For over 25 years, I kept a big notebook of lists and quotes and thoughts that I called “The Book of Experience.” It was a maroon square-shaped graph paper notebook I bought in Ad Damman, Saudi Arabia when on an Army supply run. It contained over a hundred pages of various types of lists. Favorite hymns. Places I’d visited. Happiest accomplishments. Hutch’s theses and maxims.
And scores of quotes from all over about all manner of things, things I found interesting, spiritual or fun. Pages and pages and pages of quotes.
I lost that book in a coffee shop here in Blacksburg, I assume. It just disappeared one week and no one ever called me to tell me they’d found it, even though it had my name and phone number in it. I will always miss not having that book.
When I wrote my book on humility, I did my best to scour my memory for the quotes I’d lost. With the help of Google, I found a good many and included as many of them as I could. Of all of these recovered quotes, it’s hard to pick a favorite, but there is one that I have meditated upon more than any other these past few years.
It’s three simple lines from the poem, “Ash Wednesday,” by T.S. Eliot:
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks.
According to my English professor at Duke, Victor Strandberg, this was Eliot’s way of taking the Buddhist concept of “the middle way” and applying it to his own Christian conversion from existentialist atheism.
I am no Eliot scholar; all I know is that I need to remind myself of these lines every few months. There are some things I don’t care enough about - for instance other people’s trials or suffering. There are some things I care too much about, like my own power and reputation. But I can also care too much about trying to help others with their trials and sufferings. I need to remind myself that I am not the Christ - especially when other people pressure me to produce more than my health allows. The hard thing is, I don’t always know when I’ve “cared too much” until it is too late.
I need to learn to sit still. Even among the rocks of this life. And there are rocks. Rocks that can make us stumble, rocks that can hurt us. But there are also rocks for sitting. Rocks for beauty.
I do need to care. God is real. People are real. Sin and suffering is real. But so is heaven. So is grace.
I need to learn to care and not to care. I need to learn to sit still.