Reset

Autocorrect just “fixed” the title of this post to “rest” — which might be equally apt. I haven’t posted in a month, despite having a week away from teaching for spring break. It’s been busy. I gave seven talks in the space of just over three weeks, on six different topics. Then I helped four of my five research students get prepared for their presentations at the big national chemistry meeting currently going on in San Diego. (I’m not there, sad to say.) And I started teaching our intensive lab course for junior chem and bio chem majors. Oh — and I’m spearheading the synodal listening process for my parish. Reading this I understand why I am tired!

Last weekend, I picked up Becky Chamber’s beautiful A Psalm for the Wildbuilt to put it away and instead sat down and re-read the ending (spoiler alert!) where an exhausted monk is treated to tea by an oh-so-practical robot. I longed for a bit of not-self care, where someone might sit me down and insist I drink a cup of Evening in Missoula, take a hot bath and sit in the garden under a full moon. Instead I popped another load of laundry in and scrubbed the bathtub.

And then, in the mail a little bit of care arrived, sent by a friend. “For a reset…” said the label on the bottle. Spray some in the air and walk through the mist. I did and was transported back to Shojoshin-in on Mt. Koya in Japan. Dripping cypress, curls of mist, soft moss muffling my steps, and the incredible hot bath. Or alternatively to the hermitage Dex and Mosscap find in A Psalm. Reset indeed. It’s the next best thing to a transporter.

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Evening in Missoula tea. Sabbatical Beauty’s mist.

Release the penguins! A score for the start of classes

I am in my last year as chair of the chemistry department, I'm also chairing a major committee for the college. The last three weeks have been...packed? I ran across this music meme again last week and realized it's the perfect score to accompany the start of the semester for a department chair (or faculty member, or support staff, or student, or parent...the slope of the ramp from summer to fall is steep for us all!).

When the day gets chaotic (and they all have), I visualize the score, and find my spot on it. Before school began its advice to "keep both feet together" and to "cool the timpani with a small fan" reminded me to plant my feet, stand my ground and attend to self-care and care for my students and faculty. Of course, nothing goes as planned, as the "light explosives now....and.....now" portended.  But now the saxes have moved downstage (where hopefully they will calm down. Honestly, I didn't mean to double book their rehearsal room and I'm so sorry the piccolos drove them out with that shrill arpeggio. If your hearing doesn't return soon, do let me know.)

"Play ball!" and the first day of classes was upon us, even though I still needed a relief pitcher for Thursday afternoon organic lab, and yes, a tempo of 788 beats per minutes seems about how we usually play this section, why do you ask?  Of course, two measures later you can certainly understand why I've "gradually become agitated"given that metronome setting.

But here we are, at the end of the second week, and I'm relieved to say I've reached the measure where I'm instructed to "release the penguins." Watch out, they've gotten quite grumpy cooped up in my office these last two weeks, but once on the loose, not my problem any more.

Outsourced prayer

I subscribe to a service that will do the occasional task for me — or at least anything legal that can be done by someone with a phone, internet connection and common sense. It's great for scheduling and for tracking down odd bits of this and that. This morning they rolled out a beta test of a new service, which looks at my calendar and suggests which task they might be able to take off my hands. So I awoke to an email which offered to take "morning prayer" off my hands every day.

When I joked about this in the kitchen this morning, my sister-in-law No-No said, "but isn't that what the monks are for?" True enough, priests, deacons and religious offer the Liturgy of the Hours on behalf of the Church, so that we can rise to Paul's challenge in Thessalonians to "pray unceasingly."

For the record, I didn't take them up on the offer — though I wonder what they would have done if I'd send them the texts — or a link to the Virtual Abbey? It's legal.

Litanies of Complaints

In the last month I've only posted 10 times, and nothing in more than a week. Work has been pretty intense this semester, and time for writing for pleasure impossible to eke out before I slither exhausted (and crabby) into bed. My writing catch basin is overflowing with scrawled notes of things about which I might have written (and might still write): "the antiphonal radiators in the morning," "the sound of the sugar jar tinkling against the teapot as the kettle comes to the boil on the table in my office," AMDG Exterior Contracting"...and just what is a STAMPP point?

