Life of simplicity: Making progress. Really.
"The sacrifices others see [the monk] making are in reality no different from the athlete's recognition that certain elements detract from one's performance."
--Frank Bianco: Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today.
Topics in this post: Internet addiction, support for solitaries, stability, meditation/contemplation, liturgical hours, work, novelties, lectio divina and Vitae Patrum, Great Books and ethics, rigid daily schedules, seasonal schedules, social interactions, overwork and tiredness, the Psalms and Thomas Coverdale, Anglican chant, arguments against solitude, grace through trial, asceticism.
*** 19 May 2008
Eight-and-a-half hours online; it's seven a.m. now. And of course my binge occurred on the day after my Muse finally showed up, for the first time in eleven days. I'm sure I've scared him away again.
I had thought that the number of things I had to do online would take less than an hour. I was wrong. These were the two things that trigged my Internet addiction:
* Having to wade through a billion posts at Amazon's Kindle forums to find the information I needed in order to prepare the Kindle edition of my next e-book.
* Loneliness. This was the biggest factor. Loneliness got me cruising around the Internet in search of community sites, blogs, and e-mail lists related to simplicity, and loneliness is what caused me to spend an hour or three starting a blog at LiveJournal for the sole purpose of directing people back to these "Life of simplicity" entries. I can't figure out any other way to meet other people with similar interests.
As planned, I looked up the meeting information for the Benedictine Cell that gathers at my old parish church - a group of lay folk incorporating Benedictine practices into their lives. I attended the cell a few years ago with a friend who has monastic yearnings. I didn't get much out of it at the time - but then, those were days when I didn't even know what lectio divina was. I'd like to see whether I can learn more from it now.
Later:
Vitae Patrum V.i.3: "Holy Gregory said, 'God asks these three things of everyone who tries to live up to his Baptism, an unwavering faith with all his soul and strength, temperate speech and bodily chastity.'"
I had to interrupt lectio divina today to help a dying moth escape my study. That wasn't the only distraction.
I'd thought I'd be ruminating on bodily chastity, but my mind ended up wandring to the subject of unwavering faith. Perhaps it was because I'd been reflecting yesterday that, after forty years of arguing that a set time of day for doing writing-related activities didn't work for me, I'm finding that it actually does. I get things done if I know that I'm going to be doing the activities in a set order at roughly the same time each day. (Today I'm off my regular schedule, thanks to the Internet binge, but I'm trying to follow it as closely as possible in hopes that I can return to it tomorrow.)
"Unwavering faith" in this case seems not to mean, not just a state of mind, but a particular set of activities that's meant to encourage that state of mind.
Today I was reading Armand Veilleux's "Lectio Divina as school of prayer among the Fathers of the Desert." In certain ways, his argument is the opposite of what I've stated above - that you need to have a certain state of mind before you enter into a particular activity - but this passage struck home with me:
"According to the modern method of lectio divina, one should read slowly and stop at a verse long enough for it to nourish the heart or the spirit, if not the emotions, and pass to the following verse when the feelings have cooled or when the attention is lost. The first monks, for their part, stayed with a verse as long as they had not put it into practice."
Perhaps this is why the issue of stability continues to haunt me.
*** 21 May 2008
The first time I ever meditated, and knew that I'd meditated, it was an accident.
I'd never read anything about the techniques of meditation. I didn't know how meditation worked. I didn't know that it was often triggered by concentrating on some sensory detail or activity: an image, a mantra, a breath; counting a rosary, spinning of a prayer wheel, drawing a mandala.
All I knew was that I was sitting in the meetinghouse of the Friends Meeting of Washington, and I didn't know what the heck to do.
The last time I'd been to a Quaker meeting, more than a dozen years before, I'd spent the meeting daydreaming. Not surprisingly, I'd left the meeting wondering what Quakers got out of their meetings.
This time I'd been reading about Quakerism for several weeks, so I knew about the theoretical aspects of what was supposed to happen. But the books I read hadn't gone into the practical aspects of how one encountered the Inner Light.
So, trying to do something less distracting than daydreaming, I did what I'd probably done a zillion times since I was a child: I focussed my attention on the light falling onto the wooden pew. I put all my attention into it. And gradually, as the minutes passed, I felt myself filled with an excitement and joy that had nothing to do with the light I was staring at, and yet had everything to do with it.
I haven't been able to achieve that state many times in my life. And when I have, it's usually been because I haven't been trying. I'll be listening to a piece of music, for example, and will be concentrating so hard on it that the meditative state takes me by surprise.
The above thoughts are raised tonight by the fact I was sitting there, trying to do meditation/contemplation, and feeling distracted by the darned highway noise outside. There are no less than two highways and two major roads crisscrossing within a short ways of this house, and there's not much between us and those busy roads. So this house is continually filled with the sound of speeding cars and trucks (and occasionally the whistle of the nearby trains). Having grown up in this house, I usually pay as little attention to the traffic noise as a country child would to the continuous noise of a waterfall outside their home. But tonight I was thinking, "Blast it - how can I meditate with this loud noise filling the room?"
And then it occurred to me that the noise was actually very interesting.
Have you ever listened to cars and trucks on a highway, at a distance? They emit musical notes - different notes, depending on the vehical. And the notes gradually go up and down and fade and grow stronger.
It's like listening to the aural equivalent of the aurora borealis.
So that's my focus for future contemplation, I think. It's a lot more interesting than staring at a candle (and a lot easier on my eyes).
*** 22 May 2008
The traditional Western monastic hours for prayer (the "liturgical hours" or "offices") are below. Some of the times I've noted are approximate, and vary from monastery to monastery. I've started with the evening offices because that was the ancient tradition, still followed by the Eastern Orthodox churches.
* * *
6 p.m.: Vespers (literally, evening).
9 p.m.: Compline (literally, complete).
12 midnight: Matins (literally, morning; also called Vigils).
3 a.m.: Lauds.
6 a.m.: Prime (literally, the first - that is, this was the first hour of the day).
9 a.m.: Terce (literally, the third).
12 noon: Sext (literally, the sixth).
3 p.m.: Nones (literally, the ninth).
* * *
As you can imagine, monks who want to get a full night's sleep tend to nudge Matins and Lauds forward. Prime was dropped by the Catholic Church in 1964.
Even before the Reformation, the British had begun to simplify matters by reciting several of the hours together, continuously. This is what the late medieval schedule of the British Church looked like:
* * *
Matins: Matins / Lauds / Prime.
Evensong: Vespers / Compline.
* * *
When the Church of England (from which the Episcopal Church is descended) was formed in the sixteenth century, it adopted Matins - spelled Mattins - and Evensong as its two daily services, celebrated, not only by the clergy, but also by many of the laity. These services eventually came to be called Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, though the sung version of Evening Prayer is still called Evensong. However, the makers of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer in the Episcopal Church evidently felt that the simplification had gone too far; they added optional services for Noonday Prayer and Compline.
This is a very abridged version of the tale; actually, the early history of the canonical hours was one big mish-mash of experimentation. I offer this history lesson to explain why, for someone of Episcopalian background, setting aside times for contemplation etc. is not quite as simple as it for a Roman Catholic, who merely has to decide whether to follow the pre- or post-Vatican Breviary (the book that contains the offices).
Matters are complicated by the fact that it's been years since I got up regularly in the morning. The basic problem is that I'm a twelve-hour-a-day sleeper. Until recently, I was awake from noon to midnight, which allowed me to be out in the daytime but also to attend evening events. However, I'm cutting back on events, and it's hard for me to sleep for twelve hours straight without my eyes getting cranky (because, after a certain point, they demand that I eat food).
So here's the Monday through Saturday schedule I've set up, based on my current duties for my mother. Keep in mind that writing is my vocation; it plays the same central role in my life as study does to a cloistered monk. Keep in mind also that reading fiction is part of my writing duties.
* * *
VIGILS (approximately 1 to 4 a.m.)
Write fiction and edit what I've written.
Read about simplicity while eating.
Read fiction.
Lectio divina.
AFTERNOON (approximately noon to 6 p.m.)
Contemplate what my dreams have to tell me (and yes, they're usually hammering at me about simplification and self-discipline).
Read about authorship/publishing while eating.
Read fiction.
Edit and/or publish fiction.
Write a Writing Life entry in my blog.
Do chores at my mother's place, taking a break in the middle to read fiction while eating.
EVENING (approximately 6-9 p.m.)
Write fiction and edit what I've written.
Read about simplicity while eating.
Call my apprentice.
Write a Life of Simplicity entry in my blog.
As I fall asleep, mentally commit myself to remembering my dreams and following a life of simplicity the next day.
* * *
I wish I had more hours in the day. :/ But today, following that schedule, it's already 10:30 p.m., and it'll be eleven before I get to bed, since I'm taking a shower. Once I'm no longer spending three hours at my mother's place each day, my schedule will ease up. In the meantime, I'm trying to make meditation/contemplation a part of my daily activities through mindfulness, reflection, etc.
*** 23 May 2008
My apprentice has been learning this week, to his sorrow, that it's best not to plan your activities in such a way that you must rush pell-mell to meet a deadline.
I should have taken lessons from him. Deciding that I should publish my Lawnmowers book tomorrow, in honor of the first anniversary of the day when Jo/e asked me to mentor him, I spent four-and-a-half hours on publishing-related tasks today and learned, yet again, that focussing on a single task for long periods of time makes me manic.
It took me nearly two hours of reading afterwards to calm me down enough that I was unlikely to be kept awake all night with insomnia. Tomorrow I'm going to take things easier. I have three things that need to be done all around the same time: submit my booktrailer to Google Video, publish my e-books and audio book at Lulu, and upload and check my domain. It takes Google a while to approve videos, so I'll put off the e-mail and blog announcements till the following day, and I'll put off submitting the Kindle edition of the book to Amazon till the day after, and I'll put off the review submissions till the day after that, and I'll put off community blog announcements till the day after that, and I'll put off the MySpace announcements till the day after that, and I'll finish the other booktrailer submissions the day after that . . . It will take me a while, but I'm determined not to spend more than an hour or two doing publishing work each day (though I'm rather afraid the first day's tasks will take longer than that). This will be an interesting experiment in seeing whether I can go online for an hour or two a day and not get sucked in by my Internet addiction.
