A Countermove to Diving Down

I just finished reading Walter J. Ciszek's story of being a priest in Soviet prisons and Siberian labor camps for twenty-three years. The book is With God in Russia, and I highly recommend it. A real page turner and an inspiration to those of us tempted to falter in our faith or our humanity.

At one point Ciszek mentions that when he was moved to a place with better conditions--meaning that they weren't starving, were able to stay somewhat warm, and could sleep sometimes--other problems emerged. People who were not constantly obsessed with finding food and avoiding frostbite now had the luxury of reflecting on their situation. Thus there was a higher incidence of emotional disturbance, depression, and misbehavior. I guess when you are just trying to survive, you have no resources for experiencing life at any other level.

I often say that I have First-World problems. My "bad" day involves a messed-up train schedule or a blossoming sinus infection or a dangerously low bank balance. I have good problems such as writer's block or a boring workday. Sometimes I think that I get depressed because I have the luxury of sitting around and thinking about myself too much. Clinical depression is a condition of physiological as well as psychological imbalance, and I respect the seriousness of it. I'm just not at all sure that my frequent (some days I would say constant) state of depression is really that. It can be a dangerous thing to go deep into one's life. Perhaps some days it's better to live in an intentionally shallow and appetite-driven way.

My work life for just about all of my adult life has revolved around people's spiritual welfare. If I was not teaching ESL in a mission school overseas I was trying to help teenagers appreciate the art and joy of music. Since those early days, my only job has been editing books for the religion market. Is it healthy to be in that diving-down-into-the-soul place all the time? Honestly, it can become a weariness to think about divine life day in and day out. No wonder I've taken up knitting and watching too much television. I would probably drink more except that alcoholic intake exceeding two drinks makes me sick, puts me to sleep, and depresses me further still. I have used food to break up the monotony of trying to live with meaning and purpose, but that adds pounds to my hips and thighs, and let's not even go to the body-image region of depressive episodes.

While complaining about the constant badgering of a purposeful life, I know that I wouldn't last five minutes in a life that did not dive regularly into that deep-down inner place of eternal something-or-other. I'm just not built for a trivial sort of existence, even when I act, speak, and think in trivial ways. Temperament-wise, I have always needed to reflect and communicate.

Life circumstances have also pushed me toward the more contemplative life. There were no babies and small children to distract me for days at a time and prevent prayer or spiritual reading and other interior activities. I married an introvert, which makes for a comfortable life when you, yourself, are an introvert, but it also enables some of the introvert's less healthy habits, such as sitting at home rather than being engaged with life "out there" at least sometimes. We are polite introverts, so we do ask each other, "How are you?" and mean it, but of course we never press for an answer, and there are times when you need an extravert in the room to yank you into a standing position and interrogate you until you finally say out loud what's really going on in that damned deep-down region of meaning.

The mystics tell us that everything we're looking for is already here, and much of the time "here" means that personal interior place where God speaks and you listen, where you look and God hides. But it's a frustrating, devastating day when you dwell in that interior place of wonder and divine wisdom and discover that there's a lot of emptiness in there, too, And it can be an echo chamber that blasts your own stupid thoughts back to you. The deep-down place isn't enough. In fact, sometimes it's too much.

So here's the mystery. Without the diving-down practices of reflection, contemplation, prayer, and conversation, life is reduced to finding the food and staying warm. But it seems that the diving down needs a countermove, and that countermove should probably be a practice, something we do regularly. How do we break the surface? What does a good eruption look like--you know, the kind of bursting forth that releases the pent-up energies of prayer and love?

You Look Like Your Mother!

In recent years, various people have told me, with great enthusiasm, how much I look like my mother. It's taken me awhile to settle into this fact. When I was a child, everyone agreed that I looked just like Dad, so I became accustomed to thinking of myself in that way. Now there's a new reality to which I must adjust, and it's been interesting to observe my own reaction to this.

Mom has always looked young for her years, and she's always been attractive. I've never considered myself attractive, just passable, and so I did not consider that I bore any resemblance to my mother. Now that she's in her seventies and looks older--although still attractive, in my opinion--when people say I look like her, I don't know if they're noticing my signs of aging or if I do in fact have some of her innate characteristics. There are moments when I'm quite proud to be seen as resembling her. But other moments, not so much. Why is that?

I know that I'm not the only woman to feel uneasy about being identified closely with her mother. It goes much deeper than looks. A friend and I were talking about how we have tended to wear clothes like those our mothers wear, and how embarrassed we are when we realize this, especially if someone else points it out. On Mom's recent visit, I found myself attentive to her gestures or the way she placed her arms across her lap, and I checked my own gestures and positioning to see if I mirrored her; at times I did. I would adjust immediately, all the while asking myself, Why does this even bother me?

And how many of us have been somewhat horrified to hear, coming out of our mouths, the phrases, verbatim, that we used to hear our mothers say?

Perhaps a daughter is especially and naturally critical of her mother, who is her first model of womanhood. As children we accept that model without question. But when we become older and attach ourselves to peer groups, one of the first people to suffer our newly formed judgments is Mom. We are desperate to fit in, and Mom represents our earlier forms, our baby-ness and our dependence. We may feel very close to Mom, but we also feel obligated to put distance in that relationship; otherwise, how can we become ourselves?

Well, I'm fifty-six years old now; I don't think Mom is going to embarrass me in front of my friends. Yet, I'm not sure I want to look like her. Maybe I'm afraid that if outward appearance is any indication, I will become like her in other ways, too. That wouldn't be a bad thing, because Mom's a wonderful person. But the insecure adolescent who still lives inside me wants to be her own person. The need to be special takes a lifetime to die, I guess.

And is it possible that my life is so easily predetermined and predictable, that so much of what I do and say and believe is the result of my years in close proximity to this particular adult? Do I fear that, thanks to my mother, my father, and others, my fate was decided long ago and I don't really determine much about who I am? Can people look at Mom and know immediately what I will be like in a few years?

Another possibility: seeing my mother age reminds me that I, too, will grow old if I don't die first. I cannot avoid this progression any more than I can avoid the physical resemblance.

I made sure Jim took this photo while Mom was visiting last week. Despite my ambivalence about looking like my mother, I want everyone to see.