Are You Living a Fragmented Li(f)e?
Jean Vanier’s Double Life: A Story of Fragmentation
If you’re involved in faith circles, especially those of the Chrisitan variety, you might have heard the news from two weeks ago. Jean Vanier—the founder of L’Arche, a community that served those with special needs—was living a double life. According to reports from his own organization, Vanier used his position and status to sexually abuse no less than six women, some of whom were nuns.
A man some considered a surefire Saint (as in, canonizable by the Pope) had dark secrets, which should surprise approximately no one these days. But in reading and watching YouTube videos on the revelations, I ran across a quote from a letter written to Vanier by Catherine Doherty. Doherty was a fellow justice worker and the founder of Madonna House, an organization serving the poor and marginalized. In 1974, she saw the cracks forming in Vanier’s life. She wrote:
“Please pray for me because I think I should not write this letter; yet here I am writing it. I worry about your fragmentation — another stupid word that doesn’t apply to you at all, my very dear. How can one worry about the fragmentation of a saint, at least one who is on the way to sanctity like you.”*
The Steep Cost of Fragmentation
Fragmentation. It’s a word conjuring images of shattered glass and broken homes. It’s a word used to describe breaking things, and this was the word Doherty used to describe her friend, though there is no indication she knew how deep that fragmentation went. But as I read that quote, I considered my own life. Are there fragmented areas of my own life, areas I’d rather avoid, hide, or otherwise dismiss?
This week, I’d like to delve deeper into the fragmented li(f)e. (See what I did there?) I’m inviting you along for the ride. Begin today with a simple examination.
Life Examined
Is there some area of your life you’d rather avoid, hide, or otherwise dismiss?
When examining the possibility of fragmentation, don’t limit your examination to the more negative aspects. Ask yourself: Is there some gift, talent, or desire I’m hiding away?
*Follow this link for the original source of the Doherty letter.
A Tool for Defragmenting
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
A Piece of Art That Will Change Your Day
Last week, we explored beauty and art, how it shapes and molds the world around us. This weekend, I experienced the spiritual and emotional alchemical power of art firsthand. At a church in Rogers, Arkansas, Amber and I stumbled across a sculpture.*
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If Beauty Can Save the World
If beauty can save the world, where are you finding beauty? Are you even looking?
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Birdsong: A Poem
Today’s post is a bit late. Apologies for the delay, but sometimes the day runs wild like horses in Montana.
Maybe beauty can save the world. Maybe it can’t. Whatever the case, the video I shared this week proves the truth: Beauty can break rocks. Today, enjoy a poem inspired by this week’s previous video.
Birdsong
In the church of St. Simon The Tanner,
the guardian of the Kura River,
a choir collected voices as
a passing of peace.
The West sent their Pope,
the East a black-haired girl,
young as the Virgin Mary,
small as a baby bird
until she sang.
Over the drones of her elders
she wailed, throat full of notes,
which rose and fell like
the breaths between sobs.
Her elder, a bearded man,
sang his offering too
and all measured it
an act of power meets power.
But the girl,
it is said by some,
was the water
that broke the Rock.
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
How Beauty is Saving a Friend
Over coffee, we cut loose on the stuff of life: the news; marriage; children; art; the journey into or out of faith as the case may be. We talked about the creeping despair in America, too, how I’d had two acquaintances who’d passed in the last 14 days, perhaps by their own hands. “Precarity,” he said, “is baked into everything these days: the economy; the ways we make money as freelancers; the family; life.”
I rolled his statement over again, played it back in my head. Precarity. That’s an apt way to put it.
He looked at his camera (a camera that he loves and I covet), then said, “This thing might have saved my life.” The pursuit of art opened his eyes to the beautiful stuff of the world, to the people staring down the barrel of his lens. He collects those people, those places, those tiny snapshots of life and considers them, smiles at them, sometimes posts them on Instagram for others. It’s this art that serves as a hedge against his own despair, against the precarity that is the genesis of that despair.
Can beauty save the world as St. John Paul II and Dostoyevsky’s idiot claimed? Maybe not. But it can save a middle-aged man or two. And these days, that’s enough for me.
Life Examined: Curating Beauty
Are you practicing your own artistic curation somewhere? Are you resisting despair through beauty? I create photography (and sometimes share it online).
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Ash Wednesday: A Pause to Reflect
This week, I’ve been writing about backfilling your time with beauty. I’m taking a brief break, though, to remind you that today is Ash Wednesday, a day in the Christian tradition to remember your mortality and look forward to resurrection. Today, I’ll make my way to service and the priest will remind me:
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
I’m inviting you to stop, reflect, and remember. You came from dust and are returning to it. How will you make the most of living dust days?
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Email readers, you’ll want to follow this link to watch this video.
How Beauty Brings Power to Tears
Break with technology and backfill the time with beauty—that’s the call of the week.
Yesterday, while traveling, I searched for beauty, and it came in the form of an email from my friend and fellow-writer, Lore Ferguson Wilbert. It was an email filled with links, each meant to pull the reader into a more sensory experience. She wrote:
To help you engage all your senses (which is part of waking up), I listened to this four-minute masterpiece this morning and by the end was gulping back tears. The Sound of Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago.
I lost myself in the haunting and holy beauty of the clip, and after those four minutes were over, I recalled a video I’d seen years ago. In it, the Holy Father sat in a Tbilisi church as an Orthodox choir sang Psalm 53 over him. The drones from that choir are enough to bring you to your knees, but when the child lifts her voice in lament, spirits bend low, listening.
If Dostoyevsky and John Paul II are right, if beauty can save the world, this music might be salvific.
