Category: THE TRAGICOMEDY OF THE CROSS

“Several scientists have told me that the fringes of sleep set the problem-sodden mind free to make uninhibited, bizarre, even random connections taht may throw up an unexpected answer. One said that the technical trick that led to one of his most admired discoveries–it was about the fundamental, molecular nature of genetic mutations–had sprung to mind while he was lying insomniac at three in the morning. Another said he was startled from a deep sleep one night by the fully worked-out answer to a puzzle that had blocked him for weeks–except that at breakfast he was no longer able to remember any detail except the jubilant certainty. So the next night he went to sleep with paper and pencil on the bedside table; and when, once again, he awoke with the answer he was able to seize it.

Wow. I traveled so much last year, and now I’m leading an 8-week zoom Writing Workshop, that more than midway through February, I feel like I’m just catching up to 2025…

Am reading a book called Strangers in the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of Saint Benedict, by Michael Casey, monk of Tarrawara (Australia).

He writes: “There is very little mystery about perseverance–it simply involves making use of the means that monastic life offers, day by day and year by year, and having confidence in God. Perseverance is not a matter of gritting one’s teeth in difficult times or stretching oneself forward to cross the finish line. As Benedict notes, it begins on Day One. It is a matter of really committing oneself (as distinct from ‘making a commitment’) to give one’s best to the monastic process and to stay with it while it works its magic on us. Grace is working non us ot neutralize the natural fecklessness of the will; what we have to do is to avoid interfering with the process.”

“Stability is neither progressive nor conservative. Its strength lies in its attention to the present moment, like the peasant at his plow, concentrating on the job at hand and not much looking up from it. Yet the labor is sustainted by the hope of a harvest. It is not for nothing that he works. Salvation is a matter of hope; for the moment stability helps to ensure that the furrows run true.”

“Living mindfully involves limiting all forms of escapism, not only those that are frivolous, but more so the serious concerns that sometimes hijack our attention and concern…Constantly seeking to be entertained by the pursuit of novelties of one kind or another is a most effective way of blocking any progress toward contemplation. Carpe diem.“

I’ve been thinking of this a lot as I’ve discovered as I may have mentioned this satanic online game called Free Mahjong. A couple of months ago I vowed never to play it again but did so three times last week and each time stayed up too late as I literally can’t stop once I start and was then tired the next day, and altogether–please God, no. The game has a soothing effect on my nerves, for the first six or seven tries anyway, and then I just become like a gambler at the roulette wheel like in a 40s movie shot in the casinos of Monte Carlo. (Speaking of which, check out Jeanne Moreau in Bay of Angels if you want to see a terrific/horrifying gambling movie).

Anyway, also last week we had the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis. And I’ve been thinking how, ever since we ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (or however you want to think of it), there’s an intractable element in the human psyche that craves “getting away with something.” It’s a companion urge to the urge to hide from God. Like a child, I, for one, want to “sneak” in a little fun.

So I would play Mahjong, justifying my little escape on the grounds that I work so hard, and thinking all day, exercising my brain, is so hard, and give me a break for heaven’s sake I don’t drink, do drugs, shop, overeat, etc etc. We alll have our own list. Of course there is nothing wrong with rest and recreation and relaxation–in fact, we need those things! Especially maybe as we age. But this was something different. You don’t get addicted to “healthy” forms of rest and relaxation.

So I would play Mahjong and wake earlly the next morning, exhausted, and as always, however, immediately sit down to pray, feeling vaguely or not-so-vaguely guilty, and ashamed, and mad at myself. Was God mad at me, too?

But the other morning I realized, No, God’s not mad at you. He’s not mad. Take that out of the equation. You don’t have to try to “get away with anything” because there’s nothing to get away with. He’d love you even if you played some stupid tile-matching game every hour of the day for the rest of your life. So take that little clandestine thrill, if that’s what it is, out of the equation. No need to hide. No need to sneak. And when I remove the “thrill,” what’s left is the freedom to ask myself, one more time, What do I really want?

Temporary anesthesia aside (also, the pathetic thrill, not to be minimized, of winning, which is accompanied by flame coming out of the top of a volcano and an extremelly satisifying victorious bot sound), what I really want is to love and serve God with all my heart, part of which is to be INTERESTED and ENGAGLED and CURIOUS and GROWING and LEARNING. In the end, with the tile game, I’m bored, empty, flatlined, and too tired wholeheartedly to pursue the things I love the next day.

“The sustainability of our commitment demands that we are proactive in ordering our life. In particular it means nipping in the bund any tendency to lead a double life by blurring the boundaries between good and evil so that large areas are accepted as morally neutral. We cannot afford to be vague. Behavior inconsistent with the commitement we have made usually begins at the level of thought”…

“When Malcolm Muggeridge was making a TV documentary about the Cistercian monks in Scotland he elicited from one of the senior monks a reply that delighted him. In response to his question about monastic austerity the reply came, “It’s a hard bed to lie on, but a soft bed to die on.”

“We might ask whether there were impulsive, random acts by Jesus, acts without purpose. Healing one person, but not another? A turn down one road rather than another? Cursing this fig tree and ont that one? Did every event involving Our Lord have some design and ultimate reason? If we answer yes, as no doubt we should, we are acknowledging as well that even the smallest hours in our life can be part of the divine plan for our souls…A God who descended to a crib and the obscurity of a carpenter’s shop may want alertness to his presence even in the smallest choices. he wants all in in a life to be offered to him. If we do not attend to that thought daily, we miss many opportunities for an offering to him that otherwise could be thought simply the endurance of a day’s difficulties.”

–Fr. Donald Haggery, from Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into an Essential Encounter with God

“I wonder if contentment is really a virtue? Like balance, it can so easily slip over into indifference or fence straddling….One clear example for me is that I am called at this moment both to love the monastic life and to be an active layperson in the world. At first, it seemed to me that the tension was unbearable, and that I should ‘fish or cut bait’ I ought to choose between one or the other, and give up the longing/desire for the unchosen one. Yet was unable to choose and gradually I began to see that, right now, God calls me to have a foot on both sides. It may look like fence straddling to some, but to me it feels like a bridge, a conduit through which communication becomes possible in a way it would not without someone like me, someone content with being ‘mixed.’ The tension continues, but the contentment predominates.”