Gratitude: UR Doing it Wrong
Sometimes you guys tell me that I’m being too self deprecating when I say that I’m spiritually inept. Behold: I can’t even figure out how to be grateful.
The theme in my prayer life over the past few weeks has been gratitude. Over and over again I kept feeling prompted to work on cultivating an “attitude of gratitude,” so I jumped right in. And it was easy. As a modern American, living in a kind of luxury never before seen in human history, the words just rolled right off my lips.
“Thank you, Lord, for hot water! For abundant food! For easy access to medicine! For a cozy bed! For soft sheets! For my air conditioner! For a reliable vehicle! For my crock pot!…” and so on. It sounds like this should be a spiritually fruitful exercise, right? Nay. Here’s the problem:
If you were to ask me in an unguarded moment to complete the sentence “My joy comes from the ________,” my answer would probably be “air conditioner.” I’m not quite there with Brother Yun, who was so detached from worldly comforts that he could find great peace and delight in the Lord, even after being tortured and thrown in a metal box. If an evil regime hostile to Catholic bloggers were to overthrow the government tomorrow and start a reign of persecution, I’m not sure I would be ready to risk losing all my nice luxuries for the sake of the Gospel. When our refrigerator was broken for a few days, I was tempted by the sin of despair. In other words: I’m really attached to my material possessions.
(On a side note, this is why I’ve often thought that Gnosticism is a tempting heresy. In many ways it would be easier to cultivate an attitude of hating all material things than to find the balance of appreciating them but not over-valuing them.)
So, long story short, my recent efforts at gratitude seem to be making me more attached to the world. The other day I was giving thanks for feeling good during this third trimester of pregnancy…then I had a few days where I felt absolutely miserable. While I was feeling bad I found myself with a rich cornucopia of things to complain about, since I’d just recently put some serious thought into all the advantages of not feeling like an overtired, nauseated blob. When I attempted to unite my suffering with Christ’s and seek joy in the Lord despite my circumstances, I kept getting distracted by all those thoughts about how niiiiiiiiiiice it was to feel good. So I guess my question is:
For those of us who tend to be attached to worldly comforts anyway, how do you give thanks for them without becoming more attached to them?
And if you’d like to take a break from my mess and read something spiritually enriching, go check out this post by The Philosopher Mom where she answers the question “Am I happy?” despite facing postpartum depression, financial stress and chronic pain.
(Title shamelessly ripped off from Dorian’s recent guest post.)
Is it irresponsible to trust God too much?
Last week I was all inspired about the idea of placing full trust in God, and I shared a story about a missionary who learned to trust God in all things, down to getting a cake for a Bible study event. In response there were quite a number of corrective comments that raised interesting questions about what trusting God should look like. Some excerpts:
Magnificat said: It’s typical feel-good story and it makes me feel uneasy. Trusting God is something much, much more serious. These sweet stories may help little children; to others, they are almost (maybe it’s to harsh word, but I can’t help myself) idiotic.
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Rosemary said: I am very glad there are thoughtful comments on this topic, and that not everyone is being carried away with emotional enthusiasm…I’m uneasy with the way people can subtly pressure one another into greater and greater acts of imprudence, out of a desire to be/feel (seem?) more holy.
One could find oneself starting to make one’s decisions based on what would be a good story for one’s friends or one’s blog readers rather than what would make a better life for oneself and one’s family…It’s making that marshmallow-soft thrill of a “trusting feeling” into an idol.
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Honeybee said: Feel-good stories like these leave me feeling uneasy. There are all kinds of problems with this, not the least of which is the slippery slope of the “name it and claim it” bunch. What if the cake hadn’t arrived? I need trust and faith the most for those times, the hard times, the times when I’m feeling desolate and abandoned by God. Cake is nice, but I need to know and learn more deeply how to trust in suffering.
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Young Mom said: All this mentality did for me growing up, was to teach me to “shut up and trust God” shut up about abuse, shut up about dreams, shut up about everything and just believe that God will take care of it all. Well, he didn’t. I also have a hard time with the “god sent me a chocolate cake because I trust him so much” when people begging for their baby to survive the NICU get ignored.
