bl. Nagai’s devotion to scripture. I’d started slowly reading the Psalms fairly recently, getting the idea from somewhere else (I now forget) to immerse myself in scripture and soak up by osmosis a love and devotion for God and to learn by this way how to pray. It’s too early to say if it’s working, but Bl. Nagai’s devotion to scripture rekindled this project and I am coming to love it as well.

A side note about the Atom Bomb: Zippy famously blew my mind by helping me realize that the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were heinously immoral. Bl. Nagai, merely one year after the bombing, offered a controversial perspective.

An Excerpt:

“Heavy clouds rendered [the original] target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Then a mechanical problem arose, and the bomb was dropped further north than planned, and burst right above the cathedral [at Urakami]. It was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb.

“God’s providence chose Urakami, the suburb, and carried the bomb right above our homes. Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war?

“Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II? Happy are those who weep. They shall be comforted.”

God uses tragedy. There is never a complete absence of Hope. But because we can’t count on the future, we can only make good out of what circumstances we find in our lives today. And if the blastwave come, may it find you serving God.

Back In Dixieland

I recently moved back to my home state of Virginia. I wrote a post when I left–I won’t link to it–and wanted to write a post on my return. Can’t yet, but anyway it’s so good to be home. To drive places that feel familiar, to not have to use a GPS to get around. The ground and trees and air all familiar in ways I can’t express but which feel tangibly real. I love Virginia. I’ve found a parish and, God’s perfect will notwithstanding, I hope it’s the parish I’m attending when I die. I’m tired of moving, (6 times in 10 years) and I don’t want to leave home again. So, time to dig in.

Fear of Flying

I historically am afraid of flying. I have had to do a lot of flying for non-leisure travel and it’s been an adjustment but I’ve figured it out, by the grace of God. It was on one such flight recently that I had a bit of a revelation. We were coming in for landing, it was mildly windy, so it was a little rocky but by no means the worst landing I’ve ever experienced. I closed my eyes and braced my head against the window to help me escape. And I realized–I’m a Christian, what good is being Christian if I can’t face circumstances like these fearlessly? If God is going to call me home at this moment, what reason do I have to fear? So I tried sitting up straight, tried keeping my eyes open. I left the window closed–one step at a time, you know–but it felt good to confront this fear in the context of being present and not counting on some future. If God called me home, I can hope that my reward would be Heaven. I hope I remember this in my other circumstances of life too.

Hope you all are having a fruitful and faithful Lent. God love you.

AMDG

CDLXVIII – Eclipse

Today is Solar Eclipse day, if you weren’t aware. I am not in line of totality, but I’ll be going to see what I can see.

I’ve talked about this before, perhaps, but I’m feeling romantic about the occasion. I like to joke that Space was my first love. I’ve been in love with the stars since I was a wee lad, and I was given a kids book with cardboard pages that showed planets and comets and all manner of space things. I can’t explain why. Someone (JMSmith perhaps?) suggested that a better description is “the heavens” and I always liked that, but I haven’t yet managed to make that language my own.

There’s something beautiful about the movements of the heavens and the heavenly bodies. The Grand Design of creation. Some people compete about the kind of existentialism space makes them feel. “Man I really feel insignificant looking at the stars.”

I always protest that I do not feel insignificant looking at the stars. It’s not that I feel significant–but in a strange, small way, God designed the heavens to be beautiful for us. He knew that we would look to the stars in wonder, and He wanted us to have something worth looking at. And God being God, he made it detailed, intricate, beautiful–a tapestry of infinite worth, a pearl of infinite price, an unattainable goal, an infinite well to study. In the movie “Moneyball” there’s a scene where an unlikely hero hits a home run, and Billy Beane leans back in his chair while watching the tape and says, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

I say–“How can you not be romantic about the heavens?”

Today is a Solar Eclipse, an alignment of the earth, sun, and moon. A brief moment where the heavenly bodies align just so and remind us just how big space is, how much bigger God is, and that this beautiful show could not have been coordinated by anything less than our all-mighty Father.

