Fencing Bear at Prayer

Thanks, as always, to Jennifer for hosting our "takes." 1. Have you ever wondered why it is that people speak in such hushed and reverent voices when they're at a bank ? I used to think that it was out of awe at the presence of money (always a seductive idol), but when I was visiting my bank earlier this week to deposit a fairly large check, I started thinking maybe it's because everyone is so worried about making mistakes. Things need to stay quiet and calm lest the person doing the calculations or signing the papers misses something, e.g. drops a zero, neglects to read the fine print about the interest rates. Hushed and calm, after all, is much preferable to angry and loud, as, for example, one might be after one's bank lost a deposit or made a mistake in the balance on one's account. If only we had the same sense of terror at making mistakes before God. 2. Which brings me to my second quick thought: why is it that Westerners who say they dislike the ...

One of the things that Abbot Pennington recommends as a consequence of our desire to be with God in centering prayer is that we elaborate our own personal rule of life . It is important that this rule should be simple enough for us to sustain, but it should also reflect what it is that we really want out of life, what it is that we really want to do with our life. It should be a structure supporting our life, not something rigid against which we measure our success or failure in observing it. Practicing centering prayer is one way to help us articulate such a rule. Indeed, practicing centering prayer--or so I have found in the past couple of weeks--may itself give rise to the desire to formulate such a rule, as much as to reassure oneself that there will be time for God every day as out of any sense of the value of having such a discipline. So, what is it that I really want out of life? Clearly, I'm a seeker; I want to know God. If this is the case then it should go withou...

There are so many things that I wish I could do better than I do. Every night at dinner time, I wish that I knew better how to cook. Every Sunday in church, I wish that I could actually sing. On the rare occasions that I find myself at a party or wedding, I wish that I could dance. On outings like our visit to the Renaissance Faire this past weekend, I wish that I could take better photographs. Whenever we have people over to our apartment, I wish that I had a better eye for interior decorating. And on, and on, and on. If only I could make my life as beautiful as I can imagine it being: excellent food, beautiful music, exquisite furnishings and photographs, elegant dancing. And then, of course, there's myself. If only my clothes were more fashionable, my hair more manageable, my features more photogenic, my voice more pleasing, my carriage and gestures more graceful. No, I'm not going to show you a photograph; I hate seeing photographs of myself. Very rarely one com...

(click to enlarge) There's a real question here. The more I do centering prayer , the better I am coming to appreciate how nothing really matters except God. Or, perhaps more accurately, how everything that matters, matters only in respect to God. It is all too easy to spend our time on earth dreaming about ways in which our lives could be different, all the while missing how amazing it is to be alive at all. Which is not to say that we should not exercise our imaginations in the effort to live well, only that everything we need is already here, right in the palm of our hands, if only we could learn to pay attention.

1. Yes, that's Kapla . In our living room, floor to ceiling. Jacob's ladder or the Tower of Babel? We're not sure. Whichever it is, it is certainly a good metaphor for the struggles I've been having these past few weeks with my book. Theories on what will happen when it comes down? 2. My father loved math, more even than cars. He spent most of his life thinking about math, reading about math, doing as many problems in math as he could. If he could have had one wish, it would have been to have someone to talk with about math who loved math as much as he did (Freudian typo: I originally typed "does"). If only he were here now to have this conversation with his grandson; he would be so proud. (And, yes, that's calculus on the white board in my son's bedroom; my son is 13.) [Update: My son says he's corrected the equation now.] 3. Elizabeth Gilbert has achieved turiya, the fourth level of consciousness in which one's understanding and...

Centering prayer is an ancient contemplative practice newly described for opening the mind and the heart to the presence of God. It is not so much a technique as a letting go, a willingness to surrender to the reality by which we are sustained but of which we are typically only intermittently aware thanks to the thoughts (emotions, perceptions, feelings, images, sensations, memories, reflections) that are constantly cluttering our mind. Practically speaking, it could not be simpler: twice a day, find a comfortable sitting position, close your eyes, let go of all thoughts, and consent to God's presence, ideally for about twenty minutes. Sound doable? Having a timer helps, since the first thought that is likely to arise is worry about whether one is sitting and consenting for long enough--or too long. Having a sacred word helps, too. This is the way Father Thomas Keating , on whose teaching the contemporary practice of centering prayer largely depends, describes the use of this...

I am going to regret this time once autumn comes, I know, but what exactly will I regret? I'm home again early today, having finished revising the syllabi for the courses I'm teaching next quarter and turned the book orders and reserve requests in. Should I have stayed and continued working? I have a letter of reference to write that is due on Friday, and there is always--as always-- the book . But instead I packed my bags and bicycled away, to spend the next hour or so (however long it takes me to write this post) sitting on the back porch in the hazy afternoon sunlight. According to Aesop , it would be much better to be an ant working hard all summer to grow and harvest enough food to keep me going over the winter. But I spent all winter working hard. Does that mean that I shouldn't actually get a break? Should I instead just work and work and work and work until even the Calvinist workaholic inside me gives up? But then, again, I'm not feeling very workaholic ...

