Browsing tag: catholic

  • Fix The Physical

    Treasure chastity. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 64)

    The obvious difference between a rule written for monks and a rule for married couples is that whereas monks take a vow of celibacy, married couples take a vow of sex.  A Christian marriage requires sex with the same person until death.  Not continuously, of course.  It’s not death by sex.  But in a society with long life spans, sooner or later you’ll face what everyone else does: DD (Domestic Doldrums), the long-drawn ho-hum humdrum.  Your sex life will vary between BTN sex (Better Than Nothing) and NON sex (Now Or Never).

    If you’re dissatisfied, the thing to realize is that only you have this problem.  Everyone else has ecstatic sex daily.  Only you are stuck with an ordinary human being.

    Whatever is wrong with your spouse, feel free to describe it eloquently to God in prayer.  He’s the one who designed the prototype.  He knows what to do to fix it.  But your prayer should begin with thanks: “Thank you God for [name of spouse].  Thank you for BTN and NON.  Thank you for the orgasm I had the other day.  [Was it an orgasm?].  I know I’ve got it BTMP (Better Than Most People).  However, […].”

    Be careful what you say to your spouse.  Human memories are more tenacious than human feelings.  Once you say it, you can’t erase it from your spouse’s brain, even if you’re ok now.  Don’t go complaining to everyone else, either.  It may be true.  It may also be a shabby thing to say in public.

    The goal of the husband and wife is to remain happily married.  In order to stay both married and happy, they need a sex life that is not a form of martyrdom.  In order to have a satisfactory sex life, she needs to be able to enjoy it.  For her to enjoy it, he needs to figure out how the female body functions.  This is tricky, because he can’t get any practice time in if she never feels like trying.  Then again, if he is clumsy, clueless or out of control, why would she ever want to?  Or maybe they just need to change things up. Or try actually going to bed at the same time.

    Don’t wait for passion to return.  Passion is like the booster rocket that propels you into outer space, then falls back to earth, never to be retrieved.  From then on, you’d better know what you’re doing.  The reactor on board is supposed to provide all your power.  It’s a notoriously finicky design, and everyone has problems with it.  Do not skip regular maintenance.  Do not ignore warning lights. You don’t want to be the ones floating aimlessly in the void because the power went out.  You don’t want to be the ones who suddenly explode into smithereens, when no one else even realized there was a problem.  Sex isn’t everything, but it’s the only thing you’re not allowed to outsource.  Only the two of you can keep it in working order.

    The world will tell you that to get the thrill back, you’ve got to unscrew all the stops.  But they’ve got something wrong, because they keep losing pressure.  They have to do worse and worse things to get a jolt out of the system.  And they don’t even try to take care of each other.  No love, no laughs, no one noticing when you’re gone.

    The Christian premise, on the other hand is that you’ve got to keep the unit sealed tight.  The pressure will build back up, and eventually you’ll find yourself considering sex with the person you married.  This might involve taking the initiative to negotiate and implement changes.  Or maybe you know what you need to do, but you’ve been too […] to make the effort.

    What’s all this about work?  You thought you were relaxing on a cruise, not joining the navy.  You can unseal the hatches and bail: one last thrill before Judgment Day.

    On your spiral down you’ll pass the clunker you never thought would make it, still rattling along.  You don’t even want to know what they do to keep that thing going. Married couple sex? They must have figured something out.

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  • Hold Yourself Together

    You must not be proud, nor be given to wine Titus 1:7; 1 Timothy 3:3.  Refrain from too much eating or sleeping, and from laziness Romans 12:11.  Do not grumble or speak ill of others.  (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 34-40)

    Hold yourself together. You let yourself go when you begin to imagine yourself superior to other people.  Or maybe you tend to drink too much, or eat too much.  When you don’t bother to take care of the task you’re responsible for, that’s another form of letting yourself go.  And then there’s the letting go of complaining or gossip.

    So keep hold of yourself.  Watch your attitude and your personal habits.  Watch what you say.

