Breaking the habit means starting the day off right

MICHELE MARR

It’s a well-known fact that we can change a habit in only 21 days.

Or, so says Terry Cole-Whittaker, an ordained minister, motivational

speaker and the author of “Every Saint Has A Past, Every Sinner Has A

Future.” Unnumbered other sages and social scientists agree.

I just can’t remember a time when that has worked for me. When I

quit my three-packs-of-non-filtered-

Camels-a-day habit, after nearly 20 years of being a smoker, it

was pretty much cold turkey. My husband is my witness -- you can ask

him.

Cole-Whittaker also believes you can’t change a habit by trying to

get rid of it; you have to replace it with a new one. But I don’t

know.

When I gave up Camels -- that “walk a mile for a Camel” jingle

wasn’t just words to me -- I didn’t start chewing toothpicks, gum or

my fingernails. I didn’t eat more. I just quit.

I met a man I wanted to marry, and he told me he could live with

all my bad habits but one. He didn’t nag. He didn’t have a conniption

fit. He simply stated the fact.

As long as we were dating, he put up with the smoke and the stale

smoke smell in my apartment and my car. But I knew if I continued to

smoke, I was making a choice: Camels or him. So one night, I stubbed

out the last cigarette from a pack and I never bought another one.

That was more than 20 years ago. It never occurs to me to smoke

now. I don’t miss it.

But my other vices? I can give them up for 21 days. In fact, I can

give them up for longer. I do it every year at Lent. I exchange them

for all kinds of new and healthier habits.

I can give up meat and eat more grains and legumes. I can give up

coffee and drink decaffeinated tea. I’ve given up chocolate -- well,

mostly -- since I became allergic to it. I can take a walk or read a

book when my sweet tooth lures me.

Then when Lent is over, or as time goes by -- counting 60 days ...

61 ... 62 ... -- my fine new habits succumb to entropy, which my

Webster’s defines as the “measure of the amount of energy unavailable

for useful work in a system undergoing change.” Amen.

St. Paul would say, “What I want to do I do not do, but what I

hate I do” -- Romans 7:15.

So when I set out to make reading Scripture a daily part of my

life, I wasn’t at all surprised to find, even if I did it 159 days in

a row, sooner or later a day would come when I wouldn’t, then another

and another and another.

It was after listening to me lament that a dear friend gave me two

books. Like a fire lighted for a romantic evening, she hoped they

might help set the mood.

One book is titled “Breakfast with the Saints;” the other,

“Breakfast Epiphanies: Finding wonder in the everyday.”

The first is a collection of 120 readings about or from the pens

of what editor LaVonne Neff describes as “saints that the church has

named. Some ... famous; many ... nearly forgotten ... men and women,

hermits and parents, theologians and peasants, young adults and

centenarians ... contemporaries of Jesus ... saints who lived during

the Industrial Revolution.”

I gravitated toward the latter. “Breakfast Epiphanies” is such a

delicious play on “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” And nearly each

bite-sized essay has a title that sounds fun, clever or intriguing.

“Graveyard Stew.” “The Man Who Did Nothing.” “Plato’s Garage.”

“Slowing to a Fast.”

So much promise. As I bit into one story and then another, the

words began to taste like something not quite ripe. The book is

peppered with lovely turns of phrases, like “No one cracking the skin

of a Macintosh knows just how many Octobers remain.” Or, “She would

sit on the edge of my bed and shake that thermometer with a wicked

wrist.”

But like the blush of a tomato picked too soon, they are mostly

seduction. To take and to eat is disappointed delight. The essays

leave me longing for what they might have been.

“Breakfast with the Saints,” except for its faux-illuminated dust

jacket, is dull to skim. The type is not pretty. It’s a little too

big for the page. The interior titles are dull. The prose is often

plain. But its essays taste rich and sweet.

The first words are from St. Therese of Lisieux, also known, I’m

told, as The Little Flower: “All the flowers God has made are

beautiful. The rose in its glory and the lily in its whiteness do not

rob the tiny violet of its sweet smell, or the daisy of its charming

simplicity ... If all these lesser blossoms wanted to be roses ...

nature would lose the gaiety of her springtide dress -- there would

be no little flowers to make a pattern over the countryside.

“And so it is with the world of souls -- [God] wanted to have

great saints to be his lilies and roses, but he made lesser saints as

well; and these ... must be content to rank as daisies and violets,

lying at his feet and giving pleasure to his eye. Perfection consists

simply in doing his will ... being just what he wants us to be.”

The short essays pique my appetite; it’s hard to put aside my

daily portion of Scripture before it is read.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.