bearing blog

Love is patient, love is kind. Yes, yes, and other stuff.

Sometimes I feel like I still need a basic how-to of the Christian life.  Love is such a difficult concept for me.    I think it's because even though I know better, I constantly slip into the error of mistaking the word as a kind of feeling rather than a kind of act, a choice, or a way of life.  It's a common error, maybe one of the fundamental American social errors.  And I'm kind of embarrassed to fall for an error so common.  Which is itself a problem, I suppose.

Mistaking "love" for a kind of feeling leads some souls to mistake the ephemeral for the lasting, and so endanger themselves.  It leads others to mistake the surface for the substance, and so fail to deepen.  Me, it tends to tempt me to despair.  I have feelings, but not many of the kind that one can mistake for love.  So sometimes, in forgetting, I go a long time wondering if I actually have any in me.

Oh, there are exceptions.  I'm human, and a mother, and I live in the experience of biological attachment -- something that nearly knocked me over with its power, because the sense of wanting to love, of having physical desires that aligned with total self-gift, was so alien to me.   It gave me much food for thought -- can I harness this power? I wrote in 2007, about real love, "Attachment is the natural way that we become disposed to love.   The other way, the supernatural way, is through the sacraments."  Sometimes, if you know something (intellectually) about what love really is,  you wonder how people get so snookered by its substitutes.  One reasonable hypothesis:  We mistake feelings not so much for love itself, but for attachment, love's natural source of power.

I've gone to the writings of St. Thérèse and listened to her explain the merits of "doing little things with great love."  Daily life is a string of such little things, the ordinary duties of marriage and motherhood, citizenship and community; how to swing this "love" thing?  Can I transform my tasks?  Can I transform me?

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 I'll tell you right now, trying to generate feelings of love whilst going about the tasks of the day works imperfectly at best.  It's not a bad exercise:  one considers why this task is here, for example, that the laundry pile is so high because I have many children, for whom I am truly grateful, and try to convert it into being grateful for the laundry itself.  St. Francis embraced Death itself as a beloved sister:  perhaps laundry could be a sort of affable nephew or something?  But I never quite get there, although I can fake it to myself for a while, sometimes even long enough to get it all sorted into baskets.

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This week I went back to 1 Corinthians 13, always a corrective when one has forgotten what love is.  

I did get sidetracked somewhat by a sudden fascination with a translation problem*, but managed mostly to focus -- as I swear I've done over and over again -- on the attributes.  Love is patient, love is kind, and then some more stuff.  Rejoices in the truth.  There's a list there of what love is not, as well as what love is, but honestly I could stand just to pick a couple of these things -- patience, kindness -- and work on that.  For me, "doing small things" with a love greater than I usually can muster might simply be to do them with patience and kindness.

And neither are things that you have to feel in order to do.

(Yes, even patience.   Certainly we can feel impatience, but we can do, or at least try to do, patience despite it.   Who hasn't snapped at a whining child, "Be patient!"  Why ask for patience if we don't mean a behavior change?  What we really mean is "Stop whining and wait."  Surely we can ask the same of ourselves.)

I foresee a time of muttering to myself, "Love is patient, love is kind," as I go about my day.  Seriously, those two attributes alone are enough effort to keep me occupied, never mind all the others.

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I do think ahead with some foreboding.  Even if you actually get a handle on the intellectual meaning of "love" as an interior disposition, you still have to reach out to others with something that is sensible, i.e., available to their senses.  "The body, and it alone, is capable of making the invisible visible" -- that is St. John Paul II -- and wherever our vocation has placed us, we have a duty to communicate love.

A love that is known by nature.  By how it seeks to be felt -- sensed.

We have to try to generate those feelings -- in others!  (Feelings that are true -- feelings of being-loved -- that are safe, not dangerous, because we really do love and desire to love the ones who feel them: we know they are worthy, that they are persons, knowing and bearing with them and beholding always an image of all creation and all the Uncreated too.)  We create the space where it is safe to feel love, and then it is our job to fill that space so love can be felt.  Not so easy for those of us who don't "feel" very much, or who don't trust "feelings;" who prefer to take the easy way out, reasoning and thinking about everything instead.  