Lectio divina, to my surprise, is serving as an anchor in my life. When I was tempted to work late tonight, I thought, "No, I mustn't, because I have lectio scheduled for after midnight, and I don't want to miss that." This is the second time I've changed (bad) plans so that I won't miss lectio. I'd never have guessed this would become such an important activity to me.
*** 24 May 2008
Well, it took me six hours to get the first three tasks done; for technical reasons I made the fourth task I listed above into the third task, but otherwise everything went as I'd planned. Most of what I did was deathly dull work, so I don't feel as though I've been playing too long in the sandbox; instead, I'm glad it's over with.
From this point forward, I switch over to one hour a day of doing publication work online, with another thirty to sixty minutes daily spent on proofreading my next book offline. If I can manage that (my Internet addiction is always lurking in the wings), it will put me back on my regular schedule of spending one or two hours a day on editing/publishing. Unfortunately, I'll be getting to bed at two a.m. tonight, so my sleep schedule is off.
*** 25 May 2008
I'd been growing more and more pessimistic about overcoming my Internet addiction, because nothing I tried seemed to work - but now, knowing that my limits are tied with the amount of sequential time I spend online, I'm feeling more hopeful. Not that I want to spend an hour online every day on non-publication weeks, but keeping my online time to one hour per week might prove a way to make progress.
However, I didn't do that today. I did the same thing I did when confronted with liver for the first time: I gobbled down a whole chunk in hopes that I wouldn't taste the dreadful stuff. Namely, I spent the whole day struggling to find appropriate review sites, fighting with Amazon's stupid publishing interface, and generally doing all the tedious tasks that have to be done when a book is published.
I drew the line at spending a third straight day at this type of horrid work. Next weekend will be soon enough to finish it off.
In the meantime, I'm in an Internet buzz, darn it. It will take me a while to get over my manic high. I can't believe that I let myself get into this type of condition daily for a decade.
The above thoughts remind me of what a friend's therapist said when my friend was complaining to her about how he wasn't keeping on schedule. She said, "A year ago, you didn't have a schedule." Baby steps, but I'm taking them.
*** 26 May 2008
Vitae Patrum: V.i.22: "An old man said, 'The life of a monk is labour, obedience, meditation, refraining from condemning and despising others and grumbling. For it is written, "You who love the Lord flee from evil" (Psalms 96.10). This is the life of a monk, to bear with injustice, to keep his eyes from evil and vain imaginings, not to be forever seeking novelties and hearing strange tales, to keep his hands from stealing but rather open them to give, not to be proud of heart or evil in thought, neither to be gluttonous, but to manage all things with discernment. In these things a monk lives.'"
I think I fail in most of these departments, especially the grumbling part, but at the moment my greatest concern is about my "forever seeking novelties." So, after meditating on this matter tonight, my wish was that I receive the strength to stick to a regular schedule that is centered, not on obtaining novelties, but on a steady study of what I already at hand.
I'm beginning to learn that the contemplation part of lectio divina usually ends up being about something other than what I've meditated on. Oh, the subject always ends up being the Vitae Patrum passage I've read, but whatever is directing this part of the lectio reaches different conclusions than I do. Not necessarily contradictory conclusions, but different ones.
This time I found my thoughts directed to my alma mater. "What the heck?" I said, till I realized that "forever seeking novelties" is exactly what I've been doing in seeking a new community. I have a community that has helped me to discern ways to live my life, and even if this community tends toward abstract discussions rather than concrete suggestions on how to put these ideas into action . . . Still, St. John's College is where I learned to think deeply. It could be the place that I turn to again.
*** 28 May 2008
Oh, my goodness. Now I know what a steady schedule looks like.
I copy and paste my previous day's schedule, change the date, delete the hours from the previous day, and don't make any other changes.
Later:
Vitae Patrum V.ii.1: "Abba Antony said, 'Just as fish die if kept on dry land so monks are drawn away from their original intentions if they linger outside their cells or spend too much time with worldly people. Therefore just as the fish must needs return to the sea so should we hasten to our cells, lest through lingering abroad we lose our inner watchfulness.'"
So many exciting simplification advances are happening in my life that I'll have to summarize them in a list.
1) It turns out that one hour is my natural limit for any activity. (I know that because I spent three hours doing chores at my mother's today, and ended up in a manic high.) As long as I don't go over that one hour, I seem to be able to do just about any activity safely. Namely . . .
2) Going online to do publishing work each day for one hour - only one hour - is working out splendidly. Magnificently. Incredibly well.
Things that seem to make this work:
* My daily visit is part of a rigid schedule - I use the word "rigid" advisedly - that leaves no wriggle-room. If I spend too much time online, I can't do other things I need to do during the day.
* If I don't spend the entire time doing rather dull publishing work, I don't give myself a star at the end of the day. This may sound like a small matter, but I like pasting down those stars.
* By sticking my online time to one hour, I limit the temptation to stay on longer.
* The biggest factor: Predictability. That goes back to the rigid schedule again. When I know that this is the time of day that I'm going to do online publishing work, and right after that I'm going to do my simplicity reading, it doesn't occur to me to think, "Hey, maybe I should spend a half hour posting at writers' forums." It's just not part of my plan.
I need to set aside one day a week for non-publishing online tasks, though.
3) Lectio divina continues to work wonderfully for me, as does a daily reading about monks and/or hermits.
4) That leaves the matter of ethical readings. I've been thinking more about the guidance I received to make St. John's my community. For anyone who is mystified as to why I would receive this guidance, I should explain that my alma mater is devoted to a Great Books curriculum, a large portion of which is philosophy. I lived on a steady diet of ethical readings during my college years, and I think it's fair to say that 90% of the deep soul-searching I've done has been done in St. John's seminars.
For a variety of reasons, I haven't been participating in the alumni seminars, the chief reason being sheer laziness. If you don't know what causes that laziness, try slogging your way through 130 pages of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War, which is the reading for the July Seminar of the Annapolis alumni chapter. (I'll have to miss the June Seminar because I'll be attending a fiction convention that weekend.)
After thinking about it, I realized that I've been trying to take the same easy way with alumni seminars that I did with my college assignments. (That I was allowed to graduate remains a matter of wonder to me.) That sort of laid-back attitude is excusable - though no less deplorable - in a nineteen-year-old freshman, but it makes no sense in a forty-five-year-old who's trying to lead a highly disciplined life.
So slog, slog, slog I shall, and I'll see whether the seminars - and any lectures I attend - do the same magic on me now as they did in college.
I might add that I'm also doing this for the sake of Doug, who's desperately interested in taking part in some sort of intellectual activity with me. In fact, we moved to Annapolis for a year partly so that we could take advantage of the events at my alma mater. Unfortunately, my Internet addiction had full control of me during that year, so I didn't take advantage of the opportunities afforded to me. However, we're only a forty-five minute drive from Annapolis now, so we can still attend any events there. We're even closer to the meetings of the D.C. alumni chapter.
5) I haven't missed the fact that the reason my life is going so splendidly at the moment is because I'm sticking to a rigid daily schedule. This implies that, any time I depart from that schedule, I'm going to be in trouble.
We'll see whether tomorrow's break in the schedule causes problems. My greater worry is about travel out of town, such as to the aforesaid seminars. I'll just have to experiment and see how things work out.
6) As I've already mentioned in my Writing Life entry, I've concluded that I'm going to need to have a different professional schedule in the warm-weather months (when I need to devote most of my time to proofreading, layout, and marketing) than in the cold-weather months (when I'll set all that aside and concentrate on reading fiction and turn-of-the-century writings, in the hopes that devoting myself fully to my Muse during those months will satisfy him. He's sure been miffed with me for the past few weeks).
It seems to me that I could take a similar approach concerning eremitism. I'm already essentially homebound during the cold-weather months of the year, thanks to my eye condition. Why not turn necessity to profit, and make those months the ascetic heights of my year?
Whenever my Muse arrives, I spend nearly my entire day doing four tasks: writing fiction, editing fiction, exercising, and reading fiction/narratives. I'm beginning to suspect that this sort of schedule naturally occurs any time I devote most of my day to writing fiction. So, during the cold months of the year when it would be difficult for me to do publishing work, why not adopt that slimmed-down schedule (including, of course, my daily simplicity reading and lectio divina)? It would be interesting to see whether my Muse flourishes if I devote myself to him in that way.
I feel the need to mention once again that writing plays the same central role in my life as study does to a cloistered monk. This is the equivalent of me saying, "I'm going to devote my winter months entirely to prayer, spiritual study, and manual labor."
*** 29 May 2008
Well, my day spent doing household tasks went fairly well. I didn't get everything done that I had on my list, but I did my laundry and tidied my desk and the dining room table. (If you'd seen the piles of books and papers there, you'd know how much time it took to tidy the latter.) I also did little things that needed to be done, such as going through the files on my computer to figure out what the heck I saved them for, and writing two long letters to my apprentice. I think I spent too much time on a couple of posts to a list - which confirms my impression that I need to limit my social interactions, or they will completely drain my time - but otherwise, I think my schedule was well-balanced.
Though I felt a bit adrift, departing from my daily schedule, I managed to establish a pattern that should serve me well in future weeks.
Going online for personal surfing (as opposed to professional work) was also successful, though more stressful. Chasing links (which is what I was doing most of the time) is much more dangerous for me than posting book announcements. But I did get myself offline one hour after I started, on the dot.
Tomorrow I return to my regular schedule, which I'm looking forward to.
*** 30 May 2008
Vitae Patrum V.ii.9: "A brother once went to abba Moses in Scete asking for a word, and the old man said to him, 'Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you all things.'"
I got a prompt answer to my wish concerning this passage, that I be able to discern what types of gatherings it would be safe for me to go to. Not long after I entered into my contemplation, I began seeing cartoon faces of angry men and women, shouting. I realized then that the answer was quite simple: I should be attending gatherings that help me to reinforce my commitment to simplicity. Benedictine Cell meeting: yes. Local science fiction club: probably not.
