My monastery is silver. It tracks through the suburbs from
Surrey Hills to the city. It is the 8.25.
Being husband, father, brother, office worker, mortgagee
smothers me with demands. God's powerful presence in prayer
is equally insistent.
Life consists in integrating and answering the demands of
these two belongings.
How and where can I pray during the working day? How do all my
activities as father, husband, son, brother, worker, interweave
with this deeper belonging?
It starts. Bring in the paper and the rubbish bin, put on the
kettle, feed the cat make the lunches, borrow train fare from the
kids, sign that note, pull up the doona, shave, find a pair of
socks, where is a hanky, pack that bag, put in those bills and
cheques, defrost the sausages, rush for the 8.25, think up that
agenda, remember to make those calls.
During the morning business the ear half listens to the news
summaries: Bosnia, Cambodia, Burma, South Africa, Somalia, Tibet,
Bougainville, and unemployment. Between 6.40 and 8.10 the heart
sinks lower and lower, almost to despair. There can't be a God in
a world like that!
Life seems so frantic, the news so profoundly disturbing, the
two so unconnected. The challenge to survive neutralises the
challenge to respond to humanity. Our lives can feel shallow, our
hearts despairing.
These predicaments frame our spiritual lives. How do we in
busy urban Australia two jobs, children, mortgage, school fees,
maintain an active spirituality? How do we satisfy our hunger for
the infinite?
We all have our ways, expressive of our temperament and
opportunities, of preventing the smothering of our profoundest
instincts. The following are some of my idiosyncrasies.
Trains, planes, buses, trams; these are for me the best places
for prayer. Rakes, brooms, spades and forks: these are for
me the best tools for prayer. Hat, overcoat, walking shoes: these
are the best garments for prayer. Travelling, working, walking,
in these are purpose but no straining of will, the heart can seek
its target.
I walk to the station in the morning. The air clears my head.
The rhythm of the steps and the breath is simple prayer saying
thanks for the morning.
On the train, the silver monastery, hiding in a corner, I read
from a small book the morning prayer from the office of the
church. It takes four stations. After that I just sit, half
asleep, half praying a mantra, wondering about my fellow
travellers, feeling empathy for their lives. Imagining how they
live.
Work, can be exhilarating but often is like gnawing on the
same hard stones, meal after meal. The ache of boredom can become
claustrophobic. Try as I might, many things I have to do are
deeply frustrating. How can the boredom be transformed into
prayer, made productive? How to both preserve a loving attitude
to squabbling workmates and keep integrity?
You play the role, answer the phone, and meet the deadlines.
Lunchtime is a chance to make contact again. Sometimes I put on
the jacket, step out with the target of a chapel about 2 klms
away. Sometimes Catholic, sometimes Lutheran; my favourite,
Anglican. The emptier the better, and it is better to walk out of
the city centre. I drop into a steady, comfortable gait. As I
walk, I take it easy, and let the feverishness of the brain fall
away, concentrate on the mantra of the walk.
I sit in a pew or follow Mass. I think of Bosnia, Cambodia,
Burma, South Africa, Somalia, Tibet, the people on the train, the
unemployed who come to the city in the off peak. I enter in a
small way into their suffering. Lunch hour is my great silence.
On the way home on the 5.59, I should say the evening prayer.
I don't, I'm too stuffed. The brain sits empty, barely working at
all. On Friday nights the forlorn moment is waiting wearily in
the winter dark on Richmond station, looking out across the
lights of the suburbs looking at my anonymous companions,
travelling their own trail of light to their anonymous homes.
Drawn out through darkened suburbs, magnetised to that square of
light out there, each to their own, to the one table, to the one
person where they exist, to their space where everything allows
them to name themself, to be named , to have themselves invented
by others, to be filled with the light, in that one small place.
Lay people, no less than monks need a rule, a deliberate
scheduling of God time and activities within our busy and
volatile lives. We need regular habits of prayer, meditation,
active giving, self-denial, and worship. We need to focus each
day on our relationship with God, regularly day after day, even
if we break our pattern many days. We need to read and talk
spiritually and perhaps and most previously with your partner. We
need a mantra for the walk to the bus stop, to play quietly in
the background, that swells in us unbidden while we work on that
spreadsheet at work. Perhaps for some keeping a journal will be a
natural bent.
The rule is going to be different: for the busy parent, young
retiree, student, elderly person, person on a pension with mental
health problems, and for men or woman. Attention to God
can’t be left to chance. The traditional dichotomy between
the active and the contemplative lives is false.
Last thing at night the jog or the walk. The final
mantra of the step and breath. Sometimes with the partner,
sharing the day, our first conversation for the day. Put out the
rubbish bin, the paper stack and the bag of bottles. Sometimes
the evening prayer in the bath.
Set the alarm for the 8.25. Try again.
Extract from Fragments: Moments of Intimacy by Terry
Monagle, published by John Garratt Publishing. RRP $29.95.
20% Book of the Month discount for CathNews readers (until
24/12/03, mention CathNews when placing order, no other discounts
apply).Click
hereor call 1300 650878.