 I wonder, too if the comparative dearth of "feeling" might not turn out to be a sort of gift, in the end.  I hope, maybe, it makes it easier for me to rejoice in the truth, because the reason I'm naturally suspicious of "feeling" is because "feeling" tends to obscure.  Still, conscious acts of patience and conscious acts of kindness -- or at least, squelching urges to vocalize impatience, to react with unkindness -- cannot hurt, and might spread outward, even if they don't penetrate inwardly as much as I would like.

 

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 *Because I can't let it drop.  NAB:  "love is not rude."  But Latin Vulgate:  "non est ambitiosa."  Rude or ambitious?  Quick survey of various English translations reveals a split between the two. The Greek received text is ἀσχημονεῖ, which everybody seems to translate as "acts unbecomingly," so more "rude" than "ambitious."  What did Jerome have in mind, exactly?  A mystery for another day.

My endorsement.

With only a little more than a week left, I'll make my case.

Do I want a Clinton presidency?  No.  

Do I plan to vote for Mrs. Clinton?  Probably not; most likely, I'll vote third party in the contest for Minnesota's electoral votes.  (More on that below). 

But if I must state a preference between the two?  Fine.  I'm not the one who apparently made up the rules.  But I'm not afraid to say it, not among my conservative friends, not among my liberal friends, and not among people who aren't my friends at all.

I prefer Mrs. Clinton to Mr. Trump.  

I'll sum up my position both succinctly and at length.  

 I believe a bad President of the United States to be preferable to an insane one.

Now, at length.

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I'm not voting "against my conscience" if I refuse to vote for the Republican party.  I won't even be voting "against my conscience" if I decide to color in the little bubble next to Clinton/Kaine when it comes to the final day -- something I haven't ruled out, because every bit of information counts.

I vote my conscience every time I vote, and this is no different.  I urge you to vote your conscience too.

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First I'm going to address why it's permissible to vote against Mr. Trump.  If you think you must vote for Mr. Trump because you're not allowed to vote for someone with Mrs. Clinton's beliefs, this is the part you should pay attention to.

The reason I'm not sure yet whether I'll vote third party or whether I'll actually vote for Mrs. Clinton is because it matters to me how close the election is in Minnesota.  Not because it will affect whether I will vote my conscience, but because my conscience directs me to consider the pragmatic effects of my vote.   It matters to my conscience how close the election is.  

I've already determined that I prefer a Clinton presidency to a Trump presidency (more on that later), the closeness of the election is relevant to whether I will try to help Mrs. Clinton to get more votes than Mr. Trump by voting for electors who will select Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kaine, or whether I will just allow it to happen without my help.  There might be some other good I could accomplish with my vote, such as expressing positive support for another candidate that I view as good.

Make no mistake, I view Mrs. Clinton as a bad candidate and a poor choice.  I think it likely that she is corrupt, self-interested, and that she thinks herself above ordinary laws and rules, something that's rather dangerous in an executive.  Along with most of the rest of the Democratic Party, she advocates some positions that I agree with strongly; but she also promotes other policies that I believe are repellent and so fundamentally contrary to justice as to outweigh the goodness of her good and right positions.

Mrs. Clinton hasn't earned my vote.

And yet, people older and wiser than me, whose task and vocation is the guidance of the people of the United States on moral matters, and who share my understanding of the meaning of the human person, have written about this type of situation.

34. Catholics often face difficult choices about how to vote. This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions, redefining marriage in ways that violate its essential meaning, or racist behavior, if the voter's intent is to support that position. In such cases, a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.

35. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate's unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.

36. When all candidates hold a position that promotes an intrinsically evil act, the conscientious voter faces a dilemma. The voter may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate or, after careful deliberation, may decide to vote for the candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods.

37. In making these decisions, it is essential for Catholics to be guided by a well-formed conscience that recognizes that all issues do not carry the same moral weight and that the moral obligation to oppose policies promoting intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions. These decisions should take into account a candidate's commitments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue. In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching.