Perhaps I love space and have always loved space because there’s a little piece of me that always knew it was divine. Because somewhere in time and space and beyond time and space, in the eternal now, the Divine looked on creation, and some part of Him thought, “Scoot is gonna love this.” Not because Scoot is worth anything, but because that’s the infinite depth of God’s love for his dusty, meager, broken, fallen creation.

If you get a chance to see it, at the local peak of the eclipse–remember that this is a love poem from God to you written in the heavens. And say a little prayer, in love, back to Him–back to the Author of creation, who set the heavens in motion.

God love you.

AMDG

(z) – Notes on Angels

  • It is possible that an Angel descends upon anything we pour love into.
    • This follows that God loves each of us, and that is why we have guardian angels.
  • I first noticed this because […]
    • This logic makes sense with angels of places too–countries have guardian angels, principalities, etc. When we love a place, it has an angel. When we have a disordered love of a place, it has a fallen angel.
      • Idolatry means thinking the stuffed cow does anything on its own, that the stuffed cow qua stuffed cow has powers. That’s when the angel is a fallen angel.
  • I think pets don’t have souls but they do have angels, perhaps because we love them so much. An animal in the wild might not have an angel, but once you take it into your home, domesticate it, share your love with it, perhaps an angel descends on that animal and it becomes a pet.
  • I don’t think your favorite pet dog is in heaven, but their angel is. Dogs are animals and will be present in the resurrected life, and maybe they will all have angels associated with them and maybe dogs in the resurrection will live forever just as we will.
  • An Angel then means a messenger of God’s love.
    • Perhaps this is only the order of Guardian angels, which I understand is the lowest order of Angel. Perhaps a higher order of angel served the role of the Angel of Death at the Passover, or other angels noted in scripture.

I am not an expert on Angels, and in my conversations with others on this topic I have been shown where I don’t know nearly enough. But I thought this was interesting.

AMDG

CDXL – What Year Is It (2)

Alternate Title: A Nightmare Vision of the Future

I’m telling you, folks, this futurist’s substack has been great for my blog.

The question this futurist asked yesterday is “What science fiction technologies do you wish were real?”

Lots of predictable stuff. I even chimed in to suggest a space elevator or gravity manipulation, mostly because those are macguffins I use in my science fiction.

One comment presented a case for time travel that was alarming. I reproduce the comment in full:

Time travel so I could bring a bunch of climate scientists, activists and storytellers back for a redo on resisting fossil fuel companies. We’d send some to the 1870’s and some to each decade thereafter in a coordinated effort to short circuit the birth of the modern PR movement and paint fossils [sic] as the filthy planet-destroyers they are. That’s just for a start.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

First and foremost, the idea of using time travel for political activism is deeply disturbing. It never occurred to me, and I have thought about and written time travel based fiction. Politicizing time itself. Just wow.

The three privileged groups to earn their ticket to the past to save the future are Scientists, Activists, and Storytellers. Scientists willing to go back in time to push an agenda just are activists. Activists just are story tellers because they are trying to tell a convincing story, a persuasive story, about some thing being more bad than we think it is. So what our commenter is saying here is that three kinds of story tellers will be telling three different kinds of politically aligned stories. The scientists will tell stories that are based on numbers for academic audiences; the activists will tell stories based on people for political audiences; the storytellers will tell scary stories to the wider public. Psychological warfare across time and space, my friends, that is what we are talking about here!

Of course, there’s no alternatives. We built modernity on cheap, efficient, power. That’s why they claim the world is wrecked. They love modernity but the original sin was building modernity on dinosaur squeezings. We don’t get an empire state building, iPhone, etc without good cheap black gold.

I don’t know why the commenter chose the 1870’s. Why not the 1800’s? Why not 1700’s? Coal has been available for all time, only in the industrial revolution did it start getting used for good cheap easy power.

So problems we are dealing with: 1- Time Terrorism. I just can’t even believe that climate change somehow justifies that. Staggering. 2- No alternative for fossil fuels, so get used to wooden ships and whalebone skirts. 3- Law of unintended consequences. If the whole world discovered the wonderful power density of Oil and chose not to exploit it, then one group gets competitive advantage by exploiting it, and they conquer the world in tanks because everyone else’s green-energy trebuchet’s are useless against them.

