I am fairly unfamiliar with some of the more formal aspects of Catholicism.

And I am an (almost) 30-year-old cradle Catholic.

When I was growing up, being Catholic was interwoven into how we understood ourselves  and the world around us.  It was the foundation of our views, ethics and attitudes.  But, it wasn’t necessarily how we spent our time.  We didn’t pray the Rosary as a family (and in fact, I am just now learning all the steps in praying the Rosary), we didn’t go to Adoration or Benediction, and the structure (parish priest, order priest, bishops, cardinals) totally escaped me.  Again, Catholicism was at the root of our lives, but the devotional practices were not.  I was even at slightly more of a disadvantage, because I never went to Catholic school, until I went to college, unlike most of my siblings.

My friend Margaret does a holy hour on Friday afternoons, and she asked if I’d like to join her.  After asking her to explain what that meant (see above concerning Catholic ignorance) I decided it might be helpful (a bit utilitarian of me, but that’s how I roll) and started joining her.

So there I was last Friday, sitting in the chapel in front of the Sacrament, thinking/praying about sin, my sin, like you do.  I happened to be thinking about a particular sin (or maybe set of sins) that has been recurrent in my life for a couple years now, despite a concerted effort on my part to change.  And then it hit me:

I’m really bored.

Not with praying, but rather in my own life.

I don’t mean this as in “every single second of my life is dull and miserable and I don’t enjoy anything ever.”  I do lots of fun things.  I have friends I enjoy spending time with, family I look forward to talking with, the occasional public outing that ALWAYS results in a stranger making strange comments to me.  I read, watch TV, clean, work, complain about work.  I have a nice, comfortable, semi-busy life.  But given all this, I discovered in the quiet chapel an underlying current of boredom.  Boredom in the sense that my heart is unattached to any particular aspect of my life.

I lack Chesterton’s ability to be enchanted with every small aspect of life that I come across.  I tend to go in phases, immersing myself completely in something for a time and once I have found out all the pleasures possible (or once it becomes difficult) I move on to my next conquest.  I’m like a little butterfly, flitting from hobby to interest to activity to hobby.  While this might seem shallow (or dare I say flighty) to some, I don’t actually think of it as a problem.  It has in a way left me a Jack-of-All-Trades-Master-of-None, but mastery has never been the point for me.  I have a deep to desire to be entirely captivated by something.  I love the feeling of being so enraptured that you cannot look away.  Something so engaging that it requires a full and total commitment from me is what I’ve always been looking for in the various pursuits throughout my life.

But for years my “hobby” was drinking and there wasn’t time for any interests outside the bottle.  And in the last 22 months my focus has been on sobriety, on correcting those faults within myself that lead me to seek comfort of the intoxicant variety.  I could say to myself “I miss making art, or learning about new historical times periods, or  arguing about books” but when I was an active alcoholic there was no will for anything like that, and so far as a recovering alcoholic there has been a sense of greater priorities.    I think that recognizing now a nagging boredom in the back of my heart might be a sign that I am progressing in my sobriety, that the dire immediacy of relapse may have passed and I should start to look at the broader possibilities for my life.  Please please don’t mistake this for a sense of complacency about sobriety.  I have to work every single day to stay sober and there is never going to be a moment when I get to say “I’m cured!”  But rather, not-drinking is a habit now, part of my regular life, and while difficult, is not an abstract concept that I need to grow comfortable with.

Sin lives in the space in our soul that is not filled by God or that which God gives us to love.  I have had for years now space in my soul where that which captivates me is supposed to be and hasn’t been.  It has been a long time since anything fully engaged my whole self; my intellect, my heart, my passion, my ethics, everything.  The root of sin is pride, but the ground it grows in is boredom.  With God’s grace, and a look at the community college roster of class for the fall, I can kill the soil.

(1 Year, 10 Months, 4 Days Sober)