Self-Control According to Johnny Francis

“Poor self-control”.  


Our St. Mary’s Elementary School Report Cards were yellow cardboard folded in half and slipped into a brown envelope the long way.  There was a little half-moon shape at the top of the envelope so the card could be slid all the way in and still be retrieved.  On the envelope was my name in careful, precise, nun writing.  The nun was Sr. John Francis.  I was in third grade, in a split classroom in a walled-off corner of the lower “school hall” that served as an auditorium and sort of theatre for the 400 or so good Catholic children who were students there.  Actually, 399 good ones and me, it seemed that day. 

The cards, folded vertically as they were, had a front, an inside, and a back.  On the front was a kind of cover, with the student’s name within a certificate-like description of the school.  The inside was a listing of academic areas for grading: arithmetic, handwriting, geography, English, and so on.  The back was reserved for conduct.  It was a letter grade, like the academic subjects; “E” for excellent (seemed to be reserved for girls, and for boys who stayed after school to clean the blackboards and sweep the floor)  VG for very good, G for good, P for poor, and U for unsatisfactory.  Under the conduct section on the back were four lines for parent signatures for each grading period. 

The mediocrity of my academic subjects seemed to suggest that at the mere age of eight I had intuitively discovered Aristotle’s Golden Mean, that perfect middle between deficiency and excess.  I…was…Good!  There was the occasional VG, probably some lapse of memory or involuntary act of charity by “Johnny Francis” as we called the brown-habited teacher when she was not there to hear.  And there was, in Aristotelian balance, the occasional P, which signaled the requirement for the signature of both parents, and had my eyes glued to my dinner plate on the evening of Report Card days, at the end of which my mother would somberly hand my Report Card to my father for his review and reluctant signature.  Had he been a lawyer and not an assembler of little red Radio Flyer wagons, I suspect he would have included a disclaimer above his signature, making clear that his signing was in no way an endorsement of my Poor behavior. 

Today’s final Fruit of the Holy Spirit is “Self-control.”   Two years later, in the fifth grade, I would (perhaps) learn it as this last of the nine fruits, as distinguished from the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, as we prepared for Confirmation.  The Bishop would come in his groovy red cassock and beanie and slap us on the cheek to remind us that we were “Soldiers for Christ.”  But there was something in that slap that failed to deliver this particular fruit, in God’s retroactive power over time, so that it would reach back to my third grade self and save me from a “P” grade in Conduct.  Johnny Francis’s script stated the truth as she saw it.  “Exhibits poor self-control.” 

I still do.  I’m still subject to the approval of others.  I still get angry from time to time, stewing on things until they erupt.  I still look glum when others are smiling, and grin when others are serious.  And I still have some tenacious reluctance to follow the consoling, calming Spirit that descends on me even now as I type these words, balm to my wounded ego, argument to my self-doubt. 

There is a sweet irony in this term, self-control, because it is not claiming control, but relinquishing it, letting go with our ego and letting our (so well named, Dr. Freud) superego take over.  But while Freud’s superego, called “uber-ich” “over-self” was a kind of imposed compulsion, this fruit of the Spirit of a loving God is not the controlling hand, but the consoling breath, the breeze that inclines our life-boat to its true destination, that shows us the way of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness.  The breath of this Spirit guides us to discover and to befriend our true Self, a self by which we long to be controlled.

Spirit of God, God who created us, God who became one of us and showed us human love, who gave us over to this Spirit; help us to be still enough to feel the morning breeze of your Spirit.  Help our leaves dance in You.  Help our limbs wave in You.  Help our swaying trunks convince our roots to nestle into You, so that we may be nourished by You, and bear Your fruit, the only food that will sustain us and even begin to satisfy a so-hungry world.

Tomorrow - a final Fruitful look.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.