Self-Awareness
The gift of self-awareness is one that few bother to develop. In the midst of our busyness, we become numb. The curiosity of our youth fades, until we go through the motions of life without admiring the beauty and truth around us. Our bodies send us hints and signals throughout the day, telling us exactly what we need. Our lack of curiosity leads us to respond to those subtle cues inappropriately or ignore them altogether. Developing a sense of self-awareness can help us give our bodies just what they need.
In some ways, I didn’t work on my sense of self-awareness because I was afraid. I didn’t want to know what was really going on at my core. I preferred to create my own narrative, setting aside the helpful suggestions that my body was giving me.
I’m shocked at this lack of curiosity. I received all of this information, and ignored it. I was longing for meaningful activity; instead I ate a bowl of ice cream and rewatched The Office. I was feeling unsettled; I didn’t stop to realize my day was jammed with no down time.
Just as I learned about the unique connection between physical and spiritual health, I think that there’s a similar connection between health and self-awareness.
To redevelop my self-awareness and nurture my curiosity, I first turned to mindfulness. I spent about 10 minutes in the morning, and again in the evening, in quiet meditation and prayer using the Hallow app. Later, I added in the practice of intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is intentionally dividing your day between two periods: eating and fasting. For example, you might choose to eat during eight hours of the day and refrain from eating during the other sixteen.
Over time, as mindfulness and intermittent fasting took root in my routine, I noticed a difference. Through these habits, I have time in my day to pause. I consider and acknowledge any signals from my body that I receive and then choose the best response.
When it’s meal time, I ask myself, “Am I hungry?” What does my body say? If I’m satiated, there’s no need to eat. If I’m hungry, then I eat.
When I feel anxious, I ask myself is the cause something from my physical or mental state? Or perhaps is there something in my environment causing this anxiety?
Curiosity is a wonderful gift, and a strong sense of self-awareness is a trustworthy guide. If you want to work on developing either, consider gradually integrating mindfulness and intermittent fasting into your life.
Transformation
There’s something natural about self-criticism. We see ourselves in pictures, and we instantly focus on our faults and imperfections. In many ways, those pictures don’t align with the way that we see ourselves. I had an incredible experience of taking a picture that I felt perfectly captured me. I saw in that image the physical transformation that I’ve undergone this year. It reminds me of the overwhelming power of redemption. No matter how far gone we are, there’s always a way back.
Since Christmas, Alison and I have been working on our physical health. In one form or another, I’ve been doing this kind of work since 2011. This year, though, has been profoundly different. Working together, we’ve diligently stuck to our diet. In addition, I’m walking almost daily. The results are exactly what should be expected from a program of diet and exercise. I’m at my lowest weight in five years, and overall, I’m healthier than I was seven years ago.
The photograph has beautifully captured the transformation. In it, I see beauty. I see vibrance and life. I see a completely different man than I saw in the mirror last winter.
The kind of radical change that I’ve experienced in my physical appearance is possible with the state of my soul. No matter how cold, hard, or selfish I’ve become, a complete change is possible. It starts in the confessional through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It’s reinforced through the transformative Eucharist. It’s nurtured through a robust daily prayer life.
The care, health, and wellness of our soul is the work of a lifetime. The same elements that contribute to an improvement in physical health are required for the improvement of spiritual health. We need a solid blueprint, a clear-eyed goal, and daily diligence. I will never become a saint, or even know peace, unless I put in the work.
Little Kids Praying
Praying with little kids is often a difficult experience. While I try to set a good example, my kids often fiddle, wander, or play. As it turns out, they’re not being disrespectful. When little kids fiddle, they’re really engaged in the activity. It’s how they listen, process, and understand things. They may not say the words, but they hear and know them. It can be frustrating when they refuse to pray, but giving them their space has its benefits. One day, the switch will flip, and it’s a beautiful thing.
