The Spirituality of Little Things

Last night I went to see Stranger Than Fiction for the second time.  (Hint: if I’m willing to pay full price to see a movie, I like it.  If I’m willing to pay full price twice, I really, really like it.)  I think one of the reasons why I like this movie so much is because it synchs up with an idea I’ve been developing for a while about what matters in the spiritual life.

This is what I think: when it comes to spirituality and loving God, what matters most isn’t the big things that you do (although those are important), but the little things.  It’s the spiritual version of “Mind the pence and the pounds will mind themselves.”  It’s not having ecstacies, or spending hours every day in front of the Eucharist, or going to foreign countries to die as a martyr, it’s whether you say “Thank you” to the check-out lady at the grocery store.  It’s whether you clear your own dishes from the table.  It’s how you treat your family or your roommates on the day you’re coming down with a cold.  The little things add up, eventually far outweighing the big things.  I would far rather have a husband who comes home to eat dinner with me every night than one who takes me on a long cruise, and then doesn’t bother to see me the rest of the year.

In addition, I think it’s the training we go through by doing the little things that make the big things possible.  A man who finds a hundred little things every day to show his wife he loves her, from opening a door to scraping the frost off her windshield, isn’t going to be tempted much when another woman “makes him an offer he can’t refuse.”  Little by little we train ourselves in unselfishness and love.  When the chance comes to do the big thing, to jump in front of the bus to save the kid or take the bullet for your friend or whatever, you do it without thinking.  Because that’s the kind of man or woman you are.  That’s the person you’ve trained yourself to be.

This is also my definition of integrity.  It’s a whole-life consistency, a million tiny decisions, all pointing the same way.  The things we do without thinking show more about our true characters than the most deliberated-over decision.  I think this also has to do with what it means to be “pure of heart.” (Matthew 5:8)  When a person’s whole life points toward love, that is a person who will surely see God.

So in this season of holiday frenzy and compulsory good cheer, I think it’s good to remember that it’s the little things that count.  Smile and say thank you.  Appreciate the light on a child’s face, the way a snowflake dances through the air, the million tiny things our God does every day to show us He loves us.  And then do the same for the people you’re with, no matter who they are.  It’s all in the little things.

Marian Theology and the War In Iraq

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the various conflicts we’ve found ourselves militarily involved in, particularly as they relate to my personal views on war and peace.  For me, the war is rather personal.  It’s not some abstraction, it’s people I love going away from me for long periods of time.  It’s people I love perhaps not coming back.  So far it hasn’t been any family members (I’m lucky enough to not have any family in the military), but it has meant two close friends of mine.  One is in Afghanistan, and the other is currently in the heart of Baghdad. 

I don’t like this.  When I think about it, it just doesn’t belong in my world.  It’s almost surreal.  Kjirstin should not be in Baghdad.  Kjirstin should be home (note: when I say home I mean here in Dayton with me, not in Washington state where she’s from or in Arizona with her parents – yeah, I’m a little self-centered), getting ready to meet me for dinner or reading books in her apartment with her cats.  What is she doing in Iraq, with gunfire outside her bedroom and a combat helmet stashed beside her desk while she works?  For me there is a fundamental disconnect there.  Something is not right in the world.

Today it ocurred to me that this is possibly part of what Mary felt when she stood at the foot of the cross.  The world might have suddenly not made any sense to her at all.  What was her son, her little baby, her darling one around whom her whole world revolved, doing up there nailed to that wood?  How could those hands that she washed and held now have pieces of metal stuck through them?  It would have seemed just utterly wrong, that things were not right in the world and perhaps would never be right again.

However, the truth is that in that moment when things might have seemed so wrong, the whole world was being put right.  After millenia of things-going-awry the cosmos was about to become correctly ordered for the first time.  And I guess that’s where I have my hope.  I don’t like seperation.  I don’t like knowing that those I love are in danger.  I don’t like the accumulation of sin that has made it necessary for my friends to be there.  But perhaps, like Christ’s suffering on the cross gave humanity its great chance at salvation, the work my friends are doing might give the people they work with a chance at a better life.  So I’ll wait, like Mary, and trust, like Mary.  God’s will will be done.  While we have heaven no seperation is forever.  “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done unto me according to thy word.”

Livin’ It

“If evidence for holiness is to be found in the life of Edith Stein, the biographer must look for it in her subtle and slow development – not in the act of death but in the process of living that makes a certain kind of death possible.”

 - Greene, Dana K., “In Search of Edith Stein: Beyond Hagiography” in Contemplating Edith Stein, ed. Joyce Avrech Berkman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 140

This is something I’ve though about a lot with regard to my favorite saints.  It isn’t so much the death you die as the life you lived so that when your chance for greatness came you didn’t flinch away from it.  In a lot of ways, this is my definition of integrity: millions of tiny decisions all pointing the same way.  In a saint, the decisions overwhelmingly point towards heaven. 

Note, not all of the decisions point that way.  Saints are sinners, saved and redeemed by the grace of God, but still sinners.  In fact, this is what gives me the greatest hope for my own life.  When it comes down to it, I’m pretty far from where I want to be.  But I’m getting there.  Little by little, day by day, I’m making my way towards where I want to be – safe in heaven in the embrace of my God.  Maybe one day I’ll have my chance at greatness, the chance to finally play in the game I’ve been training myself for for so long.  One of my friends used to say that the most important day in a person’s life is the day they die.  One day I hope to be able to die the way a saint dies.