The more I think about it, the more it seems time is our most valuable commodity. How a person spends his time is ultimately definitive for him, demonstrating what he finds most important in life. It's trite, but true, that you never get any of your spent time back. Once your day is gone, it's gone and never coming back.
When it comes to relationships, the value of time is even more of a stark reality. To date someone is to state, by your actions, that you find the other person worth spending time on, that it is worth investing your time into a relationship with that person. Though money may come into it, the ultimate chance you're taking is with your most valuable resource: time.
Put that way, it seems like quite a risk, doesn't it? You might spend time pursuing someone who doesn't, in the end, fit in with your life. On the other hand, you can never know if a potential relationship will work without, well, actualizing it: spending time with the other person. The moment you realize that spending time with the person is not how you want to use your time is the moment you know to end the relationship.
Speaking of the ends of relationships, there's a saying that time heals all wounds. I think this saying is misleading. What you choose to do with your time may or may not contribute toward healing. Letting time pass can certainly be a way of getting distance, but relying on time itself to do some magical healing work is silly. To heal wounds requires acceptance, reflection, prayer, and counsel--and investing time into these actions is a worthy goal. Time on its own, however, is just a vessel.
It's easy enough to say, unthinkingly, that we simply "don't have time" for everything we need to do. Maybe there's even some truth to that statement. If our time is so limited, how can we possibly hope to accomplish all the goals that seem to be within reach, to be appropriate for us? The best time-management advice I have seen says that the solution is to prioritize: to make the truly important things the ones that we first spend our time on, and then let the less-important things shake themselves out. To do that requires a deliberation on what we find most important and what our priorities truly are, rather than a reactive mode of action that has us spending time based on habit or urgency. It's difficult. I prefer to think, though, that we will always have enough time. We have time to be happy, to pray and be with God, to love and be loved, to work hard and take our rest.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Accolades
Well, it looks like I'm finally getting the recognition I deserve. In response to my last post, I received the following reviews for my blog:
- "S. Smith brings to the intellectual table a very peculiar style of writing, one that successfully defies all conventional guidelines of length and structure. I highly recommend investing the time reading her work. You will enjoy every second!" - S. Dashjian
- "Love it! A must read!" - P. Meert
- "You're so funny, Miss Smith!!!
- Great read!" - A. Jozefowski
I am flattered. I can safely promise to continue posting blogs that are two sentences long. After two sentences, the rest is just fluff, anyway.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
How to Find Dating Rules That Cover Absolutely Every Person and Situation
- They don't exist.
- Any other questions?
Monday, January 12, 2015
The Latin Mass for the Disenchanted
It's possible that you're missing out on something really great because you're too lazy. I'm sorry to have to put it like that, but at least now I have your attention, right? In this post, I'm going to talk about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and why you should take the time to give it a chance (or a second chance or a third . . . you get the picture).
In a previous post, I gave a brief reflection on how to prepare to go to the Latin Mass if you are unfamiliar with it. I realize now that my prior post presupposed that you are willing to overcome that unfamiliarity. What if you don't see the point? I mean, isn't Latin fine for other people, but really not necessary and kind of dead anyway? Isn't the older form of the Mass just a throwback, whereas you are part of the current Church, relevant to modern culture, and not unhealthily nostalgic for past ages of faith? In response to these questions, here are a few of my personal reasons to approach the EF Mass:
1. It is Scriptural. I'm going to take it as a given that you appreciate the value of the Word of God in your personal prayer life. Even more so, the beauty of God's Word should have a place in your public, liturgical prayer through the prayers of the older form of the Mass. Many of these are taken directly from Scripture and provide a richness unparalleled by the newer form of the Mass, in which these prayers have been abridged, imperfectly translated, or removed altogether. If you attend the older form and, in time, follow the missal attentively, you receive a beautiful interwoven tapestry of the Word of God in Scripture and the Word of God made Flesh and sacrificed for you on the altar.
2. It is an aid to meditation. Is it easier to meditate in a loud or a quiet room? The Tridentine Mass produces an interior quiet, a secret room in which we can pray, as Our Lord instructed: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." When you attend Mass, you are coming to the altar of Sacrifice, the re-presentation of Jesus' death on the Cross. It's not only "nice" to be filled with awe and wonder--it's an absolute must.
3. It is simple. That the Latin Mass is something "simple" may not instantly occur to you, as there are many outward pieces coming together that make it seem rather bewildering: a different language, the priest facing away from you, inaudible prayers, lots of kneeling, etc. After attending this form of the Mass for years, however, I can tell you that the liturgy is not the sum of all these parts. The liturgy is meant to bring that "one thing" that Our Lord said was necessary: prayer. The EF Mass allows you to see, in stark relief, that you are worshiping God Himself; there is no other reason to be there than that.
4. It is beautiful. We train and discipline our minds to pray and indeed the moment of prayer is the most important and definitive moment of our lives--a moment which is meant to last into the next life. Nevertheless, we have bodies as well as souls; we see and hear and smell and taste and touch, and these senses too are meant to be directed toward God. We have to train our whole selves to appreciate beauty, to see God in all the outward realities we experience in life. The Tridentine Mass is hugely helpful in this, not just because it provides "smells and bells," but because it combines that primary focus on prayer/meditation with suitable gestures, music, and incense, befitting the worship of God.
