There is a balm...

Bob handed me Marilynne Robinson's Gilead this morning and wanted me to read the first two paragraphs to refresh my memory about the prose.  I kept reading, and came upon this passage. The narrator is an old pastor writing a letter to his son:

My mother's father was a preacher, and my father's father was, too, and his father before him, and before that, nobody knows, but I wouldn't hesitate to guess...They were fine people, but if there was one thing I should have learned form them and did not learn, it was to control my temper. This is wisdom I should have attained a long time ago.  Even now, when  flutter of my pulse makes me think of final things, I find myself losing my temper, because a drawer sticks or because I've misplaced my glasses...

A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine.  Above all, mind what you say.  "Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire"--that's the truth.  When my father was old he told me that very thing in a letter he sent me. Which, as it happens, I burned.  I dropped it right in the stove. This surprised me a good deal more at the time than it does in retrospect...  

Well, we see but do not perceive, hear and hear but do not understand, as the Lord says.  I can't claim to understand that saying, as many times as I've heard it, and even preached on it.  It simply states a deeply mysterious fact.  You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between the but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

My point in mentioning this is only to say that people who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing.  They make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time.  This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did.  Just to reflect on it make me a little irritated.  Irritation is a form of anger, I suppose.

One great benefit of a religious vocation is that it helps you concentrate.  It gives you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore.  And if I have any wisdom to offer, this is a fair part of it.

Why did I quote this?  Because it calmed me.  I think it was as much the sheer beauty of it as it was the message.  I like the way Robinson has Ames mention that he burns the letter on anger, and even as an old man he gets irritated that it took him so long to become wise. That's realistic. When we're feeling ornery, sometimes there's not much we can tell ourselves about it, rationally. Better to laugh it out, or cry it out, or look at something beautiful.  Read a Psalm.  I know that when I am stressed, I get way too analytical.  No one who is feeling hyper-analytical about themselves should blog.  Thus my silence lately.

Midlife meets adolescence.  C.Z.'s physical therapy twice a week meets with my need for a small surgery, and a longer than expected recovery. February meets April; it's called March, and it suits my mood.  The world doesn't stop.  It lurches.

I've read lots of good blog posts about margin lately.  Susan's entire blog is about margin, more or less.  Yet for me, it seems that margin means that I don't blog.  It means I sit quietly and read what others have to say, try to learn wisdom, and hold my tongue.  For now.