Lessons From Brother Ass on a Blue Monday

Lessons From Brother Ass on a Blue Monday January 18, 2016
SONY DSC
Jôkulsárlón at Midnight, Copyright Meg Persson (used with permission)

“Variable and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute, I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surprised with a sudden change, & alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew, and we polish every stone, that goes to that building; and so our health is a long & a regular work; but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant. O miserable condition of man, which was not imprinted by God.”

John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Meditation I, ed. Anthony Raspa (spelling normalized)

Somewhere between faux science and the folk cultures of marketing and the internet, there emerged the popular belief that the third Monday of January – so-called Blue Monday – is the most depressing day of the year. Our ability to verify this is doubtful, but, scientific or not, a popular belief in Blue Monday does reflect the more commonsense fact that the time of year and its accompanying complications affect us, and that often in terms of health – which is why I recently have been thinking a lot about the opening quote from John Donne.

Whether we are dealing with regular physical sickness brought on by lowered immunities, close indoor quarters, and lack of exercise; or chronic or mental illness exacerbated by the effects of the season, many of us know precisely what Donne is talking about here, the frustration of having our bodies and mental functions fail us. In spite of our plans and ideas – no matter how many things we need to do, aspirations we need to follow, and deadlines we need to meet – we cannot think our way out of ailing bodies or argue our way out of ailing minds. Indeed, it can be very humiliating – no matter how smart or clever we are; no matter how much willpower and stamina we have; no matter how much attention we pay to our overall health; there comes a point when we will be laid low by sickness.

My first response of course is annoyance – my unreliable body, that Franciscan Brother Ass, has gone and let me down again. But after I have spent myself making all kinds of ruckus failing to get him to proceed, I am exhausted and still, and it is then I usually recall that even the stubbornness of an ass can have purpose sometimes – for it may like that of Baalam be protecting us from destruction just down the road. It may be that our bodies know something our minds don’t, that angels rush in where fools fear to tread.

And indeed, when I think about it, I notice that there is destruction down the road. I notice how busy I would otherwise be, how I would try to have absolute control, thank you very much; how left to my own efficiency and devices, there would be no open space for God to come and go as he pleases. Indeed, I suspect it is the case that St. Paul’s discussion of our bodies as temples of the Holy Ghost is more than mere metaphor – perhaps our bodies and their illnesses keep us from becoming the proud gnostic spiritual beings so many of us implicitly want to be, with the power to think our way out of everything and away from everyone. This of course is not to say that we should go overboard in romanticizing bodily illness (whether mental or physical) as some special instrument of God – such is simply cruel to those suffering, and is (very often) a way of opting ourselves out of the care God calls us to show them – “God is looking after them, so we don’t have to.” However, provided we proceed carefully, I do think there is a case to be made for sickness as a grace – a hard grace and perhaps an imperfect one for this time of sin between times – but nonetheless a grace.

I came upon this conclusion in a particularly visceral way the other day when I encountered the proposed prayer in week 2 of Ignatius of Loyola’s spiritual exercises, the request that I

“may be received under his [Christ’s] standard; and first in the highest spiritual poverty and – if His divine majesty would be served and would want to choose to receive me – not less in actual poverty; second, in suffering contumely and injuries, to imitate Him more in them, if only I can suffer them without the sin of any person, or displeasure of His Divine Majesty.”

– from Exercise 147, The Spiritual Exercises, ed. David L. Fleming, S. J.

The imagery used is that of riches and poverty, but of course we are meant to understand that this can signify riches and poverty in any area, health included – and the prayer seems one part daft and one part gutsy. None of the “I wish you were a magical God and would just fix things but you are not so I will piously request that your will be done” nonsense. No, we are not here asking God to alleviate our poverty if it is his will. We are asking for poverty – spiritually and, if God should will it, in other areas too. It is a very hard prayer to pray, and one I suspect that is best undertaken under the supervision of a spiritual director, as the context of the exercises always presumes (kids, don’t try this at home without the supervision of a parent or other responsible adult…). But pray it I did (with supervision), and it has stretched me.

It has stretched me perhaps most on account of the way it has changed my attitude. It is one thing to pray for wellness – riches – and then grumblingly concede that you will accept sickness if there aren’t any other blessings left in the bucket that day. But it is another to request poverty – not so much because in praying this I have suddenly become poorer or sicker or more destitute than before, but because, when I find myself poor or sick or destitute, I have to consider that as an answer to prayer rather than a curse. And that is difficult. My initial attempts to pray this were along the lines of “Okay, I’ve had my share of difficulty, and continue to have it – indeed, my theological side knows I’m wrong, but my spirit is very wounded and feels it has a good case against You, God – and now You want me to ask for what? Really? Because it seems there is no prayer that I have seen answered so quickly and abundantly in advance as this. Indeed, You seem just a little too eager to answer this one.”

But it is of course a matter of the heart rather than the particular plagues we may or may not suffer. I must stress again that this is not a kind of masochistic will-to-martyrdom in which we are irresponsible and careless, seeking our own destruction or enjoying that destruction when it comes. But destruction will come now and again, here and there, whether we like it or not, and the question on which our faith hangs is this: “Will we accept the reality God has given us as a gift, and give thanks, or will we rail against it as a curse to our dying breath?” The first position is indeed hardest, and if anyone felt it as anything less than the pains of crucifixion, I would suspect him or her of not getting the point in its entirety.

Of course, the degree to which I myself live up to these things depends on the day – it is sometimes easier to see where one ought to go than to get there. However, the purpose of this post fortunately is not to parade myself as a shining example, but to invite – you who are weary and heavy laden – to be thankful for reality on this Blue Monday. It may be a while before we can appreciate the so-very Ignation spirituality of John Donne in his Devotions and say with him that “affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it” (Med. 17). However, we can learn to be thankful for reality, which is to say that we can be alive to our own humanity and creaturehood bound up and defined in the life of Christ and His Church, gathered as we are around that sacrament that names thanksgiving, the Eucharist.


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