    Ask the Holy Spirit to grant you discernment. Then set your goals for the weeks ahead. Don’t try to hit all of them every day. Spread them out over the course of the week.

    Monday: Watch my attitude. Be thankful.

    Tuesday: Watch what I eat.

    Wednesday: Take care of that obligation that’s been sitting on the back burner.

    Thursday: I know, I know…

    Friday: No gossip.

    Saturday: No getting drunk.  (If the party’s on Friday, switch the last two.)

    Sunday: Go to church.  Rest.

    God commands a day of rest most explicitly of all. It’s one of the original Ten Commandments. The purpose of your life is not perpetual accomplishment. Your purpose is to live in harmony with your Creator, who called you into being and who sustains your existence at every moment. When you take a day to rest, you acknowledge that your life and all your efforts depend on the grace of God. You remember that it’s the Holy Spirit who is at work within you to transform you.

    When you’re examining yourself, keep in mind that self-control is like the fortified perimeter around your soul. The devil only needs a breach in one section to move in and out at will. So don’t make the mistake of dismissing your one vice because of how good you are in other areas. Your one vice can ruin your life all by itself. Your one vice can blight the lives of everyone who depends on you. Your spiritual enemy, just like all enemies attacks at the point of vulnerability. 

    On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of obsessing about your area of greatest weakness. It’s a mistake to focus all your energies on your worst habit, because you’ll quickly become exhausted. When you’re exhausted, you’re easily discouraged. Then you want to give up on everything. When you’ve given up, it’s even harder to try again.

    But when you work regularly on all fronts, you’ll do quite well most days without heroic efforts. You’ll accomplish some positive things that make you feel victorious. It’s important to come to an awareness not only of your weaknesses but of your strengths. This helps you keep up hope. By exercising discipline systematically across all fronts, you’ll build up confidence and gain experience. Eventually you’ll be able to tackle that one thing that has always seemed impossible.

    Do expect sabotage attempts. Ask for help. Don’t try to go it alone.

    Five days out of the week you can manage pretty well. One day all hell breaks loose. One day you collapse into the hands of God and lie still.

    Then by the grace of God you get up and try again.

     

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  • Housewife Manifesto

    Housewife Definition

    And finally, never lose hope in God’s mercy.  (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 74-77)

    Despair is a housewife with a television
    peering through channels at the world passing her by.
    She seeks hope, but what a difficult decision
    to turn off the screen and go sing a lullaby.

    So, what do you do all day, Ms. Smith?  Do you play
    with them, the tedious darlings—what sort of game?
    How sad for you, when you could have had (and with pay)
    lovers, success, fame and letters after your name.

    Are those stretch marks on your breasts we see (not real ones!?)
    that nursed babies.  We can fix that for a small fee
    reverse the decline in your value.  A man runs
    from paying bills, sagging flesh and mortality.

    It’s true, she replies with a sigh.  After dinner
    diapers and dishes, it’s only games, day and night:
    Play Fair, Tell The Truth, You Can’t Always Be Winner
    Don’t Pull Your Sister’s Hair, Say You’re Sorry, Don’t Fight.

    It wasn’t my intention with the marriage vow
    to fail pitifully, give up ambition, beauty.
    I made kids, not money.  But thirty years from now
    thanks to me, there may yet be a society.

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  • Friendly Faces Feel

    Have a great horror of hell.  Yearn for everlasting life with holy desire.  Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die.…  Do not love immoderate or boisterous laughter.  (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 45-54)

    There are those who remind you that you’re going to die, and encourage you to think about eternity. There are others who remind you that you’re getting older, and encourage you to think about Botulinum toxin.

    One guy warns against flippant laughter.  The other guy fixes your face so you can no longer laugh.

    Religious types subtly make you feel that you could be a better person.  Fashionable types subtly make you feel that you’ve aged, sagged and bought last year’s clothes on sale.

    If you’re thinking of splitting the difference with the Spa Special and a charitable donation, realize that both sides will come at you with renewed zest. For every charitable gift, you’ll get a dozen new solicitations. For every photofacial, you’ll get a dozen new spots.

