tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80341394905273732442024-03-13T01:45:41.463-04:00Peace and PekoeIf I can't have one, I'll have a cup of the other.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger200125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-32280807801201415212017-01-10T09:18:00.002-05:002017-01-10T09:18:07.071-05:00Quote of the Day"One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, "If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me," we choose the road toward darkness. Often we are made to believe that self-deprecation is a virtue, called humility. But humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters, and the determination always to live our lives according to this truth."<br />
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- Henri Nouwen<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-75322193297571727292016-12-22T12:08:00.000-05:002016-12-22T12:10:40.715-05:00How the World WorksI am fuming this morning. Some of the local children came up with a cooperative solution to share a resource, and it has fallen apart because another parent told his kids that "first come, first served" is the way of the world.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNkuhurh3TwolPdbfe3KmnDbQGgkByhF5siyanoWTGT3NPRh2AZo3Cb5pDuahkNy2FNpBD-0OPIetXSyuqUMUhZ1J35rnhyphenhyphenKHrQyU4zK4HDtzA6dGCTOlswg9gWIC_rwOFyZD0anzueqk/s1600/cooperation+dictionary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Image of dictionary definition of "cooperation."" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNkuhurh3TwolPdbfe3KmnDbQGgkByhF5siyanoWTGT3NPRh2AZo3Cb5pDuahkNy2FNpBD-0OPIetXSyuqUMUhZ1J35rnhyphenhyphenKHrQyU4zK4HDtzA6dGCTOlswg9gWIC_rwOFyZD0anzueqk/s1600/cooperation+dictionary.jpg" title="" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3f5f6; text-align: start;">CC, Image credit www.uberoffices.com </span></td></tr>
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<br />
I felt a little silly at first that I was upset over a matter of kid politics. The conflict the children were trying to solve was over something fairly unimportant. Nobody is going to be worse off for never getting their own way in this case.<br />
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I've realised though that it isn't the "first come, first served" that rankles. It's the bald statement that "this is the way the world works" and how that statement was used to invalidate a compromise that the local children had solved together. All they needed from us adults was our tacit agreement that their group decision should have weight. They needed us to back them up and remind them of their own agreement so that it could have staying power. Without that endorsement, the agreement couldn't hold.<br />
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Here's where no parenting decision is entirely small, because the aggregate of small decisions adds up to a larger message. And a big part of that message is what we, as parents, tell our children about "the way the world works," and whether we communicate to them the place they have in determining how the world will work in the communities and interactions they participate in now and as adults.<br />
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I believe that "the way the world works" isn't set in stone. It is the result of the decisions of each of us, forming the culture and the society in which we live. It is the result of what we do with the authority or power or privilege we are given, and a result of what we can persuade others to agree to when a communal voice is needed. It's a result of our small, individual, autonomous decisions, even when our voice and role seems small. All of these things, together, determine "the way the world works" in our immediate vicinity. <br />
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Today, my kids may not learn what I had hoped they would learn about cooperation and collaboration. Today, I may have to teach them about picking their battles and letting small stuff go. But I will continue to encourage them to seek kind, just, merciful, and peaceful solutions, with the hope that as they grow, the Way the World Works will be better for their part in it.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-6499538335604995722016-12-09T14:07:00.002-05:002016-12-09T14:10:39.579-05:00Doing All The TraditionsSt. Nicholas Day was this past Tuesday. As I always do, I put some effort in beforehand to make sure we had all the requisite materials for our St. Nicholas traditions: speculaas cookies, hard wrapped candies, clementines, small toys, a chocolate letter for each family member, chocolate coins, chocolate hail (like really, really good sprinkles), dutch style rusks, and an almond ring from the local dutch bakery. <br />
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On Monday, we tidied the house, sang songs about St. Nicholas, read his life story, and waited to see if Zwarte Piet would throw candies in through a window or door for the children to scramble around and collect. Before bed, we all lined up our shoes for St. Nicholas to fill. We forgot to put out a carrot for his horse this year, but we've done that in years past. When the children woke up in the morning, there were chocolates and toys in their shoes and traditional Dutch treats on the table.<br />
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Later in the day, I logged on to Facebook, and saw this, from Simcha Fisher: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I love this time of year. I always feel so smart and happy for never letting my kids find out about St. Nicholas' Day." </blockquote>
<br />
My first impulse was to want to defend this tradition that my family loves so much, to say, "Oh, it's not that much trouble! Really, it's worth it."<br />
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Before I posted, however, I browsed through the comments. And that is when I remembered the Year I Tried To Do It All.<br />
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I had a baby and a 3 year old, and I wanted them to understand that this was a special time of year. I wanted them to connect their faith with good things--with family, with mystery, with warmth, with belonging to something greater. And perhaps because I was very far from my own family, I went a little overboard.<br />
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We celebrated St. Nicholas' day with shoes and chocolate and homemade speculaas. We went to Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate conception and had extra dessert. We celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe with tacos and guacamole--I think I may have even made the tacos from scratch. We celebrated St. Lucy's day with a paper candle hat. It didn't stop after Christmas, either, because I'd decided we should go around the neighbourhood and collect canned food for the food bank on St. Stephen's day. My family also has two birthdays in December, so you can kind of imagine what kind of month it was.<br />
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Over the intervening years I cut back and cut back out of a sense of self-preservation, until now I am left with what, in our home, are the essentials: The Immaculate Conception. Christmas. Birthdays. And the Feast of St. Nicholas, celebrated mostly the way my Dutch mother celebrated it with me, the way her parents celebrated it with her, the way they celebrated it with their parents.<br />
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Am I saying you shouldn't celebrate traditions you have no cultural connection to? No. After all, every tradition starts somewhere. St. Nicholas was a fourth century bishop of Myra, in Asia Minor. There's no immediately obvious connection to explain why this early bishop of what is now a part of Turkey should have become the center of so many modern traditions in the Netherlands, and thus in my own family.<br />
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What we can see is that different saints have always resonated with different people, nations, and cultures through the centuries. You don't need to have the same connection with every saint on the calendar. The wide variety of saints and traditions associated with them means that there is something for everyone. We won't all have the same devotion to the same saints.<br />
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And that's OK. They all point us to the Child in the Manger in the end.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-79920003722598583832016-11-21T11:19:00.000-05:002016-11-21T11:38:41.902-05:00Is Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton racist?So, apparently, the talking point today in some circles is that the musical Hamilton is "racist" or suspect because the creators have a very clear vision for the casting that requires all of the roles to be filled by non-white actors (the only role reserved for a white character is King George). This is, according to some, discrimination that you could never get away with if you were to try to cast only white actors.<br />
<br />
First of all, many, many plays and musicals have very clear casting instructions, and more of those casting instructions exclude minorities (by specifying characteristics specific to Caucasians or mentioning the character's fictional biography and origin) than the reverse. Legally, casting calls have to be open to all ethnicities--but that doesn't mean all ethnicities have a real chance at a particular role It's not actually discrimination to seek to cast particular physical types to fit the vision of a character or a story.<br /><br />
Second of all, and more importantly--if you think this casting is about hatred of white people or any such nonsense, you've missed the point of the musical--and the reason for its popularity--entirely.<br />
Hamilton has some specific instructions because the casting is part of the musical--the casting is meant to make these characters accessible to a modern, diverse audience, the same way the musical styles are.<br />
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Now, this has another effect, which might be uncomfortable to some--it sends the message to the dominant cultural group, who tends to assume US history belongs to them (because, honestly, it really does in many ways) that they don't own a monopoly on passion, ideals, revolution, patriotism, and so on--and that they are not the only ones who want and deserve a role in shaping the nation.<br />
But the accessibility of seeing the founding fathers as something other than "dead white men" is of greater importance. It is challenging to inspire identification with the origins of a nation in which your ancestors were enslaved or oppressed or marginalized. But every nation needs unifying ideals and stories to tell it who it is, what it is, the US--a nation founded on ideas--needs that even more than most.<br />
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I think Lin-Manuel Miranda, as artists sometimes do, found a genius way to cut through those obstacles, and I think that the play's success can largely be attributed to this potential for unity, something many Americans crave. It does not ignore those problematic divisions at the heart of the nation's founding. It actively addresses them. But the casting emphasizes instead the common humanity of the characters and the audience.<br />
Hamilton's casting is not meant to build barriers between us. It is about tearing the barriers between Americans down, and this is what makes it so timely.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-75679098859269752552016-11-08T09:36:00.003-05:002016-11-08T09:37:32.859-05:00An Open Letter to Fr. Frank Pavone's Superiors<div class="tr_bq">
This is the text of a letter I sent via electronic submission form to the Bishop of Amarillo, TX, yesterday afternoon. I have made no edits to it for public consumption.</div>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dear Bishop
Zurek,</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It came to
my attention today that Fr. Pavone of Priests for Life falls under your
jurisdiction. I am writing to express my horror at his recent use of human
remains in a crass political stunt (I note that he also made an explicit
political endorsement, which I believe is problematic for both the diocese and
his organization for legal/tax reasons).</span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I am
pro-life. I have been since I was child. I donate to pro-life organizations and
my values affect my political and personal decisions. I believe that respect
for life is grounded in respect for the human person, which our faith teaches
us must be extended even to human remains, since we are embodied souls and
believe in a bodily resurrection.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Even secular
society recognizes the importance of respectful treatment of human remains.
