bearing blog

bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

Introduction to the Devout Life 5-15 and 5-16: General considerations in conclusion and sentiments to be preserved.
For other posts in this series about St. Francis de Sales's most well-known work, follow this link to the index, also available in the right sidebar. I outlined the structure of part five here.

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I'm blogging my way through Part Five, the annual review and renewal of devotion, which Francis suggests beginning each year at the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord — since that's a week away I'm going to try to finish by then. In the last post we looked at the five daily meditations Francis prescribes following the examination of conscience. Today we look at the sixth meditation, which ends with an exhortation to go to confession.

I find this a little bit unusual. Most of the time, the E. O. C. is supposed to be done right before going to confession, right? Here, confession is prescribed at the end of 7-9 days' worth of spiritual exercises, with the E. O. C. at the beginning. Interesting. I'd just like to point out that that practically makes it into a novena.

Well! Let's dive into the "general considerations in conclusion." Francis begins by putting the words in our mouths.

'My resolutions are the beautiful tree of life planted by God himself in my heart and watered by my Savior's precious blood to make it bear fruit. I would rather undergo a thousand deaths than allow any storm to uproot this tree. No vanities, pleasures, riches, nor afflictions shall divert me from my purpose.

'You have planted and preserved this beautiful tree in your fatherly heart, my God, from all eternity, ready for my garden; and how many others have not been so favoured! How shall I ever humble myself enough before your mercy?

'How beautiful and sacred are my resolutions; if I keep them they will keep me; as long as they live in my soul I too will live; may they live forever, then, as they have lived eternally in the mercy of my God, and may I never abandon them.'

"As long as they live in my soul I too will live." Francis sounds confident that the intention to pursue the devout life, resolved as part of his "program" for the devout life, is itself identified with the state of grace, at least in one who has participated in his spiritual exercises. It is hard to argue with this logic, when you consider what these resolutions are.

The resolutions to pursue the devout life — which resolutions, Francis wants us to pray will never leave us — are not to be confused with the intent to pursue specific means of fulfilling the resolutions, though — these will change according to time, season, and situation.

Now Francis moves on from dictating the words of prayer, to instructing us in how to form our own intentions and words:
After these considerations, decide on the particular means necessary to fulfil your resolutions, protesting that you desire to make faithful use of them; such means for example as

prayer

the frequentation of the sacraments

good works

the amendment of the faults you have discovered

the avoidance of the occasion of sin

the practice of your confessor's advice

and so on.
Can I point out that, obviously, everyone is called to make at least some use of all the above-listed means of receiving grace? But Francis wants us, I think, to identify "particular means" to focus on — the one or several means that will be most helpful to our particular resolutions. I'm seeing here (in the word "particular") an exhortation to concentrate your will and effort on one or a few places. If prayer is what's needed most, identify a time, place, and method; if more frequent reception of a sacrament, plan where and how and when; if amendment of faults, identify a plan of attack; and so on. In the meantime, the other means of receiving grace retreat into the background, always a support but not taxing us with a feeling of obligation or of having to "work" at them.

After deciding on the particular means:

Then, summoning up all your strength and fervour, make countless promises of fidelity to your resolution, dedicating, consecrating, and sacrificing your whole being to God, protesting that you will never retract your offering, but leave yourself forever at the service of his holy will.

Ask God to regenerate your whole life and bless and strengthen your renewed resolve; invoke our Lady, your guardian angel, St. Louis [the patron of France, where Francis was writing], and other saints.

Then go to confession:

In these dispositions go to your confessor, accuse yourself of the principal faults committed since your general confession, and, having received absolution, read and sign your protestation in his presence.

A note on "read and sign your protestation." In Part 1, chapters 20 and 21 — that is, at the starting-point of the devout life — Francis supplies the text of a solemn resolution (you could of course compose your own) which he implies you should write out and carry with you into the confessional, then sign just before receiving Communion. Let's look at that bit from 1-21:

What a wonderful contract you make with God, Philothea, for in giving yourself to him you receive in return eternal life and God himself! All that remains is for you to take pen in hand and with a sincere heart sign your resolution; then approach the altar, where God in his turn will sign and seal your absolution and his promise of paradise by setting himself, in Communion, as a seal upon your purified heart…

I take it that when Francis says "read and sign your protestation" he has in mind a repeat of the same "signing" that was performed when, after his prescription, you did "sign your resolution" just before approaching the altar.

As before, this exercise ends with communion:

Finally go to Holy Communion and unite yourself, thus renewed in spirit, to your Saviour, the source of all your life.

In the next chapter, chapter 16, Francis offers some advice for the remainder of that same day as well as on the following days.
On the day you renew your resolution, and on the days following, make constant use of aspirations… saying, for example

"I am no longer my own; whether I live or die I belong to my Saviour."

"I have nothing of my own, I belong to Jesus and all I have is his."

"The world remains the same, as I have remained till now; but I will remain the same no longer; my heart is changed and the world which so often deceived me will be deceived in me; not noticing my gradual change, it will think of me as Esau when in reality I will have become Jacob."
(This last bit reminds me of the beginning of Part 4, "Worldly Wisdom," one of my favorite chapters in the book, about the world's folly and criticism of the devout.)

So there you go, finish up your renewal with several days' worth of frequent aspirations — remember, these are the short ejaculatory prayers that can be said quickly and quietly as often as you remember, or that you can remind yourself to pray each time the clock chimes or something like that, to draw your heart toward God. (More on how to pray aspirations is in part 2, chapter 13.)