    There’s no rest in this world for us. We’re caught in the movements called Time. There’s the movement toward eternal life, called redemption. There’s the movement toward eternal death, called drifting with the trend.

    You know, the people who care about you will love you no matter how you look. On the other hand, the people who rate you when you walk through the door will never care, no matter what you do.

    If you paralyze your face, your friends won’t know what’s going on with you. Are you sad, mad, anxious?We care. But we don’t know where we stand with you, because your face is without expression. Do you even like us anymore?

    And guys, the problem is not that you’re losing your hair. The problem is that you’re going to die, and we will be left alone.

    So do what you want with your look, but please keep the focus on your health. Above all, could you please make sure your soul is in shape for eternity? We want to be there together.

     

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  • Wholly Holy And Hale

    Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may more truly be called so.  Live by God’s commandments every day. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 62-63)

    Of all the archaic vocabulary words that have become vestigial, holy has to be the most vacuous.  We have no idea what it means, but we’re pretty sure we don’t want to go there.  It’s probably the Christian equivalent of a no fat, no sugar, no salt, gluten-free, vegan blueberry muffin.

    You try it.

    (They make it look like a blueberry muffin, but a deep human instinct tells you that it’s going to be a bad experience.)

    What we’ve heard about holiness is that there’s no money, sex or power in it.  It’s sinless and spiritual.

    Definitely go for it.

    Naturally there are people who want to be holy, just as there are people who try to make you eat their special muffins.  You pay attention to who they are, and you make a mental note to breakfast elsewhere next time.

    (Of course we’re still friends!)

    Although we don’t take the word “holy” seriously anymore in everyday speech, its cognate, “whole” is a workhorse we use all the time.  Whole and holy are linguistic twins, but over the course of nine hundred years, the version without the W specialized as a religious term, while the other one got a regular job and put food on the table.  At birth their meaning was: entire, unhurt, healthy, free of wound or injury.  Whole also originally meant “restored,” in the sense of having recovered from a wound or injury, being healed.

    As a matter of fact, the Old English parent word is still alive and kicking, pronunciation unchanged through the centuries.  It is “hale,” as in hale and hearty, free from defect, disease or infirmity, retaining exceptional health and vigor.  You could still use this word, if you ever met anyone who fit the description.

    Linguistically it’s entirely plausible to assert that a holy life is a life restored to wholeness, a healthy, vibrant life.

    Of course, St. Benedict was writing several centuries before any version of English existed at all.  In Latin, his choice was “sanctum,” a word that English eventually swallowed whole to mean “sacred place.”   For him and still for us, it means dedicated or set apart for the service of deity.

    Latin was a pagan language.  In Latin it’s possible to be sacred to the deity and therefore murdered; pimped out as a temple prostitute; locked in an iron cage and suspended over toxic fumes to induce entertaining prophecies for the pilgrims.  No one ever claimed that the pagan gods were faithful friends. On the contrary, they were reputed to be fickle, capricious, cruel.  You sacrificed to the gods in order to buy their favor, or to buy off their wrath.  The thing (or the person) you gave was then sacred to the god. To be sacred to the god was to be consumed by the god.

    But English developed as a Christian language and follows a different logic.  Holiness merges the concepts “sacred” and “hale” inextricably.  This is because our deity wants our good.  He doesn’t want to consume us.  He flaunts the whole concept of religion by requiring us to consume him.  What he wants from us is an interior change of heart that produces action for good.  When we’ve done wrong, he wants us to feel remorse and apologize to the person we’ve hurt.  He wants us to feel pity and do something to help when we see someone suffering.  When he gives us opportunities and resources, he wants us to feel responsible and work to establish justice.

    In exchange for dedicating your life to him, he offers to make your death temporary.  You will pass through death and emerge immortal.  As for your experience in this life, the language itself bears witness that when you offer yourself to the service of Christ, resolving to live by his commands, you will experience a restoration to wholeness.