That’s exactly what happened to us. My son is in kindergarten and should be learning his basic prayers. He’s heard them hundreds of times and I was more than ready for him to be a leader for his sisters. I took him aside one evening and told him that I now had the expectation that he prays aloud with us. He took our talk to heart. The next day, I could hear him quite clearly. His little sister soon joined in.
There’s something wonderful about the sound of a child praying. Their voice is so sweet to adult ears. Their intentions and prayers are so innocent and pure. When I hear my children praying, I understand clearly why God treasures these little ones so much.
It’s been several months now, and both of my “big kids” pray out loud at meals, at bedtime, and on occasion, at Mass. Benedict will even take the lead at mealtime, which is a treat. What’s really struck me, though, is how many of the more complex prayers they know. We’ll be at Mass or praying Night Prayer, and they’ll both join in without skipping a beat. Like a choir singing in harmony, we pray together as a family. It’s a delightful experience.
I don’t know what my children’s faith life will be like when they enter adulthood. What I do know is that I’m going to expose them to as much of our faith as possible. I hope that one day they have the experience of having their own children join them in prayer. It’s an experience that I’ll treasure forever.
Mindfulness
My experience with mindfulness is a bit checkered. I’ve used a few of the popular apps out there to learn the practice, to some degree of success. For one reason or another, though, the habit just didn’t stick. I’d loathe the 10 minutes of silence, totally defeating the purpose. Mindfulness finally clicked for me when I connected it to my faith. No longer was I seeking to focus solely on myself; rather, I was taking time to intimately be with God.
For many years, mindfulness and meditation have been suggested to me for improving my physical health. Migraines thrive on an overactive nervous system, and mindfulness has been show to reduce that hyperactivity. At least three separate times, I tried to implement mindfulness into my daily routine. Each method that I tried to learn, whether through a book or an app, wanted me to “just simply be.” Reaching that state required a laser-like focus on myself in each moment. I would try to discover how I feel, what’s going on in my body, and what do I sense in this moment?
Only now, in hindsight, do I see the problem with these methods. These guides were telling me to turn inward to find peace, when the true source of peace is God. I can’t find peace, or be truly present in the moment, without shifting my focus off of me and onto the Giver.
There are several really good meditation apps in the iOS App Store. Modern, beautiful, easy to use, and really enticing. I used several of them, but I hesitated from subscribing to any of the big ones, like Calm. The price tag was just too high for something that I wasn’t enjoying.
That all changed when I found Hallow. One evening, I was searching for Catholic apps to install on my phone. There are very few apps that are both Catholic and really good. Hallow’s app icon first caught my eye. It was bold and I was instantly drawn to it. I downloaded the app and started playing around with it. The user interface is at the level of some recent Apple Design Award winners. It’s clean, simple, and delightful.
After experimenting for a few minutes, I started the sessions. Hallow has what they call “praylists.” These are a series of meditations on a particular topic. I did my first session and immediately felt the connection. 10 minutes wasn’t arduous or boring, it was a joy. I looked forward to my time meditating and praying. I enjoyed it so much, I now do two 10-minute sessions a day, with ease.
The creators of Hallow have put a lot of thought and effort into their app. Not only does it look and feel good, the content is rock solid. It’s not thin and it’s not too dense. The theological value hits right in the middle of leading you deeper into prayer and then getting out of the way so that you can pray.
Background soundscapes are an important component in modern mindfulness apps. Developers are constantly creating and adding new background noises for users to listen to while meditating. There’s the classic thunderstorm soundscape or a babbling river, all the way to New Age electronic trance music.
Hallow has three background soundscapes, but one totally caught me by surprise; silence. No noise, whatsoever. The narrator leads me, and then leaves me in peace. He pops back in for a prompt or two, but when he’s quiet, my world is quiet. I relish this peacefulness.
I subscribed to a full year of Hallow because I want this app to continue to grow and expand. The App Store is in a malaise, with hundreds of thousands of apps, but only a few good ones. The golden era that the early days of the store are long gone, and now you have to really search for the diamonds in the rough. Hallow is a true diamond.
