Thursday After Ash Wednesday: Failure and Success

Happy Thursday morning, Duffy! Well, let's be clear about it: you succeeded with yesterday's fast, and I failed. I water fasted for 24 hours from 6:30 PM Tuesday until 6:30 PM Wednesday. Then I ignored Canon law 202, which defines a day as the 24-hour period from 12 midnight to 12 midnight, and used a technicality ("Maybe I should be holding to the sunset-to-sunset definition of a day") to break my fast and eat dinner after 6:30 PM on Ash Wednesday evening. I was surprisingly hungry and tempted, and I couldn't get through to you by text for encouragement to keep going, or I wouldn't have broken the fast. Maybe it would have been acceptable if I just ate a salad, but to make matters worse I overate, and then I skipped my evening Examen, political reading, and compline prayers and went straight to bed instead. Now I feel like I gave in to four spirits of desolation: disunity (between you, me and all the rest of our Ash Wednesday penitents), dysrhythmia (between me and my emerging rule of life), gluttony (in overeating), and sloth (in diving for the covers). Are these spirits of desolation something I should focus on this Lent moving forward?

Doing my Examen was my first priority this Thursday morning after brushing my teeth. I was up at 4 AM. Then I did some research on Gemini, and one of Gemini's AI prompts helped me discover some anxiety related to yesterday's medical appointment that I was avoiding. I should have handled myself better with my doctor yesterday by following through on some blood work because I have gained ten pounds since my last appointment and even though I am still in the healthy range for my BMI that is not always the best indicator for "skinny fat" people. I was so grateful for my good doctor's aptitude and mercy in our appointment that I neglected to listen to my conscience and just get the bloodwork done when given the choice. I bailed because of some residual inner blood-draw anxiety on my part. Or I just didn't want to be inconvenienced, and maybe I wouldn't get the best results during a fast anyway. All of this unmanly avoidance, do you know what I mean? Like, "Man up Jonathan and get the blood work done, you're 54 now, not 11 years old! That's why you leaned on Duffy to tell you whether to continue your fast or not. You're not being alpha male enough!"

But now I am not so sure, because Google Gemini AI seems to be suggesting that from an Ignatian point of view, this inner voice telling me to "man up" and describing myself as an Ash Wednesday "failure" might not be the Holy Spirit, it might be the Adversary!

This gets to the question of whether the Holy Spirit is feminine, and "Mom," alongside God the Father, who is "Dad," and if they have two different coaching styles as a result. It sounds like the Holy Spirit is feminine in Aramaic and Hebrew, but I don't know if this means that Aramaic and Hebrew Christians experience the Holy Spirit as the ultimate "Mom," i.e., the mother-aspect of the Godhead. Is it the father's mercy that we crave, or is it his manliness, and is it actually the mother's mercy that we crave? All of this is slightly different in the traditional Catholic system, where Mary is venerated as the mother of Jesus. Either way, whether we are referring to the Holy Spirit as feminine, or we are venerating the motherly mercy of Mary, it's possible that my desire to be "manly" like God the Father is not a virtuous intention toward the courage of the expert general in a cosmic war against sin, but rather is itself a sinful movement of male pride that still needs to be rooted out.

With regards to our centering prayer discussion, Duffy, at this point, what I am scheduled to be doing on my zafu and zabuton around 6:30 PM at night, and at 5:15 AM in the morning, is probably more properly described as a medication-assisted Examen than it is as either centering prayer or Zen meditation. But there is a tremendous amount of Zen meditation and centering prayer practice co-occurring alongside the examen component. The Examen evolves hand and glove with the maintenance of joyful tranquility. Certainly, the first Christians were aware of this delicate daily psychological balance. Prayer was not merely mechanical, but also a living inquiry into the instruction of the Holy Spirit. What disturbed our joyful tranquility today? Sin or trial. What is the remedy? The Examen. Matthew 6:6. "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (NIV)

It's 6 AM and time for my morning Torah study, Duffy, so let me leave off here for now. I will publish again around 10 AM about today's reading in Matthew. 

For future reference, here's my research thread on the synthesis between centering prayer and the Examen:

https://share.google/aimode/i2ZVbbRp2BB6cULP1