Then Francis concludes with a familiar recommendation for a gentle transition from prayer to ordinary duties, one that functions both as a recommendation for each of the day's transitions and as a more general recommendation to pass from the time set aside for annual renewal, to the rest of the year's efforts to grow in holiness:

These sentiments should rest quietly in your heart and you should pass from your considerations and meditation to your ordinary affairs and occupations gently, without straining either mind or body, lest you spill the precious balm of your resolutions before it has penetrated into the very depth of your soul.

That concludes the consideration of the Annual Review — and with a week to go before the feast of the Lord's Baptism.

There are a few more sections in the book which cover some more general topics, and be assured I'll get to them soon — but perhaps not before January 9th. More on that in a bit.
Jan 3, 2011

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Switch.
Readers who have been interested in following some of the threads about personal change — becoming an athlete, overcoming gluttony, detaching from time, and maybe even beginning the devout life à la St. Francis de Sales — might be interested in a quick-read book I just finished, one that Mark got for free at work after the author made a presentation there.

The book is Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It seems to be aimed at the business/management market, and indeed most of the many and very interesting anecdotes have to do with encouraging behavioral change in other people, but there is a sprinkling of stories about personal change as well. I don't think the logic is perfectly crisp (and Mark wasn't terribly impressed by the author's presentation), but I think it's worth reading, if only because the anecdotes are so fascinating and varied. For example:
- How aid workers permanently improved child nutrition in a Vietnam village with no extra resources
- How hospitals reduced medication errors by discouraging staff from distracting nurses
- How therapists taught child-abusing parents techniques that dropped re-offending rates from 65 to 20 percent
- How one hospital nearly eliminated IV-line infections with a single policy
… as well as some other examples of effective techniques from popular gurus that will be familiar to many readers of this blog, such as Dave Ramsey (the get-out-of-debt-with-cash-in-envelopes guy), "FlyLady" Martha Marla Cilley (the clean-your-house-by-shining-your-sink lady), and Brian Wansink (the lose-weight-by-shrinking-your-plate professor).

Chapter One of the book is available on the authors' website here.

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Nowadays when I read self-help books of any kind, I find myself testing them against my own experiences making serious, deliberate changes. I have made two life-altering, "previously impossible" changes now: I've gone from being mostly sedentary to regular vigorous exercise and even athletic competition; and I've gone from being a habitual and even compulsive over-eater to, well, not being one at all anymore. Those are fairly recent, within the last three years, so they are still fresh in my memory, if not entirely completely understood and processed yet.

I can go back farther and remember a couple more successful changes. One significant, life-altering change was made about ten years ago in conjunction with another person, my friend Hannah, when we with our (then) one baby each quite deliberately set out to create a "tribe," a sort of extended family for ourselves and for our kids and husbands, by sharing one day's worth of our work each week. Hannah and I had to make another deliberate change about three years ago when we realized we absolutely had to integrate our homeschooling efforts if we were going to keep up our (now two days a week) schedule.

So when I look at a book like this — a book that purports to explain how to make difficult changes happen — I feel that I can really evaluate it on the merits, at least as far as personal change is concerned. (I've never been a manager, and I've never had to enforce any really major changes in the family's behavior, so I can't really evaluate it in terms of encouraging others to change.)

And my judgment is that this book meshes really well with my experience. Let's take a look.

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The Heaths organize their book around a borrowed image of something I've written about before, the divided self. They envision:
- the logical, decision-making, long-term-focused self as the reins-holding Rider;
- the emotion-driven, pleasure-seeking self as the much more powerful Elephant;
- and the environment or situation that influences both as the Path.
The various chapters in the book offer advice on how to "direct the Rider" (that is, how to show the intellect where to go and what to do, what steps to take; how to "motivate the Elephant" (that is, to get the emotional side on board with the change and thus harness its power, or at least, how to reduce its resistance); and how to "shape the Path" (that is, how to change the situation to make the desired change easier for both Rider and Elephant).

At first I was a little skeptical about this way of framing the divided self, but as I went through the book I came to see that it is indeed an apt analogy (and a neat organizational principle as well — which always appeals to me).

Here's a quick outline of their main points, with comments about how these fit into my two recent experiences with personal change: becoming an athlete and overcoming a lifetime of overeating.

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I. Direct the Rider

A. "Follow the bright spots: Investigate what's working and clone it."

The only recent exercise I had successfully stuck with was YMCA swimming lessons once a week. So when I decided to exercise twice a week, I picked swimming.

I didn't know about any normal-eating "bright spots" before I started, but an example of this would be if you picked up a book like Thin For Life: 10 Keys To Success from People Who Have Lost Weight and Kept It Off by Anne Fletcher – which is based on data from the National Weight Control Registry — and tried to follow their recommendations.

B. "Script the critical moves. Don't think about the big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors." By this they mean, identify one or two specific action items that pack a big punch.

The perfect example of this is the four-point "No S Diet" published by Reinhard Engels. It goes like this: "No snacks, no sweets, no seconds, except on days that begin with S." Easy to remember, and really quite effective for many people. As for me, it took a long time for me to discover the critical moves for reducing my own weight, but now that I have them, the task of maintaining is much easier. They are: no seconds, no bedtime snacks, sharply curtail alcohol, use small plates. If I concentrate on those four rules, my weight goes down surprisingly quickly.

As for exercising, I guess you could say that my "specific behavior" was "Get in the pool twice a week." If I do that, I get enough exercise.

