photo: Simon Migaj
Mind Body
Soul
By Fr. David A. Cregan, O.S.A.
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020 started out with a promise of ‘perfect vision.’ And yet, here we are months into this new decade with a blurred vision of an uncertain future. Through months of quarantine and isolation we have been on an emotional rollercoaster that makes figuring things out virtually impossible. When our routine is disturbed our desire to control our lives is interrupted and this sends our minds into a jumble of unmanageable concerns.
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n my last piece I wrote about using the body as an essential part of our spiritual journey and in this one I will focus on how to use the mind to listen and understand the voice of God, and even manage our fears and anxieties better.
Let’s start with our routine. By its very nature our routine keeps us from having to think too much about anything. For instance, recall the times you drove from one familiar place to another and couldn’t remember much of anything that happened on the road because your mind took over with its perpetual stories – mental chatter that removes you from the here and now, pulling you backward to dwell on a hurt from the past or a worry about the future. The pandemic has interrupted all of that routine and thus has left us quarantined with our minds. That’s not a fun place to be! Uncertainty disturbs peace of mind and evokes anxiety and even fear in us.
photo: Kiwi Thompson
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But what’s to be done with the mind? While it is commonly believed that thinking is just thinking, it’s just who we are, our Catholic spiritual tradition says otherwise. Let’s consider that the above metaphor of ‘perfect vision’ relies on the idea that we see clearly and flawlessly, this is the use of perfect as an adjective. But the word perfect is also a verb, and as a verb it means to free something from its faults or defects. Thus, in our current circumstances, could it be that God is perfecting us in the midst of the good and the suffering of this particular moment of time?
