Whose race are we running?

This is the third stop on a blog hop for Chris Lowney's latest book, Make Today Matter: 10 Habits for a Better Life (and World). Find the rest of the tour here.

"Compare and despair, that's the advice I got," noted the young Jesuit novice across the table from me. A group of us were having coffee and a last conversation before beginning the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.  We were nervous and uncertain of what lay before us in these thirty days in silence. Whatever God wanted for each of us during these days and over the next years, it would be different.

Almost a decade later, those words have returned to me again and again.  I have offered them to students worried about their progress in a course relative to their peers, murmured them to myself when looking at a piece of writing that was nowise as good as that essay by...stopping each of us in our tracks.

Last weekend, reading Chris Lowney's latest book, Make Today Matter, I scribbled "compare and despair" in the margins of the section on his third habit:  "Don't win the race, contribute to the (human) race." When we focus on winning, on besting those around us, we are never quite content with what we have. Someone always has more.  More money, more time, more honors. So we compare ourselves, and come up wanting, despairing of what we haven't achieved, rather than rejoicing in what has been given to us. Turn it around, suggests Lowney, and look not to get more, but to do more. To consider making the next move not one that positions you to move up, but makes the world a more just and a more loving place.

Science can be pretty competitive at times, no one wants to have their research scooped by another group barreling down the same road.  But another weekend read reminded me again what winning could mean.  The abstract for a feature article in the latest issue of Chemical Communications ended by noting that the translation of this chemistry "into real-world applications, starts to demonstrate the power of this approach, and its potential to transform the world around us for the better." Prof. David Smith goes on in the article to explain why he shifted his research to tackle fundamental questions in supramolecular chemistry from a different perspective: "[E]xplaining to someone with a life-limiting condition that you are using all of your skills to understand how peptides interact with one another in toluene somehow felt inadequate."  There were many directions he could have taken with his initial groundbreaking work, some more likely to "win" the science race than others, but he chose to seek a win for all of us, not just himself.  Something that might make this world a more loving place.

As I start to plan for the summer's research and writing, and my work with students next fall, I'm reminded to ask the question, not how many people will read this paper or cite this work compared to my peers, but what is the potential of this work to transform the world into a more just and loving place.  It's a good habit to get into.

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Full disclosure, Loyola Press gave me a copy of this book.  You can watch a short clip about Habit 3 here and read a sample chapter or two here.

Dot Magis: Sacred cacophony

St. Benedict Fra Angelico via Wikimedia Commons

“From holy Easter until Pentecost without interruption let ‘Alleluia’ be said both in the Psalms and in the responsories.” —from The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 15.

"...my breath caught in my mouth. Alleluia? I had barely thought the word in weeks, and now we were singing it in four parts, in Lent. St. Benedict’s Rule flashed through my mind. Wait, I wanted to say, until 'holy Easter'! 

Holy Easter duly arrived, and with it, a delightful explosion of Alleluias. But I still wondered at my discomfort with those out-of-season Alleluias. I was reminded of St. Ignatius’s caution to retreatants in the Spiritual Exercises (#127) to 'not read any mystery that is not to be used on that day or at that hour, lest the consideration of one mystery interfere with the contemplation of the other.' It can be hard to hear God’s voice in a cacophony, even a cacophony of sacred mysteries." — read the rest at DotMagis

I have a short piece up at DotMagis reflecting on how the out-of-season singing of alleluia made me more aware of the need to be present to each of the tasks and people that appear in my inbox and at my door even in this particularly chaotic time of year.  Just as with the sacred mysteries of the Exercises, I mused, take things one a a time.  What I hadn't quite realized when I wrote it is that these swirling demands are not like sacred mysteries, they are sacred mysteries.  Enveloped as they may be in difficult personalities, or troubles that I can't unravel in a few lines, even popping into my inbox, these are collisions with the sacred.  And surely a mystery.

On Being on dusting

A few weeks ago I got an email from one of the producers of On Being letting me know that Krista Tippett had used an excerpt from a blog post I had written for DotMagis during her interview with poet Marilyn Nelson.

Nelson is one of my favorite contemporary poets, in part because her work tangles with such a wide range of themes, from the desert fathers to modern Trappist martyrs, she is unafraid to draw on scientific imagery, and brings a unflinching eye to the gouges racism has left in our country.  I'm still haunted by Fortune's bones, or more precisely by the thought of Fortune's wife dusting her husband's bones.

During the interview Tippett tells Nelson:

"To that point — I don’t know if this is something you’re aware of — we found this blog post that was written actually by a professor who had just gotten back from sabbatical, and she was dusting her office. Have you read this? I mean, this is the things you can find on the internet. This is the upside of the internet. Is your poem, Dusting?'"