C. Point to the Destination: Change is easier when you know where you're going and why it's worth it."

I didn't need much intellectual convincing that it was a good idea to get some exercise. Here's a post I wrote about the non-weight-loss benefits of regular exercise.

As for overeating, you might think that I would know intellectually my whole life "where I was going," but actually I didn't. It wasn't until my intellect grasped the (should-have-been-obvious) fact that I was simply eating too much food that I was able to make the change.

II. Motivate the Elephant.

A. Find the Feeling. "Knowing … isn't enough…"

One of the things that went "click" for me and let me stop overeating was the onset of a feeling – the feeling of being really sick of overeating itself. When I suddenly started to feel disgusted with my behavior (rather than with my appearance), I started to act to change. And (before I decided it was bad for my sense of compassion) I used to deliberately linger over watching other people's disgustingly gluttonous behavior, e.g., at salad bars. Effective, if spiritually damaging.

B. Shrink the change. "Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant."

Oh yes, this is a big one: measuring my successes meal by meal, snack by snack, and workout by workout.

C. Grow… "Cultivate a sense of identity."

I definitely did this. I set out to create an identity of myself as a person who exercises, an "athlete." I imagined myself as a "person who goes to the gym" — and then I tried to do what I thought that person would do. It is more than just "Well, she'd go to the gym, duh!" When it's an entire identity, you have to fill in lots of details of character.

A person who was like me, except she goes to the gym…. well, she'd have two sets of workout clothes, not one. And she'd keep her bag packed all the time and in the car so as not to miss an opportunity. And she would be the sort of mother who expects her kids to manage in the gym child care for half an hour, not the sort who would reflexively reject gym child care. And she would occasionally take a yoga class if she happened to arrive at just the right time. And she wouldn't care if occasionally slipping that workout in meant she would wind up washing her hair twice in a day, or that she would have wet hair or wrinkled clothes when she got where she was going. "Sorry I look like a mess, I just came from the gym," she would say.

As for overeating, well, that's the power of the mantra, "I don't do that anymore." I have observed before that when maintenance requires me to go back to extra-careful eating, it takes me a few days to settle back into the pattern of impulse resistance, almost as if I had forgotten how to do it. I wonder now if it doesn't take a few days to switch into the "identity" of a non-glutton.

III. Shape the path.

A. Tweak the environment. "When the situation changes, the behavior changes."

So many strategies here. Buying smaller, divided dinner plates was, I'm convinced, the single most helpful environmental change that I made.

B. Build habits. "When behavior is habitual, it… doesn't tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits." [including checklists and what the authors call "action triggers," i.e., decisions "to execute a certain action…when you encounter a certain situational trigger."]

I've written a lot about habits, so that's nothing new, but I like the concept of the "action trigger," which the authors recommend for motivating people to "do the things they know they need to do." One example of an action trigger might be, "I'll change the batteries in my smoke detectors on the same day that I change the clocks." The authors say that dreaming up an action trigger reduces personal resistance enough to be like creating an "instant habit" — and if that's correct, then it's powerful indeed.

An example from my overeating life would be when I decided that when I finish my first plate of dinner, I'll get up and get a cup of coffee or a piece of gum. From my exercising life: "I'll head to the Y right after the preschool music class every week."

Everything gets a lot easier when you're in the habit, but making these little micro-plans — basically just deciding when and where you're going to do something, and taking a moment to imagine it happening — could perhaps carry you along until the habits are established.

C. Rally the herd. "Behavior is contagious. Help it spread."

This one has more to do with encouraging change in a group (for example, how managers might get a whole slew of employees to adopt new safety rules) but I still think I saw some of it in my own change. For one thing, I tried very hard to look to my fit and active and not-at-all-gluttonous husband as an example, and as part of my change — it's hard to see which came first here — we reinforced our whole-family identity as "a family who does active things together."

And I am sure that it helped me feel comfortable in my new role as "a person who exercises" that I was part of a larger organization, a member at my local YMCA, and that two or three times a week I was literally surrounding myself with people who already were who I aspired to be: "a person who goes to the gym." I felt that identity coalescing as I found that I knew the names of the staff and they recognized me, as I nodded hello to the same people I saw from time to time in the locker rooms, as my kids got comfortable in the child care and made "favorite" friends among the staff.

I think that blogging about it helped too. There is a certain risk you take in announcing to the world that you're making a change. I admit that I feel responsibility toward "the blog" to stay on habit at this point! I don't want to let you all down!

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This post has gone on long enough, so I'll end here, but I'm pleased at how it coincided so neatly with the start of the new year! I'm not making any new year's resolutions myself, but I wish the best to any of you who are.

(Just do it at some other YMCA, not mine. The parking is bad enough as it is. Ah, January…)
Dec 31, 2010

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3 comments on Switch.
Introduction to the Devout Life: 5-9 through 5-14, “Considerations on renewing your resolution.”
For other posts in this series about St. Francis de Sales's most well-known work, follow this link to the index, also available in the right sidebar. I outlined the structure of part five here.

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We've been looking at Part Five of Introduction to the Devout Life, which is about the annual review and renewal of devotion.

If Part Four is a sort of "troubleshooting guide," then Part Five is a preventative maintenance manual. Francis recommends doing this review at the time of the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord (January 9 this year). I'm going to try to finish up blogging Part Five by then.

