“Hoarders”

Last week I was watching a TV show called Hoarders, which is about people who suffer from a psychological condition called “hoarding” (hence the name). People who are “hoarders” like to hang onto tons and tons of stuff—clutter, trash, you name it—and by the time they make it into the TV documentary TV, the cleaning crew is knocking at their door, ready to clear out their stuff before they get arrested or lose their kids because their house is a health code violation.

In one episode I watched, an elderly lady had 8,000 pounds of garbage cleared out of her house… including several dead cats, a toilet full of human excrement, and countless other pieces of junk that were among the rubble.

There is a part of me that wants to be disgusted by people that live in so much filth that the toxic environment of their home is literally dangerous to their health. Yet, I can’t feel that way because I know that I too am “hoarder”…just in a different sense. I “hoard” my past.

A great saint once said (again, somewhat long but worth reading):

“First of all, it is necessary that the continuity of the “old life” be cut…For in the perfection of life, that is, the imitation of Christ, it is necessary, not only in the example of gentleness and lowliness, but in His long-suffering into His death…so in making a change in lives it seems necessary for “death” to come as a mediator between the two, ending all that goes before (our rebirth) and beginning all that comes after.” –St. Basil the Great, On the Spiritual Life

The continuity of the “old life” must be cut.

In his epistles, St. Paul often compares spirituality to athletics, likening life in Christ to running a race. And I think sometimes, in my own life, something that hinders me from “running the race” is the fact that I drag parts of the past around like dead weight, when sometimes I just need to let go. I think more people than me probably do this. We carry around with us old hurts, old possessions, old lifestyles, old habits, even old relationships…and these things drag us down as we try to move forward in life, spiritually and otherwise.

The people on Hoarders hang on to the clutter and trash in their house for reasons that are as different as the messes themselves. One guy was hanging onto tons of trinkets and random items that he had slowly accumulated over the years because the items had sentimental value, they made him think of very specific instances in his life that he didn’t want to forget. The lady with 8,000 pounds of trash held onto stuff because she was just apathetic about cleaning her house. She didn’t care that she was sitting in a mess. Others were too emotionally distraught over a traumatic experience to try to get their home in order.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all of us were “hoarders”, hanging onto our pasts in different ways. Some people probably slowly accumulate sentimental messes of memories like the guy with the trinkets. Others of us probably are apathetic about cleaning up the toxic stuff in our lives…bad habits, sins, etc. And others of us are still hurting too badly to even begin to deal with the traumatic mess in our life.

Even if we have an inkling that it isn’t good to relive the memories, the pain or to perpetuate a bad habit, it can seem equally as cruel or difficult to let go of something from the past, if not impossible. We don’t want to stop talking to our old flame. We don’t want to kick a bad habit. We don’t want to stop being mad at someone. We don’t want to stop sifting through old pictures or writings or trinkets from “the good ol’ days.” And hey, my hoarding is not hurting anyone but me, so why should I bother to clean up the mess, to let it go?

In Hoarders, the mess that one person accumulated affected everyone who lived in their house. Similarly, refusing to let go of past habits, hurts, etc., affects everyone who comes into contact with “my house”. As people with pasts, we take the “house” of our life with us everywhere we go. And so, if I have a mess to clean up, it probably is spilling over onto other people, even if I don’t know it.

There’s nothing wrong with the occasional jog down memory lane. But, I think there’s something wrong with staying on that path for too long…

The Gospels are continually urging people to repent. I believe repentance is not just some dark, outdated religious word, but rather it is a decision to move forward.

I think my study Bible explains it well: “Repentance…is a total about-face. The word in Greek literally means to change one’s mind, or more generally to turn around. Repentance is a radical change of one’s spirit, mind, thought, and heart, a complete reorientation of the whole of one’s life. It is the necessary first step in the way of the Lord.”

I believe the decision to “turn around” looks different for everyone.

The man with the sentimental trinkets had so much stuff that his house was a hazard to his new granddaughter. To move forward, he needed to allow himself to forget some of the past memories so he can see his granddaughter, see the future.

The lady with 8,000 pounds of trash needed to clear out the trash and the toxic waste in her life or she was going to die…literally. To move forward, she needed to start caring about the mess of her life—she needed to kick the habit, to stop sinning— or she wouldn’t HAVE a life to care about.

For the people who were too distraught to keep things clean, moving forward could only come with dealing with old wounds, seeking help, finding healing. And if they didn’t, they would find them selves drowning under piles of pain and bitterness from the past… AND taking their loved ones down with them.

