Thanks, Jim

Over the weekend I converted my Sean Scales Down blog to basically a private journal. I had gotten uncomfortable with the amount of information I was putting on it; to be honest, I was embarrassed to see my entire dieting saga right there in black and white. I've sort of been struggling with what direction to go in terms of a weight-loss program, and I basically just felt stupid describing what I was going through.

I received a very nice email from Jim, who said that the blog had inspired him to try to lose some weight himself. He also said he understood why I might want to keep my thoughts about my weight loss private. I read his email this morning, and have been thinking about it off and on ever since. I was glad to hear it was actually an encouragement to someone, but I also acknowledged something I already knew to be true; I had some good reasons for starting that blog, and some bad reasons for taking it down (in a nutshell, a mixture of pride and embarrassment). This evening I decided to reset the blog to public and once again link to it from this one. I've written a rather lengthy (and honest) post about it over there.

It's really not accurate to say that this blog is the one where I write about spiritual matters and that one is where I deal with the mundane business of dieting (although it is accurate to say that dieting-related minutiae will appear there and not here). That's the joy and the ongoing struggle of embracing a genuinely Catholic worldview. Nothing is outside the scope of our faith. Nothing gets left out, glossed over, or set aside for later. The Gospel demands that our whole lives be lived pursuing love of God and love of neighbor, and that everything we do, say, eat, and drink be a reflection of that pursuit.

Blog-wise, I sort of segregated that aspect of my life for a couple reasons: 1) There would be something crushingly, mind-numbingly narcissistic of me to devote almost every post to one very personal topic, especially in the kind of detail I go into there; 2) I wanted to have a place where I could set my thoughts down about this one thing and view my progress; and 3) as I mentioned in a now-deleted post, Blogger is free. They don't charge per word or per blog, so you can just basically go nuts with it. It's kind of fun to start a short-term or single-topic blog, and as someone who's been blogging for quite a few years now, it's a good way to keep my main blog from getting overly cluttered with other stuff. Some of those blogs flourish for a short time, some develop a nice little life of their own, and some die a quick, merciful death. By the way, you'll never see the blogs that fall into that last category.

My own efforts to lose weight are part and parcel of my battle against my own concupiscence and sensuality (let's face it; most fat people are fat because we really, really like to eat). There's a reason why gluttony is one of the Seven Deadly Sins (and isn't it interesting how it's probably the only one a person can actively engage in and still be thought of fairly well by others). In this struggle, as in all of our struggles against sin, I am quite literally my own worst enemy. I saw that running as a thread through the Sean Scales Down blog, and quite frankly, it embarrassed me.

I mean, that's really the whole point, isn't it? It's what I talk about on the radio every day. It's why I've been blogging about my faith since 2002. It's the reason I became Catholic. Catholicism isn't any of the things it's often purported to be in the distorted descriptions made by those who oppose it. In a way, it's also not many of the things we Catholics represent it to be, either, at least if you judge our view of the faith by our behavior. The Catholic faith is an opportunity to look at every aspect of our lives, and every moment of our lives, and determine whether we are living in harmony with the Gospel or in opposition to it. Through the Sacraments, the faith is an ongoing opportunity to touch heaven and be touched by it. It is a chance to see the face of God and let that intersection with the divine work itself into our everyday lives.

Something as mundane (and in my case, as important) as losing weight isn't peripheral to the story of our faith journey. It goes to my need to deal with long entrenched patterns of sin, to improving my own interior life, and to honoring my commitment to my vocation as a husband and father (by keeping myself healthy, more actively participating in the life of my family as the weight becomes less of a hindrance, and by simply staying alive longer).

You're unique, so your issues aren't my issues. All I know for sure is that you do have issues; we all do. The Catholic faith doesn't take us to some far-away land where it doesn't matter how we've lived our lives, spent our money, or conducted our affairs. The more we allow heaven into our daily lives, the more important those very things become. Great saints have talked about this in a myriad of ways, from St. Therese's Little Way, to St. Josemaria's establishment of Opus Dei, to St. Francis de Sales' spiritual direction, to St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. They're really all about the same basic truth; as we respond to God's call to holiness, everything matters. The more fully we embrace his mercy, the more they matter. It's not a matter of scrupulosity, but of harmony. Scrupulosity is actually the opposite of (and a hindrance to) that harmony as one or two things are singled out and exaggerated.

We're called to live lives of consistent faith. That ain't easy.