The Flower of the Imagination: a Case for Dragons

May 3, Feast of Sts. Phillip and James, apostles.

{Please note:  This is a Catholic-interest post, I'm afraid, but that doesn't mean non-Catholics can't chime in and/or enjoy.  Just keep in mind that I write from a heavily Catholic perspective and that a suggestion to dismiss moral value in the arts will be a bit irrelevant to the conversation!}

I've been troubled by a literary trend in the Catholic community that draws severe lines of categorization regarding moral archetypes.*  Harry Potter is the obvious example, an engaging albeit imperfect series with some beautiful moments reflecting Christian truth and values.  But the mere mention of the word "witch" cause some to banish it from their bookshelves forever, without even cracking open the cover.

There is more witchy to Harry Potter than the word, I'll grant, but what about other stories that rename symbols or use the imagery from another culture or civilization?  What about the well-loved A Wrinkle in Time, which merely uses the word "witch" tongue-in-cheek to stand-in for celestial beings, perhaps even angels?  What about the wizard Merlin who appears as a sage and a Christian in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, who is allowed to use the last bit of pre-Fallen Earth's command of nature to save the world and then to pass on?

In the same type of severity, dragons are dismissed as evil in all literature, and any treatment of a dragon as good is an inversion of truth.  As Catholics, we believe that what is not true comes from the Enemy--that is why he is called the Father of Lies.  But are all symbols so iron and non-negotiable?

In the east, dragons are wise and often benevolent, associated with luck and prosperity.  It's hard to say that this is an inversion, since the civilizations of Asia are far older than those of western Europe, except in the sense that they're symbols are opposite ours.  Which would only make sense, as we are on opposite sides of the globe.

But, people argue, in the Bible the serpent is cursed by God, and should always be associated with evil. Well then, say I, what about Moses's use of the snake on the staff--not even a real snake, but a seeming idol!--to heal and perform miracles?  With this task he was charged by God Himself.  It seems that even in the same cultures, sometimes symbols can be inverted.

There's a similar case for witches.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word witch first appears without any negative connotation; it's not until several centuries later that a second usage appeared that was more or less synonymous with the idea of witches we have today--devil-worshipers or evil spirits (citation as soon as I get back to the library).  Even then, the clear-cut dichotomy of magic being always evil did not exist** and in fact didn't become the majority belief until the late Middle Ages.  Before then, the belief in the supernatural other than God lived side-by-side with a deep devotion to the Church.  One need only look at Ireland as late as the first half of the twentieth century.

I have a theory that the reason why no one saw a problem with this apparent hypocrisy was because it was kept in the proper order: God was Lord.  And the other creatures or ways were rendered impotent, with the sign of the Cross or a a consecrated Host.  Dracula illustrates a superb example of the sovereignty of Christ.  Modern supernatural thrillers would be over a lot sooner if they'd just call the exorcist to bring in the Eucharist.

Vampires are another archetype enjoying a great revival at the moment.  Though as far as I know, vampires have in every time and place been on the evil spectrum of archetype, I have no problem with the modern obsession of redeeming them . . . so long as it is done believably and does not indulge in what Flannery O'Connor calls "sin against art."  I think clinging to the original archetype of the vampire as something dangerous, depraved, and hungry for redemption (John 6:54, anyone?) is what makes him so attractive to modern readers--not that the archetype is inverted so that vampires now appear good rather than bad.***  Our generation is all too familiar with the attractiveness of evil . . . aware of the that strong, thin thread of the Holy Spirit, calling us to salvation.

When I was younger, I used to believe that there were far more absolute truths than there actually are.  Absolute truths about what is beautiful and modest, what is the proper form of worship, who is in the right and wrong on particular political and philosophical issues, even absolute truths in parenting.  But experience and gentle discipline from God have taught me otherwise.

That is not to say that we shouldn't approach our reading material with caution: those with sound formation have a far greater chance for sifting the truth and beauty from the trash and poison in modern literature.  Those struggling or with young children have greater need for discernment.  But if we sweep all stories with non-evil dragons, benevolent witches, and less-than-saintly protagonists into the same off-limits categories, we risk experiencing the deepness that is the story of our Redemption.  We skip to the Resurrection at expense of the Cross.  