    Live whole.  Die good.  Be hale forever.

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  • Bless Those Who Blast You

    If people curse you, do not curse them back but bless them instead. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 32)

    Sadly, the right to retaliate is not an inalienable right.  It may be necessary to fight your enemies and to defeat them, for the sake of the common good.  But the Christian must not inflict harm merely for the satisfaction of revenge.  Yes, it’s hard.  And unfortunately, this isn’t just St. Benedict’s idea.  This is Jesus himself Luke 6:28.

    Can we give them the light-activated puzzle map of the United States?  If they fail to replace Montana, Alabama and Arizona, they’ll be learning about Helena, Montgomery and Phoenix every time the headlights of a passing car flicker through a chink in the curtains.  If they bury it under blankets in the closet, in the middle of the night a strangled voice will say, “New Jersey: Trenton.”

    Not only are we not allowed to give their children motion-sensitive, musical toys with no OFF button: God requires us to pray for them as well.

    When we suffer an insult from another person, we have a reaction, anger, which is as natural as the body’s inflammatory response to injury.  If you didn’t feel anger at being wronged, it would be an emotional failure, just as it would be sick for your body not to react to a wound.  But just as your inflammatory response can itself become a problem if it doesn’t subside, so anger can become destructive to the person who feels it.

    St. Paul describes anger as the devil’s foothold Ephesians 4:26-27 (also translated “place,” “room,” “opportunity.”)  Anger serves as the devil’s foothold because it’s not in itself wrong.  All the other vices are absolutes.  Only anger has this ambiguous quality of being at the same time justified and harmful.  St. Paul tells us, “Be angry but do not sin.”  This means that anger itself is not the sin.  The sin is what the devil tempts you to do when you’re angry.

    Your anger is just.  The wrong is real.  To dismiss the offense would flaunt the law of God.  But because the anger is justified, the devil can easily slip in temptations to vengeful acts which are against God’s law too.  So, anger functions as the gateway through which righteous people can be tempted to do things which normally would repel them.

    When the thirst for revenge sets in, it’s like a bacterial infection that develops in a contaminated wound. If it isn’t addressed immediately, it can become chronic, like vengeful feelings that persist for years after an offense.  The infection can invade your entire body and ruin your health.  Vengeful feelings can obsess you even after the perpetrator is dead.

    It’s true that revenge can attain to the level of tragedy.  There are wrongs that no mere mortal can bear alone.  But usually the vindictive person is shallow and selfish.  It’s the conceited person who punishes someone for an honest remark.  It’s the spiteful person who exacts retribution for a petty grievance.  You don’t want to become that person.

    This is why God prescribes such a horse-pill.  Praying a blessing on the person who has wronged you is like swallowing one of those enormous pills.  The prayer operates like an antibiotic within the soul to combat vengeance.  You don’t have to be enthusiastic about it, not anymore than you have to like those pills.  It may take you more than one try to get it down.  Your natural gag reflex might seem at first insurmountable.  But even a nauseated blessing through clenched teeth will begin to alter your interior state.  Whenever you have vengeful feelings, say, “God bless [so and so].”  That’s all you have to do, but you may have to do it many times, every three hours for weeks. Daily for months. Weekly for years.

    You’re not requesting on their behalf a life of luxury, flippant and carefree.  Still less are you asking for evildoers to continue to do harm with impunity.  When you bless those who’ve mistreated you, you’re asking God to intervene in their lives.  You may have detailed ideas for how exactly God could proceed. He will consider your suggestions fairly.  But at the end of the day, you surrender judgment to Christ.

    Who is the person who does inspire respect?  It’s the one who can laugh off an insult and make a joke of it. The one who sticks to principle in the face of harassment is inspiring, not the one who lashes out in fury. The one who gets back up after being knocked down and keeps right on running toward the goal: that’s who you want to be. Outmaneuver your opponents. Leave them in the dust, and leave revenge in the hands of God. “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.‘”

     

     

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  • Hallow Your Speech Or Hollow Your Home

    When my first child asked me if Santa Claus was real, I told her quite frankly: “No.” She didn’t believe me. She argued with me. On Christmas morning she rebuked me: “See, Mommy! Look at all these presents. Where do you think these presents came from, if Santa isn’t real?”

