I often hear people talking about living in the present moment as if it is a struggle, some cosmic game of attempting to grasp something that is fleeting, illusory. They say things like, “the moment I have it, it’s gone.” While this is true and can be frustrating, the last thing present moment awareness is about is grabbing serenity. I have always liked the metaphor of the river (borrowed from my Christian contemplative practice of centeringprayer) in talking of the flow of thoughts. Imagine the stream of consciousness as a river, with boats and debris representing thoughts. You’re sitting on the bank of the river watching it. Normal awareness has you looking at each individual boat-thought, following it down the river with your eyes — and to strain the metaphor, getting on it and opening hatches — then suddenly shifting your awareness to another boat and so on. If your mind is particularly cluttered, you can feel overwhelmed by all the boats you have to look at and it can feel like that classic I Love Lucy skit with the conveyor belt at the chocolate factory, like you’re falling behind and they start slipping by. There can be a sense of panic that a thought that’s getting past you without attention is important and you’re missing it.
Present moment awareness is simply sitting on the bank and watching the river, not the boats. Boats cross your field of vision and you do see them, but you don’t follow them with your eyes or get on them. They’re not out of focus, but you don’t focus on them.
The present moment is where reality is, where God is. When you remove the obstacles from being fully present, fully awake, you remove the obstacles from seeing the glorious reality of life, the presence of God’s love.
Paradoxically, you are actually more aware of what’s going on than when you focus. Why? Because when you attach to one thought at a time, it is to the exclusion of all the others. Staying alert but not putting your attention on any one thing makes you more aware. Like a hunter or a birdwatcher before they’ve spotted something, you are taking in everything around you.
Once a birder or hunter spots something, they shift into focused attention, and this is how life can be if you are well practiced in present moment awareness. The goal isn’t to never focus on anything and live in some gauzy vagueness. It’s to stay open, teachable, aware, present. Then, when a task is to be attended to, you focus on it. That’s fine. When the task is over, though, you let it recede into the stream of consciousness again. You don’t keep thinking about it.
It’s compartmentalization in the best sense of the word. But many people who are critical of this approach to life see it in the same vein as the bad type of compartmentalizing, where bad things are ignored by keeping thoughts about them walled away. They might say, “but you should be thinking about such-and-such because it needs to be dealt with.” Well, maybe it does. (Or maybe it doesn’t. As I say often, most of the things we worry about never come true. But let’s assume it does need to be dealt with.) The point is to deal with it when it is actually time to deal with it, when it is actually occurring in the present moment and is the focus of your attention. But neither you nor the issue is helped by your worrying about it when you’re not in a position to do anything.
Where reality is, where God is
Reducing worry and stress is just a happy side effect of cultivating presence, though; it’s not the point. The point of living in the moment is that the present moment is where reality is, where God is. When you remove the obstacles from being fully present, fully awake, you remove the obstacles from seeing the glorious reality of life, the presence of God’s love. The Great Commandment is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) When you remove the obstacles from being truly present, you can fully experience reality as your true self, and love and know God’s handiwork all around you, and by that act, you are changed. The second half of the great commandment flows from the first. As I said in my column about revenge, if you love God and experience the closeness of God, and thus experience the interconnectedness and oneness of all Creation, then you can’t help but love your neighbor as yourself. Not similarly to yourself, but as yourself. The illusion of separation is gone.
Of course this type of perfect Oneness doesn’t stick around. We get it in glimpses. And of course there is some frustration with that. We want it all the time, but can’t conjure it up at will. But we can cultivate presence to improve the frequency and the duration of those times. As I’ve said before, the most helpful thing for me has been my Christian contemplative practice of centeringprayer. But that is only one method. There are many other contemplative practices in the Christian tradition, including the rosary, adoration. lectio divina, and the guided meditations of the Ignatian Exercises. There are also contemplative practices that aren’t part of a religion, like some forms of yoga and meditation, and of course, almost every other faith has some contemplative practices in its tradition. And finally, as I also say often, perhaps the most powerful teacher of present moment awareness is Creation itself. Spending time in nature, re-tuning yourself to the woods or the ocean or the desert, will slow your pace, lower your level of chatter and open you, naturally and gently.
How do you cultivate presence? How have experiences of presence affected your spiritual journey? I’d love to hear from you.
Vermeer's "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary"
My last column, about waiting patiently for a late bus, provoked some interesting comments and reactions (on the site and directly) that tease out the bigger issues involved. While I wrote about waiting for someone who’s late, two commenters brought up the flipside of the same time management coin — what to do when you’re going to be late yourself through no fault of your own. Fellow Busted Halo contributor Ginny Moyer wrote:
I have often been in situations where freeway traffic is crawling along, which is pretty high on the frustration-meter. In those situations, there really IS nothing to do but just let go and crawl right along with it. That requires a certain kind of surrender, which is not easy for me … but it’s a skill worth cultivating. When I stop fighting it and just let it go, I can feel my stress level drop dramatically. “It is what it is” is a very helpful mantra for me, in those situations.
And Emily said,
I also think of saying that mantra “get there when i’ll get there” is like a little prayer to the Holy Spirit saying, I trust you, guide me. It has given me the best relief when I used to have road rage.
I’ve written two earlier columns about being late, here and here. Whether you’re waiting for someone who’s late or you’re running late yourself, the answer, of course, is the same: accept that this is what’s happening and, if you can’t change it, don’t stress. In the same way that in my scenario, “the bus will arrive when it arrives,” if you’re running late (and there’s no way to do anything about it), then you will arrive when you arrive. Now, when I used to be late all the time, it was a different story. A lot of the anxiety I experienced while running late was directly related to self-recriminations and guilt.
