{"id":11126,"date":"2015-02-18T12:10:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T17:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=11126"},"modified":"2015-02-18T12:10:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T17:10:28","slug":"contemplation-and-comment-moderation-for-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2015\/02\/contemplation-and-comment-moderation-for-lent.html","title":{"rendered":"Contemplation and Comment Moderation for Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"(US<\/a>
(US Navy \/ Public Domain<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent \u2014 the season of preparation for Easter. \u00a0The whole church fasts from meat on Fridays, during this season, and individual Catholics usually make personal commitments to give something up or take something on as a discipline this season.<\/p>\n

In Lent and in any other time, I sometimes like to review what suggestion other people make to me that I most frequently ignore, and, thus, this Lent seems like a good time for me to take a look at contemplative prayer.<\/p>\n

I tend to engage in active and scripted prayers \u2014 saying the Divine Office on my way to and from work, going through the structure of an examen, etc \u2014 and I can recognize myself as living mostly on one side of St. John of the Cross\u2019s description of the difference between meditation (more deliberately reflective) and contemplation:<\/p>\n

\u00a0The difference between these two conditions of the soul is like the difference between working, and enjoyment of the fruit of our work; between receiving a gift, and profiting by it; between the toil of travelling and the rest of our journey\u2019s end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t like<\/em> being at rest. \u00a0When I read Tamora Pierce\u2019s Circle of Magic books, I had an enormous sense of relief when I got up to\u00a0Cold Fire<\/em>.<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0Up until that point, all the mages in the series had learned to control their magic through quiet meditation, sitting and counting their breaths. \u00a0I could\u00a0maybe<\/em> have the patience to do this, if the payoff was being able to do magic, but, luckily, in\u00a0Cold Fire<\/em> one of the students gets to learn proper focus a different way: quarterstaff fighting. \u00a0That<\/em>\u00a0sounded completely up my alley.<\/p>\n

\"buffy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Secular meditation and religious contemplation tends to make me feel\u00a0precisely<\/em> the same way that sitting around after finishing a Regents exam, waiting to be allowed to leave, did: penned up and frustrated.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m not trying anything very\u00a0exciting\u00a0<\/em>in the way of contemplation for Lent. \u00a0I\u2019m just setting a five minute timer, once a day (I\u2019ve already done today\u2019s) during which I\u2019ll try to engage in contemplative prayer and patience.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a short enough span that I won\u2019t have to spend the whole time wondering whether I can do what I promised and it lets me give God my widow\u2019s mite of patience, while I wait to see what could come of it. \u00a0Ora pro me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"(Sean<\/a>
(Sean Johnson \/ Flickr<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, here on the blog, my usual comment policy<\/a> has been to allow anything that\u2019s not spam to be posted, but to pop into what look like bad threads to remind everyone involved that it\u2019s ok to walk away from a fight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Recently, I\u2019ve felt the need to do that more often, as I\u2019ve spotted back and forths where people are choosing to engage\u00a0again<\/em> with stubborn commenters with unusual and inflammatory opinions, without doing anything differently from the last\u00a0n<\/em> times people chose to pick this fight, or a discussion that becomes a series of complaints about the other person engaging in bad faith or being predictably dumb (once you conclude that\u2019s the case, it\u2019s a better use of your time to do\u00a0anything<\/em>\u00a0else rather than keep arguing with someone you think isn\u2019t listening).<\/p>\n

So, during Lent, I\u2019m going to be moderating comments a little more actively, in the hopes of freeing us all from finding ourselves in the position of Screwtape\u2019s patient:<\/a><\/p>\n

You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say\u2026\u2019I now see that I spent most my life doing in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What will this look like?<\/p>\n