Wow, Am I Attached

I thought it would be easier. Funny how naturally simple and painless detachment sounds late at night when I'm reading in my warm bed, my belly full, no kids clamoring for my attention, no work to do, no distractions calling my name.

I'm actually finding myself swinging in the other direction, eating more junk food, drinking more caffeine, listening to more music and watching more tv as I try to detach myself from these things. It's as if my spirit is beginning to understand the radical fullness of sacrifice God calls me to - and the things of the world are thus highlighted, standing out in bold relief, looming large before me.

Another possibility is that the enemy sees my pathetic attempts at holiness and wants to smack me down with temptations. I have to be easy on myself and remember that I can't pull myself up by my bootstraps. Only Jesus can. On the other hand, I can't give up the pursuit of holiness. If detachment is the way, I have to keep on. I need to pray hard and pray more.

Holy Spirit, help me to pray.

2 Mental Images for Understanding Detachment

Reflecting on Fr. Dubay's 9 harmful side effects of attachment to created things, I linger on a couple of images. The first is one of not seeing the forest for the trees. This is one way of helping me to understand why God would create everything and pronounce it good, but then want us to detach ourselves from these things.

In this image, God is the forest. We see the trees around us and we see how good and beautiful they are, but we have a sense that if we can only get out of these woods we'll have a better view. It is true. If we come into a clearing, we see at last the woods in full.

The beauty of the trees, the beauty of creation all around us, is a harmony of signposts proclaiming, "Behold: beauty, goodness, elegance. They point to a Designer. Seek Him."

We are surrounded by signs. They all point one way. After gawking at their glory and harmony, we ought to move along and follow the signs.

God is love. We can begin to know love from relationships with those closest to us here on earth. And we can begin to understand that true love has one pure source: Love Himself. We should seek Love by following love - not merely seek love itself.

Returning to this image of the forest, I think once we see the forest from a distance we see there is a mountain beyond. The mountain is beautiful and it beckons us to climb. Climbing to the top, we seek to see all, not just the mountain. Just as we leave the trees to see the forest, we leave the wide view of the mountain before us, from the bottom, to reach the summit and a view of all.

The second image that comes to mind is that of a wallet size photo of a beautiful woman (or if you are a woman, a photo of a gorgeous man). The most beautiful or most gorgeous ever. Beyond compare. Staring at such a photo, we may become transfixed by the wonderful mystery of the person in the photo.

But this is not where we should stop. We should pry our eyes away and get our feet moving in order to seek this person. Just so with God. Beholding the beauty of creation, we must proceed to look away from it in order to seek its author and come face to face with Beauty Himself. We must not cling to the picture but seek the person in the picture. We must not cling to created things but seek God alone.

Detachment - Part 9 ("Drain on Psychic Energy")

"Our mental resources are... limited. This is why the individual who spills himself out in sense stimulations, who is engulfed in the mass media, is never a person of deep prayer. Self-centered desires 'sap the strength needed for perseverance in the practice of virtue,' says John, and 'the more objects there are dividing an appetite, the weaker becomes this appetite for each.'"

Detachment - Part 8 ("Desires Beget Desires")

"Unrest is the omnipresent accompaniment of earthly pursuits, and anyone who has lived a few years into adulthood and is therefore capable of rudimentary reflection on the human situation knows well from experience that nothing fully satisfies. Soon after even peak experiences one begins to feel the inner gnawing emptiness... Because spirit as spirit opens to the infinite, it can be satisfied only in the infinite. All else leaves it incomplete and desiring more... They whet the appetite as crumbs do the famished person."

Detachment - Part 7 ("Blocking Transformation")

"Attachments prevent the final transformation into divine beauty. Until a person is purified of his clingings, he will not be equipped to possess God... Though John can extol the beauty of creation... he insists that in comparison to the divine beauty the 'grace and elegance of creatures [is] quite coarse and crude.' Hence to cling to the latter makes one incapable of the infinite elegance of God. A person attached to the finite is incapable of transformation into the infinite."

Detachment - Part 6 ("Diminishing the Person")

"So marvelous are men and women, says John, that their clinging to anything less diminishes them just as a diamond or a golden vessel is stained by admixture with anything less than itself. The person, therefore, must cling only to God and in this clinging be elevated, ennobled and beautified."