Some past hurts cannot go away all at once. Some behaviors don’t change overnight. But I think the decision to keep moving forward means actively working to not let the past define our lives anymore…the mistakes, the pain, the memories, the bitterness, who we WERE. The decision to repent, to move forward happens not in a moment, but daily.

In Hoarders, the cleaning crew discovered two flattened, rotting, dead cats in the lady’s house with 8,000 pounds of trash. The lady said she loved animals, and that may have been true. But her love for cats got crushed under 8,000 pounds of garbage, lost in the rubble of her life she refused to clean up.

In a sense, this can happen to any of us. The things that we love NOW can get crushed under the accumulating mess from our past that we refuse to clean up. New relationships get smothered by reeking crap from old relationships (romantic ones, friendships, familial relationships), new habits are choked by the old ones we can’t kick, new thoughts are eroded by old ones.

So here’s the public service announcement for all of us: Quit hoarding. Take out the trash. Bury the cats. Repent.

Our new lives depend on it.

Love Stinks

One of my favorite scenes from the Adam Sandler movie, The Wedding Singer occurs after Sandler’s character Robbie Hart gets dumped at the altar but then decides to go back to work as a wedding singer. Unfortunately, the gig doesn’t go so well when Robbie decides to sing “Love Stinks” at the reception and then ends up getting punched out by the bride’s angry father. A little while after the incident, Robbie says, “I hate the bride. I hate the groom. I want them to be miserable because that’s what I am.”

Sometimes…maybe too often…I can relate to this line. The messed up part is when the bride I “hate” is me and the groom is my fiancé.

Well, it’s not that I really hate myself or him. (I don’t know…maybe a therapist would tell me differently…). But sometimes I feel like I really do hate the fact that because I’m getting married I have to get excited about dresses and flowers and cake and invitations and catered food and sappy songs for a day that’s going to lead to stress, responsibility, and inevitable heartache and pain. Wouldn’t it be easier to go to grad school if I didn’t have to worry about a spouse and theoretical children that could come too soon? Or what about the fact that I have to adjust to someone’s flaws…and not just the cute ones like, “Oh, you have morning breath…tee hee. How precious.” But serious flaws that could make life difficult.

Sometimes, thinking about how another person could screw up the future I would like to have makes me so flat out angry that I can relate to Robbie Hart wanting to ruin a wedding more than I can relate to a blushing bride.

I had a dream the other day that I kissed someone else. It wasn’t like the other guy forced himself on me. I had a choice. And I chose to cheat on my significant other. And as I pulled away from the kiss and started to walk away, I heard a line that we pray during Liturgy, “Neither like Judas will I give thee a kiss…”

Translation: I won’t betray God. But yet, I have. I do.

I read this line today in 1 Timothy, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith…having their own conscience seared with a hot iron…” –1 Tim. 4:1…-2

To have your conscience seared with a hot iron means (according to my commentary), “…that repeated and willful sin blunts our sensitivity to good and evil. A grim warning to all Christians to reject evil in all forms and thereby maintain a softness of heart toward God.”

Sin makes our hearts become calloused…I think both the sins we commit and the sins that others commit against us.

Why did Robbie Hart grab his microphone and start wailing “Love Stinks” at a wedding reception? Because he got dumped at the altar. Because he was in pain. And it is easier to anesthetize pain with insensitivity, callousness, and cynicism than to let ourselves feel it.

I am often responding to world with callousness, insensitivity, and cynicism. I make gagging noises at happy wedding photos, I go to a beautiful beach and see slave ships, I look at the mountains and see deforestation and global warming. What can I say? “I hate the bride. I hate the groom. I want them to be miserable because that’s what I am.”

Yet, as one of my professors said once, “Commiseration is not the point of life.”

Well, why the heck not? It is easier to divorce yourself from your feelings, and to watch your life, your world as though you were staring into a fish tank on the other side of cold, hard glass. It’s easier to critically think about life than to be immersed in the water poisoned by the pain of the fall. It’s easier to examine life’s events as museum exhibits than to be an active participant in life. It’s less painful, less messy. I can’t remove myself from life’s painful circumstances, but I can remove my heart from them, damnit. And I will.

I sabotage myself.

Yet, why is it that some people have lived lives a million times harder, more trying, and more painful than my own, and yet, they found happiness in life while I find something to whine about on vacation?

That’s what happens when I decide to let my heart become calloused. I miss the pain of life. But I also miss the joy.

Our priest has preached two sermons in the last couple of weeks about gratitude. He said that one of the hallmarks of the Christian life is gratitude. It makes sense. What other response is there to charity? Yet, I find myself constantly grumbling.

And that is a choice. That is a sin.

