Honor Thy Limits (Nov 5-11)
This week’s snapshots:
Happy Saturday, dear humans!
I discovered this week in a really visceral way that I am not a trash panda, but a squirrel. Dissatisfied with the snacks in my cabinet and at my desk, I decided to check my snack stash and was completely and delightfully bewildered by multiple Haribo bags that I had forgotten I’d buried there! If they were acorns, they would have most certainly turned into a tree 😂😂😂
I have been contemplating identity and labels and inadvertently been reminded of the frustrating human reality of limits. Unlike my God who is infinite and therefore infinitely present, loving, and powerful, my mortal coil is inextricably bound to 4 dimensions. In the physical 3 dimensions, I am only 5’4”, which is terribly inconvenient when I’m trying to reach things in the ceiling (but quite helpful when I’m sitting comfortably under front of house). Being unable to manipulate space-time, it takes me not one step and two seconds to visit my family in Europe, but a minimum of 24 hours of transporting my 5 feet and 4 inches across roughly 5,000 miles of land, air, and sea. Try as hard as I might, my mind and body need 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every 24 hours without fail.
The time limit is what grinds my gears the most - I want, in my 168 hours in Wyoming, to spend 60 hrs playing Hogwarts Legacy AND 60 hrs playing Gloomhaven with friends AND 60 hrs playing DRG with international friends AND 60 hrs to make the world’s most delicious meals to share with friends AND 60 hrs to draw comics and paint fan arts and process the world through doodles AND 60 hrs to write and record a Christmas album (maybe even with friends) AND 20-40 hrswrite adequately about everything going on in my brain BUT that doesn’t include the unnegotiable, minimum 56 hrs of sleeping OR the 7 hrs of morning devotionals OR the purported 7 hrs of pushups and pull-ups that I could have time for on my week off. Instead, I have to appoint only what is of utmost importance into my days, and so while I indeed spent 20 hrs at Hogwarts this week, I mostly spent my hours off sleeping, then eating food, playing games, and drinking tea with people I love.
The time limit is impossible to reconcile with my desires because as smarter thinkers than me (Lewis, Willard, Comer) have pointed out, the only limit on desire must be self-imposed. If I do not impose a limit on my desire for delicious tacos, I would cross my physical limit of how many tacos I can eat which would cause the death of my physical body. God in his grace built our bodies with lots of tools to help us limit our desires (such as leptin to help us know when our hunger is satiated, melatonin to help us know when to go to bed, dopamine to know what information to focus on) but - if you’re anything like me - these limits can be rather easily overridden.
According to Willard, the ability to limit (or not limit) our own desire is what makes humans human and animals not-human. A deer when it is hungry, eats. When it is full, it stops. A deer will not experience hunger and decide, “man, I’ve put on some weight and I don’t want to look attractive to hunters. I should probably ignore my hunger.” If there is food and they experience hunger, they are going to eat. It is the human who experiences their desire and decides what to do about it. When I experience anger and the desire to harm you, if I am well-trained, I will forgive you, establish boundaries, and do good to you. If I am poorly trained, I will choose the way that I harm you - perhaps socially rather than physically given my 5’4” limitations! If I am untrained, then like an animal, I will immediately harm you when I experience the desire to do so.
A notable aside that Willard never explores is a) animals with societies such as wolves or gorillas have social rules whereby they limit their desires and b) animals who spend any amount of time under human dominion learn how to limit their desires, and we call animals who successfully do so “domesticated.” Because of the relationship with desire, the only things about human existence that are functionally limitless (and may or may not be experienced by animals) are virtues and vices. God created humans to have experiential knowledge of himself - infinite love. Since we have the capacity to know unlimited love, joy, and peace, we also have the inverse capacity to experience unlimited apathy, hate, and anxiety.
While our distinction from animals may not be as simple as limits on desires, Jesus gives us access to a “domesticating” force on our limits: the Godhead. Our relationship to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost trains us to expand our limits to doing good and restrain our limits on doing evil, because of the way we draw near to him. Consider this abbreviated list of ways:
Sabbath
Silence
Simplicity
Community
Study
Celebration
By training with these limits, we become more skilled at doing good and at avoiding evil. When we honor the limits of our mortality by practicing sabbath, the limits of our attention by practicing silence, the limits of our possessions by practicing simplicity, then give purpose to our possessions by practicing community, expand our limits of attention by practicing study, and participate in eternity by practicing celebration,
I find solace in the fact that God gifted us limits. It is a present reminder that I am not God, but that he loves me so. And when honoring my limits, I experience his goodness and lovingkindness towards me 🥰
What limit do you most struggle to honor? What do you believe about God or yourself that incites your dishonor of that limit?
I’d love to hear what you think, so please let me know by email, text, Polo, or owl 😜
-Beth