    With my second child, I patiently explained that Santa is based on a real person, Saint Nicolas, who lived a long time ago and started the custom of giving presents to poor children at Christmas. Then I got a phone call from my mother: “Do you realize that Anthony is going around telling people that Santa Claus is dead?”

    With the third child, I decided to let my husband handle this issue. Shamelessly he played along with the whole charade. Not only Santa but the Tooth Fairy was real. He snuck presents under the tree and put absurd amounts of money under her pillow, inflating the value of teeth and provoking competition.

    With the fourth child I avoided the whole problem. I agreed that it was too bad the Tooth Fairy didn’t show up, but she might try selling her tooth to her dad instead. I told her to ask her siblings about Santa.

    I recognize that there’s a vast chasm of difference between enjoyable fictions that everyone participates in and, on the other hand, corrupt systems in which the innocent are manipulated by the selfish. It’s one thing to let Santa live on in everyone’s imagination. It’s another thing to lie to your children in order to induce them to do what you want, quickly and without protest.

    There is a place in a child’s life for a teller of tall tales. The tall-tale-teller wants the children to grow up knowing how to distinguish truth from falsehood. Nothing tickles a tale-teller so much as the efforts of a knee-high pipsqueak to put one over on him. And sometimes the pipsqueak wins this game, to everyone’s delight. It’s a game that sharpens the wits, just as tossing balls in the back yard develops athletic skills.

    But then there are adults who hate to see the children maturing, because they no longer believe the little white lies we tell them. How nasty these teenagers are, and how sweet they used to be, back when they still believed everything we said. We used to monitor them electronically. Now they know more about technology than we do, and we can’t even figure out how they’re evading our surveillance. We still track their phones, but they never take our calls, so in the end we don’t know what’s going on in their lives, because they don’t want to talk to us.

    The thing is, if your children can’t trust you to tell the truth about an inane character like the Tooth Fairy, how can they trust you on more important topics?

    If you actually do care about your children, no doubt eventually trust will return. Terminal deceit, from which there is no return is the pretense of love on the part of a parent who is essentially selfish. The friendly father who abandons his family is hollow. The effusive mother who neglects her children is hollow. There’s no need to wonder whose façade is fake. When the perfect-looking marriage collapses, and the hollow family splays out in the open, you’ll wish you didn’t get that sickening glimpse inside.

    The opposite of hollow is to be truly, through and through, what you claim to be. It means actually taking care of your children, and part of that job is to teach them the truth. Fiction can play a role in this, because truth is complex. But your teenagers won’t confide in you if they’ve learned that you rate your immediate convenience above their ultimate good. They’ll have learned your deceptive strategies and will apply them back to you. So consider which sort of parent you’re going to be.

    In the short term, manipulation gets results. But in the long run, integrity stands.

    (Rule of Saint Benedict 4. 24-28)

     

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  • King Once And King To Be

    It is love that impels them to pursue everlasting life; therefore, they are eager to take the narrow road of which the Lord says: Narrow is the road that leads to life Matthew 7:14. (Rule of St. Benedict 5.10-11)

    When my son was not yet six years old, he asked me at Christmas: “How can God be both everywhere AND a baby in a manger?”

    I said, “Yes, and he’s also a Spirit who is present to each of us at every moment.”

    He said, “That’s CRAZY.”

    So I said, “One day you’ll learn that the really dangerous crazy people make perfect sense.  Everything fits together neatly for them.”

    Fortunately, at that point he dashed off to something else, so I didn’t have to explain that the baby is an exiled king who will one day return, and we’ve given him our allegiance, which involves us in all sorts of struggles while we wait for him to reclaim his inheritance.