It is true that bad stuff happens in life. You get dumped at the altar. Someone dies. Someone lets you down. Someone gets sick. Someone makes a stupid choice and it ruins YOUR life. And that sucks. It really and truly sucks.  What sucks even worse is that we can’t do anything about it.

But I can decide how I’m going to respond to the situation. Unfortunately, I too often choose to respond to life with callousness, and the fruits of my life are bitter…if I produce any at all. I drive a wedge further into my relationships each time I decide to be insensitive to the other, to pick at their faults. My personal “cross” may be small, and yet I still bare it like a wuss.

And in this way, I kiss God like Judas. I betray Him with a cynical, an ungrateful, a critical comment or a complaint.

Here is something else I read: “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” –Mtt. 3:1-2

Repent. This was the message of the prophets, of John, of Jesus. And, I also think it is the hardest message. It’s easier to read about, to write about, to talk about the spiritual life than to walk it. And even when we experience spiritual “milestones” like a conversion experience or a wedding ceremony, those things are still only a part of the spiritual life, not the whole thing. Every word we say, every  action we take is either walking toward God or walking away from him. And the more I choose to walk the other way…through insults, complaints, cynicism, ingratitude, the more my heart becomes calloused. I sear my conscience with a hot iron not in a moment of weakness but in the habits that I refuse to change. To train ourselves to see the good, to speak the good, to be the good even in the poisonous pond enables the mustard seeds of our faith to grow into a tree.  Yet, often times, we cut the tree down ourselves, we sabotage ourselves by choosing to respond badly to life.

Even a wimp can be a good person when things are good. Yet, to be a good person when things are bad…that’s where God comes in.

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” –Mtt. 3:1-2

Faith: It Ain’t Always Damascus Road

“Then He said, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put it in his garden; and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.” –Luke 13:18-19

Faith grows. Love grows.

I started reading a book this summer about Father Arseny, a Russian Orthodox priest who was imprisoned in a Soviet Camp during Communist Russia. Obviously, this was not a place of comfort and luxury. Despite all of that, Father Arseny was able to act as a shepherd for the souls of people who were seeking Light in that great Darkness.

One part of the book describes a mystical experience that Father Arseny has. After being very sick for some time, Father Arseny dies and is able to view the souls of the people in the camp.  Of this experience, Father Arseny describes what he sees (a little bit of a lengthy passage, but worth reading):

“The souls of some were afire with faith which kindled the people around them; the souls of others…burned with a smaller but ever growing flame; others had only small sparks of faith and only needed the arrival of a shepherd to fan these sparks into a real flame. There were also people whose souls were dark and sad, without even the least a spark of Light. Now, looking into the souls of the people which God allowed him to see, Father Arseny was extremely moved. ‘O, Lord! I lived among these people and did not even notice them. How much beauty they carry within them. So many are true ascetics in the faith. Although they are surrounded by spiritual darkness and unbearable human suffering, they not only save themselves, but give their life and their love to the people around them, helping others by word and deed’.”

–Father Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father, p.44-45

Sometimes I expect faith to feel like Paul’s all-at-once-blinding-light conversion experience on Damascus Road. However, my own “journey of faith” has felt more like a growing flame described in the passage in the Fr. Arseny book or a growing mustard seed than a blinding light experience.

A little over a week ago, I had my confirmation in the Orthodox Church. On Friday: confession, standing before our priest, before an icon of Christ, confessing the sins I could recall having committed in my lifetime. On Saturday: chrismation, head anointed with oil, a seal of the Holy Spirit within me. Sunday: Communion.

I had spent a year, waiting, preparing for these steps of faith. And finally it was here.  And it was a meaningful step in my journey of faith. But it wasn’t Damascus Road. The moments of Confession, Chrismation, Communion weren’t moments of beaming light splitting the heavens. But I do believe that something happened in each of them. I believe each moment was like the lighting of a spark that can continue to grow. God gives us the spark of faith, of love, but part of its growth must come from effort on our part: prayer, watching, working out our path of salvation.

I’m a selfish baby in faith, but this is exactly why the image of faith growing like a mustard seed into a tree or a spark into a flame is comforting to me. It doesn’t have to happen all it once. Salvation, sanctification takes time, effort.

In another book that someone recently gave me about an Orthodox nun, Mother Gavrilia, Mother Gavrilia writes,

“Find a hole in the wall of your prison and escape! The whole world will be freedom for you and soon you will find out that only Love counts. And, where there is Love, even the cutting of lepers’ fingers and toes eaten away by gangrene and rats becomes a moment of blessing. Then, the sun rises in your heart and from within you, spring up the words of the Prophet David, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”

“Only love counts.”

