The Day I Stopped Looking Sideways

Last Saturday, frustrated after a week of computer issues, I faced a blank screen. The cursor blinks, taunts. Even my favourite fountain pen fails to mark the page. Through the window, fog drapes the harbour, clouds poised on the southern horizon—a physical acedia rolling in.

What can I change to deflect a drenching?

Change, however, is never my first choice. The very word makes me twitch, as it implies some degree of personal responsibility. More often, I prefer to, in a kindly way, blame ‘others’ or ‘external circumstances.’ These days, applicants abound for both.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in change. In fact, I know plenty of people who would benefit from a shift in their attitudes or choices!

The images of some who accepted change etch themselves on my memory, their postures like cave paintings.

Strapped in a stroller beside my mother as she played piano for Sunday services, I watched people struggling with addiction and abuse come to the front of the sanctuary—broken and wanting wholeness for even just a day—to kneel at the Mercy Seat. The backing track includes “Just as I am without one plea,” and “Amazing Grace. “I once was lost but now am found,” the soundtrack for gospel incarnate.

But my seat was always on the sidelines—observing—while the action unfolded “over there”.

Until.

Until I find myself humming the lyrics of the African American spiritual “It’s Me, O Lord (Standing in the Need of Prayer).” And I recognize a real prayer, not just a shower repertoire. Humility and repentance back each prayer like chords backing up the lead of the slide guitar.

Looking back, I am humbled, even ashamed, by the feelings of self-righteousness that accompanied my early years. In one scene, Jesus describes the attitude of a Pharisee and a publican. (Luke 18:9-14) “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector…” Sigh! My people.

Open Pandora’s box of spiritual and moral comparison, and temptations swarm. Either I’m better than others or falling short. Such comparisons open the door to my old friend, acedia, and the gang bursts in: dissatisfaction, restlessness, agitation. Unseen and unstated expectations feed agitation and break attention. Comparison pulls me from my present into the world of another, real or imagined. Why am I not like them? If only…. The restlessness born of dissatisfaction erodes steady engagement with God and one’s path.

Comparison is the engine; acedia is the condition it fuels.

Come back to the present, my reality: Breathe in for a count of four, hold for four, breathe out, hold for four. Repeat.

A female friend once told me that women in their 50s no longer compare themselves to images of women in their twenties; instead, they measure themselves against other women in their 50s and 60s. “At least then we can say, I look better than she!”

Neither comparison nor acedia is confined to the realm of the personal. Even a quick glance south of the 49th parallel reveals a nation entrenched in moral comparison. Can you believe what those people believe or how they act? Thank God we Canadians are not like that. Pharisees and publicans! Fetch my T-shirt!

Comparisons spin me away from my own reality, shielding me from self-awareness, repentance, and the possibility of change.

While in his twenties, the writer of the classic hymn “Amazing Grace,” a reckless and rebellious John Newton (1725–1807), displayed a penchant for excessive drinking, mockery of religion, and challenges to authority. During this period, while working in the Atlantic slave trade, his shipmates abandoned the highly disliked Newton on the coast of West Africa. He survived.

On another voyage, the ship became ensnarled in a vicious storm. In a move reminiscent of the Biblical character Jonah, Newton cried to God for mercy. His plea was granted, but it took years before he saw the slave trade differently. Eventually, he turned away and became a mentor to William Wilberforce, the famous abolitionist. Change and repentance find their own gait.

A smorgasbord of accounts of repentance fills the Bible: Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jonah. No need even to crack open the book of saints to look at the lives of those like Francis, people who resist, delay, or pretend not to know before they acknowledge —my people.

In the Biblical stories and those of the saints, God meets people in places they never meant to go. Often, feeling lost provides a step.

When struggling through the darkest parts of the Valley of the Shadow, I often wonder what I need to do to get out of this state. Happily, there are practices that help: putting structure into the day each morning, using an arrow prayer (as the Desert Fathers called them) (1), and journaling. But as grateful as I am for those insights, in the end, my overwhelming feeling is not so much about fighting my way out or through as about being found.

“I once was lost, but now am found.”

The word “found” conveys the sense of being discovered. Someone searches, tracks me through the fog, over the shale.

For lack of a better phrase, I would say some presence comes alongside and so changes the experience.  The sense that I was not, am not, alone in my version of reality changes the nature of the cloud. No longer so forlornly cold or pitilessly dark. Shoulders loosen, the hard knot of loneliness eases.

In an effort to make sense (aka do theology), I reach for some version of God’s name.

Some maintain that, even when we cannot sense God’s presence, God is always present. Maybe. Maybe not. I prefer the comfort of the first but wonder about the second. As troubling as it often becomes, I do not dismiss those words of Jesus, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The Valley makes me aware of how flimsy a storm door my wisdom, knowledge, and practices provide. “It’s me, O Lord, standin’ in the need.”

Although I work fairly diligently – at least once a week – to be aware of my emotional and spiritual state, I am often slow to acknowledge signs. Sometimes the cues are subtle: I move through my days with less patience – to put it generously, or I find myself avoiding tasks without even providing a creative excuse. Other times, my body shouts, demanding recognition—tension in my shoulders, brain fog and lethargy when I wake. When I sing fragments in the shower, does the change in my personal playlist from “I once was lost” to “It’s me O Lord” signify something?

Lately, the 1950’s tune, “I know about tomorrow,” by Ira Stanphill has arrived.

Many things about tomorrow,

I don’t seem to understand.

But I know who holds tomorrow,

And I know who holds my hand.

Might mean something.

This blessing works for the day: When the storm rises within you, may a quiet light endure—steady enough to guide you home.

(1) An arrow prayer is “a one-breath cry to God that pierces distraction before it can take root,” a short, urgent prayer shot from the heart to God in a moment of need—like an arrow released instantly rather than a speech carefully composed. (ChatGPT)