Unplugging, the 21st Century Fast

Be still and know that I am God.  Psalm 46:10

Lenten practices centered on discipline (i.e. "giving up") are many. So are ones centered on adding more (prayer, sacraments, alms-giving). At the end of the day they should all be aimed at helping us empty ourselves so we can be filled with God. I used to say, "so we can listen," but it is more becoming still so God can act in us.

For several years my fast has tended to focus on modern time wasters—video games, social media and so on—the things of this world. Lately it has been worse. The political situation. Waves of messages from friends. The daily news grind.

This year I decided to unplug completely one day a week. No TV. Turn off phone and ipad. Limit screen time to the printed word—word as in the word processor for writing and my e-reader.

Has it worked? Somewhat. Temptation to check email for that all important message or keep the phone handy for an all-important call is great. If I'm on the desk top writing, what about writing-related tasks or hopping on a messenger app to clarify a research issue with a friend? Is it my fault there are tempting icons everywhere?

Still, the quiet is soothing, prayer floats through the day, and when evening comes I'm curled up with a book and the noise in my head is at rest. I am seriously thinking I should continue this after Lent. It will have to be close to 100%. Compromises flourish if I let them.

Maybe I should do more than one day. Maybe not. I'm not ready to take to a hermitage yet. 

I hope I'm giving God room to act. Maybe he'll push me. Someday I'll know. 

Silence

Silence is good for the soul, essential to recollection, and conducive to humility. Remember Our Lord's silence throughout His life and during the hours of His passion.

Elizabeth Leseur           

I discovered Leseur's writing only recently and was struck by the simplicity of her spirituality. She begins a series of "retreats," each with a resolution, with Silence. She has a resolution for each of twelve months. The beginning of a new year struck me as a good time to consider them one by one.

When I see the word silence, I tend to think of it in terms of shutting out noise. Turn off the TV. Shut out the news.  Retreat to a spot where there is no sound. Avoid social media. Get off the Internet. Quiet your insides. Those are all things to do. That isn't what she means.

Leseur writes about being silent. Her emphasis is on not talking, and particularly about not talking about herself. For years I've grappled with something that skirts the edges of her thought but misses the heart of it. I have tended to focus on listening, being attentive to God and learning how to do that by learning to be attentive to Greg first of all and all others as well. My mantra has been listen don't talk in prayer, in social life, and in business. It's my mantra because I'm not very good at it. My natural instinct is to blurt out every thought.

How is that different from what Leseur writes? I realized that by focusing on listening I'm in expectation of receiving something. While it can and should open me up to compassion and care, it is in the end an openness to receiving, not giving. Leseur sees keeping silences as a value in and of itself; it is part of her great emphasis on humility, the emptying out of self. That wasn't a value to me in my twenties. As I age I see the emptying as the absolute necessity of the spiritual life and I know it for the virtually impossible challenge it is. 

So. Silence. She talks at length about all of the things about which she won't speak: the petty, the mean, the material, but also her own interior life, her spirituality and blessings granted her. She leaves it all between her and God. She does write about it so perhaps I can be excused for keeping this journal.

Her final resolution is, I resolve to hide my spiritual life, and, to great extent my sufferings, interests, and material or personal occupations under a veil of silence.

Wow. Perhaps I can take baby steps in that direction.

Breathing

And the Lord God...breathed into his face the breath of life and so man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7

I was driven from the chapel Saturday by incense. Odd, that, but I simply couldn't breathe. I went up to my room and worked at breathing for a while. That was followed by a deep sleep.

When I read about cultivating silence, the author, whether Catholic, Christian or non-religious inevitably brings the discussion to breathing. Control your breathing, concentrate on your breathing, become aware of your breathing. Silent prayer, truly silent prayer in which you quiet the chatter in your head, usually involves the sound of your own breathing. I've come to see that as focusing on the point at which God holds you, oh so quietly, into existence, the tipping point between being and not being. At some point in faith you ought to be able to give it over utterly to Him. I don't know that I've ever gotten that far.

Asthma is a reminder of my frailty. Breath comes, and it could leave me. I am utterly dependent on God in the meantime.

The Desert

Thus says the Lord: I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. Hosea 2:16

(First reading for February 26, 2006)
Is the desert a silent place? It must be. Cultivate silence, He says, and, if you won't, I will lead you to the desert so that you can hear me.

Where did I find so much noise? The printed word, the Internet, the media, the phone--can I leave them all behind? Perhaps not for 40 days, but for two, yes, I can. I can at least begin Lent that way.

I have no doubt that if He chooses He can impose a great and terrible wilderness on those He loves.

Listen Don't Talk

when I called, you did not answer,when I spoke, you did not listen
Isaiah 65:12

Oh how I hate silence. Once there is emptiness in my life, I rush in with goals and plans. For years I believed that to be virtue. I've come to see it as refusal to listen. It is no different than rushing to fill every lull in the conversation with talk, leaving those I'm with no room to speak.

It has been six weeks since my father's funeral, and there have been days well occupied with business associated with the aftermath. There are many more, however that are wide open, many more such days than at any time in my adult life. They are frightening. My first instinct was to begin to scan the want ads and to engage family in discussion about whether or not we ought to move near the grandbaby. Only belatedly did it occur to me how horrid for my daughter and son-in-law it would be if we did indeed make that child the center of our days (he is already the center of our heart).

After thrashing around I concluded that the year off I chose began January 1, 2006 not June 1, 2005. Only with some time and space can I begin to understand what is going to be my "third act." For now, I have an opportunity to finally learn to listen. I am avoided complex goals--even extensive prayer goals--in favor of praying as much as possible always, and making much of that a prayer of silence into which God may speak.

In practical terms I reserve "planning" as much as possible to one day at a time. Every day I
> Begin with an offering prayer as I'm rising out of bed.
> Ask Greg what he needs for me to do that day, both in terms of what he wants me to do and in terms of his reliance on me for driving him places.
> Think out a general schedule that accomodates Greg's needs, plans dinner for the two of us, includes writing at least three new pages and either a walk or bike ride.
>Wrap prayer around it like a blanket.

Other than that, two key outside forces, Church and Family, impact my schedule and activities. In these things I believe the voice of God is present. It is undoubtedly elsewhere but I need to learn to listen very carefully.

If I let Him, He will teach me.

Making a start

Everything has a beginning. Even in midlife we have beginnings. This is one of them; I've come to a place at which I need to explore the themes I've been given:

Silence
Submission
Breath

and the arenas in which they play out, work and family.