I remember standing on the beach’s shoreline this summer, feeling the ocean roll into the beach in waves against my ankles.  The waves were tiny where I stood, but I know if I followed them, I would be led to bigger waves, to a deeper ocean.

I don’t know what paths of salvation God has laid out for other people, but I needed Orthodox Christianity to satisfy my hunger for something deeper. At liturgy each week, our prayers are heavy with tradition, sometimes too heavy for a new convert like me.  But the weight of tradition also tugs at me like waves in a vast ocean, promising to lead me to something deep that I couldn’t find anywhere else. The Orthodox Church is the hospital of my soul because it allows me to draw nearer to Christ, the only one who can heal my brokenness.

I don’t believe that Union with Christ happens in a day. I believe we are always drawing nearer to him as He leads us to do so, and as we do, the love in our hearts grows like a spark into a blazing fire. Many are walking in faith toward Christ in hope that He can heal the hole in their heart. After playing in the shallow pools of healing the world offers, the longing for something often persists. It compels us forward like a moth to the flame, and we cannot rest until our soul finds what it is seeking.

As St. Augustine has written, “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”
–St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 1

Like a mustard seed, faith grows. Love grows.

As we draw nearer to God, the great capacity we have within us for beauty and goodness dances like a flame in the night, laughing in the face of darkness because of the warmth within. And the souls caught in the cold can find warmth that the icy world cannot give.

“Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” –Jam. 4:8

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

“O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.”

–”O Come Emmanuel”

A local radio station, 101.7, is playing Christmas music all day, every day through December 25. I will be listening to that station on just about every car trip I make from now until then. Some people think it is quite irritating to have to listen to Christmas music for a month, but listening to Christmas music, for me, makes me feel hopeful because it reminds me that Christmas is coming.

The funny thing about the Christmas season is that it seems to change as one gets older. The other day, I was listening to the Christmas station and I heard this song about a man who “meets his old lover in the grocery store” during Christmas time. They try to find a bar to talk in, but they can’t find one that is open, so they get a six pack and “drink it in her car.” Then, they discuss the lives that they had been leading over the past few years without each other. Sometimes, Christmas has that feeling about it. The decorations, lights, etc. that meant joy and happiness when we were young start to signal a dull ache in our hearts as we feel the changes that have taken place: a friend, an old lover, a family member who is not there anymore—a part of US that is not there anymore.

I went to visit my Hospice patient yesterday but couldn’t actually see her because the nurse was putting a catheter in her. From my conversations with this particular patient, she sounds like she used to be a real socialite back in the day—someone who enjoyed dressing up for a good dinner party that she was hosting for a big group of friends. But yet, where her Christmases past may have meant parties flowing with egg nog, this Christmas she now has urine flowing into a catheter, and human dignity flowing out. An unflattering image, I know, but let’s face it. Life can be quite unflattering, and sometimes the unattractiveness of life makes it hard to celebrate the holiday season the way we used to.

“O Come Emmanuel” is one of my favorite Christmas songs. My mom doesn’t like it at all. She thinks it’s depressing. But hey, life can be depressing. And that’s why I like the song. Sometimes at Christmas, I believe it is impossible to pretend like everything is okay—it is impossible to pretend that life is great when someone is missing around the Christmas tree, when someone else has changed, when we are in unrelenting pain from the brokenness and weariness of life. Life truly is a lonely exile where we are captives to the pain and brokenness that the world brings. And we can’t save ourselves by putting on a happy face, by shopping, wrapping, baking or decorating the pain away. Pain is pain…and whether we try to glitz it up for the holidays, it will still be there when our holiday rush comes to a halt.

But yet, hope is not lost.

Emmanuel means “God with us.”

It is often around this time of the year that I want to demand the answers to life’s hard questions: Why does my patient get a catheter for Christmas? Why will some people be separated from their families on Christmas? Why is the pain and the suffering still here?

I don’t know. No one really knows.

But, I believe that the hope of Christmas is that we are not alone in our pain. That Emmanuel—God with us—has been incarnated, has been born into our world, into our lives no matter what we’re going through.

We are not alone.

And that is why we rejoice.

Not because all of our life’s problems are gone, but because God is with us. And that we can hope to someday be out of this exile and fully present with God who wipes away all tears.

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” –This is the deep cry of our hearts.

To give thanks, or not to give thanks, that is the question…

As I anticipate this day—Thanksgiving—in my opinion, the most odd of holidays uncreated by Hallmark, there is one thing that springs to mind that I want to do—

And it is not giving thanks…

It is complaining.