It's important to understand that the U.S. bishops' document quoted above (Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship) is meant to supplement rather than to substitute for the pastoral advice given by one's local bishop.  The USCCB has no special authority and isn't higher-up-in-the-hierarchy than your own bishop, who knows your local situation better than the USCCB acting as a whole.  But supposing that one's own bishop hasn't made a contradictory statement, one can safely use this as a guide to the practical and specific problems of voting as a moral act in the United States. 

Practically speaking, it's rare that Americans face an election in which any candidate is certifiably evil-policy-free.  We are used to the idea that it's okay to vote for a candidate who promotes an intrinsic moral evil, if our vote is somehow against a candidate who promotes a worse one.  We sometimes give this idea the shorthand of "voting for the lesser evil."  But that's not actually the moral principle that we are working with.  The principle that permits us to do so is the principle of remote material cooperation with evil when proportionate reasons exist.

The term "material cooperation with evil" is an unfortunate term because it sounds like a bad thing.  But material cooperation with evil is almost impossible for most people to avoid.  It's contrasted with formal cooperation, in which you have the intention to further the evil end.  In material cooperation, you do something that happens to further an evil end, even with full knowledge that your act will have some evil effect, but with no intention to do so.  In the United States of America, paying your taxes is an act of material cooperation with evil, because it is entirely foreseeable that the government will use some of your money to do bad things that you don't want it to do.  And yet we pay taxes, even consider it a duty, because we all have proportionately grave reasons.  Justice demands it.

What the U. S. bishops are saying is that voting for a candidate who has an intrinsically evil policy you don't support -- even voting for a candidate who has lots of intrinsically evil policies that you don't support -- is an act of material cooperation, not formal cooperation, in the evil policies.  That's why it says a voter can't vote for a candidate who has evil policies "if the voter's intent is to support that position."  The "if" matters! (Voting for a candidate who has intrinsically evil policies that you do support would be formal cooperation, not material.)  

And material cooperation with intrinsic evil is permissible -- might even be obligatory, like paying taxes -- if you have a proportionate reason to do so.

Material cooperation with intrinsic evil is exactly what you're doing when you vote for a candidate who has some evil policies but you think, "They're not as evil as the other candidate's policies."  Even if you think you're voting "for less evil," it's not okay for exactly that reason.  It's okay because you have a proportionately grave reason.  Often that reason is "the other candidate's policies are also evil," but it doesn't have to be.

Indeed, "the other guy's policies are more evil" is not the only possible proportionate reason out there.  

You might do it out of justifiable fear of real danger to some important good, for example.

But I digress.

The principle here is this:

It's morally permissible to vote for a candidate who has intrinsically evil policies if (a) you do not do it because you support the intrinsically evil policies and (b) you have ANY proportionate reason to do so.  The reason does not have to be "the other candidate also has intrinsically evil policies and I think those policies are more evil."  In fact, that reason is almost nonsense, because just as the value of human persons cannot be compared because all persons have an INTRINSIC value, then the evilness of intrinsic evils cannot be compared because they are INTRINSIC to their very nature.

The moral calculation then comes down to how proportionately grave the foreseeable consequences of one's act are.

And that's why I'm waiting to see the outcome of the Minnesota polls all the way to the election:

Possibility one is that Mrs. Clinton's positive supporters -- people who are happy to support her as President under the current circumstances -- will be counted so numerous in my state that they can be predicted to handily deliver our ten electoral votes to her and her running mate.  If that's the case, then I should have no fear that a candidate even worse than her will win them without my help.  Already resolved not to cooperate formally with those of her policies which are intrinsically evil, I will not have a proportionate reason to cooperate materially with them either.  

In that case, I will use my vote to express positive support of a good candidate:  

Evan McMullin, who appears on the Minnesota ballot on the Independence Party ticket.

Possibility two is that Mrs. Clinton will not have enough positive supporters to predict with high probability that they can, alone, deliver the ten electoral votes.  If this is the case then I will conclude that I have a proportionate reason to materially cooperate in her evil policies, in order to assist her positive supporters as well as her reluctant ones in keeping Minnesota's electoral votes away from the candidate who is even worse than she is.  I won't be happy about this situation, but I will do what I believe I must -- not despite my conscience, but in obedience to it, and with a full understanding that a vote for Mrs. Clinton -- like a vote for most political candidates, no matter what the letter behind their names -- is a remote material cooperation with evil.  