    Or maybe that’s not theologically correct.  Maybe he is already King of everything.  It’s just that his enemy usurps his territory and seduces the allegiance of his citizens—usually the easy way, with inducements.  For those who don’t respond to inducements, there are threats.  For those who disregard threats, there are punishments.  Some of these are worse than being condescended to at cocktail parties.

    Sell out?

    In other words, there’s a romantic loyalty in the Christian call.  Something about love.

    The Christian does not obey a set of laws, a system of ideas, an abstract principle or an impersonal force.  The Christian has committed to obey a person.  That person is Christ.  So, Christian faith is not an exercise of the imagination.  Nor is faith an intellectual assent to a set of propositions.  Still less is it membership in a club.  You do have both an imagination and an intellect, and you are free to join clubs, but faith is something else.  Faith in God is trust in a person.

    It’s exactly at the point of obedience that you start to wonder if you really believe in this guy.  Why should you put yourself out for someone you neither know nor trust?

    You shouldn’t.  If it strikes you that God asks far too much, proceed with caution.  Take a step in the direction of what he seems to want, and see what comes of it.  And begin to claim his promises for yourself.  It’s only as you begin to experience God making good on his word that you’ll begin to feel confident in him.  If you never expect anything of him, you’ll never know him.

    Also realize that if you are yourself untrustworthy, you will never know God.  “Faithless” means treacherous, fickle, false.  This sort of person is incompatible with God.  If you want to experience a relationship with God, be faithful in your dealings with other human beings.

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  • Let Go Of Your Grudge

    A grievance can be like a splinter in the sole of your foot. You don’t want to stop to deal with it. You hope it will work its way out by itself. But it doesn’t work its way out: it wriggles in deeper. It causes more pain, and you think maybe you’ll get used to it. But not only does the pain intensify, it begins to spread, so that the whole area around the splinter becomes hypersensitive. You must take action to get rid of it, and even for just a splinter you might need help with the extraction.

    But not all grievances are like splinters. If you had a bullet in your chest, you wouldn’t hope it would extract itself. You’d know you’d need a surgeon urgently. The more serious an offense is, the more urgent it is for you to let go of your grievance. Refusing to let go of it because it’s the other person’s fault is like refusing to let the surgeon extract a bullet because someone else shot you. Yes, it’s the other person’s fault. But you are the one who has been injured. Therefore you are the one who must undergo treatment. It will be a painful and difficult experience, but in the long run you’ll be much better off than the person crippled by a lifetime’s worth of retained grievances.

    How do we distinguish a grudge from everything else roiling inside?

    A grudge is not horror at evil. If someone who was supposed to be good harms you, what you may feel, more intensely than rancor at the offense is horror at the evil of which you are now aware. Horror is not something you can let go of, not anymore than you can let go of the shadow cast by darkening clouds overhead. Only God can clear the skies for you.

    A grudge is not grief at love spurned. If someone you’ve loved cuts you off, what you must let go of is the grievance at the injustice of it. The sorrow will endure.

    A grudge is not fear of future harm. If someone hurts you who has the power to do so again, you can’t let go of the past while still eaten up with anxiety at what might happen next. Pray for deliverance from your enemy: the Psalms are full of such prayers.

    A grudge is not the memory of what occurred. If you have the sort of imaginative memory that serves up again and again not only the details but all the original feelings, so that you relive the experience over and over, you may dearly wish you could let it go, but you can’t escape your own mind. Consider this: Jesus when he visited his disciples after his resurrection still had holes in his hands and a gash in his side—but the wounds didn’t bother him. So too will yours be, if you commit them to God. Forgiving doesn’t have to mean forgetting.

    Unlike these living emotions of horror, grief, fear and pain, a grudge is a cold, hard, dead thing within you, impervious to change. It wants revenge and will always want revenge, long after you’ve ceased to feel anything else.

