Today I made a poached egg

This year I made a goal for myself to learn how to make a poached egg. Today was the day. See below.

It’s like how my new year’s resolution every year is “pet more dogs.” Very doable. Even, in some way, designed to throw others off the scent (you may think I am a poor cook or not interested in animals based on either of these goals). Very much not revealing my actual goals for the year.

On avocado toast, no less!

But there’s a reason for that. Isn’t there some group of people - I think an indigenous population - who believe that photography steals your soul? So every time someone snaps your picture, a piece of your soul goes away. (Someone better tell the Instagram influencers.)

That is how I feel about sharing goals too early. Why the need to tell one million people what you plan to do? How about just do it? The sharing, with out any ground to stand on, in some way dissolves the dignity of the goal. It saps it of its life. Maybe because talking about it is itself satisfying enough and it feels like it has been achieved, I don’t know. Or maybe that’s how your talk yourself out of it. Or giving it voice makes it seem too large and unconquerable. For all these reasons and others, whenever I have a goal that actually means something to me, typically I keep it mostly to myself.

Which brings me to another point about goals, which is I have been thinking lately about how thoughts are things and how everything that is, began as a thought. I thought about that egg - I visualized it sitting on the top shelf of my fridge in its little clear plastic case, nestled in with its egg brethren. I visualized the water boiling, and cooling, and swirling; the introduction of just a tablespoon of vinegar, the way the white would become solid and swirl around the increasingly opaque, sunshiney yolk. The rounding, the hardening. Slipping a slotted spoon into the hot water after approximately three minutes to rescue the eggie in in its new form, and indeed to give it its rightful place of honor atop a warm piece of buttery toast slathered in pulverized avocado. Heaven. I squealed when it was done. All of this was a thought, for two months, and then there it was in front of me, a thing.

So it is for small goals, so it is for big goals. The trick is the work that must be done in the middle, to take it from thought to thing. Oh, maybe that’s it - talking feels like work, to some. (It isn’t.)

While we’re on this topic, there is an additional, much more important thought here - and arguably the only one that matters - that we exist because God thought us into being. As I have heard it explained, He loved us into existence. And He allows us into the act of co-creating by allowing us to think things into existence - careers, homes, travels, art, relationships. It is good to create, because God is the first Creator.

I merely thought a poached egg into existence. But, I’ll take it (and I did).

A Lent Full of Possibilities

There is one other thing I want to add about Lent. I spent the last post talking a lot about sacrifice (“sacrifice” - what are donuts, after all?) and prayer, but not much about service or alms-giving which are equally pillars of this penitential season.

On Ash Wednesday, Bishop Barron wrote:

The three great practices of Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—are three things you do. This is going to sound a little bit strange, but my recommendation for this Lent is, in a certain way, to forget about your spiritual life—by which I mean forget about looking inside at how you’re progressing spiritually. Follow the Church’s recommendations and do three things: pray, fast, and give alms. And as you do, pray to draw closer to the Lord as the center of your life—and the reason you do everything.

Last night I came across an article in evangelical magazine, Relevant, called Inside India’s Brick Kilns: Meet the Catholic Sisters Serving Kids.

I will save my thoughts on the absolute witness of these women to, as the author notes, simply be with these poverty-stricken children and families. I don’t think anything I say could do that reality justice, anyway.

I raise the article for two reasons: one is that I often run across organizations doing great work and think “people really ought to support that.” This leads me to my first thought: I interpret this as an invitation to me to notice that particular thought during Lent and actually be the one to give. Even just $10. Why not? That’s almsgiving, to me. Charitable giving need not be done in huge, pre-planned chunks. Respond to the call when you hear it, even if in just a small way.

Secondly, service. Bishop Barron does not cite service as a pillar of Lent, but I am claiming it here. What is faith without works? But more importantly, as he points out, Lent can become such an inward-looking experience, a “have I become holy yet?” quest. I may forget about serving others around me. And service can be its own experience of penance and mortification and therefore an opportunity for growth. So, you may not be called to serve the poorest of India, but you may be called to visit the elderly or disabled near your office; to arrange flowers for your church’s altar; to write a letter to someone in prison; to shovel the snow off your neighbor’s driveway; to mentor and hold the hand of a child without parents. That, to me, seems like a Lent full of possibilities.

p.s. I want to hear how your Lent is going. Are you doing the Stations of the Cross every Friday? Are you fasting, and if so, how and from what? Are you dragging yourself reluctantly to confession and considering it a victory? Let me know in the comments, girlfriend!

p.p.s. My workshop on growing in self-awareness is tomorrow!

Rethinking Lent This Year (Again)

Last year I wrote an article called Rethinking Lent This Year. I was inspired by the fact that I realized my own sacrifices were on autopilot and I didn’t even know why I was giving up what I was giving up. More importantly, could I add something? The thought of it all!

Anyway, I polled a bunch of people via email and got some great responses. Please read if you are rethinking your Lent; have fallen off the band wagon already; are feeling competitive with yourself or others (just kidding - don’t do that - it’s very much opposite the spirit of Lent); or want to learn something new. I know I did as I wrote it.

For example, one thing I come back to again this year is the decision to enjoy the thing on Sunday which one has given up. Obvious examples: chocolate, beer, wine, donuts, Netflix. As someone explained it to me, there are a few reasons for this. One is that it keeps you humbled. If you think you are just a’cruisin’ to Lent giving up this and that of your own power, to have it reintroduced - and then removed again the following day - can show you how dependent on God you are, actually. And yes, it takes God’s grace to keep me from snorfling seven handfuls of chocolate almonds from my desk drawer each day.

I think there’s another layer of humility, too, which is that if you are giving up all these fatty things you may end up feeling both svelte and smug. That’s not the point of Lent! Stop it! Go eat a donut and remember your sins.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering what I’ve given up. Last year I decided not to really give up anything because I had not been partaking of much alcohol or sweets, anyway. I prayed over some particular intentions, and I also wrote letters to friends with a bit of scripture that fit the season and in which I found a lot of meaning. That was Sirach 35:1-11. I was thinking a lot about relationships. It was a very powerful Lent.

This year, I have indeed been enjoying things like wine and so I have given that up, and all sweets. Also no social media at home/after work. More prayer intentions. I have a card I took from the back of St. Matthew’s with the pictures of all the seminarians in the Archdiocese, and I am praying for them. Writing letters again, and including a poem this time. I will share the poem later; don’t want to ruin the surprise for my friends who read this. I will be writing fewer letters, though.

But overall I am - resting. Resting in God. Remembering that indeed I am from dust and to dust I shall return. Trying slowness, patience, forgiveness, hope. Taking a good, hard look at my relationship with God. Wondering what it means to be helpless before God. Wondering how it is that Jesus himself understands helplessness. I will be revisiting the third week of the Spiritual Exercises.

“I ask for what I desire. Here it is what is proper for the Passion: sorrow with Christ in sorrow; a broken spirit with Christ so broken; tears; and interior suffering because of the great suffering which Christ endured for me” (SE 203).