Resolving 2012

I had meant to send this out a few weeks ago but was simply too busy with writing other things to get it finished. And this in a nutshell is what the #1 item on my list for 2012 involves: time. Over the past six weeks I’ve learned that our loved ones, specifically children, need our time no matter what their ages be they four, eight or sixteen. It’s true that the younger ones are easier to dedicate time to because they are more apt to snuggle up with you and their pink blanket or smother you with unlimited hugs and kisses while the teenagers will roll their eyes and sigh a lot. Nevertheless time is what they want from you and it is what they all deserve. In 2012 I hope to spend more of that time with my oldest child but also with the others in my life who love me enough to desire the same.

Here’s my list of goals for a 2012:

• Make a morning offering each day. Simply kneeling down each morning to offer up the day ahead for God’s glory. This simple act will set the tone for my ability to have the energy to live out the following goals.
• Set aside time for at least 15 minutes of silent daily prayer. A little “one-on-one” fact time with God, whether at home or in church before the Blessed Sacrament.
• Get in at least 15 minutes of spiritual reading each day. Time spent in Scripture as well as any of the dozens of spiritual classics that I own. I bought a new commentary on The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis that I plan to read, as well as a few on Ignatian spirituality.
• Attend Holy Mass at least once per week and receive Holy Communion in the state of grace. I already do this, but my goal is to walk to St. Mary’s from my office at least once a week to attend Mass at noon.
• Pray the Angelus or Regina Coeli prayer each day at noon.
• Pray the Holy Rosary each day. Why? I’ll let Lynne, one of the Catholic Sistas, tell you. She does a fantastic job in Of P90X and the Holy Rosary. You really must read it.
• Make a brief examination of conscience each night before bed. An excellent bookend to the Morning Offering in order to close the day with an attitude of gratitude and of responsibility for actions taken.

"The Angelus" by Jean-Francois Millet, 1857

These first seven are items I took from a list written by Fr. John McCloskey. To it I will add going to confession once a month. But you said you wanted to spend more time with your kids, Jeff. How can you do that by adding all of these things each day? Well, if you add all of them up (except for the weekly Holy Mass) they will take a little over an hour out of each day. Plus some of these things I am already doing, if not more when you add in an occasional Morning or Evening Prayer from The Divine Office. So the additional time is not really an issue. In order to ensure that it’s not an issue I’m going to open more time in my daily schedule. How? By deleting my Facebook account for one thing. I’ve attempted to only check it during business hours off and on, but that’s just stealing time from my employer. And since I don’t always have my laptop or PC on at home I wind up spending way too much time engrossed in the screen on my Droid. This morning while walking back from Starbucks to the office I watched a woman get plowed into by a guy on a bicycle. He’d tried to avoid her but she was too busy checking her Facebook (she admitted this to me as I helped her up). A good friend of mine recently deactivated his Facebook account when he had been too busy checking it while giving a practice spelling test to his first grader and realized he had no idea whether his son had spelled any of the words correctly. I’ve tried for months to limit my time spent there, but repeatedly fail. So it’s got to go. Will I come back? Probably. But I need to go cold turkey for awhile. It will go black this weekend at some point.

I want to give my family and especially my children more of my time. I also want them to get the best, most “at peace” version of me that I can give them. The seven items above are designed to do this by providing a solid foundation for the day, the mind and the soul. It is from personal experience in the past “pre-Facebook” that I know this to be true.

Besides, it’s not like I’m falling off the grid. I’ve still got five separate email accounts(!) and this blog through which I may be reached. Just a few short years ago that was more than enough. It’s too much in fact, but it’s reality.

Now, what things am I going to try to avoid in 2012? Aside from Mayan Prophecies and reality TV I plan on avoiding:

• Comparing myself to others.
• Going “should” on myself.
• Trying to get people to like me.
• Interrupting others.
• Worrying about how I look.
• Working constantly.
• Failing to give people a break.
• Complaining about minor illnesses.
• Being a jerk.
• Avoid doing the right thing.
• Making fun of people.
• Being too hard on myself.
• Politics.

Once again, I’m lifting the bulk of this list from elsewhere but I’m incorporating them as my own. I don’t presently do a few of these but I decided to keep them on the list as reminders. I added “Politics” because 2012 is shaping up to be the most polarizing, ugly and nasty year in American politics that we’ve seen in quite awhile. Americans seem to politicize everything and because of this identity politics is rampant. Oh, you believe in x? Than you must be for y. There is a real effort to eliminate the ability for any person of faith to comment or hold a position on an issue. If he or she does, she is accused of dragging their religious beliefs into the public square. It is madness and an attempt to whitewash history. Each generation has vainly thought it was the “most enlightened” generation and that all who came before were ignoramuses who lived in the dark ages. A line spoken by Vizzini in The Princess Bride always comes to my mind when I consider this:

Vizzini: “Let me put it this way. Have you heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?”
Man in Black: “Yes.”
Vizzini: “Morons.”