I have found that since getting better with time management myself, those times I am late are not as stressful, because I know I’ve made a reasonable effort. (If I have, that is.) This itself is part of a much bigger spiritual principle: If your intentions are aligned with good, then on those occasions when things don’t work out, there’s no reason to feel guilty. That guilt comes from believing you haven’t done all you could. And as Ken Maher observed, doing “the right thing” is important even when you expect it won’t matter, as in showing up on time for someone (or something, like my bus) who’s late:
Being on time is merely a matter of respect for and commitment to the other(s) whom you are meeting. Your respect and commitment should have nothing to do with theirs, just like the size of your Christmas present to someone should have nothing to do with the size of theirs to you.
I find that if I let myself get worked up over something like the late bus, it is usually not healthy. Like Martha, I find myself living in the resentments, not in the presence of Jesus, who in the story of Martha and Mary is physically in the room, but who is just as present for us all if we can only notice… I have found that 90 percent of the time when it feels like actions need to be taken, they really don’t. So, I’d prefer to err on the side of being present than on the side of taking action.
If you do the right thing regardless of what others are doing, then your heart can be at rest. Or, as the saying goes, take the right actions and let go of the results.
I think kelly damude summed it up better than I could have myself:
Life’s too short to waste time being grumpy about things we have no control over, so BE in the moment & make it count.
It’s remarkable how much of the spiritual advice amounts to this simple concept of being fully present in the moment. I think that’s because we need to be reminded of it again and again.
Martha and Mary
There was one dissenting commenter though. Theresa Henderson said,
I’d contact the bus company and inform them of each time the bus was late and petition that they have a covered area built there because of the number of folks who wait there. Get the folks to sign it too. I’m a lot more patient when sometimes i am part of a solution.
To paint far too broad a stroke, the world of spiritually-minded folks is often broken down into Marthas and Marys, from the story of Jesus visiting the home of two sisters (Luke 10: 38-42):
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
While Martha is busy running back and forth to the kitchen preparing dinner and being the perfect host, Mary simply sits at Jesus’ feet, which he says is the only thing that is needed. This brief 100-word story has been interpreted many ways depending on who’s doing the interpreting. I won’t get into whether there is a preference for a contemplative over a social justice orientation in Jesus’ words. (As a contemplative myself, I’m biased.)
But as I see it, the main point is that it is better to be inactive and truly present than to be busy doing “good” things at the expense of being present. This is not a call to do nothing. Jesus also said blessed are those who mourn and blessed are the peacemakers. Martha’s fault was not that she cared about being a good host, or that she wanted to make a nice dinner for Jesus. The fault was that she allowed her busyness and her resentment of Mary destroy her present moment awareness.
It’s possible that the actions described by commenter Theresa Henderson would be done in a loving and fully present manner, but for myself I find that if I let myself get worked up over something like this, it is usually not healthy. Like Martha, I find myself living in the resentments, not in the presence of Jesus, who in the story is physically in the room, but who is just as present for us all if we can only notice.
There’s also the distinct possibility that what the action-taker thinks is the solution is not the best thing. In the late bus scenario, I wouldn’t want a shelter clogging up the sidewalk and looking urban. Martha’s answer in Luke 10 is for Mary to get off the floor and come help in the kitchen, leaving Jesus alone in the other room. I have found that 90 percent of the time when it feels like actions need to be taken, they really don’t. So, I’d prefer to err on the side of being present than on the side of taking action. Whatever you are doing, though, just make sure to be present in the moment.
Thanks for all the wonderful comments to the last post. This issue of the spirituality of time just keeps coming back. It’s something so many of us struggle with.
One of the most popular columns I’ve ever written is about struggling with being on time. It led to a TV interview and, almost two years later, people still regularly bring it up in conversation. But working on your own on timeness can lead to an interesting new issue: being on time when others are not.
It’s one thing to be on time and have everything go smoothly. You can point to your on timeness and feel a sense of self-satisfaction at having contributed to the proper flow of the universe by having aligned yourself with the way things are meant to be. Call it spiritual pride or call it enjoying the fruits of “skillful means,” we all enjoy it when we do the right thing and things go our way. But what about when you are on time and someone else isn’t?
There’s a long-distance bus I catch fairly often in the summer coming back to the city at the end of the weekend. My stop is in the middle of its route and, almost every time, the bus is about 10 minutes late. The place we wait isn’t covered and today it was 15 minutes late, in pouring rain. This is not convenient. I know it will probably be late, but I still have to make sure I’m there on time because every once in a while it is, and it doesn’t wait around for me if I’m late.
When the scheduled time arrives and the bus doesn’t, I see other travelers start checking the time. (I was going to say “checking their watches” but most people don’t check watches anymore, they check cell phones.) At first they do this as if to check their internal clock: “Isn’t it 11:50 yet? I’m sure it must be.” As the minutes tick by, the cell phone time checking starts getting more dramatic. Now they are saying, without words: “You all see that the scheduled time is past and the bus isn’t here, right?!”
Often, if and how much I’m bothered by waiting is in direct proportion to how much distress I went through to be there on time.
But we don’t have an option. The bus will arrive when it arrives no matter what we do, and if it’s on time and I’m late I’ll miss it. Simple as that.
Like pressing the elevator button more than once, all the street theater has no effect on the result.
So I wait.
The outraged ego
Often patientily. Somtimes not quite. I’ve noticed that if and how much I’m bothered by waiting is in direct proportion to how much distress I went through to be there on time. If I am there in plenty of time and stroll comfortably up to the stop and join the first people in line, then all is right in the world. But if I miscalculate or something comes up at the last minute and I end up scrambling to get to the bus stop in time, anxious the whole way that it will be on time and I’ll miss it by a minute (there isn’t another one for hours) and then I end up waiting around, my ego is outraged. I didn’t need to rush! I didn’t need to stress myself out! My time is valuable; how dare they waste it!
