Operation: "Without Complaint"
I found it an odd penance that the priest gave me so many
years ago. I probably had told him that
I am guilty of the sin of complaining. I
am sure that all things considered, I am not in a minority in that bad
habit. But the penance was hardly a
penance to me. It wasn’t, “Say three Our
Father’s and four Hail Mary’s.” It was
more to the point of my spiritual illness:
“think of three things you are grateful for this week.” I was in my late 20’s at the time and at
least I had the wherewithal to realize I was doing something that was
wrong. Most people get caught in the rut
of complaining and don’t realize how destructive it is.
For those of you who may be stumbling over the concept of
penance, let me get that out of the way.
Penance doesn’t “make-up” or “un-do” something we’ve done wrong. The extreme and somewhat frightening monastic
practices of the Middle Ages left us with a very distorted view of penance….
And I’m not even sure it was as widely practiced as we were led to believe by secular
history textbooks. I would more readily equate
penance with a man who gives his wife flowers after he hurt her feelings. Flowers don’t make the harsh words
un-said. But they are an important gesture that speaks volumes when
presented sincerely. They say, “I stepped
wrongly in the dance of our relationship.
Please let us begin again.”
When a priest suggests a penance to a person it is with the
aim of putting the offense in perspective.
It is well-assigned when it is related to the sin. For instance, only a fool goes to confession
and thinks (as the movies suggest) that he can confess to a murder and somehow
get away with it because the priest “can’t reveal what is said under the seal
of the confessional.” You can bet that
the penance for murder, the gesture of wanting to make it right, is going to
be: “turn yourself in to the
police.” If the penitent says, “No can
do,” then he isn’t trying to make things right, is he? He’s just trying to make his guilty
conscience silent. Confession isn’t
magic – it is helping a life get back on track to someone who sincerely wants
to make the change.
Back to complaining.
People complain about a lot of things large and small. The weather.
The politics of the day.
Families. Work. In essence, all the things of our daily
lives, including at times the very things that are blessings to us…. like our
children and our material things, etc.
So it is very fitting that a person who wants to change should consider
what blessings surround them -
“Blessings without number,” as an old hymn says. Yet, sometimes being asked to do something
right doesn’t quite sink-in. Due to a
lack of reflection, which is probably proportional to the speed of life, we
often only half-do something we could do better at. I got my chance.
My family asked me some years after that original scenario
in paragraph 1 if I was happy. And I
said, “not really.” I’m not a glass ½
full person. Neither am I a glass ½
empty subscriber. I just think, with all
the possibilities, the glass isn’t full
enough. So I was just registering my
dissatisfaction. To be fair, I was
dating a miserable, controlling human being that was stressing me out. I wasn’t feeling like my typical self because
I had begun trying to “make things work with us.” I wasn’t in my zone of fulfillment and I
didn’t see anything other than relational (and my emotional) disaster if we
made that relationship permanent… as he was pushing for. He needed a green card. He kept saying, “It is easy to get
married. Just take the decision.” I even objected to the word “take” – and
insisted it is “make.” This was very
important in that it underscored our worlds-apart perspective: he wanted me to “take” a decision that would
benefit HIM. I wanted to “make” a
decision that would benefit me. (And I did. I put him on a bus and sent him back to where
he came from.)
Apparently Oprah was on this “Be Thankful” kick for a while
too. So my younger sister, ever eager to
straighten me out, said I should make a list of things for which I am
thankful. Sounds familiar to the first
story, no? This time, I intended to turn
the tables. I did not make a list of ten
things. I took a spiral bound notebook
and over a period of time made a list of 100+ things for which I was
thankful. And then I began to understand.
When we realize how great we have it, there is no room for
complaining. When we even look at the
unfortunate circumstances or suffering of others, we also realize how
profoundly we are blessed. Even our
response of compassion to those who are in lesser straits physically, mentally,
or spiritually, can grow good virtues in our own lives. I like that rendition of the song “You Raise
Me Up” by Josh Groban because it reflects our interdependence so
beautifully. Surely there is pain and
suffering of various levels for all of us because we live in a world that is
fallen and marred by the sins of humanity (including our own). It is clear that the spiritual law of the
universe mirrors the agricultural law of “sowing and reaping.” If you plant good things, you will grow good
things. If you plant weeds, you will
reap weeds, nothing useful. My list of
100+ things I was thankful for helped me begin scratching the surface of the
basics that I so much took for granted.
I began looking at my life with a broader lens and I liked the view.
I think complaining is a vice of the privileged more than an
expression of the underprivileged. I
have met people who have lived so simply and have been so very happy. You just wanted to be around them and have
that happy glow rub off on you. I have
also met people who have the best of all circumstances and they do nothing but
make lemons out of apples. I wonder if
Gallup Poll or Pew Research has considered doing a National Complaining
Comparison Study. They could send people
to a variety of other countries and have them see if they could determine the
general mood of an entire country, or if there were groups of whiners in
certain cases that were generic across international lines. It’d be interesting, wouldn’t it?
One of my friends has been doing missionary work in Zambia,
Africa for over 50 years, really almost his whole life. He came for a visit to the States at one
point and we went to the Mall together.
I thought it might be interesting for him to see all the new types of
stores. What caught his eye was a kid in
a sneaker store whining that he didn’t “like” the type of shoes he was trying
on. He was shocked at the whining. I really had thought nothing of it, having
seen many examples of the American teenager in its prime over the years. He pointed out to me: “In Africa, the children are taught a sense
of both respect for their parents and gratefulness for anything that is given
to them …” It went without saying that the gratefulness was probably naturally
spurred on by a position of want or need:
If you have little and someone is generous, you don’t take it for
granted. His observation made me
embarrassed for our culture, and it also made me more aware of my reaction to
generosity.
There is so much generosity and blessing in our daily lives
that most of us are tripping over it.
The other day a stranger sat at my lunch table and bowed his head before
eating his meal. I thanked him for saying
grace. Really, as someone who owns dogs
that practically run each other over to eat their meals – as if they will never
see another meal again – I think people can do a little better to thank the
Creator for the gift of food. What if
all we had to eat as human beings was like dog food, every single meal the
same? How boring it would be! Five years ago I discovered Brussels’
sprouts. They were done really well as
they were fried with olive oil and sesame seeds. I closed my eyes for a moment to focus on the
flavor. If you have eaten regular
iceberg lettuce all your life, do that with arugula greens some time. Just close your eyes for a few minutes and
let all your senses focus on tasting.
Maybe in doing this, we have stumbled onto the secret: slow down & savor and then we will grasp
more of how blessed we are! Of course,
let it not go unsaid, that I don’t have to close my eyes to eat ANY flavor of
ice cream – I’m one with the spoon and loving every minute of it!
So this is my challenge to you, take a step forward in the
Journey of Gratefulness. Train yourself
to operate without complaint. Perhaps
grab a spiral bound notebook and start taking notice of all the things you just
have accepted as if they were your personal due. They are not.
They are blessings and we should feel so happy. Then let that “happy” glow out of you and
help others. Shut off the evening news
and become yourself. Filter out the
negative. As the sign says: “Live
the life you love; and love the life you live.”
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I dedicate today's writing to Fr. Bill J. Thanks for the good "penance." It took 30 years, but I'm "getting it."
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