It reminded me of a story one of the Jesuits at the observatory told me about going into the Rome to pick up a piece of paperwork he needed that the government website had shown was ready. When he finally got to the window, he was told to come back.  "But it said it was ready on the internet," he pleaded.  But the Italian bureaucrat was unmoved, "The internet says many things.  Next!"

The internet does say many things, and so it was quite nice to hear my writing called part of the upside of the internet. It was also fascinating to hear a little bit of my own work read aloud, which Tippett does (you can hear it around 25:00 minutes in the segment).

In the "Case for Dusting" I suggested that the dust on my desk might have alien origins: "fragments ...burnt off comets that blundered into Earth’s atmosphere. Crumbs of the infinite lie scattered across my desk."  So I particularly enjoyed the recent piece in the New York Times about jazz musician Jon Larsen's work identifying the micrometeorites in ordinary, every day dust.  The photographs are gorgeous.  Now I really can't bear to dust my desk, knowing what I'm wiping away.

DotMagis: Love is patient and kind, but am I?

Not the St. John's Bible by any means...

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. 1 Cor 13:4-6

St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians.  It was proclaimed when I married Tom, and again when I married Victor.  It was hardly a novel choice.  But what happens when I hear it at a funeral? I hear hard questions, not a poetic description — however powerful.

"Have I been patient? kind?
Was I jealous, pompous, or self-important?"

Read the whole reflection at Ignatian Spirituality's DotMagis blog.

...but in my own hand nonetheless

It was interesting to be reminded of the other readings we chose. From Matthew's Gospel  - the call to be salt of the earth and light for the world.  From the Song of Songs,  set me as a seal upon your heart. And Psalm 30, the psalm that ran through my head all night when Tom was dying.  Then the line that I held close was at night weeping enters in, but with the dawn joy, but for this day, you have changed my mourning into dancing, you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.  A bridge between two lives, an acknowledgement of the mystery that I would not willingly have given up the first for the second, nor now, forgone the second to have clung to the first.

DotMagis: Dusting

I'm back.  I packed up plants and books at the end of last May and moved home, with plans to write and to travel during a six-month sabbatical leave.  I wrote and wrote:  three essays for Nature Chemistry, an essay for the UN for the International Year of Light, an op-ed on the internet and pseudoscience for C&E News, 17 blog posts for my Culture of Chemistry blog and a solid first draft of a book of writing exercises for chemists.  Then I traveled, to talk in Texas and Rome and Barcelona. Lots of exciting things happened (two NPR interviews! new colleagues to collaborate with!)  And that was just the professional end of things — about which I have to submit a written formal report next week.

My other authorial persona tried out a few new things as well — writing a short piece of fiction about an encounter with Pope Francis, in two languages no less— though that wasn't part of my official plan for my sabbatical.

But yesterday I went back into my office for a full day, and today am working on writing not only that report, but also polishing up the syllabi for the three courses I will teach this spring (intro chem, physical chemistry and a first year graduate course on quantum mechanics), and finishing a letter of recommendation for a wonderful former student.

This shift from extraordinary and the ordinary has prompted me to do some tidying of my study and office, and to write a reflection on the spiritual arguments for not dusting for DotMagis.

Dusting reminds me that our daily life, even when unremarkable, is perhaps not so ordinary. As I step back into my teaching, into the very ordinary days of my life, I’m reminded to think twice about brushing off the infinite hiding within the immanent.

Read the rest at DotMagis.  Read all of Marilyn Nelson's science flecked poem about dusting and chemist and spiritual writer Mags Blackie's thoughts about her return to the everyday from sabbatical.

DotMagis: Hearing Places

After a month of travel, a delightful mix of work and rest, I was anxious to get home. Still, I wasn’t looking forward to negotiating yet another airport, where each line earns you the privilege of waiting in another. As we approached check-in, we were waved off to wait with a half-dozen others. “Are you sure they sent us to the right line?” I asked my husband, as I watched people in the long queue next to us check their bags for Philly while we waited— unmoving —  behind a rope.  “The sign says Philadelphia,” he reassured me.

Suddenly a young woman appeared, and without any preamble, began to ask us questions in careful English.  “What did you see?” she asked me brightly.  It was a hard question to answer.  I had spent a number of days walking the northwest coast of Ireland, I’d seen the Atlantic stretching out before me, breath-taking cliffs, tumbled-down chapels, and sheep — lots of sheep.  I’d seen Gaudi’s magnificent Sagrada Familia, and Michaelangelo’s David.  I took a lot of pictures, but my most potent memories of this trip are as much about what I heard as what I saw.  Why don't we ask people who've been away, "what did you hear?"