There seemed to be something missing from that answer - a consideration of selflessness. Should I be thinking only of what is best for me when deciding which events to attend? Shouldn't I be considering whether I can add something to the group? But that sort of thinking has gotten me into trouble in the past - it has taken me beyond my natural limits. Limiting myself to a small number of people gives me safer scope for practicing selflessness than indiscriminate socializing.
Vitae Patrum: V.ii.11: "Abba Nilus said, 'Any one who loves quiet is safe from the arrows of the enemy, but the person who mixes with the multitude suffers many wounds.'"
Sometimes I think that the guidance I receive comes less from the images I receive than from my own decision of how to interpret those images. Case in question: The fact that a snippet of a Waltons episode came into my head while I was in contemplation after reading the above passage probably had less to do with the inherent wisdom the show had to offer than to the fact that I'd watched the show that afternoon.
Nonetheless, I was able to find meaning in the snippet. My wish prior to the contemplation had been for me to find a way to be less self-centered in my dealings with people. What I got back was John Walton saying to his son John-Boy: "A man's judged by the way he's handling a job he's agreed to do. Give less than your best - whether you're writing or chopping wood or farming - and you're failing a lot of people. Most of all, he's failing himself. You do the best at what you try, you've got nothing to be sorry about."
Well, exactly. If I'm to be less self-centered with other people, I need to focus the same hard attention on what they are saying that I do when reading and writing. My relations with my apprentice are good precisely because I spend a lot of time listening to him (though I still need to hone my listening skills with him). I just need to extend that skill to dealing with other people.
Vitae Patrum V.ii.12: "Abba Pastor said, 'The beginning of evil--'"
(*Realize that I haven't put down the star indicating that I've done my exercise for the day. Pause to do this. Return to writing down daily Vitae Patrum reading.*)
"'--is to let your mind be distracted.'"
Let's just say that irony is my middle name.
*** 31 May 2008
Well, it seems I've finally found a way to control my Internet usage.
The magic formula turns out to be:
1) Stay online for no more than one hour at a time (preferably one hour per day). It turns out that spending more than an hour on any activity in my life triggers my mania.
2) Minimize the amount of links chasing I do. Clicking links is more likely to trigger my mania than, say, posting blog entries.
3) Go online every day as part of an utterly rigid schedule that I know I can't deviate from without the rest of my day collapsing. By doing the same things day after day, for limited periods of time, my mind gets to the point where it says, "One hour. We're going online for one hour. Then we're continuing with the next item on the schedule."
In case you're curious, here's my current schedule. It takes into account the fact that, for the foreseeable future, I'll be spending three hours every day at my mother's, doing chores while she's recovering from her operation.
o--o--o
DAYTIME (afternoon to early evening)
* Meditate on dreams.
* Do research reading (authorship and publishing) while eating.
* Proofread fiction.
* Call Mother.
* Walk to the Center (i.e. the town center); then do chores at Mother's, with a break in the middle to read fiction while eating.
* Come home and edit fiction while eating.
* Call my apprentice.
* Nap.
NIGHT-TIME (after midnight)
* Meditate on dreams.
* Optional: Write fiction.
* Do simplicity reading (Great Books) while eating.
* Proofread fiction.
* Do publishing work online for one hour.
* Do simplicity reading (monasticism or eremitism) while eating.
* Record schedule.
* Blog entries.
* Lectio divina.
o--o--o
I'm holding my breath, hoping this isn't a delusion, but it looks as though, after eleven years, I've finally found a way to control my Internet addiction.
I never would have been able to do this if I hadn't committed myself to a life of simplicity last December and begun attacking all of my most fundamental assumptions about how to lead a good life. Here's a toast to the examined life.
*** 3 June 2008
Some things that continue:
1) I'm still keeping to my one-hour-on-the-dot daily Internet schedule. Amazing.
2) I'm still spending too many hours awake, as I have been since I started doing chores at my mother's place. There seems to be no other way to get my own professional work done each day. At the moment, I've been awake for eighteen hours, mainly because I stayed up to answer personal correspondence that I haven't been able to figure out any other time of the week to read. Somehow I need to come up with a schedule that allows me to get everything done but doesn't wear me out.
3) I'm still feeling isolated from not being able to discuss simplicity and solitude with others. I thought I'd talk about it to my apprentice this evening - he has an interest in Buddhist monasticism - but when I called him up, he was continuing to deal with an ongoing crisis in his life, so we discussed that instead. (Ironically, his crisis was a form of Internet addiction that he's just recognized. I told him, "I'm passing on the torch to you.")
*** 3 June 2008
"At the moment, I've been awake for eighteen hours . . ."
After writing that, I remembered what my Vitae Patrum entry was for the previous day: "Abba Arsenius used to say, 'If a monk is any sort of warrior at all one hour's sleep should be sufficient." My wish after reading that had been that I should need less sleep.
Oops.
Since I don't want to imitate the desert hermits' disdain of bodily needs, I revised my wish last night: I'd like to be able to be aware of when I need sleep, and to fall asleep when I do. At the moment, part of my sleeping time is given over to actually getting to the point of falling asleep. My mind is often racing too hard to do that. I need to learn to attune myself more to whatever I'm doing, whether it's talking to people or going to sleep.
Meanwhile, I decided today to chant a Psalm daily. (Not every Psalm speaks to my condition - and by that, I'm not referring to the "break every bone of my enemy's body" Psalms. I can easily deal with those by imagining the "enemy" to be my inner demons.) But there are lines in the Psalms that make me want to ask the dead psalmist, "Gee whiz, how did you know that happened to me? And how did you find a way to put it so well?"
* * *
Before I was troubled, I went wrong; but now have I kept thy word. . . .
It is good for me that I have been in trouble; that I may learn thy statutes.
* * *
That's the sort of thing I mean. If I'd never undergone the affliction of my Internet addiction, I wouldn't have seen how wrong my life had become, and I wouldn't have learned new statutes.
Incidentally, I'm using the Thomas Coverdale translation of the Psalms, as it appears in the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. I specify the edition because the 1553 Coverdale translation has been modified over the years. However, those particular verses are unchanged; I know this because my father prepared an edition of the original Coverdale Psalms a few years ago. My father has this to say about the translation:
"Coverdale is not necessarily the most reliable translator of his era; his strength lies rather in synthesizing, with unerring instinct, a fluid, elegant text from the books in several languages that lay before him as he wrote. . . . Much more than Tyndale, Coverdale is a self-conscious artist, forever seeking those stately rhythms that harmonize so well with Cranmer's magisterial prose in the Book of Common Prayer. Little wonder that musical settings of Coverdale's Psalms began to appear as soon as his first Bible was published and that composers to this day are drawn to his superb words. There is no doubt that Coverdale's vocabulary and syntax occasionally sound archaic to us nowadays (but then so do Shakespeare's), yet the presence of the Psalter in the English Prayer Book - and of course in other Anglican Prayer Books throughout the world - has kept this brilliant translation alive for more than four and a half centuries. . . . It is a translation that since the sixteenth century has occupied a central position in both the private devotions and public liturgies of the English-speaking people . . ."
Indeed, I would say that, next to Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible, the Coverdale translation of the Psalms is one of the most heavily quoted works in English literature. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites no less than 316 quotations from the Coverdale Psalms. It cites no quotations from the King James Version Psalms - those Psalms weren't in liturgical use in Britain for many centuries, so they didn't roll off people's tongues the way the Coverdale Psalms did.
Yet I don't suppose that there are many people today who have even heard the name Coverdale - not even many young Episcopalians, because the Coverdale translation is no longer authorized for use in the Episcopal Church (which is the American descendant of the Church of England). My father comments, "This sort of liturgical house-cleaning continues apace throughout the Anglican Communion. It does not require any special prophetic gift to see that one of the most splendid translations in the English language, which has given aesthetic pleasure and spiritual comfort to every generation since Coverdale's time, is likely to be pushed to the margins in the twenty-first century."
At any rate, while I think Coverdale's translation of the Psalms is unsurpassed in literary quality, he isn't the most exact translator, so I checked those verses against other translations. The New Revised Standard Version translates "have been in trouble" as "was humbled."
Typical milk-and-water NRSV. The King James Version pulls no punches; it says "was afflicted."
In other news, for the second week running I haven't finished all of my household tasks on my day devoted to household tasks. I did my laundry and tidied my study and the kitchen table, but I didn't install my new anti-virus software or answer old correspondence. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to spend another day getting those done; I can't keep flirting with danger by going online without up-to-date anti-virus software.
Looking at my hours for today, I see the problem is that, once I go off my daily schedule, it becomes hard for me to get needed tasks done. Though I really do need to devote a day to lengthy tasks such as washing laundry and installing new software, I need to find a way to integrate short household tasks (tidying my surroundings, answering my correspondence) into my schedule, as well as short leisure activities.
Yet I'm already being run ragged by my current schedule, which barely leaves time for me to get my professional work done each day. I'm going to try to cut a half hour off my daily three hours of chores at my mother's house and see whether that helps.
*** 4 June 2008
"I'd like to be able to be aware of when I need sleep . . ."
Well, that particular wish seems to have been answered. I'm dead tired today. I think all my lack of sleep recently is catching up with me.
We've had a tornado warning earlier today, and another storm is scheduled to go through in about an hour, but after that I think I'll go to bed and try to get a full night's rest.
Later:
It occurs to me that some of the folks here (the ones who didn't fall asleep during my discussion of the Psalms) may be interested in hearing Anglican chant, since it's not as well known as Gregorian chant. Here it is, courtesy of the Mastersingers.
Okay, seriously, here's Psalm 121, as set by Bryon Adams in Anglican chant, and as sung by All Saints' Choir in Beverly Hills, California. But the Mastersingers actually showcase - through exaggeration - a number of features of Anglican chant: its tendency to pronounce unexpected syllables (sit-u-a-ti-on, in-ter-sper-sed, oc-cas-si-on-al), its tendency to get stuck on a single note forever, and most of all, its ability to make even the most mundane text sound lovely.