A few days ago, when a meeting was cancelled (and no one told me), I started a blog post about being overstretched and underslept, then realized with a start that I'd written some version or another of that post before. And recently. Of my last ten posts, almost half are basically extended whines about my overly busy life and how exhausting I am finding it. Enough, already!

I found this video posted by Paul Campbell S.J. at People for Others to be a delightful mirror to my own grousing. It's nine minutes long and I listened to the entire thing (the shots of the baby in the orange hat at 1:00, blissfully asleep while the chorus moans and grumbles around her, is a meditation in itself, I'm sure). I love the litany of complaints, "my boss prints his spam and hands it to me." It makes me wonder what my internal dialog sounds like to God!

If I were to add one complaint to the list in the song? "My students forget to put their names on their files." When I had four open notebooks on my computer the other night, none with names, all looking for some help untangling their quantum mechanics, trying to figure out who to send what back to in which email was a challenge! (And rest assured, I did gently share my difficulties with them and pleaded for their help in the matter.)

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STAMPP is Systematic Technique to Analyze and Manage Pennsylvania Pavement. I'm still unsure why there would be a sign saying "STAMPP point" with a triangle on it on the highway, but at least part of the mystery is solved.

Column: Prayer of the exhausted - sleep

Patient Spiritual Director suggested (not entirely in jest, I think) I consider taking up sleep as a Lenten discipline, his theory being it would be a more difficult undertaking for me than giving up chocolate. (I didn't in fact give up chocolate for Lent, but am trying a modified version of what Mark Bittman and others are attempting. At the moment all I want to say about the experience is that it has been efficacious — and far more difficult than I anticipated.)

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 31 March 2011.

I will lie down in peace and sleep comes at once, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety. — Ps. 4:9

Last Thursday morning, the high school principal found Chris and his friend, asleep, on the floor outside their first block classroom. “Is everything OK?” he wondered. Roused from his slumbers, Chris responded with a laconic, “Tech week.” Those two words explained much. The principal left the two to drowse away the last few minutes before the bell rang.

The school musical opens on Friday and rehearsals are in full swing. Chris is both performing and working as tech crew: alternately singing up a storm on stage and hauling huge pieces of scenery around behind the scenes. Mike is managing the technical end of the production; with a word whispered into his headset, he can cause witches to appear in mid-air and set a darkened stage alight.

There is no shortage of creative energy flowing in my house — this crew can get a paper mache cow to give milk. Sleep, however? No one is getting very much. That includes the parents who late each night collect the exhausted thespians, and sit vigil with them as they face the homework due the next day.

As Chris crept off to bed late on Thursday night, declaring he would fall asleep as soon as he was horizontal, this verset from Psalm 4 ran through my mind. He would indeed sleep in peace, his work for this day finished, his school bag packed for the next.

St. John Chrysostom, in reflecting on this psalm, would agree with Chris. Those who live virtuously, who possess God, will “in their waking hours enjoy life and at night rest with great satisfaction.” A clear conscience (or completed homework) doesn’t nag at you in the quiet hours of the night.

Yet there is more than just the rest of the righteous in the image of repose the psalmist evokes here. Recently, a friend lent me a little book of pithy advice on prayer by Keith McClellan OSB. Number 33: Sleep is the prayer of those who rest secure in God.

In his commentary on the fourth psalm, St. Augustine proposes that sleep is a metaphor for the presence of God. Just as we close the door and pull the shades at night to shut out any commotion on the street that might disturb us, Augustine suggests we foster a similar attitude with our interior world. He might be writing about our own time when he laments the ways in which a world that clamors noisily at the gates, which measures worth in terms of possessions, leaves us fragmented.

Augustine urges us to forgo the “countless images” and demands that take our gaze away from God. Cultivate a simplicity of heart, let this be the cloak we might wrap around ourselves to shut out the world and rest in God.