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Michelle said: God can be bothered to send people cakes for tea parties, but can’t be bothered to stop natural disasters that kill thousands of people?
The discussion got me thinking about what the proper role of trust is in the Christian life. I’ve been mulling over thoughts like:
Surely authentic trust in God doesn’t mean that we should take no action ourselves…but does that mean we should always plan to do everything by our own powers?
When is it appropriate to do the work with our own capacities, and when is the time to sit back and let the Lord provide?
We know it’s inappropriate and insulting to approach the Lord with a “name it and claim it” attitude where we tell him our desires and expect him to jump to attention and make them materialize. But what, then, should we ask him for?
Obviously we’re not supposed to assume that God’s goal is to make us rich and comfortable, but does he never smooth the way to make things a little easier for us?
How could someone believe that the Lord will provide cake for a tea when he didn’t provide shelter and safety for the earthquake/tsunami victims in Japan?
I’ve read enough stories of God providing in near-miraculous ways for people who place radical trust in him that I believe that there’s something going on there. I believe that we can rely on God as a living, active force in our lives and count on him to provide for both large and small needs. I’ve seen it in my own life. But what, then, about all those questions?
I don’t have all the answers, but my initial thought is that appropriate trust in God hinges on having a proper understanding the following three things:
- Who God is
- What God wants
- What the meaning of life is
Who God is:
He’s not a wish-granting genie. He’s not a concierge. He’s not a living magic wand for us to wield to change the world according to our liking. He’s our heavenly Father, and he is perfect and all-knowing — in other words, his ideas are better than ours, and he knows what’s best for us more than we do. We can get way off track of we start to forget this.
What God wants:
I’ve heard many amazing stories of divine providence at work in people’s lives, and one common thread is that people who experience a lot of this crazy miraculous stuff live their lives according to what God wants, not what they want. I wrote about this more here, but these people spend a lot of time asking: “Lord, what do you want me to pray for?”
So, to use the example of the cake for the Bible study tea, I do believe that that was God at work, but I don’t believe that the cake appeared because the missionaries were in the mood for something sweet. Each day they spent hours in prayer seeking the Lord’s guidance. The idea to host the event didn’t come from their personal whims, but rather was an idea the Holy Spirit gave them in prayer — thus it’s no surprise that all the details just so happened to work out.
What the meaning of life is:
I think this is where it’s easiest for us Americans to go wrong, and where many “health and wealth gospel” proponent have gone wrong. Surrounded by incomparable wealth, luxury and access to medical care, it’s easy to start to think of our lives here on earth as our eternal destinations. The natural human inclination is to make the overarching goal of our lives to have the longest, healthiest, most comfortable life here on earth as possible. But that’s not how the saints have seen it, and it’s not how God sees it. Not that God wants us to suffer — suffering and death wasn’t even part of the world he originally planned for us — but, in a heaven-centered worldview, suffering is not the worst evil. Sin is.
And that’s another thing I’ve noticed about people who seem to have radical but healthy trust in God: they accept this. They trust that God will pave the way for them to get themselves and others on a path to heaven, and know that sometimes it will involve sending cake for a tea party…and other times it might involve suffering, or even an early death. But when they compare that prospect to an eternity of ecstatic peace, it doesn’t seem like such a bad proposition.
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So when I ponder placing radical trust in God in my own life, I think of deepening my understanding of those three concepts as part of the package, an absolute requirement for striking the balance between prudence and abandonment to God. But what do you think? What is the proper role of trust in the Christian life? Is it possible to trust God too much?
Trust School
I’m reading the astoundingly good book God’s Smuggler, which is the memoir of a Dutch Protestant missionary who smuggled Bibles behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. At its core, the book is all about trusting God. On almost every page there is some example of how God comes through when we place 100% of our trust in him and hold nothing back.
One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was when the author, Andrew van der Bijl (a.k.a. Brother Andrew), talks about a unique type of missionary school he attended in Scotland. As Brother Andrew explains, this school didn’t set up traditional church missions: they didn’t wait until they had money or even had sources of funds secured in order to start a mission. “If they thought God wanted a man in a certain place, they sent him there and trusted God to worry about the details,” he writes.