This line of thinking veers into the magical when I start blaming the late bus for the fact that I am agitated from running late and having to rush. This doesn’t even make sense — because if I hadn’t rushed and the bus had been on time I would have missed it — but this is where the mind goes.
And being upset is all the crazier because, what actually happens if I’m on time and the bus is late? Well, I spend ten minutes enjoying the day (when it’s not raining), sometimes getting into an interesting conversation with one of the others waiting. It’s no hardship at all. It doesn’t even mean I’ll get home late; the bus makes up the time along the way.
Enjoying the present moment
Being upset is all the crazier because, what actually happens if I’m on time and the bus is late? Well, I spend ten minutes enjoying the day, sometimes getting into an interesting conversation with one of the others waiting.
Essentially, these thoughts all boil down to: I’m more important than anyone else; more important than the bus company having a schedule that helps them stay profitable; more important than the bus staying at a safe speed before it gets to my stop; more important than any human problems or equipment issues that contributed to the delay.
It doesn’t matter if you’re waiting for a bus or an elevator, for your turn in a line, or for that friend who often runs a little behind, the fact remains that working yourself up about it does no good.
So here’s what I propose: The next time you find yourself waiting for someone or something and getting irritated at them and the universe, pause, take a deep breath, perhaps spend a minute imagining that there might be a good reason they’re late (though that’s not important), and turn your attention to enjoying the present moment. If that doesn’t quite do it, pull out the big guns and pray for patience.
If you’re waiting with other people, smile at one of them or start a conversation. If there’s something you could be doing, like checking email or reading, you could turn your attention to that, though just being in the present moment is even better.
Often the irritation just evaporates. It was built on nothing but air in the first place.
What is your experience with waiting? Have you found other ways to be patient? Does it drive you crazy? Share below in the comments.
You have just enough time left if you act now to join me in the Million PALA Challenge — a national campaign to get people active. (Sign up and join us at “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.) This challenge has been going on for a year, and I’m sorry about the last minute notice, but you still have time. I learned about it just recently from Kevin Sorbo, whose organization, A World Fit For Kids, is an official partner of the presidential program responsible for the challenge, and signed up myself.
To complete the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA) challenge and receive an (emailed) PALA certificate “signed” by co-chairs Drew Brees and Dominique Dawes, you have until the end of September to log six weeks in which you are active for at least half an hour each day for five of the seven days. (Or one hour per day for those under 18.) You register on the website and log and track your activities there. The Million PALA Challenge is a campaign to get one million Americans to complete this plan.
Make the commitment to be just a little more active for the next six weeks. Sign up for the Million PALA Challenge, then join me in our group. Once you’re logged in, this link will take you to the Busted Halo page, or you can find us by searching for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.
I’ve created a group you can participate through. (After you sign up, search for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845 and join us.) You can just sign up on your own, but I figured I might as well make it a little easier for you, and maybe a little more fun to see our cumulative numbers of our group. If no one does this, that’s OK, but I hope it’s the motivation a few of you need to get moving.
If you’re already pretty active, then this isn’t very difficult. There’s nothing that says what your activity should be, just that you be active. Stroll for half an hour: you’re set. Or you can run, cycle, hike, use a cardio machine, whatever. Anything works, as long as you’re up and active. So why not sign up, log the activity that you’re already doing and get the award!
But it your idea of a walk is the distance from your car to the door, then this challenge may be just the gentle introduction you need to a more active life.
I already walk a fair amount. I’ll usually walk anything less than a mile. But it’s not always as much as a half hour a day, so this challenge is encouraging me to take less direct and more enjoyable routes. And while many weekends I enjoy a hike or a kayaking trip, that’s just once a week. For me, the main thing this challenge has done is to get me to dust off the ole elliptical machine. It’s the perfect answer for those days I find myself at home at the end of the day without having gotten in the half hour of activity. To be honest, that dust on the elliptical was pretty thick, and several very good intentions in the past year didn’t get the dusting job done. So I’m very grateful for this challenge.
Take charge of your own activity level
Regular exercise helps you to stay healthy, balanced and available to the spiritual dimension of life.
I’ll never forget the first time I lived outside New York as an adult (well, kind of adult; I was 17 or 18 years old.) I was in a city, but it was a city of private houses, not apartment buildings, and everyone had cars. The supermarket was a block and a half away. The first month or so that I was there, I walked to get groceries, but before long, I gave in to the design of the streets and the community and started driving the block and a half. I’ll never forget noticing that I’d switched and feeling like I’d given in to convenience over the natural order of things. But that didn’t make me go back to walking. In this society we must sometimes stake out practices that defy what our culture is encouraging us to do. Our society offers us unlimited entertainment from our couch; unlimited access to information and communication from our desk; and numerous ways to get from one place to the next without exerting ourselves: moving sidewalks, escalators, cars, the hipster fashion accessory kick scooter, and the most absurd of all, the Segway.
This is not to say you must skip every escalator. But you don’t have to take an energy-saving option just because it’s offered. You’ll notice that almost every diet plan assumes it’s combined with regular exercise. And this challenge will help get you on a path to losing weight if that’s something you want. But the real issue is general fitness. That’s why the focus isn’t on calories burned or intensity but just on being active. A shocking number of Americans have absolutely no regular activity in their lives. The Presidential Active Lifestyle Award is part of the President’s Challenge Program by the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, which has been attacking this issue on multiple fronts. This challenge is just one way.
You might ask what this has to do with spiritual practices. I’ve written here many times about things that aren’t directly spiritual. For example, getting enough sleep, spending time in nature, eating regular and balanced meals. All these things, and regular exercise as well, help you to stay healthy, balanced and available to the spiritual dimension of life. If you are hungry, tired, cranky, uncomfortable, it is much harder to hear God’s “still small voice.”
