I joined the gym.
Just like that, way more than I wanted to spend and never sure if I’m on another whim, I’m in.

In this cult of the body we live it’s hard not to get carried along by the popular obsession with tight thighs and a tidy waist. It’s all about being driven, focussed, creating the life you want, being who you want to be. To summon up such drive feels like a violation to my Carmelite sensibilities so I have generally settled for gentler ways to move my body.

But now I’m in. Locked in and once I’ve paid for something I don’t like going back.

Toughing it out

I was only on the cross-trainer for two minutes before I felt a shaken inside. I could feel my heart racing and my thighs begin to hurt very quickly. My head got a bit spinny.

‘I haven’t had breakfast yet,’  I explained to the trainer wanting to hide my lack of toughness.

And that’s what it is – lack of toughness.

I’m not unfit so I know now what I was experiencing wasn’t just physical weakness. It was more like a deep and hidden fear of doing anything to hurt myself, push myself, move out of my comfort zone.

We’re not long out of Lent and during that time I could smell a distant and imperceptible scent of joy – the joy of freedom from all sense of preciousness and self-concern. My body still holds the imprint of all sorts of hesitations, retreats, petulance, complaints and cowering and wants to retreat all over again as these memories rise up to meet me as I offer it a challenge.

I think it’s time I shed the weight of all this apprehension and take this cautious body into some new and difficult places. I may even get back to the blogging!

Photo credit: DVIDSHUB

“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland

I don’t know if it’s wise taking quotes from famous people too seriously if you’re bent on a spiritual life. But sometimes I’m prodded into a more honest way of looking at myself with advice from the most worldly and superficial quarters.

It must have something to do with the daily struggle. The struggle to be with God. To be good. When we live through a world that is just so not into the godly.

It’s the children of the world that do often have the most sensible advice when it comes to dealing with the world they know so well.

A sincere heart

I’ve been meditating on sincerity today. Being who I say and believe myself to be without caution, hiding or hedging. You just don’t know what people will think when they pick up that you may not be as enthusiastic as they are about sport, politics, shopping, holidays, house renovations, job advancement, the latest TV shows. I get as obsessed with these things as much as the next person at various times but I have to admit a lot of the time my heart’s just not in it.

Can you see the problem?

If God really sets out to transform you, to set you apart, to be a chosen people. Well, doesn’t that make you just a little weird?

When I feel weird then I begin to wonder should I really be someone else? Should I disguise my weirdness just a little so it’s not too obvious?

In my heart I know the answers to these questions of course.

I may be weird to some, yes. But weird in a way that God loves me that way. And if I can fully accept and embrace my own odd self then I am just that more embracing and accepting of every other odd self I have the great joy and privilege to meet with.

If I don’t break this sense of security that comes from conforming then I will never be free. I will never be able to speak the truth without adornment and I will never know what it is to stand out by living differently to the way I am defined here.

Emerson noted that we can expect to be heckled occasionally

For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face.

He did continue though with an encouraging observation:

but the sour faces of the multitude…have no deep cause, but put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.

Photo credit:Grudnick

The Way of Perfection

And now we journey into our second stage of reading in preparation for the centenary of the birth of St Teresa of Avila in 2015.

I’ve started The Way of Perfection and straight away it seems a more direct treatise on prayer than Life. I don’t want to do a literary analysis but what I notice from listening to the first four chapters is that Teresa seems much more confident in the wisdom of her own experience in this later work.

She is so insistent at times that I really want to take it in.

Seeking perfect poverty

In Chapter 2 she speaks to her nuns very sternly about being concerned with their material needs.

I wrote some time ago that I think that the Catholic value of ‘poverty’ can just as easily lead us down a miserable road of limited possibility and powerlessness as it can build virtue. There is little virtue in being poor if you are rich with superiority, envy, bleakness, anger at your situation, anxious thoughts or hopeless longing.

But it’s not just about money is it? What’s this ‘poverty’ is all about?