We must find a way to kill the weed without uprooting the flower.

------------


*  For further reading, see A Landscape with Dragons by Michael O'Brien.  (Kindle version available here.)
**  I've twelve months of post-graduate study on Arthurian literature and a Master's thesis under my belt to affirm the ambiguity of the magical figure in the Dark and Middle Ages.
***  I speak with limited knowledge on the subject, as I have not read the grandam of supernatural romance, the Twilight series.

Twenty Hobbies

Feb. 16, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

I stole this quote from Sarah of Little Progress Notes, and even though I have read it before, it stuck in my flesh like a thorn, sharp, sweet, and chastising, as it did the very first time I read it.  Someone close to me was very upset by this quote at the time, and I couldn't understand why.  Not intellectually.  Intellectually, I could understand how someone, a woman, who aimed for a profession or the perfection of a trade would balk that Chesterton thinks she oughtn't.  But my heart cannot fathom it.

When I read this quote, it's like if someone handed me a translation guide to the language of my soul.  People talk about wanting to be stay-at-home moms, and the majority of that talk revolves around the raising and education of children--which is, obviously, the most important aspect of homemaking if you're blessed to have them.  But there's more to it than that, and I see the fruits of the domestic woman in those who are not able to have children.  They're free to perfect their skills and passions.  They're broadly educated, not necessarily formally.

My own mother is extremely well-informed about current world events; her relatives in high political places talk down to her "narrow" point-of-view and are abruptly put in their place by a southern housewife.  I have a friend university-bound after seventeen years of graduating high school; she speaks with more lucidity and grace than most of my college professors.  My godmother has helped her husband raise the children from his first marriage, run three successful businesses, and start a grassroots ministry addressing the sorely ignored crisis of human sex trafficking.  My favorite women bloggers are, by a landslide majority, homemakers; more than gifted writers, they are photographers, crafters, architects, chemists, seamstresses, artists, philosophers, poets, botanists, activists, farmers, chauffeurs, and cooks.  They're quite literally everything to someone (their families).  And it just wouldn't be possible for them to be that astonishingly versatile in a career.

It's very telling that after a century of liberation, women are choosing to go back to the professions (oppression?) of their great-great-grandmothers.  Instead of being taught in an unbroken chain of mother-to-daughter lore, they're having to re-learn many of those skills that made suppressed Woman so dangerously skillful.  I suppose the feminist movement was necessary because it helped us understand.  For now we have the double benefit of having the freedom to choose and choosing not to be "free."

As for myself, being a Catholic, I have no problem being told what I ought to do and what is good for me.  But then, I believe that the so-called restraints of the patriarchy are not man-made at all, but transcend the world.

I don't think that a woman can't be focused on a single aim to forge a career.  Or that some women are best suited to that lifestyle.  I just know that in my first-hand experience with competent, thoughtful women, and for me personally, that would be sad.  It would be a kind of compromise.

I have so much to offer, so much that I'm passionate about.  God has generously equipped me.  I don't care that my ability to make a dwelling a comfortable home, or the home a place of spiritual peace and healthful stimulation, will go unappreciated by society.  And I grow weary of rationalizing my "career" preferences to that same society.  Like if I don't chose something concrete to achieve and then run it down like a fox, I'm irresponsible or somehow mis-made.  I feel, when I tell the world that I wish not to work formally for a living, a reaction akin to sexism.  If I can chose a lifestyle, God willing--and not without knowledge and acceptance of the sacrifices, as well as the blessings--in which I need not be distracted by the minutiae of the outside world, then that is what I want.  Because this is not a useless, fruitless aim.

Chesterton's logic gives me permission to embrace the scattered person I am; and he gives me comfort by telling me my efforts are not vain, nor shameful.  The domestic woman is unimpressed by the limp equality offered by a world that seeks excellence at the expense of freedom, that considers seclusion oppression and liberality narrow.  Our role model for Womanhood is a virgin and a mother--a handmaid and a queen.  And the domestic woman is the original Renaissance Man.

