Temptations

The Wisdom of Stability, Part 2-Midday Demons (book review)

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The following chapter in Hartgrove’s book warns, “Buckle Up!”

After encouraging nurturing roots of love, he immediately offers that you can expect spiritual challenges. His first reference retells the story of the desert monastics’ “describing the ‘noonday devil’ who attacks after one commits to stay and begins to feel the heat of high noon.”

This is where the book’s subtitle, “Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture,” gets highlighted. To stay, to root, to pursue stability “against the seas of constant change makes us susceptible to temptations we would not otherwise have occasion to know.”

The practice of stability cannot be reduced to a quick fix for the spiritual anxiety of a placeless people. It is a process. It takes time…To persevere in the process that leads to real growth, we must learn to name and resist the midday demons.

These are the three midday demons:

  • Ambition’s Whisper
  • Boredom’s Rut
  • Vainglory’s Delusion

I’m quite familiar with the first two. They often show face at high noon. Hartgrove offers several countermoves to these temptations focused on both spirit and body including physical activity, engaging community, and dying well.

This book, available on hoopla and an easy weekend read, is worthwhile. If you only read chapters four and five of this book, you will be enriched. However much you read, you’ll find yourself wiser and pondering your stability.

Photo by 光曦 刘 on Unsplash

The Wisdom of Stability, Part 1-Roots of Love (book review)

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Reading while traveling last weekend I gained a broader definition for stability thanks to Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. His book, The Wisdom of Stability, affirmed and challenged me, leaving me with this evaluation-I’m decently stable, but there’s always need for growth.

It’s important to point out what Hartgrove is addressing. He’s not talking about the need for emotional regulation or mental wellness. In simple terms, he shares a message of valuing staying put, committing to less wandering, and acknowledging “there comes a time to set seeking aside,” as Kathleen Norris states in her foreword.

Example: I overheard someone this morning describing the makeup of three fantasy football leagues they’re active in. One is made up of college friends; another is made up of childhood friends. Possibly without intention, this person is practicing stability in a way that many of us aren’t.

To practice stability is to learn to love both a place and its people. -Chapter 4, “Roots of Love”

Hartgrove uses trees to explain in chapter four. His analogy rings true, especially for those living where I do. Last year’s hurricane season wreaked havoc. Ask those who live where I moved in April. The community lost over a third of its trees. Why? Their roots couldn’t withstand the winds.

The chapter title, “Roots of Love,” comes from a thought by Benedictine Anselm of Canterbury, a twelfth-century monk who compared a restless monk to a tree. “If he often moves from place to place at his own whim, or remaining in one place is frequently agitated by hatred of it, he never achieves stability with roots of love.”

One temptation in the face of agitation is to flee (more about temptations in part two). Hartgrove challenges us to accept this goes against one reason we were made-to intimately share life with our landscape and its people.

How else can we learn the attention that is needed to really know a community? How else would we ever gain the patience that is required to care for a place over time?

Friday, I chose to go inside Chick-fil-A for lunch rather than hurry through the drivethrough. Not many other customers made the same choice, so the hostess had few people to chat up. She chose me as her customer to get to know. She asked a pretty standard question for non-Floridians, “Did you grow up in Florida?” I have to honestly answer that with a no. But when I say I’ve lived in Florida since 1986 and in this area since 2002, the reply is usually something like, “Well, you might as well have.”

More than once my seeking has tempted me to move on.

More than once, I’m reminded that God is wiser than me. With his wisdom comes stability, and with that stability comes wisdom.

Waiting for Presto!

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Parlor magicians hired to entertain children at birthday parties frequently begin tricks with a display of an empty hand, offering clear proof that there is nothing up their sleeve, nothing in the shiny top hat they are about to sit on the table in full view of the fascinated children. Then suddenly-presto!-a rabbit is pulled up by the ears, a dove with fluttering wings emerges, a shiny silver dollar flips into view. Something created out of nothing! We adults know that these are just parlor tricks, sleights of hand, practiced technique.

This quote comes from chapter seven of Andy Davis’s book, The Power of Christian Contentment. Davis is describing the best worship that comes from contented believers, and he shares this thought under the heading Most Comforted by Things Not Seen.

Some people want to know how the trick works. Not me. I’d rather not know. Were I to know, the awe and wonder would be gone. To keep the awe, I don’t want to know.

Often I’m tempted to know how God is going to do something, what He’s up to, or even to tell Him what to do. I’m learning that giving in to those temptations ruins contentment. Giving in also displays my lack of trust or my need for control. What I’m realizing is I’m also ruining my awe and wonder. 

I need to stay off the stage and wait for presto!


Photo Credit: Unsplash/Omid Armin