Time terrorism. Just amazing. I can’t believe it.

AMDG

CDXXXIX – What Year Is It?

I’m kind of a snob about not reading news. I’ll see some offhand remark about some worrying headline and I’ll slide over, put on sunglasses, say, “Oh yeah? I didn’t know cuz I DON’T READ THE NEWS” then I’ll pop confetti and run away.

This has been great for stopping me from worrying about silly things like Chinese Balloons, Political court cases, or climate change. It isn’t so great for things like the weather, local crime alerts, or having conversations with normal humans.

I do occasionally get accidental exposure to television. I was in the gym of all places today (yes, be on the lookout for a sweaty, frowning Scoot, residents of [my new state]!) and there are TV’s above the cardio section. A smattering of local news, Fox news, HGTV, true-crime dramas, and college sports were being broadcast.

I had this weird feeling like everything was reruns.

It’s not the first time I’ve had this feeling either. I was listening to the radio–there’s a catholic station [I] found–and it was broadcasting Catholic Answers Live, and there were live callers and Q&A and timely, topical questions and answers and discussions. For the life of me I couldn’t treat it as real. It was entertainment, my brain was processing it as if it was recorded weeks ago and rebroadcasting it now because some schmuck tuned in and they didn’t have anything else planned.

At the gym, it was the same: I couldn’t process anything that was on TV as a thing that was actually happening in real life. It was pre-recorded entertainment–all of it. Even the live TV.

I can’t quite put my finger on what it was about. Perhaps it’s a sign that I’m free–I’ve detoxed from television and now it feels alien and weird? Perhaps it’s a sign that I’m cynical–it feels like entertainment because it’s all scripted, even the news?

It doesn’t feel good though. It feels like the Truman Show. Like I am watching something that happened to someone else and they don’t realize they’re on TV. I feel like a time traveler. I feel like I don’t know what year it is. I want to ask people “When did this happen?”

I offer this for public comment or criticism.

AMDG

CDXXXVII – Ride The Rails

I.

In a previous post I introduced an idea I want to expand on. To fully grok it may be a walk. Bear with me and we will make it together.

There are two important predicates. First is that the most important priority of life beyond all others by far is to get to heaven. Nothing even comes close. More on this in a second.

The second important predicate is that there is nothing we can do to hasten or delay Christs coming again, and the Eschaton. The day and the hour and the moment is set, in time and beyond time. And it is known only to God.

Here’s how the rest of this article will go. I’m going to expand on these predicates, I am going to explain how understanding them has helped me, I will answer some obvious objections, and then I’ll bring it all together and serve up the punchline. Here we go.

II.

The first predicate is that our top priority is to go to heaven. Why is this? By top priority I mean this is the consideration that should govern every aspect of our thinking. That’s what growth in virtue is all about— does this thought, word, or deed make me holier or less holy? If we govern every aspect of our lives by this standard then we become good people and we can be a little more confident of heaven.

Beyond that, all other concerns shrink to insignificance. Self mastery, stoicism, theyre all about not becoming depressed by a rotten world that is trying its best to make us rotten too. World events, bad news, good news, headline of the day—these are distractions on the journey, not landmarks. So keep your focus and keep your eyes on heaven.

Obvious objections to this predicate include things like, “oh, I should be a jerk to my family and friends and not care about them?” Or “I have a lot of things I need to worry about. I cant worry about heaven when I’m struggling to put food on the table” or “Yeah but the other team is gonna make your life miserable if they take control so in order to have a happy life you have to worry about winning this game”.

Valid concerns, all, and I have presented them with snide flippancy.

The first objection is concerned with how we treat people when focused on heaven. I repeat myself: every thought, word, and deed ought to be aimed at holiness. Holiness is not a license to be mean, degrading, disregarding of anybody. We ought to love our neighbors, even if they are big fat and stupid. A person who is mean, degrading, or disregarding and says they do so in the name of holiness is doubling their error by causing scandal and giving Catholics a bad reputation. If someone is doing this they are doing it wrong.