Thanks to Sarah of Amongst Lovely Things for hosting Weekends with Chesterton.

What Women Really Need for Valentine's Day

Feb. 14, Feast of St. Valentine, bishop and martyr.

to know there is hope after abortion #ProjectRachel  //  a society that doesn't force them to choose freedom at the expense of their children  //  not to be murdered in the womb for being the wrong gender

I'm a one-issue voter.  It's hard for me to imagine funneling energy into other issues if we can't first secure the right to life.  Without life, all other rights are rendered obsolete.  I believe that if a politician, public figure, or party endorses abortion, it's a deal-breaker.  That said, the fight for life shouldn't end at birth.  The sidewalk counselors oughtn't to wipe their hands of the women they just talked out of a permanent decision--praise be to God!  That first, initial victory over death is only one of many, many more battles.  The culture of death is called a culture because it permeates everything.  It's in our attitudes, our visions of beauty, our food and clothing choices, our entertainment.  Our work isn't done as soon as the innocent child is born alive.  It should only have begun.

I have struggled in this culture of death.  I was naive when I married, and almost certainly not ready (having nothing whatsoever to do with my actual age and everything to do with psychological maturity).  I found myself pregnant three months later, after a very rocky initiation into real life.  We had no work, no means of income, and no hope for either of those two things to change in the foreseeable future.  People I loved and cared for, people whose opinions mattered to me, said all the right, "pro-life" things, but I could hear their internal head-shaking as loudly as if they were screaming at me.  Acquaintances gave me sideways glances at Mass.  My mother cried.  I felt like an unwed-and-pregnant, teen-aged high school drop-out.  Never mind that I had a Master's degree and was validly married in the Church.

It was my father--my stern, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps father--who silenced all further woebegone what-might-have-beens with a single sword-like sentence: "We welcome all life in this house."

But that wasn't the end of hardship.  I had terrible, day-long morning sickness.  I lost weight.  After two and half days of keeping nothing down, not even water, I was so weak and miserable I dragged myself to the emergency room to have anti-nausea meds pumped into my through an IV.  When the sickness subsided, the preeclampsia set in.

When my baby was born, I suffered severe post-pardum depression; anemia; recurring UTI's; inexplicable and disabling body aches.  My son never slept; my husband couldn't take care of him; my parents, whom we had moved in with, were overtaxed and overworked.  They were frustrated with the added burdens.  I was weak and exhausted and emotionally a wreck and without health insurance.  My husband worked a minimum wage job part-time hours.

Fast forward two years.  We moved into a tiny but affordable apartment.  My husband managed fairly well at a better-paying job for a short period of time, the job the vocational rehabilitation department got for him.  After six bounced checks; gasoline poured, libation-like, into the hour-and-a-half long one-way commute (I drove, my husband didn't have a license and we couldn't afford to add him to insurance) only to be told, "We're taking the day off today, go home;" and manipulating him into saying he was quitting so they didn't have to pay unemployment, my husband booked a one-way-ticket back to his home country.  I worked a minimum wage job, and only just found a part-time something that paid a little better in September.  My husband sends us money when he can.

Today, we are incredibly blessed.  We have food, shelter, and happiness.  It took us a long time to finally get here, but we did.

Yesterday, my little boy turned 3 years old.  If society had it's way, he wouldn't be alive.  Why is that?  Why is it that it's easier for Planned Parenthood to grab a fistful of money and cut up a perfectly formed human being than it is for our communities to offer positive support, giving dignity to the whole woman, as well as her baby?  What are we doing to make sure life is treated--before and after birth--as the sacred, worthwhile thing it is?

Whatever we do to improve the lives of all human beings, women included, it starts with the womb.  Let's just make sure it doesn't end there.