*** 5 June 2008
I've been dipping into Barbara Holland's One's Company: Reflections on Living Alone, which could be described as the loyal opposition to the idea that solitude is enriching. Here's part of what she has to say:
* * *
In Solitude, A Return to the Self, [British psychiatrist Anthony] Storr, who happens to be married, speaks highly of living alone . . .
The American high priest of solutide was Thoreau. We admire him, not for his self-reliance and his conceited musings, but because he was all by himself out there at Walden Pond, and he wanted to be. All alone in the woods.
Actually, he lived a mile, or twenty minutes' walk, from his nearest neighbor; half a mile from the railroad; three hundred yards from a busy highway. He had streams of company in and out of the hut all day, asking him how he could possibly be so noble. Apparently the main point of his nobility was that he had neither wife nor servants, and washed his own dish. I don't know who did his laundry; he doesn't say, but he certainly doesn't mention doing his own, either.
* * *
Elsewhere, she says, "You will have noticed that most of these rapturous types went outdoors to be alone. The indoors was full of loved ones keeping the kettle warm till they came home."
If you sense a feminist tone, you're right; Ms. Holland has the odd notion that enjoyment of solitude is a specifically male trait, made possible only by female relatives keeping the home fires burning. She then goes on to say, however, that most men are helpless when living alone, because they don't know how to take care of themselves without the help of a wife. "No one reminds them to turn the clock ahead in April, and their refrigerator holds nothing but a withered half [of] a lemon."
She's obviously never met Doug, who does all the cooking and nearly all the shopping in our household. He's also the one who keeps track of Daylight Savings Time.
Today I went over to Mother's place and discovered that Doug had done so much work clearing up there that there was practically nothing left for me to do except sort through boxes of papers. Thank goodness. I was reaching the point of collapse. Now I can spend half as much time there each day as I have been, and actually get a full night's sleep.
I'd already decided, before making this glorious discovery of Doug's hard work, that I'd have to determine first how much working time I had each day, and then decide which tasks to do, based on the amount of time available. Till now, I'd been doing the opposite, which was fine when I wasn't working three to four hours a day outside the house.
Remember that I sleep twelve hours a day. Another hour or two is given over to mundanities like visiting the bathroom, recording my schedule, and stopping in to say, "Hi, how ya doing?" to Doug now and then. That leaves me with something like ten hours of working/leisure time max. In reality, more than nine hours of work/leisure a day is pressing it for me.
I've been working from nine to thirteen hours a day for the past month. No wonder I was ready to fall to pieces.
At any rate, I slept for twelve hours straight last night and plan to do the same tonight. We'll see whether my altered schedule at my mother's allows me to fit in the needed time for editing, publishing, and leisure activities. (I just gave a lecture to my apprentice tonight about the need for him to schedule leisure time for himself. I'd better follow my own advice.)
*** 6 June 2008
Three hours spent with my mother at her doctor's office today. The air conditioning was going full blast, so my eyes hate me, and this means I wasn't able to start out my new schedule. Tomorrow I will, though.
I finished reading Frank Bianco's Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today. I hate that I still can't tell which parts of his composite monks are real and which aren't, but the quotations appear to come from interviews and are interesting. Here's one passage:
* * *
[A former marine] and Stephen [the abbot] had met for the final interview that capped an applicant's inital visit to the monastery. The [monastic] life could get quite ordinary, Stephen had said. It would sharply contrast with the colorful life he had led as an officer of Marines. Was he certain he wanted to trade one for the other?
No life lacks excitement, the former officer replied. Especially not when the certainty of Christ in ever-changing circumstances came with each day's dawning.
"Wrapping cheese for that entire day?" Stephen prodded. [This is a reference to the monastery's cheese business.]
"Especially wrapping cheese, because it still bugs the hell out of me to put my brain on hold even for four hours a day."
One marine flyer's survival as a Vietcong prisoner illustrated his point, he said. Since the marine was the ranking officer among the Americans, the Vietcong made special efforts to break him with torture. The worst involved tying his hands behind him and raising them with a rope until his body was almost suspended. The pain in his upper body was excruciating, unbearable.
Presumably, he survived, Stephen said. How?
"He learned to love the rope."
No matter how bad it got, the prisoner believed he would be ever so slightly stronger after each session. That growth in strength became his goal. Similarly, the retired marine perceived God as most present when some aspect of the monastic life became distasteful. "If God's will has me cleaning toilets, then that job becomes something entirely different. I know for certain it's my doorway to him," he explained. "The more something I'm asked to do bothers me, the better I like it."
This recognition of the opportunity for grace - the catalyst upon which every monastic life depended - was delightfully unique, in Stephen's opinion.
* * *
I've been aware - because I'm always aware of when I'm misbehaving during conversations with my apprentice - that I've been complaining a lot about my chores for Mother. It's not that the chores themselves are uninteresting; it's that I've resented that they've been taking me away from my professional work, especially at a time of year when I'm rushing to meet a deadline (the period when my POD printer is waiving its fees).
And yes, I knew, even before I read the above passage, about the concept of making distasteful chores one's cross - making it a means to grace. Still, I needed this reminder.
This is why I like linking my own life in with the lives of hermits and monks elsewhere in place and time. Because they struggle with the sorts of issues that come up in my own life; I can learn from them.
I've also been reading David Steindl-Rast's The Music of Silence: Entering the Sacred Space of Monastic Experience, which is the best book on monasticism that I've read so far. It has an unassuming appearance: a tiny little book commenting on each of the liturgical hours. But every page contains some gem. Here's a passage that is a good response to all those folks out there who look down their nose at the word "ascetic."
* * *
People associate monasticism and monks with asceticism, and that is correct. But they often think that asceticism means a denial of the senses, and there they go wrong. We've learned from traditions like Zen that asceticism means disciplining the senses so that you develop your capacity to experience every dimension of existence with heightened sensitivity. Monasticisim at its best has emphasized this always and in all traditions. To the truly alert palate, a drink of spring water is full of flavor.
Rightly understood, asceticism means training. The word comes from the training of athletes, askesis in Greek. When we seek quality in our life, we study, we develop techniques, we refine our language, movements, and diet. So, too, with spirituality.
If, for example, you want to refine your diet, you might have to deny yourself things that you find tasty and quite enjoyable. But if you really care about your health, and work on improving your diet by cooking and eating what's good for you and tastes good as well, you quickly find that you haven't denied yourself anything you truly need. So it is with asceticism. The seasoned runner, the healthy gourmet, the virtuoso musician, the master gardener - anyone who hones a passion for excellence of some kind into a disciplined art - gladly forgoes some things to attain a refinement through discipline that brings immense vitality and joy.
* * *
That passage stayed in the back of my mind for a week or two until, two nights ago, I read this passage (V.iv.42) from the Vitae Patrum: "Again she [Holy Syncletica] said, 'Just as strong medicine can drive out bodily poisons, so fasting and prayer can drive out squalid thoughts from the soul.'"
Well, not quite. The "fasting" I'd been doing recently - being forced to do chores for long hours at my mother - didn't drive out my squalid grumblings. But it did make a positive change in my life.
In order to get my professional work done under such circumstances, I was forced to do what I've never willingly done in my life: set a rigid, unbreakable schedule for myself. And in doing so, I (1) found a way to control my Internet addiction, (2) found a way to get boring but necessary tasks done regularly, and (3) enjoyed my moments of pleasurable work more than I had for years.
I still dislike the fact that I've been overworked and tired for the past month. But as I told Doug, "I think maybe every person who works at home should be forced to work outside of home now and then, just so that they can fully appreciate what they have." And, I might have added, so that they can be forced to pare down to the essentials of life, as I did when my eyes went out on me in 2001.
Grace indeed.
Later:
I put together a new schedule, based on me spending ninety minutes at Mother's apartment every other day (including travel time). On the days when I'm off-duty at Mother's, I've devoted those ninety minutes to household tasks and occasional gardening.
I managed to get the schedule under nine hours. Barely. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to expand the amount of time I spend on editing and publishing each day. We'll see whether this schedule is workable.
*** 7 June 2008
It is eminently workable.
I got just over eight hours of work/leisure done today, which is what my schedule called for. And I got my daily editing/publishing quota done for the first time in a week.
I hope this trend keeps up.
*** 8 June 2008
Here's the latest schedule that is working out so well. (I hope I'm not putting everyone to sleep with all these schedules. I thought they might be of interest to others who are trying to figure out how to balance their various activities.)
* Meditate on dreams - :15.
* Chant Psalm (throughout the day) - :15.
* Do research reading (authorship and publishing) while eating - :15.
* Proofread fiction - 1:30.
* Publish fiction (online or offline). - 1:00
* Call Mother - :15.
* Edit fiction while reading - :45.
* Household task / exercise (at home or at Mother's) - 1:30
* Personal correspondence or leisure activity - :30.
* Call my apprentice - :45.
* Do simplicity reading (monasticism or eremitism) while eating - :30.
* Record schedule - :30.
* Blog entries - :30.
* Lectio divina - :45.
Total: 9.25 hours.
RECENT SIMPLICITY READINGS
Highlights from the Profession of Perpetual Vows as a Diocesan Hermit by Sister Laurel M. O'Neal (online video).
David Stiendl-Rast, O.S.B., with Sharon Lebell: "The Music of Silence: Entering the Sacred Space of Monastic Experience."
Karen E. Sloan: "Flirting with Monasticism: Finding God on Ancient Paths."
Frederick J. Tritton: The Discipline of Prayer (online PDF file of printed pamphlet).
Frank Bianco: "Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today."
A Nun's Life (blog).
Louise Dickinson Rich: "We Took to the Woods."
Barbara Holland: "One's Company: Reflections on Living Alone."
Marcia Adams: "New Recipes from Quilt Country: More Food and Folkways from the Amish and Mennonites."
Robin Bruce Lockhart: "Halfway to Heaven: The Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians."
Mary Swander: "Out of This World: A Woman's Life Among the Amish."