The second objection is concerned with how we handle obligations when focused on heaven. Similarly to the first objection, focusing on heaven is not a license to ignore or abandon our daily duties. In fact we ought to handle our daily duties with more vigor and enthusiasm because they are making us holy.

The third objection is concerned with how we handle the worldly games we set up for ourselves to cause trouble for each other. Politics, economics, culture wars, you name it. All of these are big distractions. Are you closer or farther from Heaven by participating in politics? It depends. Are you closer or farther from Heaven by investing? It depends. If the economy is good or bad, does that determine whether you get to heaven? No. If people like you or hate you, does that affect whether you go to heaven? Not really. These are Earth games for Earth people. We play heavenly games because we are an Easter people. None of this stuff matters in any meaningful, heavenly sense of the word.

Now, all of this is not to say that our daily concerns don’t matter in an earthly sense. Earthly things matter a great deal–we do need food and drink and raiment, but Christ says (badly paraphrased:) “Seek first the kingdom of heaven and all these will be added unto you.” In other words: Get your priorities straight. Heaven first, earthly concerns second.

III.

The second predicate is that we do not have the power by any means whatsoever to move the date and time of Christ’s return to earth by one moment. He is coming when He is coming. I can pray a lot, I can pray a little. My team can win, my team can lose. I can be successful and rich, I can be a pauper. Christ could find Faith on earth, or he could find evil having conquered it all. As far as we know, Christ is coming by the time you finish reading this sentence. Are you ready?

This attacks the same problem as the first predicate from the other direction. The first predicate says, “How can I govern my life in a way that is pleasing to God?” The second predicate says, “What influence do I have over God?” The answer to the first is to seek first the kingdom of heaven, the answer to the second is absolutely none. So the question upon hearing this is, why is [XYZ] so important to you?

You might answer with the first objection: “If Christ is going to come back when he comes back, regardless of the state of the world–what is the point in trying to make the world better?” If you are living according to the first predicate–conducting your life in a way that is prioritizing getting to Heaven–then you already are making the world better. Just by living that way.

What you might mean by this question is, “How can I make other people agree to make the world the way I think it should be,” and that is not the right way of thinking about it. You focus on you–getting yourself to heaven. Then worry about your family, your friends, your community, your parish. When you have everyone up to the Parish level on the boat and ready for the flood, you have done something extraordinary. I guarantee you can be in the holiest parish in the world and still have your work cut out for you.

So politics, economics, culture–these are child’s play. These are not even the best levers we have of making the world a better place. Concern yourself with yourself, and with those in your care and custody, and you will find your local sphere improving by tiny steps every day. If you are persistent at it, and don’t move away from home, then you will end up with multigenerational influence in setting the tone and culture for the area you live. And that’s without worrying about anyone else! Imagine if everyone took the same scrupulosity to their own souls!

The second objection to the second predicate is to ask, with all sincerity: “It is not good that we should be persecuted or suffer ills at the hands of others. Shouldn’t we want to stop that, even if it doesn’t move the Eschaton one jot?”

The answer is–yes, we should WANT to stop persecution and suffering ills at the hands of others. But we need to be perfectly candid and honest with ourselves about what tools we have at our disposal. The first is prayer, are we praying? The second is what I described above–are we working hard to make ourselves, and those in our care and custody ready for Heaven? Leave worrying about Caesar for the romans. The only King that matters to you is Christ the King. If the government decides tomorrow to persecute you, specifically–there is nothing you can do to stop that. You can do all the right things, sign all the right petitions, vote for the same party in every election, save your money responsibly from your very first job–you can do all those things, and still lose to one determinedly evil man. God doesn’t promise us success he promises us a home in heaven–IF we earn it.

IV.

So how have these predicates helped me? It’s helped me to endure sufferings big and small at the hands of others. Having a bad day? Offer it to God–it’s helping you to be Holy! Bad news on the TV? Pray for them! Help people who are suffering to be holy! Not getting what you want? Offer it to God! Pursuing the Kingdom of Heaven and having that in mind all the time really does affect how you experience the world. You will have more patience than you had before, for minor inconveniences and little sufferings. It’s also helped me to put everything in perspective: Christ is coming when he is coming, so I ought not get worked up about this election or that headline or this war or that travesty of justice. God will get the last laugh in all of those things. As long as I am not making any of those things worse, as long as I am doing what I can to make my little pocket of creation better, I can at least try to be ready for when Christ does come, or when Christ calls me home, whichever comes first.

