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Angustia: no way out!

  Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae describes anxiety as a narrowing (from Latin angustia - narrowness): "Anxiety is that which so takes possession of the mind as to leave no opening for escape" It is sorrow so intense it "binds the soul" and "shuts out all hope" The soul becomes trapped, unable to find a way out. This image is precise: anxiety feels like being in a space that keeps getting smaller, the walls pressing in. Aquinas's proposed remedies all point towards "dilatatio" (expansion) : -Grace as "enlargement and strengthening" of the soul. A distraction that provokes a "dilatatio" (expansion) and therefore:  -Joy and love causing the heart to widen -Hope opening what anxiety has closed -Contemplation of truth delighting more than pain saddens This is grace - not as theological abstraction, but as lived experience of sudden release. My frustration:  Around my 20s when I was trying to deepen Catholicism, I bega...
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At Home

 

Finally at home. A home I feel totally mine. After 25 moves up and down the Alps. Down to the Apennines. Up to the very core of the Alps. And down again, in the flat land of the Po Valley. In Italy. In the Oltrepò.

I am now 71. Incredible. In the hustle and bustle of a life full of pressure, drama, danger, I have reached this age without being aware of my time passing by.

Eventually the violent chaos is over. There is silence within and without. And Autumn is here. I lit my candles. I burn the aromatic herbs I dried. Their scent gently invades the space. My space. My home. In the silence I feel at peace.

 

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