Lift Up Your Hearts!

Focusing on the Foundations
Concentration:  Spiritual
Goal:  Read through the entire Bible in 2013, chronologically

Ever since reading and reviewing The Chronological Guide to the Bible, I've wanted it to re-read it while simultaneously reading the Bible according to its chronology.  Reading through the Bible in a year is not too ambitious a project (our former rector does it every year), but does require discipline, especially when coordinating it with another book.  I'm also starting a week late.  But you can hardly get more foundational, in spiritual matters, than a good knowledge of the Bible, so there it is.

A scene from a couple of weeks ago:

My husband, his sister, and our nephew are playing a game.  They have repeatedly assured me that they are having fun, and I must believe them, because as soon as they have completed this game they will move on to another—probably a two-person game so said nephew can return to the Lord of the Rings tome that has absorbed much of his free time this week.  (Despite repeated pleas for game-playing, he has managed to complete two of the six books thus far.  And win most of the games as well, which as you can imagine frustrates the dedicated game-players no end.)

However, an observer of the yells, groans, grimaces, and (mostly) muffled curses might be justified in imagining the participants engaged in arduous forced labor.  If this is fun, count me out.  Which they do;  my sister-in-law and I now have an agreement:  She doesn't ask me to play games with her and I don't ask her to ride roller coasters with me.  (Even though I couldn't resist sharing that Manta is the Best Roller Coaster Ever.)

It got me to thinking.  I was a reasonably normal child, and our family enjoyed playing games together; why, then, do I usually find the idea of scrubbing the kitchen floor more attractive than playing games?

I've come up with a few reasons, none of which is completely convincing in itself.

Time (specifically, the lack thereof) is certainly a big factor.  With a Bucket List^* heavy enough to make Giles Corey plead, I'm not inclined to spend hours on an activity that is neither my duty nor particularly enjoyable.  But that just begs the question:  Why do I no longer find games enjoyable?

My lastest inspiration is that not all game players are alike.  There are those who play to play, and there are those (the majority, apparently) who play to win.  I believe I am in the first category.  It's not that I don't like winning, but it makes me very uncomfortable if any of the other players is made unhappy in the process.  Perhaps it comes from being seven or more years older than my siblings; that kind of age difference precludes developing a cuthroat approach to games.  The day my young brother freaked out over being "attacked" in a game of Flinch was the day I lost interest in playing the game.  I also remember an incident when one of my childhood friends and I were playing Monopoly:  she was losing, and became upset, whereupon I shifted strategies so that she won (without, I hope, noticing that I was throwing the game), and afterwards contrived to avoid playing games with her whenever possible.

Then again, it may be my attention span.  I generally am not fond of watching movies—the thought of committing 2 - 3 hours to a movie makes me feel claustrophobic; I'm trapped.  On the other hand, I do enjoy watching several 40-minute episodes of a good mystery television series one after another.  I may end up spending three hours staring at the screen, but there are several built-in escape hatches should I wish to bail out.  Games are the same way:  The games I enjoy playing are short, and though I may play several in a row, I'm not stuck with a long-term commitment.

Or it may be a dislike of regulations and complex rules, the same attitude that turned me off completely to organized sports.  In elementary school I loved sports.  I loved soccer, and baseball, and volleyball, and every other competitive sport we played, both in gym class and at recess.  On summer nights the kids in our neighborhood almost always convened for kickball or another game until it was too dark to see.  But these were wild-and-wooly, free-for-all games, even in gym class.  We followed the basic rules about scoring, but with none of the strategy.  In soccer there were no rules about who could chase the ball, and most of the game was spent tearing up and down the field as everyone tried to get the ball into the goal.  (Needless to say our passing game was not very intelligent.)  Volleyball was a friendly game, with the main object being to get the ball over the net; there were no nasty spikes, no need to stay in your assigned position.  And the play was generally supportive, with teams encouraging one another.  It wasn't about winning, although winning was fun; it was about the sheer joy of physical activity and growing strength, endurance, agility, and skill. 

Along about middle school, however, everything changed.  Suddenly, winning mattered more than playing; ability and strategy mattered; and rules multiplied.  Sports simply were no fun anymore, and I retreated from being an eager, active player to one who did no more than the minimum required by gym class.  I vividly remember my first and last volleyball game at an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship camp in college:  I'd been told it was important for camp fellowship, and was a friendly game.  My siblings, avid volleyball players themselves, would have found it friendly and relatively non-competitive, I'm sure, but the intensity and the yelling and the insistence on hitting the ball "right" (rather than just getting it over the net) completely spoiled the game for me.  Fellowship or no fellowhip, I wasn't at that conference to be screamed at and then made to feel guilty for not enjoying the misery.  As C. S. Lewis said, "Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure."

Those are the ideas I've come up with so far.  I don't think they completely explain my attitude, but it was an interesting meditiation and I've probably unearthed some significant factors.

Do you have any other suggestions?  What kind of game-player are you? 

^*I'm told I use the term Bucket List incorrectly, that it's supposed to be for things like riding in a hot air balloon, travelling to New Zealand, or climbing Mt. Everest.  But can I help it if the things I want to accomplish before I die are more mundane?  Not that "get all our photos scanned, organized, and put into albums" doesn't seem an awful lot like climbing Mt. Everest.

