Fencing Bear at Prayer

It is difficult sometimes to feel like what I am doing with my life--reading books, writing the occasional blog post, teaching history--is at all important in the grand scheme of things. Why am I not, for example ,* pushing the boundaries of our knowledge about the human genome forward or filling auditoria with young people to celebrate the wonders of mathematics (with, of course, the implication that science and mathematics more or less by definition matter more than history or prayer, never mind the history of prayer)? Why am I, rather, spending my life studying ideas that have been available in the tradition for hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years? Why am I even studying a tradition rather than creating something entirely new? Because, I now realize, this is my proper work. Or, at least, thanks to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, I think that I understand how it may in fact be my proper work. As usual of late, I'm not saying this well. Things have been simply too hectic the...

It was there. I could see it, just for a moment this afternoon. I was standing under a tree in the park with my puppy Joy sniffing around happily at my feet, and gently, ever so gently, I caught a glimpse of reality as Katie describes it: simply, truthfully what is . All of the pressures that I've been putting on myself to publish, to be Someone, to have a house /more children/more money , to get a promotion, suddenly, if only for a moment, fell away, and I could sense how happy I would be without all the thoughts that I have about who I "should" be as opposed to who I am. Alas, alas, why is it so hard to hold onto this thought? Or not-thought? It was so clear! The shoulds, the shoulds, the deadly shoulds ! "I should publish more." Is this true? Yes, if I want to get a promotion. But is it really true? Who needs all of our academic publications? Is it not, in a very real sense, simply feeding the machine to produce simply in order to, yes, produce?...

"Nothing could be more alien to contemplation than the cogito ergo sum of Descartes. 'I think, therefore I am.' This is the declaration of an alienated being, in exile from his own spiritual depths, compelled to seek some comfort in a proof for his own existence (!) based on the observation that he 'thinks.' If his thought is necessary as a medium through which he arrives at the concept of his existence, then he is in fact only moving further away from his true being. He is reducing himself to a concept. He is making it impossible for himself to experience, directly and immediately, the mystery of his own being. At the same time, by also reducing God to a concept, he makes it impossible for himself to have any intuition of the divine reality which is inexpressible. He arrives at his own being as if it were an objective reality, that is to say he strives to become aware of himself as he would of some 'thing' alien to himself. And he proves that the...