At the two-year school the students studied theology, homiletics, world religion, linguistics, as well as practical skills that could aid native people in need, like brick laying, plumbing, building huts out of palm fronds and crafting mud jars that can hold water. But here’s where it gets interesting: they were also given a crash course in trust.
Students were sent out on several local missions in which they’d learn to rely on God’s providence in real ways. They were given a one-pound bank note and told to go on a missionary tour through other areas of Scotland. They’d have to pay their own transportation, lodging, and food, as well as any expenses related to mission work such as event refreshments and location rental for meetings. And there’s more: they were not allowed to ask for collections or even mention money at their prayer services or at any other time. Though they were allowed to accept gifts, they could not specifically ask anyone for anything. And they had to pay back the pound note at the end of the trip.
The stories of how God provided for their missionary work are just astounding. Here’s one of my favorites:
Brother Andrew and his friends had had a successful meeting with some young people in Edinburgh, and they suddenly felt prompted to invite them to a tea party the next day, despite the fact that they had none of the materials people would expect for a proper tea (cake, bread, butter, cups…even the tea itself) and they had no money. Without being asked, the invitees volunteered to bring almost all of the ingredients, down to the plates and cups. But Brother Andrew and the other missionaries still didn’t have cake, an absolute requirement for a tea party in Scotland. He recounts what happened next:
That night in our evening prayer time, we put the matter before God. “Lord, we’ve got ourselves into a spot. From somewhere we’ve got to get a cake. Will you help us?” [...]
Morning arrived. We half expected a heavenly messenger to come to our door bearing a cake. But no one came. The morning mail arrived. We ripped open the two letters, hoping for money. There was none. A woman from a nearby church came by to see if she could help. “Cake,” was on the tip of all our tongues, but we swallowed the word and shook our heads.
“Everything,” we assured her, “is in God’s hands.”
The tea had been announced for four o’clock in the afternoon. At three the tables were set, but we still had no cake. Three-thirty came. We put on water to boil. Three-forty-five.
And then the doorbell rang.
All of us together ran to the big front entrance, and there was the postman. In his hand was a large box.
“Hello, lads,” said the postman. “Got something for you that feels like a food package.” He handed the box to one of the boys. “The delivery day is over, actually,” he said, “but I hate to leave a perishable package overnight.”
We thanked him profusely, and the minute he closed the door the boy solemnly handed me the box. “It’s for you, Andrew. From a Mrs. William Hopkins in London.”
I took the package and carefully unwrapped it. Off came the twine. Off came the brown outside paper. Inside, there was no note — only a large white box. Deep in my soul I knew that I could afford the drama of lifting the lid slowly. As I did, there, in perfect condition, to be admired by five sets of wondering eyes, was an enormous, glistening, moist, chocolate cake.
Neat, huh? And that’s one of the less amazing stories at Providence at work for Brother Andrew and the other missionaries — I chose this one because I didn’t want to spoil any of the real jaw droppers for those of you who plan to read the book (which is everyone, I hope!)
While he was still at the missionary school, Brother Andrew had begun to worry about having enough tuition money to get to graduation, and this brought him to a turning point in his relationship with God. While taking a long walk one night, he pondered his stress about where the funds would come from for him to do this work he was sure God wanted him to do. And he realized:
The question was not one of money at all. What I was worried about was a relationship.
At the chocolate factory [where he worked before going to missionary school], I trusted Mr. Ringers to pay me in full and on time. Surely I said to myself, if an ordinary factory worker could be financially secure, so could one of God’s workers.
I turned through the gate at the school. Above me was the reminder “Have Faith in God.”
That was it! It wasn’t that I needed the security of a certain amount of money, it was that I needed the security of a relationship.
I walked up the crunchy pebblewalk feeling more and more certain that I was on the verge of something exciting. The school was asleep and quiet. I tiptoed upstairs and sat by the bedroom window looking out over Glasgow. If I were to give my life as a servant of the King, I had to know that King. What was He like? In what way could I trust him? In the same way I trusted a set of impersonal laws? Or could I trust him as a living leader, as a very present commander in battle? The question was central. Because if He were a King in name only, I would rather go back to the chocolate factory. I would remain a Christian, but I would know that my religion was only a set of principles, excellent and to be followed, but hardly demanding devotion.