There are regulations on how cadavers donated to medical science are handled
and treated by lab techs, med students, and others. Undertakers are trained to
treat bodies with dignity even when there is no one in the room to know. The
human body is not an object for use. As the Catechism says:</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">CCC 2300 The
bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope
of the Resurrection.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Fr. Pavone
took a body which was entrusted to him for burial and delayed proper burial in
order to use the child--on an altar!--as a prop for a political video message.
He did not place the child in a casket. He did not place the child before the
altar, as one might while awaiting funeral rites or burial. He did not clothe,
shroud, or discernibly tend to the body. He put the body on the altar naked and
uncovered. He put the body of a dead, naked child on the altar, in what appears
to be a grotesque mockery of the Eucharist. I was told many times as a child
that the altar is only to be used sacramentally, never as a prop or piece of
furniture. Fr. Pavone seems to have forgotten this. He used the altar, and the
body of a child, in order to create political propaganda. His ends are
unimportant when the means by which he pursues them are so depraved.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
respectfully urge you to discipline Fr. Pavone. His actions need to be clearly
condemned by pro-lifers and Catholics together. This cannot be the face of the
pro-life movement. No movement for life can be successful if it loses the
foundational principle that each person exists for their own sake, as the
beloved children of the God who created them--not to be used as objects by
others for any purpose.<br /> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Kate Cousino</span></blockquote>
<br />
You can find <a href="http://amarillodiocese.org/diocesan-staff">phone contact information for the diocese of Amarillo here</a>, or <a href="http://amarillodiocese.org/contact-us">submit a letter to the department of your choice (including the bishop) here. </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-32778274786706105262016-10-04T10:47:00.000-04:002016-10-04T10:47:05.754-04:00Defined by morals, not memories<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
This article popped up in my FB memories from last year, and I was moved again by it.<br />
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/morals-not-memories-define-who-we-are/<br />
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This is an article from Scientific American about how patients with Alzheimer's disease (which affects memory) but not dementia (which can affect moral traits like honesty and compassion) continued to be perceived as "themselves" by their loved ones, and maintained close bonds with caregivers. Statements like "The patient seems like a different person" were rarely endorsed by caregivers unless moral changes came about.<br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px;">"Efforts aimed at helping sufferers to understand themselves in terms of their moral traits—characteristics like altruism, mercy, and generosity—can restore their sense of identity and control as memory fades or cognition declines. Simply knowing that others continue to perceive them as the same person, even when they feel that their own identity is changing, can allow them to securely protect their sense of self."</span></blockquote>
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As someone with a...well, "poor memory" might almost be understating just how fuzzy my recollection tends to be...I find this both reassuring and intuitive. And, of course, from a metaphysical perspective we are ourselves regardless of age, condition, disability, or other changes.<br />
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There's a lot of focus sometimes on "making memories." And experiences do enrich our quality of life. But perhaps more important is that we understand that we are, every day, making our selves. Who we are affects our choices, but our choices also shape who we are. Our moral choices mark us more deeply and more legibly than the things that have merely happened to us.<br />
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And there's a kind of peace in this for me. Whatever storms come, I will always be able to choose to live from my values, my faith, my center. It might be difficult--it might sometimes seem unfairly difficult--but it is in my reach always to be a moral person.<br />
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And if I break and fail to be my best self, there is always another moment, another choice, another chance to begin again. To be someone who loves. To be someone who is constant. To be someone true.<br />
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To be, not a collection of skills or abilities, or a collection of memories, but a person striving to be ever more fully whole.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-67125450566663925812016-08-22T20:37:00.000-04:002016-08-26T19:57:02.393-04:00A defence of earthiness<i>*This post was originally meant as part of a two-part post. I hit a mental block with the second part, however, and so never posted this part. The recent firing of the brilliant Simcha Fisher from the National Catholic Register, when Simcha was one of the targets of the original debate about "raunchy" speech that prompted me to write this, has motivated me to post this as a form of apologia for earthiness in Catholic writing. I am saddened and deeply disappointed that the Register was short-sighted enough to fail to see the deep need for Simcha's voice within the Catholic community.</i><br />
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The question of whether it is good or right for Catholics to engage in raunchy humour seems to me to be one that eludes a simple answer. In some contexts and from some people, raunchy humour may be entirely appropriate and even virtuously motivated. When discussing the often sensitive topics of marital relations or family life, a certain amount of raunchiness can serve to alleviate bitterness or resentment by alluding to the often ridiculous and absurd elements of embodiment. There is something sublimely silly about immortal souls walking about united to flesh such that the flesh can and does fall short of the will, all of which makes cracking jokes about small boys and their preoccupation with their penises or grown women trying (and failing) to stay awake for a romantic interlude with a spouse both near-universal and extremely cathartic. Raunchy humour is earthy, embodied. When used to express something about the common experience of embodiment, it can be a good that draws persons together and teaches them perspective and tolerance towards their own physical nature and that of others.<br />
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Of course, like anything, raunch can be and often is misused. Raunchy humour can be directed at persons in an objectifying way, as many women have experienced. It can serve to cheapen or expose another by reducing them to their physicality and neglecting the value of the whole person.<br />
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It can also be used to intentionally cause offence to others, capitalising on differing cultural expectations and standards to create scandal for no purpose but to take malicious pleasure in causing scandal. There are many innocent things that shock or scandalise the tender of conscience, and while we are not abjured to cease to eat meat sacrificed to idols, we are abjured to avoid making a show of it around those who feel genuinely conscience-bound to avoid it. St. Paul (the original moral relativist, by some standards, it seems) cautioned the Corinthians not to embolden other believers to act in ways that they (mistakenly) believed to be sinful, for "since their conscience is weak, it is defiled" by following the example of those whose knowledge renders their conscience clear. "Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know," says St. Paul, "But whoever loves God is known by God." So we are to "Be careful...that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak."<br />
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Obviously, this is easier to apply when our audience is clear. If I am speaking within my house, I'll naturally guard against overt sexually-based humour around my children, since they lack the context for it and are not an appropriate audience. If I'm talking to someone I've just met, I won't make the same jokes I might with someone who knows me well. If I know my audience, I can choose words that will speak to that audience.<br />
<br />
Online, however, audience can be hard to judge. There's often a difference between the intended audience, the potential reach of a piece of writing, and the actual readership. If I've found a particular audience who responds well to raunchy humour, and if my use of it is appropriate and person-affirming rather than objectifying, should the reality that my writing is accessible to a larger readership prevent me from writing with that particular subset in mind? Do I have an obligation to write for every person who clicks on a link or visits my page, when writing online?<br />
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My concern is that if every Catholic writer restricts themselves to the linguistic common denominator to try to write in a way that will communicate equally to every reader, we are likely to fail to communicate well to any audience. Conversely, if I fall into the habit of writing to please a handful of individual people already known to me, I may find myself falling into lazy habits, using shorthand labels and expressions and failing to explain my premises or qualify my statements, and effectively reaching a much smaller audience than I might hope for. <br />
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I don't, however, think I have a responsibility to write with every possible audience in mind. If a mode of writing can be appropriate and even virtuous within the context of a particular audience, as I've argued that raunchy humour can be, it remains appropriate even if others might see and misunderstand it. I am responsible to the person or people to whom I am speaking and to those who make an honest effort to understand me within the context in which I move and write. If I do become aware that someone has been scandalised because of differences in conscience, I should in charity both attempt to explain myself and encourage that person to follow their own conscience and not my example. I think the obligation to avoid scandalising others goes that far.<br />
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However, when potential readership extends to anyone with an internet connection, it no longer becomes clear which person is owed the greater care--the person who might experience my language to be a stumbling block, or the person who is in need of the communion and commonality that language could provide. To that end, the discernment of which audience to serve and reach out to is one that can only ever belong to the individual, in accord with his or her own understanding and conscience, and within the context of his or her own calling and journey.<br />
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<br />
<br />
So, here's the TL;DR summary, what I want you to take away from this:<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes, you're not the audience. Sometimes, the audience is one that needs to hear embodied language appropriate to the ridiculous sublimity and sublime ridiculousness of embodied souls and ensouled bodies. Sometimes, the words that offend you are the instruments that edify and heal another. Sometimes, you need to consider that you might not be the audience, and that's OK, because God loves a lot of other not-you people too.</span><br />
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<i>(For more, see my earlier <a href="http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/home/comments/The-Problem-of-Language-The-Desire-for-Communion">two-part piece at the Personalist Project on the purpose of language.</a>)</i><br />
