{"id":2918,"date":"2024-04-24T23:13:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T03:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/chocolateforyourbrain\/?p=2918"},"modified":"2024-04-24T23:13:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T03:13:22","slug":"for-this-type-of-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/chocolateforyourbrain\/2024\/04\/for-this-type-of-food\/","title":{"rendered":"For This Type of Food"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

I need to write.\u00a0 Writers do that, every day. I\u2019ve been managing as many words as I do steps as of late.\u00a0 It\u2019s a red letter day when I break six thousand with the walking, and likewise three hundred fifty with the writing. Not sure why putting thoughts down on the page has become harder than exercise.\u00a0 Blaming illness doesn\u2019t work, because this started before I got sick.\u00a0 It can\u2019t be because I\u2019m too busy because I\u2019ve always been too busy and I\u2019ve always made time.\u00a0 Further, when I\u2019ve sat to write, even if I had no thoughts, the thoughts assembled like Avengers, and came one after another, almost faster than I could type.\u00a0 <\/span> \n<\/span> \nNot these days.\u00a0 <\/strong> \n<\/span> <\/span><\/h4>\n Additionally, I need to pray.\u00a0 There have been years when I\u2019ve been a prayer warrior, managing the Chaplet, Rosary, and other devotions consistently each day \u2013but these days, it\u2019s a true victory to listen to the mass as I drive to work, and all devotions start with great intentions, and somehow stay mostly there. \u00a0 It used to be easy. I\u2019d pull into the parking lot and scoot into the Adoration Chapel and feel like I\u2019d been wrapped in a blanket. \u00a0 Somehow, the space from the car to the chapel door feels like miles, and I pull into the parking lot only to feel like I\u2019m wearing fatigue, like those last few steps will exhaust me, and God will have to make due with my weary self sitting in the driver\u2019s seat, eyes shut and drifting off.\u00a0 <\/span> \n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Could you not watch one hour?\u00a0 These days, the answer seems to be no. <\/strong> \n<\/span> \n<\/span>Everything I do seems to expand to cover all of the hours.\u00a0 Dishes, teaching, cooking, cleaning, planning lessons, all of the time gets taken.\u00a0 I was supposed to play the piano piece, Beethoven\u2019s Moonlight Sonata, three times a day, and now, I can\u2019t quite look at those keys because I know, I haven\u2019t done it.\u00a0 It takes effort, and the part of me that beat Cancer, that always had more energy than I knew what to do with, that wanted to dance until the last song ended and wished the last song wasn\u2019t the last song, all of that part seems, if not asleep, closed off for repairs. \u00a0 The drive is missing.\u00a0 <\/span> \n<\/span> \n<\/span>Writing this I thought would help me muster the push to do more \u2013but it has reminded me of how much less I am doing.\u00a0 That thought brought me to what I\u2019ve observed in students and in life in general. When shopping at Target, the birthday section felt picked over, and uninspired.\u00a0 Like the effort to celebrate took too much to ask, and that\u2019s what I see missing, both in my own efforts, and in those of communities around me, they\u2019re needing something more, that effort, that energy, that vigor to act and go beyond what is required, beyond 10,000 steps, beyond 500 words, beyond making it to the door of the chapel.\u00a0 Sherry, what if you played the Moonlight Sonata four times? \u00a0 <\/span> \n<\/span><\/span>The very thought of pushing past, of planking life, of choosing to be stronger than I felt, felt like a hint of the Holy Spirit pushing me out of the sickly comfort shell I\u2019d created.\u00a0 Start with this, and see where it leads. \u00a0 It made finishing the writing almost an impatient task, because the keys beckoned, and I needed to get to them before the zeal that seemed to dangle before me, evaporated. \u00a0 <\/span> \n<\/span> \n<\/span>But before I could leave my computer, my daughter came and complained that she felt flat.\u00a0 The stillness filled her to the tips of her hair, and made her feel lonely and sad.\u00a0 After a few minutes, I let her read what I\u2019d written. It gave the correct diagnosis but not the cure.\u00a0 So I read her Langston Hughes\u2019 story, \u201cThank You Ma\u2019am.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d only heard it myself that afternoon, but I knew somehow, it fit the bill.\u00a0 A good story that held pain and humor and hope all in one without answers seemed perfect.\u00a0 Her smile returned at the end, and she hugged me.\u00a0 <\/span> \n<\/span> \n<\/span>A good story is like a hug, it holds onto the more we seek and lets us grasp it for a moment.\u00a0 Stories, like music, like art, like beauty, like prayers, like dance, are the more we do not recognize we need until we are starving for it, and unhappy because we are starved.\u00a0 I\u2019d been starving for weeks, and so the soul felt thin.\u00a0 <\/strong> \n<\/span> \n<\/span>So I finished writing and went to practice my piano, feeling more like myself than I had in weeks, other than when I went dancing this past weekend and fell onto the dance floor because my heart danced faster than my feet could follow. \u00a0 If we want a society filled with deliberate joy, we will have to seek out more stories, prayers, music, art and dance.\u00a0 We will have to recognize we\u2019ve been starving ourselves for so long, we don\u2019t recognize how hungry our souls are for this type of food.\u00a0 They are all hints of the world that is, that awaits us and that is not fallen, of the Eucharist, of the community and communion we seek and only get sometimes in the midst of doing. \n \nWe are starving for this type of food.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I need to write.\u00a0 Writers do that, every day. I\u2019ve been managing as many words as I do steps as of late.\u00a0 It\u2019s a red letter day when I break six thousand with the walking, and likewise three hundred fifty with the writing. Not sure why putting thoughts down on the page has become harder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4510,"featured_media":2573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-teaching-others-and-myself"],"yoast_head":"\nFor This Type of Food<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I need to write.\u00a0 Writers do that, every day. 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