Life Examined: The Search for Beauty
Where did you find beauty yesterday? If you didn’t, did you look?
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Let Beauty Be Your Distraction, Your Reprieve
Up before dawn. Cranking out a report. Sending three emails. Locking in the day’s tasks. Orienting myself to the work. All before prayer or meditation. This was my morning.
Today is already burning at both ends, and if you live in this modern miracle of Western civilization (which is to say if you are not a ghost), your day might be too. Always burning, always on fire. But perpetual fire burns things to the ground, and a life of constant conflagration isn’t sustainable.
Today, take a break from this endless burn. How? Take a break, and instead of turning to distraction (to social media, for instance), turn to beauty. Carve out ten minutes and:
play a beautiful piece of music, closing your eyes as you listen;
read a poem, perhaps “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke;
look for art in the world around you, perhaps on the side of a building or an office wall;
get into nature and find something astounding.
“Beauty will save the world,” Dostoyevsky and St. John Paul II. And as I look at my own burning life and the lives of those burning around me, I suspect we could all use a little saving. Today, find a little beauty and cherish it.
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
From Digital Addiction to Analog Resistance: Find Something Beautiful
This week, I’ve thrown down a challenge: Cut your screen time down, see how you feel. But what good is the practice if you don’t backfill it with something meaningful? Today, spend some of the time you’d normally scroll on your cell phone pondering the good, beautiful, or true. Take a photograph. Write a poem. Read a book. Have a cup of joe with a friend. Resist the digital. Do something analog.
That’s all for this week. Come back next week and let’s keep living the examined life.
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
They're Changing Your Brain: The Unintended Consequences of Our Machines
Read my continuing a series on our increasing attachment to smartphones.
I’m working on a longer piece, a piece on the unintended consequences of our relationship with technology. (Look for it in my Newsletter on March 1.) To be clear, I’m not some Skyfall Chicken Little, but research is beginning to catch up with the neurological effects of modernity’s endless tryst with innovation. Particularly, smartphone innovation and the resulting addiction. In an article published by the Daily Mail yesterday, it was reported:
German researchers examined 48 participants using the MRI images — 22 with smartphone addiction and 26 non-addicts.
Writing in the study, published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, the researchers write: “Compared to controls, individuals with smartphone addiction showed lower gray matter volume in left anterior insula, inferior temporal and parahippocampal cortex.”
Decreased grey matter in one of these regions, the insula, has previously been linked to substance addiction.
What does the region of the brain known as the insulae do? In a piece for the New York Times, Sandra Blakeslee writes:
“[Neurologists] say it is the wellspring of social emotions, things like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement. It helps give rise to moral intuition, empathy and the capacity to respond emotionally to music.
If this is the case, perhaps our collective decrease in insula gray matter explains society’s current lack of empathy, our incessant online bickering, our inability to point to the beauty in the world around us. And yes, this sounds like a conclusory statement, but spend ten minutes on Twitter. Is it too far-fetched a conclusion?
Life Examined: Do a Little Research
Today, make your way to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. (Yes, I know what I’m asking you to do.)
How long does it take to find a post that fires you up, makes you angry, or causes you to feel depressed or lonely? Less than three minutes?
Ask yourself whether the resulting emotions are worth the time you spend on the platform.
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Social Media Brings The Fix, But What Else Does it Bring?
Since noticing my screen time crossed the 4 hour-per-day threshold, I’ve been more mindful. Trying to reduce it by no less than an hour-per-day, I’ve set new parameters. How am I doing? Yesterday , I spent 2:16 minutes on my phone, most of which was on account of scheduling meetings via text. I’d say that’s progress.
Yesterday, I popped on to social media for a quick spit, thought I’d see what folks were cursing on any given Tuesday. Before I knew it, I’d thrown 8 minutes of my screen time into the dumpster fire of Twitter and watched it burn. I felt the fire rising as I read their tweets—the Southern Baptist professor whose detractors lambaste her because she’s a woman; the Midwestern man who’s lost his sense of God; the political pundits who cannot fathom following another day of this presidency. Every base emotion was triggered in the span of those six minutes, but when I escaped that vortex I felt a dark sadness seeping in.
In The Book of Waking Up, I wrote this:
What is social media but technological heroin? It’s a distracting hook, an attention manipulator, a time suck. It’s equal parts feast, famine, fear, ego, and political dumpster fire, and the content… is created by the people for the people. It’s our method of mass communication, our way to be heard, our method of connecting with people when we’re alone. This centering of our own message, opinion, need, whatever—doesn’t it etch a groove?
No matter how much I swear it off, I always end up back on the social-media sauce. Why? When I’m alone, my brain plays the groove in the record: Media brings the fix. (#89. Groove 5: Social Consumption)
There are very simple scientific reasons we believe this message, reasons I wrestle onto the page in The Book of Waking Up. But instead of retreading those reasons here, I’ll simply ask: Do you feel the uncontrollable pull to social media, to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook? If so, ask yourself Why? More importantly, ask yourself, After a good social media binge, how do I feel? Are you angry, sad, full of despair or regret? If so, why do you keep going back to that poisoned well?*
*This is not to say that all social media is bad. I use it and will continue to, just with eyes opened much wider.
Life Examined: Social Media Parameters
Today, take a look at your screen time statistics. How much time do you spend each day on social media?
What does social media do for you? How does it make you feel? Answer these questions honestly.
Write down some parameters for your social media use (examples: no social media during work hours; less than thirty minutes of social media a day; unfollow accounts that drive your blood pressure to Katie-call-the-ambulance levels.)
Visit my thread on smartphone addiction and throw down your two cents.
Grab a Copy and Wake Up
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.