My current spiritual practice includes, among other things, the excruciatingly slow reading of the Bible and other wisdom texts. I typically read a paragraph, or a few verses, per day; that’s plenty to sit with in silent prayer and ponder the depths that the passage may hold.

This year I began reading The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day in this way. (If you don’t know Dorothy Day, you can start here to get acquainted with her—a writer, journalist, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, tireless advocate for pacifism and against poverty, etc.) Today, quite by accident, what came up was her entry for the first Friday in Lent 1935. Very short and yet, my goodness, it could have been written yesterday:

Lent is teaching me a great deal through the lessons at hand—teaching me not to be surprised at the foolishness, even the treachery of creatures. [This lesson] really has nothing to do with them—…it is for my good.

Is there anywhere in our public square that’s not rife with this kind of foolishness? Does it rile you up as it does me? I would love, instead, to learn what Dorothy learned: to take it all in stride, not excusing the treachery but approaching it with a clear mind.
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For those of you who practice Lent, may you have a blessed one. 

Two months ago I got hit with a torrent of inner conflicts/issues/etc., what I will refer to as dreck. The dreck included huge lifetime struggles with body image, my intense craving for approval, and my occasional impatience with  chronic illness.

​It was intense.

I know that deep spiritual practice tends to stir things up. But along with the dreck came an attitude I didn’t even know I had: I should be done with this by now.

I should be, right? I’ve done therapy off and  on for 40 years. I’ve kept a journal off and on for 40 years. Plenty of time to steam-shovel the big stuff, so that all I have to do now is fine tune.

No. As God/Reality/the Universe was trying to tell me, it doesn’t work that way.

People I respect confirmed this message. My Zen teacher compared self-transformation to “peeling the infinite layers of an onion.” My spiritual director told me about an interview with Carl Jung in which he said the conscious mind never stops processing, even in the face of death.

The clincher, for me, was a famous line from Dogen, the monk who brought Zen to Japan: “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.” (Full text of the quote here.) Since studying the Buddha Way can take forever, why wouldn’t studying the self?

Sigh.

So, no: I guess we’re never done with the inner dreck. Conflicts we’ve long suppressed finally come to the surface. Issues we’ve dealt with for years demand another go. Spiritual practice keeps stirring the pot.

But why bother? On one level I want to say we’re asked to do it. On another, though, we mine such rich veins of life in the process. Sometimes we find deep healing, as I’m now finding—maybe for the first time since I was eight—with body image. Sometimes we glimpse a clear, liberating view of reality, and it takes our breath away, and that clarity and liberation are worth the whole long hard slog.

This aspect of life isn’t for everyone, that’s for sure. But if it calls to you, pay attention. You’re in for one hell of a ride.

Questions? Comments? Bring ‘em.