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<br /><span style="color: purple;">I'm adding this relevant quote here, so that I can find it again. <a href="http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way-point-850.htm">From St. Josemaria Escriva</a>:</span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: purple;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">What conversations! What vulgarity and what dirt! And you have to associate with them, in the office, in the university, in the operating-theatre..., in the world.</span></span><span style="color: purple;"><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /></span><span style="color: purple;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Ask them if they wouldn't mind stopping, and they laugh at you. Look annoyed, and they get worse. Leave them, and they continue.</span></span><span style="color: purple;"><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /></span><span style="color: purple;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">This is the solution: first pray for them, and offer up some sacrifice; then face them like a man and make use of the 'strong language apostolate'. — The next time we meet I'll tell you — in a whisper — a few useful words.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: purple;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-77039658819330552542016-06-23T14:16:00.000-04:002016-06-23T14:17:23.906-04:00Modesty and Avoiding Scrupulousity<a href="http://aleteia.org/2016/06/23/the-mercy-of-modesty-a-lesson-learned-on-a-nude-beach/">The question of modesty has come up again at Aleteia</a>. In the ensuing discussion, a commenter asked me how someone with a propensity to scrupulosity can "err on the side of mercy" as the blogger recommended when it isn't possible to know what might provoke a sexual response in some other person.<br />
<br />
Of course, I don't believe modesty requires us to mindread, so this is my response:<br />
<br />
I argue strongly against a definition of modesty that requires trying to anticipate others' inward responses. I do think the question of modest dress has gotten more complicated as our social "language" has become more garbled, precisely because it is harder to figure out what your clothing choices communicate in a pluralistic society in which the answer can vary wildly between families within the same community, let alone between different communities and demographics. When Wojtyla argued that modest dress is culturally determined, he compared cultures on different continents as an illustration; we could compare cultures in ZIP codes within the same country.<br />
<br />
If you examine instead your own interior attitudes in how you present yourself to others--which includes body language, behaviour, and demeanour, as well as dress--you are looking to something you CAN honestly assess.<br />
<br />
Did you put on that shirt because it is comfortable, suitable to your day, aesthetically appealing, or simply because it is beautiful and fills you with joy? Or did you put it on to show off how much weight you've lost in front of someone you dislike, to make them feel inferior? Did you pick it to try to get attention from men by manipulating their sexual responses (Notice: this doesn't ask whether you succeed in provoking sexual responses. Even if every man around you is chaste in his responses, or if you're not nearly as sexually irresistible as you think you are, it's still immodest to *try* to flaunt your sexuality in order to wield some power over men)?<br />
<br />
Are you wearing the shoes appropriate to your day, or are you wearing the expensive brand-name shoes that you know will demonstrate your status and provoke envy in women who can't afford them? Did you buy that purse because it is really practical/beautiful/well-made, or because it is a status symbol?<br />
<br />
If your intentions are modest, appropriate, humble, then more often than not you will tend to dress and behave in ways that end up being easier and more comfortable for those around you, both men and women. It's possible to be immodest in "modest" dress, if your intention is to show your moral superiority--but if you are at peace in your mind and your intentions towards others, I think you will find you have a great deal of freedom to enjoy self-expression in dress and presentation.<br />
<br />
If you want more specific advice to relieve your scrupulosity, there's always the classic spiritual advice which really won't ever steer you wrong (Francis de Sales said something of this sort): Wear what other people of your class, situation, station in life are wearing, but a notch less ostentatious or showy. Wear the fashion of the day, but a slightly more conservative version. Let others shine; step out of the limelight, but not in that dowdy, radical way that would be as ostentatious and showy as being a fashion-plate.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-92132732191321301372016-06-06T14:04:00.003-04:002016-06-06T15:21:09.473-04:00Binge drinking is not rape<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e5pv4" data-offset-key="1kpoq-0-0" style="background-color: white;">
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Stanford rapist, Brock Turner (and there you are, may those words accompany that name on Google for far, far longer than the measly 6-month sentence the man will serve), has promised to speak to youth about the dangers of "binge drinking and promiscuous sex." </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
His father begged for mercy in sentencing because digitally penetrating an unconscious woman behind a dumpster was just "20 minutes of action" out of 20 years of life, and also echoed the line about the dangers of drinking and promiscuity. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
I want to say this:
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Binge drinking is not rape.</b>
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Promiscuous sex, as dumb and dangerous as it is, is not rape.
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Penetrating a non-responsive stranger with your fingers, shoving pine needles and dirt inside her while you dry hump her body until someone notices you you and scares you off---whether or not the law recognizes digital penetration as rape, THAT IS RAPE.
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drinking does not explain or excuse what Brock Turner (and seriously, doesn't that name sound like a parody of privilege? Could you think of a more privilege, WASPy name?) chose to do that night. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drinking to excess can remove inhibitions. It can make a person suggestible. It can injure judgment. But none of those things will turn you from a decent, caring, empathetic human being into someone who would drag an incoherent woman behind a dumpster to get in her underpants.
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A decent guy gets drunk and makes embarrassing passes at attractive women, and is ashamed the next day. A decent guy doesn't get drunk, separate a woman from her friends, and stick his fingers inside her as soon as she is incoherent or unconscious enough not to be able to protest.
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Promiscuous sex can spread disease, make people vulnerable to exploitation, hurt hearts, and create drama.<i> It cannot, however, take a non-violent person and make them commit acts of violence and violation. </i>
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did drinking have a part in Turner's actions? Sure it did. It gave him an excuse.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
Did the current age's obsession with no-strings-attached sex have a part in Turner's actions? Maybe. It may have been part of his sense of entitlement. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
Did either cause him to rape a woman behind a dumpster?
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">No.
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">He did that himself.
Edited to add this cogent observation, from friend Christina P.: </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">You mean to tell me we live in a country where the top medical authorities advise "women shouldn't drink any alcohol unless they're on birth control," but men can do this shit and get off next to Scot free because of alcohol?</span></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Y'all, until alcohol is not a viable excuse for rape and assault it should be illegal for a man to even get wasted.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-11417316687287602852016-03-19T11:22:00.000-04:002016-03-19T11:41:52.424-04:00On strawmen, privilege, and the "deserving" poor<br />
If you want to look down your noses at people who rely on government assistance, I don't want to be treated as exempt from your disdain simply because I don't fit the image in your mind.<br />
<br />
I don't want to answer your (rhetorical, I guess) question about why poor people do or don't do something and then be told that<span style="font-size: large;"> you don't mean people like me</span>, you mean those other people.<br />
<br />
I don't want to be excused because I come from an intact family, I grew up on a farm in the country, I'm white and well-educated, attend church weekly, because I had my children within wedlock, or because I express myself well.<br />
<br />
Here's how I see it, when I step out of my subsidized-rent home and see the other "poor" people around me. I see that with all of the advantages listed above, many of which, yes, my economic peers do not have, we are all at this moment in the same place.<br />
<br />
I have incredible, incredible respect for men and women who keep striving in the face of no advantages, few privileges, less education, and/or dysfunctional family dynamics. I am in no way superior to them. I didn't earn any of my advantages.<br />
<br />
So stop telling me that you just mean those *other* poor people, the ones who aren't trying as hard as I am. Because <span style="font-size: large;">I can assure you, nothing I have came from "trying harder." </span><br />
<br />
And maybe, maybe, you might consider whether poor people might not mostly just be...people...doing what they know to do, trying to get by, some virtuous, some silly, some selfish, some amazingly generous, no different in essentials from any other segment of society.<br />
<br />
Maybe they aren't so alien after all.<br />
<br />
<i>(Originally posted on FB, in response to some interactions there.)<br /><br />ETA: Related reading from Melinda Selmys. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicauthenticity/2016/03/youre-not-pro-life-if-youre-not-pro-child/ </i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-49996605875670672502016-01-22T16:30:00.001-05:002016-01-22T16:31:29.472-05:00Perceiving the personJust popping in to point any readers I have left to <a href="http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/home/comments/empathy_photography_and_perception_thoughts_on_the_public_display_of_graphi">my post over at The Personalist Project</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
News photographers know we have trouble seeing the humanity in
victims of violence. It is all too easy to dehumanize the people we live
alongside, let alone the dead we have never known. This is why we have
the old trick of putting a child's shoe or a teddy bear in the
foreground of a picture of a war zone or scene of natural disaster. If
there's a corpse, they are photographed being held or mourned over by
loved ones. Or a single, humanizing detail is photographed—a bracelet on
an outflung arm, a fringe of scarf across a face. These details help us
to see ourselves or our loved ones in the pictured victim. We, who wear
clothing, who tuck our children in at night with their own favorite
stuffed toys, who love our favorite baubles, see first ourselves before
we know how to see the other. It is our knowledge of our own
subjectivity that reminds us that the other is also a subject, rather
than merely an object.<br />
There's a mercy and a ruthlessness in contextualizing the victims of
violence or disaster in this way. The mercy is in sparing the
already-traumatized the grotesqueness of the manner of death. In any
large audience there will be those who have lost loved ones to violence,
and who will see in any graphic depiction only their own loved one’s
pain and the cruelty of the world that drives some to despair.<br />
<br />
The ruthlessness is in not allowing the rest of us to gain the distance of disgust...</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/home/comments/empathy_photography_and_perception_thoughts_on_the_public_display_of_graphi"><br /></a>
<a href="http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/home/comments/empathy_photography_and_perception_thoughts_on_the_public_display_of_graphi">Read the rest here. </a><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-67374437970318315272015-11-20T00:16:00.000-05:002015-11-20T12:31:05.861-05:00A LetterDear Nasrin,<br />
<br />
You don't know me--you live in the US, and I live in Canada--but we have a mutual friend. During a conversation today she mentioned that, since the attacks in Paris this past weekend, you have stopped wearing hijab. You are afraid of what people will think of you, afraid of <a href="https://soundcloud.com/david-mack-27">what they might say</a>, perhaps afraid of <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/frightening-attacks-leave-ontario-muslims-shaken-1.3323107">what they might do</a> if you are visibly Muslim. Your husband is away, you are on your own with your children, and you are afraid, so you have set aside a custom that has, I am sure, both religious and personal significance to you, to try to fit in and be anonymous.<br />