RECENT PHILOSOPHY/ETHICS READINGS
Thucydides: "The Peloponnesian War."
Judith Martin: "Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson."
--Frank Bianco: Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today.
Topics in this post: Internet addiction, support for solitaries, stability, meditation/contemplation, liturgical hours, work, novelties, lectio divina and Vitae Patrum, Great Books and ethics, rigid daily schedules, seasonal schedules, social interactions, overwork and tiredness, the Psalms and Thomas Coverdale, Anglican chant, arguments against solitude, grace through trial, asceticism.
*** 19 May 2008
Eight-and-a-half hours online; it's seven a.m. now. And of course my binge occurred on the day after my Muse finally showed up, for the first time in eleven days. I'm sure I've scared him away again.
I had thought that the number of things I had to do online would take less than an hour. I was wrong. These were the two things that trigged my Internet addiction:
* Having to wade through a billion posts at Amazon's Kindle forums to find the information I needed in order to prepare the Kindle edition of my next e-book.
* Loneliness. This was the biggest factor. Loneliness got me cruising around the Internet in search of community sites, blogs, and e-mail lists related to simplicity, and loneliness is what caused me to spend an hour or three starting a blog at LiveJournal for the sole purpose of directing people back to these "Life of simplicity" entries. I can't figure out any other way to meet other people with similar interests.
As planned, I looked up the meeting information for the Benedictine Cell that gathers at my old parish church - a group of lay folk incorporating Benedictine practices into their lives. I attended the cell a few years ago with a friend who has monastic yearnings. I didn't get much out of it at the time - but then, those were days when I didn't even know what lectio divina was. I'd like to see whether I can learn more from it now.
Later:
Vitae Patrum V.i.3: "Holy Gregory said, 'God asks these three things of everyone who tries to live up to his Baptism, an unwavering faith with all his soul and strength, temperate speech and bodily chastity.'"
I had to interrupt lectio divina today to help a dying moth escape my study. That wasn't the only distraction.
I'd thought I'd be ruminating on bodily chastity, but my mind ended up wandring to the subject of unwavering faith. Perhaps it was because I'd been reflecting yesterday that, after forty years of arguing that a set time of day for doing writing-related activities didn't work for me, I'm finding that it actually does. I get things done if I know that I'm going to be doing the activities in a set order at roughly the same time each day. (Today I'm off my regular schedule, thanks to the Internet binge, but I'm trying to follow it as closely as possible in hopes that I can return to it tomorrow.)
"Unwavering faith" in this case seems not to mean, not just a state of mind, but a particular set of activities that's meant to encourage that state of mind.
Today I was reading Armand Veilleux's "Lectio Divina as school of prayer among the Fathers of the Desert." In certain ways, his argument is the opposite of what I've stated above - that you need to have a certain state of mind before you enter into a particular activity - but this passage struck home with me:
"According to the modern method of lectio divina, one should read slowly and stop at a verse long enough for it to nourish the heart or the spirit, if not the emotions, and pass to the following verse when the feelings have cooled or when the attention is lost. The first monks, for their part, stayed with a verse as long as they had not put it into practice."
Perhaps this is why the issue of stability continues to haunt me.
*** 21 May 2008
The first time I ever meditated, and knew that I'd meditated, it was an accident.
I'd never read anything about the techniques of meditation. I didn't know how meditation worked. I didn't know that it was often triggered by concentrating on some sensory detail or activity: an image, a mantra, a breath; counting a rosary, spinning of a prayer wheel, drawing a mandala.
All I knew was that I was sitting in the meetinghouse of the Friends Meeting of Washington, and I didn't know what the heck to do.
The last time I'd been to a Quaker meeting, more than a dozen years before, I'd spent the meeting daydreaming. Not surprisingly, I'd left the meeting wondering what Quakers got out of their meetings.
This time I'd been reading about Quakerism for several weeks, so I knew about the theoretical aspects of what was supposed to happen. But the books I read hadn't gone into the practical aspects of how one encountered the Inner Light.
So, trying to do something less distracting than daydreaming, I did what I'd probably done a zillion times since I was a child: I focussed my attention on the light falling onto the wooden pew. I put all my attention into it. And gradually, as the minutes passed, I felt myself filled with an excitement and joy that had nothing to do with the light I was staring at, and yet had everything to do with it.
I haven't been able to achieve that state many times in my life. And when I have, it's usually been because I haven't been trying. I'll be listening to a piece of music, for example, and will be concentrating so hard on it that the meditative state takes me by surprise.
The above thoughts are raised tonight by the fact I was sitting there, trying to do meditation/contemplation, and feeling distracted by the darned highway noise outside. There are no less than two highways and two major roads crisscrossing within a short ways of this house, and there's not much between us and those busy roads. So this house is continually filled with the sound of speeding cars and trucks (and occasionally the whistle of the nearby trains). Having grown up in this house, I usually pay as little attention to the traffic noise as a country child would to the continuous noise of a waterfall outside their home. But tonight I was thinking, "Blast it - how can I meditate with this loud noise filling the room?"
And then it occurred to me that the noise was actually very interesting.
Have you ever listened to cars and trucks on a highway, at a distance? They emit musical notes - different notes, depending on the vehical. And the notes gradually go up and down and fade and grow stronger.
It's like listening to the aural equivalent of the aurora borealis.
So that's my focus for future contemplation, I think. It's a lot more interesting than staring at a candle (and a lot easier on my eyes).
*** 22 May 2008
The traditional Western monastic hours for prayer (the "liturgical hours" or "offices") are below. Some of the times I've noted are approximate, and vary from monastery to monastery. I've started with the evening offices because that was the ancient tradition, still followed by the Eastern Orthodox churches.
* * *
6 p.m.: Vespers (literally, evening).
9 p.m.: Compline (literally, complete).
12 midnight: Matins (literally, morning; also called Vigils).
3 a.m.: Lauds.
6 a.m.: Prime (literally, the first - that is, this was the first hour of the day).
9 a.m.: Terce (literally, the third).
12 noon: Sext (literally, the sixth).
3 p.m.: Nones (literally, the ninth).
* * *
As you can imagine, monks who want to get a full night's sleep tend to nudge Matins and Lauds forward. Prime was dropped by the Catholic Church in 1964.
Even before the Reformation, the British had begun to simplify matters by reciting several of the hours together, continuously. This is what the late medieval schedule of the British Church looked like:
* * *
Matins: Matins / Lauds / Prime.
Evensong: Vespers / Compline.
* * *
When the Church of England (from which the Episcopal Church is descended) was formed in the sixteenth century, it adopted Matins - spelled Mattins - and Evensong as its two daily services, celebrated, not only by the clergy, but also by many of the laity. These services eventually came to be called Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, though the sung version of Evening Prayer is still called Evensong. However, the makers of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer in the Episcopal Church evidently felt that the simplification had gone too far; they added optional services for Noonday Prayer and Compline.
This is a very abridged version of the tale; actually, the early history of the canonical hours was one big mish-mash of experimentation. I offer this history lesson to explain why, for someone of Episcopalian background, setting aside times for contemplation etc. is not quite as simple as it for a Roman Catholic, who merely has to decide whether to follow the pre- or post-Vatican Breviary (the book that contains the offices).
Matters are complicated by the fact that it's been years since I got up regularly in the morning. The basic problem is that I'm a twelve-hour-a-day sleeper. Until recently, I was awake from noon to midnight, which allowed me to be out in the daytime but also to attend evening events. However, I'm cutting back on events, and it's hard for me to sleep for twelve hours straight without my eyes getting cranky (because, after a certain point, they demand that I eat food).
So here's the Monday through Saturday schedule I've set up, based on my current duties for my mother. Keep in mind that writing is my vocation; it plays the same central role in my life as study does to a cloistered monk. Keep in mind also that reading fiction is part of my writing duties.
* * *
VIGILS (approximately 1 to 4 a.m.)
Write fiction and edit what I've written.
Read about simplicity while eating.
Read fiction.
Lectio divina.
AFTERNOON (approximately noon to 6 p.m.)
Contemplate what my dreams have to tell me (and yes, they're usually hammering at me about simplification and self-discipline).
Read about authorship/publishing while eating.
Read fiction.
Edit and/or publish fiction.
Write a Writing Life entry in my blog.
Do chores at my mother's place, taking a break in the middle to read fiction while eating.
EVENING (approximately 6-9 p.m.)
Write fiction and edit what I've written.
Read about simplicity while eating.
Call my apprentice.
Write a Life of Simplicity entry in my blog.
As I fall asleep, mentally commit myself to remembering my dreams and following a life of simplicity the next day.
* * *
I wish I had more hours in the day. :/ But today, following that schedule, it's already 10:30 p.m., and it'll be eleven before I get to bed, since I'm taking a shower. Once I'm no longer spending three hours at my mother's place each day, my schedule will ease up. In the meantime, I'm trying to make meditation/contemplation a part of my daily activities through mindfulness, reflection, etc.
*** 23 May 2008
My apprentice has been learning this week, to his sorrow, that it's best not to plan your activities in such a way that you must rush pell-mell to meet a deadline.
I should have taken lessons from him. Deciding that I should publish my Lawnmowers book tomorrow, in honor of the first anniversary of the day when Jo/e asked me to mentor him, I spent four-and-a-half hours on publishing-related tasks today and learned, yet again, that focussing on a single task for long periods of time makes me manic.
It took me nearly two hours of reading afterwards to calm me down enough that I was unlikely to be kept awake all night with insomnia. Tomorrow I'm going to take things easier. I have three things that need to be done all around the same time: submit my booktrailer to Google Video, publish my e-books and audio book at Lulu, and upload and check my domain. It takes Google a while to approve videos, so I'll put off the e-mail and blog announcements till the following day, and I'll put off submitting the Kindle edition of the book to Amazon till the day after, and I'll put off the review submissions till the day after that, and I'll put off community blog announcements till the day after that, and I'll put off the MySpace announcements till the day after that, and I'll finish the other booktrailer submissions the day after that . . . It will take me a while, but I'm determined not to spend more than an hour or two doing publishing work each day (though I'm rather afraid the first day's tasks will take longer than that). This will be an interesting experiment in seeing whether I can go online for an hour or two a day and not get sucked in by my Internet addiction.