". . . If we could see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. . .  But the influence of children goes further than its first trifling effort of remaking heaven and earth.  It forces us actually to remodel our conduct in accordance with this revolutionary theory of the marvelousness of all things.  We do actually treat talking in children as marvelous, walking in children as marvelous, common intelligence in children as marvelous. . . [and] that attitude towards children is right.  It is our attitude towards grown up people that is wrong. . ."--G.K. Chesterton

Bigger on the Inside

Feb. 3, Feast of St. Blaise, a doctor who lived in a cave and who healed men and animals.  Injured animals would approach him on their own for his help but never disturbed him at prayer.  While imprisoned during the prosecution of Christians, he saved a child choking on a fish bone, which is how the blessing of throats on his feast day came about.  He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and is patron against wild beasts, whooping cough, goiter, and throat diseases; and of animals, builders, carvers, construction workers, healthy throats, stone-cutters, veterinarians, wool-combers, and wool weavers.

Somehow I'm not surprised Chesterton penned the first "It's bigger on the inside!"  (You know what I'm talking about, Whovians!)

This quote is a follow-up and an embellishment on the first one.  Chesterton affirms the Church's teaching that the family is the most important societal institution--more important than any other, though it works on the smallest scale--in the privacy of one's own house, rarely seen or paid attention by the great political players.

As with the "everything to someone" quote, Chesterton balks at the so-called intellectuals who deem the work of nurses and mothers as somehow trivial and mundane, when they themselves put so much time and energy into the goings-on of the nursery.  It's absurd to find the formation of a human being of the utmost importance but ignore the grave importance of the ones doing the forming.  Yet that is what they do.  It's a common problem, even today, when we see that teachers and childcare providers are paid so little, treated so poorly by employers and parents.  Why should they be any less valued than doctors, businessmen, and senators?  All of those people, after all, were taught and mothered by someone.

This quote also offers an insight into the nature of God.  For, like everything He has made, it reflects the One who has made it.  The God-who-became-Man, entering the world quietly and unobtrusively, the same world He brought into being from nothing, still works quietly, privately; not in the public forum, trumpeting vast truths like the popes; or working staggering, undeniable miracles, like the saints.  No, he works in the quiet of the human heart; wooing wills, loving the lonely, doing the mighty work of redemption, which goes by, day by day, as profound and unnoticed as a flower turning a petal.

He takes a simple circle of bread and empties it, only to fill it with Himself; that tiny white Host, which is quite bigger on the inside; in fact, larger than the world itself.

Weekends with Chesterton link-up hosted at Amongst Lovely Things.

Potential Dangers of an NFP Mentality

Disclaimer:  Do review my commenting policy before blasting an insult or intentionally provoking controversial remark.  Also, please keep in mind that my ideal audience is a particularly Catholic one with a fundamental understanding of the teaching of the Catholic Church on fertility, such as is written about in Blessed John Paul II's Theology of the Body.  Feel free to pose questions if you are unfamiliar with our beliefs or don't understand.  However, if one wishes to make an off-topic remark or pick a fight about something only vaguely related, e.g. "Catholic priests are pedophiles omg hatesss," he or she will be promptly ignored.

I've not had the privilege of growing up in an active, loyal, practicing Catholic community.  Only recently has it been called to my attention that eager Catholics who practice NFP too often take sides and nitpick over which family planning method is the best, most accurate, easiest lifestyle, etc.  Conversation to improve and propagate NFP methods is good and desirable.  But I'm worried sometimes about the direction our thought patterns are headed when I glean bits of these conversations.

Herbert James Draper, A Water Baby

First and foremost, before even picking up an NFP pamphlet, we Catholics should be made to understand and internalize that fertility is a precious privilege and inherently good.  Learning about how it works is wonderful, but only so much as being aware of what and how you eat nourishes your body is wonderful.  It's a tool, not to be mistaken for the goodness of the thing itself.  I feel too often we're bringing the conversation into secular territory, with emphasis on 99% accuracy, arguments about which are less likely to "fail" during fertile periods, and exclamations of better sex lives and closer couples.  Like we're trying to compete with the artificial birth control out there, like we have to prove ourselves.