If you want to take your prayer life in a new direction, or if you want to get into mindfulness, you need to take a look at Hallow. Spend your meditation time connecting deeper with your Creator.
Seven
Seven years ago, Alison and I started our life together. Captured so perfectly in the photograph in the banner of this website, the years have passed by with a considerable amount of joy. Our home is now filled with three bubbly children. They play, laugh, and interact with one another. We’ve grown, changed, and continued to get to know each another. In many ways, our marriage reflects the work of our engagement.
The first year was very difficult, filled with conflict. We’ve had periods of prolonged challenges, and children who fight constantly. The people that we are today are very different than we were back then. We’ve consistently worked on our relationship. We’ve learned how best to respond and serve one another. We don’t live perfectly, but we make a good effort.
While we have missed perfection, we have succeeded at love. We’ve succeeded at loving one another despite our faults and failings. We’ve succeeded in building a family life in which we both contribute to the household. We’ve made a reality the plans that we set during our engagement. The family that we are today is a close reflection of those early plans.
Most pointedly, I find myself loving Alison more than I did on our wedding day. It’s more tangible. Marriage is not built on emotions or feelings, but there’s a new intensity to my love for her. I make mistakes and pick fights from time to time, but I defer to her feelings far more often than I used to. I find myself seeking to build harmony and consensus more than I look out for my own benefit.
We’ve undergone profound change in these years, personally and professionally. Seven years, in the scope of our lifetime, is only the opening chapter. May the good work we’ve started continue to bear fruit in the decades to come.
Dinner Table
Just before moving two years ago, Alison and I went furniture shopping. We had gotten by for four years with the furniture that we had each brought into our marriage. We were ready to trade up. Something that I really wanted was a real dining room table. As a military family, the dining room table was a staple of my childhood. No matter where we moved, or what house we were in, we always ate at the table.
The house that we live in has an eat-in kitchen with enough room for a full size table and four chairs. Just off the kitchen is a dining room. For our first two years in the new house, we mostly ate at the kitchen table. It was close to the food prep station, and it was easy. I could get the kids started on their meals and still be right next to them as I finished cooking mine. Our dining room table was used for crafts, projects, and folding laundry.
A switch flipped in my mind earlier this summer. I bought the table in the kitchen from a yard sale nine years ago. Now with a family of five, things were getting a little tight. With four people at the table plus a high chair, we were short on space. We decided to start using our dining room table for what it was made for: to eat on.
I didn’t think that it would make much of a difference. It did. I stopped serving the children first and then finishing the cooking. Now I get all of the food ready and then serve dinner. It made meals into an occasion. It wasn’t just sitting down to quickly eat, it was more like a destination. We eat slower, and talk more.
It’s important for the family to sit down and eat together. Sharing food is an intimate human ritual. By dining together frequently, the bonds of family are strengthened. If you have a dining room, think about using it exclusively for eating. You might be surprised at what a difference it will make.
Spiritual Bankruptcy
I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the mass shootings gripping our society. Young men, disaffected and isolated, suffering from mental illness, take up arms and attack unsuspecting victims in acts of extreme violence. These events are things that we’re used to seeing in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. We’re not accustomed to hearing about them happening in our schools, offices, and shopping centers.
A deeper look at the profile of these killers provides a stunning indictment against the culture that we’ve built. We live in this golden era of consumerism, where few of us want for our basic necessities. We have a bustling economy at full employment and our lives are inundated with abundance. Yet, in this era that previous generations could have never imagined, a group of young men find themselves hopeless. In their hopelessness, they’re radicalized, and then they act out.
We’ve learned that they’re not only loners, but some had a history of violence. They’re young and many of them didn’t have their father in their lives. They have weak ties to the community, and don’t participate in society. Many of them spent inordinate amounts of time in the darkest places of the Internet.
