If my daily writing has been characterized by anything, it’s been the theme of waking. Waking from our addictions, habits, and attachments. Waking to the Divine Love that might reorder our lives. All that writing has led to today, the day The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life releases!
Read MoreWe began this series on waking weeks ago, and by connecting the dots, we worked through the neuroscience of our coping mechanisms and sorted through some of our disordered attachments. We landed with a sort of literary flourish, discovered Jean Valjean waking to his own disordered attachments. As he woke, what did he see? The light of the Bishop, which is to say the light of Christ. By waking to that light, Valjean found new life.
Read MoreOn an Arkansas-bound flight from the Steel City, I cracked my copy of Les Miserables, Victor Hugo’s sprawling epic about both societal and personal revolution. Perhaps you know the story, but if not, allow me to provide some salient bullet points.
A generous and gracious Bishop welcomes a cruel and hardened criminal, Jean Valjean, into his home for the evening.
After dinner and a few hours of fitful sleep, Valjean wakes, and plagued with the unshakeable thought of stealing the house silver, creeps into the Bishop’s room where he acts on his larcenous impulse.
When captured by the police the following day, he is returned to the Bishop for potential prosecution.
The Bishop covers for Valjean, says that he’d given the ex-con the silver as an investment in his new life. “But Valjean,” he said, “why did you leave the silver candlesticks I gave you?”
Once released from police custody, the Bishop charges Valjean, “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I am withdrawing it from the dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God!”
On that day, the Bishop embodied a man of right attachments, one who handed his wordly possesions to a hardened criminal in hopes that it might save Valjean’s soul. What was the effect on Valjean, the man who’d been so attached to worldly possessions (along with anger, bitterness, and hatred of society) that he could not help but steal from a man of the cloth?
His conscious weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it, the Bishop and Jean Valjean. Anything less than the first would have failed to soften the second. …[A]s his reverie continued, the Bishop grew grander and more resplendent in his eyes; Jean Valjean shrank and faded away. At that moment, he was but a shadow. Suddenly, he disappeared. The Bishop alone remained.
He filled the whole soul of this wretched man with a magnificent radiance.
Invited into a new kind of life, a life attached to the Divine Love embodied by the Bishop, Valjean cut the attachments to his own lusts. Embracing this Divine Love, the old Valjean died and a man of light emerged.
Jean Valjean’s story shows what’s possible when we let go of our disordered attachments and accept the Divine Love freely offered. Our disordered selves fade and new possibilities emerge. This emergence is captured in a singular concept: Rebirth.
***TODAY’S TASK: ORDER AND FORWARD***
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launches in just a few short weeks and IT’S TIME TO ORDER YOUR COPY. Today:
1. Order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever good books are sold; and,
2. Forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Each attachment is a choice, a decision not to attach to something else. This begs the question: Will we hitch our horses to the things that matter less (work or money or booze or religion or whatever) or will we fix ourselves to the Divine Love?
It’s Advent, and last night, I made my way to a celebration service in Pittsburgh. (Yes, this is what I do for fun while on business.) There, the priest delivered the gospel reading for the day:
Jesus said to the crowds: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Matt. 11:28-30)
Gospel read, he gave a short charge. The yoke, he said, was a farm implement, one meant to attach two oxen so they could pull together in the same direction. Where one went the other would go. Where the older, stronger, wiser animal went, the younger would follow. And as the younger animal followed, wouldn’t he learn the way, the path? Yes. Why? Because the animals were joined together by a wooden yoke. There was no choice but to follow the leader.
The notion of attachment, it’s baked into the very teachings of Christ himself. In fact, it’s present in today’s gospel. Can you find it?
Attachment Exercise: Read today’s gospel. (Luke 1:26-38). In a journal or on a scrap piece of paper, describe the attachment themes you see in the scripture passage.
The woman and her child. This is beautiful attachment.
“What is economics?”
The professor dangled the question in the opening minutes of Introduction to Macroeconomics. Arms folded, face flat, he waited.