The fact of the matter is that there is no competition.  If you are a loyal practicing Catholic, you know that to approach NFP with the attitude that it is "an acceptable form of Catholic birth control" defeats the whole purpose of Natural Family Planning.  I hope I'm mistaken, but I'm getting this impression more and more.

How do we remedy this attitude in the Church?  I think it has everything to do with our attitude toward children and child-rearing.  If in secular culture, fertility is undermined as something to control and submit to our will, there is no inherent difference between the single, sexually active woman who has successfully avoided pregnancy and the married woman who has 2.5 perfectly spaced babies.  She may even have six!  And it is all well and good, in secular society, as long as she has the means to provide for them (no need for a father for that), and chose when to conceive each consecutive child--God forbid she do otherwise!  Then she is careless, irresponsible, a burden to society, and an enemy of planet Earth.  As if a child's worth in existence depended on an active decision by its parent(s) and not by the will of God.

A prayerful Catholic couple may have none to twenty children in their lifetime together, but that is not the point.  I feel strongly that the term "planned" and "unplanned" applied to children--human beings, with immortal souls and infinite worth--should be stricken from our Catholic vocabulary.  It puts too much emphasis on control, on what we want, on the identity and worth of a child being in the decision to allow conception, like some kind of defeat.

"I despise Birth-Control first because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly word.  It is also an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would at first recoil from its real meaning.  The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth.  It only makes sure that there shall never be any birth to control."--G.K. Chesterton

I think this tension can be eased even more by loosening the strict expectations we have of motherhood.  I'm not advocating for careless parenting here, but we should embrace the variety of parenting styles and parenting types out there--there are as many as there are personalities in the Church, and there as many personalities in the Church, Saint Therese pointed out, as there are colors and types of flowers.  It is the variety that makes the world beautiful.  We may disagree on structure, proper nutrition, appropriate bedtime, how much stimulation is allowable, being ecologically responsible, but please, please--there is no better way to discourage a couple to openness to conceive than to make them feel like they would not be "good enough" parents.  We're all working our way to sainthood, which is very telling.  It means we're not yet saints.  And we shouldn't be made to feel guilty or like failures because of that.  A child needs his mother and father.  No one else's.  If we are prayerful and love truly--the way God loves, meaning putting the good of the beloved before all else--the child will be happy, and safe, and emotionally healthy, regardless of whether or not he gets a bath regularly.

In this way, we should also show patience and sympathy for couples, especially Catholic ones, who don't yet have the courage to give up their fertility to the hands of God.  It will help to remember all the shortcomings and vices we continue to nurse.  Everyone has their personal weaknesses.  Let's pray for each other.

Last, let us remember that NFP is a fairly recent development.  But the Church has always forbidden contraception.  I'm no expert, but interest in and research into medieval lifestyle led me to discover that sex in marriage was under strict prohibitions by the Church in the middle ages.  A couple was not to have sex during holy days, menstruation, Lent, etc.  Far from being shocked and angered at these "prudish" guidelines, I felt smug and warmly proud.  This is the clever Church, doing what she does best: making feasts and fasts a mystical rhythm of life, and seeing to it in her own way that her women had proper rests between pregnancies.

So don't apologize for your fertility.  Don't blush shame-facedly when you find yourself pregnant after having announced to the world that you practice NFP and that it is a perfectly valid and effective method of spacing pregnancies.  Don't.  Because that "pregnancy" is a person, with a face and a life ripe with potential stretched out before her.  When someone asks me, "Was your son planned?" I will say, with surety, "What do you mean? This child blossomed like a wildflower in the mind of God before all of time began."

For further reading, see:

• NFP doesn't work!  You have so many kids! at House Unseen
• Never Say Never at Conversion Diary
• Fertility Charting vs. Birth Control at iusenfp.com
• Done? at Camp Patton

Also, join me in fasting and prayer for Dwija and her little one.  It is during times like these that the universal Church is summoned to battle.