Three Happiness Moments marked this Epiphany day, all in the morning, all milder than the events I've mentioned before:  more a smile of pleasure than a "wild stab of joy."

The first is the hardest to explain.  I was coming off a verbal rebuke over something that needed to be done and which had already that morning nagged me painfully without words—as had several other undone projects.  I was feeling overwhelmed; but the joy and peace came in the mere act of unloading the dishwasher.  Was it pleasure in the cleanliness, thankfulness for the new appliance, or relief that a job, however small, was actually being accomplished?  I don't know; that's why I'm chronicling these moments.

The other two occurred in church.  It's not hard to explain the one that came as we began rehearsing our anthem:  gratitude for our new choir.  And I guess there's no no surprise in the last, either, for I was kneeling for the Eucharist; still, that joy isn't consistently predictable.

Then there was Skyping with our Swiss family in the afternoon; that's not the kind of Happiness Moment I'm trying to figure out here, but there's no doubt it contributes to a great deal of pleasure.  :)

This morning's Happiness Moment came in our living room, dark save for the illumination of the Christmas tree, in a time of quiet meditation and prayer.  Gazing at the tree, I recalled my childhood Christmas trees, and favorite ornaments, and all the joys of decorating, and baking, and family times.  I listened to my husband and his father working quietly in the kitchen.  And life was suddenly very good.

In keeping with my efforts at chronicling those indefinable, momentary feelings of happiness that catch me almost by surprise, I'll mention one that occurred last night, fleeting but sweet.  It was inspired, I'm sure, by an admixture of a good friend's visit, a dinner of a particularly good quiche, and good fellowship around dessert with a centerpiece of an amazing Canadian ice wine and an associated lecture from the Great Courses on the subject.  The actual moment, however, came later, while looking into our new shower (pictures to come), which added overtones of beauty, good work done well, and a sense of being clean, warm, and at home.

Perhaps it is the wine course that leads me to try to describe these "happiness moments" as if they were wines.

I often puzzle about what makes me happy.  What do I enjoy, what do I find to be fun, what conditions make me stop and think, almost with a start, "I am happy"?

It's surprisingly difficult to discern.  So what I'm going to try to do this year is make a note of those moments, and the circumstances under which they occurred.  It goes without saying that many, more fundamental factors undergird this happiness, but what I'm seeking at this point is the extras that bring the joy bubbling to the surface.

Today, for example, I felt the surge of joy for "no particular reason"  My father-in-law was reading contentedly in his recliner chair; my husband working away in his office (perhaps not so contentedly, but without obvious signs of discontent); I was unhurriedly working ("labor without perturbation") on bringing order to the house and organization to the New Year (activities I always find quietly satisfying if I am not under time pressure); there was good music playing in the background, including recently (thanks to the random selection of our music player) a selection from the soundtrack to Local Hero, which always makes me smile, because it makes me think of my brother and how blessed I am to have such a wonderful family (even though it's a bittersweet joy as I grieve once again that we are so far apart); and I smiled again at the memory of a three-way phone call with our children.

A full cup of quiet happiness is hard to beat.

Focusing on the Foundations
Concentration:  Mental
Category:  Reading
Goal:  Read A History of the Medieval World by February 14

Reading is foundational for intellectual grown, and reading history all the more so.  My 2013 goal of reading fifty-two books has already been mentioned, and will be chronicled under "Books Read" in the sidebar.  Having finished 2012 with several short books, I'm starting 2013 somewhat ambitiously.  I enjoyed Susan Wise Bauer's A History of the Ancient World, and had bought the sequel more than two years ago.  Since her next book, The History of the Renaissance World, is due to be published this September, I decided to give Medieval World high priority. 

This takes prioritizing, and goal-setting, because it's 667 pages long.  It's enjoyable, but dense, and not conducive to casual reading.  I'd originally planned to give myself three months to finish it (reading other books in parallel, of course), but halved the time when I realized that goal had me schlepping a three-pound book through airports.  Still, reading 14 pages/day should not be difficult, IF I make it a specific goal.

Focusing on the Foundations
Concentration:  Physical
Category:  Health
Goal:  A 10 p.m. bedtime

I'm dividing my Foundation 2013 efforts into three categories:  Physical, Mental, and Spiritual.  Not that I believe that body, mind, and spirit are truly separate, any more than the Christian Trinity is separable.  As with the Trinity, however, it is sometimes helpful to consider the "persons" individually, if only for the sake of balance.  I could have chosen different categories, or more, or fewer—but these will do, and I have a pernicious tendency toward analysis paralysis, so it is what it is.

Anyway, a first step that requires little analysis is to set a consistent bedtime of 10 p.m.  That means in bed with the lights out, so all the preliminaries must be completed before then.  For most of my life I've let circumstances (some avoidable, some not) dictate my bedtime, but it's abundantly clear that I do better in almost every way when I'm in bed by ten and asleep soon thereafter.  Of course there will always be exceptions, but with this goal I choose "rules with occasional exceptions" over anarchy.

What I need next is a system of measuring progress/compliance with the goals I set.  As I've discovered with my book-reading goal, what gets measured is much more likely to be accomplished.  But first, a first step.  (See above comment about analysis paralysis.)