V.

So what’s the punchline? The punchline is that we do not actually control events: we are riding life on rails.

If there’s war, there was ALWAYS going to be war, and it’s God’s design that there is war. It’s God’s design that we freely choose war. We cannot prevent it and we cannot hasten it. It begins and ends according to God’s will. If there is a pandemic, it begins and ends according to God’s will. If there is a depression, it begins and ends according to God’s will. Even our reaction to surprises is included by God in His master plan for life, the universe, and everything.

We are on a roller coaster. It has ups, it has downs. We laugh, we cheer, we scream. But we can’t get out. We just have to do our best with the time we have been given in our spot on the ride. And one day the ride will end, and we will look back and see how God designed it that way, and wonder how we ever lost our cool at things not going the way we wished. We are riding the rails of life. It’s not a choose-your-own-adventure–there is only one adventure. We are in it. There is no alternative universe, there is no other outcome. This is the life we have been given. Live in it! Live for Christ in it! And see how much less all those distractions outside the ride matter, when we learn to experience the ride well.

AMDG

(x) – Do As You Would Be Done By

I don’t communicate very well. That’s why I like writing, I can express myself thoughtfully, deliberately. I can take my time. If you ask me to speak off the cuff I sound clumsy, confused, muddled, possibly stupid.

I also am not very open. I have a lot going on in my head and I am aware of my thoughts and feelings but if you ask me to “just say whats on your mind” I freeze. Suddenly my thoughts are like molasses in a pressure washer—they’re going nowhere, fast.

I was praying about something earlier and I noticed, as usual, God didn’t really talk back to me. He doesn’t say, “Hey, Scoot, I’ve got it under control”. He doesn’t say, “Message received, Scoot, I will see what I can do”. He doesn’t say, “You know Scoot that’s really the wrong way of thinking about all this.”

I get silence.

Now, in some ways it has helped me to trust in God more. I don’t know what He listens to (he listens to everyone, of course, pardon my loose language), but I see His handiwork every day of my life. It’s like I am a tourist on a construction site. God is building things around me and its my job to observe and keep out of His way.

But I can’t help but think God is communicating to me the way I communicate to others. Silently. A surprising consequence of the “do as you would be done by” principle. I know people who feel God reaching out to their lives, who can feel God speaking to them at various times or in various situations. They are also much more open—they tell people what they think. Does God communicate to them because they communicate to others?

Maybe God just likes communicating to me in writing, too.

Comparison is the thief of joy so there’s no point in dwelling too long here. God loves each of us and speaks to each of us differently. Maybe some of you can confirm or deny my observation. If you feel God talking to you, are you very open? If you do not, are you a tough nut to crack? Any tough nuts feel God speaking to them? Any open souls feel God is silent?

AMDG

CDXXI – Who is Right? (Crosspost)

See the original, published on Substack

All my life, I have had this fascination with religion. It was the opiate of the masses, the Sunday duty, the transcendent mystery–it was the question that cut to the core of every individual human experience: Who created us, and why? It wasn’t until I was older that I realized “fascination with religion” was really a thirst for Truth. It wasn’t until I was older that I abandoned the set of answers I inherited from my family–the answers prescribed by the Anglican Communion–for the solid ground of the Catholic Church.

Continue reading CDXXI – Who is Right? (Crosspost)

CDXVIII – Treasure and Terms

I was thinking of how to answer the prompt in a recent post about what things we treasure. I tried answering it and I found a good pattern, and thought that might be helpful to some of you.

The prompt was to think about “Non negotiable, unalterable terms”. These are things–treasures–which we resolve to protect with violent force if necessary. These are things offenses against which we will not tolerate in any company. The benefit of thinking about this is that we create a “confidence circle” within which we can operate comfortably and confidently knowing that we are doing a good and right thing, and we will not let anyone or anything disturb our peace about that. If someone disturbs our peace about our non negotiable, unalterable terms, then something is wrong with them and not us.