GKC and Me

I guess you could call me a Chestertonian.  One of my most prized possessions is the (so far) Complete Works of G.K. Chesterton published by Ignatius.  I was a regular subscriber to Gilbert Magazine before finances got tight.  So much of my thought on faith and fairy tales is informed by Chesterton's childlike wonder, intelligence, and simplicity.  I'm a bit of a Chesterton quote spammer.

This post is about GKC and me; how I learned of him; what book of his I first picked up; what about his life, writing, and philosophy resonated with me; how I've come to call him a my patron saint and spiritual father.  This post was inevitable, but a few expressed reservations from kindred spirits makes the time ripe for an introduction.

Before we go any further, the caveats:

1.  Chesterton is a polemicist.  He's not an apologist of the breed of Dinesh D'Souza, C.S. Lewis, and Scott Hahn.  He's certainly not a theologian like Saint Thomas Aquinas or Peter Kreeft.  He's a debater, both verbal and literary; and debate is a unique school.  It requires pithiness; it assumes an ideal listener/reader, and includes an appeal to pathos as well as logos.  There are certain truths, whether timeless or circumstantial, that must be kept in mind when reading Chesterton, and often there are obscure references to current events that would not have been at all obscure at the time of publication.

Chesterton is timeless in the sense that our repeated failures are timeless.  Otherwise, he is very much a man of his time and culture.  That's very important to keep in mind when reading any author, but even more so with GKC because a lot of what he says assumes pre-established facts.  As a debater, he just wouldn't have had time to go into them, and rightly leaves those metaphysical arguments to the experts.  His one-liners are almost never meant to be taken super-literally and, out of context, can appear downright absurd.

2.  Chesterton is not antisemitic.  This ridiculous and unfounded rumor has been proliferated and preserved by figures as weighty as T.S. Eliot.  The slander of antisemitism is lifted from quotes taken out of context, a modern day backwards application of political correctness, and super sensitivity that sacrifices necessary honest but respectful dialogue for "not hurting anyone's feelings."  Gilbert Magazine devoted a whole issue to address this claim, which can be downloaded for free.  There's no longer an excuse to accept the malicious accusation.

I hope that wasn't too unpleasant.

I consider Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton to be My Big 3.  My love for Tolkien led me to Lewis.  My love for Lewis led me to Chesterton.  Each one shaped who I am today, each person tapped into a part of my personality and soul and nourished it; and, if all did it using different techniques and strengths  from different perspectives and at different angles, that part of me that they shaped is the same and oriented toward the same ultimate good.

Toward the end of my first year of college, I had devoured 19 books by C.S. Lewis, a staggering accomplishment for the world's slowest-reading bibliophile.  Still I wanted more.  Much like I did with Tolkien when I "discovered" Lewis, I frequented articles and forums online, gleaned little bits of information and anecdotes.  I had read Surprised by Joy, of course, and once again saw the name Chesterton popping up with reference to Lewis.  Somehow, I ascertained that this guy was a Catholic.  Naturally, my interest piqued.

I read Orthodoxy and was not disappointed.  Now I'll attempt to describe something that is very hard to communicate in prose.  It's more naturally expressed by art and poetry.

A sentence of Chesterton's is a microcosm of any book; a book, of his entire body of work.  When I read Chesterton, his sentences slapped me in the face, like getting a cold shock of water first thing in the morning.  They literally struck me as truth.  This isn't because his thought is so original that I'd never heard of it before and was astounded to realize him right about it.  Rather, he presents what-is in clarity, distilled in purity, like snow melted mountain water.  Here was a man who unlocked all the tightly raveled God-knowledge of my nascent soul and presented it to me: not as a bride, like Tolkien, in beauty and mystery; not as a mother, like Lewis had, in comforting familiarity and profound love and awe and devotion; but as my own child, an impish joyful thing, astoundingly complete in itself, innocent yet immortal, infinitely familiar to me, utterly surprising and unpredictable.