As the mid-point of Lent approaches, I wonder if I, like my kids, epically short of sleep these days, might look to Augustine’s wisdom. The exterior world makes many demands, fragmenting my attention and my patience. God has but one desire, that I rest in Him alone.

Can I turn off the computer with its countless images and burgeoning inbox, close the book, ignore the laundry, and sleep — secure in God? I suspect it would be harder than giving up chocolate, and likely bear more fruit.

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Lord our God, restore us again by the repose of sleep after the fatigue of our daily work: so that, continually renewed by your help, we may serve you in body and soul. Through Christ our Lord, Amen. — Closing prayer from Thursday Night Prayer

Brewing Chemicals

Warning: explicit chemistry content ahead!

When last I visited Patient Spiritual Director we had a conversation about caffeine — since at times this semester I felt as caffeine was all that was getting me through the next hour. So for now, a lá Ignatius' advice to find the mean of things regarding eating and drinking, I'm trying to stick to just two cups of the caffeinated stuff a day, though I have to admit that caffeine adds a bitter edge to tea and I miss the taste even more than the buzz when it's not there. The small deprivation definitely heightens my appreciation for those two cups!

A young friend sent me the link to these mints, which promise both tranquility and alertness in a single package. The secret ingredient is L-theanine (structure shown below), a naturally occurring amino acid found in Camelia sinensis. (Some amino acids (roughly 20) are used by biological systems to build proteins (the working machinery of cells), but theanine is not one of them.) Coincidently, the dried, fermented leaves of Camelia sinensis are what I use to brew my preferred pharmacological concoction to decrease stress and increase alertness: tea.

So would the mints work as advertised? I don't really know, but there is some evidence that theanine works synergistically with caffeine to enhance cognitve performance, while moderating some of caffeine's less desirable effects. I think I'll stick with tea — two cups!

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Need more chemistry? Read the version posted at my chemistry blog.

Podcast: Episode 3/Flight into silence UPDATED

UPDATED: (Reason for the update? Read this post.) The end of the semester chaos threatens to send me crashing to the ground, but memories of a flight into silence last Advent remind me to again seek strength in the stillness, to wait upon the Lord.

Listen here:

Five hours and fifty-four minutes

No, this is not a allusion to John Cage's 4' 33'' (though 5 hours and 54 minutes of silence has a certain appeal for me). It's the upper limit to the amount of sleep I got last night. My alarm is a zen bell sound, and one of the 'features' is a countdown timer. So when I hit the "start" button, I get instant feedback on the number of hours of sleep I might (under the best of circumstances) manage.

In the car this morning, taking Barnacle Boy to his radio gig, I mentioned that 5 hours and 54 minutes of sleep was just not enough. "How did you know to the minute?" he wondered. I explained. "That's creepy!" I wasn't going to argue with him.

In some ways it is a bit creepy to know to the minute the upper limit on the sleep that I can get. And depressing to be reproached by my own alarm about my sleep habits. It's sort of like opening the menu at a restaurant you've traveled a long way to eat at and seeing the calorie counts for everything, including dessert.

I've reached my limit and it looks a lot like sin(1/x)

My life is all about limits these days. Crash Kid is getting a crash course in the mathematical sorts of limits. He's taking AP Calculus — a year's high school course compressed into a semester. This course moves. He's had lots of questions for me, running along the lines of "how do you analytically find the limit of sin x²/ x as x → ∞ ?"

Since I'm in the incredible minority of people who on occasion have an actual use for mathematical limits in their work*, I'm not a bad person to ask. (I almost said "have a practical use" but that's an entirely other post about whether quantum mechanics can ever be said to be practical!). Still, my take on limits leans heavily toward the pragmatic. Crash is best off asking the resident mathematician when he wants to know about the theoretical underpinnings of these great mysteries. So sometimes I say, "Go ask your father!"

There's no escaping at work though. Evaluating the usability of some mathematical functions for quantum mechanics requires that you take a limit - and so my students have been dropping by my office all week to ask various questions about limits.