The last post concerned itself with an annual examination of conscience that is aimed specifically at considering one's progress in devotion and the devout life over the course of the year. When the examination of conscience is completed (over one to three days), Francis prescribes five days of meditations:

Having completed the above… make each of the following considerations the subject of your daily meditation, following the method I have already explained, placing yourself first of all in the presence of God and praying for grace to establish you firmly in his love and service.

The link goes to my post about chapters 2-1 through 2-8 — in these chapters, Francis carefully explains the basics of prayer and meditation to the total beginner.

So, let's look at the content of these five days of meditation.

Day 1: The Excellence of your Soul.

I think it must be common for people to fall away from devotion, or never to start in the first place, because they think of their own soul as not really worth saving, or not quite good enough or important enough to merit so much attention. It is logical, then, that St. Francis repeatedly begins these series of considerations with meditations on the value of one's own soul: here is another example. Before you embark on a program to work on your soul, you have to believe that this soul is worth working for.

So on this first Day, Francis has you consider the gifts of reason, knowledge, and understanding that you already possess. He has you consider the nobility of your will "capable of loving God and incapable of hating him in himself." He has you consider "how great is your heart which can find no rest except in God and which nothing created can ever satisfy."

In other words, Francis is showing you that your own human nature points you toward God simply by virtue of being a human nature — and if we stop to think about it for even a moment, we know that every human, no matter how mean and lowly, deserves to become devout. Humans require only love to have that opportunity to the fullest. And however low we may feel, we must admit that we ourselves are worthy of lavishing that work of love even on ourselves.

One of the things which the prodigal son most regretted was that, when he might have been eating delightful food at his father's table, he had been eating husks with swine. 'O my soul, what wretchedness, when you can enjoy God, to be content with anything less.' Lift up your soul in this way; realize that it is eternal and worthy of eternity; stir up your courage to attain this end.

Day 2: The Excellence of the Virtues

Here Francis wants you to stir up your desire to possess the virtues — certainly whichever virtue you are specially working on, but each and every other besides, because Francis's "method" puts all of them within your reach.

Consider the beauty of the virtues compared with their contrary vices. How beautiful is patience compared with revenge; gentleness compared with anger and acrimony; humility compared with pride and ambition; generosity compared with avarice; charity compared with envy; moderation compared with dissipation!…

Those who know the value of devotion might well exclaim with the woman of Samaria: Lord, give me this water (Jn 4:15)…

Day 3: The Example of the Saints

Francis singles out for consideration martyrs, women martyrs and virgin martyrs in particular; pastors; Stes. Monica an Paula as examples of saintly life as married women and as widows. (Sorry, married men! I get the impression that Francis served as confessor to a lot of women. But I'm sure if you think about it you can come up with some saints that are particular for your situation.)

After such wonderful examples, what is there that we may not do? They were as we are; they did it for the same God and for the same virtues. Why should we not do as much, according to our state of life and our circumstances, in order to keep our cherished resolution and to fulfil our holy protestation?

You see now why it was so important to place that meditation "on the excellence of your soul" first — otherwise many people would not be able to see so clearly that there is not some special kind of person called a "saint." We really are all called to be so.

Day 4: Christ's Love for Us

Here Francis wants us to consider specifically the act of love in time and history which is the Savior's Passion: the sacrifice on the cross. This is very much a "Jesus is my personal savior" meditation; worth pointing out to people who think the Protestants came up with that idea:

As a woman with child prepares the cradle, the linen and the swaddling clothes, even arranging for a nurse and everything necessary for the child she hopes to bring forth, so our Lord, his goodness, as it were, pregnant with you upon the Cross, wishing to bring your forth to salvation and make you his child, prepared everything you would need: your spiritual cradle, linen and swaddling clothes; your nurse and everything required for your happiness, in other words, all the means, all the attractions and graces by which he guides your soul and seeks to lead it to perfection….

How wonderful to realize… that God has loved you… as though you were the only person in the world to be considered, just as the sun shines on one part of the earth as brightly as though it shone nowhere else.

Day 5: God's Eternal Love for Us

The previous meditation is, as I said, concentrated on the temporal sufferings of Jesus. The fifth meditation steps back to consider love in its eternal unchanging form, that of the Godhead.

Before our Lord, as man, suffered for you on the Cross, as God, he knew and loved you in his infinite goodness. When did he begin to love you? When he began to be God? No, for he is without beginning and without end; he has always been God and so has loved you from eternity…

He tells you so through the Prophet Jeremias in words addressed to you as though there were no one else: With unchanging love I love thee, and now in mercy I have drawn thee to myself. Among other things he thought of drawing you to make your resolutions to serve him.

'How important these resolutions must be, my God, since you have thought of them, considered and designed them from all eternity!…"

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So you see how Francis, in the course of these five days of meditations, leads you from the center of the self ("the excellence of your soul") outward, through the virtues that will illuminate your soul, to the example of other virtuous people throughout history, to God made man loving you in time, to God the Eternal loving you even outside time.

And along the way he encourages you to look at your resolutions, the ones you are about to renew, from all these perspectives.
- Yes, your soul is worthy of your own efforts, including the making and keeping of resolutions.
- Yes, virtue is desirable as an end, for which the means are your resolutions.
- Yes, you can keep your own resolutions; we know this because the saints have kept theirs.
- Your resolution is precious, "the fruit of your Saviour's Passion."
- Indeed, your resolution is eternal, for it has existed from the beginning as an idea in the mind of God that He "considered and designed from all eternity" as a means of your salvation.
If that doesn't get you in the mood to renew your resolutions, nothing will!