I want to complain about—I do complain about—enduring awkward questions from family members or future in-laws, having to drink weird punch, having to sit in a bleak cinder block building because my family is too big to fit in someone’s house, having to face the fact that my engagement ring being on my right hand and not my left may draw unwanted attention to my physical deformities from my non-relatives…

I complain about all these things.

Lately, because I am getting married, I have been forced to think about some hard life questions that I really don’t want to think about. I would rather think and write about the difficulties of school than of my upcoming (impending?) marriage. People my age can relate to school problems. A large majority of 18 to early-twenty-somethings are going to school. Not such a large majority of this age group is getting married. The young marriage category is more reserved for shot-gun weddings due to unwanted pregnancies, people in difficult family/living situations, or religious people who want to do things the weird, socially backwards, traditional way. Yet here I am, eight-ish months away from solidifying myself into that weird minority. And I am forced to think about socially un-hip hard questions as I fling myself headlong into adulthood. Like…what to do about contraception?

The funny thing about Christianity and contraception is that there are mixed views on the subject. Unlike other subjects where people take a hard line one way or the other, the acceptability of the use of contraception seems more ambiguous among various Christian people and groups. So, as I have pondered … “To use contraception, or not to use contraception…that is the question?” I have perused some of the options. There is the ever-popular birth control by means of the pill or whatever else, there is the not-so-fun total abstinence even within marriage option, and there is the controversial Natural Family Planning option. Because this third option is somewhat new and foreign for me, I have been reading literature and reviews on it… and I have found that some praise it, some say it is reliable, some say it is unreliable, some say some forms of it are reliable and others not so much, some say that they would never wish NFP on the “foulest fiend of hell.” Hmm…such a variety of opinions. Yet, what is the right thing to do?

Well, I don’t have the answer to that practical question yet, for myself or for others. However, contemplating the important practical question of birth control has made me realize something important. The stories that I have read about using NFP depict some people who are happy in their marriages and some people who are not. Likewise, some people that I know who use birth control are happy in their marriages while others are not. I don’t know many people who are married and not having sex, so I can’t say much about that. But it seems as though whether people are using contraception or not, they are going to find ways to be happy or unhappy in their marriages. Whether people’s sex lives are regulated to a schedule, or whether they can have all the sex they want, there can still be problems. Why?

I think maybe it’s because we are broken and selfish people.  And what really seems to make a difference in marriage (and probably other situations) seems to be attitude.  As married people grow together, it seems that they can either learn how to accept and respect their spouse or not.  They can choose to do what it takes to grow in love for another person, or they can choose to be selfish and fall into the ever-hungry cycle of self-gratification. And whether one uses birth control or not…a marriage can still go one of two ways.  In other words, it is not birth control that destroys a relationship. It is our human selfishness. It is our broken nature.

Which brings me back to the topic of thanksgiving.  It seems like a quality that truly holy people have is not a favorable or unfavorable position on birth control, but a grateful heart. They are grateful for all the things that life gives them. They are grateful for comfort and for suffering. They are grateful for people and seasons and the big and little blessings they receive in life.

This is why I know I have a long way to go on this spiritual journey towards sanctification, holiness, salvation…whatever word you want to put to it…because in my heart I am often complaining when I should be rejoicing…rejoicing because I have to make a choice on Thanksgiving between two groups of people who care about me, rejoicing because my family IS so big that we have to move our Thanksgiving to a bleak, cinder block building, rejoicing that I HAVE been given someone who wants to marry me, deformities and all.

Maybe the reason that some marriages fail has to do with contraception, but maybe the reason that some marriages fail has to do with ingratitude, feelings of entitlement, and an inability to know how to treat someone as a treasure that we have for a limited time. No one ever said that our spouses, our friends, our family members are guaranteed to us for life. People move away, people move on, people die. And so for today, for every day, we are faced with another difficult choice, “To give thanks, or not to give thanks?”

It is possible to live a life where we always complain. It is possible to have heaven on earth—in our many relationships and life situations— and make these relationships and situations hell by fault-finding.

I hope I can overcome my tendency to complain. Because if I can’t, then it won’t matter what my position is on birth control or whatever else, because I will always see the problems and not the good. God help me.

I can’t stand it when people are lazy.

I can’t stand it when people talk about themselves all the time and you can never get a word in edgewise.

I can’t stand it when some yahoo cuts me off in traffic.

I can’t stand it when people say one thing and do another.

I can’t stand it when I have to pay for a cup of water in the school cafeteria.

Why?

Because I’m lazy.

Because I talk about myself all the time.

Because I cut people off in traffic.

Because I say one thing and do another.

Because I force people to pay—wait, no. No I don’t do that one.