Lectio divina, to my surprise, is serving as an anchor in my life. When I was tempted to work late tonight, I thought, "No, I mustn't, because I have lectio scheduled for after midnight, and I don't want to miss that." This is the second time I've changed (bad) plans so that I won't miss lectio. I'd never have guessed this would become such an important activity to me.
*** 24 May 2008
Well, it took me six hours to get the first three tasks done; for technical reasons I made the fourth task I listed above into the third task, but otherwise everything went as I'd planned. Most of what I did was deathly dull work, so I don't feel as though I've been playing too long in the sandbox; instead, I'm glad it's over with.
From this point forward, I switch over to one hour a day of doing publication work online, with another thirty to sixty minutes daily spent on proofreading my next book offline. If I can manage that (my Internet addiction is always lurking in the wings), it will put me back on my regular schedule of spending one or two hours a day on editing/publishing. Unfortunately, I'll be getting to bed at two a.m. tonight, so my sleep schedule is off.
*** 25 May 2008
I'd been growing more and more pessimistic about overcoming my Internet addiction, because nothing I tried seemed to work - but now, knowing that my limits are tied with the amount of sequential time I spend online, I'm feeling more hopeful. Not that I want to spend an hour online every day on non-publication weeks, but keeping my online time to one hour per week might prove a way to make progress.
However, I didn't do that today. I did the same thing I did when confronted with liver for the first time: I gobbled down a whole chunk in hopes that I wouldn't taste the dreadful stuff. Namely, I spent the whole day struggling to find appropriate review sites, fighting with Amazon's stupid publishing interface, and generally doing all the tedious tasks that have to be done when a book is published.
I drew the line at spending a third straight day at this type of horrid work. Next weekend will be soon enough to finish it off.
In the meantime, I'm in an Internet buzz, darn it. It will take me a while to get over my manic high. I can't believe that I let myself get into this type of condition daily for a decade.
The above thoughts remind me of what a friend's therapist said when my friend was complaining to her about how he wasn't keeping on schedule. She said, "A year ago, you didn't have a schedule." Baby steps, but I'm taking them.
*** 26 May 2008
Vitae Patrum: V.i.22: "An old man said, 'The life of a monk is labour, obedience, meditation, refraining from condemning and despising others and grumbling. For it is written, "You who love the Lord flee from evil" (Psalms 96.10). This is the life of a monk, to bear with injustice, to keep his eyes from evil and vain imaginings, not to be forever seeking novelties and hearing strange tales, to keep his hands from stealing but rather open them to give, not to be proud of heart or evil in thought, neither to be gluttonous, but to manage all things with discernment. In these things a monk lives.'"
I think I fail in most of these departments, especially the grumbling part, but at the moment my greatest concern is about my "forever seeking novelties." So, after meditating on this matter tonight, my wish was that I receive the strength to stick to a regular schedule that is centered, not on obtaining novelties, but on a steady study of what I already at hand.
I'm beginning to learn that the contemplation part of lectio divina usually ends up being about something other than what I've meditated on. Oh, the subject always ends up being the Vitae Patrum passage I've read, but whatever is directing this part of the lectio reaches different conclusions than I do. Not necessarily contradictory conclusions, but different ones.
This time I found my thoughts directed to my alma mater. "What the heck?" I said, till I realized that "forever seeking novelties" is exactly what I've been doing in seeking a new community. I have a community that has helped me to discern ways to live my life, and even if this community tends toward abstract discussions rather than concrete suggestions on how to put these ideas into action . . . Still, St. John's College is where I learned to think deeply. It could be the place that I turn to again.
*** 28 May 2008
Oh, my goodness. Now I know what a steady schedule looks like.
I copy and paste my previous day's schedule, change the date, delete the hours from the previous day, and don't make any other changes.
Later:
Vitae Patrum V.ii.1: "Abba Antony said, 'Just as fish die if kept on dry land so monks are drawn away from their original intentions if they linger outside their cells or spend too much time with worldly people. Therefore just as the fish must needs return to the sea so should we hasten to our cells, lest through lingering abroad we lose our inner watchfulness.'"
So many exciting simplification advances are happening in my life that I'll have to summarize them in a list.
1) It turns out that one hour is my natural limit for any activity. (I know that because I spent three hours doing chores at my mother's today, and ended up in a manic high.) As long as I don't go over that one hour, I seem to be able to do just about any activity safely. Namely . . .
2) Going online to do publishing work each day for one hour - only one hour - is working out splendidly. Magnificently. Incredibly well.
Things that seem to make this work:
* My daily visit is part of a rigid schedule - I use the word "rigid" advisedly - that leaves no wriggle-room. If I spend too much time online, I can't do other things I need to do during the day.
* If I don't spend the entire time doing rather dull publishing work, I don't give myself a star at the end of the day. This may sound like a small matter, but I like pasting down those stars.
* By sticking my online time to one hour, I limit the temptation to stay on longer.
* The biggest factor: Predictability. That goes back to the rigid schedule again. When I know that this is the time of day that I'm going to do online publishing work, and right after that I'm going to do my simplicity reading, it doesn't occur to me to think, "Hey, maybe I should spend a half hour posting at writers' forums." It's just not part of my plan.
I need to set aside one day a week for non-publishing online tasks, though.
3) Lectio divina continues to work wonderfully for me, as does a daily reading about monks and/or hermits.
4) That leaves the matter of ethical readings. I've been thinking more about the guidance I received to make St. John's my community. For anyone who is mystified as to why I would receive this guidance, I should explain that my alma mater is devoted to a Great Books curriculum, a large portion of which is philosophy. I lived on a steady diet of ethical readings during my college years, and I think it's fair to say that 90% of the deep soul-searching I've done has been done in St. John's seminars.
For a variety of reasons, I haven't been participating in the alumni seminars, the chief reason being sheer laziness. If you don't know what causes that laziness, try slogging your way through 130 pages of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War, which is the reading for the July Seminar of the Annapolis alumni chapter. (I'll have to miss the June Seminar because I'll be attending a fiction convention that weekend.)
After thinking about it, I realized that I've been trying to take the same easy way with alumni seminars that I did with my college assignments. (That I was allowed to graduate remains a matter of wonder to me.) That sort of laid-back attitude is excusable - though no less deplorable - in a nineteen-year-old freshman, but it makes no sense in a forty-five-year-old who's trying to lead a highly disciplined life.
So slog, slog, slog I shall, and I'll see whether the seminars - and any lectures I attend - do the same magic on me now as they did in college.
I might add that I'm also doing this for the sake of Doug, who's desperately interested in taking part in some sort of intellectual activity with me. In fact, we moved to Annapolis for a year partly so that we could take advantage of the events at my alma mater. Unfortunately, my Internet addiction had full control of me during that year, so I didn't take advantage of the opportunities afforded to me. However, we're only a forty-five minute drive from Annapolis now, so we can still attend any events there. We're even closer to the meetings of the D.C. alumni chapter.
5) I haven't missed the fact that the reason my life is going so splendidly at the moment is because I'm sticking to a rigid daily schedule. This implies that, any time I depart from that schedule, I'm going to be in trouble.
We'll see whether tomorrow's break in the schedule causes problems. My greater worry is about travel out of town, such as to the aforesaid seminars. I'll just have to experiment and see how things work out.
6) As I've already mentioned in my Writing Life entry, I've concluded that I'm going to need to have a different professional schedule in the warm-weather months (when I need to devote most of my time to proofreading, layout, and marketing) than in the cold-weather months (when I'll set all that aside and concentrate on reading fiction and turn-of-the-century writings, in the hopes that devoting myself fully to my Muse during those months will satisfy him. He's sure been miffed with me for the past few weeks).
It seems to me that I could take a similar approach concerning eremitism. I'm already essentially homebound during the cold-weather months of the year, thanks to my eye condition. Why not turn necessity to profit, and make those months the ascetic heights of my year?
Whenever my Muse arrives, I spend nearly my entire day doing four tasks: writing fiction, editing fiction, exercising, and reading fiction/narratives. I'm beginning to suspect that this sort of schedule naturally occurs any time I devote most of my day to writing fiction. So, during the cold months of the year when it would be difficult for me to do publishing work, why not adopt that slimmed-down schedule (including, of course, my daily simplicity reading and lectio divina)? It would be interesting to see whether my Muse flourishes if I devote myself to him in that way.
I feel the need to mention once again that writing plays the same central role in my life as study does to a cloistered monk. This is the equivalent of me saying, "I'm going to devote my winter months entirely to prayer, spiritual study, and manual labor."
*** 29 May 2008
Well, my day spent doing household tasks went fairly well. I didn't get everything done that I had on my list, but I did my laundry and tidied my desk and the dining room table. (If you'd seen the piles of books and papers there, you'd know how much time it took to tidy the latter.) I also did little things that needed to be done, such as going through the files on my computer to figure out what the heck I saved them for, and writing two long letters to my apprentice. I think I spent too much time on a couple of posts to a list - which confirms my impression that I need to limit my social interactions, or they will completely drain my time - but otherwise, I think my schedule was well-balanced.
Though I felt a bit adrift, departing from my daily schedule, I managed to establish a pattern that should serve me well in future weeks.
Going online for personal surfing (as opposed to professional work) was also successful, though more stressful. Chasing links (which is what I was doing most of the time) is much more dangerous for me than posting book announcements. But I did get myself offline one hour after I started, on the dot.
Tomorrow I return to my regular schedule, which I'm looking forward to.
*** 30 May 2008
Vitae Patrum V.ii.9: "A brother once went to abba Moses in Scete asking for a word, and the old man said to him, 'Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you all things.'"
I got a prompt answer to my wish concerning this passage, that I be able to discern what types of gatherings it would be safe for me to go to. Not long after I entered into my contemplation, I began seeing cartoon faces of angry men and women, shouting. I realized then that the answer was quite simple: I should be attending gatherings that help me to reinforce my commitment to simplicity. Benedictine Cell meeting: yes. Local science fiction club: probably not.