If you recall that arrogance didn’t serve Vizzini so well. It doesn’t serve us either.

Tony Esolen wrote something pithy recently while discussing American politics that I copied down as it struck home to me while drafting this piece. He said

When one does not believe in a transcendent God, to whose goodness and wisdom none of us can measure up, then the Next Big Thing in sight becomes a god. I’ve been arguing that there are three candidates for Next Big Thing. In my mind they go by the names Baal, Pharaoh, and Adam: Nature, the State, and the Self. The Left now worships at the altars of all three, by turns. The secular Right worships at the altar of Adam, with sometimes a nod to Baal, and a nod to Pharaoh when he’s on the warpath. A pox on ‘em all.

Indeed. I see too many of us making a god out of the state. History is replete with this and sadly it’s happening again.

In 2012 we’ll celebrate the 600th anniversary of the birth of St. Joan of Arc (Jan. 6, 1412), the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens (Feb. 7, 1812), and the 100th anniversary of the opening of that baseball shrine: Fenway Park (Apr. 20, 1912). We will also commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and of the over 1,500 who lost their lives on that voyage on April 12, 1912.

It will be a year of reading books of course. Among the many I plan to read there are three major works I’ve put off for a few years and my goal is to finish at least two of them. The Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I’d started Brothers a few years ago but stopped after a hundred pages. I plan to start over. Of this giant among literature Simcha Fisher recently wrote:

I wish more people would give The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky a chance. It’s intimidating because it’s so long and it’s A Classic, but it’s surprisingly modern, and has everything you could wish for in a novel: unforgettable characters, crazy stories, laughter, blood, tears, sex, God, monks, prostitutes, puppies, etc. This book will change you for the better, if it doesn’t kill you first.

How can you not want to read that book?

It will be a year of baseball, birthdays, and blogging. Oh, and a little bourbon thrown in to smooth out the year.

And that’s my 2012.

What’s on your list? What do you just know you can do?

Peace, Trust and the One Thing

Earlier this week I posted stories of peace and of trust that also involved the sea. They reminded me of another.

Then he made the disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone. Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore, was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. At once [Jesus] spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how [strong] the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” After they got into the boat, the wind died down. Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”

The story of Jesus walking on the water is recounted three times in the Gospels, by Matthew, Mark and John. It is the story in Matthew that I thought of because it involved Peter and because in my mind it is the perfect example of why we need to have something in our lives to look to as a focal point. A home base. A lighthouse. A truth. We live in an age that tells us there is no truth. Or, that there are many truths, none of them better than the other. Well…which is it? The argument that “there is no truth” is self-refuting. If “there is no truth” then the claim that “there is no truth” itself cannot be true.

Now in this little blog post I’m not going to make an argument one way or the other for what I think Truth is. If you know me or have read me long enough you probably have a good idea of where I stand. Instead what I want to do here is to emphasize that as an individual you have to have some solitary truth or guidepost that you use to steer yourself through the trials of life. This is someone or something that you trust in above all to be your compass when navigating through life’s storms. And yes, it really should be One Thing. To have Many Things will only serve to create confusion and anxiety and relativism. There is only one “N” on our Boy Scout compass. There is one magnetic north pole. Imagine the confusion that would exist if when lost in the woods we pulled out our compasses and the needle kept fluctuating between directions. We have to have One Thing to trust in during times that we’re afraid.

The man sits upright, leans forward, and speaks intensely: “Josip, above all things you must trust it. Trust where it will take you.”

Josip covers his face with trembling hands.

“Are you afraid?” asks the man.

“Yes.”

“In your life, Josip, you will have much to fear. In time, you will come to a length of days, and wisdom, and goodness. You will suffer, and this suffering will bring much good to others.”

“I do not understand what you are saying.”

“You do not need to understand. Only remember: you will be afraid. But do not be afraid.”

In the example from Scripture, Peter is unafraid and able to walk on the water as long as he keeps his eyes focused on Jesus, who is Peter’s One Thing. And so it is with us in our endeavors. Successful businesses have a mission statement. Successful people have an over-arching goal. Where Peter gets into trouble and begins to sink is when he takes his eyes off of Jesus and is distracted by the wind. He has lost focus. He begins to flail and to sink into the water because instead of placing his trust in Jesus he worries more about the distraction of the wind, which wasn’t even the greater danger to him. St. John Chrysostom called this the fear of the lesser danger.

