September 6, 2021

On the hopeful turn of September—and the hope of habits

We have yet to begin our new school year around these parts, at least for my youngest three. (The oldest two are off to university, sharing an apartment, and already arguing about their grocery budget and whether they can—or can’t—afford soy milk.)

I am a sucker for beginnings: the resolve of January, the hopeful turn of September. I don’t know about you, but I live with an urgent desire, especially in weeks like these, to drastically improve my life. To make good—finally—on good intentions. This usually means I start piling books on my desk, books I’ve procrastinated starting. Currently, this pile looks like three books on the Beguines, a medieval women’s movement, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, The Congregation in a Secular Age by Andrew Root, as well as a couple of books on trees. I make this pile, feeling optimistic about the months ahead, thinking I won’t be met by the same hurling winds of interruption—or that if I am, that I’ll resist them.

Today, I did a manage a couple of chapters of Andrew Root’s book. (You can read Joel Wentz’s review of Root’s book in The Englewood Review of Books here. Joel is the producer of the ERB podcast, which I host, and you should also check out Joel’s YouTube channel, where he reviews books.) On the other hand, I reshelved Ovid. With an approaching book deadline and graduate work to keep up with, not to mention everyday life as wife, mother, and manager of the refrigerator (because yes, someone needs to pay attention to expiring leftovers), this may not be the right season for tackling Greek poetry. 

Maybe life requires less outsized ambition than we think.

Maybe we should aspire to grow things slowly, by habits of everyday faithfulness.

I’m growing far more certain that life isn’t changed by the dramatic gesture. “Change” may not even be the right word for conceiving of what Paul means by this marvelous verse in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation!” Maybe transformation is a far better alternative. Maybe, as Root writes in The Congregation in a Secular Age, transformation is a better word because it “invites the self into the new as a gift, as grace.”

These thoughts—on habit and grace—have me thinking of this week’s prayer in The Divine Hours, a fixed-hour prayer guide I’ve been using during the pandemic. This new habit of prayer has been for me both a good and hard one. Good: because I find that turning to prayer at intentional points during the day has inspired more “prayer without ceasing.” Hard: because I find that this turning to prayer always seems to arrive like an unwelcome interruption to more “productive” work.

Here is this week’s prayer: “Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in my heart the love of your Name; increase in me true religion; nourish me with all goodness; and bring forth in me the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” 

I like remembering that transformation is wrought by God’s good work in us. This isn’t to say that it is only an interior and invisible work. Not, it’s a work that produces “the fruit of good works.” God’s work in and through his people produces new habits of being in this world: habits of living for the glory of God, habits of living to bless our neighbor.

Those habits are worth praying for—and hoping after, especially in September.

Yours,

Jen