Chapter 6 is titled “The Spirit of Work”. In this post, I will be concentrating on Part II. Concentration.

“Nothing is so disastrous as to keep turning one’s attention this way and that.” (127)

I may be guilty of this. After all, it has been six months since my last post on this book. I have most recently turned my attention to discernment of spirits. It’s my idea du jour. I thought about doing a series of posts on it and realized that I should first finish what I’ve already started. In my defense, I don’t actually flit daily from one thing to the next. I can focus for months on something.

“… let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea.” (127)

I just spent the month of March watching four seasons of the TV Series Heroes. Three-fourths of my daughters are into Milo Ventimiglia. They love him as Jess Mariano of Gilmore Girls, we all love him as Jack Pearson of This Is Us, and now we know him as Peter Petrelli, argueably the most virtuous character of Heroes. I don’t recommend the show – full of violence, gore and bad moral decisions – but I hung in there because I enjoyed the Heroes group chat with Bobby and my two older daughters. We posted theories, predictions, memes, etc. And we had a lot of laughs together. My point is that I can focus my attention.

“Make an orderly series of your different studies, so as to throw yourself into them completely. Let each task take entire hold of you, as if it were the only one.” (127)

I’ve been kind of doing this since my last Book Notes post. There was listening to media while Bobby and I worked out in the basement, a big Christmas movies binge, Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and John Wick marathons, the bathroom and kitchen remodels, the laundry room closet remodel, and the St. Joseph consecration. I’ve thrown myself into these, they’re just not studies.

One noticeable difference is that these are activities that involve my family members. I wonder if I have trouble committing to studying because it is an activity that I do on my own. Do I not think it’s important? I wonder why I am able to break a house project down into tasks, prioritize them, and plug away at them until it is finished. But when it comes to studies, I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly.

“We must allow each thing its separate place, do it in its own time, provide all the conditions necessary for the work, devote to it the fullest resources at our disposal, and once it has been brought to a successful issue, pass on quietly to something else. It is incredible what results one accumulates in that way without wearing oneself out in fussy agitation.” (128)

A. G. Sertillanges states that, of course, we may have several undertakings going on at once. And we concentrate on one at a time. When the turn of one comes, we put the other aside. There is one last quote from this section on concentration that I underlined.

“To dig and dig into the same hole is the way to get down deep and to surprise the secrets of the earth.” (129)

I am so motivated now to concentrate on my studies in an more orderly fashion. I want to allow myself the time it takes to go deeper into topics I feel led to explore.