The rules I set for myself when thinking about this was that I would start from the inside out: What is the biggest treasure and most fundamental term, which supports all other treasures above it, and without which none of those treasures matter, and against which all other treasures must be capable of transgressing. And once the foundation is established, work my way up.

The pattern that developed was something like this.

First Level: God – God is the root of everything, so sensibly ought to be the first and most fundamental. My God, my faith, my Church, my devotions all fall under this category. No offenses against God ought to be tolerated; and nothing else I have matters without God.

Second Level: People – My life, [and] families fall under this level. They are treasures in their own right, but also capable of transgressing against the first level, which is God. We ought to educate ourselves, those people close to us, so that they do not transgress against God; we ought to resolve to protect these people with violent force if they face determined offense; nothing else we have matters if we do not have these people in our lives.

Third Level: Life & Livelihood – These are the things we do in our lives that support and enhance every preceding level. Our jobs, our education, our recreation and hobbies, I also include our possessions and belongings here. I would not accept a job if it required me to sacrifice anything on the preceding levels; I would not engage in a recreation if it offended against any of the preceding levels; I would not purchase a good for my use or my home if it was contrary to the previous levels. Yet, once I have properly aligned my life & livelihood, anything that transgresses against these things I would reject with violent force if necessary. No one may take my possessions or limit my recreations unjustly.

Fourth Level: Beliefs and Ideals – These are the truths we hold dear. You may be surprised it is this far out from the center, but rather than being fundamental, it serves as a protective shield. We don’t hold beliefs that transgress below, neither do we allow higher levels to transgress against our beliefs and ideals. Think of it this way: Once God is foundation, and the people are in place around us, and once the people around us are taken care of, then our beliefs will solidify. The beliefs and ideals serve as the foundation for everything beyond, which is not much.

Fifth Level: Community – These are the friends and relations who are in our lives but not essentially so. They enrich our lives but I would not defend them with the same vigor that I would defend […]. Yet–as my community, I would defend them against anything that sits at a higher level.

Beyond – Anything higher than this fifth level falls under the category of Enemies, Strangers, or Foreigners–which are words I use to signify people we don’t like, people we don’t know, and people we don’t understand, respectively. Each of these three categories can transgress against our community, and we ought to defend and protect our community vigorously, and seek to support them. Enemies we ought to keep at arms length, strangers we ought to employ reasonable suspicion, foreigners we ought to make reasonable pains to make them understood.

Now, in each of these levels there are specific items which are worth listing. My writing endeavors fall under the third level: they are recreations I enjoy which help make me whole, yet which ought not offend against any of the people closest to me, nor God. This is not to say my writing can be offensive against my beliefs and ideals and my community, but rather that if I am compliant with the preceding levels then I will have no difficulty remaining consistent with the succeeding levels.

Maybe this is all very obvious to you already, but it was a helpful exercise to me to think about, and I hope there is something valuable in all this for you, too.

AMDG

CDXVI – Neither Treasure Nor Trash

I saw a video today that included this fantastic line, which I had never heard before:

“If I could buy you for what you are actually worth, and sell you for what you think you are worth, I would be a wealthy man.”

The opposite is also true, for some: if you bought them for what they think they are worth, and sold them for what they are actually worth, you’d be rich.

This quote was offered in the context of controlling anger, and the idea is that how much value we place on a thing determines how we react to an offense against that thing. If I crumple up a note you wrote to yourself, who cares; if I crumple up your lifetime achievement award you might be angry. Some of us value ourselves too highly, so we get angry at offenses we perceive against us. Some of us don’t value ourselves enough so we don’t get angry at offenses we ought to get angry at.

These ideas are, of course, not new. But I am an accountant so the language of value stuck out to me. How do we make sure we have a proper assessment of our own value, such that we get angry only when we ought?

This sounds like a lesson in humility but it’s a little different. Humility is of course the virtue involved, but the goal is less growing in virtue and more in tearing down some insidious weeds of self love. These weeds can grow unnoticed for a long time, and its very easy to think we do not have them. Everyone does, I am not afraid to raise my hand first.

