First: housekeeping re the arc of this project.

My goal is to live more fully in the reality of The Table. Over years of reading and thinking, I’ve identified several hypotheses about how to do that. Each week I’ll tackle one of those hypotheses in turn...and then I’ll start all over again with the first and hit it again from another angle, with more nuance, more specific action.

This is called a pedagogical spiral, and I LOVE IT, both in teaching and personal growth. It reminds me that, despite (annoyingly) having to learn the same lessons over and over again, I’m not just walking in circles; every time I come back around, I’m stronger, wiser, ready for more truth.

So I’m going to start with hypothesis #1 (H1), get your input on it, suggest a super-basic action aligned with it…and then next week we’ll move to H2 while we’re practicing H1 basics. When we next revisit H1 in a few weeks, it’ll be more robust, informed by all the other work we’ve done. Throughout, I’ll be practicing what Cherokee scholar Adrienne Keene calls the “consent to learn in public.” That is, I’ll get my butt kicked and change hypotheses and approaches along the way.

THANK YOU FOR BEING SMART AND PATIENT.

Without further ado: hypothesis #1 about whyyy I struggle to align my real life with the priorities of The Table:

I need to address some deep habits of mind and heart that were built in me by evangelicalism.

Since I became an adult and began growing into my own faith, a lot of my thinking has changed. My voting has changed. Many of my conscious choices—what I buy, what I read—have changed. I’ve spent twenty years slowly shifting my conscious beliefs and behaviors to (I hope) align better with table values.

But. My mental habits, my knee-jerk automatic reactions, my first emotional responses, have remained stubbornly and maddeningly…stuck.

This, perhaps, shouldn’t surprise me. As a culture, we’re learning that this is just how the brain works: the neural pathways that we walk over and over in our youth get worn down, cleared, and paved. Our brains don’t bushwhack new paths very often, thank God; most of our everyday behaviors (walking, remembering the location of the grocery store) are automatic.

But that means that even once we buy ourselves new mental maps and commit to using them to go to new, beautiful places, our internal GPS keeps taking us down those same damn rutted old roads. Old habits of heart and mind keep cropping up.

H1 is: I’ve got to address these habits.

I say “address” because I’m not sure it’s possible to “change” or “undo” them. As with depression or anxiety or expectations, I’m looking to manage these habits of mind and heart. Name them. Start recognizing earlier that I’m sleepwalking down those rutted roads instead of going somewhere new.

Here are the Big Three mind/heart habits that stymie me most often. Their titles are, um, kind of unwieldy (ha, surprise!). I wonder which of these are familiar to you, or what you’d add to the list.

MIND/HEART HABIT #1: MYOPIC COMPLACENCY

AKA The Focus on the Family Problem, or The Mrs. Bennet Problem

“Myopic” = near-sighted, insular, focused primarily what I see in front of me.

“Complacent” = self-satisfied, pleased, contented; according to one dictionary, “shit-eating."

White evangelical women raised in the 80s and 90s were fed a dissonant diet of feminism-lite (“You can be anything you want! You can play soccer, even!”) and patriarchy (“A woman's highest calling is to make a happy home and be an excellent mother!”). The upshot for me as an adult? Whatever else I do, I’m putting my home and my family first, working my ass off to make them safe, comfortable, and high-achieving.

Setting the most beautiful family table doesn’t feel selfish; it feels selfless. When I’m Focused on My Family, I ignore any political or social issue that doesn’t directly affect me and mine.

All the while, I believe I’m doing the right thing; all the while I’m missing my invitation to the big, good table.

MIND/HEART HABIT #2: HIDEBOUND SUSPICION

AKA The Lucille Bluth Problem

“Hidebound”: originally used to describe cows so undernourished and emaciated that their skin can’t be loosened from their bones; they’re frozen, stuck. The term now describes someone so narrow-minded, so devoted to rule and tradition, that she cannot move.

My subconscious still believes that, somehow, all of reality is accounted for within a systematic theology devised by a handful of white dudes—that nothing exists that can’t be satisfactorily explained and solved by a watertight set of Rights and Wrongs. I often find myself frozen, subconsciously believing that, if something is amiss, it’s because we haven’t yet humbly submitted to the Right Answer, which is definitely available to us.

For me, the upshot of this hidebound-ness is suspicion toward my neighbors’ descriptions of their own experiences and needs.

When I hear someone demand change to the systems I’m used to, or when I hear someone ask for public care, or even when I see someone standing on the sidewalk with a sign asking for money, my first impulse is always skepticism or “but have you tried…?” I reframe their story within my own mental system and try to determine why they’re wrong, how they should be doing things differently.

I do not trust others to accurately describe their own experiences and needs. I assess them according to my personal hidebound system and, unless I find them legitimate, we cannot share a table.

(I really hate this one, guys.)

MIND/HEART HABIT #3: NUMB DESPAIR

AKA The Moira-in-an-Ostrich-Pillow Problem

Once I quell the suspicion and am finally awakened to realities outside my own, I find myself alternately weighed down with shame, impotence, and magical thinking. There is TOO MUCH; this world is just TOO DAMN MUCH right now. Because I can’t fix it, because no one solution seems to be universally approved and appreciated, I shut down.

I love Eugene Peterson’s translation of the biblical prophet Amos, disgusted and overwhelmed: “Justice is a lost cause. Evil is epidemic. Decent people throw up their hands.” Yes. This. In my numb despair, I am what Louisa May Alcott calls “all nerve, no muscle.” I just…can’t. I pull the covers up over my head and decline all invitations to the table.

* * * * * *

Well! Hoo boy.

What do you think? Which of these Big Three habits bedevils you, too? Or is there another knee-jerk habit that prevents your values and life from aligning? How do you see it show up?

This week’s ACTION suggestion

Identify a mind/heart habit that keeps you from acting how you would if Jesus or Michelle Obama were standing next to you. Then, just once, just experimentally, do the thing you know it’s keeping you from doing. Make it extremely simple. Myopic complacency? Read an article about a problem afflicting schools outside your purview, and say to yourself, “those are our kids.” Hidebound suspicion? Give money to the next person who asks for it; say to yourself, “my neighbor needs this.” Numb despair? Next time you hear about another shooting, instead of shoving that shit down, say aloud, “We can do something about this,” and then sign up for Everytown or Moms Demand Action.

And then: pay attention; see what opens up in you…and, if you can, tell us about it here!

Love you so much, and can’t wait to hear from you in the comments.