<br />
I am so sorry.<br />
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<br />
I am sorry that you have become anonymous. I know my faith is not incidental to who I am. How could I feel fully, freely myself if I felt I had to hide it? What use is an imagination, as Anne Shirley said in the book I read to my son tonight, if we cannot use it to peek into the heads of our friends? So I can imagine something of how painful that decision must have been for you.<br />
<br />
I am sorry for your fear, for the actions and attitudes that have given you reason for fear. And I am sorry you have lost, temporarily I hope, this small piece of yourself.<br />
<br />
I am sorry that the actions of fanatic coreligionists halfway across the world have resulted in the loss of your sense of belonging within your own community, your own state, your own nation. I've been told, by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/17/isis-wants-you-to-hate-muslims/">writers</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hating-muslim-refugees-is-exactly-what-the-islamic-state-wants-europe-to-do/2015/11/15/dfe0ca84-87d1-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html">and thinkers</a> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/queen-rania-isis-islamic_n_6781160.html">who should know</a>, that this is what Daesh hope for when they incite attacks in Western nations. I've been told that they hope to use that division to force moderate Muslims to take sides, to leave them no home in the civilised world so that they will begin to see themselves--so that <i>you</i> will begin to see yourself as having more in common with them than with non-Muslim westerners like myself. They want to split the world into Muslim and non-Muslim, with themselves as the voice and arbiter of Islam. And they want to do this, I am told, in <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/17/9750504/paris-attacks-islamophobia-isis">the hope of inciting an insane, apocalyptic war.</a><br />
<br />
I don't want to see that. I don't think you do either. I think if you and I said what we really think of that idea, we'd probably both use a lot of the sort of language that we try not to let our children overhear.<br />
<br />
I won't tell you to observe hijab in defiance of your fear. Do whatever you think best for you and your family at this time. But I want you to know that I hope for a future in which you are able to discern your religious observances with a peace-filled heart, assured of the tolerance of those around you. <br />
<br />
I'm Catholic. I understand to some extent what it is to have an ancient faith with a complicated and sometimes embarrassing history, and rich, complex layers of teaching and tradition that baffle outsiders. I spent some time today <a href="http://www.patheos.com/Muslim">reading blogs</a> and <a href="http://www.kingstonmuslims.net/islam_and_non_muslims.php">essays</a> written by American and Canadian Muslims, which felt surprisingly familiar to me from my time spent in my own religious blog circles. I spent more time reading the comments on those blogs--challenging, insulting, contemptuous, sometimes threatening comments from non-Muslims. And I was ashamed, because I have felt misunderstood for my faith many times, but I have never faced quite that level of hostile crap.<br />
<br />
These Muslim bloggers seemed to me like thoughtful, decent people who are wrestling with the intersection of their faith and their lives, questions of context and interpretation of their sacred texts, complicated matters of history and tradition, just like all the believers of various stripes I've ever encountered. But I've rarely, if ever, witnessed so many people determined to tell believers what they "<i>really</i>" believe, so <i>determined</i> to push them all into being either terrorists or apostates because somehow these commenters are uncomfortable allowing American and Canadian Muslims to self-define, to find their own ways of modernizing and adapting and understanding themselves and their faith.<br />
<br />
So, I am sorry. I'm sorry that we have all made it so easy for Daesh to recruit in your communities and to represent the West as incompatible with the practice of your faith. I'm sorry it took me this long to make the effort to listen to Muslim voices instead of non-Muslim or extremist's versions of who you are and what you believe. I'm sorry that I've been content for so long to coexist at a distance and not see beyond the "otherness" of hijab and custom. I'm sorry I didn't listen and I didn't see.<br />
<br />
I hope that some day soon we will be able to set aside this atmosphere of fear and get down to the much more important business of comparing our children's accomplishments and foibles, worrying over family finances, dreaming over our ambitions and goals, and creating lives filled with beauty and meaning. I hope we can show the fearful and the hateful that they don't get to say who you are or who I am. I hope we can be neighbours in spirit, if not in location.<br />
<br />
I hope we can live at peace. <br />
<br />
KateUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-13202496993451532972015-11-10T22:06:00.000-05:002015-11-10T22:06:54.531-05:00The Mercy InversionBear with me, this post is geeky.<br />
<br />
I just finished watching The Zygon Inversion, last week's episode of Doctor Who. Or rather, I just finished rewatching The Zygon Inversion, for the third time. The episode is the second half of a two-parter, but the first part--and much of the episode itself--is really just a setup to a very powerful piece of dialogue--monologue, really--about war.<br />
<br />
Except it's not really about war as much as it is about forgiveness.<br />
<br />
Except it is not so much about forgiveness--though it is that as well--as it is about the power of mercy.<br />
<br />
Which means, ultimately, it's about love.<br />
<br />
Here's the meat of the speech:<br />
<br />
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It's a remarkable, emotional performance from Capaldi. The speech itself is a marvellous rhetorical creation, moving from scolding to pleading, from frustration to raw pain. <br />
<br />
It's also a treat for fans, referencing as it does the Doctor's backstory and the universe and character-shaping events of 2013's 50th anniversary special, the Day of the Doctor. My second viewing sent me back to revisit that episode, wondering if it was the emotional resonances from previous viewing that had so captured my attention. The Doctor's choice from his own warrior days, from his own Moment, is certainly consciously echoed here.<br />
<br />
But I realized what it was, finally, this last time I watched the episode and the speech. I realized what was pulling me so intensely back to it, what it was I found compelling enough to watch again and again. It's this:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">I did worse things than you could ever imagine, and when I close my eyes... I hear more screams than anyone could ever be able to count! And do you know what you do with all that pain? Shall I tell you where you put it? You hold it tight... Til it burns your hand. And you say this -- no one else will ever have to live like this. No one else will ever have to feel this pain. Not on my watch."</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
This? This is a particular kind of mercy. The Day of the Doctor was about counting the innocents (also referenced in this speech). At one point in that episode, the Doctor revealed that he stayed up "one long night" and counted all the children's lives at stake in his grim moment of decision at the end of the Time War. The Day of the Doctor--an episode that is also about war, and about alternatives to war--was about pleading the case for the innocent lives against the weight of the guilty.<br />
<br />
But this episode takes that and inverts it by pleading, not for the innocent, but for the guilty.<br />
<br />
Pleading so that "No one else will ever have to live like this." Live, not as survivors of war, but as perpetrators of atrocity.<br />
<br />
The Doctor's speech first asks the combatants to have, not mercy on the innocents, but mercy on their opponents to break the cycle. The Doctor offers his mercy to Zygella when she thinks she deserves none. But the ultimate plea, the compelling plea, the most heartfelt of them all, is the plea he makes for her to have mercy...on herself.<br />
<br />
Because sin--and if we can't talk about unjust war and the murder of innocents in terms of sin, what can we?--sin's costs only <i>seem</i> to be carried solely by its victims. The mercy of the Doctor is the mercy of someone who knows the true and lasting cost of sin to the one who commits it. It is the mercy of the broken towards the breaking.<br />
<br />
In this moment, the Doctor's pleas are something more than desperate attempts to verbally wheedle an opponent into submission. They are an act of love.<br />
<br />
For the wrongdoer. For the terrorist, the rebel, the contemplator-of-genocide.<br />
<br />
It is the plea that pierces to the heart. The plea from an opponent who loves you more than you knew to love yourself.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Sometimes we talk about mercy like it is something that the more virtuous person offers out of their virtue. Ultimately, there's some truth to this. God's mercy certainly comes out of His infinite goodness. <br />
<br />
But the human impulse to mercy usually has different roots, I think. Because it isn't the people who think well of themselves who find mercy most natural to them, is it? It's not those who have found it easy and rewarding to follow the rules. It's the reformed, the repentant, the humbled. <br />
<br />
It's our brokenness that teaches us to see what is broken in others and wish them, not condemnation, not punishment, but healing.<br />
<br />
Love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you.<br />
<br />
We are all sinners.<br />
<br />
We say these things so often they have become hollow, I'm afraid. We've forgotten, I think, just what that means. It means your enemies' soul and fate matters as much to you as your own. It means there is no "us" and "them." <br />
<br />
There's just varying degrees of broken, all in need of a Doctor. <br />
<br />
And while I love my fictional Doctor, especially for this week's speech, I love my very real Divine Physician all the more. Bearing all of the wounds of all of our wars in his hands and feet and heart, He waits for us to choose mercy and life.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">"I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." (Deut. 30:19)</span></blockquote>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-82857960599303832742015-10-16T14:28:00.001-04:002015-10-16T14:35:00.624-04:00Learning to Love the Thing I Most Wish Had Not Happened<br />
Last week was Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. It also marked the four year anniversary of my return to Canada after my marriage collapsed and sundry smaller betrayals left me with no other home to return to but that of my parents.<br />
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Yet, I have many things to be thankful for. I am grateful for my family, and for everything they are to me and my children. I've learned to appreciate how blessed I am in being able to say with honesty that I enjoy and anticipate time spent with every one of my siblings and their spouses. I am thankful for my parents, for their generousity towards us, but also for their faith in me. I am grateful to be in Canada, to have landed on my feet with a home of our own and work to pay the bills. I've tried to let my gratitude for all that is good in my life serve as consolation for the wound in the center of my family. <br />
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This year, I find that adversarial balance--wound vs. consolation--challenged by a quote, a comment, that <a href="http://peaceandpekoe.blogspot.ca/2015/08/colbert-on-suffering-sorrow-and-joy.html">I have not been able to shake since reading it back in August</a>, in that fantastic GQ interview of Stephen Colbert. In it, Colbert told the interviewer that perhaps the reason he didn't seem to be working his demons out on stage was because, <a href="http://www.gq.com/story/stephen-colbert-gq-cover-story">"I love the thing I most wish had not happened." </a><br />
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I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from [J.R.R.] Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien’s mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”</blockquote>
I wrote once about <a href="http://peaceandpekoe.blogspot.ca/2015/05/your-pain-is-celebration.html">sorrow being a true and appropriate response to the privation of a good</a>. To grieve a good lost is to acknowledge that it IS good. But Colbert approaches something more profound here; the felix culpa, the happy fault. The wound in the world that opens the door for a greater grace. It is right to grieve what is lost, what is broken. It is also right to rejoice in what is given, and to love, not only the graces and the Giver, but the very wound that opened the door to Him.<br />