So given that we have this stealthy, perhaps as yet unidentified love of self, how do we find the weeds and kill them?

The first step in any project ought to be to plan. Pray for God to reveal those areas where we treasure ourselves too much. Do an examination of conscience, go to confession. Meditate on the last occasions you were offended or angry. What were you offended or angry about? Who offended or angered you? What exactly did you do in response that you wish you did not do?

Don’t be afraid to really dig in. Sometimes self love hides in surprising places. Think about the things you don’t want to give up. Is it a physical object? A relationship? A wound? A grudge? A memory? An excuse? What about it do you not want to give up? What about it do you treasure?

Once we have identified probable areas of self love, what is the remedy? What can we do to fight against it? Aristotle said to acquire a particular quality you must do particular things—this sounds obvious. So to acquire the quality of not excessively loving oneself, we must perform particular acts which are against that self love. The contrary act to self love is to be selfless. I will suggest two ways to cultivate selflessness as an act contrary to self love.

First: Gratitude. As it pertains to the area you have identified for self love, make a list of all the people to whom you are grateful for giving you the gift you love. If Johnny is getting big for his britches about his baseball career, if he thinks about all the friends, family, coaches, trainers, teammates, strangers, whose encouragement helped him along the way, he will not be so prone to think of his career as his own success. likewise with our own areas of self-love. We will begin to think less that we are the one responsible for our blessings, and more that others have helped tremendously to give us those blessings. Don’t forget to acknowledge the role God has had to play!

Second: Service. If Johnny is getting big for his britches, helping others succeed at baseball will help remind him how much work it was, help him remember the people who helped him. Even serving in an unrelated capacity—a soup kitchen down the street—can remind him that there are people out there with less than nothing and he ought to have a little more gratitude for the things he does have.

Now, here’s the quandary: what if we start sounding like the Pharisee? “Lord, I contemplate those I am grateful for, for three hours every morning. I serve at six soup kitchens, and contribute frequently to the collections”—in other words, what if we start loving ourselves for our own virtue?

We ought to remember that virtue is a free gift from God, so it is not really ours, and certainly isn’t won for us by our own efforts. Everything we have comes from God and that includes the attributes we like about ourselves. If we fear we are too proud of our own holiness, I tend to think the solution is to stop talking. Go on a listening tour. Talk to people about their lives, their struggles. Talk to them about their virtues and even their vices. Stop talking about how good we are and start listening to how good others are. Start looking for how God is working in others lives and start trying to appreciate how God has worked in our own.

Now, what if we have the opposite problem—not that we are our own greatest treasure, but that we are our own worst trash?

Well, turns out Gratitude can help with that too. What are the things you have that you can be thankful for? Anyone—even in the deepest despair—can list three things: life, the love of God, and a sense of gratitude. Maybe those are the only things on your list, but they are important, and through them you will quickly see you have more things to be grateful for than just those three.

Furthermore, rather than service, someone who does not value themselves enough ought to think about what things in their life are worth defending—what are their treasures? What about ourselves do we treasure?

We should contemplate what we treasure so that we can think to ourselves how we will protect that treasure. I have my life—will I let some bully beat me up? Will I let some robber make me afraid for my life? No: I am going to draw a line and never let it be crossed.

These have been referred to elsewhere as NUTs—non-negotiable, unalterable terms. These are the lines we draw within which we can safely love ourselves and across which we will let none pass. If Billy is feeling down but he loves to draw, he can draw a line around his drawing and say “You know what I am happy with my drawing and I won’t let anyone tell me I should give it up.” Once the terms are drawn, you can appreciate your own value safely in the knowledge that you wont let anyone bother you in that specific area. And if you cultivate gratitude, you will be inoculated from loving yourself for your drawing too much.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and you won’t properly reorient your sense of self worth in a day either. But I hope this meditation has given you something to think about. I wrote this because that video spoke to me and made me ask myself where I love myself a little too much; and where might I love myself not enough. I wanted to give myself some practical advice on how to contemplate these things, so I hope you get something out of it as well.

AMDG