We’ve had acts of domestic terrorism before, but never at this scale. We watched ISIS target Europe, but with a certain aloofness. We’ve pontificated and conjectured about why those young Arab men were radicalized. We’ve opined about how their communities could better interdict them and de-radicalize them. All of this time, while we’ve been academic about the problem, the very same evil has taken root here at home.
This violence must stop. There are many policy ideas being proposed. Red-flag laws that allow courts to remove guns from the people deemed to be a risk are starting to be enacted. Other policymakers suggest a different mix of gun regulation or perhaps more funding for mental health services.
This is a complex problem with no simple solution. We need to be doing all of these things, and more. If we throw some money at mental health treatment, pass a few token laws, and call it a day, we’ll have missed a huge opportunity. We must address the root cause that’s driving these men to their breaking point.
These are young people without hope.
In our rush to self-actualize, we’ve made God irrelevant. We’ve collectively dismissed the importance of our spirituality. We’ve demeaned people of faith as radical or stupid. We’ve insisted that we are enough unto ourselves, with no need for any religion. We’re smarter than all of that fantastical theology.
The data speaks for itself. In the midst of abundance, we’re a nation that’s spiritually bankrupt. Suicide rates are accelerating, families are in tatters, drug abuse and overdose rates are a public health crisis, and domestic terrorism is taking hold. We’ve found a problem that cannot be solved by ourselves.
But what is hope?
“Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Catechism of the Catholic Church 1817
Hope is the understanding that we have a real and active connection to our Creator. Hope is the acknowledgment that our spirit is an integral part of our humanity. Neglecting our spiritual wellness has the same negative effects as neglecting our physical or emotional health. Hope is the virtue that tells us that what God has promised, He will deliver.
Faith, hope, and charity are the virtues through which we should interact the world. We’re here to know God and Truth. God has revealed to us the reality of Heaven, and that He desires us to live there with Him forever. And while we’re here on Earth, we need to serve and love one another.
This is the cure to the despair that underpins our spiritual bankruptcy. A reminder of our true reality and our true purpose for being. Nothing soothes the soul more than service. Perhaps that’s where we should start.
All-Time Fatherhood
Expectations of fathers change over time. There was a period of time where the only requirement of fathers was to pursue their career for the good of the family. This is the nuclear age, Leave it to Beaver, model in which the mother manages the children, the shopping, and the cleaning. The man would get up, get ready for work, and come downstairs to a prepared breakfast. Same thing in reverse for his arrival at the end of the day.
It would be wonderful to say that we’re in a better place now, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. In many homes, the father isn’t present at all. Divorce, absenteeism, or even the origin story of the child result in dads being out of the picture. Maybe they pay child support, and maybe they don’t, but they’re not physically present to contribute to the life of the family. As much as we discount the importance of fatherhood, we’ll never beat the rap of statistics that show us that our families and children are worse off because of it.
Parenting isn’t just for nights and weekends. It’s not for the little times you can carve out during the week. It’s an all-time job. If you aren’t actively teaching your children, your actions are doing the job for you. They’re always watching and observing. From time to time, they’ll share an insight that will confound you, but it will demonstrate that they are more attuned to the daily life in your home than you realize.
Parenting, and even the daily care for a child, isn’t a grand mystery and it isn’t hard to figure out. It takes a lot of effort, and belief in yourself, but it’s totally possible. So yes, you can lead arts and crafts and do a great job. You can go out shopping for kids clothes and come home with some reasonable options. You can do anything that you apply yourself to.
Soft Power
In the world of international diplomacy, there are two main forms of exerting pressure on another nation. The first is hard power. That’s to say, military force. If you want to bend another nation to your will, you can take direct military action and try to force their hand. The second, and perhaps more effective, is soft power. Soft power is influence. In diplomacy it consists of lobbying, economic aid, and other tools by which you can try to win the hearts and minds of your opponent.