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So this Thanksgiving, I have tried to be grateful for the course my life has taken. I am a better person for this wound, this hurt that has taught me so much about compassion, about tenderness, about my strengths and my weaknesses. Slowly, I am learning to face towards my discomforts rather than away from them. I wish my children had both their parents present to them. I wish I had the consolations of a loving and constant partner. But I am thankful to have come through the fire and learned my measure. I am thankful for the fire.<br />
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"It would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude.<br />
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It doesn't mean you want it."<br />
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I think--perhaps--I can hold both of those ideas in my head.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-43836564267399290952015-10-12T14:32:00.000-04:002015-10-16T14:33:23.179-04:00Love among the ruinsA snippet from a piece I published last week:<br />
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...There are things broken that we cannot fix.<br />Am I advocating despair? No. But these broken places in people's lives are where Francis's call for compassion and pastoral care is most relevant. For while it is true that we cannot heal one another's every wound, nothing is beyond God. And while we wait for his action, we can and should follow his command by loving one another, even in the broken places.<br />It isn't comfortable...</blockquote>
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Go to <a href="http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/home/comments/love_among_the_ruins">Personalist Project to read the rest</a>, if you haven't already!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-57453768486139376792015-08-21T00:22:00.000-04:002015-08-21T00:22:57.801-04:00Thoughts on a Broken World<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've been thinking about the brokenness of the world all day, and about how nobody is guaranteed a smooth path.</span></div>
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On Facebook, someone asked why it is that the world's response to a double standard is to want to level the playing field by enabling the same vices or poor behaviour across the board instead of by holding everyone up to the same high standard.<br /><br />My answer was that the first option is easier. It's easier--it is in our control--to lower ourselves to the level of the predators and cheats of the world. It's easier to become a dog eating other dogs. It's not within our power as individuals to make anyone else be just, kind, merciful, humble, or loving.<br /><br />We can always choose to rise above--to consciously decide not to be part of the rottenness of the world--but there's an obvious consequence to that choice. The way of the world is for the virtuous to suffer from the sins of others (while we all suffer from our own sins). <br /><br />We struggle with this. Some lose their faith, because a Christianity that promises us rewards on earth won't give us the staying power to endure the obvious injustice, the reality that the unjust prosper, the just often suffer.<br /><br />Lord, it's not fair! we pray, like Job finally driven to lament his plight. Why do we suffer, even when we make the right choices, take the high road? Why is it that the sin and rottenness of the world always seems so much larger, so ever-present, so far beyond redemption?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the answer is, because we choose. We all choose. And other people's choices break the world.<br /><br />Our own choices break the world.<br /><br />Christ is the glue to patch us together, the solution to our slavery to sin, the promise of freedom. But we can't escape the consequences of the brokenness of this world while we live.<br /><br />He has to be reward enough. Wholeness, becoming less and less someone who breaks the world and more and more someone who heals and offers healing...that's what Christ offers. And that has to be enough. That has to be our reason--that we can't stand any longer to be part of what breaks the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We want our good behaviour followed by rewards, like little children. I did the right thing, now I deserve something good. Even if the reward we crave is just the hope that our efforts might mean something on the large scale to change the fate of the world we live in.<br /><br />But don't we try to teach our children that the right thing IS the good? That you should help your sister because she is good and because it is who you want to be? We try to teach our children not to demand a treat every time they do the bare minimum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">***<br /><br /> I told my kids often, that first year separated from my husband, their father, "This is not what I would choose." It's not. But I can't take away my husband's choice. Even if I could bribe, manipulate, or somehow coerce him into doing what I wanted, I would only do him injury. I would never hold his heart if I did violence to his will.<br /><br />I had a moment in prayer, early on, when I understood that this is exactly Christ's position in relation to me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He will never do me the violence of choosing for me, of removing my freedom. He will only have my heart if I give it to him freely.<br /><br />***</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />I think the war between good and evil is played on battle lines that run through every human heart. It's dispiriting to try to do this salvation thing on ones own terms and strength and fail, and it is dispiriting to aim at transforming the world and find that we can't even transform our own small corners of it.<br /><br />But I suck at surrender, so I can't really blame God for my unwillingness to turn to him when I most need to, when I am most tempted.<br /><br />That is the road to salvation. Surrender. I will work out my salvation in fear and trembling and constant surrender. And while it feels futile to try and fail and to see so many falling around me, I know there is, truly, freedom from slavery to sin, freedom from my own selfishness and my own brokenness offered to me in that surrender.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can look back on</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> things I once thought or was once tempted to and feel like I'm looking at an image of a different person.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Maybe it is the falling and getting up again that leads to that growth, as slow and incremental as it is. But w</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">e really do become more whole, more free, with continued surrender.<br /><br />***</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The weird thing is...as much as the news of the day has been weighing on me today, wearing me down...it's days like this I doubt less.<br /><br />It clarifies something for me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because when I slip into thinking of my faith as a source of comfort, as an anodyne for the world and something that smooths my path, then I have no answers for this...this ailing world, this world of dismembered children and unfaithful spouses and exploited innocence and everywhere powerful people making profit out of vice and depravity.<br /><br />If I turn faith into being nice--or if I turn it into following all the right rules to earn a reward--I have no answers for this.<br /><br />But when I look at the brokenness, the sin, the role we all play in that, the despair of healing ourselves and the utter depravity man is capable of...and how trapped we all are in it...<br /><br />Then it's clear. The good news.<br /><br /><b>The good news is forgiveness and freedom from slavery to sin.</b><br /><br />It's easy to lose sight of it in our plans for self-improvement and our plans for changing the world.<br /><br />But there it is. Christ came because the world is broken. We are broken, we are drowning in our selfishness and sin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We need a Saviour. Not to make us comfortable, not to protect us from the cruelty of the world or guarantee us a haven from pain or suffering. We will suffer no matter what we do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We need a Saviour to save us from ourselves, to give us the strength for the battle within our hearts.<br /><br />I need a Saviour. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-39640727563766383082015-08-18T08:35:00.001-04:002015-08-18T08:35:08.743-04:00Colbert on Suffering, Sorrow, and JoyDon't miss this<a href="http://www.gq.com/story/stephen-colbert-gq-cover-story"> incredible interview with Stephen Colbert.</a> I found this inspiring, in the midst of my own tangle of things-as-they-are and things-not-as-they-ought-to-be and children that need to be raised to find joy in it all. Not <i>despite</i> it all, but <i>in</i> it all:<br />
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He was tracing an arc on the table with his fingers and speaking with such deliberation and care. “I was left alone a lot after Dad and the boys died.... And it was just me and Mom for a long time,” he said. “And by her example am I not bitter. By <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">her</em> example. She was not. Broken, yes. Bitter, no.” Maybe, he said, she had to be that for him. He has said this before—that even in those days of unremitting grief, she drew on her faith that the only way to not be swallowed by sorrow, to in fact recognize that our sorrow is inseparable from our joy, is to always understand our suffering, ourselves, in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity? Imagine being a parent so filled with your own pain, and yet still being able to pass that on to your son.</div>
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“It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering,” he said. “Which does not mean being defeated by suffering. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness.” He smiled in anticipation of the callback: “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that's why. Maybe, I don't know. That might be why you don't see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It's that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.gq.com/story/stephen-colbert-gq-cover-story">Read it all here. </a><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-34908359660780979352015-08-05T10:04:00.000-04:002015-08-05T10:04:00.520-04:00Giving BackFor years now, I've belonged to an online forum that has become a true on-and-offline community. Through this forum, I have sent and received "random acts of kindness" in the form of small gifts and surprises through the mail. Once, my husband made a tiny casket for a forum member, someone I'd never met in person, whose child was stillborn. When I was struggling to pay bills, I was helped through the Helping Hands fund this community maintained for members in need. Over the years, forum members have come together to help women leave abusive situations, assist members through illness or disaster, and help grieving members through the loss of a child, spouse, or parent. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.gofundme.com/Baldforbucks">Now, one of the foundational members of that community, someone who has in the past been quick to help others in all of these ways, is now facing her own trial--cancer. </a><div>
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I've known Natalie for 8 years online, and in all those online interactions, I have seen a consistent character that is kind, eager to assume the best of people, faith-filled, and dedicated to her family and her friends. </div>
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<br />From the website:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 25px;"><a href="http://www.gofundme.com/2ab3v2ajnb3">This fundraiser</a> is to benefit my friend Natalie. She's the mother of six children, ages 19-7, and her military husband is on the deploy list for 2016.</span><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 25px;">Natalie was diagnosed with breast cancer and recently had a double mastectomy. She was reassured by the doctor about any doubts she may have had about the decision to have the double procedure (with cancer on only one side) when she tested positive for a gene called CHEK2. This gene is associated with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS), which is a hereditary cancer predisposition syndrome. Breast cancer is among the most common cancer types found in families with this syndrome. </span></blockquote>
