This Ignatian Life

When I was in kindergarten I lost my first tooth ever. It happened in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese and I was blubbery mess, convinced that the tooth fairy would not buy my story. After crying and carrying on in true over dramatic six year-old fashion, I am told that I said these words to the manager that night: “There has been a disaster.” As it turns out, the tooth fairy accepts handwritten explanations from managers on duty—crisis averted.

Twenty some years later and loss continues to tantalize me, shoving its ugly nose into very real attempts to plan, to organize and make sense of the world. But rather than remain victimized by this all too familiar force-of-loss, I’ve come to think of losing as an art, an art that I am very skilled at. I am constantly “at a loss” throughout my day—metro card, the time, my thought process. And I am especially gifted at losing my keys. The early twentieth century poet Elizabeth Bishop writes about the measured process of losing in her poem “One Art.”

“One Art”

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing further, losing faster:
places, and names and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write It!) like disaster.

Count your loses— on fingers, with tears, in curse words. Measure what’s now missing, maybe gone forever—gone from sight, from feeling. And if you can, in a joking voice, laugh at the loss and tell it—you are no disaster.

Then there are those other kinds of losses. What do we do about the losses that cannot simply be laughed off with self-deprecating humor, loss that cannot be consoled with a poem, loss that isn’t somewhat easily consoled?

Lost lives. Lost loves. Lost causes. Loss of innocence.

I admit that I’ve had more losses in these categories than I care to remember. And I also admit that in response to too many of these losses, faith was not my immediate response. Life dangles the temptations of quick-fix responses to the most profound hardship—and there lies the disaster. The loss itself isn’t the disaster, but the response to the loss is where the catastrophe lurks. Enter faith.

Faith is what we turn to; what we must turn to in order to weather the significant losses of life. And when I say faith, I mean much more than going to church for a quick-fix, more than swiftly reaching out for Psalm 23, more than hastily carrying yourself to the nearest confessional to own up to your part in the losing process. The faith that I am referring to is a slow faith. Slow faith means sitting down with a trusted friend, a mentor and examining, over time, how you’ve gotten to this point and how God is trying to help you through it. Slow faith means regular quiet time with your God to feel through the loss and grieve together. Slow faith means paying attention to the people, the places, the things that God has placed into your life very intentionally to inspire, encourage and even entertain. Slow faith will lead you away from disaster.

Loss. With patience, with humor, with faith we can be masters.

Photo: “letting go” by “janGlas” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

I was recently proctoring the ACT college entrance exam to New York City public school  juniors and seniors in a small, white-walled room with no windows (thanks to construction going on around the building’s perimeter that meant all four windows were encased in a bubble-wrap-like material.) The desks were in single file roles exactly 5’ apart from one another in all directions and students sat quiet, stiff and seemingly dead to the world     listening to me drone on with the nittiest of the griddiest directions.

While 19 students were supposed to be lined up at the door at 7:30 am on a Saturday to show admissions offices just what they are made of, only 4 not-so-eager troopers actually pulled through and were sitting in front of me. Hour one rolled into hour two and two into three, four—calculators, sharpened pencils, 5 minute warnings, tissue distribution, and a whole lot of silence, unspoken tiredness and staring at the wall. And on the wall…

The only decoration in the entire testing room was a series of 7 posters entitled “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.” Each poster detailed in words and in illustrations what a teen must do in order to be successful, exceptional, presumably thriving and triumphant. Not allowed to do anything but stand and stare at the environment around me, I spent a lot of time thinking about these 7 keys to success and how they might relate to not just college-bound teenagers, but Catholics as well who are trying to be “highly effective.”

Sean Covey and his dad, Stephen Covey, coined the phrase “7 Habits of Highly Effective (insert age level here)” and the posters that surrounded me and the 4 test-takers included:

1) Be Proactive
2) Start with the End in Mind
3) Put First Things First
4) Think Win-Win
5) Seek First to Understand then to be Understood
6) Synergize
7) Sharpen the Saw

The habits are not mandates, or rules, or Commandments, but instead recommendations for attitudinal and behavioral modifications that will lead to success. I’ll admit, at first, I thought the list was overwhelmingly uncomplicated. “Be Proactive” by showing up to your ACT test on time, “Start with the End in Mind” by realizing that you need a good score on the test in order to get into college and you should therefore, put “First Things First” and pick your sleepy head off your desk and actively engage in the test in front of you. However, when I began making the analogy to “Highly Effective Catholics” this seemingly uncomplicated list got a little more convoluted and complex.

