The Attic of Your Mind

Dear Friends,

Talking with friends and family about how they spent these 100-plus days of pandemic isolation, a number of people said they hoed out various parts of their homes, including their attics. That made me remember a phrase I learned many years ago – “look for it in the attic of your mind.”

We all have nooks and shelves and niches in our mind where we have stored ideas, memories, unfinished tasks, things we learned in classes or from life situations. This Father’s Day weekend, I find myself recalling songs my father, Connie, sang to me, how he taught me to read a road map, how he prayed, and his stance at the tee as he played golf. Do dust off the memories of your Dad this weekend, and share them with your family.

But there is something more precious that is somewhere in our minds: something Paul in Philippians 2.5 encourages us to have within us, namely “the same attitude/mind that is in Christ Jesus.” I would hope that the mind of Christ is active in you during these days when the pandemic is mixed with the aftermath of George Floyd’s untimely death. These two realities, plus the economic downturn the pandemic caused, have absorbed us whether we want them to do so or not.

But where will we go for wisdom and understanding about the meaning and implications of these interwoven realities? Gurus from many spheres of influence tell us what to fix, how to proceed, what the most important thing to do might be. Still others remind us that we can’t honestly say these problems have nothing to do with us. We cannot claim we are out of the loop.

This is where the mind of Christ comes in. Most especially, the mind of Christ, His attitude toward people, which we have been taught since our youth, is where we are to go for courage, insight,  determination to seek truth and follow after it and set people free of illness, poverty and racism/sexism. Life today can be so full of absorbing things that we forget God, Jesus, the mind of Christ, the call we said “yes” to as His disciples at our Baptism and repeated at our Confirmation. These life-giving realities may well be in the niches, corners, shelves in the deep recesses of our own minds. Go hunting. Find what Jesus reminded his hearers, his disciples: “love God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole soul and your whole strength and your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12.30-31). Remember his story of the Good Samaritan, the ways he healed the blind, lame, and deaf. He treated women and children with respect. Some commentators believe that Simon the Cyrenean, who helped carry the cross, was black. Race, gender, age made no difference to Jesus who served all.

In the weighty matters before us today, neutrality is not an option. Our participation in the reshaping of our decimated world will make a difference. So, put on the mind of Christ. Let your own heart be shaped by Christ’s desire for a world that keeps coming closer and closer to heaven on earth. As one of the encouraging ads on TV says: “Together we can” – which we edit “Together with Christ, we can.”

~Sister Joan Sobala