Fire Within chapter 08

lab notebook

Fire Within: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and the Gospel on Prayer (Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.) https://ignatius.com/fire-within-fwp/

(If you are catching up: chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7)

Chapter 8: “The Freedom of Detachment”

[After Saturday morning Mass I went to Old St. Pat’s for a while. Saturday readings]

Lord, let me tell You a story: once upon a time I had a solid-top guitar (a Seagull) and was reading a website with advice on tuning and on replacing guitar strings... there was a page on how to deal with the anxiety of having a beautiful guitar: what if it suffers “scratch-’n-dent” damage? The instructions were as follows: 1. lay the guitar down gently, flat on the ground. 2. Stand over it holding a bunch of keys (one’s house keys, car keys, dorm or apartment keys). 3. Let go, i.e. drop the keys on the guitar! I thought this was very funny — but — it illustrates how we are a slave to our possessions. A new car without a scratch on it — or a favorite ball-point pen — wool socks that perhaps the moths will eat... we are weighed down by a thousand chains. And why? Fear, I suppose. If we loved You — let me not write this as an accusation of others but of myself — if I, Lord, loved You, then I would be afraid of nothing but willfully offending You — and even here, in this salutary fear I would be consoled by Your mercy: You do not desire me to sin (although You permit) and You do desire to pick me up and dust me off and embrace me after every fall.

I am off of the subject already though! We were going to talk about detachment. Since this book is for me evidently a hands-on practical course with a lab component and not a theoretical class (I am thinking here of high school or college, in the science or engineering classes) (and how badly — I just want to note what I inevitably recall of these — how badly one’s labs go compared to the pristine description in a textbook; drawing the graphs or writing the measurements which ought to have corresponded to some equation) — in this chapter how shall I say what has been going on? — how (instead of finishing the chapter promptly; I read the last three pages only now) I have been reading 1. chapter 7 and 8 in Spiritual Theology (Aumann) last week and into this week, but perhaps more importantly 2. To Raise the Fallen. I read about 75% of it (then I gave it to someone else on Thursday morning but that’s another story). In the introduction, letters, and extracts from his journal — what I saw was this [i.e. Fire Within’s chapter 8] written out in practice — the lab notebook of, if we were in the high school physics class, the top student in class. To them maybe they see the flaws in their work... and we can’t copy someone else’s data; we have to collect our own and chart it... but it does a person good to see concretely that it can be done and what it looks like. In chemistry: this is how the flame test for copper looks... [YouTube]

[Intermission] (A holy man has handed me 2 cards to be used to invite people to Mass: “I make those,” he said.)

What I am saying, Lord, is that when I got to the journal entries I looked at the dates and was struck NOT by how stark and total a thing You had asked of him [in his ordinary life as a priest, before the war] but by for how short a time in hindsight You had asked it. [“Only six years,” I had exclaimed, marveling.]

It is a temptation from the enemy (who leverages[1] the natural recoiling of our flesh in reaction to imagining or remembering “what it will be like” to live in a particular way) to think that it will be for a long time. If a person thinks “how can I give up this licit pleasure[2] (which the Lord gently urges me to do) and never have it again? How can I endure if I live to seventy, eighty, or more?” he has already defeated himself in the race by refusing to run it — why not give it a try ... why not as Fr. Doyle[3] did, say “just this once” I will go without it, not looking beyond. Why not say “just this once, Lord, for You, I will do the harder thing” when it is possible to,... or make an act of the will to be inclined to (to be willing to) do the harder thing and accept when it’s not possible.

The next natural — probably the wrong word. Let’s go with “natural-seeming”. The next natural-seeming step from “six years is not very long” is “sixty years... six years or sixty years is not very long”, not one’s reason putting forth the argument but a felt reality, an intuition, that that is not long. I can’t explain this, Lord, because I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know how the first thing happened either (to be struck not with predominantly a sense of “I have no attraction to that” or “I am repelled by that” or “it’s all very well for him but would be too hard for me and anyhow You hadn’t asked it (and I won’t listen in case You might)”, which are ordinary reflexes when presented with sanctity; in some cases “this saint was obviously mentally ill” is a reflex — But instead to be struck not with “I can’t” but with “what a very short time You asked this of him”.)