Q. As a successful Catholic, how do we ensure that we are being “Proactive?” A. Daily prayer, weekly mass, creating opportunities to engage in our faith—doing service, talking with others. And another question…Q. What is “The End in Mind” that we, as Catholics, are starting with? A. The Kingdom! As I started going down the list, with the analogy in my head, I developed more sympathy for the 15 no-shows. How often do I, as a Catholic, lack in my “Proactiveness” or in my ability to “Seek First to Understand Then to be Understood?” Let’s just say that too often, I find myself demanding things of God rather than patiently listening for his words or not showing up for that daily moment of prayer like the students missing from my ACT room. Perhaps we have more in common than my original highly judgmental impression of their absence suggested.

As the final minutes ticked by on the official ACT clock, I realized just how hard it was going to be to “eat my words” and my “judgments,” leaving the room with the intention of becoming a “More Highly Effective Catholic.” First things first—now I’ve written down my analogy and am off to discover in what other ways I can be more effective, as a person of faith.

Photo: “Proactive” by “Jonathan Assink” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Recently, as I was teaching a group of ninth graders, the noise level in the room rose to an uncomfortable level. It was last period of the day on a Friday and the room was saturated with excitement for the weekend. Being that I am relatively new on the scene of high school teaching, my heart still begins to race when cracks appear in my classroom management. My heart accelerating with the noise level, I not only threw the class off-guard, but myself as well, with the words: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”Twelve words spoken without even raising my voice caused all thirty students who were at various levels of attentiveness to snap to attention; snap their mouths shut and snap their eyes to the front of the room. I wish I had given more careful thought to what I was going to say next after such an effective command. There we all were, thirty-one of us, waiting for someone to break the now oppressive silence. One of the “talkers” in the back of the room had the honors of greeting the newfound stillness with “Wow.”

“Wow” was right. While I don’t want to make a habit of spouting tidbits of internalized prayer, I was amazed at the effect it had. But perhaps even more noteworthy was my quick turn to God in a moment of stress and panic.

A friend of mine calls these automatic, almost reflex-like reaching out to God moments “panic prayers.” When you are running late to work and your mind is racing with the “What ifs” of your delayed arrival, you might interrupt your reeling thoughts with, “Please, God, let the number 7 train be waiting at the platform when I get there.” When driving through treacherous weather— thunderstorms with sheets of rain, tornados on the horizon, bits of blasting hail hitting your car—gripping the steering wheel and focusing eyes more intently on the road, I imagine I’m not the only one who will burst out an “Our Father” or ask more informally, “Jesus! Help!”

So what’s the deal with panic prayers? Are they legit? Should we be using them, relying on them in the freakishly distressing moments of life? Or, are they simply expressions of not carefully thought-out, almost irreverent demands, shouted in life moments when self-control has dwindled? Answer? Legit. At least, I think so. Each of the above examples: teaching in the classroom, commuting to work, and driving in the car lend itself more often to sincere, intentional prayer than it does this quickened, fright-filled kind. As long as I am remembering to pray with and for my students at the beginning of class when the environment is calm and relaxed, I don’t think God so much minds the occasional panic prayer in moments of management crisis. Likewise, the subway can be the perfect place to insert daily prayer time that includes praying for the sleepy people around you who are hiding behind newspapers, plugged into ipods and anxiously checking their watches with a tapping foot. Similarly, if sitting behind the steering wheel is a recurring location of yours why not make it the moment for scheduled time with God? If we can say that we are honestly making an effort in these various settings throughout our day to actively include God, talk to God and practice routine prayer, then the moments of “panic prayer” seem a little more grounded, legitimate and justifiable. I once had a teacher tell me, “If you’re going to panic, panic constructively.” Bring on the panic prayers, albeit sparingly and grounded in the relaxed routine of self-control.

Photo: “by Jami” by “Sara!” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)