So, yeah.  I don't live in Ohio or Arizona or any of the other swing states.  Your local conditions, you know better than I do.  But with the information I have and the beliefs I have, I would not rule out voting for Mrs. Clinton if I did live in those places.   

I won't lie to you.  I'll be more unhappy if I vote for Mrs. Clinton than if I vote for Mr. McMullin.  Not because I'll be doing the wrong thing -- I believe that voting in accord with a proportionately grave reason is the right thing -- but because I'm particularly emotionally moved by the evils I'll be materially cooperating with.  But in my experience, emotion has never been an accurate guide to the rightness of a difficult decision.

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You'll notice that I haven't yet explained why I think there are "truly grave moral reasons" to defeat Mr. Trump, such that I consider it potentially permissible to vote for Mrs. Clinton.  There are three tactics I can take to answer that, all of which (in my view) adequately answer the question individually.  Two take it for granted that the cause of protection of the unborn is the most important activist cause in the United States today, and opposition to that cause to be a very grave intrinsic evil.  One admits the possibility of still graver threats.

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First,  it's not enough that a candidate merely speak the words "I am pro-life" or "I will appoint pro-life judges."  As the bishops say, when evaluating candidates' stances, These decisions should take into account a candidate's commitments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue.  Mr. Trump's commitment to the pro-life cause is risible; his character is that of a person who contributes to the culture of death by demeaning and using human persons and treating them as sexual objects, which is contrary to the culture of life; his integrity is not attested to by any trustworthy person; his ability to influence the cause of life is significant -- significantly damaging.   In short, Mr. Trump is not a pro-life candidate.  We are faced with two candidates who promote the culture of death, albeit in two different ways.  And once you accept this truth, it rather lowers the bar of any "proportionately grave reason" to decline to vote for Mr. Trump.  That's one reason.  If it is not sufficient to drive a vote to Mrs. Clinton, it is at least sufficient to permit voters who cannot bring themselves to vote for a pro-choice candidate, at least, to decline to vote for the Republican nominee.

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Second.  I once received a wise piece of advice from a pro-life activist that, at the time, I respected.  It was to "consider the gains that the pro-life cause can make in any election."  I have considered those gains, and I have concluded that, in many ways, the pro-life cause has already lost this presidential election.  Our chances to make reliable gains on November 8 are solely in downticket races, in opposing bad presidential policies via the checks and balances inherent to federalism and the separation of powers.  We do not have a candidate -- we do not have a candidate -- who can be trusted to make good and pro-life appointments to the Supreme Court.  (Even well-intentioned candidates have made appointments that turned in unexpected directions.)  The Democratic candidate is committed to the Democratic platform; the Republican candidate is a womanizing, sexually aggressive scoundrel.  The GOP had a chance to nominate several different candidates who would have been good, or at least good enough.  The GOP declined to provide us with one.  We have already lost the political power of the presidency on our side, with its Supreme Court appointments, with its vetoes.  The question is, what more can we lose?   

And the answer to that question is:  a great deal.  We can lose our integrity, we can lose our public image, we can lose all chance of convincing an entire generation that to be pro-life one must first be committed to justice for women (because to be pro-life is to believe in the equality of dignity of all human persons, no more, no less).  We can go from having the ear of one major party, at least, to having the ear of no major parties, while the GOP devolves into squabbling over the votes of white nationalists.  It's already clear to me that the real battleground of the pro-life cause is within the hearts and minds of individuals, masses of people:  it's moving everyone towards love, through fear.  Steering the composition of the Supreme Court is putting the cart before the horse.  Electing Trump will do nothing predictably good for the Supreme Court, and much that's predictably bad for the public understanding of right and wrong and acceptance of the most marginalized human beings.  This also is sufficient reason to vote against the man.

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Third.  There are greater dangers to human life than the danger that our particular U.S. form of the culture of death will become one notch more entrenched than it already is, here, via this one election.