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If you are able, please help show Nat some of the kindness she has so often shown others. </div>
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Thank you!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-72113268577178931382015-07-30T22:09:00.001-04:002015-07-30T22:09:24.377-04:00Soylent Green is People"Soylent Green is people!" <br /><br />The movie Soylent Green ends with the plea that people be told this truth--that the remains of people are being turned into food for the rest of the population. The ending leaves you room to hope that something will change as a result of this revelation. But it also leaves you reason to believe that no-one will listen to this grim, unpleasant message. What would they do? <br /><br />I rather suspect that the majority, hearing this declaration, chose to believe instead reassuring official voices that told them the claims were overblown, the evidence fabricated, and even if the processed food were made of people, why should we allow all of that protein to go to waste when there are people dying every day? <br />
<br />That is, after all, the response to our modern-day dystopic realities.<br /><br />Soylent Green is people? "Fetal tissue" is people.<br />
<br /><a href="http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2014/Apr/fetus_1396774878_540x540.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2014/Apr/fetus_1396774878_540x540.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a><br /><br />
I've been watching combox warriors arguing over the source of the videos showing Planned Parenthood employees apparently negotiating the sale of fetal body parts. They argue about the extent to which the videos are or aren't edited (no tech wizard has yet found telltale marks of manipulation on the "unedited" versions). They argue about the legality of tissue donation and the ethics of inflating handling costs for "donations" and whether the mothers gave informed consent.<br /><br />But all of this misses the real crux of the thing, which is this: fetal tissue is human remains. Fetuses are people. Whether or not they are currently recognized as such. And that we do not recognize the humanity of the unborn is not a result of our enlightened modern nature--it is a relic of a barbaric protectionism that ranks the humanity of different groups by how likely they are to use the resources we desire for ourselves, or how much use we can make of them.<br />
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The movement of modern liberal society has been towards extending kinship further, turning out-groups into in-groups, recognizing the humanity of groups when it had previously been more convenient, useful, economically and socially advantageous to deny that humanity. This has been a courageous movement because each extension of humanity, of rights, of dignity and worth has cost the more-dominant groups. Each extension of in-group status threatens those who are newly come to the in-group and feel insecure in their place and challenges the norms and power base of the dominant members of the in-group. Each extension takes a tremendous amount of moral courage.<br />
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Abortion has been a horrific exception to that movement, a step back justified as a necessary bloody step up for women, an answer to living in a man's world that allowed men to continue to make the rules for equality that women would now sacrifice their children and their integrity to try to live by.<br />
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The unborn are people.<br /><br />The failure to recognize this is a failure of courage. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-14685606475890324592015-07-24T12:59:00.000-04:002015-07-24T12:59:05.972-04:00The weight of impatience<div class="UFICommentContent" data-reactid=".55.1:5:1:$comment845772045508394_847567765328822:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
As I said in the preamble to my last post, I've spent a lot of time listening and talking with women in difficult marriages since my own separation, almost four years ago.<br /><br />When women who are struggling come together (I speak only of women because this is what I know), the worst that can come of it is a race to compare circumstances and descend into bitterness, doom-saying, dire warnings, and projection. It is easy for a few voices to take their own experiences and conclusions and fit them on to every newcomer, whether the fit is natural or needs to be a forced a bit.<br /><br />I thought of this when reading Simcha's brilliant post on NFP and suffering. Her observation on suffering--and the way it makes you compare your situation to others and become impatient, to rush to look for a fix or a change when consolation isn't readily available--is applicable to all kinds of situations, not merely difficulties encountered in family planning.<br /></div>
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<span data-reactid=".55.1:5:1:$comment845772045508394_847705928648339:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$text20:0"><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/simchafisher/2015/07/24/on-complaining-honestly-about-nfp-and-other-crosses/">Simcha writes:</a></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-reactid=".55.1:5:1:$comment845772045508394_847705928648339:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$text20:0">"Oh my gosh, what a downer, right? But really, it’s a trap to use human standards (“Is this making me happy? Is this making life better? Does everyone around me agree that this makes sense? Does it seem like I’m making progress?”) to make judgments about what kind of suffering is tolerable. When we do this, then really serious suffering, the kind that doesn’t make sense, will seem like a sign that something is wrong — that something has to change, that we deserve a pass of some kind (see point #2).</span>.<br />"If we look at a crucifix, suffering may or may not make sense, but at least we can’t claim that God couldn’t possibly expect us to choose that path just because of religion. Look to Him. Look <em>at</em> Him. See Him hanging there, abandoned. Sometimes there is no answer — not for you, not right now. That’s not a good reason to stop.<br />Don’t get me wrong: I believe in redemptive suffering. It’s just that I no longer expect it to <em>feel</em> redemptive."</blockquote>
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Does that contradict what I said in my last post, when I encouraged women to examine their treatment at the hands of their husbands and ask themselves whether it honors their dignity, reason, and place of honor in the heart of the home? Wasn't I asking suffering spouses to judge what kind of suffering is tolerable and seek to make changes?<br /><br />On some level, yes. But the difference is that ultimately the decision about what must or should be tolerated does not come down to what other people think or what makes sense to those around us. The wisdom of Christ is foolishness to the world. </div>
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The fact that something causes you to suffer is <i>not</i> sure evidence that you need to tolerate it. Suffering is an <i>evil</i>, theologically. It is a privation of a good--all suffering comes down to the lack of goods that we were created for. If you are suffering and you can address the privation at the root of your suffering without sacrificing some higher good, then you should do so!<br /><br />However, as Simcha mentions in her discussion of NFP, sometimes suffering comes from things we can't easily address--from sin in the world, from our own brokenness, from the social mores around us, from poverty, illness, or circumstance, from the privations we cannot fill by our own power. Sometimes the hardest suffering isn't in what is done to you, but in patiently bearing the weight of impatience with what <i>is</i>. </div>
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Which brings me to the second blog post that moved me today. From <a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/2015/07/for-all-us-hope-ers-when-things-arent-working-out-as-wed-hoped/">Ann Voskamp:</a><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: Merriweather; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-top: 15px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Pain begs us to believe that only action can end our ache — <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">when actually only God can.</em></strong><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Action doesn’t end pain — God does.</strong></em>It takes incredible courage to wait on God in what feels like a wrong place— <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">until He gives us the incredible gift of the right action.</em><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Merriweather; line-height: 30px;">And the making of one’s whole life takes time. Goals take longer than you think; the ways of God take longer than you want. It takes time, a lifetime, to turn the ache of our longings toward Him.</span> </blockquote>
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Pain drives us to action; we grow restless, we want to move, to do. Isn't this so true? And so, as Simcha says, redemptive suffering doesn't <i>feel</i> redemptive. Often, in the midst of the suffering that you tolerate for the sake of the good you seek to preserve or discover--whether because the Church, whom you trust, has taught you or because Christ has spoken into your heart or because it is the only path that leaves your integrity and your best, most true self intact--in the midst of this chosen or unchosen necessary suffering, all you will feel is...impatience and restlessness.<br /><br />Where is that peace you thought was the reward for faithfulness? Where is that deep joy that someone, somewhere told you waited in the depth of pain?<br /><br />The best answer I have is that the peace is there in the stillness I choose and strive for when everything in my monkey-brain is clamoring for decisive action. Joy, when I find it, is in the places it always was--in the people I love, in the beauty I find or create, in the momentary glimpses of grace made visible that help me believe it is present when it is invisible. Some days it is easier to find that stillness and those reasons for joy than others.<br /><br />Today, for a few reasons, I found myself restless. The things I desire are good things, and it seems intolerable sometimes that they cannot be forced, cannot be built single-handedly. And the temptation to comparison is never very far from any of us, is it?<br /><br />...<br /><br />I visited a dear friend last month, and in a moment of quiet she told me, "I don't understand you, you know."<br /><br />And then she said it--<br /><br />"I don't understand you. But I love you."<br /><br />There's a lot I don't understand. There's a lot of people whose lives and burdens seem as incomprehensible to me as I'm sure mine looks to them. <br /><br />Fortunately, we don't have to understand to love each other. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-12749872068326200862015-07-11T20:42:00.002-04:002015-07-11T20:42:38.863-04:00When submission becomes a false idol<span style="font-size: x-small;">First, the disclaimer: My husband and I have problems (you don't live a thousand miles apart if you don't), but I have never been afraid of my husband, nor has he ever behaved in a controlling or abusive way towards me or our children. I've been afraid <b>for</b> him, many times, but never afraid <b>of</b> him. <br /><br />This blog post is a response to the stories and heart-felt struggles of many other good women, as shared with me over the last three years. In many ways, it is a post TO those women, a reminder, and, since I find myself repeating this message over and over again, a handy way to avoid having to retype the same passages and ideas every time misguided interpretations of wifely "submission" or horrible, awful, damaging Christian marriage advice come up in conversation. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Now, on to the post. </span><br /><br /><br />
<b>Dear, wonderful, struggling Catholic and Christian wives,</b><br /><br />Stop trying to convert or change your husbands' hard hearts through your wifely submission.<br /><br />There are Christian and even Catholic writers out there who will try to convince you that your husband's abusiveness, emotional detachment, defensiveness, anger, lust and infidelity, or immaturity is merely evidence that you, his wife, have not submitted sufficiently to soften his heart and seduce him into becoming a better husband, father, and head of the family.<br />
