I didn’t want to finish reading Finding Our Way Again-The Return of the Ancient Practices by Brian Mclaren. He describes the basic categories of the ancient practices of Katharsis, Fotosis, and Theosis and describes Spiritual practices as “about life, about training ourselves to become the kinds of people who have eyes and actually see, and who have ears and actually hear, and so experience not survival but life.� Of course the concept of training ourselves to accomplish things beyond our expectations is not a foreign concept to a person like me a non-runner who trained and ran a marathon just to see if it was possible. For some reason though while I understand that the body can be physically trained, things like one’s ability to write poetry, paint landscapes, or see God seem to have been placed in a whole different category in my mind. They are in the category of a divine gift of genius or saint. If there is anything to training oneself to wake up ones soul to God, the possibilities are endless. So here I go attempting to begin katharsis by fasting every Monday to cleanse me from my addiction to tastible pleasure so that I can better sense the deeper pleasures of the soul.
April 2009 Archives
This morning I almost threw out an orchid plan that I have had for two months. By now all of the flowers have dropped off and although the leaves remain a deep, brilliant green, I have no idea how to care for it until it blooms again. I have heard that orchids can keep growing for as long as humans can, but the thought of looking up how to take care of the plant along with the awareness of my lack of green thumb didn’t make me hesitate- at least initially- to toss it in the rubbish bin.
Then I had the thought that this lazy approach of throwing away what we don’t know how to care for applies so eerily to the way our society treats human beings. I may not be an orchid aficionado any time soon, but I can at least repot my plant and water it once a week. I guess the next lesson will come once it has been a year and has not bloomed and I am contemplating the rubbish bin again.
Henri Nouwen has the story that I have always wanted to have. There is a secret part of me that wonders if this is part of why I am going to law school. After twenty years in academia holding a high profile position as an author and professor at Harvard, he moved to L' Arche a community for the mentally handicapped. To be able to succeed on society's terms and then move "down" to redefine success and fulfillment seems somehow better than being accused of opting out of an admirable career track because you don't have the aptitude or ambition. Perhaps my admiration for his story was what made Nouwen's reflections on Christian life and LeadershipIn The Name of Jesus so meaningful. Throughout this slim eighty page book, Nouwen's reflects on his transition between his two "careers" and gives warnings against temptations common to worldly success. He ends with a powerful counterintuitive statement:
"If there is any hope for the church in the future, it will be hope for a poor church in which its leaders are willing to be led" [64]
Clearly the poor church, taken literally, is not what the American church is after, but the being led part is even more offensive to me personally. I think I have built up so many defenses against the concept of following because of both my hippy upbringing as well as the poor examples of people in the church who end up being led by poor leadership. Good leaders must know how to recognize the value of following and be able to discern who to follow. I am still at the beginning stages of recognizing my deficiency in the area of submission and following. Once again my reactionary nature has to be brought back to the center of paradoxical truth.
As seems to be the trend lately, I found myself reading another book on the monastic life. This one was unique in that it was written by a woman who lived the rule of St. Benedict for over thirty years in a monastic community. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily. My favorite thing about the Benedictine rule is the way it values the way daily living can be given a high level of sanctity. Although there is not a whole lot of practical advice about how to enact the rule in different circumstances, the definitions underlying each principle were revelatory. The description of humility, for example, includes the following:
"Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and they know it. And because they' re at ease with themselves, they can afford to be open with others." [64]
Perhaps the reason that this definition in particular stands out to me is that while I am comfortable with people that I feel are beneath me (yes, if I am honest there are people who still fit into this category), I have trouble associating with those above me. I wonder if this is because I have trouble receiving rather than giving. Just when I think I may be making some progress towards humility, I find a new aspect that I have yet to begin. As is usually the case, the pattern of my current life affords plenty of opportunity for practice (somehow God always seems to work this out) as my association with law students this fall, and the community of movers and shakers that my husbandBrad Abare seems to find himself magnetic with.