In the next post, we'll look at the conclusion of these considerations.
Dec 29, 2010

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Jimmy Akin on priestly celibacy.

Jimmy Akin has a post up that's worth noticing.

The post's purpose is to be part of a series of posts dealing with a particular current-events scandal involving a philandering priest.

But in order to set up the necessary background information for understanding the scandal, Jimmy lays out a concise (really) twelve-point explanation of the nature of the rule about priestly celibacy: what it means, why we have it, what are the exceptions, why it's possible to disagree with the rule in good faith, etc.

Worth checking out if you need a refresher on this information yourself.

Dec 29, 2010

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No comments on Jimmy Akin on priestly celibacy.
Introduction to the Devout Life: 5-3 through 5-7, Examinations.
For other posts in this series about St. Francis de Sales's most well-known work, follow this link to the index, also available in the right sidebar. I outlined the structure of part five here.

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In the last post, we looked at Chapter 5-2, which encourages you to start off your annual review and renewal by considering the value of the resolutions you've made. This chapter ends with a segue into the examination of conscience that is the concern of the next five chapters:

After all these considerations, which should inspire you with many good desires, end quite simply, with an act of thanksgiving and a prayer that you may draw great profit from them. Then retire with humility and great confidence in God, reserving the task of making your resolutions until you have carried out the following exercises.

Two Options for Examination of Conscience

Francis suggests two options. The first is a "long-form" examination of conscience, which he introduces in Chapter 3 (and continues to discuss in Chapter 7):

This exercise is rather long, but remember that there is no need to go through it all at once; examine at one time, for example, your conduct towards God [detailed in chapter 4], at another your duty to yourself and the state of your inclination [chapter 5], at another your conduct towards your neighbor [chapter 6].

…Take these points quite peacefully, one at a time, and consider the state of your heart in their regard since you made your resolution, noting any serious faults.

The second option is "An examination of your general dispositions," introduced and outlined in Chapter 7:

If a detailed examination such as I have suggested would prove too laborious it may be simplified and reduced to a scrutiny of your passions… In other words, what inclinations sway your heart? What passions possess it? Where has it gone most astray? Test the passions of your soul one by one and you will know its state.

Either of these could function as a pre-confession guide to examination of conscience: print 'em up in a pamphlet and carry the with you to the line for the confessional.

One is long and the other short, but length is not the only difference between them:

The first, long form of the examination — the one that Francis suggests taking three separate sessions to perform — attends to details of behavior and on the feelings that are signs of our love for the devout life. In it Francis enumerates questions like "How do you talk about yourself? Are you boastful and conceited?" and "Do you do anything to harm your neighbor either directly or indirectly?"

The second, shorter form asks us to examine our consciences from a different direction, so to speak, by enumerating not our actions and thoughts, but our "passions." Francis lists seven to be scrutinized: love, hatred, desire, fear, hope, sadness, and joy. The question is then, do we (for example) desire the right things? do we desire the wrong things? do we desire things in proportion to their worth? and so on.

How to prepare for the examination "sessions."

It is not necessary nor expedient to kneel except for prayer at the beginning and the end. You can easily make your examination while out walking, perhaps more easily still in bed, so long as you can remain sufficiently awake for long enough. In this case, however, you should have read through the necessary considerations before retiring, and aim at completing the whole of this exercise within three days at the most, setting aside some convenient time each day, for it will lose its efficacy if too long protracted.

"It is not necessary… to kneel except for prayer at the beginning and the end." This is a good reminder that an examination of conscience is not a kind of prayer. Prayer is always an appeal to someone outside yourself; an examination of conscience is focused on the self. One prepares for self-examination by praying, asking for help in making the examination, and one ends by spiritual acts (these are given in detail in Chapter 8) thanking God for the insights and asking for pardon and the like, but the stuff in the middle is the simple application of your sense and brain to hard reality. Where do I measure up, and where don't I?

It is not necessary to withdraw from company entirely while carrying out these exercises but you should do so to a certain extent, especially towards evening, retiring early to take the bodily and spiritual repose so necessary for meditation.

During the day make frequent aspirations to God, our Lady, and to the angels, in fact, to all the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, your heart filled with love of God and a desire for your spiritual perfection.

The picture I am getting of this examination is of one or three days set apart for a small "season of reflection."
1. Designate one day, or three consecutive days, as days to examine your conscience.
2. Set aside some time in the evening to be alone for reflection: perhaps in the spot of your usual evening prayer, but perhaps during an evening walk, or even just going early to bed and reflecting there in the time before you close your eyes to sleep.
3. Plan that day to get extra rest and quiet during the day, "especially towards evening."
4. During that day, keep your upcoming meditation in your heart, and make frequent aspirations (short prayers), expressing your love of God and your desire for spiritual perfection.
5. Just before performing the examination, read through the text of Francis's guides (either the long form in chapters 4-6, taking one chapter each day; or the short form chapter 7). Have them with you during the examination if the chosen place and time makes that possible.
Beginning the "session" of examination

This would be the part where Francis implies you should be kneeling for prayer. Francis instructs:

To begin your examination properly place yourself in the presence of God and invoke the Holy Spirit that he may enlighten you and enable you to see yourself clearly as you really are, praying humbly with St. Augustine, "Teach me to know thee, O Lord, and to know myself;" or saying with St. Francis [of Assisi], "Who art thou, O Lord, and who am I?"

Protest that you wish to note your progress, not for your own satisfaction, but to rejoice in it for God's sake; not for your own glory but for his, that you may thank him.

