Vainglory

A word has come to my attention lately: vainglory.

This word used to be quite commonly used; but I don't know that I have ever heard it used in 'normal' conversation. I am familiar with it through literature, especially literature dealing with character or morals.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "vainglory" as: inordinate or unwarranted pride in one's accomplishments or qualities; disposition or tendency to exhalt oneself unduly.

Ouch. This word has become a thorn in my side. I have begun to notice how constantly my thoughts revolve around situations that I can now call vainglorious. I have also begun to notice that 'attached' to 'feelings' of envy or inferiority or 'left outedness' is: vainglory... that is in someway the deeper, motivating 'feeder' of those feelings.

I can say that at this point, I am glad that I am recognizing the pull to act on those thoughts and am learning to resist them. So far, the discipline I am bringing to bear on them is to name their motivation: vainglory, and then to take action that is opposite: face the truth about myself in the moment and seek an action of humility. Which is tending to mean that I shut up a lot.

But it is hard.

Speech to the Young

Say to them,
Say to the down-keepers,
the sun slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.
Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

Gwendolyn Brooks 1991

From The Midday Office

Lord, my God, King of heaven and of earth, for this day please direct and sanctify, set right and govern my heart and my body, my sentiments, my words and my actions in conformity with Your law and Your commandments. thus i shall be able to attain salvation and deliverance, in time and in eternity, by Your help, O Savior of the world, who lives and reigns forever. Amen.

adapted by Phyllis Tickle from the Divine office, 2.

A Poem For My Musical Instrument Practicing Kids!

How Long Have I Been Practicing?

How long have I been practicing?
I'm sure it's at least a million years!
The evidence I submit
are my fosselized tears!

I was sure, by now, I'd be a pro..
But I can't seem to get the knack
of "Row, Row, Row"!

What? Five minutes!
You haven't a clue!
Time must move awfully slow for you,
Cause I've been working here,
At least an hour...

Would you like some of my
time moving power?

Who Kissed You Through the Dark...

A Child's Thought of God
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

They say that God lives very high!
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see our God. And why?

And if you dig down in the mines
You never see Him in the gold,
Though from Him all that's glory shines.

God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across His face --
Like secrets kept, for love untold.

But still I feel that His embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place:

As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids her kisses' pressure,
Half-waking me at night and said,
"Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?"

Scaffold or palace?

Last week my lovely pastor, Jan Bros, passed on a resource to me of a talk that Tony Campolo recently gave at North Park University in Chicago, IL. Tony challenged his listeners to use this economic crisis to re-evaluate where they are investing their lives: in the falling powers of this earth, or the eternal Kingdom of God.

Then today, in my lectio reading, I came across these words of George MacDonald's. It struck me that George gives a picture of what those investments look like, eternally. Here are George's words, exerpted from The Vicar's Daughter:

Suppose God were building a palace for you, and had set up a scaffold, upon which he wanted you to help him; would it be resaonable in you to complain that you didn't find the scaffold at all a comfortable place to live in? that it was drafty and cold? This world is that scaffold; and if you were busy carrying stones and mortar for the palace, you would be glad of all the cold to cool the glow of your labor. (...)But what will all the labor of a workman come to if he does not fall in line with the design of the builder? (...) ...will you go on tacking bits of matting and old carpet about the corners of the scaffold to keep the wind off, while that same wind keeps tearing them away and scattering them?

Primed from listening to Tony's speech last week and meditating all weekend on where the investment of my (and my family and church's) life lies; this image of George's fell on extremely fertile ground in my heart. I hope and pray that I will become sensitive to realize when I am 'tacking bits of matting and old carpet' around me and will stop immediately and begin again the work of building the palace with my Father. This, for me, is the desire of my life... to work along side Him until I realize we are done.

As I finish, I cannot help but ask, "where do your investments lie?"

Bailouts and the Rule of Benedict...

The other day, I was ranting to some trusted friends about how angry I was when I came across a Facebook ad that promoted getting 'bailout' money that was not being claimed. When I clicked on the ad it went to a blog where someone was telling about how they got $12,000.00 in unclaimed government grant money and then they paid off $10,000.00 in credit debt and took a family vacation. Then they went on to tell people how to get their own chunk of money, for themselves.

I was furious.

When I told my friends, one of them replied, "Welcome to the Republican party."

Their comment caused me to think...

My problem is not about Republican or Democratic approaches to policy; but about the responsibility of we citizens have in the state of our nation. If the Republican or the Democratic party makes money available to help others; it is not my right as a citizen to take that money to save myself while others who are in more dire straights than I am sink. That is the opposite behavior that is needed to help this nation to rise up honorably from our mistakes.

I felt that the person in the blog was promoting the same irresponsible choices that have helped this nation towards the mess we are in; and then turning and taking more from their national brothers and sisters to help themselves. They put themselves first and the rest of us, last.

Today, I read in "The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages" by Joan Chittister O.S.B., words that underscored these thoughts for me (italics mine):

"...if the preservation of the globe in the twenty-first century requires anything of the past at all, it may well be the commitment of the Rule of Benedict to humility.

The Roman empire in which Benedict of Nursia wrote his alternative rule of life was civilization in a decline not unlike our own. The economy was deteriorating, the helpless were being destroyed by the warlike, the rich lived on the backs of the poor, the powerful few made decisions that profited them but plunged the powerless many into continual chaos, the empire expended more and more of its resouces on militarism designed to maintain a system that, strained from within and threatened from without, was already long dead.

It is an environment like that into which Benedict of Nursia flung a rule for privileged Roman citizens calling for humility, a proper sense of self in a universe of wonders. When we make ourselves God, no one in the world is safe in our presence. Humility, in other words, is the basis for right relationships in life."

I am struck, quite forcibly, by the state America is in today and what Rome was like in Benedict's time. And, quite oddly, I take comfort in the fact that Rome is still there -- but it is not exactly as it was. I hope that we, as a nation, may begin to learn and explore the concept of humility that, to borrow Joan's words, "directs us to begin (...) by knowing our place in the universe, our connectedness, our dependence on God for the little greatness we have."

May we 'begin (together) again.'