So if you’re so inspired, or if you’re even tempted, join me! Go sign up for this thing. Make the commitment to be just a little more active for the next six weeks. You may not want to go back. Once you’ve signed up and signed in, then join our group. This link, https://www.presidentschallenge.org/activity/groups-home.php?groupNumber=935845, will take you to the Busted Halo page, or you can find us by searching for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.
Pope Benedict on summer vacation in the Alps. Credit: CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters
The pope has made several comments this year concerning vacations, which were highlighted in a piece on the Vatican Radio website. (I learned about that post thanks to Mary DeTurris Poust in Our Sunday Visitor‘s Daily Take blog.) Summer is halfway over already, but he touches on some powerful ideas, so while there’s still time, let’s take a look.
Pope Benedict offers two basic goals for our vacation besides relaxation:
spending time with others
spending time with God
It’s one thing to spend an hour or two with a person, or to be with family or a partner all the time in the daily routines of life, but there’s something special (and sometimes challenging) about travelling together. Quality time is a great thing, but the hours of non-quality time during a vacation — in cars, waiting at airports, between events — create a different kind of intimacy.
And as far as what vacation to choose, are you challenged by the pope’s suggestion to spend time with others? Is there a visit to family that you could do instead of that beach vacation which will yield greater fruit in the long run? Maybe not. And not every vacation should be about visiting family. Getaways are valuable too. But it’s worth asking yourself.
“I would like to recommend that during this time of vacation, you revivify your spirits by contemplating the splendors of Creation. Parents, teach your children to see nature, respect and protect it as a magnificent gift that presents to us the grandeur of the Creator!” — Pope Benedict
It’s obvious how to spend time with other people — bring them along or go to them — but how do we spend time with God while on vacation? The pope offers three ideas, and we’ll explore each one a little.
being in nature
reading scripture
visiting sacred spaces
The sacred in nature
I’ve written numerous times about how powerful and enriching it can be to spend time in nature. Camping with my family was my first introduction to the divine. We built vacations around visiting natural wonders: descending the side of Bryce Canyon on donkeys; exploring geysers and hot springs in Yellowstone; watching the swallows of San Juan Capistrano; staying through a hurricane on Cape Hatteras; looking up from the floor of a redwood forest.
In a talk on July 10 to a group of pilgrims — during his own vacation at Castel Gandolfo — Pope Benedict said:
“I would like to recommend that during this time of vacation, you revivify your spirits by contemplating the splendors of Creation. Parents, teach your children to see nature, respect and protect it as a magnificent gift that presents to us the grandeur of the Creator! In speaking in parables, Jesus used the language of nature to explain to his disciples the mysteries of the Kingdom. May the images he uses become familiar to us! Let us remember that the divine reality is hidden in our daily lives like the seed in the soil. “
Whether it’s the majesty of a western canyon or summer night sky, the delicate beauty of a wildflower or songbird, or the insane complexity of a fractal pattern or balanced ecosystem – it’s hard not to feel the presence of something greater than yourself when you spend time in nature. Cherish these opportunities; some of them are probably closer to home than you realize.
Daily practice
Pope Benedict suggests bringing a Bible with you on vacation. This is a not a trivial or overly pious idea. It is easy when vacationing to leave all your normal spiritual routines behind. It might feel like you don’t need daily prayer, meditation and sacred reading when you’re vacationing on the beach, especially if you see those practices as salves, bandages, for the damage done by regular life. But touching base with God is not just something to do when you need it; it enriches the good times even more than the bad, because without a crisis to absorb the good energy, so to speak, it’s all available for enrichment.
This is a case where physical spiritual practices have an advantage. It seems more appropriate or fitting to continue a daily yoga or running practice on the beach than it does pulling out a book. But let me suggest that if you begin your day with prayer and a little reading from scripture that you do this on vacation too.
Sacred spaces
The pope’s third suggestion is to visit sacred places while on vacation – cathedrals and monasteries in particular. When I popped into Notre Dame while in Paris it became a high point of that vacation. (And I wasn’t even Catholic yet!) Visiting basilicas and cathedrals, monasteries and churches with historical or personal significance, shrines — any spiritual site — can be uplifting, and while it might be half a day out of a two-week vacation, it’s a memory you’ll always have with you. And you might even consider devoting a vacation to making a pilgrimage, like the Camino or Lourdes.
Re-creation
As any regular reader of my column knows, I’m a bit of a word nerd. It’s fascinating to me to see how much of the meaning of a word can be found in its roots. Words are not arbitrary sounds assigned a meaning; they are rich little vessels that contain history and ancestry. Often a word’s roots aren’t immediately obvious but in the case of “recreation” they’re pretty plain. It literally means to create anew.
The pope encourages us to “revivify” our spirits while on vacation. Consider destinations or side trips to take in the divine majesty and beauty of nature or spiritual sites. And even if your vacation is calming and escapist, maintaining your daily and weekly spiritual routines will help ground you and might even stimulate spiritual growth.
Share your thoughts about the pope’s suggestions and I’d love to hear about experiences you’ve already had, this year or in the past, where a vacation turned into something spiritually enriching. Enjoy the rest of the summer!
One of the things I notice whenever I spend time on retreat at a monastery (as I did a few weeks ago) is how much I enjoy the regular meal times, with some of the same food choices day after day. This is not the way I live my life. Which makes me wonder: Why don’t I do the same thing at home?
At the monastery, breakfast is one hour after I wake up — 1 hard-boiled egg, 2 slices of toast with orange marmalade. Lunch is four hours later; dinner, five hours after that. The food for lunch and dinner varies, but it is what it is. You eat what you are offered.