    When the thirst for vengeance sets in, it’s like a bacterial infection that develops in a contaminated wound. If it isn’t addressed at once, it can become chronic, like vengeful feelings that persist for years after an offense. The infection can invade your whole body and ruin your health. Vengeful thoughts can obsess you even after the perpetrator is dead. You become vindictive and spiteful. You can’t punish the person who harmed you, so you lash out at someone else nearby. You exact retribution for every petty offense, because everything irritates your sensitive area, and eventually every area is sensitized, because you go through life collecting grievances. Rancor is the only emotion you know anymore, but the word is unfamiliar, because the spiritual state is so normalized that no one names it.

    Jesus tells us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The phrase rolls off the tongue easily, but living it may involve a long, hard ordeal. It’s what you’ve got to do, though, if you want to live.

    How? You have to accept what God said a long time ago: “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’” This isn’t forgiveness yet: but it’s a necessary step on the way to forgiveness.

     

    (Rule of Saint Benedict 4.23)

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  • Rid Yourself Of Anger

    It’s easy to be angry when responsible for running a household with children, because children are constantly doing things wrong. The more children you’re responsible for, and the less help you have, the easier it is to remain in a state of perpetual irritation. But a chronic state is not necessarily a good state. Jesus insists: But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment (Matthew 5:22). This makes the anger itself a problem, or at least the imminent indicator of a problem that is looming.

     

    So where does the anger come from?

     

    Habitual anger is the result of ingrained dissatisfaction. If we constantly focus on the myriad disappointments of life, on the people who don’t live up to our standards, anger will always be at our elbow.

     

    It’s true that yearning for the better thing is a powerful motivator toward the good. But lots of factors are out of our control. There’s only so much we can do to achieve what we want, and anger is a natural response to frustration. If the frustration collapses into despair, we give up working toward the goal and are left with nothing but the chafing desire for something we don’t believe we’ll ever get.

     

    This simmering soup of dissatisfaction, disappointment and hopelessness is such a regular meal for so many people that we might describe it as the national spiritual dish of the U.S.A. Left unattended, it can boil over suddenly into violence. The culture we live in keeps the heat up relentlessly. They can’t sell you what you don’t want, so they pour big bucks into figuring out how to make you want it. Not everyone gets to the boilover point, but a lot of people remain in a constant state of miserable frothing beneath rattling lids.

     

    The antidote to anger is joy. You cannot enjoy something and simultaneously feel angry. Joy casts out anger.

     

    Joy in its ultimate form is a lofty mystery. But the pathway to joy begins anywhere, in the small, ordinary thing that you can genuinely enjoy in this moment. Don’t worry about great saints who weirdly experienced joy in the midst of torture. You can begin to feel joyful simply by focusing on whatever good presents itself now, and giving thanks for it.

     

    It can take a huge effort to haul your attention away from the disappointments you’ve been focusing on, but the benefits of doing so are life-changing. As with physical medication, you have to give this practice some time to work. You know that if you swallow a couple of pills for your headache, it’s going to take half an hour for them to take effect. Similarly, begin to make the effort to thank God for what you can enjoy, and soon you’ll begin to feel relief from chronic anger. Just realize that this treatment needs to be an ongoing practice. Thankfulness has to build up in your system and maintain a certain level in your awareness in order to be effective. This means that you must develop a habit of thankfulness to counter the habit of dissatisfaction.

     

    For Christians, thankfulness is not a vague, self-referential shot in the dark. It’s not that we work ourselves up to feeling thankful in general to nobody in particular. We believe that God is the originator of all good: that’s why we thank him for what we enjoy.

     

    We also recognize that human beings have the freedom to choose evil or good. So when someone does a kind thing, that person truly deserves thanks. We practice saying thank you to people for what they’ve done for us not just as a social reflex, but because of freedom. The person who voluntarily does something for you could have omitted that action. So, say thank you to the people through whom you receive good things.

     

    When you thank your children for their good attempts, you’ll find that not only your outlook but their attitudes change for the better. Yes, everything will still be imperfect. But you’ll be imperfectly happy rather than perfectly unhappy all the time.

     

     

    (Rule of Saint Benedict 4.22)

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