These are just a few reasons that you should give the "traddie" Mass a(nother) go, if you haven't already. To utterly retract my opening line, I am pretty sure you are not too lazy! On the other hand, maybe you just don't know what you're missing.
In a previous post, I gave a brief reflection on how to prepare to go to the Latin Mass if you are unfamiliar with it. I realize now that my prior post presupposed that you are willing to overcome that unfamiliarity. What if you don't see the point? I mean, isn't Latin fine for other people, but really not necessary and kind of dead anyway? Isn't the older form of the Mass just a throwback, whereas you are part of the current Church, relevant to modern culture, and not unhealthily nostalgic for past ages of faith? In response to these questions, here are a few of my personal reasons to approach the EF Mass:
1. It is Scriptural. I'm going to take it as a given that you appreciate the value of the Word of God in your personal prayer life. Even more so, the beauty of God's Word should have a place in your public, liturgical prayer through the prayers of the older form of the Mass. Many of these are taken directly from Scripture and provide a richness unparalleled by the newer form of the Mass, in which these prayers have been abridged, imperfectly translated, or removed altogether. If you attend the older form and, in time, follow the missal attentively, you receive a beautiful interwoven tapestry of the Word of God in Scripture and the Word of God made Flesh and sacrificed for you on the altar.
2. It is an aid to meditation. Is it easier to meditate in a loud or a quiet room? The Tridentine Mass produces an interior quiet, a secret room in which we can pray, as Our Lord instructed: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." When you attend Mass, you are coming to the altar of Sacrifice, the re-presentation of Jesus' death on the Cross. It's not only "nice" to be filled with awe and wonder--it's an absolute must.
3. It is simple. That the Latin Mass is something "simple" may not instantly occur to you, as there are many outward pieces coming together that make it seem rather bewildering: a different language, the priest facing away from you, inaudible prayers, lots of kneeling, etc. After attending this form of the Mass for years, however, I can tell you that the liturgy is not the sum of all these parts. The liturgy is meant to bring that "one thing" that Our Lord said was necessary: prayer. The EF Mass allows you to see, in stark relief, that you are worshiping God Himself; there is no other reason to be there than that.
4. It is beautiful. We train and discipline our minds to pray and indeed the moment of prayer is the most important and definitive moment of our lives--a moment which is meant to last into the next life. Nevertheless, we have bodies as well as souls; we see and hear and smell and taste and touch, and these senses too are meant to be directed toward God. We have to train our whole selves to appreciate beauty, to see God in all the outward realities we experience in life. The Tridentine Mass is hugely helpful in this, not just because it provides "smells and bells," but because it combines that primary focus on prayer/meditation with suitable gestures, music, and incense, befitting the worship of God.
These are just a few reasons that you should give the "traddie" Mass a(nother) go, if you haven't already. To utterly retract my opening line, I am pretty sure you are not too lazy! On the other hand, maybe you just don't know what you're missing.
Who Am I?
Don't we identify mostly with our weaknesses? I think this is much more subtle than we expect. We constantly take personality tests and all too easily take their results as gospel. We develop a fixed mindset about ourselves and our personalities.
Am I extroverted? That must mean I get a pass for shallow thinking, not making time for meditation/prayer, speaking before I think, being careless, etc. Am I introverted? That means it's okay for me not to reach out to others, to spend undue time worrying rather than trusting, to focus too much on myself, etc. Even these are generalizations. We all have our particular weaknesses--but these weaknesses are not an ingrained part of our nature!
In fact, we are called to overcome weaknesses, especially the most impossible ones. The hardest things for us to do are the ones we absolutely must do, but this can only happen with God's grace. He wants to bring us to the point where we are ready to crack, where we can't bear any more, on a natural level, so that He can lift us up with His Spirit. He says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
That is how we should see ourselves, not as weak, sinful humans crystallized with our least-overcomeable traits, but as completely empty anyway. We are vessels of grace and what we can or can't do on our own is basically irrelevant. Even the achievements we are most proud of we would never have done without God. Neither will we be able to accomplish the hard things that we don't want to do without His help.
Am I extroverted? That must mean I get a pass for shallow thinking, not making time for meditation/prayer, speaking before I think, being careless, etc. Am I introverted? That means it's okay for me not to reach out to others, to spend undue time worrying rather than trusting, to focus too much on myself, etc. Even these are generalizations. We all have our particular weaknesses--but these weaknesses are not an ingrained part of our nature!
In fact, we are called to overcome weaknesses, especially the most impossible ones. The hardest things for us to do are the ones we absolutely must do, but this can only happen with God's grace. He wants to bring us to the point where we are ready to crack, where we can't bear any more, on a natural level, so that He can lift us up with His Spirit. He says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
That is how we should see ourselves, not as weak, sinful humans crystallized with our least-overcomeable traits, but as completely empty anyway. We are vessels of grace and what we can or can't do on our own is basically irrelevant. Even the achievements we are most proud of we would never have done without God. Neither will we be able to accomplish the hard things that we don't want to do without His help.
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