Here’s how I eat at home a lot of days: I’m running late in the morning, so I leave the house without breakfast. Sometimes I eat a fruit and nut bar on the way to work, sometimes not. I have lunch about four hours after I wake up, sometimes at my desk. I don’t eat dinner till after I get home, so that is six to eight hours after that. If it’s on the late side, I don’t want to spend another hour preparing something, so I get take-out on the way home. There are at least a dozen choices I can pick up easily, and each time, I debate which to get and usually go with what feels like the most fun in that moment.
There are a few different factors here — regularity of timing, simplicity, and a de-emphasis of food as entertainment.
Regularity
If anyone knows about regularity, it’s monks. Their entire life is routinized to a level ours never will be, framed by the Divine Office, which breaks the day into three-hour chunks between prayer services. But even if we have no interest in a life so regular, we can learn something from their example. As I discussed in my column Freedom From Choice (which I wrote after another retreat), much of the clutter in our day and in our mind is the result of unnecessary choices. Replacing some of these with routines simplifies our life. At the monastery, meal times were not up to my whim, or up to competing priorities, perceived or real. Meal times were fixed. If I didn’t eat then, I missed that meal. (It’s not like they were being hard about it. There was always a bowl of fruit by the coffeemakers.)
At the monastery, meal times were not up to my whim, or up to competing priorities, perceived or real. Meal times were fixed. If I didn’t eat then, I missed that meal. There’s an indefinable comfort in this kind of routine. I can’t explain it, but our mind and body find the same thing happening at the same time each day to be calming.
There’s an indefinable comfort in this kind of routine. I can’t explain it, but our mind and body find the same thing happening at the same time each day to be calming. And conversely, lack of regularity can be unsettling. One of my most popular installments since I started this column was about HALT. HALT says that prior to noticing you feel agitated or irritated, often you will find you were in a state of being Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. In working with people, I find it’s not uncommon to be able to back up from the moment of some eruption of agitation to the fact that they had skipped a meal. (I’ve written before about how not getting enough sleep leads to irritability, and though I almost always get enough sleep, I struggle with having a regular bedtime myself.)
In recent years, science has confirmed ancient wisdom about eating regularly. They differ in the details, but newer diets from South Beach to the Zone recognize the value of giving your system a regular supply of food, avoiding the binge/crash cycle.
Simplicity or amuse-bouche?
Another aspect of freedom from choice is keeping the food choices simple, or eliminating them altogether. At the monastery, instead of deciding each morning what I “felt like” having that day, I simply collected a hard-boiled egg from the bowl, placed two pieces of toast in the toaster, added butter and marmalade, and ate breakfast. (There were a few other choices there. This was my routine.) Was I any worse off for not having yoghurt one morning, cereal the next, eggs and bacon another?
I’m not saying what you should eat or how much. Those are personal decisions and personal issues. I will say this, though. Our culture encourages us to seek entertainment value and instant gratification in food, and much as I strive to be on the spiritual path, that call is mighty strong. While concerns about gluttony have been with us for millennia, and we’ve always been attracted to fun and rich foods — “a land flowing with milk and honey” — much of the current insanity is less than a century old, the direct result of the rises of the food industry and advertising. We are bombarded with temptations and the reality today is that if we so choose, every single meal can be an all-out taste pleasure overload.
The point is not to eat food that is bland or unappealing. All the food choices at the monastery were enjoyable. (Though, believe me, I’ve been at some retreat houses where the food would lose a competition with hospital fare.) The point is that not every meal needs to be about entertainment.
The question I must face in myself is why, after spending a week thoroughly enjoying this simple routine, once I returned to my everyday life, I also returned to missing meals, eating dinner late, and not having the same breakfast each day. Is the pull of competing schedules and fun choices just too strong?
What is your experience? Does your busy life lead you to favor productivity over personal health — running out the door without eating or working through lunch or going from one appointment to the next without thinking about your physical state? Do you make every dinner entertainment? Or have you found success with building routines in the timing and the content of your meals — some of them at least? This is an issue I still struggle with. I’m looking for answers, especially about why it’s so hard to stick with it. I welcome your comments below.
“Dolce far niente.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, it’s a saying we have in Italy: How sweet to do nothing.”
“Well, you’re in America now and they can pull you in for that.”
“Oh, poor Americans.”
— Sophia Loren & Cary Grant — Houseboat (1958)
Our new level of connectedness is a wonderful thing — perhaps the greatest blessing technology has brought us. But it has created a new problem. In this hyper-connected world, time in which you can do nothing is rare.
Despite how highly I value and seek out serenity, I am linked continuously to my workplace and other obligations, so it’s all too easy to feel pressured by the things I could be doing — like Fran in Black Books, cursing under her breath while answering her cell phone as she’s running late for yoga.
The seeds were planted centuries ago with the Puritan work ethic — epitomized by Isaac Watt’s 1700s hymn for children praising the worker bee, which includes the lines:
In works of labour or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
The paradox is that by having no goal, you achieve something wonderful — something potentially transformative. You create space — physical and mental space — to truly decompress and become more open to God’s love.
The industrial age created even more busyness. And since Houseboat was released, we’ve had the Information Age, “greed is good” and “time is money.” And in just the last two decades, the game has changed again with mobile devices and the internet.
So, as we head into the lazy days of summer, I want to put our focus on: doing nothing.
Doing nothing on retreat
Going on retreat has become a part of the spiritual materialism so rampant today. Goal-oriented achievers schedule in time to acquire a skill, or relieve stress. The grown-up equivalent of science camp, these thousand-dollar mini-vacations may offer both useful training and some immediate relief. But the idea of a goal-oriented retreat is an oxymoron. To “retreat” means to “pull back.” Goal-oriented pulling back?
If you want to do an educational weekend workshop, have at it. But don’t confuse that with a true retreat, which offers a much more important spiritual benefit. When you are on retreat just to be present, then everything that’s due when you return — the bills, service commitments, the “need” to research this and buy that — can fall away.