Teresa states,

Never seek sustenance through human schemes, for you will die of hunger – and rightly so. Your eyes on your Spouse! He will sustain you! [Way of Perfection, 2:1]

This made me think about the sorts of human sustenance I am often tempted to draw on when I’m ‘hungry’:

• An approving nod from a superior at work that makes me feel important
• The love and admiration of my colleagues that convinces me of my future success
• Dollars in bank to make me feel safe and secure
• An extra glass wine or a sweet treat ‘because I’m worth it’
• The sense of accomplishment when I complete a task that lets me know I am in control of my life

But these things are so normal! So necessary! So psychologically healthy! What is this strange doctrine I am following?

A lean and hungry look?

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

[Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 190-195]

St Teresa was never so silly as to deny the need for sustenance. I need all these earthy things. My life would be impoverished in the most undesirable way if I did not enjoy such sweet tastes.

I think the loss of direction comes more in the continual seeking of these experiences, when I spend my time searching and waiting for that next fix that tells me I’m alive.

So I will listen attentively to her advice as I go about my hungry day:

Your eyes on your Spouse! He will sustain you!

Photo credit:testspiel

There is a wonderful piece of absurdist theatre, a ‘tragic farce’ by Eugene Ionesco called the The Chairs.

For 80 (sometimes excruciating) minutes the audience must watch an elderly couple do little else but set up chairs and greet invisible guests who have come to hear the Old Man’s message to the world. His great message is the culmination of a life’s wisdom that will save humanity.

The couple cling bitterly to conflicting memories of a faded past and disappointed aspirations. The bleakness is balanced by vaudeville-style comic scenes building to the dramatic climax of the great message.

Not trusting his own powers of expression, the Old Man has engaged an Orator to deliver the message. It is only after the couple commits suicide that Orator stands to deliver the GREAT MESSAGE to the audience – but he is deaf-mute and cannot relay it.

Ionesco said that the play:

is not the message, nor the failures of life, nor the moral disaster of the two old people, but the chairs themselves; that is to say, the absence of people, the absence of the emperor, the absence of God, the absence of matter, the unreality of the world, metaphysical emptiness. The theme of the play is nothingness. [Curtain Up Review]

God and nothingness

Such a nihilistic view of the world may seem at odds with Christianity – but not for me.

The Chairs is a dark and comic portrayal my own self-delusion, the emptiness of worldly endeavour and the disintegration of the God-in-my-own image that I so easily idolise. As I imagine self-gratifying conversations, approval from people I admire, myself living like lives I sometimes envy, I have to stop and remind myself of such frivolity.

It’s so easy as soon as I remember those rows of empty chairs, the grunting Orator pathetically alone on the stage and an audience with a pointless performance.

I laugh at this when sometimes I long for that GREAT OPPORTUNITY to explain myself to humanity.

Photo credit: Marcus Kyd

It always astounds me how saints can seek out humiliation and suffering.

It can sound a little sick to one unschooled in faith. I’ve often longed, not for the suffering (because I can be pampered and petulant), but just to be able to understand how someone could be so deeply in love that they welcome with joy any chance at all to be put upon.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I get a tantalising glimpse of such freedom and I’m deeply grateful for this grace.

Imagine being as indifferent to the bitterness of life as St Thérèse when she says,

At times my soul tires of this over-sweet food, and I long to hear something other than praise; then Our Lord serves me with a nice little salad, well spiced, with plenty of vinegar—oil alone is wanting, and this it is which makes it more to my taste.[Story of a Soul, 10]

Spoken like a true Frenchwoman.

Photo credit: catsper

Hiatus (n): a break; a small difference in pitch between two musical tones.

We all need to bed ourselves down sometime.

This is the longest break I have had from writing here since I started. I noticed that much of my reflective writing in general had stopped too.

Adjusting to demands

What’s going on when patterns of prayer, work, reflection change? Is that enough to decide that life has taken a different direction, drop what you are doing and work on something else? Is perseverance doggedly doing the same thing day in day out until you drop? Or is perseverance having the confidence to be flexible, knowing you will return and the courage to start again?

As Carmelites, prayer is life. And our life is a life in prayer. So all these lessons of life are lessons in prayer. I know sometimes I need to let go of certain activities: the daily meditation, morning or evening prayer or Mass. There are just so many other things to do, other ways to serve, to work and other ways to pray.

We are called to silence and sacraments and we are called to visit the sick, care for our family, look after our home, reach out into the community and the apostolic life.

