Posted on

Assumptions.

Have you ever had a relationship in which you could be completely honest?

I don’t mean to imply that we’re liars, but that sometimes, we speak in code. Or we feel one way while acting like we feel another. We gunnysack all the things that bother us until we don’t like the person who does them (or until we explode). We avoid expressing ourselves explicitly because, frankly, we don’t want what we want from whom we want it unless we can get it without asking.

And when we don’t get what we want, we sincerely cannot believe such a frustrating turn of events. How dare [so-and-so] not do [such-and-such], even after I dropped an almost unending series of extremely vague hints?

If you’ve been there (and you have. Don’t lie!), you know that it is frustrating. And fruitless. It stunts growth. Assumptions don’t work where communication is required.

I’ll leave it to two famous guys to prove my point:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” -George Bernard Shaw

and

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” -Henry Winkler

?

Posted on

Empty.

Lent is the season of the church that starts on Ash Wednesday (today) and ends on Easter. It’s dark and somber. Solemn and quiet. Chock full of scripture, tradition and spiritual discipline.

Sometimes, especially toward the end, Lent is sad.

But I love it.

In an email I got around Ash Wednesday last year, a friend of mine who’s a Franciscan friar explained the concept of kenosis. It’s the “process of emptying,” he wrote, and it’s “very common in our Christian spirituality.” Especially during Lent.

Most practicing Roman Catholic Christians fast until dinner on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We don’t eat meat on Ash Wednesday, or on any Friday in Lent. We usually make a 40-day sacrifice. Sometimes, it’s a sacrifice of time, like volunteering at a food bank, going to mass daily or waking up earlier every day to read the Bible. Other times, it’s actually giving up stuff. In past Lents, I’ve given up chocolate. Bread. CDs. Facebook. Once, I heard about a guy who gave up his bed (so he slept on the floor).

But what people give up is only part of the point. The rest of the point is what happens to you when you deny yourself something. Fewer things means fewer distractions. Time is finite. Attention is finite. The fewer our obligations, the more time and attention we can give to what’s left. The more time and attention we give, the higher the quality of it. When we give up stuff, it puts a new perspective on the difference between the words want and need. When we sacrifice, it empties us.

That, the Franciscan friar wrote, is the point.

“In order to let God fill our life, we need to empty it first.”

Here’s to an empty Lent.

Posted on

Proof.

We don’t live in a “first things first” culture. We procrastinate.

Procrastination is using the pursuit of one thing to justify our neglect of another. It’s distraction. It goes deeper than the “TV now, study later” life. Way deeper. Subconscious deep.

Have you ever heard a pastor or a priest say that meeting a good guy or girl won’t solve your problems? Or that your dream job won’t fill the void. Or that money won’t make you happy.

He’s right. Few think he isn’t. Very few consciously pursue those things to solve problems. I’d even say lots don’t pursue them for those reasons, even subconsciously. But some, I’d say, do subconsiously pursue them… for proof.

If I had a successful relationship…

If I got the job…

If I made X amount of money…

I’d have proof that there is no problem. That there is no void. That “I’m happy.”

But it doesn’t usually work like that. If you get what you pursue, you find you have it plus a problem. It plus a void.

We know what distracts us. We usually know it well. But do we know it’s a distraction? Do we know from what it distracts us?

Posted on

Twenty minutes: Wholehearted.

I couldn’t do it justice if I tried, so I won’t describe this video. But I will implore you to take 20 minutes out of your day to watch or listen to it. Worth it. Trust me. Fabulous. Thanks to Rhett Smith for posting it on his blog this morning.

If you’re reading this on a blog reader and you don’t see a video above this line, click the title of the post and see it at my blog.