So, in a parodox (of which Chesteroton is a great advocate), I was knocked off of my feet by this unflinching sense, what we call common sense; only it's not so common anymore.  Since the Fall there's been this dichotomy between good human instinct and an idolatry of human thought.  Some people reason themselves into madness; some into a sanitized, inoffensive creed (Luther, for instance, and the philosophers of the Enlightenment).  Since the Catholic Church lost her queenship in the west, sense has dwindled to a rumor, dismissed as prosaic, found altogether inconvenient.  So there's this strange effect of hearing from Chesterton something both new and familiar.

I've heard people more or less chalk up the popularity of Chesterton to bias confirmation.  And to that I would answer: yes, absolutely.  In the sense that siding with the truth, the kind of truth that can't be tested with the scientific method, is bias confirmation.  Chesterton affirms our instincts.

I can see how someone wouldn't like Chesterton.  His word-play and hyperbole is only one taste out of many.  He's easy to mistake for cocky because of his confidence, though his confidence is like that of a saint: completely unfocused on himself but rather on truth, indeed the Truth, out of pure love and devotion to it.  As he says in The Catholic Church and Conversion, "It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong," and he demonstrates that true humility to a T.  Still others consider him chauvinistic.  To that, I point insistently to caveat #1.  As to the rest of it, I can only say: even Tolstoy didn't like Shakespeare.  There's no accounting for taste!

One final thing.  Chesterton is also my teacher in poetry.  Although that wasn't his thing (Tolkien put his perfectionist frown on The Ballad of the White Horse), his worldview is that of the poet.  He said something profound and simple and alarmingly obvious when he said, "The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say.  The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say."  He gets it.

Much of Chesterton's revelations come to him because he sees the wide world the way a poet does.  Not as something familiar and taken for granted, but as an astounding and strange thing, like a fairy tale.  Why, he asks in Orthodoxy, do we assume that because a tree grows apples that it couldn't very well have grown tigers hanging by their tails?  And what will it take for us to notice, gooseflesh and tiny hairs rising, that apples grow on trees?  That the sun rises every day, without having to be wound up?  That breathing is a miracle, and babies laugh, and wine is so, so warm and good?  How can we make ourselves smell and hear and taste, and be shocked out of complacency?

What is the job of a poet if not to bring forth those delightful shivers?  To dare to inspire a soul to prayer or a call to action?  To look at things-that-are in a way that makes us tremble with fear and wonder and walk away changed; either like the man who went away sadly when Jesus told him what he must do to obtain the Kingdom of Heaven, or like the healed one who went out and proclaimed, "I was blind, but now I see."

What Money and Spiritual Death Have in Common

St. John of God, Patron of Hospitals

I read this really great quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. just now.

A nation that continues, year after year, to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

I don't know the context of this quote, but it mirrors the way a lot of people feel.

His sentiments are understandable.  A culture that is absorbed with problems outside of itself and ignorant of the grave problems within is blind, and there is a good chance it is already deteriorating.

However, from what I understand in the above quote, his prescription for this dangerous mindset could be unhealthful as well.

Yes, I know, cheeky little thing, aren't I, to disagree with the great Dr. King?  My reservations about his solutions are these.

Please note these are simplified thoughts, and that they do not take into account the nuances of foreign policy and social doctrine.  I'm just putting this out there for thought and discussion.

1)  Government is notoriously wasteful.  We spend millions of dollars funneled into programs that are supposed to address social evils but which go toward paying for unnecessary red tape and redundancies.  How much of that tax money is actually seen by the poor and the sick?   

Does anyone have any non-biased resources regarding this matter? 

2)  Military defense is the express jurisdiction of the federal government, as it was drawn up in the Constitution.  Social programs are not. 

So what, you ask.  People need to be helped, do they not?

Unlike with military defense, the government is not the sole entity responsible for social uplift.  The institutions traditionally looked to for citizens fallen on hardship were charities, chiefly charities run by a religious organization or church.  In fact, the beginning of the twentieth century in this country, most hospitals were run by the Catholic Church.  (See the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)


The role of the government is to make sure the environment of our society is not hostile--or better yet, nurturing--to these spontaneous oases of human generosity.  In the case that more is needed, citizens can vote to raise taxes for social programs.