Ways to do nothing
Turn off your phone. At retreats, participants are often told to turn off cell phones and leave them in their bags. Try applying that same principle sometimes in your daily life. If I’m watching a movie or if it’s later than I like to receive calls, I put my phone on vibrate and leave it in another room. (Obviously, if you are a parent or otherwise caring for someone and need to be reachable, you need to balance these concerns.)
Consider a real retreat — one where there is no skill being taught (except perhaps a new method of contemplation); the only activities are non-goal-oriented and non-mandatory.
Create sacred time for you and God. In your daily routine at home, build in non-negotiable time during which you will not be disturbed. Runners have an advantage. Their form of exercise involves leaving the house and being in nature alone. Your time could be for meditation, prayers, running, yoga, or just sitting and enjoying the breeze, or the silence. It matters much less how long or what you’re doing than that this time exists, and that you don’t feel guilty taking it.
Have a real full day of rest. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8) How many of us actually do this — set aside an entire day with no obligations other than our faith practice and being with family? At a minimum, consider committing to do nothing related to your job on the sabbath.
Take an extravagantly goal-less vacation: camping; lying on the beach somewhere — a vacation where there is no goal except to be there.
When I stumbled on this journal entry, which I wrote years ago on a retreat, it reminded me of that precious weightlessness you can feel when the problems of your life and world are lifted, even if just for a weekend:
I’m just here to be here. The agenda is to be at sessions, and then pray or meditate or walk the grounds or nap. Nothing needs to be accomplished. So, despite the fact that silence, a slow pace, modest demands on my attention, are normal for me, this still feels different. Because at home, even when I’m doing morning prayers, or devoting a whole day to service, there are many other things waiting to be done, many things that could be done and maybe, just maybe, should be done. Here, that’s gone. It’s like a vacation, but the purpose is not to be free to play in the surf but to be free to hear God. And this reminds me that despite my good setup at home, it’s still easy to make too much noise in my head to hear that quiet voice.
Meditation, vacations and retreats are not about the immediate relief they may offer. In different ways, they are all about doing nothing. The notion that keeping busy is the only way to avoid temptation is also at the root of some Christians’ mistrust of meditation. But the paradox is that by having no goal, you achieve something wonderful — something potentially transformative. You create space — physical and mental space — to truly decompress and become more open to God’s love.
Doing nothing at home
Once, when I worked in my hometown of New York but lived outside the city, I was caught in town in a blizzard and had to stay in a hotel. I remember those few days as a peak moment in my life. Why? Why were those two days so different from the thousands of others in the same place before and since? Because I felt entitled to do nothing productive. Nothing was expected of me, required of me. Despite being just 50 miles from home and on familiar turf, I had no way to attend to things that might need doing. It was as if I was on vacation.
But back when that happened, few people had cell phones and I wasn’t one of them, and though I did have email, I would have needed a desktop computer and a modem to get at it; so if, as with that blizzard, I wasn’t at my home or office, I was unreachable. In a similar situation today, I’d be answering emails, texts, voicemails and Facebook messages on my iPhone, and editing and publishing articles on my iPad anywhere there was a 3G signal.
(Here’s the segment from Black Books I mention above.)
This doesn’t mean we can’t find freedom from demands. We just have to be more deliberate these days. How do you recreate my blizzard experience in this hyper-connected age? It’s simple, but it’s not easy. It means breaking some patterns and ignoring what people around you might think. It’s hard not to feel guilty doing nothing when the whole society is obsessed with measuring productivity.
Cardinal Egan once said that the greatest gift we give another person is our time, being present to them. Give yourself that gift. Take some time to have no purpose but to be with yourself. And if you have a family, also take time to be with them. My childhood camping trips were so precious partly because we were together with no agenda. (Other than my father’s insane daily mileage goals, that is.)
So, go on that tour of medieval churches in Italy. Go to that workshop. Those are wonderful things. But also consider a real retreat, where the only goal is to be there; the only activities, to pray, walk in the woods, and perhaps listen to talks.
In your daily routine at home, create time to do nothing — sacred time for you and God. Consider the ancient Judeo-Christian tradition — one of the Ten Commandment, no less! — of a real full day of rest, an entire day with no obligations other than your faith practice and being with family.
The sidebar on the right has some suggestions for how to create space to do nothing in your life.
And I want to hear from you! How do you carve out space to do nothing? Has a time when you did nothing enriched your spiritual practice? Share your tips and experiences in comments below.
[This column was originally published on July 27, 2009.]
A few weeks ago, when the bishops of England and Wales decided to reestablish the practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays, I had been thinking about the issue already after seeing friends struggle with the few Fridays of Lent. I have abstained from “meat” on Fridays since becoming Catholic. (I put meat in quotes because seafood is allowed.) Since Vatican II, this practice hasn’t been required — one well-meaning friend even suggested I was being disobedient by doing it — but when I discovered during my conversion that the tradition was not eliminated but just made non-mandatory, I said to myself, “I think I’d like to do that anyway.”
Meat-free Fridays were a given from at least the ninth century, but it seems that when things were loosened in the 1960s, Catholics said a collective sigh of, “Well, glad that nuisance is over,” and started eating meat seven days a week. The Church never removed the requirement that one do something penitential every Friday (abstinence being one option), but many Catholics I talk to don’t even know this. I’d like to join with the English and Welsh bishops in suggesting a return to the tradition of meat-free Fridays.
Growing up in a non-religious formerly Protestant household, we had no dietary traditions other than the Midwestern inclination to use processed foods like Cheez Whiz, orange juice concentrate and canned cream soups whenever possible (including in unexpected ways that rivaled the adventurousness of nouvelle cuisine.) But when my family moved to New York City I found myself immersed in a culture that was equal parts Jewish and Catholic and my sister became a Seventh Day Adventist. Suddenly I was surrounded by people with faith-based dietary restrictions. Now, that mix includes Muslims and Buddhists.