Here is another one of those spots where I sit back and marvel at St. Francis's down-to-earth, pastorally unique approach. If I came across a modern "Guide to Examination of Conscience" that encouraged the penitent to examine his progress in the spiritual life as well as his sins, I'd be annoyed. The examination of conscience isn't a place for pats on the back! It's a place for simple self-accusation! But Francis clearly puts it into perspective: The progress that Francis so confidently predicts has been made only because of God's saving work in the penitent. The penitent owes it to God to acknowledge his progress during the course of this examination, so that he can better thank and praise God for God's saving work in him.

And Francis is no dummy of a pastor either: He is writing for beginners, after all, and he knows that beginners need encouragement. Noticing where God's work is really working counters the sadness that can accompany acknowledgement of failures.

Protest also, if you seem to have made little progress or even fallen back, that you will not give way to discouragement and become faint-hearted and lukewarm, but on the contrary that you will stir yourself to greater efforts, humble yourself and strive with God's grace to remedy your defects.

Examination Session

Now, preliminary prayers finished, you can get up off your knees! Begin thinking and judging, and trust that the Holy Spirit will be quietly working beside you and in you.

Having done this, consider calmly and peacefully how you have behaved up to the present towards God, your neighbor, and yourself…

OR, if you are doing the short form,

Take the points [of the short form — that is, each passion that is listed] quite peacefully, one at a time , and consider the state of your heart in their regard since you made your resolution, noting any serious faults.

I won't get into the details of the examinations here; you can get it from the book, or you could probably adapt any other published examination of conscience. If you are doing the long form, Day 1 concerns your behavior toward God, Day 2 concerns your behavior toward self, and Day 3 concerns your behavior toward your neighbor.

(The "behavior toward self" part deserves a little description, since many published examinations are organized by the Ten Commandments, which fall into the "love God/love your neighbor" dichotomy. This is, of course, after Christ's greatest commandment. Still, it isn't just "love your neighbor;" the command is to "love your neighbor as yourself," and to evaluate that requires us to determine how we love neighbor and how we love self, and then weigh the two! Anyway, on Day 2 Francis is asking us to consider things like whether we are humble or proud, how we talk about ourselves, whether we seek to correct our faults, and whether we have habits that harm our health.)

Concluding the Session

At the end of each day's session — whether you do it all in one day or whether you complete only part of the examination each day — return to your knees.
Having quietly completed your examination and discovered the state of your soul, conclude with the following spiritual acts:

Thank God for any progress you have made since your resolution, acknowledging that it is entirely due to his mercy.

Humble yourself…. acknowledging that if this progress is scanty it is entirely due to your lack of fidelity, courage and constancy…

Promise to praise him eternally for the graces which have enabled you to… make progress…

Ask pardon for having been so unfaithful and disloyal to grace.

Offer him your soul that he may be its sole master.

Beg him to make you completely faithful to him.

Invoke the saints, our Lady, your guardian angel, your patron saint, St. Joseph, and so on.
After the days of examination are complete

It's not time to go to confession yet (unless maybe if you've discovered serious sins). The next part of the renewal consists of five daily meditations, which Francis goes into in some detail. We will begin looking at these in the next post.
Dec 27, 2010

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And so this is Christmas.

I might have mentioned at some point how much I hate having my plans changed.

Whenever that happens, until I finally manage to wrest myself into acceptance of my new schedule, I find myself playing a movie in my mind of the way things were supposed to go.

So today I'm thinking about waking up with my family in the bustle of my in-laws' house in Ohio. I'm thinking about my daughter making cookies with Grandma and my sons plashing about after Grandpa in their boots. I'm thinking about my sister-in-law finally getting to know her newest nephew in person. I'm thinking about Mark meeting old friends for breakfast and me catching up on clothes-shopping with my best friend from high school at the after-Christmas sales. I'm thinking about the annual $15 round-robin gift exchange at Mark's family get-together, with — what was it? ten, eleven?– little cousins running around, so that the Christmas tree will have to be braced with wires running into eye-hooks in the wall. I'm thinking about my own grandma's cookies and pie, and my smaller (but just as loud) extended family gathered together. I'm thinking about looking forward to the long drive back on New Year's Day, the kids in the back seat and fourteen hours of sitting next to my husband musing about all the blessings we have and had and will have.

What I'm doing, though, is making chicken soup in my own kitchen.

Monday night Leo started throwing up. And then it was Oscar, and then Milo, and then me, and now Mark is down for the count. MJ was sick last night too, although she seems pretty lively this morning.

Today I felt well enough to dig out the car and go to the grocery store, and I tried to pick up things enough to make cookies and things. It feels pretty thin though. There's no tree yet (I suppose there's still time for that – but Mark is too ill to help, and I'm not sure I can put up the artificial tree myself with a baby crawling around). Almost all our presents are in Ohio (save one biggish one for the kids that I'm hoping will be exciting enough to suffice).

I could say "Oh well, it's the non-materialistic, meditative Christ-centered Christmas I've always wanted," but I'm not even sure that any of us are going to go to Mass — some special kinds of Christmas cheer, you don't want to spread around, if you know what I mean, and even if we all feel better tomorrow we might still be contagious.

There is some cheer to be had; I sang "Gloria in excelsis deo" as I loaded the groceries into the trunk of the car, and arrived home to find happy children devouring chocolate and fruit from a basket newly sent by Mark's mom and dad. Still, I'm a little melancholy and stuck in the Christmas that might have been.