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You love Christ, you love the Church, and you love your children. You want to love your husband. You want your husband to love you. So you pick yourself up and try harder, assenting to every whim and decision your husband makes, no matter how degrading or disagreeable, playing the role he allows you or expects you to play, and tolerating cruelty, neglect, or disdain in return. You meditate on the trials of St. Monica and imagine that a time will come when your husband will see your self-sacrificial love and be slain by remorse, repentance, and compassion, and then you will finally have the rightly-ordered Christian marriage which you have idolized for so long. If only you can become perfectly meek and submissive and carry your cross in the meantime.<br /><br />Dear ladies, this isn't God's plan for marriage. And it isn't what the Church requires of you, or what St. Paul was getting at when he described marriage as a type of the relationship of Christ and His Church.<br /><br />Casti Connubii 27 and 28 says, speaking of wifely submission as understood by the Church (emphasis mine),<br /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Segoe, sans-serif; font-size: 14.6666669845581px; line-height: 20px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">27. This subjection, however, <b>does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman</b> both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; <b>nor does it bid her obey her husband's every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife</b>; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so<b> she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.</b></span><span style="font-size: small;">28. Again, this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time. In fact,<b> if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family.</b></span></blockquote>
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Now, I think this is pretty clear. Submission is qualified, and subordinate to the demands of a woman's conscience, reason, and dignity. For a wife to submit, her husband must <b>first</b> embrace right reason and act according to the dignity of his wife (and, I would say, his children).<br />
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Frankly, the whole "right reason and dignity" clause basically means that the whole industry of "submit and he'll become virtuous" marriage advice is utter and complete shit. If you cooperate with evil (and anything that neglects or acts against the good of wife or children is, make no mistake about it, an evil) in the hope of softening your husband's heart, you have essentially made an idol out of your husband or marriage and placed it above your own conscience.<br /><br />Now, on to St. Paul. Ephesians 5:22-33:<br /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
"<span class="text Eph-5-22" id="en-NIV-29327" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">22 </span>Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29327A" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29327A" title="See cross-reference A">A</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> as you do to the Lord.<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29327B" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29327B" title="See cross-reference B">B</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> </span><span class="text Eph-5-23" id="en-NIV-29328" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">23 </span>For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29328C" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29328C" title="See cross-reference C">C</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> his body, of which he is the Savior.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> </span><span class="text Eph-5-24" id="en-NIV-29329" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">24 </span>Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29329D" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29329D" title="See cross-reference D">D</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> in everything.</span><span class="text Eph-5-25" id="en-NIV-29330" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">25 </span>Husbands, love your wives,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29330E" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29330E" title="See cross-reference E">E</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29330F" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29330F" title="See cross-reference F">F</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span> <span class="text Eph-5-26" id="en-NIV-29331" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">26 </span>to make her holy,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29331G" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29331G" title="See cross-reference G">G</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> cleansing<span class="footnote" data-fn="#fen-NIV-29331a" data-link="[<a href="#fen-NIV-29331a" title="See footnote a">a</a>]" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%205:22-33#fen-NIV-29331a" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #b34b2c; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top;" title="See footnote a">a</a>]</span> her by the washing<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29331H" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29331H" title="See cross-reference H">H</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> with water through the word,</span> <span class="text Eph-5-27" id="en-NIV-29332" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">27 </span>and to present her to himself<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29332I" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29332I" title="See cross-reference I">I</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29332J" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29332J" title="See cross-reference J">J</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span> <span class="text Eph-5-28" id="en-NIV-29333" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">28 </span>In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29333K" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29333K" title="See cross-reference K">K</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.</span> <span class="text Eph-5-29" id="en-NIV-29334" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">29 </span>After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—</span> <span class="text Eph-5-30" id="en-NIV-29335" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">30 </span>for we are members of his body.<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29335L" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29335L" title="See cross-reference L">L</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span> <span class="text Eph-5-31" id="en-NIV-29336" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">31 </span>“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”<span class="footnote" data-fn="#fen-NIV-29336b" data-link="[<a href="#fen-NIV-29336b" title="See footnote b">b</a>]" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%205:22-33#fen-NIV-29336b" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #b34b2c; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top;" title="See footnote b">b</a>]</span><span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29336M" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29336M" title="See cross-reference M">M</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span> <span class="text Eph-5-32" id="en-NIV-29337" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">32 </span>This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.</span> <span class="text Eph-5-33" id="en-NIV-29338" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">33 </span>However, each one of you also must love his wife<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-29338N" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-29338N" title="See cross-reference N">N</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."</span></blockquote>
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As St. Paul clarifies at the end, this entire passage is primarily about how marriage is an image of Christ and his Church. In doing so, he explicitly calls for marriage to reflect the relationship of Christ to his Church. While verse 22 tends to get all the attention, the really radical passage is verse 25-33. You see, Christ's self-sacrifice comes <b>first</b>; Christ sanctifies the Church and enables her to submit to his leadership. St. Paul then explains that this is how husbands should love their wives, with the same love with which they love themselves--in response to which, wives should respect their husbands.<br /><br />Think about this again. The marriage of Christ and his Church came after the crucifixion--there was no Church when Christ walked the earth. Christ's call for us to take up our crosses and follow him only comes <b>after</b> he takes up his cross. The leadership a husband ought to wield is a leadership akin to Christ's--a leadership that proposes, but does not impose; a leadership that points to a purpose and end, but invites our full and fully willing cooperation in finding and travelling the road to the given end.<br />
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And yes, when a husband leads with a servant's heart, with Christ's self-sacrificial love, the only appropriate response is to yield to that love and be unified under a single vision for the family.<br /><br />But if your husband is broken, flawed, mired in addiction or mental illness or just plain old sin? The path of love may be to remove yourself from the reach of a man who is ensnared by addiction and lashing out violently, so as to reduce the harm he would do to his own soul by his actions towards you. The path of love may be to guard a man's children when you cannot guard the man himself from his own sinfulness. Your conscience may guide to you stand up for justice for yourself and your children when your husband is unjust to you.<br /><br />Please, if you've been trying to tame your husband through submitting to his temper, his vices, his tyranny--please, remember you owe a yet higher allegiance. Find a peaceful, quiet place and ask God and yourself: Is this reasonable? Is this in keeping with my dignity and that of my children? Am I honored or loved as the heart of the home? Have I claimed for myself the chief place in love? What would that look like?<br /><br />Then listen. And do not be afraid.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">(For further reading: <a href="http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/domestic-violence/when-i-call-for-help.cfm">the USCCB statement on domestic violence</a>, whether physical or psychological.)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-31959091129651848652015-05-23T20:58:00.000-04:002015-05-23T20:58:32.469-04:00Mulling things overHere are the topics jumbled up in my mind and in my conversations the last couple of days (along with too little sleep and time to really sort them out): <br /><br />What does it mean to have a rightly ordered heart? How do you order your heart? What is virtue, anyway? <br /><br />And what about heroic virtue, the kind the Saints have? What does it <i>really</i> mean to become a Saint--is it all forcing yourself to do the right thing against your concupiscent desire to do otherwise? <br /><br />How do we raise children to have heroic virtue? How much influence can we have over our children's formation? Can you form true virtue through outside consequences? How do you make what is inside the heart more important and relevant than outside appearance? How do you reward virtue instead of rewarding the <i>appearance</i> of virtue? <br /><br />What role should the heart play in the Christian life? Does emotion have a role? What about suffering--when is it good, and when is it a sign we need to change something?<br /><br />Anyway...lots of stuff. And I've read some John Bosco and some Benedict XIV as a result of all these conversations, so there's some good material for cogitation!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-61434581300539953352015-05-21T00:06:00.000-04:002015-05-21T00:06:13.071-04:00Your pain is a celebrationAfter my last post, I told a few people I was planning a followup that would look past the specific experience of Mother's Day and look more generally at the experience of suffering and the question of "sensitivity" towards suffering.<br />
<br />What interests me, and has for some time now, is the problem of the pain that comes when a good that one lacks is celebrated.<br /><br />Obviously, my Mother's Day post addressed this to some extent. But the example that was most present to me while writing that post has little to do with motherhood. The example that I bear with me, accustomed now but still impossible to ignore, is the privation of the good of a happy marriage.<br /><br />If you've read this blog at all in the last three years, you know I am separated from my husband. Without going into details, I can tell you that this situation--this privation--is deeply painful. It's a pain that sits at a dull, almost forgettable background ache much of the time, until I move or something moves me and the sharp point of loss and regret stabs afresh, as sharp as when the wound was inflicted.<br />