What’s more all this must be done with love. Without love there is nothing. So when love seems to dry up we need to realign, shift our activities or approach. There is no simple solution here. Sometimes it might mean pulling back, taking things a bit more easily and looking after ourselves.

These are the sorts of things I might do when I feel this way:

• Just read a psalm or do a short prayer instead of evening prayer
• Go for a walk with a rosary rather than morning prayer
• Read something of St Teresa before bed instead of meditation
• Sleep
• Stretch
• Stop reading newspapers, watching television or socialising
• Read some fiction
• Nap
• Listen to classical music
• Do things quickly and simply instead of perfectly and elaborately
• Let the routine activities go
• Be deliberately late for work
• Skip a meeting to just lie on the couch all afternoon

How do we pull away from self-concern?

This would be a very poor way to get to heaven if any of these things became a habit. Our Carmelite teaching is filled with much advice about how to overcome our will and make that difficult ascent. So at other times we need also to be hard on our nature and not so easily fall into concern for our personal comfort. Being inclined to personal comfort myself, what I find particularly welcome about the spirituality of Carmel is that all the ‘hardness’ occurs with such gentleness and simplicity.

I will finish with the words of St John of the Cross, what some would say is harsh advice. But it’s not. He advises, within the context of deep love of Christ, to ‘endeavour to be inclined always’. Not to pull the whip out and curse yourself for failing, but to gently remind yourself in every small situation to incline the soul away from what our nature wills toward where the Spirit draws us.

I was sitting on the couch, watching tele, not looking forward to mowing the lawn and yet another tiring trip to Sydney and somehow just ‘endeavoured to be inclined’ to moving. And now I’m here.

Strive always to prefer, not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult;

Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing;

Not that which gives most pleasure, but rather that which gives least;

Not that which is restful, but that which is wearisome;

Not that which is consolation, but rather that which is disconsolateness;

Not that which is greatest, but that which is least;

Not that which is loftiest and most precious, but that which is lowest and most despised;

Not that which is a desire for anything, but that which is a desire for nothing;

Strive to go about seeking not the best of temporal things, but the worst.

Strive thus to desire to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and poverty, with respect to everything that is in the world, for Christ’s sake.       [St John of the Cross, Ascent: 1,13,6]

Photo credit: f1uffster

You are no longer aliens in a foreign land, but fellow-citizens with God’s people, members of God’s household. [Eph, 2:19]

It’s a day of blessing, immense joy and blessing. Days when I wonder what the the world out there is doing now as they watch the ads on the other channels, sneer at Catholicism or just go unwittingly about their day.

How can they know such joy and peace on a day such as this? It’s not a human joy, not sentimental or self-righteously pious. The tears flow gently as do the blessings and grace that pours out upon our land.

She is one of us.

When I visited the chapel at Perthville I heard details of her visits to our town. I sat in the same room where she spoke with her nuns. I was in the presence of a saint but I wasn’t in Rome or some foreign place, some well-worn pilgrim trail. I was home, here in Bathurst, amongst people I knew and I was in the presence of a saint. A saint who has come to Perthville, a remote and nothing place, as ordinary as my backyard.

She has come and poured out God’s grace among us. She is a saint who knows our land, our heat and flies and long distances, broad skies and bigotry, roughness and compassion. She knows our isolation and cultural confusion. She sees no barriers to what needs doing, unburdened by history and ready to remake the future.

I only went out to the Josephites to join them in prayer so as to honour this day and feel more a part of it. I wasn’t looking anything special but believed in it anyway because it’s not everyday that you sit in the same room a saint has sat on the day she is canonised.

I know I was blessed. I know we all were blessed this day. This wasn’t her day – all her sisters were honoured this day. She has brought honour to them and on to us, the people she served, and taught and loved.

You are the glory of your race!

Photo credit: josephitefederation.catholic.org.au/aboutfederation.html

It’s funny how a new translation or slightly different emphasis can trigger a whole new view of the world.

I found a quote from St Thérèse saying how her occupation is love [Story of a Soul, XI]. That struck me. I didn’t even recognise that it was just a different translation of the oft quoted phrase ‘my vocation is love’. To make one’s vocation love makes some sense with the word vocation usually assigned to holy-type things. But when I came to the word ‘occupation’ I immediately took it literally as in ‘this is what I do when I go to work’.