"Enough," I want to say, "I've reached my limit when it comes to limits!" And since it's the start of a new school year, I'm still working out the limits of how many plates I can keep spinning and how well I can keep the camels confined (cue the occasional crashing plate and spitting camel here). I made some remark at the dinner table to this effect tonight — at which point Math Man turned to Crash and said, "I'd say Mom's life is a bit like sin(1/x) as x approaches zero." They both snicker.

Don't get the joke? Check out the graph of sin(1/x) in the picture. The closer you get to zero, the more wildly the function oscillates, until it's just quivering.

There's nothing quite like getting snarked with math by your 16 year-old at your own dinner table. Especially when he's right on the money. Sigh. I think I need to set a few more limits.

*My Fermi calculation suggests the population of people who might take a limit as part of their job is less than 0.01% of the population.

Pools of silence

It was 106^oF (314 K for those of you who prefer SI units — you know who you are) when I left home Tuesday to drive up to see Patient Spiritual Director. My appointment wasn't until the next day but I was in deep need of a time out — before someone made me use my crabby mommy powers for evil, not good.

I was searching for a place where no one would pop out the door, flip on the porch light and ask my advice about a stuck mail a queue in the midst of my nightly Examen, or arrive in my study at noon to inquire about dinner (and to be clear, the discussion was about the meal to be eaten some 7 hours in the future and was prefaced by the acknowledgement that I'd asked not to be disturbed except for emergencies).¹

There is no air conditioning here, or very little. The basement chapel is cool, and the little first floor library where I am typing this, but certainly not my room or the main chapel or the balcony or the dining room! I spent my first prayer period floating in the gloriously cool, blue, silent, oh so silent pool. I alternately ghosted from one end to the other and just floated. Arms out wide, surrendering to the clear waters, I made no effort to stay afloat, though float I did. It was a deeply embodied experience of Ps 31:6 (Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, LORD, faithful God..).

The heat inside the old building wasn't as awful as you might imagine and I had somewhat the same sense of surrender as I walked back. Supported by the thick muffling air, I floated along through the dim corridors, neither hot nor cold.

In the end it was the little parlor with the computer that did me in. (That should teach me to plug in while I'm trying to unplug?) The window was open a mere crack, while the computer and printer merrily churned out BTUs and the fan only runs on when you flip on the light. I did what I came to do. I lingered not, and ultimately retreated to the artificial cool of the first floor library.

My room alas, was like a oven. I thought about sleeping outside.³ I thought about sleeping in the basement crypt.⁴ I thought about sleeping in the pool.⁵ I thought a lot about sleeping, I just didn't do much of it.

In the end, the prayer soaked out most of the kinks, and I floated, sleepless, but not discontent in the immense pool of silence that shimmered in the heat on the hill.

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Endnotes⁶

1. Emergency was explicitly defined as any situation in which someone is bleeding profusely or other any situation that engenders a similar level of panic² in the victim or rescuer. (Yes, Math Man asked for a definitition.)
2. Not knowing what, if anything, has been planned for dinner is clearly an emergency under the rubric described in note 1. At least if you are a 14 year old who has grown a 1/2 inch in the last three weeks.
3. Then I thought about the fox I saw earlier this summer.
4. Would someone think I'd fainted in front of the altar? (No tabernacle here, just an altar…)
5. Would the novitiate security find me and kick me out? Would I drown? Would it be crowded with other desperately hot retreatants?
6. Of course there must be endnotes, I'm an academic, not a mystic!

A Study in Clutter

Robin is blogging about a topic that's often on my mind -- the spiritual aspects of physical space. You may have noticed the list titled "Fifty Fewer" on my sidebar. Two years ago, I spent the weeks between the end of the school year and the start of my annual retreat clearing out spaces real and spiritual by trying to have fifty fewer things in my life at the end of each week. I kept the list partly for accountablity and partly so I could keep from bringing the same stuff back in over and over again.

