BOOK REVIEW: Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life

December 11, 2003

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is part of a series of book reviews featured monthly in The Globe. The review is sponsored by the Religious Education Media Center as a service to those interested in developing their own spirituality. Books featured in this column can be borrowed from the diocesan media center. This week's book is available using the code number PR 2072.92.

You may request this or other books by writing Deacon Larry Sitzman, Religious Education Media Center, 1821 Jackson St., Sioux City, IA 51102, e-mail him at larrys@scdiocese.org or phone (712) 255-7933.

Linda Harrington offers this review of Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life by Mary Margaret Funk, O.S.B. with a forward by Kathleen Norris. New York: Continuum, 2002. 144 pp. $13.95.

The subtitle of this little book, The Practice of the Spiritual Life, gives a clue to its real value. There are many books about prayer and spirituality, but very few that specifically address the practical business of actually living the spiritual journey.

Thoughts Matter fills that void by turning to the wisdom of the ancient desert spiritual masters as preserved in the writings of John Cassian. Their wisdom is as valuable today as it was in the fourth century, and this book makes it accessible to anyone seeking a little help along the spiritual path.

One aspect of being human is our capacity for being aware of our thoughts; we can observe them coming and going and we recognize that we are different from our thoughts.

A thought of itself is just a thought; it comes and it goes. But if we think about a thought it becomes a chain of thoughts that coalesce into desire, and thinking about a desire generates the "passion" that spurs us to action. Repeated actions form habits, either virtues or vices depending on their orientation toward or away from good.

The spiritual journey is a life-long effort to form habits of virtue and dissolve habits of vice; hard experience taught the desert fathers and mothers that it is much easier to redirect unruly thoughts than it is to subdue unruly passions.

Those early spiritual masters recognized that it is possible for us to notice our thoughts and to redirect them, to select those that we want to encourage toward desire and those that we want to let dissipate. Their teaching groups the thoughts that constitute our "interior chatter" into eight general categories that seem to fit every person in every age and culture: thoughts about food, sex, and things, thoughts about anger and dejection, and thoughts about acedia (or weariness of the spirit), vainglory and pride.

Most of us have encountered this list as the "Seven Deadly Sins" (vainglory gets included with pride). The genius of the desert tradition was to recognize that paying attention to the thoughts that always precede those deadly sins can often deflect the progression from thought to desire to sinful act. And practical folks that they were, their teachings about each of these "pre-sin" thoughts come with down-to-earth advice for dealing with them.

For example, fasting is the "tool" that deals best with thoughts about food. But fasting does not mean doing without food all together; it means eating enough at appropriate times of day - no more and no less. To be sure, there are times when one fasts in the usual sense of the word, just as there are times when one celebrates God's graciousness with feasting. But the day-to-day discipline of fasting means honoring God by discerning and responding to the legitimate needs of one's body, eating nourishing food that is neither too rich nor too unappetizing. Fasting means eating and drinking mindfully and deliberately so that food nourishes both body and spirit.

Every person needs to eat and every person experiences the hunger that induces the "food thoughts" that demand our attention. The desert wisdom is that these "food thoughts" make a good training ground for learning to recognize thoughts as they appear and then to discern which to encourage and which to simply let dissipate. "Food should not dominate my consciousness; it is only a tool for my relationship with God. But on the other hand food should not be a barrier to keep me from a deeper stillness and a predisposition toward prayer" (p. 36).

We can all identify with St. Paul's lament: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Rom 7:15). The wisdom of the ancient desert was that paying attention to our thoughts before they coalesce into actions (without becoming obsessed by them) brings some measure of movement toward understanding what we do, toward doing what we want to do and not what we hate. Each chapter of Thoughts Matter distills the practical wisdom of the desert regarding one of the eight categories of thought for modern readers.

In each chapter, you will find honest and straight-forward discussions of the ways that these kinds of thought can entice us to turn away from God and away from the spiritual path. More importantly, you will also find the guidance of Meg Funk's gentle wisdom for applying the insights of the desert tradition in our 21st century lives.

(Linda Harrington is an adjunct theology instructor at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City.)