It’s a radical idea. Imagine the conversations.

‘So what do you do for living?’

‘I love’

‘uh, okay . . . but what do you actually DO’

‘collect roses . . .‘

‘see ya’

‘. . . of love and sacrifice’

It’s an odd sort of conversation but one I have been having with myself lately. A while ago I wrote about another radical idea – an interior apostolate. The strange thing is that as that idea takes a deeper grip on my life the outward works seem to be happening – the very works that never seemed to work very well before.

I love to plan. Drawing charts, timelines, schemes, pictures,and schedules makes me feel in control of the world, like my life has form when I experience it mostly as seering chaos. With all this planning and scheming,  ‘having an occupation’ is not something I have ever succeeded at. I have a job but never quite find my groove enough to be able to say ‘this is what I do, this is the direction in which my life is developing, this is what people know me as’

And then I read, ‘my occupation is love’. Just like that. Like it’s a job, a real job that you jump out of bed for and become passionate and knowledgable about. It earns your keep and takes you places.

I don’t think there could be a more audacious claim to make about one’s life than to state openly ‘my occupation is love’.

I want to do this but after all I am just a schmuck like everyone else in the world. That is, not especially loving or lovable. I can see the firing squad before my eyes – ‘How dare you proclaim that you are worthy of the name ‘lover’! What have you done that makes you think you’re so great, so good, when you’re so not?’

There couldn’t be anything more heretical and counter-cultural in this self-seeking capitalistic enterprise society than to do nothing – just love? One’s sole purpose, life, achievement and contribution to the world? Pathetic really. What a loser of a job description!

Is this the step our little Thérèse was bold enough to take? What do you think?

Photo credit:lightsoutfilms

Its a strange experience writing on the internet. Words go out so open, so permanant.

I was wandering what keeps me writing with this and it occured to me that part of it is that it keeps me in touch with a wider world when my inner life seems to take over.

And then there is the sheer joy of knowing that soemtimes my experience resonates with someone elses.

I hope you like this funny cartoon that resonated with me when I found it.

Photo credit: Shoebox

To reach their goal prayerful souls need what St Teresa calls a ‘very determined determination’ to persevere until the very end.

I was collecting a number of quotes from various places and now I can’t remember what I’ve copied and what I’ve written. But determination does that. Thoughts fly in, they fly out, spur you on for moment and then more take their place. It’s the will that quietly does its business: longing, waiting, calling, opening out.

So I couldn’t quite find a way to collect this mess into a coherent story. Just some odd quotes, some spiritual and some worldly reminding me to keep on keeping on – no matter what.

To those who want to journey on this road and continue until they reach the end, which is to drink from this water of life, I say that how they are to begin is important – in fact, all important. They must have a great and very determined determination to persevere until reaching the end, come what may, happen what may, whatever work is involved, whatever criticism arises, whether they arrive or whether they die on the road, or even if they don’t have courage for the trials that are met, or if the whole world collapses. (The Way of Perfection 21:2)

Prayer takes effort and the courage to continue despite any criticisms. So begin. Pray. Pray faithfully, everyday, always, at all times and never give up (A Solitary Bird).

St. Teresa said that bodily strength is not necessary for prayer, only love and a making prayer a habit – discipline aimed by ambition and imbued with love.

Let us not neglect resolutions as we construct our list of Teresian methods. Resolutions are very clearly meditative acts that she highly valued. Though Carmelites sometimes spurn this seemingly more Ignatian emphasis, Teresa herself is a woman of will. She wants a very determined determination to keep on praying all of ones years (see Way, 13) (Teresian Methods).

And it is persistence, perseverance and determination that are qualities that spill out into the world propelling great deeds.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
~ Calvin Coolidge (1872 – 1933)

We know that worldly wisdom is insufficient to our needs but even with all my openness to the spirit and willingness to love sometimes I just have to get out of bed and keep rolling along:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. — Will Durant, though often misattributed to Aristotle

Keep on keeping on!

Photo credit: Dana Lookadoo – Yo Yo SEO