I have decided to drop all items from my to-do list except those things which must be done.
My new definition of love: to devote oneself to the good, wellbeing, or flourishing of and the enjoyment of relationship with.
“We are sending our young people into the marriage bed as virgins (good) but also as morons (bad).”
With the advent of Rivian electric pickup trucks, not to mention Tesla’s plans and Ford’s all-electric F-150, my appetite for a new vehicle has finally come. But it’s better for the environment for me to run the Mazda into the ground first. So hold up, lil’ dogie.
I just asked Éa how she thinks she is at math. She said “Okay.” (Sullivan replied, about himself, “Super good.”) This kid scored at the 99th percentile at her last math MAP test. So I told her, “Éa, you are super-good at math” and later, “You are amazing at math.”
This.
In order for me to maximally productive at work, I have to be cutthroat with all non-work items. I have to forcefully box out distraction, daydreaming, and other (non-work) people and their agendas.
But that’s no way to live your home life!
Love in one’s home life means primarily the enjoyment of relationship with those around you and acting for others’ good by relating and enjoying and resting with them. Work is necessary in home life—and indeed, even for love’s sake it is necessary—but it isn’t primary. It serves the primary purpose of enjoyment. And besides, home life flows like water, it’s stochastic, it’s unpredictable, it’s got a bunch of other people and animals and neighbors and friends that can’t be controlled like one’s own attention can be controlled.
So I need to have two mindsets:
At home, I will not abandon my getting-things-done agendas, which are after all mostly built on love, but I will let the direct relational and enjoyment modes of love take precedence....
// read full article →Telling someone they “have been” something is more empowering a way of truth-telling than telling them they “are” something. It leaves the future open for change.
Ugh! I have so many things to think about, but my thinker isn’t big enough!
— Éa
If Donald Trump ever somehow gets himself elected for a third term, I will join the active resistance. For now, I build joyous, resilient communities.
I don’t enjoy fiction as much because I don’t spend hours at a time with it like I do movies! This calls for a change.
Shots don’t scare me. I could poke needles into my skin all day if it didn’t hurt.
— Éa
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!
glade noun : 1 : an open space surrounded by woods
I looked this one up because I love words for landforms and vegetation and encountered this one in MacDonald’s Phantastes. It is often confused these days with glen, which is a steep creek canyon-drop.
sward noun : 1 : a portion of ground covered with grass 2 : the grassy surface of land
I looked this one up because I love words for landforms and vegetation and encountered this one in MacDonald’s Phantastes.
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...
// read full article →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”?
According to St. Augustine according to Gilber Meilaender according to John Swinton, we are terra animata, or “animated earth.”
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?