Like any nation, soft power is the most effective tool that any parent has in their kit. Children deeply desire to be pleasing to their parents. It’s almost as if when they rebel or question, they’re pained to be going against their nature. Their desire to express autonomy conflicts with their desire to make their parents happy. The emotional explosion from that conflict can be hard to contain.
When children, particularly young children, are disobedient or not listening, the reason behind this poor behavior can be hard to discern. They may be tired, hungry, or conflicted over an unrelated issue. So while my first instinct is to enforce discipline, my first action should actually be a mini-investigation. If I can solve the underlying problem, my little angel will reemerge and happily do as she’s told.
Discipline must be enforced evenly and consistently, a struggle that we all face. There are days when I don’t feel like prolonging a fight. I’d much rather leave the problem alone and change the subject. Children push the boundaries constantly, and what they’re asking for is to be shown where the line is. It can be very hard to see how heavily the consequences weigh on a child’s heart. In those moments when you want to give in and extend too much grace, you have to hold the line.
You’ll constantly hone and refine your discipline strategy, but make sure that you consider the weight of any situation before acting. Temper your own emotional response, address any underlying causes for the disobedience, and make sure that the process includes heavy doses of teaching, love, and affection.
Like an Abbot
St. Benedict is a well known figure within Catholicism, but his impact had a direct role on the preservation of Western Culture. Benedict grew up in an affluent Italian family and was sent to Rome to continue his studies. While there, he applied himself to his schooling, but was appalled by the moral weakness of his peers. In frustration, he fled.
Benedict sought, as many of his contemporaries did, to find and connect with God through asceticism. By rejecting the comforts of daily life, though by modern standards they were anything but, these men and women sought to enter into relationship with God by removing all distractions and obstacles. Benedict lived, for a time, in a cave below a monastery.
Benedict’s holiness became well know throughout the country, and pilgrims would journey to visit with him and to seek counsel. Eventually, some sought to join with him in his life of work and prayer. At first, Benedict did not want to engage in this path. After all, he lived in a cave so that he could be free from distraction and lead a simple life. Taking on the responsibility of creating and leading a religious community stood opposed to his basic goals.
Benedict may have left the cave and assumed leadership, but his principles came with him. His Rule is very strict, and many of his followers buckled under the pressure. On more than one occasion, they conspired to kill Benedict, only to be thwarted by divine intervention. Benedict’s rule, in its simplicity, gained popularity among successive religious orders. Today, Benedict is regarded as the Father of Western Monasticism. Through his Rule, Benedict inspired many of the religious communities who worked diligently through the Middle Ages to preserve and protect the arts and humanities of Western civilization. We owe him a debt of gratitude.
In Chapter 27, St. Benedict describes how an Abbot is to act towards a brother who has been removed from the community for offenses against the order. Benedict emphasizes that the Abbot should take great care not to punish the wayward brother, but rather, to remedy the situation. Excommunication isn’t a punishment, but a plea for reconciliation. Benedict writes that the Abbot should remember that his role is to care for the sick, not tyranny over the strong.
All fathers are the Abbot of their families. We’re are charged with care for the weak, not tyranny over the strong. This kind of service requires tremendous humility. We must summon the energy and courage to care for our children even when they don’t cooperate.
The number one virtue that you must have, in order to fulfill your mission, is humility. You must have the strength of character to accept your role and serve your children with everything that you’ve got. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to give it your best effort every single day.
The Abbot of a community gets the title, and the mitre, but they also get all of the responsibility. They’re accountable to the community for the care of the members, for setting a vision, and maintaining the monastery. Dads occupy the same space. We have the responsibility to enforce uniform discipline, adequate nutrition, and health and safety.
Parenting is never easy. Overcoming challenges and parenting successfully is within our control. It’s a high standard, but the kind of lofty aspiration that aligns perfectly with masculinity. We have the grit and tenacity to take on this lifestyle, and to do it well.