It has for some time now been the fashion to say that we are in a morass, and to attempt to get out of the morass by attacking Romanticism; and I am going to do this too.
[Iris Murdoch]

My mom this morning, between bouts of vacuuming:

“So funny… they tell you not to wash these filters, in the vacuum cleaners. I don’t know what lame reason they give… but they cost like 25 dollars. So I’ve been washing them, and setting them out to dry in the sun, and they work fine. One of them got kind of a musty smell, and so I dumped clorox all over it and then washed it and let it dry. Worked great.

“I mean, I know why they say it, of course. Capitalism. Had even Edna bamboozled, she had trouble finding new ones and I said “well let’s wash these” and she said, “Oh, but it says not to!” So we did, and it was fine.

“… It’s kind of like drycleaning. What’s the worst thing that could happen? It gets wrecked, and then I have to buy a new one. And of course… but you know, if it can’t live through real-life stuff, it can’t stay at our house.”

which is impressive, because it already made me laugh out loud:

Bobby Tables, xkcd

[Thanks, as ever, XKCD.]

After a hiatus (I fell asleep on the job), here is number six from “Gestures Toward a Theology of Sleep,” by Russell Johnson, Lauren Greenspan, Lindsay Eierman, and Perhaps Anonymous Others.

“6. “Come unto me,” Jesus said, “All you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This lends itself toward allegorical interpretation, and rightfully so, but I wonder if there is a literal meaning as well. Think of a prayer shawl, a symbolic yoke for the work of prayer. A faithful Jew in prayer, like an ox in the field, is cultivating the earth for a harvest of YHWH’s justice. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Part of me wants to say, “Tell that to the martyrs…” The work of Christ seems to be anything but rest, but it is when we feel overburdened by the strain that we are reminded us to pray.

“Prayer is a paradoxical toil that works through rest. The yielding, the releasing unto God, is a key part of carrying on Christ’s work on earth. The rest that Christ promises is neither the feeling of ease and peace, nor a total absence of work. It is rather a resting– a way of acting through settling into God’s redemptive work. C.S. Lewis makes a good point when he says that in addition to the Lord’s Prayer being petition for God to work, it’s a summons for us to serve; “Thy will be done– by me– now.” But there’s another dimension to which this confession itself enacts that which it invites. Our resting in God, our saying, “Thy will be done,” is the Kingdom sprouting forth from the tilled soil. This is a moment of rest ushering in a new world of rest.”

My mom, just now: “I could eat the same thing every day. Granola with two cups of coffee for breakfast. And then cheese and crackers.” [Pause.] “I kind of do eat the same thing every day, so what is this ‘I could’?” [Ascends staircase out of view. Redescends, leaning on banister and sticking just her head around the corner to make eye contact.] “I always think, ‘What do I want to eat now?’ and then I think, ‘Oh right. I like cheese and crackers.’” [Re-ascends staircase, grinning.]

It was Apricot who sent me this, months ago. I keep coming back to it for a few moments, and every time I like it.

Happy screenshot

IMG_0412

The Atlantic recently published this article by Emily Esfahani Smith, on what exactly kindness looks like in a long-term relationship, and what correlation it has to the relationship’s long-term viability. Not surprisingly, the kinder couples are to each other (and I bet this applies in friendships too), the more likely they are to stay together.

What’s especially interesting, though, is the particular, detailed ways the studies (on which the article draws) describe kindness. The article describes several specific kinds: one is responding to bids for emotional connection (“Look at that bird, honey!”) positively (rather than ignoring or dismissing them). Another is not locking ourselves into negative interpretations of other people’s behavior (i.e., assuming someone was late because she didn’t respect my time and being in a rotten mood when she arrived, when in fact she stopped on the way to get me a gift). Another is responding to the other person’s good news in what is called an “active constructive” way — by joining in, asking questions, being engaged and celebratory — rather than by ignoring the news, finding problems with it, or being half-hearted.

The article also mentions that in healthy relationships, conflict is done kindly rather than meanly (this has to do with not locking in on negative interpretations).

One thing I wish the article had said, though, is that in order to do conflict kindly you have to do it on purpose. It is nearly impossible to be kind in a conflict if the conflict arose because something has been bothering me, and bothering me, but I haven’t felt free to say anything, and finally I just can’t take it anymore. At that point, so many negative interpretations have locked in, and I am so hurt, that even imagining the other person may not have meant to hurt me is beyond my capacity. I’m not in it for resolution anymore, or reconciliation; I’m in it for revenge, to return the hurt. One key in loves of all kinds (romance, friendship, family) is to go to the fight with your eyes and heart and hands open, rather than waiting till the fight finds you with your eyes throwing flames, your fists balled, and your heart hiding out in a motel in the next county.

[Thank you, Apricot, for sending this.]

Yesterday I attempted to go meet a friend in the southern end of Paris (I’m way in the north) and managed to get on a bus in rush hour going the wrong way (well, first I missed a bus, or couldn’t manage to get on because it was too full; after that, when I got on the next one, I realized I was going the wrong way). On that bus I stood next to two French women who were (and with apologies to dogs and humans, there is no other appropriate word) bitching about traffic, and bus stop failures, and organizational failures, and construction. I made a joke in French: “A Chicago on dit qu’il y a deux saisons, l’hiver, et travaux,” which got me a bitter nod and a one and a half second pause in the bitching. Before that, I sat at the bus stop and was drawn in as an external arbiter between an elderly Senegalese man and a young Romany woman, on the question of whether or not it was a public shame that she was barefoot in France. I said “Oh, maybe not necessarily,” which got me a big grin from her, but somehow avoided offending him, either that or he really wanted to talk, because then he proceeded to tell me about France. In 1972 the metros here were still segregated. In 1974, if you were from another country, and you wanted to visit home, you had to buy an identity card for ten thousand francs to get back into the country. At this point an Algerian (I think) chimed in, and they got in a discussion I couldn’t quite follow, about work. Definitively, in the seventies there was more work and fewer immigrants. Now there are more immigrants and less work. But either now or then (I got lost at this point) nobody wanted to work night shifts.

“It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.

It is only when we are detached from ourselves that we can be at peace with ourselves. We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us as we seek to live a myth we have created for ourselves. It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say, to be ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.

Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.”

[Thomas Merton, The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, 1955; with thanks to Karl Johnson]

Last week, sitting in the courtyard on a bench in the slight rain eating lunch, I listened to two young native French speakers bantering as they walked past me, and thought about how amazing it is that their tongues just do that, when it is so hard for me to form my tongue into French shapes.

Then I thought, My tongue does that, in another language. And then I thought, How amazing it is that so many human beings have a language in which their tongues do that, where words just come and the intonation is completely native, and all this happens without thought or very much effort. I have a new appreciation of what it means to call something a “mother tongue.”