For those without hope,
there’s Despair- Move over management gurus,
someone’s selling mediocrity & dissatisfaction
New York, Dec. 2:
Think positive! Teams work! Work is the Elixir of Life!
Ok, no one has ever uttered
that last statement. Still, nothing is more irritating
than those smarmy motivational posters that exhort
employees to produce more and work harder.
Slackers and malcontents
take heart: At last someone is promoting cynicism,
mediocrity and dissatisfaction with life in a world awash
in books, videos and management gurus selling success.
Motivational maven Dale Carnegie must be spinning in his
grave.
Texas-based Despair Inc. is
blanketing America with 2.3 million catalogues, just in
time for the holidays. The company is pitching its
anti-motivational calendars, caps and mugs to an audience
fed up with their workplaces, co-workers and managers and
ready to embrace the caustic humour its products promote.
Co-founders E.L. Kersten
and Jef and Justin Sewell weren’t thinking about all
that when they launched Despair Inc. in 1998. But the
dotcom crash, a sour stock market, the rash of corporate
scandals and rising unemployment have helped fuel worker
discontent — and, as it turned out, the
company’s sales: revenue is just over $5 million
today, up from a mere $200,000 five years ago.
Kersten contends there were
those who scoffed at the motivational pap that managers
spoon-fed their staff even when the economy was booming,
and who gravitated toward Despair Inc.’s warped
brand of humour. But after more than two years of
economic turmoil, there are more.
“Everybody is cynical
about something,” Kersten said, “even the
optimistic individual.”
Take Deepak Chopra, the
eternally optimistic guru of spirituality and fulfilment.
He can’t stand all that motivational stuff.
“When you have major issues like corporate scandals,
a war going on, and politicians hyping themselves, that
is all the more reason to despair and to be very cynical
about the human condition,” Chopra said in a phone
interview.
Chopra doesn’t have
the Despair Inc. catalogue. He had never heard of the
firm, but said that he agreed with its philosophy.
“I would also poke fun at the things we hold dear as
examples of success,” he said.
Retired teacher Bob Geary,
60, of Harwich, Massachusetts, got a taste of Despair
when its catalogue arrived in the mail this month. He
ordered a calendar for his son’s office. He said the
calendar reminded him of the corporate retreats he used
to attend and the motivational exercises he was required
to do.
“I participated in
many team-building exercises,” said Geary, who
retired in June. “So, I thought the posters were a
hoot. At the time, I took those retreats very seriously.
Now, I can see the humour in them.”
Julie Price of Boston, a
30-year-old web design specialist, was at a mall two
years ago when she saw the company’s
anti-motivational wall calendar, read it, and burst out
laughing.
“I decided to buy the
calendar on a whim, and it was hilarious,” said
Price, co-founder of an online networking group called
The Dining Scene. “It was also refreshing,
especially when you’re used to getting that success
stuff shoved down your throat.”
She has bought greeting
cards for her friends with cynical messages and continues
to buy Despair’s calendars, which she displays at
home.
Despair doesn’t sell
its wares in retail stores any more. Instead, it built a
website whose twisted humour is designed to goad the
unhappy, dispossessed, and unemployed into buying.
One demotivator is
specifically geared to the love-starved. Called
BitterSweets, they’re made from flavoured sugar and
they look like pastel candy conversation hearts.
But while most
Valentine’s Day candy hearts have messages like
“Love U” and “Be mine,” BitterSweets
are stamped with mocking messages such as
“Time2DumpU,” “Tradin’ You In,”
and “CthatDoor?”
Appropriately,
Despair’s launch was sparked by bad news. “I
was working for an Internet start-up with two
friends,” Kersten said. “We got our
stock-option grants and discovered that we were not going
to make as much as we’d thought.”
They were bemoaning their
situation when one of them opened the mail, found a
motivational poster, and started mocking it. Soon, they
were putting handmade posters sporting cynical slogans
such as “If at first you don’t succeed, failure
may be your style” in their cubicles, and co-workers
were asking for copies. That’s when they knew they
had a marketable idea.
They started the company
with $75,000 in capital, money raised from savings and
the buyouts they received after they were downsized by
their employer, a Texas dotcom.
Despair has hit a nerve in
America’s workplaces.
“Our fans tell us that
they see these things, these foibles in their own
companies,” Kersten said. “Even if you work for
a great company, you know that there are things that are
being done that are not productive. But we don’t see
a lot of HR directors handing out our posters in the
break room.”
TOKYO - On Monday, Toyota Motor Corp launched an initiative to
incorporate more elements of uniquely Japanese culture,
philosophy and spirituality into its product design and
development.
The sense of hospitality and well-being epitomized by the
Japanese teahouse already has international recognition,
according to the company, which feels that if its automotive
products could embody more of this sense, along with leading-edge
technology, it will be able to offer customers something that its
foreign competitors cannot.
Toyota wants its designs to convey a sense of spiritual richness,
alongside safety, concern for the environment and functionality.
The redesigned Crown sedan, which is scheduled to be launched
this month, will be the first to reflect the auto maker's new
thinking.
"This is not a matter of simply turning back to the
past," executive vice president Akihiko Saito told a news
conference on Monday. "We want to build into our products
Japanese creative values that already have global
acceptance."
