The Rhinoceros in the Room

We ought to have much more time, more leisure, than our ancestors did, because technology, which is the most obvious and radical difference between their lives and ours, is essentially a series of time-saving devices.

In ancient societies, if you were rich you had slaves to do the menial work so that you could be freed to enjoy your leisure time. Life was like a vacation for the rich because the poor slaves were their machines. . . .

[But] now that everyone has slave-substitutes (machines), why doesn’t everyone enjoy the leisurely, vacationy lifestyle of the ancient rich? Why have we killed time instead of saving it? . . .

We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.

So we run around like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, and making them our masters. We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us, like a dark and empty room without distractions where we would be forced to confront ourselves. . .

If you are typically modern, your life is like a mansion with a terrifying hole right in the middle of the living-room floor. So you paper over the hole with a very busy wallpaper pattern to distract yourself. You find a rhinoceros in the middle of your house. The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death. How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros? Easy: cover it with a million mice. Multiple diversions.

Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, Pascal’s Pensees Edited, Outlined, and Explained. pp. 167-169

Reading about Monks & Monasteries

I've reading about monks and monasteries for a project I'm working on, and ran across this quote from St. Benedict:

If any pilgrim monk come from distant parts, with wish as a guest to dwell in the monastery, and will be content with the customs which he finds in the place, and does not perchance by his lavishness disturb the monastery, but is simply content with what he finds, he shall be received for as long as he desires. If, indeed, he find fault with anything, or expose it, reasonably, and with the humility of charity, the Abbott shall discuss it prudently lest perchance God had sent him for this very thing. But, if he have been found gossipy and contumacious in the time of his sojourn as guest, not only ought he not be joined to the body of the monastery, but also, it shall be said to him, honestly, that he must depart. If he does not go, let two stout monks, in the name of God, explain the matter to him.

I had to laugh when I read that last line. "If he does not go, let two stout monks, in the name of God, explain the matter to him."

Gotta love it

Secret of Success

Said one man about the secret of his friend's (a famous and successful literary and political figure): "Genius, deep faith, a colossal work ethic, and, especially as a young man, the ability to learn from — and to use what he learned from — men... , who knew much more than he did."

I like that, the humility and teachableness (if that's a word) of someone who is willing to learn from -- and actually apply the learning -- people who know much more than I do.

It also reminds me of one of my mentor's sayings. He dislikes the phrase, "we stand on the shoulders of giants." He says it sounds humble, but really isn't. It declares that however high the giant's shoulders are, we are higher by virtue of standing on them. He prefers, "we play at the feet of giants." We are, he says, only safe and blessed "to play" in the way we do because of the industry, vision, and sacrifice of those who have gone before us.

Anyway, thoughts I'm thinking today.

Poseurs

“There’s a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word “banal” sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say “underedited,” I say “derivative.” The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.”
— Anna Quindlen

Ministry Immune Systems

"The creation of a new life system," writes Peter Senge, "often requires a specialized 'container' because established systems are naturally hostile to the 'other,' the 'outsider,' the 'alien.' The normal chemistry of an adult human body would be toxic to an embryo, just as the mainstream culture of an organization is often toxic to the innovators it spawns. And when the organizational immune system kicks in, innovators often find themselves ignored, ostracized, or worse."

All of which makes me wonder, what are we doing in our local faith communities to create protected space for new life to flourish? 

If an answer doesn't immediately spring to mind, it is almost certain that we are instead unwittingly eradicating new life through the unthinking processes of our organizational immune systems.