Dietary laws
There are several reasons that faith practices can include dietary laws and traditions. Some proscribed unsafe foods (especially pre-refrigeration) and these physical health guidelines became codified into religious law. Others forbid intoxicants because they threaten your spiritual health by causing you to misperceive reality or not be fully present. Some forbid foods that are bad for your health out of respect for the body as a temple (1 Corinthians 6:16-17). Yet another category is tied to ethical beliefs concerning animals. For example, many Buddhists are vegetarian as a result of the centrality in that practice of causing no harm to other life.
The Church never removed the requirement that one do something penitential every Friday (abstinence being one option), but many Catholics I talk to don’t even know this. I’d like to join with the English and Welsh bishops in suggesting a return to the tradition of meat-free Fridays.
But the Catholic practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays is a different kind of dietary restriction. In part, it is tradition, ritual. We do it to remember, more like the Jewish abstention from eating leavened bread during Passover. Long ago, I thought it was beautiful when an Orthodox Jewish friend explained that one of the benefits of following the 613 mitzvot (commandments) in Jewish law was that it filled your day and all your actions with reminders that you are living in relation to God.
The British bishops echoed this idea when they said that abstaining from meat on Fridays would exist “in the lives of the faithful as a clear and distinctive mark of their own Catholic identity.” (Of course, that also hints at another result of special dietary laws which has value but can become problematic: to set you apart from others.)
Meat abstinence is also grounded in the extensive use of fasting in ancient times, still practiced by many today, as an act of asceticism and ritual purification. From Yom Kippur to Jesus’ 40 days in the desert to Lent, fasting as purification, often to begin a new phase, has always been part of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Facing up to instant gratification
Abstinence also involves facing up to instant gratification. Our society is built on instant gratification and there are few things more toxic to spiritual fitness. It is a fascinating and educational experience to want something — something you could easily obtain — and refrain from satisfying the urge. In this way, abstinence can help teach you how driven you are by your urges, and how thoughtlessly you obey them.
On a practical health note, some suggest that fasting one day a week is good for the digestive system and disease resistance — an example of the link often present between what is good for the body and what is good for the soul. While meat abstinence is not a full fast, there is a health benefit to giving the body a little break from hard-to-digest meat. (A commenter to my Lenten column about abstaining from alcohol correctly pointed out that this kind of penitential abstinence isn’t about doing something good for you, but about giving up something you enjoy. That’s true. In this case, the health benefits are a nice side-effect.)
During my time as a Catholic, I have practiced this meat abstinence two different ways. Some of the time, I’ve been vegan on Fridays — that is, no animal products at all. It’s easy to make good hearty vegan meals, and since I already eat less meat than the average American, this is more of a sacrifice on my part than simply skipping meat one day. Most of the time, though, I’ve eaten seafood on Fridays. While less restrictive, this is for me more of an alteration of my normal diet. I don’t like fish that’s fishy, and the challenges of buying seafood super-fresh, cooking it thoroughly, and dealing with the cooking smell and the dirty cookware and dishes haven’t seemed worth it. So, for me, eating seafood on Fridays is a clearer way of saying, “Fridays are different.” I also love that I’m participating in something that billions of people have practiced for thousands of years.
Reading Elizabeth Scalia’s recent column in First Things about growing up with meatless Fridays, I realize my own experience of this ritual is different. She describes the humbleness of a meal that is just sustenance without being exciting to the palate. With my meat-free meals like last Friday’s grilled shrimp and asparagus (see photo), there isn’t much asceticism or humbleness going on. But it’s still enriching to my spiritual and physical health to take part in this ancient weekly ritual of penitence, purification and self-restraint.
Making sure to fit nature into my life, and encouraging others to do to the same, is a passion of mine. As a writer, it’s easy enough to stay holed up indoors in a room in front of my computer all day, but my encounters with the divine in nature helped form — and, it would be the right word choice to say, nurture — my spiritual path. Nature continues to ground me in my connection to the spiritual dimension of reality.
The fact that I live in a city, without any outdoor space of my own — no backyard or balcony — doesn’t mean it’s difficult to make this happen. There are parks all around, and just a walk in the sun down city streets can be enriching. For example, after working in the office, I often go to a park and spent a little time birdwatching or just strolling.
And contrary to all the neo-Luddite moaning out there, technology is now making it easier to stay connected with the non-technological world. Many of the advances in recent years have focused on untethering people from their desks. I am writing this column on my iPad; not only can I write it but even file it while sitting on a log in the middle of the woods, or on the grass in a city park. (OK, well, as long as there’s an AT&T signal.)
Taking time to notice nature is also taking time to just be present. To slow down and observe everything around you. It can be very contemplative. And, witnessing the amazing splendor and absurd abundance of nature shows me the face of God and my own place in relation to that. As Einstein said, “What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.” Perhaps some don’t have this reaction, and just see raw materials and messiness. I am awed.
We need Vitamin D to survive, and it is acquired naturally only from unblocked sun and some fish oils (and unnaturally through fortified milk and supplements.) This may seem unrelated to the spiritual value of being in nature, but it’s not: We are meant to be outdoors and the outdoors is meant to be in us. What is good for us physically is good for us spiritually.
Here are some ideas for getting outdoors — some you may not have thought of before, some you may just need a little prodding to fit into your life.
Eat an occasional weekend brunch outside — If you have outdoor space with your home, take your coffee or juice into the open air. If you live in an apartment, find a nice brunch restaurant with outdoor seating.