So I'll tend my soup, and hope that it appeals to everyone by the time it's finished; and I'll clear off the counters and maybe make a batch or two of cookies. I think that everything will be different in the morning. It should, shouldn't it?

Merry Christmas to my little band of readers and friends.

Dec 24, 2010

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12 comments on And so this is Christmas.
168 hours, part two.

I said in my last post that I had recently logged my time for a week to see how I was spending it.

How did I spend my 168 hours?

Well, I'm getting enough sleep. I spent 51.5 hours sleeping, an average of more than 7.5 hours per night.

This left 115.5 waking hours.

28 of these were spent on household tasks. This includes food prep (11.5 hours), tidying (7 h — who knew I only spent an hour a day?), shopping and errands (6 h). Apparently someone else does most of the laundry because I only recorded half an hour. 1.5 of these "household" hours were spent supervising the children's chores. Almost 2 more hours were spent on listmaking, meal planning, and making appointments and the like.

Including travel, 27 hours were spent at leisure, not counting dedicated "family" time. This included 13 hours devoted to socializing with other adults, 8 hours using the internet. about two and a half hours watching videos, and almost 4 hours reading print matter (including some time reading to kids, but not including reading in bed).

Dedicated family time took up 24 hours – one day out of my week. That includes the 5.25 hours I recorded nursing (even though some of that was multitasking, and surely I really nursed a lot more than that.) I spent 8 hours being with my husband, and almost 11 hours interacting directly with the kids outside school and meals.

Personal maintenance took 22 hours. That includes eating (more than 9 and a half hours), changing clothes and bathing and the like (7 hours – really?), and time devoted to exercise (5.75 hours, but that includes travel, changing, and showering). I got a little more exercise under the "family" heading, too.

Next comes my "job" — homeschooling. I always thought it was a full time job, but really it's only part time! I spent a little more than 21 hours on school. Of that, ten hours were one-on-one instruction — which was about what I would have guessed, 2 hours per day. I spent a bit less than 9 hours on planning, preparing lessons, record keeping, and keeping the schoolroom tidy. 2.5 hours were school-related travel time. (The children all spent some time on independent work and being taught by others, too. Also, this leaves out about an hour of reading to kids.)

Finally, I spent 5 and half hours on church and prayer, including travel and getting the kids ready.

What about the analysis?

My first impression is that my life is remarkably balanced:

A quarter of my waking hours were spent at leisure, either alone or with friends and neighbors. A bit more than a fifth were spent leisurely interacting with my family. A bit less than a fifth of my time is the interesting and challenging work of schooling the children. (Alternatively, if you count up all the time I'm interacting directly with the children, including instruction, care, and discipline, it's well over one-fourth of my time.)

Necessary household tasks take a quarter of my waking time, and caring for my own body and clothes takes a fifth. I spend about as much time on going to church as I do on going to the gym: five percent of my waking hours was spent on each.

There are some other ways to crunch the numbers by re-assigning categories.

For instance, what is "work?" I have long considered my "job" to be homeschooling. But because we're home all day, there is more housework that needs to be done. If you think of me more as a "homemaker" than a "homeschooler," and count as my "job" the schooling plus all the household tasks I perform, then I work a nearly-fifty-hour week. But on the other hand, maybe only M-F housework should count. In that case it's about a 45-hour week. Or maybe I should count as "work" only the housework done while my husband is working for pay (as a measure of the hours I've specialized in homemaking; presumably Mark doesn't think of his evening and weekend housework as "being at work."). In that case, I work 38 and a half hours per week, plus 11 weekend-and-evening hours at more household tasks.

Or how about analyzing based on whether I have to interact with other people? I am an introvert and I dig my alone time, even if that's cleaning the kitchen. Turns out I spend 73 hours a week having to interact with other people, and 56 waking hours per week recovering from that time by being (whew) psychically isolated, i.e. exercising with headphones on or sitting on the couch with my nose stuck in a book. That's probably enough to meet my needs.

Or you could divide it up by how much I like to do the stuff I do — am I spending time on things that are fulfilling and/or fun? I like teaching, planning, prepping school, socializing, cooking, using the internet, exercising, and spending time with my family. I don't like driving, running errands, housework, or phone calls. I'm neutral on personal care, I guess – let's call that a "dislike" since I would rather do something else (even though I famously love a hot shower).

By that measure, I am pretty happy most of the time. I spent about 100 hours doing things that I find purely enjoyable (like exercise and reading) or else at least a meaningful use of my competencies (like cooking, teaching the kids, and preparing the schoolroom). In contrast, I spent less than 24 hours on tasks I don't really like to do. That's a four-to-one ratio — not bad! (Unless it just means I don't pull my own weight.)

There were a few surprises. I thought I spent a lot more than 8 hours on the internet, but it turns out that I must be getting that impression because of the many times per day I check "just for a minute" if I have a new email or blog comment. Even though those "just a minutes" add up, I didn't track that "non-sitting" internet time. I probably should track it better, but I learned one thing at least: it's clear that I'm not getting a feeling of "leisure" from these little checkings-in, and maybe I should be more disciplined about avoiding them. I wouldn't be depriving myself of very much, and maybe I'd gain focus. On the other hand, the total time is pretty low — it doesn't seem like something I have a huge problem with, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it.