I know some of you who don't know me personally have been wondering what I look like. Here's a pic taken on my last quest... Now it's your turn: SP-Studio . Hat tip to Andi for the great site! [Update: There, now I'm right-handed.]

Twelve days, 5555 words, and three ruthless cuts later , I think I may finally have an introduction to chapter 3. Which experience, while frustrating, reminds me of these three cardinal rules of writing well: 1. Find your voice . I can't actually write "academic prose." Every time I try, it comes out stilted and fake. Because there is no such thing as "academic prose" (except in a bad way, see #2). There is having an academic audience, which means you can assume certain levels of knowledge and experience on the part of your readers (although even this is not set in stone), but there is no one way to write to such an audience, just as there is no one way to write brilliant fiction or poetry. There are conventions of presentation, things that one must be able to demonstrate, but there are in fact no rules--at least, no rules of voice--about how one must go about arguing one's point. Which is not the same thing as to say that style does not matter; it ...

1. We've finished our Dexter marathon and moved on to the second season of Mad Men . It's spooky, to say the least, watching my childhood (or close; I wasn't actually born until a little over a year after Kennedy was shot) reconstructed before my eyes . Most striking images thus far, other than all the smoking and sexual shenanigans: the plumptious size of the women in the country club bikini fashion show, and the little boy being scolded by his mother for trying to sneak a candy while she and the other grown-ups were playing bridge (and smoking). 2. I used to worry about sailing through stop signs on my bicycle until I learned about Hans Monderman's anti-design for the Drachten intersection . Now when I come to an unmarked or simply signed intersection, I watch, fascinated by the way in which the cars, bicycles and pedestrians negotiate the exchange and I wonder whether it's true that we would actually be safer without traffic lights and road markings. Eve...

I am here at my desk rewriting page 5 of chapter 3, again. This is the third time I've made it to page 5 in this draft; both other times I found myself having to cut everything that I'd written after page 4. I'd made it this far by Monday last week: "But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart." Since then, all I seem to be able to do is stumble. There was a stab last Tuesday at explaining the tradition of medieval Scriptural exegesis that started promisingly enough (or so it seemed at the time): "It is a curious feature of the Christian tradition that it should depend on the one hand upon a rich, complicated and, indeed, for many, impenetrable practice of reading the Scriptures, whether, as in the ancient and medieval tradition, as a tightly-interlocking system of symbols or, as more recently, according to highly-developed historical-critical methods; and on the other upon the conviction that true understanding and, presumably, devotion com...

In the category, "what if?" What if my guardian angel had not been looking after me and my loved ones ...on the way home from high school swim practice with a carpool of teammates, when the windows fogged up because we were all wet and it was cold outside, and a semi-trailer truck took the side mirror off as I tried to merge too far over getting onto the freeway because I couldn't see? [1982] ...when I was trying to park on the edge of a cliff outside one of the monasteries at Meteora in a standard that I didn't quite know how to drive and nearly couldn't get into reverse? [1987] ...on the way to the airport to fly with my husband from London to Chicago to take up my first job, when I drove into some smoke and suddenly there was a car stopped in front of us, smoking? [1994] ...on the way from North Carolina to Texas, as my family and I were going over the Appalachians in the rain and a semi-trailer truck nearly took the side mirror off as I changed lanes? [1998] ....

Academics (like me) are supposed to be immune to the allure of fame. After all, they purposefully choose to write books that only a few people will actually want to read, many of whom they already know. If we (academics) wanted fame, surely we would write something less obscure, more salesworthy, right? Well, maybe. All writers want an audience, including those of us who spend our time researching what to others may seem obscure, even (heaven forbid!) narrow questions, hardly the stuff to show up on best-seller lists. Because, of course, to us the questions really aren't narrow, otherwise we would hardly spend our lives thinking about them. We want people to read our books and we work very hard to write as well and clearly as we can. And yet, we are very lucky indeed if our books ever make it below the 100,000 mark in Amazon.com's Sales Rankings; even luckier if they manage to stay there for more than a few days. Imagine, therefore, how we feel when mainstream writers h...

1. I thought that this would be relatively easy given that I already have my list of seven things that I'd like to share about how things have been going this week, but I'm already finding myself tongue-tied. I find this happens fairly predictably whenever I become too aware that someone might actually be reading my blog. Curious, eh? I am perfectly comfortable writing to myself about my spiritual journey (at least, in my better moods, I hope that is what it is) and I am eager to find others who are also interested in thinking about the relationship between disciplines like fencing (or yoga) and prayer , but I'm not always very good about reaching out to make new contacts. I'm grateful to Jennifer at Conversion Diary for giving us this opportunity to find new ways to connect. 2. My feet have been hurting quite a lot lately after fencing practice, particularly the instep on my left, that is, back foot. I don't know whether it has to do with the way that I...