Mr. Trump has evident fascist tendencies:  he has suggested he would order U. S. soldiers to commit war crimes (evincing a lack of respect for the rule of law as well as a dangerous disregard for our military men and women), he promotes the force of his own personality as a solution in and of itself to our social problems, he expresses admiration for foreign autocrats, he sees strength as a virtue of itself rather than a tool to enact virtue in the world, he tweets dog whistles to unapologetic racists and antisemites, he openly calls for the prosecution of his political enemies, he openly calls for making wild demands of nations that we need to be our allies.  It's fundamentally dangerous to elect a person who appears to have no respect for the underlying structure of the American republic. Our republic is not perfect, and yet there are many things about it which shelter the weak against the strong, which promote justice and equality and human dignity.   We must protect what is good in it, or we will not be able to keep it.  (If we wish to improve protection of the unborn, that means we wish to extend the rule of law to protect them; it means that we need to elect leaders who will not undermine that rule of law; arguably, it is not possible to promote life while permitting fascism to flourish.)    

Furthermore, Mr. Trump has an evident mental disorder, or personality disorder.  I'm not the only person to observe that he displays evidence of narcissistic personality disorder.  He lashes out at anyone who criticizes him, cannot handle criticism of any kind, and if there is one thing that a president can expect to face while in office, it is criticism.  He speaks recklessly rather than diplomatically about foreign leaders.  He is unpredictable and temperamental.   If this were the eighteenth or nineteenth century, when the President of the United States did not wield quite so much power to harm or help people all over the world as well as people within our borders, it would not matter so much to elect a person who is, possibly, not actually sane.  

Once the United States was not a military power to be reckoned with.  Once the President was effectively checked by an ambitiously self-interested Congress.  Once the President did not hold the personal power to unilaterally order the launch of nuclear missiles.  Now the Presidency is different.  The calculations are different.  A President can, and regularly does, do enormous damage to human lives all over the world.  We have to take that into account, and protect against unintended evils as well as against intended ones.   

I judge that the danger of having an insane fascist president is a grave enough reason, all by itself, to vote for a more-or-less-ordinary, if even-less-appealing-than-usual Democrat -- yes, even Hillary Clinton -- or at least for a third party, if it seems that Mrs. Clinton will win in my state without my help.  I judge an insane fascist president to be a grave enough reason even to vote for a terribly corrupt and dishonest alternative.  

I admit, that's a matter of personal judgment.  You might well think that the danger of an insane fascist president is overblown and not a proportionate reason to vote against the Republican nominee.  I disagree with that.  I respect your right to form your own conscience.  I'm only laying out what I see from where I sit, here in Minnesota, on October 28.

But remember:  the "down with insane fascists" argument is only one of three.  Each of the three reasons are sufficient, in my view, all by themselves, to justify a #nevertrump vote -- at least from me, at least in my state of Minnesota.  I think that Mrs. Clinton will be ahead enough due to her own supporters that I can vote third-party, in a bid to let the GOP know what I think of their choice; but I really will be watching the numbers down to the very day before the election.  I know I'll feel "right" about my choice when I make it.  I hope I'm also happy about it.

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My final note is an exhortation.  Consider where you are.  Look at the polls in your state.  Consider what good your vote might do in the context of your state's electoral votes.  Then vote your conscience to do the most possible good.  Vote on November 8.

Looking for love, a repost: Meditation on French saints.

Over and over again I wonder what's meant by "doing small things with great love," and feel I can't do before I understand. But I know I've struggled with this before, and so I searched in my blog archives for the term "love" yesterday and read through what I'd written.  I pulled this post from August 2015 out today, as a repost.   Edited slightly to improve the flow.

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A week or two ago [that is, in summer 2015] I posted briefly about I Believe in Love, originally published in 1969 as Croire à l'Amour (that is, To believe in love). It was gifted to me in a spiritual direction session that I'd sought out for some very specific advice, and the priest handed it to me almost apologetically explaining for the cover design, with its prominent headshot of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in her habit. "This isn't one of those sentimental books about St. Thérèse," he said, and I had to give him points for having pegged me pretty well.

(I can appreciate kitsch as well as the next person, but the porcelain-and-roses holy-card drawings of Thérèse, um, actually offend me. The embalmer has done his work so thoroughly that the beloved is not visible.)