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And while it hurts to see others denigrate, mock, or devalue marriage--though I ache with fellow-feeling whenever a friend, college classmate, online acquaintance, neighbor or other reveals to me their open or hidden marital wounds (and there are so very many more than you realize until you are "someone who can understand" because you've been there and are safe to open up to)--what has most often driven me to torrents of grief has been the happiness of others and the celebration of and promotion of marriage.<br />
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The spouse-brag FB posts, the anniversary blessings in church, the sappiness of new love and the comfortable resonance of old love all hurt to witness like a toothache that throbs intermittently and demands attention.<br /><br />I tried to avoid it, for a while. I tried blocking FB posts, avoiding certain blogs, keeping to myself. But that's a futile task, isn't it? And love and marriage are everywhere--in the year after I moved back north with my children, there were two family weddings and my parent's 40th wedding anniversary. I cried at or after all three. And I felt guilty for my tears because I wanted to rejoice with my loved ones. I did rejoice! But my joy was commingled with grief.<br />
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I am going somewhere with this, if you'll bear with me.<br /><br />What is the cause of this pain? It's not a re-wounding, the way it is when trauma victims are emotionally transported back to a traumatic event by being exposed to graphic depictions of the same evil. I'm not reliving the events surrounding my separation or the sins and mistakes that damaged my marriage. I am not being reminded of an evil act at all.<br /><br />What I suffer--what causes me to gasp with the movement of that deeply embedded loss--is the privation of a good that ought to be. And so it is the presence of a Great Good, as I called it in my last post, that causes me to grieve anew the lack of that good in my own life. Were it not a Great Good, I could not suffer so much for the lack of it.<br />
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I grieve my marriage because I value marriage, and it is right both to value it and to grieve it.<br /><br />This post, then, is for others who have experienced this pain over the Great Goods enjoyed by others. I don't have a solution for your pain, because your pain isn't an evil. My pain isn't an evil. While the lack of the thing you grieve is almost certainly a result of the fallen, disordered nature of this world, and while the desire to avoid feeling that pain might drive you to unhealthy lengths, the grief itself is the response of a rightly-ordered heart.<br /><br />It would be wrong to ask that others not rejoice in the Goods we so keenly grieve for ourselves, since we know they are Great Goods that ought to be celebrated. Sometimes, in seeking to escape feeling the pain of a privation we inadvertently fall into new evils like envy or resentment. But the best way I have found to preserve in myself the ability to rejoice for the Great Goods that come into the lives of my loved ones is to cease running from the rightly-ordered pain I feel at my own privation.<br />
<br />
Don't, as I did for some time, berate yourself for the grief that comes mixed in with your joy for others. There is no contradiction between sorrow and joy, suffering and celebration. When you smile through your tears, both your tears and your smile can be a tribute. <br /><br />The Greater the Good, the greater both the joy and the loss. Your pain is a celebration of the Good from a heart that knows how Great the Good is from knowing the size, shape, and cost of its absence. Let your grief teach your heart how to value the Good that is as well as the Good that is not.<br /><br /><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-79793076381059898142015-05-10T09:21:00.000-04:002015-05-10T09:21:28.074-04:00Is it insensitive to celebrate Mother's Day?<br />
Mother's day has always, since its institution as a day in honor of mothers who have passed on, included a hefty dose of melancholy. Motherhood as an abstract represents a Great Good Thing--an idea of self-sacrifice that is constant and unnoticed rather than large and famous, a nostalgia for maternal warmth and acceptance that may or may not accord with the reality of messy lived lives and experiences.<br />
<br />
In a lot of ways, Motherhood is an ideal which few of us can embody to our own satisfaction. And yet we recognize the good of it, and we celebrate that good even as we strive to more fully realize it in ourselves.<br />
<br />
Mother's day inspires a lot of angst in women. Women who cannot be mothers, women whose children are not living, those whose mothers are not living, those who feel like failures as mothers or like failures as children, or whose mother-child relationships are plagued by dysfunction. For those individuals, this commemoration and celebration of Motherhood can inspire grief.<br />
<br />
But so it should--and that is not so much a reason to avoid celebrating as it is a mark of how Great a Good it is that we desire, mourn, strive for, and commemorate.<br /><br />Yesterday I watched coverage of the 70th anniversary celebration of the liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian forces in Apeldoorn. There were equal measures tears and joy in the faces of the old men feted and lauded as they drove through the crowds in their uniforms, gazing at the faces of those generations largely born since the day they marched their exhausted, battle-worn, shell-shocked selves into a beaten, broken, starving nation and brought with them hope and provision and found there welcome and gratitude. How could they fail to remember the soldiers who didn't make it? Had the Dutch people not lost so many to the war and the Hunger Winter, would they remember with such faithfulness the soldiers from a far-away land who likewise fought and died so that they could move and live freely?<br /><br />There are no Great Good Things in this world, whether Motherhood or Liberty, that do not cost us tears in remembering their costs and our experiences of privation of the Great Good. There is no celebration worth having that is untinged by melancholy for all that should be, but is not.<br /><br />Today, let's celebrate the good we do find, mourn the good that has passed on, pray for the good that is not yet manifest in ourselves, and honor the role mothers play in the propagation and preservation of our lives with both our joy and our sorrow.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8034139490527373244.post-91346598460326191272015-04-02T19:26:00.001-04:002015-04-02T20:07:53.024-04:00Should you bring your kids to the Easter Vigil?I lay in bed this morning, kids piled on top of me, and talked to them about this weekend. About what the Triduum is, and what to expect, and what we will probably do. I talked about Holy Thursday and Good Friday and that pause for breath that is Holy Saturday, before the main event.<br />
<br />
Before I got any farther, I was asked if Easter is the one with the Mass at night-time where there's the really long song and all the lights are off and we all have candles...<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Bring kids to the Easter Vigil? <br />
<br />
Even if they fall asleep.<br />
<br />
Even if you're worried they'll light each other on fire.<br />
<br />
Even if they drive you to distraction?<br />
<br />
I probably did all of those things as a kid but<br />
all I can recollect is<br />
the smell of candlewax,<br />
and incense,<br />
the weight of the dark, lifted<br />
into shadows and shapes<br />
by the sharing flame and<br />
the quiet sounds of bodies shifting<br />
and whispers,<br />
<br />
the rich sung words rolling<br />
out across the church, rolling<br />
off the cornices and crevices, flowing<br />
around the shadow-flicker shapes of<br />
saints<br />
and<br />
patriarchs<br />
and<br />
echoing back from gold painted arches,<br />
pillars and niches....<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">Exult, all </span>creation<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> around God's throne! </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">Jesus Christ, our King, is risen! </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sound the trumpet of salvation!..."</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
Did I fidget? Probably. Probably<br />
I poked my brothers,<br />
scraped wax from the taper in my hand,<br />
the curl of wax bunching up<br />
on my fingernail. Probably<br />
I wiggled,<br />
whispered,<br />
asked questions,<br />
probably. But the words rolled over and around,<br />
through.<br />
in.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">"This is the night when Christians everywhere,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">washed clean of sin</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">and freed from all defilement,</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">are restored to </span>grace<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> and grow together in holiness. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 24px;" />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">"This is the night when </span>Jesus<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> </span>Christ<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">broke the chains of death</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">and rose triumphant from the grave. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">What </span>good<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> would </span>life<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> have been to us,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">had </span>Christ<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> not come as our Redeemer?"</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
Do kids<br />
understand ritual,<br />
(pancakes on Saturday mornings,<br />
cut just so.<br />
Will I have cake, treat bags, at my party?<br />
Will my friends sing Happy Birthday?<br />
Do everything <i>right, </i>Mama)<br />
tradition?<br />
Do they?<br />
Do children appreciate paradox? Riddles?<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">"O happy fault, O necessary </span>sin<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> of Adam..."</span></span><br />
<br />
The hot wax dripped; the<br />
paper circles meant to catch wax become<br />
hats or<br />
finger puppets<br />
or fall, unheeded, to the floor.<br />
And cooling trails of wax are molded<br />
by young fingers,<br />
always moving, always quick--<br />
quick means alive,<br />
like the quickening of buds in spring,<br />
the green of the quick of a branch.<br />
In the spring of my life the words<br />
rolled into my heart,<br />
my soul.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">"Accept this </span>Easter<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> candle,</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">a flame divided but undimmed,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 24px;" />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">Let it mingle with the </span>lights<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> of </span>heaven<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">May the morning Star which never sets find this flame </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">and continue bravely burning</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">to dispel the darkness of this night! </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May the morning Star which never sets find this flame </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 24px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">still burning:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">and shed his peaceful light on all mankind,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">your Son who lives and reigns for ever and ever."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span>
Bring your children to the Vigil? Bring<br />
children into the evening, the dark,<br />
that they do not yet understand?<br />
The night they feel around them,<br />
the dark that they fear<br />
is never fearsome here.<br />
This warm, fragrant Night that portends morning,<br />
that sings to them of Dawn...<br />
<br />
Will they sit still? Probably<br />
not. Will they understand?<br />
<br />
Do I understand? <br />
<br />
Do you? (Oh Happy Fault!)<br />
<br />
We will wait for morning<br />
<br />
together.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1