There seemed to be something missing from that answer - a consideration of selflessness. Should I be thinking only of what is best for me when deciding which events to attend? Shouldn't I be considering whether I can add something to the group? But that sort of thinking has gotten me into trouble in the past - it has taken me beyond my natural limits. Limiting myself to a small number of people gives me safer scope for practicing selflessness than indiscriminate socializing.
Vitae Patrum: V.ii.11: "Abba Nilus said, 'Any one who loves quiet is safe from the arrows of the enemy, but the person who mixes with the multitude suffers many wounds.'"
Sometimes I think that the guidance I receive comes less from the images I receive than from my own decision of how to interpret those images. Case in question: The fact that a snippet of a Waltons episode came into my head while I was in contemplation after reading the above passage probably had less to do with the inherent wisdom the show had to offer than to the fact that I'd watched the show that afternoon.
Nonetheless, I was able to find meaning in the snippet. My wish prior to the contemplation had been for me to find a way to be less self-centered in my dealings with people. What I got back was John Walton saying to his son John-Boy: "A man's judged by the way he's handling a job he's agreed to do. Give less than your best - whether you're writing or chopping wood or farming - and you're failing a lot of people. Most of all, he's failing himself. You do the best at what you try, you've got nothing to be sorry about."
Well, exactly. If I'm to be less self-centered with other people, I need to focus the same hard attention on what they are saying that I do when reading and writing. My relations with my apprentice are good precisely because I spend a lot of time listening to him (though I still need to hone my listening skills with him). I just need to extend that skill to dealing with other people.
Vitae Patrum V.ii.12: "Abba Pastor said, 'The beginning of evil--'"
(*Realize that I haven't put down the star indicating that I've done my exercise for the day. Pause to do this. Return to writing down daily Vitae Patrum reading.*)
"'--is to let your mind be distracted.'"
Let's just say that irony is my middle name.
*** 31 May 2008
Well, it seems I've finally found a way to control my Internet usage.
The magic formula turns out to be:
1) Stay online for no more than one hour at a time (preferably one hour per day). It turns out that spending more than an hour on any activity in my life triggers my mania.
2) Minimize the amount of links chasing I do. Clicking links is more likely to trigger my mania than, say, posting blog entries.
3) Go online every day as part of an utterly rigid schedule that I know I can't deviate from without the rest of my day collapsing. By doing the same things day after day, for limited periods of time, my mind gets to the point where it says, "One hour. We're going online for one hour. Then we're continuing with the next item on the schedule."
In case you're curious, here's my current schedule. It takes into account the fact that, for the foreseeable future, I'll be spending three hours every day at my mother's, doing chores while she's recovering from her operation.
DAYTIME (afternoon to early evening)
* Meditate on dreams.
* Do research reading (authorship and publishing) while eating.
* Proofread fiction.
* Call Mother.
* Walk to the Center (i.e. the town center); then do chores at Mother's, with a break in the middle to read fiction while eating.
* Come home and edit fiction while eating.
* Call my apprentice.
* Nap.
NIGHT-TIME (after midnight)
* Meditate on dreams.
* Optional: Write fiction.
* Do simplicity reading (Great Books) while eating.
* Proofread fiction.
* Do publishing work online for one hour.
* Do simplicity reading (monasticism or eremitism) while eating.
* Record schedule.
* Blog entries.
* Lectio divina.
I'm holding my breath, hoping this isn't a delusion, but it looks as though, after eleven years, I've finally found a way to control my Internet addiction.
I never would have been able to do this if I hadn't committed myself to a life of simplicity last December and begun attacking all of my most fundamental assumptions about how to lead a good life. Here's a toast to the examined life.
*** 3 June 2008
Some things that continue:
1) I'm still keeping to my one-hour-on-the-dot daily Internet schedule. Amazing.
2) I'm still spending too many hours awake, as I have been since I started doing chores at my mother's place. There seems to be no other way to get my own professional work done each day. At the moment, I've been awake for eighteen hours, mainly because I stayed up to answer personal correspondence that I haven't been able to figure out any other time of the week to read. Somehow I need to come up with a schedule that allows me to get everything done but doesn't wear me out.
3) I'm still feeling isolated from not being able to discuss simplicity and solitude with others. I thought I'd talk about it to my apprentice this evening - he has an interest in Buddhist monasticism - but when I called him up, he was continuing to deal with an ongoing crisis in his life, so we discussed that instead. (Ironically, his crisis was a form of Internet addiction that he's just recognized. I told him, "I'm passing on the torch to you.")
*** 3 June 2008
"At the moment, I've been awake for eighteen hours . . ."
After writing that, I remembered what my Vitae Patrum entry was for the previous day: "Abba Arsenius used to say, 'If a monk is any sort of warrior at all one hour's sleep should be sufficient." My wish after reading that had been that I should need less sleep.
Oops.
Since I don't want to imitate the desert hermits' disdain of bodily needs, I revised my wish last night: I'd like to be able to be aware of when I need sleep, and to fall asleep when I do. At the moment, part of my sleeping time is given over to actually getting to the point of falling asleep. My mind is often racing too hard to do that. I need to learn to attune myself more to whatever I'm doing, whether it's talking to people or going to sleep.
Meanwhile, I decided today to chant a Psalm daily. (Not every Psalm speaks to my condition - and by that, I'm not referring to the "break every bone of my enemy's body" Psalms. I can easily deal with those by imagining the "enemy" to be my inner demons.) But there are lines in the Psalms that make me want to ask the dead psalmist, "Gee whiz, how did you know that happened to me? And how did you find a way to put it so well?"
* * *
Before I was troubled, I went wrong; but now have I kept thy word. . . .
It is good for me that I have been in trouble; that I may learn thy statutes.
* * *
That's the sort of thing I mean. If I'd never undergone the affliction of my Internet addiction, I wouldn't have seen how wrong my life had become, and I wouldn't have learned new statutes.
Incidentally, I'm using the Thomas Coverdale translation of the Psalms, as it appears in the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. I specify the edition because the 1553 Coverdale translation has been modified over the years. However, those particular verses are unchanged; I know this because my father prepared an edition of the original Coverdale Psalms a few years ago. My father has this to say about the translation:
"Coverdale is not necessarily the most reliable translator of his era; his strength lies rather in synthesizing, with unerring instinct, a fluid, elegant text from the books in several languages that lay before him as he wrote. . . . Much more than Tyndale, Coverdale is a self-conscious artist, forever seeking those stately rhythms that harmonize so well with Cranmer's magisterial prose in the Book of Common Prayer. Little wonder that musical settings of Coverdale's Psalms began to appear as soon as his first Bible was published and that composers to this day are drawn to his superb words. There is no doubt that Coverdale's vocabulary and syntax occasionally sound archaic to us nowadays (but then so do Shakespeare's), yet the presence of the Psalter in the English Prayer Book - and of course in other Anglican Prayer Books throughout the world - has kept this brilliant translation alive for more than four and a half centuries. . . . It is a translation that since the sixteenth century has occupied a central position in both the private devotions and public liturgies of the English-speaking people . . ."
Indeed, I would say that, next to Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible, the Coverdale translation of the Psalms is one of the most heavily quoted works in English literature. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites no less than 316 quotations from the Coverdale Psalms. It cites no quotations from the King James Version Psalms - those Psalms weren't in liturgical use in Britain for many centuries, so they didn't roll off people's tongues the way the Coverdale Psalms did.
Yet I don't suppose that there are many people today who have even heard the name Coverdale - not even many young Episcopalians, because the Coverdale translation is no longer authorized for use in the Episcopal Church (which is the American descendant of the Church of England). My father comments, "This sort of liturgical house-cleaning continues apace throughout the Anglican Communion. It does not require any special prophetic gift to see that one of the most splendid translations in the English language, which has given aesthetic pleasure and spiritual comfort to every generation since Coverdale's time, is likely to be pushed to the margins in the twenty-first century."
At any rate, while I think Coverdale's translation of the Psalms is unsurpassed in literary quality, he isn't the most exact translator, so I checked those verses against other translations. The New Revised Standard Version translates "have been in trouble" as "was humbled."
Typical milk-and-water NRSV. The King James Version pulls no punches; it says "was afflicted."
In other news, for the second week running I haven't finished all of my household tasks on my day devoted to household tasks. I did my laundry and tidied my study and the kitchen table, but I didn't install my new anti-virus software or answer old correspondence. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to spend another day getting those done; I can't keep flirting with danger by going online without up-to-date anti-virus software.
Looking at my hours for today, I see the problem is that, once I go off my daily schedule, it becomes hard for me to get needed tasks done. Though I really do need to devote a day to lengthy tasks such as washing laundry and installing new software, I need to find a way to integrate short household tasks (tidying my surroundings, answering my correspondence) into my schedule, as well as short leisure activities.
Yet I'm already being run ragged by my current schedule, which barely leaves time for me to get my professional work done each day. I'm going to try to cut a half hour off my daily three hours of chores at my mother's house and see whether that helps.
*** 4 June 2008
"I'd like to be able to be aware of when I need sleep . . ."
Well, that particular wish seems to have been answered. I'm dead tired today. I think all my lack of sleep recently is catching up with me.
We've had a tornado warning earlier today, and another storm is scheduled to go through in about an hour, but after that I think I'll go to bed and try to get a full night's rest.
Later:
It occurs to me that some of the folks here (the ones who didn't fall asleep during my discussion of the Psalms) may be interested in hearing Anglican chant, since it's not as well known as Gregorian chant. Here it is, courtesy of the Mastersingers.
Okay, seriously, here's Psalm 121, as set by Bryon Adams in Anglican chant, and as sung by All Saints' Choir in Beverly Hills, California. But the Mastersingers actually showcase - through exaggeration - a number of features of Anglican chant: its tendency to pronounce unexpected syllables (sit-u-a-ti-on, in-ter-sper-sed, oc-cas-si-on-al), its tendency to get stuck on a single note forever, and most of all, its ability to make even the most mundane text sound lovely.
