Humble beginnings
Moses said to the people, “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then! Heed his voice, hold fast to him, for that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live.”
– From Deuteronomy 30
Margaret got up early today. She’s gone now, but our computer is still playing her music: “Relaxing Coffee Jazz Café.” What a gift. While her chiropractor and acupressure genius works on her, this music is working on me.
Can I believe my eyes that the sun is shining? Ice melts like wax on a day like this. My heart rests in the warm.
What about my mind? Mostly I am prey to monkey mind. A whole herd of thoughts rush through my head like it’s a Serengeti tree, swinging from limb to limb, cackling and cringing and calling my name in every language. “Come, follow me.”
Moses, speaking for God our Father, seems to be giving the people a choice. “Choose life, then!” But this “choice” requires tools of mindfulness, discernment, and decision. Some things I learned as a child, and so did you. Paul McCartney wrote “When I’m Sixty-four” when he was 16. What did he know then?
What do I know now? How does my physical maturity serve my spirit? In the morning I choose life. By afternoon I reconsider and am on the fence, a painful place to sit for long. But I don’t want to fall off in the evening on the side of death.
In her two books Thoughts Matter and Tools Matter, Mary Margaret Funk helps me. She reads the primary sources and points out that Origin in the third century used the term “active life” to refer to the work of controlling my own thoughts.
What are these thoughts? In the fourth century John Cassian sorted them into eight categories: thoughts about food, sex, things, anger, dejection, acedia, vainglory and pride. Getting some control over one makes it more likely I’ll get control over the next.
By the sixth century these “thoughts” had been boiled down to seven “deadly sins.” Because behaviors are easier to see, the thoughts behind them tended to be ignored.
No wonder Freud and Jung seemed to be breaking important ground. Those thoughts are important! But often I’m not aware of them, and when I do think about my thoughts, I can quickly get more tangled up than ever.
In Meg Funk’s words, I have been “exhorted to be virtuous without any training of the mind.” In our history as humans, “distractions at prayer were a primary concern, but there were no practical suggestions about how to deal with them.” What to do so that we can choose life?
It’s good to start simple and be patient. About food, Meg writes, “After a few years of conscious discernment the body begins to establish a preference for well-ordered patterns of eating.” A few years! Well, for now I am learning to put my fork down between every bite. Every bite. Every day.
There is joy in this daily grind. She writes about herself, “A solitary cup of morning coffee takes on sacramental dimensions in the dawn. First light is a precious time.”
And the great news about instruction from the Holy Spirit is that the choosing, though difficult, is infused with grace. No matter about the last one, the next choice can be for Life.
O my Father, the music still plays, and your love grows warmer in my heart. As my thoughts leave by the back door of my mind, I hear Jesus knocking at the front. Please, come in. I am choosing life. I am choosing you.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2018/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1655
