Thermal Mass

Thermal mass refers to the ability of a material to absorb and store heat energy. Water has the highest thermal mass, which is why there are not huge temperature fluctuations in, say, the ocean. Materials like brick and stone also can absorb a good amount of heat and radiate it out over time. This is why in desert climates like New Mexico, building things like a Trombe wall to absorb sunlight in the winter through a south facing window helps to round out the extremes of a homespace being too hot during the day and too cold at night, and reduce heating costs. I'm actually in the midst of designing a solar furnace now, since our brick home faces due south and we heat with oil, so I guess thermodynamics is on my mind.

At our men's bible study yesterday morning the topic of joy in faith was brought up reflecting on John 17. For many of the men who had come to faith, they described the uncomfortable reality that they were having more trouble relating to their former secular-minded friends who regarded 'happiness' (temporary and circumstantial) as the highest ideal. For the Christian, joy is a deeper seated virtue that goes beyond emotion or circumstance, as is recounted in Acts 16 with Paul and Silas singing praise to God while in prison. It is the well that doesn't run dry our Lord encourages us to draw from (Jn 4:13). 

Like a trombe wall, faith and joy in the Christian life makes one more resilient to things that may otherwise break us, because it draws its strength from a deeper, more stable source. Our faith is a kind of "thermal mass" that rounds out the wild fluctuations in emotional responses which are dependent on external circumstances. It is joy that radiates outwards gently from the inner virtue of faith. 

Sickness, misfortune, and even death, when viewed through an eternal lens, are seen through an ordered perspective--they are not the 'be all end all' of our lives. For the person steeped in the world, they are buffeted by circumstances and emotions because their happiness depends on them being favorable; when they are not, dis-ease and unhappiness sets in. Even when things are good, their temporal nature means they may not be forever, which also produces this kind of frenzied striving to keep the external circumstances highly regulated. Consumerism, materialism, hedonism, seeking to control, etc--these are kinds of imperfect coping mechanisms in the absence of faith and its handmaid, joy. 

As someone possessing a more or less doddery composition, and a highly sensitive brain chemistry, I can say that faith has added much-needed 'thermal mass' to my emotional life, and joy as the byproduct. I don't have the wild fluctuations anymore as they are tempered by something deeper beneath the surface, which is grace working. It doesn't always make the circumstances of life easier, but it does form our responses to them to be dictated by more than just fleeting, reactionary responses. We are able to 'store' the energy of joy in this wall of faith to draw from when, like Paul, we find ourselves in the proverbial prison cell. When darkness falls, and the sun is not shining, it is faith that sustains us through the night. The sacraments, especially the Eucharist, give us this kind of spiritual 'thermal mass' to sustain us over the long haul through trials which may otherwise break us in half. 

When we build our lives around this faith as the cornerstone--which is Christ--we find we expend less energy frantically heating and cooling our emotions and reactions, and simply (passively, if you will) accepting what life throws us to be absorbed and subsequently tempered through the thick wall of faith. We need less to make us happy, because we grow to love what money can't buy, that which is freely given to us by grace. We expend less energy trying to control our external environment and more time investing in our inner sanctuary, the heart, which does not break down like a worn cog, but beats stronger the closer it comes to the source of Life, which is Christ. 

It costs us everything to live this way, but paradoxically we gain our lives when we lose them, as Scripture says. The Christian builds his life not with the cheap plywood and two-by-fours of the self, but around the unshakable rock of Christ who took on the sins of all the world and poured himself out as an oblation for men, transforming the earth from the inside out by his death on the cross. And so rather than being buffeted by the fickle winds of the world, we can draw from a deeper source that is sufficient unto Himself so that with Saint Paul we can say "It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me" (Gal 2:20).