Advice

From Hermano Juancito:
http://hermanojuancito.blogspot.mx/2013/10/what-sustains-me.html

The author, Jeanne Schuler, a professor at Creighton and a former student of Fr. John Kavanaugh, ends her article with a list of five ways that he laid out “to stay rooted in our humanity in everyday life.” They are what sustain me.

   1 daily prayer and meditation to fight the emptiness endemic to consumer culture
   2 the cultivation of committed relationships in which we are known and loved
   3 the delight in things that simple living makes possible
   4 the lifelong work for justice
   5 ongoing involvement with those at the margins, who show us the beauty in simply being persons

When one of these aspects of life is lacking, I find myself floundering.

As I meditate upon this, I try to find the common threads.

First, consumer culture seems to be a way to talk about very short term connections with things easily named, such as "my computer" and "my friend", as well as things more complex, such as "my church", "my nation", etc.

This is related to "throw away" culture, since the throwing away is the end of the "relationship" that had existed between entities.

Second, the "committed relationships" speak of long term relations, in which friends are not "thrown away".

Third, delight in simple things implies recurrence and a long term relation with things, since simple things are those which are more likely to repeat themselves; complex events are not likely to exactly repeat.

Fourth, working for justice starts us on another ideal altogether, I think.

Fifth, this involvement seems to echo the third point of simplicity and the fact that simples repeat more often than complex things.
For example, "The Poor you will always have with you."

Find life and delight in the Simple... but be ready for the Big Show when it comes.

--