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!
SAR 1: Wholly, Holy, Whole
- Acedia is spiritual torpor, inability to act in my own best interests (especially my spiritual interests). It can look like laziness, or it can hide behind busy-ness.
- I see symptoms of acedia in the epidemic of chronic fatigue syndrome, in the who-cares attitudes of people around me, in moral degeneracy, and in the frantic busy-ness of so many people. I see it at the root of failure to build community, failure to develop in music and poetry, and in the growing problem of pornography addiction.
- Sloth is a failure to keep the Sabbath holy – to exert oneself to attend to the worship of God, and the love of God. Most people think of ‘sloth’ as just ‘laziness’, but there’s a whole lot more going on here and you can trace it right back to our Sabbath-keeping.
- We avoid spiritual goods when we have no ‘appetite’ for spiritual reading, for time with God in prayer and adoration, for the Sacraments. When we cannot enjoy human community and conversation, have no pleasure in beauty, or have no experience of awe and wonder, we are cut off from spiritual goods. If we avoid any suffering, any waiting, any diminution of comfort, we are in some sense also avoiding spiritual goods.
- A busy, responsible person can still be ‘slothful’ if that busy-ness, that acting upon the world, masks the avoidance of spiritual goods, or distracts him from sensing and responding to his need of those goods. SLOTH is not just about doing or not doing, but about your ability to be ‘at leisure’ with God and with yourself.
- For Catholics, the human person is a creation of God, and bears His image. Most people think of persons as mere matter, or as glorified animals. We believe persons have value that goes far beyond their functionality, but most people today equate ‘value’ with productivity, or capability. We know that persons have need of truth, beauty, virtue, and reconciliation with God, whereas many of the people we’re around every day acknowledge no such requirements.
- My wholeness – the fullness and integration and sound-ness of my being corresponds to holiness as the wheat of the Host corresponds to the Blessed Sacrament. The more whole I am, the more I grow toward holiness, and holiness increases the well-being of my body, mind, emotions, will, and spirit.
- A machine needs down-time for maintenance, so that it can get back to work. Persons need holy leisure so they may become more fully real-ized as themselves, and so that Christ may be more fully real-ized through them. The need for ‘down time’ corresponds to mere function (and we need basic rest just to function well, ourselves), but the need for leisure corresponds to what is most essential to a person’s very being – his capacity to be a Christ-bearer.
- The culture around me is a form of ‘persecution’, because it corresponds so little to what is true, and thus jars and hits at my own alignment with Truth. A culture so deformed impacts my soul, but isn’t the final word, because Christ is in me supporting the reformation!
- The soul at rest is quiet – to hear God’s small voice – and still – to feel the action of the Spirit in His smallest movement.
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