The preacher in my head

Without going into the details of the math, but reminding you that I grew up in a very religious church-going family and then spent thirty years in a monastery, I figure that by a conservative estimate, I have heard close to eight thousand (8,000) sermons or sermonettes or homilies or whatever you want to call them in my lifetime. For over twenty years, I gave many of those homilies myself, including one nine-month stretch where I preached every single day, seven days a week. (Those poor nuns!)

I bring this up because I am pondering that idea of promoting what I love rather than bashing what I hate. Most of my bashing goes on inside my own head, and I realize that I am composing a sermon and preaching it to myself. I would like to think that most of the sermons I heard and those I gave were not of the bashing sort, but the truth of the matter is, many sermons are more bash than promote.

I saw some advice the other day about maintaining serenity by not getting drawn into the story that my head starts making up about something I saw or heard. I get all agitated by what I am imagining. But despite the fact that I am a writer of sorts, I think it is not the stories I am making up in my head that get me in trouble. It is the sermons I am writing and preaching in my head.

This morning I caught myself in this hyper-critical mode and consciously turned my mind to the things I liked about the event that set me off. (It was just a movie trailer, which gives you an idea of how little it can take to get me started!) And it worked. By choosing to look at what I liked, I actually stopped thinking about the whole thing pretty quickly. I am not happy about the implication that I get bored by thinking happy thoughts, but ...

Must remember to do that!