Playing it Safe 4 comments

By Lindsey Crittenden

I’ve been having trouble starting this post. All week, I’ve been eyeing the item on iCal—blog post due to Greg Wolfe—and moving on. Not in the mood. No ideas. My last one hasn’t run yet, so I have some time. Et cetera.

This morning I read Sara Zarr on Advent and Caroline Langston on Christmas with Satan, both of which raised the bar.

Caroline’s title alone made me shiver, first at the adversary’s name, and second, in admiration, especially as I kept reading. You go, girl. What can I write that will strike a chord of honesty and revelation like that which Sara and Caroline struck in me? I stare at the screen. Scattered ideas fire off but, when I go to fix them on the screen, skitter away like balls of mercury.

I re-read some of my earlier posts, a sure sign of dilly-dallying. Am I skirting the tough stuff? Playing it safe? Nothing like a little pressure to get one going, eh?

When Craig and I were going through the Book of Common Prayer’s scriptural readings for the Blessing and Celebration of Marriage, we gravitated toward Matthew 5:13-16 (“You are the light.... Let your light so shine”). For a couple who’d kept their lamps under baskets for decades before finding each other, the passage seemed perfect.

Plus, I’ve always felt drawn to that cryptic bit about the salt. Salt losing its saltiness seems a way of turning away from creation, from integrity, from what makes each of us who we are. Marriage as a way to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16): yes, please!

In the past ten days (as of this writing), the New York Times has run three articles that mention monasteries in a significant way. The first: a fascinating essay in the December 25, 2011, edition of the Book Review, in which John Plotz discusses acedia, the desert fathers, John Cassian, and all-of-the-above’s relevance to today’s distractibility.

The second: Pico Iyer’s piece in the January 1, 2012, Sunday Review in which he wrote about visiting a monastery near Big Sur, among other things.

And the third, and most Christian in its mention and advocacy of scripture and prayer: a “personal journeys” piece in the travel section (also on New Year’s Day) in which Susan Gregory Thomas describes her silent retreat at a Jesuit retreat center in Pennsylvania.

Another reader might have tallied the number of times Mitt Romney’s candidacy was mentioned as opposed to Ron Paul’s, say, or noted an agenda at work on the front page or a demographic detail of the marriage listings.

I noticed silence.

I once watched a movie in which Meg Ryan played a mathematician, Walter Matthau Albert Einstein, and Tim Robbins Ryan’s blue-collar-but-brilliant love interest. In a scene toward the end, Ryan sits in a field waiting for a comet named for her dead father. When the comet does its thing across the sky, she jumps and hoots and waves and shouts, “Hi, Daddy!”

The moment left me cold. More than that, it left me annoyed. Because of the annoyance, and the self-congratulation that followed in my own effort to feel better—you see, I too was grieving, like Ryan’s character—I’ve often recalled the scene as a touchstone of What I’m Not.

Perky. Spunky. Meg Ryan.

Instead, as I’ve reminded myself, I adhere to Eudora Welty’s statement that “all serious daring starts from within.” And I’m a serious person, thank you very much.

Let’s go back to salt losing its taste, shall we? For in my embarrassingly quick and easy slide into judgment, haven’t I shut off any light trying to shine? Any real daring?

Not in my affect toward comets or Hollywood romantic comedies, no—but in keeping the glory directed to God. Yes, I am naturally drawn to quiet. But as Thomas Keating, the Trappist monk who has introduced many people to centering prayer through his talks and books such as Open Mind, Open Heart, reminds us, too much inward-going can lead to pride or despair. And we know where that leads.

Keating may prefer silence, too, but he doesn’t judge those who don’t—and he reminds us of the need for balance, for tempering all that interiority with service and other forms of prayer.

Light shines in many ways. As facile as that sounds, it helps me. For my judgment doesn’t stop at movie characters or certain actresses; no, my sin travels farther and deeper.

To watch it happen—it never feels like sin at first, does it, but an impulse we’re all too entitled to, a way of keeping safe, even at times an act of self-preservation—and to turn in the other direction, toward messiness and life and, yes, good works; not once, not twice, but over and over again (seventy times seven, even): now we’re onto something.

Something, you might say, worth its salt.