Love and Habit

Sue Monk Kidd writes, in The Mermaid’s Chair, of the patterns of love and habit that shape our lives.  How apt to close a chapter with these words, giving the reader at least the time it takes to turn the page to reflect on this, perhaps a deep truth of the book.  I don’t know; I’ve just begun it.  But this pair of words, like heads/tails or God/Caesar, rang like a coin pinged into flipping by an adept thumbnail, glistening even in the starlight on my walk just now.  Love…habit…love…habit.  

Yesterday’s comment – please read it – brought a word to me, a word of my own truth, my own curtain: inhibition.  The word comes from the Latin, and its root is the holy word in Anonymous’ comment: to hold.  In-hibition means to hold in.  A habit, a repeated pattern of behavior, holds us in, restrains us, just as the nun’s habit did, or St. Francis’ brown robe.  The habit says “don’t touch”, not only to the person on the outside, but the person on the inside.  And I’m speaking not only of garments, but patterns of behavior.

Do we put on our habits when we get out of bed (or, as Anonymous shares, when we get into it?)   Who, besides ourselves, are we depriving of love by doing so?  How indeed does a pattern of habit shape our lives?