A few moments ago, a friend shared with me the beginning events of her morning. It was her day off, and she had arisen early to run an errand for another friend. As she was reaching for a box of aluminum foil that was in the cupboard behind her refrigerator, she managed to knock over a potted plant, breaking the clay pot and splattering plant and dirt all over the kitchen, barely missing some food she was getting ready to wrap. Her vacuum cleaner had broken a few days before and she had not yet replaced it, so she had to go to a neighbor and borrow a broom, then sweep up the broken planter and the dirt, buy a new planter and potting soil, and repot what was left of her plant. This was not exactly the calm and peaceful morning of leisure she had hoped for. As you might well imagine, she was plenty agitated as she told me her tale of woe.

We’ve all had mornings like that, and we know exactly how my friend felt as she related her story. For any given occasion of this, it’s difficult to know whether it "just happened to happen," whether it was meant to teach us something, or whether we somehow "made" it happen in order to subconsciously sabotage ourselves. Most of the time, that can be pretty hard to figure out. There’s also the Frequency Factor. In some people’s lives, such incidents take the form of odd occurrences that happen every once in awhile. But for others, life appears to be an ongoing sequence of chaotic events; and in their lives disorder reigns supreme. Serenity, for them, is just a word in a dictionary or a far off dream.

When it comes to Serenity, while most of us may want to imagine ourselves walking Buddha-like through life’s calamities, we know that’s not a realistic picture. Whether our moments of disorder are random or ongoing, we know that all too often we rage, pound our fists and completely lose our composure when life, in ways that are seemingly endless, trips us up. Why, oh why, we wonder, are our lives so out of control? Why are we so tied up in knots all the time? Wouldn’t it be great if we could become Chaotically Challenged?

I’d like to suggest that perhaps we could think of two kinds of Serenity. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call them Unplanned Serenity and Planned Serenity. Unplanned Serenity is the kind we use on a daily basis when life throws us for a loop. Planned Serenity occurs when we have the time and leisure to remove ourselves from the world for a while in order to heal.

>>> Click to Continue Reading "Serenity's Amenities"

© Copyright Fr. Paul Keenan. This article was originally
published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in October
2003, as part of Soulful Living's "Serenity" Issue.

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