As humans, we all have lists of pet peeves. But I have been wondering lately if these lists are reflections of our own vices…whether consciously or not. And, maybe, when we ARE conscious of our vices, it bothers us even more when people do the things we are trying to stop doing it ourselves.

So…in light of this observation, I have been doing a self-experiment lately. Every time I find myself saying, “I CAN’T STAND IT WHEN…” I try to pay attention to see if I do the same things I can’t stand. Surprisingly, (or maybe not surprisingly) I find that I either do the things I can’t stand, or I find that they are behaviors I have to make a conscious effort to NOT do.

Like today.

I came into this lounge to do my homework  and I found this married couple sitting on a couch, watching a movie on the husband’s laptop. And suddenly, I found myself thinking all kinds of judgmental thoughts about them for being one of those silly couples who gets married in college. And then I thought wait—I’m going to be one of those silly couples who gets married in college. And so I started thinking about all the things I was thinking about. And I realized that I had no real basis for any of the judgments I was making.

And so I sat there arguing with my own judgments, and I realized that I really kinda liked sitting with the married couple. They were quiet, happy, keeping to themselves, whispering comments to each other, knitting (well, one of them was), and keeping the volume on their movie low (probably being sensitive to ME who was doing my homework) which is completely not what most people do in the lounge. Most people carry on loud conversations, not really caring who’s around or what anyone else is doing. But this couple actually was being quiet. And I got a lot accomplished. Not only that, but it was sort of…sweet having a couple there. They were contented…not rushed, not frenzied like me and most college students I know. And creepily enough, I didn’t want them to leave. I wanted to be around the peaceful couple because their peace was contagious. And when I shut my internal self up enough to notice that, I experienced some of their peace, too.

Do I actually have time to write this?

When I was a freshman in college, I used to have period spaz attacks wondering how I would ever get all of my work done. I got up everyday around 6 am and I was “on”…doing SOMETHING… 10 or 11 at night. I know some people do more than that, but for me, that was a long time to have to be “on.”

I quit my job at the beginning of my sophomore year of college to try to lighten the work load a bit. It worked. But then, as I watched the world around me rushing here and there, working 10 jobs, taking 100 classes and doing some weird side project without breaking a sweat, I started to feel really self conscious…like, maybe I should be doing more with my life besides going to class and studying.

So this year I got two jobs on campus…neither of them is extremely time consuming, but I have found that my lifestyle has become like it was my freshman year—rushed, hurried, trying to see how much I can do without breaking a sweat, being “on” all the time. The big difference between this year and freshman year is that I don’t panic anymore when I have a ton of stuff to do. I just do it. Like everyone else.

I read this in the Bible the other day (and a few days since): “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” –2 Cor. 3:18

There is a footnote in my Bible that goes with this. It says: “As we behold him, we become what we are created to be.”

Sometimes I believe that be a “good Christian” I should be productive all waking hours of the day, always striving, always working, always going, and going, and going, and going. I am starting to wonder if I am deceived by pride. In my quest for productivity, I am starting to wonder if I am responding to grace or if I am in a vain, self-initiated pursuit for salvation.

Some people scoffed at me for quitting my job so I could have more time for school, as though I were taking the slacker’s way out. And so for the past fewyears I have pondered the question of how much is too much.  And I don’t know if I’ve drawn any conclusions for the collective whole, but I think I’ve decided that when I don’t have time to “behold the glory of the Lord,” I might be doing too much. When a walk, a prayer, a nap, a five minute look at the clouds out the window doesn’t fit into the schedule, then maybe something is wrong.

What is the veil that hides my face from the Lord? Sometimes I feel like it’s a cloud of smog streaming out of my highway-paced life packed with productivity and busyness. It used to make me nauseated living this way…but, like living for years in a country with sick air, I’m used to it now. I’m used to being sickeningly busy. And having time to behold the glory of the Lord often seems like a childish fantasy that doesn’t exist in the real world.

Is it?

Is it impossible to lead a productive life without living in an existential state of tiredness all of the time? Is it impossible to lead a life where smelling the flowers, looking out the window, or writing doesn’t need to be scheduled in? Is it impossible to take time to behold the glory of the Lord? Is it impossible to become who I am created to be?

Why I don’t really know if chocolate doughnuts taste good…

One of my favorite things about living in twenty first century America is the fact that I’m encouraged to always follow my heart and speak what’s on my mind.

Even though I probably shouldn’t always do this, if I know what’s good for me.

Yesterday I spoke what was on my mind (heart?) to my fiancé. I had spent an evening—a weekend really—working on various projects for my midterm exams…studying for tests, writing an epic term paper, and doing random other homework that was thrown into the mix. And after a night of doing that, I was burnt out and just wanted to hang out with my man. So, when he called me after work and told me that he had a bunch of homework to do at his house (which is a good twenty minute drive from mine) I decided to speak my mind.