Don’t eat lunch at your desk — Walk out of the building for the hour. Find a local park, or just a bench in your office park. You will accomplish more in the afternoon than if you worked through lunch at your desk.
Grill — Whether it’s a backyard built-in unit or a hibachi on the fire escape, grilling is a great way to spend time outside in the summer. And it’s not limited to meat-eaters. Try tossing zucchini or green beans with olive oil and thyme and throwing them on the grill.
Walk more — I am absolutely baffled when people drive or take a train to go less than a mile, then spend time on an exercise machine. Use needed tasks during your day to spend more time outside.
Do something outdoors each weekend — In nature is best, but anything outside is better than not. Skip the mall and go to the beach, a local fair or festival, the park, a city farmer’s market.
If you have property, create outdoor space — Porches, decks and patios make it easy to move your activity outside. When I was at a monastery in New England I saw a clever solution to bugs: a detached gazebo that was entirely screened in. You could sit out there with open air on all sides, bug-free, all day.
Go camping for at least a long weekend this summer — Most can’t and probably wouldn’t want to do what my family did when I was growing up — camping for several months each summer — but at least get a little dose or two of sleeping outside.
Add an outdoor activity to your life — Birdwatching, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking: whatever gets you outside and more in tune with nature. Best are activities like birding that force you to slow down and increase your attention, but they’re all good.
So get outside more this spring and summer. Try a few of the suggestions above, and there are more in last year’s column, but you probably know best what is easy to do in your neck of the woods. Comments or questions? Leave them below.
I was going to stay quiet on the whole issue of the public reaction to bin Laden’s killing, but after an hour or so of Facebook chatter on Sunday night, I put up a post on my wall expressing my frustration that people were gloating and cheering, reminding them that the issue is not whether he deserved punishment — I had no doubt that he was an evil man who had done unspeakable harm to the world; I lived in lower Manhattan on 9/11 and saw the attack and inhaled the smoke for weeks and lived with its aftermath — I just asked people to reconsider cheering over a death, any death. I had intended that this brief remark be my only statement on the issue. But the reaction to my post and those of other friends caught me by surprise. We were immediately jumped on for being unsympathetic toward the victims of 9/11, or, as one commenter put it, “whiny liberals.”
A common argument in various forms, recounting the harm done by bin Laden or pulling in Hitler analogies, was that he had it coming. One commenter said, “Live by the sword…” expecting the reader to finish in their mind with “die by the sword.” (This is perverse in two ways. First, we are the sword, apparently? And second, this is a corruption of Matthew 26:52 which is a call for nonviolence.) But these people were arguing over something the posts never said: the question of whether bin Laden deserved to be punished. They missed the distinction between whether someone deserves punishment and whether you personally perform and/or enjoy the execution of that punishment.
The thing is, if you take scripture seriously at all, what we are called to as Christians in a situation like this is clear. The most blatantly applicable line, quoted often these last few days, is this:
Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble. (Proverbs 24:17)
To expand and strengthen that, we need look no further than the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45)
In applying the Christian view to this specific event, for me, the Vatican statement delivered within hours of the news of Bin Laden’s death says it best:
Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions for this purpose.
In the face of a man’s death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not of hatred.
But why does this need to be said again and again? And why, in this instance, are so many moral and good people saying “Yeah, but this is different”?
Revenge will not undo [the original wrong]. So then, why do people want revenge? As best I can tell, revenge is an attempt to fix the fact that the material world is sometimes unfair. People feel wronged by someone and see them seem to get away with it, and they want to bring what they think is God’s vengeance down on the person in order to restore balance.
Jesus is saying… Let it go. Return to Love. Because if you get yourself caught up in being hateful towards another person, no matter how seemingly justified you may be, you are shutting yourself off from God. And that’s hell.
Whether we can always live up to the ideal is another matter, of course. An old spiritual advisor of mine was fond of saying: forget turn the other cheek, ideally if a person punched you in the face your reaction would be compassion for how broken they are that they would do such a thing. This is the level of spiritual groundedness, of elevated thinking, that we are called to. Jesus said we should aim to be “perfect.” We will fall short, and that’s OK. But this goal is not to be mocked or dismissed as impractical, or only for the likes of saints.
… as with other “life” issues, we cannot overlook what Jesus asks of us, hard as it is to comprehend. Or to do.
For this is a “life” issue as surely as any other. The Christian is not simply in favor of life for the unborn, for the innocent, for those we care for, for our families and friends, for our fellow citizens, for our fellow church members or even for those whom we consider good, but for all. All life is sacred because God created all life. This is what lies behind Jesus’s most difficult command: “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
He goes on to say:
I am glad he has left the world. And I pray that his departure may lead to peace. But as a Christian, I am asked to pray for him and, at some point, forgive him.
Fr. Jim in the same piece reminds us that Blessed John Paul II forgave and met with the man who had shot him in an assassination attempt. Mike Hayes wrote a piece in Busted Halo about this several years ago, “Radical Forgiveness,” which we had just rerun on Sunday morning related to his beatification. On Sunday night, Mike wrote a touching post in his blog, recalling his direct connections to 9/11 through people he knew who’d been lost that day. Despite his conflicted feelings, Mike does not flinch from the Christian challenge to love his enemy. He admits,
I guess I’m not exactly able to offer the forgiveness that I know God offers Bin Laden without reservation today, the same forgiveness that is offered to each one of us for our sins,
but concludes saying,
We will have defeated the spirit of terrorism when we begin to stop hating these enemies, even under the disguise of cheap justice. We can rejoice only when peace reigns instead of vengeance.
In a 1958 speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. said the famous line, “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness.” Later in the same speech, he said that “Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate” the opponent but to win them over. We may fail to do so, but that must be our aim. If our goal, as a nation and as individuals, is not to win over our enemies but to defeat and humiliate them, the cycle of violence will never end.