It's been a busy semester, and I've been trying hard to triage (or discern, if you prefer the Ignatian term) well what needs attention and what must go by the wayside. I find it hard to work on a cluttered desk, or in a cluttered space for that matter, but finally reached a point where I didn't always have time to reshelve the books or file the papers before I had to dig into the next bit of writing or class prep. So the piles began to stack up. They're organized, after a fashion, but at least two piles are threatening my work space — one on each desk.

I'm hoping to spend a bit of time tomorrow afternoon making some order in my study, and hoping there will be some spillover to my life — spiritual and otherwise. If I organize things, serenity will return? I'm not holding my breath!

Sixty ways to say "no" to:

My plate is threatening to overflow again. When I announced at the dinner table the other night that I was going to pitch activities which were solely a source of stress and where my only contribution seemed to be my existence, Crash had some ways to say "no" - pulled from the posters on the walls of his health classroom. So when next I'm asked to....serve on a committee...write a proposal for....evaluate a new....I could say:

"I'd rather just be friends."
"Let's just go see a movie instead!"

My favorites are the non-sequitur: "No thanks, I have asthma." and the cheeky "I'm not that kind of girl." suggested by my brother, The Wookie. Hopefully no one can read my thought bubbles!

If it works for sex, drug and cigarettes -- will it work for my to do list?? I'll keep you posted!

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There is a list here.

Column: From the depths of the sabbatical

In some ways my return from sabbatical leave last week was more jarring than my return to "real life" after the silence and seclusion of the Exercises last February. Not only my shoes, but everything was more structured. My time was less my own, my wardrobe was higher maintenance with more choice that I had to make...yet some how I did not want to let go of the interior sense of detachment that has been one fruit of the Exercises in my life. Can I truly be indifferent to whether it's time to write in my jeans or sit through an excruciating meeting with blisters on my feet? Pray for what you desire, advises Ignatius!

On another subject - T.S. Eliot's advice quoted below would be good for my physical chemistry students, too. You just need to dive in and try. You may not necessarily see the way clear, but you need to make the best of hints and guesses.

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard and Times on 3 September 2009.]

Take care to keep my sabbaths, for that is to be the token between you and me throughout the generations, to show that it is I, the Lord, who make you holy. Therefore, you must keep the sabbath as something sacred. — Exodus 31:13b-14

Reality set in with the blisters on my feet. After spending most of the nine months of my sabbatical tucked up in my study writing a book, comfortably attired in blue jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers, I shook out my professional wardrobe last week and went to Washington, D.C., for a conference. My feet were the first to express their dismay at being returned to a more structured environment. The rest of me was quick to chime in.

My sabbatical leave is coming to an end — meetings, classes and appointments are sprouting like weeds on my calendar. Like Sunday, the seventh day we are enjoined to keep holy, a day we are given for rest and renewal, my sabbatical was a precious gift of time. As I return to the classroom on Monday, I want to hold onto this gift of time — not as mere memory of time spent — but to let a sense of sabbath time seep into my daily life.

I’ve been thinking about what the deeper meaning of Sunday might be in my life — beyond a day that I am obliged to attend Mass, or an evening in which I am scurrying around looking for what everyone needs for school the next morning. The closing prayer for Night Prayer on Sundays reminds me what we are about: “We have celebrated today the mystery of the rising of Christ to new life.”

So sabbath time is Easter time. A day that structures the rest of our days, marking the change to a new week and the change to a new life. A time to rejoice, to be astonished again at the good news of our salvation, to rekindle our desire to know God deeply and intimately. A day given by God to remind us of our relationship to Him. In his apostolic letter, Dies Domini, Pope John Paul II observes, “even in our own difficult times, the identity of this day must be protected and above all must be lived in all its depth.”

Even as each Sunday draws to a close, the final words of Night Prayer are a potent reminder to me that the Easter stance is not meant for Sunday alone, “May we … rise again refreshed and joyful, to praise you throughout another day.” Sunday is not meant to be put in the closet like a fancy outfit awaiting the next party.