What do you think?  Have I misinterpreted Dr. King's quote entirely?



For further reading:

Just War Doctrine
Catholic Social Teaching

Define Your Terms

"Family is family.  Love is love."

Those are lines from a commercial for the new NBC sitcom The New Normal, which, from what I can tell from the previews, is about a gay couple looking for a surrogate in order to "have a baby."

Now, completely leaving aside the fact that attempts to initiate an honest intellectual discussion regarding the morality of purposefully not raising a child in a family-with-one-male-and-one-female-parent-in-a-committed-relationship-with-each-other comes under immediate accusations of homophobia and intolerance, I want to take a second look at the above assertion.

Love is love.  It's fairly straightforward.  But is it true? 

Is there a difference?  (via Into the Deep blog)

Simply put, no, it isn't.  There is more than one type of love, and one type substituted for another does not always a healthy relationship make.  Take, for instance, the romantic love developed by a underage student for her teacher.  Or, the erotic love of an man for his adult daughter.  Talk to any unrequited lover who is only loved back "as a friend," and he will tell you love =/= love.

Someone will say, "those first two examples are extreme."  To which I would point out, regardless of the troubling fact that they are very common, there must be some external standard or idea of love to which we compare them in order to find them so.

One mom, one dad, 2.5 children--it's the average American family!

Second.  "Family is family."  Is this true?

No, it isn't.  Though broken families are the norm in America, therapists and researches would argue that the single-parent family is a far cry from the committed opposite-sex parents' family called "traditional."  Overwhelming research shows that young men whose father was absent in their rearing are more likely to abandon their own children than those young men who were raised by a mother and father in the picture.  (This information is so widely known and inarguable that I won't even bother linking a source.)

And what about the child who is raised without a mother?  If not having a father affects a child in some way, not having a mother affects him in another. 

Hair parted, ties neat, and one serious matriarch.  Not a coincidence.

Now, this should give us pause.  A child raised in a family of two same-sex committed parents is still likely raised either (a) without a mother or (b) without a father.  And since we know that these situations affect a child, usually for the worse, it is utterly false to say that any kind of family is just as good as another.

Obviously, my line of thinking has been simplified for blog format, and much more could be said.  But should one take an honest, common sense look at the statement, "Love is love.  Family is family," regardless of what they hope or feel or wish to be true, he or she must come to a similar conclusion . . . or else argue against rationality itself.

Not Everything Is A Ball

Short post is short.

I've been gone a long time working on other projects and seeing to some major life changes.  Some good, some not so good.  But here I am again.

So baby boy learned the word "ball" the other day at the beach (see "Beach Babe" post below to catch his little mouth in mid "aaallll").  He does know what a ball is--that is, anything remotely circular--but is so enthusiastic that after a week he started using the word ball to refer to everything.

"No, Afon," we say, "that's not a ball."

Not a dog.

It's funny how certain primal ideas and bottom-of-the-line assumptions are revealed to us when we are having to explain things to children.

After all, if you said to a Buddhist, "That is not a ball, it is a dog.  And a dog is fundamentally, intrinsically, most adamantly NOT a ball," he would disagree with you insofar as the ball and the dog are essentially the same but separated by the horrible dream of existence.

What do Buddhists, Neo Pagans, and other Eastern-inspired believers teach their children about balls and dogs and all else?

Practically speaking, they must act in everyday life as if these things are separate.  It would make no sense and make life a little bit unbearable to treat your dog like a ball or your wife like a dog.  So in a super-simplified  (and probably vaguely insulting) summary of their model, the Eastern philosophers live hypocritically.

It is the Western philosophies and religions that have the gall to actually believe the way they live, to say,  "Hey, Occam's Razor: if this is the way we do things, maybe it's because that's the way things are done."

And if a garment fits you like a second skin, it isn't too far of a jump in logic to assume that it was made for you.

Which just goes to show why Judeo-Christianity is still the most common sense philosophy out there.