On the subject of the solo satisfaction of biological and psychological drives (e.g., eating, masturbating, sightseeing): As long as they are not harmful and they are undertaken with thanksgiving, they are done in love, and are thus good.
“[A] Christian sexual ethic is a process of transforming eros into agape.”
Shame and guilt can be healthy, life-giving emotions. There’s a reason we have them. Sure, shame and guilt can become toxic and debilitating. But let’s not think that there’s something unhealthy about feeling shame or guilt when you do something that violates your conscience. That’s called being a human being.
Love is hardly love if it is lazy.
“…[w]ith humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves…” (Paul). This is a crucial verse for me if I’m going to bear the fruit of love. It’s this regard of others as more important than myself that is going to turn up my inner hearth of love for others. Without that phrase, my love risks being too mechanical, too principled. If I can honestly regard others as more important than myself, I will fulfill the second Great Commandment.
But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt. He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed.
— Ben Patterson, as cited in Philip Yancey’s Prayer
At the level of the individual, there is wisdom in my friend’s aversion to marriage, which she stated the other day as “I don’t know why people would want to get married.” I prefer to reword it as: “Don’t make a commitment you don’t think you can keep.” But at the level of society, there needs to be a complementary wisdom: Cultivate people who are capable of making lifelong commitments.
A set-aside half-hour or so every day for pure leisure (no work or duty, even social duty, so probably solo). And the eventide for resting and relating!
clotheshorse noun : 1 : a frame on which to hang clothes 2 : a conspicuously dressy person
I looked this one up because having decided last year that at the beginning of this year I would spend 75% or 80% of my apparel budget, I have slowly allowed myself to become consumed with systematizing it all and finding the perfect options and shopping ethically (i.e., sustainably, locally, etc.). I am convicted by Jesus’ words on the subject. And I am mildly surprised to find out that a clotheshorse is a slightly derogatory term for someone who obviously concerned with wearing fashionable clothing. I’m not so much that, but I am allowing my mind to be consumed by clothes right now.
“Don’t worry about…your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t…the body more than clothes?
— Jesus
I am convicted by this verse today.
It appears that middle-class U.S. friendships are not generally expected to bear the weight of deep and diffuse obligations to care. More like pleasure crafts than lift rafts, they are not built to brave the really rough waters—and [dementia is] rough, corrosive, bitter waters indeed. Dementia seems to act as a very powerful solvent on many kinds of social ties. I doubt that many friendships survive its onset.
— Janelle Taylor, “On Recognition, Caring & Dementia,” as quoted by John Swinton in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God
There is no doubt that it can be difficult to be with someone you know who has forgotten who you are and, indeed, who they are. At times it takes a leap of faith to remember them as the person that you know. But no matter what, your friends remain your friends, don’t they? The ease with which people with dementia can be unfriended raises a dark question: What is it that we actually love in those we claim to love?
— John Swinton, Dementia (105)
What did I get out of Swinton?
- Time is not money. It is the gift of God. Live in the moment and assign value to the present. Be with people.
- Visit the sick, especially demented folks.
- Dementia sucks.
- Hospitality among strangers is an important concept to bring to bear on all relationships, especially those with demented folks.
- We are all contingent, embodied people.
- Hanging out and friendship can change the world.
- God remembers us in the present even when we forget who we are.
- [edit June 9, 2023] Our windows into the conscious experience of folks suffering from dementia are quite foggy, so we can’t assume to know what they’re thinking and feeling. Even if someone’s dementia is so far progressed that they can’t even talk or move, their inner life might still be quite rich. And even if they’re expressively tetchy, they might be hating that on the inside and unable to express as much. Don’t assume. Always with interact with tenderness and patience and love. One of the main things they need is plenty of good company.
God still speaks today as he spoke to our forefathers in days gone by, before there were either spiritual directors or methods of direction. The spiritual life was then a matter of immediate communication with God.…All they knew was that each moment brought its appointed task, faithfully to be accomplished. This was enough for the spiritually minded of those days. All their attention was focused on the present, minute by minute, like the hand of a clock that marks the minutes of each hour covering the distance along which it has to travel. Constantly prompted by divine impulsion, they found themselves imperceptibly turns toward the next task that God had ready for them at each hour of the day.
— Jean-Pierre de Caussade, as quoted by John Swinton in Dementia (256)
This excerpt floored me because it sounds just like how Carla does things. And it strikes me as right. It’s how I want to walk through life.
One of the things that can serve as a guideline to discerning God’s leading: Do I feel hurried? It’s probably not God’s way. Do I feel obsessed with something about the world, like finding an Airbnb to stay in for on our way trip to Florida or finding good, vegan walking shoes again? It’s probably not God’s way. I might have to do that thing, but I don’t have to do it in that way. It’s not being in the present.
Swinton has rearranged how I approach time: It’s a gift that I have received, all my time. Freely I have received, freely I shall give, waste, live my time with others.
After reading page 169 of Swinton’s Dementia, it strikes me again that all the different parts of creation are like different organs and cells and organelles in God’s body. We are literally the body of Christ, the body of God. In Him indeed we live and move and have our being. How indeed can the eye say to the foot, “I don’t need you”?
God acts in the big stories in history—those of the Exodus, the Cross, and redemption. But God also acts in and through the smaller stories of human life. If we take time to listen and to reflect, we can discover God’s practices of revealing and acting in the strangest of places.
— John Swinton, Dementia (26)
Amen.
“If riches increase, do not your heart on them.”
— Psalm 62:10b
Once again I gravitate toward the moral performance side of this beautiful Psalm about looking only to God for strength and salvation and love. It’s a good precept, but why not journal about the God-as-source part?
Thank you, God. That’s what I need to do: Thank you.
There is a tired → grumpy → tired → etc. loop that I need to write more about and recognize. Here’s a quick take: If I am tired, then I find I don’t have the energy for some tasks. But my default setting is do-do-do, so then I get grumpy about not accomplishing things, especially if I feel like I have no right to be tired. But trying to think my way out of these things with a tired mind makes me grumpier and more tired.
My new motto is: “Live every day like it’s your last.” And no, that does not mean find a hospital, go there, find a room and lay down, eyes twitching…
— Sullivan
“One who allows himself license in little things is ruined little by little” (Augustine, as quoted by the folks at Renovaré.
You want biblical models for how the offender should behave in pursuing forgiveness? Try Jacob and Zaccheus on.
Guilt is good. (The feeling, not the fact.)
The sin Jesus addressed via the Cross was our sin against God, not our sin against one another. The latter still requires the hard work of reconciliation. If we understood this, our track record in handling abuse situations would be vastly improved. Jesus’ work on the Cross is not license to bludgeon victims toward cheap forgiveness of their abusers.
God does not need us to “make good” to him in order for him forgive us. However, humans may need us to do so. There is such a thing as manifesting (bringing forth) fruit of repentance. This makes hyper-Protestants nervous. It need not be so.
Here, Crosby makes the point I’ve been approaching by asserting that the sin God deals with on the Cross is our sin against Him, not our sign against others.