What We Should Do

 We've almost made it a year.  

Some of us received covid shots, others remain at home, but this year of cloistered living, it's changed us in ways we do not yet know.  It's visible in the grocery stores. People don't go in there relaxed, they go into the stores in a rush, they do not make eye contact and they do not stop.  It's visible when you visit a college campus, and the pick up football or students sitting together or walking holding hands, isn't visible.   

Tonight, for some reason, we needed out, out of the routine, out of the house, just out.  So we drove to the drive thru of a local establishment and ordered ice cream.  It was a little thing, and yet restorative of something of the reality we miss, the reality we've not known since March 12th of 2020.   

How do we reset our psyches?  I am not really worried about it, once we don't have to worry about it.  I'm certain we will rejoice almost excessively once we can go to a football game, dance or store without masks, and can do the ordinary things of ordinary life like errands and dates and birthday parties out in the world without risking our families or ourselves.   

It's the time between then and now that will be the hardest.  This is no longer new. The trick is to not try to do more than today until tomorrow is today.  We do have to do it again the next day and the next and the next, but by doing so, we won't gnash our teeth at how long we've endured this, we will instead focus on the battles of the day we face and no others.   It will mean we spend less time cursing the battles we've already fougth and won or lost.   It will mean, we do not despair because of how long this is taking to "flatten the curve," but hope because we've made it so far.   

We've made it so far...we've made it so far.  We've made it so far, getting ice cream in a drive thru felt like a rebellion, like a form of defiance, of manufactured triumph.  We will make it...and when we do, we should all sign a baseball with the year and the date we emerge from this mess, because we succeeded.  

Move!

Yesterday, I mentioned moving day.  Today, I'm thinking about moving but in a different way. 

So I started Lent, I've already messed up every day, and yet, that's the purpose of Lent, to be reminded every day of how much we pretend we don't need saving, how much we deny, we need saving.  The best Lents aren't when we adhere to whatever our Lenten promise is perfectly, but when we are perfected by the trial of seeking to adhere to it in the first place.  

What we do matters, and yet like receiving, how and why we do it matters too.   The matter of our sacrifice matters.  That's why sacarments have an unbearably physical element to them, an undenyable physical reality.  

It's the everyday progress, that comes with acknowledging how much we regress, that makes for true humility --can't do this without grace, not even for a second.   It's the everyday little surrenders that make up whole splinters of a cross that over a lifetime, is the whole cross. The nails of our life are those big moments, where we were given the opportunity to say yes or no to Christ, and the crown we weave, is of all the times we've managed to cooperate with grace and the world hated us for it, and our keen awareness of all the times we failed to love those around us --all the moments we could have cooperated with grace and did not.  We get to offer all our failures to Christ, along with a humble, "I am sorry, I am nothing but a poor ungrateful servant.  Here I am Lord, do with me what you will."   

This past week, many in my family were reminded of what most of us take for granted, heat, power, water and food.   This week, many in our nation were reminded, our world is much more fragile than nature, and this past twelve months, our nature, much more fragile than we believe.   

We are always practicing Catholics, even when our practice sounds terrible, even when we screw up, especially when we don't recognize we're screwing up.  God knows this, God tells us over and over again, He knows this.  He compares us to sheep.  That's not flattering. It is however, a reality.  

This week, I sat thinking about spiritual practice and discpline being like weight loss --the most success is when we stop looking at the problem as something to be solved, and instead embrace it as a way to live.   The same is true for spiritual exercise.   When it is part of breathing, we are closer to "doing it well" because we aren't doing something to check off a box, but as part of an ever on going progression.   

Editing, parenting, writing, exercise, prayer, all of these things are the cumulative consequence of a regular constant willingness to do and do again and be willing to do poorly but do every day.   

So with that in mind, I'm going to go edit my book and go for a short exercise...if only to start.   
Because all of these habits require first, foremost and always, my cooperation, and none of these will happen if I do not will to do them.   That includes Lent.  

The desert everywhere is calling.  Inviting us to will to go into it.   Lent is the time to be willing to move.   

Moving Day is Coming

 It's been in the works for a while now, but Chocolate For Your Brain! is moving to Patheos.   

I'll let you know when exactly, but all of these posts will migrate there once it's up and running.  Back in September, I'd been considered.  Now, after a few months of trying to figure out what to do, or how to do it, the hour approaches.   

Why am I doing this?  

Well, first, to get myself back in the writing spirit, where five hundred words doesn't feel like a push.  Second, to become part of a community of writers again, which would in turn spark my own brain to jog around the park.  Covid-19 makes everything laggy and saggy, including humor and a joyful witness...so I'm packing up and joining Patheos --a faith based website with multiple channels including one labeled, Catholic.   I think I qualify.    

What's been going on lately? 

Well, I've been teaching, I've been fretting about all my family in Texas, and it's very icy here and the snow blower decided it was too much work to clear our driveway so it quit on the maiden voyage, leaving all of us with our backs to take care of the rest.   

What really gets me is all that work doesn't amount to much of a calorie burn, only a sore back.   

In the meantime, I'm doing Lent...it's awkward like most Lents, where the recognition, you've already messed up tends to tempt one to not simply start over again.   But I'm trying...and I'm going to go on trying.   

What else are you doing?  I'm supposed to be editing.  I've found I can get the bills paid, organize lesson plans, fold clothes and do dishes and will, before I start tackling that stack...but I need to...so I paid a visit to Barnes and Noble today, to remind myself of the goal.   When I see all the stacks of books, it's  a reminder of all those who managed to see it through to the end.   It makes me wonder how many others have a stack like mine.  

It also makes me want to either a) declare a it's my week, hole up in the computer room and tell everyone to bring me food and remind me to shower until it's done  or b) cry and panic and put it off some more or c) beg everyone to remind me to edit every day until it's done.   I know, it should be c).   
I just stress ate the last of my emergency chocolate thinking about editing.   Now I really don't have any excuses.   

I'm thinking of exercising...that really tells you how much I don't want to edit.    
However I know, the only way it gets better is if I look at it.  It's like a swimsuit I don't want to put on, because I know how it's going to look.      

Moving day is coming.  In the meantime, I'll be over here, editing and trying not to cry at the reality, I should have hit the gym a long time ago, both literally and figuratively with this manuscript.