“The study of money?” a girl on the front row suggested.
“Yes, but not exactly.”
Another took a stab. “The understanding of financial systems?”
“In a sense but incomplete.”
Each potential answer was a clay pigeon. The professor was a dead shot. The question-answer carnage continued for what seemed like an awkward Freshman eternity (ten minutes?), and just when I thought I’d established proof of purgatory (pedagogical purgatory if nothing else), the good professor broke the cycle.
“Economics,” he said, “is the study of choices. The choice to produce, purchase, or consume. The choice not to produce, purchase, or consume.” He stepped back from the podium, removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. He rocked on from his heels to his toes. Did it again. Then he stared down the gunners on the front row who sat pens erect, waiting to note whatever sexy bit of knowledge he’d cued. “Every choice to do one thing is a choice not to do another. This is economics.”
The Economics of Attachment
This week we’ve been examining our attachments, the coping mechanisms, emotions, and thought processes we hitch our wagons to at any given point. Booze to quiet the pain or numb the anxiety. The woman (virtual or real) you bed down to quell that nagging sense of loneliness. The anger you nurse when your ex-husband, ex-boss, or ex-confidant comes to mind. The whatever. Whomever. That thing you fix your eyes on in lieu of the Divine Love.
You know that thing. Right?
Attachments—what are they but the embodiment of economic realities? Each decision toward one attachment is a decision away from another. (Or as Jesus himself said, “You can’t attach to both God and money or booze or anger or sex or whatever.”) Choosing to use substances or material stuff in times of pain or discomfort is a choice away from the Divine. (This is the economy of desire attachment.) Deciding to nurse anger, sadness, or anxiety without dealing with the underlying cause (perhaps with a therapist) is a choice not to seek healing. (This is the economy of emotional attachment.) Each choice to use any old thing to make yourself feel important, validated, or part of the crowd is a choice to avoid finding validation in the things that matter most. (This is the economy of identity attachment.)
Each choice dismisses the counter-choice.
Each yes has a corresponding no.
Each attachment to the wrong thing dismisses attachment to the right thing.
This is the economy of attachment.
***TODAY’S TASK: ORDER AND FORWARD***
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love--launches in just a few short weeks and IT’S TIME TO ORDER YOUR COPY. Today:
1. Order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever good books are sold; and,
2. Forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
This photo of City Liquor in downtown Fayetteville remains one of my favorites. It was taken on a blustery night last December with the Fujifilm x100s, a stellar little camera.
Attachments—we all have them. And as I wrote yesterday, when we get our attachments out of whack—money before work, work before wife, wife before spiritual health, anything before spiritual health—our disordered attachments drag us off our ultimate purpose. What is our ultimate purpose? For the person of faith, it might be said this way: “To seek God, to know him, to love him with all our strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.” (My adaptation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.) For the atheist or agnostic, it might be captured with some other maxim, but still, shouldn’t that purpose be bigger than ourselves?
Herein lies the first inkling of truth. We locate those things we’re prone to attach to in The Self, so let’s stretch beyond yesterday’s examination of the calendar and turn inward. Let’s identify our potential disordered attachments. Ask yourself:
What are the things I want, the things I use, and my default emotions when stress or pain comes calling?
Do I turn to sex, booze, or material instead of turning to God or my neighbor?
Do I allow my anger, sadness, or hypercriticism to keep me from connecting with God, my family, and my friends? (Yes, emotions can be disordered attachments, too.)
Do I attach to entertainment, to a good-and-proper Netflix binge or some mind-numbing cell phone video game?
Record your answers. Then come back tomorrow for a discussion on The Economy of Attachments.
***TODAY’S TASK: ORDER AND FORWARD***
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love--launches in just a few short weeks and IT’S TIME TO ORDER YOUR COPY. Today:
1. Order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever good books are sold; and,
2. Forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Too often I fail to invest in the things that matter (the greater things) because I’m too busy tending to the temporal things (the lesser things). And what happens when I invest in those lesser things instead of the greater things?
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