The Weight of Gratitude

I was at church yesterday and while I was supposed to be praying I was thinking about gratitude. I know that problems are problems and whether you have money, education, or a good network of friends and family, your problems are real. But are they? For instance: I am going through a period where I have to decide about what I want to do in the future. I'm graduating seminary in the spring and I am going to be force to make a decision about what job I seek.

For me this is a problem. I feel angst about defining myself by what I do. I feel conflict because I have a variety of interests and I don't want to select one interest at the cost of another. I don't know if I'll be able to balance making money and doing what I love. I don't know if I'll be able to secure a position with good medical benefits. This is my big problem.

Yet, many people around the world would love to have my "problem." They would gladly exchange their life filled with abuse, or war, or disease, or death or all of the above, for my existential angst. This is what I'm thinking when we pray for someone struggling with "family problems" or "finding someone to teach Sunday school." And I'm thinking, doesn't, at some point, our gratitude overwhelm our problems? Most of the people (myself included) worshiping were employed, in good health, and surrounded by their families: minus physical or mental illness, what do we have to complain about (under the guise of prayer)?

Mostly, I am frustrated at my own inability to maintain any sense of joy and gratitude for longer than about 35 minutes. I don't mean to come down on church or prayer or other people. It's just easier than confessing that I suckle my angst until I'm fat and content.

I'm going to go spend the rest of the day trying to get out of my own head and tell myself, "You have a wonderful life!"

Book Quote

I don't usually like to give away anything from good books that I'm reading, but I'm in the middle of reading Life of Pi and this quote struck me. I'll have to think about why. If you are currently reading this same book (I have not yet finished it) and are not up to page 70 in the paperback edition, then don't read the following.

Context: Pi is a young boy who is a Christian, Muslim, and Hindu. He is feeling pressures from the respective religious leaders to choose one.

"And that wasn't the end of it. There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rages living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.

Once an oaf chased me away from the Great Mosque. When I went to church, the priest glared at me so that I could not feel the peace of Christ. A Brahmin sometimes shooed me away from darshan. My religious doings were reported to my parents in the hushed, urgent tones of treason revealed.

As if the small-mindedness did God any good.

To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.

I stopped attending Mass at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception and went to Our Lady of Angels. I no longer lingered after Friday prayer among my breathern. I went to temple at crowded times when the Brahmins were too distracted to come between God and me."

Relationships of Imprecision

I love words, but sometimes they offer more precision than I want. When it comes to relationships, sometimes a specific designation is innaccurate. If I say that I "love" someone that I do not also "like" them? Surely my "wife" is also my "friend." Does designating a "best" friend do anything? Relationships are dynamic things and our lexicon of descriptive words is lacking. Just the word "love" can be used in a million ways. So what I'm seeking are more relationships of imprecision. I want more relationships that can only be defined by the activity of being together. Or maybe we need the verbal assuraces of where who we are and how others feel about us.

Moments of Density

There are some moments when I feel like my mass has increased, like gravity has a greater effect on me. This is not a bad thing. It happens at moments when, sometimes for no rational reason, I feel that there is nowhere in the world I would rather be than where I am at that moment. Nothing pulling me somewhere else. Perhaps this is a moment of Shalom, that deep biblical peacefulness from God.

These moments often seek up on me. From around a corner or from under a table jumps a sense of being that is rarely familiar to me. At moments of this thickening I sometimes think that breath itself in unimportant because I have started to inhale the beauty in everyday things: a bird, a song, someone's face as a certain angle, a laugh.

And as easily as it comes, it's gone again. Grace (it must be grace) is too playful to be contained. It spooks easily and darts away back under the table or around the corner leaving no track or trace.