Good Morning Resentment

As of late, I have been frustrated by the tide of resentment that greets me in the morning.  Regardless of how assiduously I thwart its thralldom during the day, it always seems to come right back at me in the morning.  Today, I went running.  As I was pounding the pavement trying to outrun the darker angels of my nature, I began to realize how much my resentment has it sources in my overweening desire to be in control. I resent those that get the awards, praise, kudos that I desire. I have never thought of myself as a particularly ambitious.  But, I am.  I am also frightened because my lack of ability to perform means that I might not be as safe as I would like to be.   So, the question is what part of this gorgon to I take on first: the sense of profound inefficacy, the ambition, the desire for control or the resentment?  The question:  can I diagnosis the center of this whole cluster of problems in my inability to allow God to be the Sovereign of the universe and my consequent inability to allow myself to be part of God's life in the world--whatever that means for my ambition?  Or, do I take on the problems symptomatically.  Tackle the resentment when it comes, the sense of incompetence when it comes. . .  ? 

 

I have been re-reading Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal.  I had forgotten how powerful the book is.  At the centre of any book on the spiritual quest is Augustine's affirmation that our hearts are restless.  This book evocatively connects that restlessness with the homely image that Jesus provides to us of paternal love, fraternal jealousy, the tremendous odium of comparison, youthful unfaithfulness and celebratory grace.  Similarly, Marilyn Robinson's Home enfleshes the story of the prodigal son.  Moreover, it takes the reader a step further into the mysterious union between the rejected and called; two that become one through the possibility of grace.   Nouwen suggests a movement beyond being one of the  children to taking up the mantle of the Father in the story.  Robinson's story dwells on how the younger and the older need each other.  How they might come to be reconciled to one another--  That the "accepted" might recognize their need to be embraced by the rejected, and that "the rejected" might accept the embrace of "the accepted." We are all accepted and we are all rejected.  We are in most desperate need to experience the grace of God through others and through our grace for others.

Living in Christian community brings with it very pressing questions concerning how we might maintain a home for others.  That I struggle again and again with the desire to make my home my habitus, my outer garment, the expression of me--my creativity, and zeal, and passion, and thereby reject the call to make this home, our home.  

I want to make this home the habitus of God.  A place of formation in the virtues of friendship and faithfulness and sharing.  In short, to wear the shimmering garment that is God's graces.

The things that are getting in the way of living this vision are legion.  I can scarcely begin to even address them now.  I imagine that careful reflection on monastic literature would soon make it entirely and extraordinarily obvious how common the attitudes that undermine our community are in the life of past Christian communities.  Certainly the sins of jealousy, and sloth, and anger, and greed are at the forefront. . .

I affirm, however, that right now, it is in this place that I am called to hear from God and to grow as God's child.  That this means a  more rigorous conflict with my own personal demons and obsessions seems obvious.  

All I know for absolutely certain is that more of my thought power needs to be aimed outside of my head.  Nein to introspection.  I suspect that this is why ceaseless prayers is important.  Prayer need not be introspection.  It can be.  But, at its best doesn't it aim towards praise and reconciliation and therefore has a telos outside of my own being.  The psychic energy can also go out in the works of love and works of creativity.  It can also be expended in works of charity.  When we pray with our very lives for peace, or justice, or fraternity (sorority...) 

Then there is running.  Pound. Pound. Pound.  

Last Night

I went on a street walk with (D). There is something about wandering the back allies and behind the bright lights of the city that makes one feel strangely like a space shuttle or a monad. I was glad to be with (D) and his friends but I still felt singular and like I was only watching people out of Emerson's giant eyeball. I am amazed at how engaged (D) is in these situations. He was warm and human and comforting. I would like to keep going with him on these street walks.

Words

Words. I am having a hard time producing them. There has been some massive rupture in the thinking process. I read. I read. I read all this academic jumbo and I can scarcely put together a sentence any longer. Worse yet, I do not know why it is that I might want to put together a sentence.

I have lost almost entirely my sense of a transcendent logos outside of time that made wordsmithing sensical. I am alone with my words, my broken syntax, my empty longing to connect and to communicate. I want this blog to be anonymous. Hoping that there might be some way forward...

Perhaps, empty communication might bring back words to me. In this sense blogging might become somewhat of a prayer. But a prayer to the empty, merciless, chaos of cyberspace.

Should I rather write a friend?

I have been trying to learn grammar as a therapeutic activity. It is my theory that my general sense of incompetence stems from my inability, to stop slicing sentences with commons. However, I find grammar books to be very moralizing. Some of the moralizing I can identify with. For instance, I do think that over use of the passive voice or phrases beginning with "it is" or "there are" can hide agency. "There is a lot of sludge in rivers." "The rivers have been polluted." These sentences ignore agency.

However, all the talk of our Fall into bad grammar seems to be a tad bit over dramatic. I am interested only in the declension that happens to nominatives. Not, so much other narratives of grammatical declension.

I will let you know if I begin to find some peace of mind and a stronger sense of self in my grammatical exercises.

Today has been so banal. I am ashamed of myself a little. I followed the classic route by which I squander a day. In general all such days include an inordinate amount of time spent on the computer. I am doing better at ignoring facebook and its mutiple possibilities. I am not doing as well as ignoring blogs, news, movie reviews and impossible schemings.

I have a sense that my time on the computer is exacerbating a tendency to be fractured, to follow what Thomas would call the sin of curiositas, and to not think and feel and love from a deep center. In short, it has become sinful. Perhaps, slothful. This blog is an attempt to be more doxological about my time.