“Can’t come over here and do your homework?”

“No, my stuff is at home.”

“Fine, I see how it is. You always do this to me. You call me up and before you even say anything you just rattle off your agenda…you never have time for me…blah, blah, blah…” (This rant went on for a while.)

Was I being logical? No.

Was I being fair to him? Absolutely not.

Did it feel really good to berate him over some lame excuse after I had a stressful day? You bet your boots it did.

I read this quote today that I really like:

“In the presence of the passions, even our state is not reliably indicated by the heart, and our impressions are not such as they should be, and tastes are distorted…”

–Theophan the Recluse, On the Spiritual Life, p. 59

My mom got really sick last week with some weird cold-ish, flu-ish thing that has been lingering around for a week. On Sunday, after being sick for almost a week, she decided to eat a chocolate doughnut and said it didn’t taste like normal.

Sickness does that to you. It ruins the taste of even a good ol’ chocolate doughnut.

That is why I probably shouldn’t speak whatever is on my mind. That is why I don’t trust what’s on my heart. Because it’s like trying to taste a chocolate doughnut when I’m sick… only my sickness is in the soul. My sickness comes from selfish desires…the passions…as spiritual people call them. Selfish desires that take a chocolate doughnut—something good—and turn it into something that is only meant to satisfy my own greedy appetites.

Though I probably should have said to my fiance last night, “Wow, sorry you had a bad day at work. I hope you can get everything done okay tonight…” I said instead, “You never spend any time with me…blah blah blah.”

St. Theophan continues in his quote, “…That is why we presently have the rule of restraining our hearts and subjecting its feelings, desires, and inclinations to strict criticism.”

Often times, America tells me to follow what’s on my heart. Most of the time, I should probably tell myself, “Please don’t.”

I switched my major this year. I was dragging my feet to do so because I knew my current major would include more challenges and more things I don’t necessarily enjoy doing compared to my old major. But I finally had a reckoning that maybe I need to forge through the tough parts of the new major in order to get to the good on the other side of it. I’m sure plenty of people pursuing a specific degree know about this.

When making the switch though, part of me hated myself. I felt like a part of me was screaming, “YOU SHOULD FOLLOW YOUR HEART! YOU ARE NOT COMPLETELY PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS!”

But I am…the passion for it is just not amusement park thrill ride passion…as are many things in life that are worthwhile. It was hard for me to figure this out though, because my tastes are distorted and I wanted to pursue something that was all-about-me.

“…If someone should be cleansed of the passions, let him give the heart its will, but as long as the passions are in force, to give the heart its will would mean to patiently doom oneself to every sort of uncertainty.” –St. Theophan

Maybe someday I will be able to completely follow my heart. Maybe someday I may not need to scrutinize every desire I have and every move I make. But for today, my soul is still sick…and following my heart is like trying to judge the taste of a doughnut when my system is full of mucous and puss. I need more guidance and discernment to figure out what the doughnut really tastes like. God help me.

Why I don’t dislike anime as much as I thought I did…

I used to dislike anime. I thought it was nothing more than a boring, stylized cartoon.

Then I actually watched some anime…

Today I was watching part of an anime movie called Grave of Fireflies as part of a class, which is kind of a depressing movie about two orphaned children and their lives during WWII. The children’s father dies in the service and their mother dies in a bombing that leaves their homeland a desolate wreck. Not only is the physical landscape of Japan in a sad state, but the souls of the people also seem ravaged by war—calloused, indifferent, hopeless.

And as I was watching a scene in the movie where the little girl is being carried through the desolation with people crying and bleeding all around her, I started to think that simply living is a lot like being a fish swimming in a pond.

We begin our lives as little fishes that can’t perceive anything because our eyes our too weak, and thus we are oblivious to our surroundings. But then we grow and our senses heighten and suddenly we realize that our pond is contaminated. And not only is our pond contaminated, but the contamination has made every other fish in the pond sick. And then we realize we are sick…and if we aren’t sick enough to just swim around trying to manage our pain, then we realize that we can only spend our life responding to the sickness in the other fish (or ignoring it all…but that’s a different story).

Suffering is inescapable. Sometimes I think that as a privileged American, I have luckily escaped many of the world’s sufferings. But then I realize that I—or someone in my backyard— is dealing with family problems or diseases or sadness or whatever…and I realize that the conditions in the rich states are bleak too. Maybe the suffering here isn’t as apparent or as tragic in some ways as the 1940’s war torn Japan…but there are still people walking around on the streets, quietly nursing their wounds.