The sea caused his dizziness, but the fear was caused by the wind. The sea was the greater threat, the wind the less. As Peter was struggling with the sea, he was on the point of suffering more anxiety from the violence of the wind. Such is human nature that we so often feel exposed to the lesser danger but experience it as the greater. – The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 50.2.

This is where I think a lot of us get into trouble and off into the weeds because we look to another human being to be this steady rock of truth for us and human beings simply are not capable of it. Not our parents nor even our spouses. Certainly not our celebrities or our politicians. And yet this is where so many today look to put their faith and then cry out when their idols fall from grace.

So one key characteristic of our One Thing is that it must be something in which we can trust. Something steady. Dependable. A rock.

So what about peace? When I asked readers “where do you find peace?” I received the following responses:

Hiking… pretty much anywhere without sidewalks. In my opinion there’s no better place to commune with both the inner and the outer than in the raw of nature.

*****

My most inner peaceful moments are found right after the Sacrament of reconciliation…there is also nothing like being a free spirit in the presence of nature, I find peace and solace there too…which is why I frequently visit the nature world.

I thought these were terrific answers as I feel much the same way about nature. In “the cushion of the sea” we read that

The peace of God is that eternal calm which, like the cushion of the sea, lies far too deep down to be reached by any external trouble or disturbance; and he who enters into the presence of God becomes partaker of that undisturbed and undisturbable calm.

Again I turn to St. John Chrysostom:

For what purpose does he go up into the hills on the mountain? To teach us that solitude and seclusion are good, when we are to pray to God. With this in view, you see, we find him continually withdrawing into the wilderness. There he often spends the whole night in prayer. This teaches us earnestly to seek such quietness in our prayers as the time and place may afford. For the wilderness is the mother of silence; it is a calm and a harbor, delivering us from all turmoils. – The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 50.1.

Jesus withdrew into the wilderness to pray. Thoreau went to Walden to “live deliberately”. Churchill would go to Chartwell to paint and to read. Presidents of the United States go to Camp David.  Where is it that you go to experience a calm harbor?

Full moon setting over Walden Pond

I agree with my readers in that I find much of my peace in nature. I don’t believe you can grow up on the prairies of North America and not appreciate it for its beauty and its power. I’ve also experienced it on the Atlantic shore in North Carolina and in the mountains that surround Missoula, Montana. A long-term goal of mine has been to locate and purchase a cabin property in South Dakota that I can use as a getaway…a place to have time to myself to think and to commune and to write. But if I am unable to be outdoors when I’m needing peace I can also be found alone in our church in a pew reading  or praying by candlelight.

In this life we will all have to brave storms. During trials of faith or fidelity, when we will have to struggle to stay upright and keep our balance, we will need encouragement or a hand stretched out to us. Our One Thing will be a source of inspiration and sustain our wavering hope. Like Peter, we will need our feet set firm on the surface of the water when we begin to sink or be distracted by the lesser dangers. When drowning in our doubts and worries, we will know no fear because of something in which we trust that gives us a peace and clarity of mind.

The late, great Jack Palance played grizzled cowboy Curly Washburn in the 1991 comedy City Slickers. Curly’s Law is defined in this bit of dialog from the movie:

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: This. [holds up one finger]
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.
Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?
Curly: [smiles] That’s what you‘ve got to figure out.

Curly’s Law is about doing one thing. But I’m talking about more than doing. Because before we can do anything we have to have a foundation to stand upon for balance (trust) and protection from the storms (peace).

I know what, or more specifically who my One Thing is. He keeps me from drowning whether I’m on the stormy seas or on the dry lands and deserts of this life. We were introduced in a very unexpected way one afternoon thirteen years ago. But that’s another story for another day. This isn’t about me. I didn’t post the first two stories on Peace or Trust for me. I posted them for you.

And so now I’m asking you to take some time to think about you. What, or who, is your One Thing?

A parable of Peace

I read the following story today and it brought to mind a couple of related anecdotes and thoughts that I’ll post in the coming days. It was about something known as the “cushion of the sea.” Down beneath the surface that is agitated by storms, and driven about with winds, there is a part of the sea that is never stirred. When we dredge the bottom and bring up the remains of animal and vegetable life we find that they give evidence of not having been disturbed in the least, for hundreds and thousands of years. The peace of God is that eternal calm which, like the cushion of the sea, lies far too deep down to be reached by any external trouble or disturbance; and he who enters into the presence of God becomes partaker of that undisturbed and undisturbable calm.

To be continued…