The walk where it was so quiet, I could hear the sheep tearing at the grass.  The rocks rolling on a shore far below.  The bubbles breaking in my cappuccino.

The experience led to a short reflection on Ignatius' notion of the composition of place posted today at DotMagis (with a great graphic!).

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The mystery of the lines was that they were funneling people off to let trainees practice.  Did we look patient?  Like teachers?  We each got a little gold star on our passports, regardless.

DotMagis: Praying one word at a time

Last May I went to hear The Egg sing at the magnificent Fish Church in Stamford, Connecticut.  On the way, I spent an incredible afternoon walking New York City with my friend Cindy.  We met through blogging, and the timing of her trip and this concert let us meet in person.  I enjoyed getting a chance to be a choral roadie mom, riding the bus with the group and handing our programs and information at the church.  It was a flying trip, I left Philly around 8 am and returned 16 hours later.

The space and the concert were both incredible.  In order to catch the last train back home, I had to dash the second the concert ended, blowing a kiss to The Egg as I went.  The church's organist and music director dropped me at the station, and I sank into the quiet car on Amtrak to process the day.  As I did, the music kept playing in my head, Robert Parson's Ave Maria (which you can hear at 2:06), along with the realization that my prayer life swims in a similar sea, from which words and notes arise with incredible clarity, only to be caught up again into the wider service of the piece.

From those reflections came this reflection, posted yesterday at Ignatian Spirituality's DotMagis.

This morning, listening again to Robert Parson’s Ave Maria, I realized that this is the rhythm not only of my prayer, but of my life. There are moments when I am blessed with an utter certainty of God’s presence, followed by moments when I am so distracted by the complex cacophony that pervades my daily life I lose track of the underlying melody entirely. I can be befuddled by, entranced with, or simply carried away by the complexity of the sacred tune swirling through the universe. And there are so many times when I strain to hang onto the barest whisper of God’s voice, unsure if it is still there. - Read the rest at DotMagis.

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The Egg is standing in the back row, in front of the tabernacle.  Sometimes you see him, sometimes you don't!

Deep in the darkness

I love Rilke's Book of Hours, both the original German and Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows' spare and sharp translation. The end of this poem in German sounds like wind chimes stirred by a late night breeze to me, barely rippling the still coolness of the night:  Gott aber dunkelt tief... But deep in the darkness is God.

I, 50

I come home from the soaring
in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.


A reflection I wrote on darkness and light — with a bit of technical advice from Crash and The Egg —is up at DotMagis this week. I talk about praying in the depths of the night during the thirty days I made the Exercises:

"At that hour the retreat house was incredibly silent, the chapel so still I could almost hear the flame in the presence lamp shimmering. “Empty yourself,” said St. Romuald in his Rule, “and sit waiting, content with the grace of God.” In those nights, empty of noise, empty of people, God taught me to sit and wait, to empty myself, that I might be filled with the graces he desired to give me..."

Read the rest at DotMagis.

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For a warm and beautiful look at light and darkness, see writing as j(oe)'s post What Light.

DotMagis: Living frugally on surprise (redux)

In March I wrote a piece for DotMagis about living frugally on surprise (a line taken from Alice Walker's poem Before you knew you owned it: “Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.”) Today, driving to a meeting, I thought again about the practice of living open to surprise, an antidote to a hermeneutic of anxiety or suspicion.

I note that my email is still chirping "like a nest of starving baby birds, messages popping up and demanding answers faster than I [can] stuff answers in them." but I'm perhaps a shade less anxious about handling the worms.

I had to go downtown to observe a student teacher today, midday the traffic is generally light, but today construction had 76 crawling.  I put myself entirely in the hands of Google Maps and ended up on a route that wound through Fairmount Park — the largest expanse of urban park in the US — and then turned me out on Martin Luther King Boulevard along the Schuylkill River.  The magnolias are in bloom and the trees are leafing in earnest.  It was an unexpected moment of beauty in my day, a surprise dollop of grace that turned my day upside down.

Ignatian Spirituality: Give whirled peas a chance

Mateusz Tokaski Still Life with Pea

It's July, which means that Ignatian Spirituality is celebrating St. Ignatius' upcoming feast with 31 days of posts old and new.  The theme this year is finding God in unexpected places, and my reflection on encountering God's gentle sense of humor appeared last week.   I loved the layers of puns in the title the editor gave it:  God surprises in peas and teas

“You know I don’t eat anything green,” insisted my youngest son, pushing his plate of mashed potatoes, meat loaf, and green peas away from him with a single finger. Arms crossed, six-year-old Chris glared at me across the dining room table. His older brother stuck a fork in the meat loaf, and startled, peered more closely at his plate and grinned. He, at least, was on to me."

You can read the rest at DotMagis.