I often think about what it means to love other people. And I always come back to the conclusion that love is not a feeling. Yet, even when I come to this conclusion, many of my actions are often motivated by feelings. I don’t help someone out because I don’t feel like it. I say something insensitive to my fiancé just because “I felt like it.” Yet, love is an action that rises above feelings.

I haven’t had large amounts of stress in my life. I have not had to face grotesque deaths or illnesses or famine or wide scale suffering of any sort. And because of this, sometimes I think I can’t handle much stress. And because of this, sometimes I think I can’t love as well as many others throughout history. It is easy to love when life is good and you’re well-fed and happy and healthy and prosperous. But when everything has gone down the crapper…then love is—I would imagine—only a choice. A choice to give to others not from the overflow of riches, but from the scraps of poverty.

And to keep loving in such conditions, I would think the only way through is to keep acting. To not think about your deeds or the costs or what you’re receiving. But to only give.

In the words of Nemo, “Just keep swimming.”

Sometimes we (I?) think we are the only sick fish in the pond and everyone should cater to our needs. The truth is, we’re not. The whole pond is contaminated with suffering. All we can do is choose a response.

The opportune time…

I had a dream the other day that I was a Sunday school teacher upset by the state of my dwindling class. However, as I was lamenting the state of humanity to someone else (though I don’t know who, one of those ambiguous dream-figures), the other person told me not to worry because “we (humanity) are forever being saved.”

Lots of people have opinions on “salvation”…some heated, some indifferent, some clueless…

I am inclined to believe that salvation could be a process—maybe not forever—but maybe more than a one time event. Maybe salvation stretches out in this lifetime behind us and before us and the more we walk down a road of redemption, the more we become better people.

Maybe everyone is right. Maybe it is hard to make sense of the nature of such things given our limited understanding of things like time and space.

For the last two years, I have been fascinated by time…specifically the fact that in Ancient Greece, they had two ways of understanding time.

There is chronos time…time that is linear, time that unfolds like a chronological line of seconds ticking away on a clock and days being x’ed off on a calendar. It is the doldrums of time that we inhabit daily filled with schedules, appointments, minutes, ticking, ticking, ticking closer and closer and closer each day to our death.

But then, there is kairos time, which is harder to understand.

Kairos time can be understood as “the right moment” or “the opportune” time (according to an article I read on cowpi.com/journal…).

Kairos time is not time that ticks away on a clock but time that disrupts the normal flow of things. This could be a moment like meeting your significant other or marrying your significant other or having a kid or doing something that makes you forget that time exists.

It is time that transcends time.

If all of time were sand grains slipping through an hourglass, kairos time would be golden grains that remain when all others fade away.

But kairos time is more than good memories. Kairos time is also a moment of opportunity.

The CowPi article describes this “opportunity” in terms of a great metaphor, “The second meaning of kairos traces to the art of weaving. There is “the critical time” when the weaver must draw the yarn through a gap that momentarily opens in the warp of cloth being woven…kairos [refers] to a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved.”

I think sometimes in our lives, time opens like a gap and we have an opportunity for change.  We feel a decision, an opportunity calling to us and we have a chance to leap through a window of time before the window slams shut and we are stuck forever on the other side of change.

This moment might be what they call a “leap of faith.”

Sometimes I feel like we live in a culture where we can’t make decisions. We are so bombarded by choices that we become indifferent to the weight that some of them hold. We stand on a precipice of opportunity, yet we can’t leap off because we fear the unknown. We feel compelled by the mysterious pull of a choice, of a change, at certain moments, but we resist them in a fight for normalcy.

“We are forever being saved.”

Salvation is happening now.  It opens to us like a window, like a moment of kairos…and we have a moment to jump in before the window slams shut.

“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” –Mtt. 3:2

Repent…what does that mean?  Accepting a tract? Praying the sinner’s prayer? Going to church? I think salvation is more complicated than that.

I think part of salvation may mean doing that thing that we feel we need to do in our deep spirit, and quit putting it off.

I am dying. YOU are dying. EVERYONE is dying. Our chronological lives are flooding through an hourglass, and the moments of opportunity are slipping down with it.

“Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts.” –Hebrews 4:7

Kairos time is an opportunity to act. We always have excuses for why we haven’t done THAT thing we need to do, whatever it is…writing that play, applying for that job, going to that church, talking to that guy, telling that person how we feel, forgiving that other person…we can’t because we have family obligations, time constraints, weaknesses, priorities, responsibilities….true. But, as someone told me once, “Only you know if your excuses are valid.”

The window is open now. But not for long.