Fencing Bear at Prayer

I'm sorry, this is so great, I just have to share it with you.  In the comments for my last post , PapaFreeak has just paid me an enormous compliment.  He reads my blog, get this, even though, he says, "I find about 75% of what you post to be odious."  ODIOUS!!!!  Isn't that the best thing you've ever heard?!  But wait, there's more: "This [he explains] is why I return: I don't understand why someone with your advantages--intelligence, health, a supportive family, good income from meaningful work in a prestigious job--is so astoundingly petty, envious, and self-pitying.  I think you fascinate me because you provide access to a mentality that is genuinely foreign to me."  Gosh, what can I say?  A FAN!!!!  This is what Elizabeth Gilbert must feel like all the time ! But PapaFreeak only finds "about 75%" of what I post to be "odious".  Which makes me wonder: what 25% could he possibly like? Could it be that, having the "...

I have a theory. Let's call it "God is glucose." Or "sweet," if you prefer. It's been just over four months that I have been keeping myself (as well as I can count) to 25 net carbs or fewer a day. I've lost I don't know how much weight and gone from not being able to fit into my size 12 stretchy jeans to needing to buy a new pair of 8s. (My goal is still the size 6s that I have from the last time I was my ideal weight, but I threw out all of the 8s that I had in last summer's decluttering, so I needed something to wear in the meantime other than my now-too-big 10s.) I am feeling not just less heavy but (every so often) almost positively thin (it comes and goes; my thighs are still quite heavy, but my waist is nearly firm). Even better, I find myself able to move on the strip in ways that I had thought I had lost forever along with my (relative) youth. When I look in the mirror, my face looks like my real face again (not the slightly puf...

It would be more impressive if it weren't all so very ordinary. I don't know quite what I was expecting. Something more elegant. Something more, I don't know, James Bond. Something at least somewhat enticing. Something that might actually encourage you to sin. To get caught up in the glitz. To lose yourself in the fantasy of having more money, sex, and stuff than you could possibly imagine. Although, to be sure, there were all of these things. Women in tight dresses and four-inch-high heels. Shops selling jewelry and designer-label fashions. Fake skies over pigeon-less fountains and facades pretending to be cities of culture and, presumably, class. But it wasn't working for me. Not even the pretend interiors, which I had expected to like, if only for their sheer absurdity. It wasn't just that they were fakes. That I could have gotten into (well, maybe). It was what they were pretending not to be--and failing. This, I realized as we strolled along th...

"Another way to discern your heart's true love is to look at how you spend your money. Jesus said, 'Where your treasure is, there is your heart also' (Matthew 6:21). Your money flows most effortlessly towards your heart's greatest love. In fact, the mark of an idol is that you spend too much money on it, and you must try to exercise self-control constantly." --Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters (New York: Dutton, 2009). I could pretend that I don't know the answer to this one, but I do. It's books. I am addicted to books. I spend my life serving books. Buying books, buying shelves for books, rearranging books, looking for more books, reading books. No matter how much they cost, no matter whether I've read the books that I already have, I can always justify to myself buying yet another book. Even when I am trying to budget for something else, a book somehow doesn...

"An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, 'If I have that, then I'll feel my life has meaning, then I know I'll have value, then I'll feel significant and secure.'" --Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters (London: Dutton, 2009). I miss my idols. Everything that I used to look and and tell myself, "If only..." "If only I were thin... If only I had a house... If only I had better things.. If only I could publish more... If only I were a full professor... If only I had read enough... If only I spoke more languages... If only I had written another book...then I would feel happy, loved, no longer an outsider. I would have made it. I would be somebody." But they're all dead now. I don't believe in them anymore. They are so much colored paper and tinsel, gimcrack illusions of significance and love. No, not quite. They...

This would be better in a diagram, but I'm still working on the details.  Think Hieronymous Bosch . 1.  Pride :  This is the vice of Grandiosity, with its companion Depression.  It feeds on the intolerance of strong negative feelings and is rooted in a weakened sense of self brought on by the denial of said feelings (often going back to childhood).  It wants at all costs not to feel worthless, but its sense of worth is dependent upon being the best and is therefore constantly at risk.  In particular, it masks feelings of shame and gives power to other people's opinions and judgments, especially over one's feelings.  It is triggered by excessive attention to self seen as constantly threatened with judgment and the corollary need to feel oneself in control ("be like gods"). Antidote : Watch for the temptation to believe that you are (or can, or should be) "in control," that you can save yourself if only you do or say exactly the right thing....

(click to magnify our sins) Anger is up, pride is down, and envy has gone into hiding.  But how can greed be so low, along with gluttony and lust?  Sloth, of course, we expect to crawl along at the bottom. Perhaps we are using the wrong labels? (click to magnify our sins)

You'd think I'd be used to this, exposing my shame to the world.  But this is a big one.  Envy .  Or, if you will, in its more virulent, Satanic form, jealousy .  The gnawing fear you experience when you hear about another's success.  The malicious but oh-so-compelling voice that whispers to you, "You're nothing, you've never been anything but nothing, you will never amount to anything," whenever someone praises someone else in your presence.  The raging green monster that wants to break, destroy, kill, pound into the ground that puny god who dares challenge your status by declaring himself (or herself) better than you. Yes, I've been there.  Many, many times.  With my siblings .  With my colleagues .  With my fellow fencers .  According to Bob Sorge and R.T. Kendall , most everyone has--not, of course, that anyone is usually willing to admit it, oh, no.  Because that would be to admit that we have something to feel jealous ...

You all know the parable ( Matthew 25:14-30 ).  There's this man, see, who was going on a journey, but before he left, he called three of his servants to him and entrusted them with his goods.  "And to one he gave five talents, and to another two, and to another one, to every one according to his proper ability: and immediately he took his journey."  While he was away, the servant to whom he gave five talents used the money in trade and raised five more talents; and the servant to whom he gave two talents did likewise, raising two.  But the third took his one talent and buried it in the earth.  Guess who gets the kudos when the master returns?  Not the one who buried his talent to keep it safe, oh, no!  Rather, the other two who took the lord's money and made more of it.  And so the master took the one talent from the servant who buried it and gave it to the servant who had doubled his five, so that the one who had had five talents now had eleven,...

Because they distract us when we are reading or meditating or praying from paying attention to God .  They are deadly because, more often than not, we don't even realize what they're doing. Gluttony says, "Eat this, it will make you feel better."  And so we stuff down the uncomfortable thought: "I'm unlovable."  And get fat. Greed says, "Buy something, it will make you feel better."  And so we stuff down the uncomfortable thought: "I'm not worthy."  And fill our homes with clutter. Lust says: "You would be happy if only you had sex (or a relationship) with him (or her)."  And so we stuff down the uncomfortable thought: "I'm inadequate."  And lose ourselves to another's image of what we should be. Sloth says: "You can't be expected to concentrate continuously, just take a little break."  And so we stuff down the uncomfortable thought: "I can't do this."  And never ...