The next “natural-seeming” or gradual step (cf. What About Bob? “baby steps”, but those are taken with intent!) is the movement from a sense of (marveling) “what a short time You asked of him” to a sense of real urgency — for oneself. I guess that makes logical sense? I observe these experimental results, Lord, but I didn’t do anything intentional to achieve them... read books, sure; pray (in which I am doing nothing), sure. You did tell us to expect the thief in the night anytime (and that You will come back no one knows when) — still I don’t know about this sense of “I haven’t got long to get all of my ducks in a row”, don’t put off until even as far as Lent (which, granted, in the last week of Feb. felt like “far away” but now is, looking at the calendar, four days from now, Sat. to Wed.) the things that You are urging me to do. Instead begin them immediately (Why?? I didn’t ask) with a generous heart. (Paused for Morning Prayer. Forgot I do not have a weekend alarm for it.) — n.b. this urgency was also in Office of Readings this morning; at 9:15 I wrote out part of Ecclesiastes[4] — and in the readings at Mass earlier this week [Thursday: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022725.cfm Sirach 5 “Delay not your conversion to the LORD, put it not off from day to day.”; Mark 9 “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” etc.]

Well, Lord, what more is there to say? We are to do everything that we can to prepare for what only You can do, and in beginning to do what only You can, You make possible greater efforts on our part. These things advance together (jerkily perhaps) like — I will see if I can find a picture of the climbing wooden toy in which one pulls left and right strings alternately. [Example here. Here is a video of an interesting variation. By this example, I mean that active purification and passive purification are not two consecutive stages.]

[Intermission] (Two people have just (kneeling) come up the Holy Stairs which I am in a pew next to... God bless them.)

What we ought to look for, Lord, is twofold, I think? One, the ordinary things that present themselves to us in the course of the day (the duties of one’s state in life and the people whom St. John of the Cross regards as sculptors chiseling us into perfection.) Two, the gentle promptings of Your Holy Spirit (to whom we ought to have a devotion; the Sanctifier) who presents us with a wistful request or an attraction that did not come from “the flesh” (there are unnatural attractions possible from the flesh — [therefore although it would be more concise] I do not say “an unnatural attraction” because masochism, and eating disorders, and competitive pride, are all of the flesh although they run counter to nature which seeks to preserve one’s life)... if one reads someone quoting St. Jean Vianney (to another parish priest on how to bring one’s people back to God) you have prayed; have you fasted? have you taken the discipline? have you slept on boards? — it would be something, I don’t know what, to be attracted to “have you slept on boards”. Possibly a strange romanticized yearning. Sometimes we get those and they are more-or-less from nature also, if one has a strong romantic streak: the attraction to suiting up in armor and tilting at windmills.

This and so many other reasons are why I say that a person MUST make at least AN ATTEMPT to find either a regular confessor or a spiritual director (and if you can’t, you can’t, and the Holy Spirit who is the true director of all souls will take care of you in one way and another) — so that when bizarre [it took me two tries to spell bizarre] desires show up you can bring them to him (like a cat bringing a mouse). [The owner of a cat should remain calm and unimpressed.] — it is noon + I shall pray mid day prayer. (12:09pm. Parking meters have a 2 hour limit + I will go to Sacred Heart of Jesus bookstore now.)

It was snowing hamster-sized snowflakes on the way to Old St Pat’s

Sunday [morning]: The strangest thing about the (perduring) sense of urgency is that it is a calm one. [i.e. in contrast to a normal sense of urgency in which there is 1. a specific deadline and 2. I am anxious.] I don’t understand this. I am very tired though and I think it will lapse. [i.e. “perduring”, much like “inconceivable”, ==> “I do not think that word means what you [Bridget] think it means.”]

Next chapter: https://withoutcost.substack.com/p/fire-within-chapter-09

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[1] my English usage has been corrupted by the slang of the business world. It would be simple and correct to say “makes use of” rather than “leverages”.

[2] for a person who is considering giving up something sinful, the enemy also uses this tactic but since we are on a chapter about detachment I confined myself to considering the problem of giving up licit things, or, breaking attachments.

[3] “Servant of God, Father Willie Doyle, SJ, what a guy!” (after reading the introduction of the book my reflex was to permanently affix “what a guy!” admiringly to his full name so there you have it.)

[4] Ecclesiastes 12 (in the unspeakable slang of my teenaged child) “goes hard”