I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Story of a Conception
Thanks to Jill Stanek, pro-life activist, for publishing this Guest Post about the 50 Million Names Project!
50,000,000! When we reached that abortion toll, I woke up, in a way, to the horror of this ongoing holocaust. I wished then, before Internet, email, and computers in every home, there was a way to give names for all those babies. No way!
[Read more…]
Flying Lightly
“Angels can fly, because they take themselves lightly.”
One of my all-time favorite G.K. Chesterton quotes, this has grown into an important part of my ‘philosophy of life.’
To take myself lightly is not to disrespect, or dismiss myself. I must take myself seriously enough that others may also respect and benefit from my existence. But if I hold self lightly, I’ll have the humility to let the bubble of illusion pop, or the balloon of reputation fly off, without whimpering.
Flying is about light. Not just being light enough to rise, but about seeing clearly – through the lens of truth, in a way that corresponds with reality and is unclouded by self-delusion, sin, or selfishness. Lightness is about detachment – from my comfort, from my demands being met, from the promise of outcomes or progress.
Flying like this requires real gravitas – real and deep connection to the ground of being, to place, history, virtue, reality. Angel flight is about high humor – the Divine sense of comedy in which we stumbling, fumbling heroes turn out all right and even save the day. Perhaps angels can fly, mostly, because they know that in the end (as St. Juliana of Norwich said) “All manner of things shall be well.”
In a Writer’s Desert
I happened into the desert – place strange to me – unwelcoming, forbidding, barren. Sent by God to dwell for a time among children of the Church whose experience of it, and of the world, seemed alien to my own, I recoiled from the task set before me: to open my heart to people who are at least so alienated and frustrated by, and at worst so contemptuous and hateful of the Church I love; to be willing to see in them what is dear to God’s own heart; to let down buzz-word barriers and hear their stories, their fears of people like me, their reasons for conclusions antithetical to my own. [Read more…]
Three-Year Old Still in Womb!
After a baby’s birth, Mom becomes the ‘womb’, the context for his continuing development. This is so much more than just making a safe home, or choosing the best food for him. The womb and placenta, like Mom, are mediating structures meant to link the child to his wider environment through a bulky, messy, murky mass that impedes flow even as it facilitates flow. I’m not calling Mom names here, just pointing out that all attempts to do away with this design, this ‘inefficient’, personal, slow, messy process are dis-integrated, wrong-headed, dangerous.
If I wanted to teach a child, I’d give his mother rich opportunities to learn, to ingest great materials, to practice skills, to discuss whatever she finds delightful, wondrous, or interesting. I imagine she’d do the mediating for that particular child better than any artificial womb I could create. Fr. Luigi Giussani wrote, “I am an educator if I communicate myself.” Unless I can be a real part of your child’s context, mediated to him through his mother’s wisdom and discernment about his needs and capabilities, I cannot truly communicate my self, or anything else, to him.
We need more people in children’s REAL LIVES and fewer contrived, artificial kiddie activities, classes, and play-spaces. It does take a village, but that village better grow up organically around the home to serve the child and his parents in truth. I’m hoping to be part of the village for the families I love, but I don’t want to abstract the children from those wombs in order to give myself to them.
Does this make sense to you? I’d love to hear your feedback on this one!
One of my favorite talks is about Mom understanding herself as this sort of continuing context for the child: Building the Bridge.
Waste Not, Want Not
Don’t waste the food! Don’t waste the oil pastels and the good watercolors! Don’t waste the expensive fabric, the nice paper, the good wine! Above all, don’t waste time playing, chatting resting! Have you ever thought about the paradox of forming the highest things?
To learn to turn ideas into works of art, we must indulge a bit – not recklessly, but with some daring – in wasting art supplies. Give a kid the kind of art supplies you don’t care if he wastes, and I’ll bet they’re also not satisfying to use, either. Interest will wane. To learn to cook, we need to take some risks with foods.
No skill at words is acquired without long practice tossing away and rewriting ‘wasted’ words. No friendship is strengthened without great ‘waste’ of time together. No love is proved by other than life poured out in service. To turn feasts into practice for the Eucharist, we need to taste the finest wine (Note: the ‘finest wine’ I’ve ever been able to afford cost $26 a bottle, but it’s the thought that counts, and paisano is great for most meals. As fans of Rumpole, we call ours ‘Chateau Kaw Embankment’!)
We must learn to value and to give what is of highest value. There’s the paradox. Only a child can give, or use up, or waste with complete abandon, and only an adult can rightly value things. It is the work of growing up to become able to bear the tension of doing both. To give without knowing the value does nothing to honor the recipient, and to value without giving communicates no actual good.
A priest once counseled that if time is our greatest asset, the best gift we can give Him is to waste it. Since I write and speak about Holy Leisure, this was great reinforcement! Sabbath rest is all about learning to be, to be acted upon, to be whole and offer that wholeness to Christ. It can be very, very hard in our goal-oriented, product-producing, efficiency-loving culture to let go and give God some simple leisure time. Even our Christian culture tends toward purpose-driven lives and accomplishing great things for God.
I hope you’ll learn to waste boldly where the great thing being accomplished is YOU!
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