*** 5 June 2008
I've been dipping into Barbara Holland's One's Company: Reflections on Living Alone, which could be described as the loyal opposition to the idea that solitude is enriching. Here's part of what she has to say:
* * *
In Solitude, A Return to the Self, [British psychiatrist Anthony] Storr, who happens to be married, speaks highly of living alone . . .
The American high priest of solutide was Thoreau. We admire him, not for his self-reliance and his conceited musings, but because he was all by himself out there at Walden Pond, and he wanted to be. All alone in the woods.
Actually, he lived a mile, or twenty minutes' walk, from his nearest neighbor; half a mile from the railroad; three hundred yards from a busy highway. He had streams of company in and out of the hut all day, asking him how he could possibly be so noble. Apparently the main point of his nobility was that he had neither wife nor servants, and washed his own dish. I don't know who did his laundry; he doesn't say, but he certainly doesn't mention doing his own, either.
* * *
Elsewhere, she says, "You will have noticed that most of these rapturous types went outdoors to be alone. The indoors was full of loved ones keeping the kettle warm till they came home."
If you sense a feminist tone, you're right; Ms. Holland has the odd notion that enjoyment of solitude is a specifically male trait, made possible only by female relatives keeping the home fires burning. She then goes on to say, however, that most men are helpless when living alone, because they don't know how to take care of themselves without the help of a wife. "No one reminds them to turn the clock ahead in April, and their refrigerator holds nothing but a withered half [of] a lemon."
She's obviously never met Doug, who does all the cooking and nearly all the shopping in our household. He's also the one who keeps track of Daylight Savings Time.
Today I went over to Mother's place and discovered that Doug had done so much work clearing up there that there was practically nothing left for me to do except sort through boxes of papers. Thank goodness. I was reaching the point of collapse. Now I can spend half as much time there each day as I have been, and actually get a full night's sleep.
I'd already decided, before making this glorious discovery of Doug's hard work, that I'd have to determine first how much working time I had each day, and then decide which tasks to do, based on the amount of time available. Till now, I'd been doing the opposite, which was fine when I wasn't working three to four hours a day outside the house.
Remember that I sleep twelve hours a day. Another hour or two is given over to mundanities like visiting the bathroom, recording my schedule, and stopping in to say, "Hi, how ya doing?" to Doug now and then. That leaves me with something like ten hours of working/leisure time max. In reality, more than nine hours of work/leisure a day is pressing it for me.
I've been working from nine to thirteen hours a day for the past month. No wonder I was ready to fall to pieces.
At any rate, I slept for twelve hours straight last night and plan to do the same tonight. We'll see whether my altered schedule at my mother's allows me to fit in the needed time for editing, publishing, and leisure activities. (I just gave a lecture to my apprentice tonight about the need for him to schedule leisure time for himself. I'd better follow my own advice.)
*** 6 June 2008
Three hours spent with my mother at her doctor's office today. The air conditioning was going full blast, so my eyes hate me, and this means I wasn't able to start out my new schedule. Tomorrow I will, though.
I finished reading Frank Bianco's Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today. I hate that I still can't tell which parts of his composite monks are real and which aren't, but the quotations appear to come from interviews and are interesting. Here's one passage:
* * *
[A former marine] and Stephen [the abbot] had met for the final interview that capped an applicant's inital visit to the monastery. The [monastic] life could get quite ordinary, Stephen had said. It would sharply contrast with the colorful life he had led as an officer of Marines. Was he certain he wanted to trade one for the other?
No life lacks excitement, the former officer replied. Especially not when the certainty of Christ in ever-changing circumstances came with each day's dawning.
"Wrapping cheese for that entire day?" Stephen prodded. [This is a reference to the monastery's cheese business.]
"Especially wrapping cheese, because it still bugs the hell out of me to put my brain on hold even for four hours a day."
One marine flyer's survival as a Vietcong prisoner illustrated his point, he said. Since the marine was the ranking officer among the Americans, the Vietcong made special efforts to break him with torture. The worst involved tying his hands behind him and raising them with a rope until his body was almost suspended. The pain in his upper body was excruciating, unbearable.
Presumably, he survived, Stephen said. How?
"He learned to love the rope."
No matter how bad it got, the prisoner believed he would be ever so slightly stronger after each session. That growth in strength became his goal. Similarly, the retired marine perceived God as most present when some aspect of the monastic life became distasteful. "If God's will has me cleaning toilets, then that job becomes something entirely different. I know for certain it's my doorway to him," he explained. "The more something I'm asked to do bothers me, the better I like it."
This recognition of the opportunity for grace - the catalyst upon which every monastic life depended - was delightfully unique, in Stephen's opinion.
* * *
I've been aware - because I'm always aware of when I'm misbehaving during conversations with my apprentice - that I've been complaining a lot about my chores for Mother. It's not that the chores themselves are uninteresting; it's that I've resented that they've been taking me away from my professional work, especially at a time of year when I'm rushing to meet a deadline (the period when my POD printer is waiving its fees).
And yes, I knew, even before I read the above passage, about the concept of making distasteful chores one's cross - making it a means to grace. Still, I needed this reminder.
This is why I like linking my own life in with the lives of hermits and monks elsewhere in place and time. Because they struggle with the sorts of issues that come up in my own life; I can learn from them.
I've also been reading David Steindl-Rast's The Music of Silence: Entering the Sacred Space of Monastic Experience, which is the best book on monasticism that I've read so far. It has an unassuming appearance: a tiny little book commenting on each of the liturgical hours. But every page contains some gem. Here's a passage that is a good response to all those folks out there who look down their nose at the word "ascetic."
* * *
People associate monasticism and monks with asceticism, and that is correct. But they often think that asceticism means a denial of the senses, and there they go wrong. We've learned from traditions like Zen that asceticism means disciplining the senses so that you develop your capacity to experience every dimension of existence with heightened sensitivity. Monasticisim at its best has emphasized this always and in all traditions. To the truly alert palate, a drink of spring water is full of flavor.
Rightly understood, asceticism means training. The word comes from the training of athletes, askesis in Greek. When we seek quality in our life, we study, we develop techniques, we refine our language, movements, and diet. So, too, with spirituality.
If, for example, you want to refine your diet, you might have to deny yourself things that you find tasty and quite enjoyable. But if you really care about your health, and work on improving your diet by cooking and eating what's good for you and tastes good as well, you quickly find that you haven't denied yourself anything you truly need. So it is with asceticism. The seasoned runner, the healthy gourmet, the virtuoso musician, the master gardener - anyone who hones a passion for excellence of some kind into a disciplined art - gladly forgoes some things to attain a refinement through discipline that brings immense vitality and joy.
* * *
That passage stayed in the back of my mind for a week or two until, two nights ago, I read this passage (V.iv.42) from the Vitae Patrum: "Again she [Holy Syncletica] said, 'Just as strong medicine can drive out bodily poisons, so fasting and prayer can drive out squalid thoughts from the soul.'"
Well, not quite. The "fasting" I'd been doing recently - being forced to do chores for long hours at my mother - didn't drive out my squalid grumblings. But it did make a positive change in my life.
In order to get my professional work done under such circumstances, I was forced to do what I've never willingly done in my life: set a rigid, unbreakable schedule for myself. And in doing so, I (1) found a way to control my Internet addiction, (2) found a way to get boring but necessary tasks done regularly, and (3) enjoyed my moments of pleasurable work more than I had for years.
I still dislike the fact that I've been overworked and tired for the past month. But as I told Doug, "I think maybe every person who works at home should be forced to work outside of home now and then, just so that they can fully appreciate what they have." And, I might have added, so that they can be forced to pare down to the essentials of life, as I did when my eyes went out on me in 2001.
Grace indeed.
Later:
I put together a new schedule, based on me spending ninety minutes at Mother's apartment every other day (including travel time). On the days when I'm off-duty at Mother's, I've devoted those ninety minutes to household tasks and occasional gardening.
I managed to get the schedule under nine hours. Barely. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to expand the amount of time I spend on editing and publishing each day. We'll see whether this schedule is workable.
*** 7 June 2008
It is eminently workable.
I got just over eight hours of work/leisure done today, which is what my schedule called for. And I got my daily editing/publishing quota done for the first time in a week.
I hope this trend keeps up.
*** 8 June 2008
Here's the latest schedule that is working out so well. (I hope I'm not putting everyone to sleep with all these schedules. I thought they might be of interest to others who are trying to figure out how to balance their various activities.)
* Meditate on dreams - :15.
* Chant Psalm (throughout the day) - :15.
* Do research reading (authorship and publishing) while eating - :15.
* Proofread fiction - 1:30.
* Publish fiction (online or offline). - 1:00
* Call Mother - :15.
* Edit fiction while reading - :45.
* Household task / exercise (at home or at Mother's) - 1:30
* Personal correspondence or leisure activity - :30.
* Call my apprentice - :45.
* Do simplicity reading (monasticism or eremitism) while eating - :30.
* Record schedule - :30.
* Blog entries - :30.
* Lectio divina - :45.
Total: 9.25 hours.
RECENT SIMPLICITY READINGS
Highlights from the Profession of Perpetual Vows as a Diocesan Hermit by Sister Laurel M. O'Neal (online video).
David Stiendl-Rast, O.S.B., with Sharon Lebell: "The Music of Silence: Entering the Sacred Space of Monastic Experience."
Karen E. Sloan: "Flirting with Monasticism: Finding God on Ancient Paths."
Frederick J. Tritton: The Discipline of Prayer (online PDF file of printed pamphlet).
Frank Bianco: "Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today."
A Nun's Life (blog).
Louise Dickinson Rich: "We Took to the Woods."
Barbara Holland: "One's Company: Reflections on Living Alone."
Marcia Adams: "New Recipes from Quilt Country: More Food and Folkways from the Amish and Mennonites."
Robin Bruce Lockhart: "Halfway to Heaven: The Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians."
Mary Swander: "Out of This World: A Woman's Life Among the Amish."
RECENT PHILOSOPHY/ETHICS READINGS
Thucydides: "The Peloponnesian War."
Judith Martin: "Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson."
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