Suppose on the other hand that I were to discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He communicated and cared and loved and led. That was something quite different. That was the kind of King I would follow into any battle.
And that, in essence, is what Brother Andrew learned in all these exercises of trust he went through at his missionary school: that God is not a King in name only. He is a present leader, here among us, leading each of us in battle at each moment. Once Brother Andrew internalized this truth, his life was never the same again, and he set off on a mission that would change the lives of countless people across the world.
As I reflect on this idea of trusting God as an active, involved leader rather than a set of impersonal principles, I keep thinking, “I need to go to Trust School!” I think it would be good for someone like me to have an experience like Brother Andrew’s, where I was forced to stop trying to control every single thing and actually put real trust in the Lord. Naturally, I keep fixating on the idea of spending a week at some faraway “trust bootcamp,” but I know that that’s just me avoiding taking real action again. Something tells me that I’m already in Trust School, but I’ve been sleeping through the classes.
So how do I wake up to a more clear understanding of God as a real leader, whom I can trust with matters both large and small? That’s the question that’s been fascinating me lately, one that I’ll probably be writing about more. But meanwhile, what do you think? How can we transform daily life into Trust School?
Right intention vs. simple intention
The other day I was re-skimming one of my favorite books, The New Wine of Dominican Spirituality by Paul Murray, OP. I’d marked tons of passages throughout the book with stars and brackets, but as I went through it again, one in particular caught my attention. Murray writes:
[C]onsidering God not so much as an ‘object’ outside of ourselves, for whose greater glory we undertake all our different works, but rather as a ‘subject’ alive within and around us, a divine Presence, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being,’ is a notion explored in No Man is an Island by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. Inspired — Merton tells us — by something he read in the work of Johannes Tauler, the medieval Dominican mystic and preacher, he makes a distinction between two kinds of intention, a right intention and a simple intention. When we have a right intention, Merton says, ‘we seek to do God’s will’ but ‘we consider the work and ourselves apart from God and outside of Him.’ But ‘when we have a simple intention, we…do all that we do not only for God but, so to speak, in Him. We are more aware of Him who works in us than of ourselves or of our work.’
Interesting. Now, such a seemingly esoteric distinction is further into the deep end of the theological swimming pool than I normally dare to wade. But this idea of right intention vs. simple intention really jumped out at me as something I should think more about.
Here’s an example to highlight how I’ve come to understand the difference between these two concepts:
Let’s say I’m sitting here at my desk, and I glance out the window to see my neighbor leaning on crutches to get from her car to her house. That reminds me that she just had surgery on her ankle, and I heard she’ll have to be off her feet for a few weeks.
In the mindset of RIGHT INTENTION…I might think, “I see that my neighbor is in need! I’ll go over there and tell her I’ll bring her dinner tomorrow night, as well as twice a week for the next couple of weeks.” Because I have analyzed the situation, and determined that this is the right thing to do.
In the mindset of SIMPLE INTENTION…it would be less calculated. I would think, “I see that my neighbor is in need!” Then I’d simply rise from my seat, walk out the front door, consciously inviting God to be in this moment with me. I’d be carried along by love rather than by any specific goal. I wouldn’t have a plan for what I’d say when I encountered her, which would leave me open to let the Spirit move me in the moment.
Who knows, maybe she really doesn’t need or want meals, but is desperate for someone to walk her dog, or vacuum her living room. And if I went over with the more rigid, right intention mentality, I could miss all of that because I was so focused on executing on this plan I have for doing the right thing.
This is definitely my default; I live mostly in this right intention frame of mind. As Fr. Murray points out, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not that the right intention mindset is all bad and the simple intention one is all good; both can be paths to holiness. But understanding that these two different approaches exist — and having their distinctions so clearly articulated — has been helpful to me.
I tend to be overly analytical, so I’ve been trying to relax into a more simple intention mindset. I think that this is the perfect thing to work on during Advent, a season when it’s tempting to get completely overwhelmed by right-intentioned activities that we’re trying to do for God. Because, as Thomas Merton and Fr. Murray point out, to adopt a mindset of only simple intentions is to shift from focusing on the work we’re doing for God, to focusing simply on God himself.