How else could I use my time better? I spend about seven hours a week on tidying and cleaning up, and only 1.5 hours supervising while children tidy or clean up. Surely I could shift away from solo chores and towards directing children who are learning to do those same chores? They are not as efficient as I am, so the more I delegated these tasks to the children, the more time it would take from me. But teaching the children to clean is arguably a more productive and fulfilling use of the hours, and also an investment for the future — because the more I supervise their chores, the more competent they will get.

I also spent almost twelve hours on food prep. Cooking is a household task I enjoy, but maybe I'm indulging in this hobby more than I ought to at about 1.75 hours a day. I have already cut back a lot in recent years, settling on a repertoire of frequently made dinners and trying no more than one new recipe per week. I'm not sure how much more I could cut back without relying more heavily on prepackaged foods and takeout. I could certainly enlist the children's help more than I do.

To sum up, I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that my time allocation is more in line with my values than I thought it was. I would like a little more data on my internet usage (I'm sure that a lot of that time is wasted — neither work nor particularly pleasing leisure time), and maybe I'll track that soon. But what I have already learned can, I think, help me. I have identified a couple of places that I could tweak to improve things a bit.

Also, I really have no business complaining about the laundry, because apparently my husband has been doing, um, all of it. If there's one place I should spend more time, it's on counting my blessings.

Dec 22, 2010

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6 comments on 168 hours, part two.
168 hours.

In my "Resolution" post from this summer, I said I was going to try to kick the habit of considering my time as my own:

Previously, I tried to deal with the visible problem in ways that actually worsened the underlying cause. When I dieted to lose weight, I became MORE obsessed with food, and especially with "getting enough nutrition" and "getting enough to feel satisfied." When I have wrangled with time in the past, I have tried to do it through ever-more-finely-divided scheduling: Not enough time with the kids? Put them in another block on the schedule! Some scheduling is necessary, obviously, just as nutrition is necessary for the dieter, but a schedule is not going to solve the problem of undue attachment to control over my time. If anything it feeds the notion that I CAN control and own time that "belongs" to me.

But I still think it's a good idea to know how I'm spending my time; a basic axiom of my personal philosophy is Data is good. (Gathering data isn't always time well spent, of course, but the data itself is a good thing to have.)

I recently read a somewhat-fluffy book with one good central idea: 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam. The author has, I think, bought a little too much into the anyone-can-have-it-all fallacy, and accepts a bit too unquestioningly the way time-use researchers classify home parenting activities (is "child care" really only the hours we spend feeding, dressing, and playing with our kids? how about cleaning and cooking and gardening alongside them?) She also suggests a little too blithely that the problem of the time crunch can best be solved by paying hired help, e.g., by sending out laundry. (I recognize that it's a matter of figuring out what your time is worth and outsourcing the things that make financial sense; but still, that's going to rankle people who could never afford that kind of outlay.)

But she's still written a fairly interesting book around this core concept: Measure how you spend your time, on the scale of hours-in-a-week, and then you can look at how you're spending it and decide if you're spending it the way you want.

I've thought about making a time log for a number of years, and have always been kind of intimidated by the prospect. But this book got me into the mood to try it for a week. So I printed up seven spreadsheets marked out in fifteen-minute increments, and started writing down what I was doing periodically through the day. I started at 3 pm on a Monday, and I stopped at 3 pm the following Monday.

(My recommendation if you try this, by the way: I found that by far the easiest way to get most of it written down was to go make a record on the page every time I finished doing something. Also, not to sweat the plus-or-minus-a-few-minutes, and not to worry if it doesn't all add up because of multitasking.)

Then, on a morning with a cranky teething baby in need of lots of rocking, I sat down with a spreadsheet program and added it all up.

Next post: what I found out.

Dec 21, 2010

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Probably this is a bad omen.

The child can't even walk yet, and already:

I think we are in for it.

Dec 18, 2010

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3 comments on Probably this is a bad omen.
Math and music videos.

Remember a while back when I linked to the Music Animation Machine videos? These animations visually represented some fairly complicated pieces of music, such as one of my favorites, Mozart's Symphony No. 40, as a series of colored bars scanning across the screen:

I loved the way the structure of the music was made visible; how I felt I could understand and grasp the music in a way I couldn't before.

At the time I posted that it reminded me of something, but I couldn't think what.

Then this morning I saw a website that told me instantly what it was I had been reminded of: Music boxes!

The above movie is from vihart.com, which is a treasure trove of videos about mathematical and musical recreations. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Here's another video from vihart.com, this one about graph theory:

Enjoy! My kids and I all did.

Dec 17, 2010

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Cheater’s biryani.

Last night I was coming home late from Hannah's, so I made it the day to try a new shortcut I'd been pondering.

In the morning before leaving, I plugged my rice cooker — it's restaurant-style, Tiger brand — into the automatic light timer and set it to come on at 4 p.m. Then I added brown rice, enough water to cook it, the contents of a commercial package of Vegetable Biryani Spice Mix, and half a bag of frozen peas and carrots. Also a handful of frozen red bell pepper strips. And a glob of coconut oil. And then I went away.

When we got home, the house smelled wonderful. To the rice cooker I added a handful of raisins and another handful of almonds. These warmed up while I put the other things on the table. We had the vegetable biryani with plain yogurt, chopped cucumber, steamed fresh green beans, and sliced fresh pears. Pretty good!

Dec 15, 2010

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3 comments on Cheater’s biryani.
“Sushi chef.”

As conceived by my seven-year-old son.

I find that giving a passel of kids a stack of photocopied comic-strip blanks really stimulates the creativity glands. Something, anyway.

Dec 14, 2010

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