In practice, what will this mean? At the end of his poem, “The Dry Salvages,” T.S. Eliot muses “These are only hints and guesses, hints followed by guesses; and the rest is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.” I am taking my hints and guesses from my sabbatical, where my days were defined not by classes and meetings, but by prayer, walks and family meals.

Papers to grade and meetings to endure may have regained a hold on my time, but perhaps I need not let them define my day. Instead I can hang the daily burdens and trials on the same scaffold that upheld the graced time away.

I go back to teaching more convinced that I don’t want to live for the weekend, but live in the weekend — in the joyful depths of sabbath time. I pray I’ll be attentive and disciplined enough to be astonished at the everyday possibilities of the resurrection.

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Eternal God, you draw near to us in Christ and make yourself our guest. Amid the cares of our daily lives, make us attentive to your voice and alert to your presence, that we may treasure your word above all else. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. — Opening Prayer for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.

Comfort Food

In the middle of the 30-days last January (2nd week, Temptation of Christ to be specific), I got sick. All I did was sleep and pray and throw-up. Tea and oral rehydration solution (thanks to UNESCO for the recipe) were my salvation.

Several days later, when I finally felt ready to tackle dinner (and dessert), there was an amazing bread pudding for dessert. Plated in pools of bright raspberry sauce and redolent of cinnamon, it was a delight to eye and palate. The sister at the table with me was so taken with it, she nearly licked the plate clean. Me, too. It was seriously comforting food.

We had several stale ends of French bread left over this week. I usually turn these into bread crumbs or croutons, but had enough to consider bread pudding. So that's what I did this afternoon, along with a batch of berry syrup to drizzle over my yogurt (and over the bread pudding). Barnacle Boy and Bead Girl approved the final product -- and it matches my memory well (though I discovered today I deeply associate this with the temptation of Christ!!!)

30-days Bread Pudding

1 large loaf of very stale French bread (or the equivalent)
1/2 cup butter, melted
7 eggs (!)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup heavy cream
3 2/3 cup non-fat milk
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon

Roughly cube the bread into 1" chunks. Place bread cubes (and the crumbs made in the process) in a large bowl, toss with the melted butter. Whisk eggs and sugar; stir in remaining ingredients. Pour the egg mixure over the bread in the large bowl. Let stand for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Generously butter an 11 x 13 pan (I used a glass pan), pour in the mixture. Tightly cover with aluminum foil and bake at 375 F for 45 or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Serve warm with raspberry syrup or sprinkle with powdered sugar. (Some like this cold, but I'm all for warm!)

Berry Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
zest from one orange
6 cups berries (I used a mix of frozen berries: black raspberry, wild blueberry, raspberry)

Bring the water to a boil, stir in sugar until it dissolves. Remove from heat. Place berries in a blender, pour the water/sugar solution over the top. Puree. Strain out the seeds, stir in the zest, bring briefly to the boil again. Cool, then store in fridge or freezer until ready to use.

UNESCO oral rehydration solution

1 litre of clean water
One level teaspoon of salt
Eight level teaspoons of sugar
Stir the mixture till the sugar dissolves.

If you can manage a banana for the potassium, that's not a bad idea -- unless of course the novices have beaten you to all the bananas!

UnSelf-Care

Work has been intense - and I came home Thursday and Friday nights with every muscle in my back tied into knots. Barnacle Boy (the king of self-care) was kind. "Maybe you should lie on the sofa with your hot water bottle on your back?"

So today I tried for some self-care, being that all my guys were out for the day. The plan:

a yoga class
a haircut
a walk

The result?

yoga class was cancelled
haircut was cancelled due to mix up in appointment time
it's pouring, deluging, I mean sheets of rain

I did run some long standing errands and grocery shopped, and turned out to be available for a friend's desperate phone call (a house full of tween and teen birthday guests awaiting transportation to the latest Bond flick and she's stuck in traffic in the city). So I had a chance to practice a bit of unselfish care at least.

On Thursday I'll try again - I've got a room for the night at the old Jesuit novitiate in Wernersville!