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Anyway, d'Elbée turned not to be writing about St. Thérèse very much at all. The book is subtitled (in the English editions at least) A personal retreat based on the teaching of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and indeed, in the first "conference" (as the chapters are called), d'Elbée announces, "During this retreat I intend to talk to you about confident love, following the teaching of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, of whom Pope Pius XII said, 'she rediscovered the Gospel itself, the very heart of the Gospel.'"

But the various quotes and examples from the life of that saint are pulled out more as crumbs of inspiration that support the various themes that d'Elbée is writing about. There are many quotes from Scripture -- many more than there are quotes from Thérèse -- and also quotes and anecdotes from many others. St. John Vianney, St. John of the Cross, St, Teresa of Avila, St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, but also lesser-known figures, principally French ones: St. Claude de la Colombière, ordinary journalists and authors. I get the impression that d'Elbée assumes his reader, his retreatant, already knows St. Thérèse very well -- the unsentimental, audacious, mischievous, wildly courageous St. Thérèse -- and points out her features to one who already recognizes them in context.

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I don't know why the good theological books that have crossed my path in the last several years have so often been the work of French thinkers and saints, or occasionally of others who were heavily influenced by them. It's a happy coincidence, because that's the one modern language (besides English) that I read really well, and so I have the opportunity of consulting the untranslated originals from time to time. But it's also interesting to me -- why do I so often find that the French-speaking writers (Francis de Sales, Jeanne de Chantal, Thérèse, Elisabeth Leseur, and now d'Elbée) have good and sensible answers to my particular problems?

Sometimes I think that particular history of the French-speaking Church must have generated just exactly the right curatives to the particular history of me.  Cathars and Calvinists, Jansenists and Jacobins, [Third-]Republicans.... all a slow forging of a particular kind of blade, one that feels at home in my hand.

But though it sounds pretty awesome, the blade metaphor isn't right.  The French saints are demulcent, cooling, healing rather than cutting.  The challenges of French history inside and outside the Church have been harsh, punishing, unforgiving, frightening; the French saints respond with confidence, good humor, and serenity.

Some of it is linguistic, for sure.  "Blessed are the meek" in French comes out as "Heureux les débonnaires," often footnoted "litt., 'ceux qui sont doux'" -- "mild" with all its connotations of calm weather, "good-humored" with all its connotations of an unruffled, un-ruffle-able disposition. It makes me think of the disciples waking Jesus in alarm, only to see him calm the waves with a word.

I am convinced that the French connotation of serenity  rather than timid submission is the correct one, and I believe that the term "meek" has damaged English-speaking Christianity in a way that's going to be difficult to recover from.

Something in my nature -- it precedes my conversion and reaches far back into childhood -- looks critically upon the self and despairs. I am forever working in vain to silence, or at least drown out, an unrelenting, driving, punishing inner voice. The French saints, I think, had to deal with (and continue to deal with) a shape-shifting and ever-constant specter, of which the extant anticlericalism is only the latest outer appearance: the depressing philosophy of total human depravity.

The message of confident love --

the belief that Jesus' goodness >> any individual's weakness -- is the corrective to both.

This is, I think, what I find in the French saints.

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The whole book is good, but judging by the frequency of my pencil scratches on the pages, the earlier chapters are the ones that I most needed to read at this time. Here is a selection of my marked passages.

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Prior dilexit nos: God loved us first that we might love him. That is the explanation of it all: of the Creation, the Incarnation, Calvary, the Resurrection, the Eucharist.

Corrective: The love we have is evidence that God loves us; but we don't have to love him in order for him to love us. We are loved without any effort on our own and do not have to earn that love before we can access it.

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We do not read the Gospel enough in the light of the love of Christ. Thus, sixteen centuries after the Last Supper and Calvary, the most satanic of all heresies, Jansenism, was able to appear and spread: a heresy which turned a God of love, saying "Come to me, all of you, come because you are unworthy, come because you are sinful, come because you need to be saved," into a God whose arms are raised to strike, a demanding God, a vengeful God. Under the pretext of recognizing our unworthiness, Jansenism diabolically led souls away from Jesus.

Thus, no longer willing to endure this heresy, Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary [Alacoque] at Paray-le-Monial and through her gave His Heart to the world.

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When someone asked little Thérèse to summarize her little childlike way, she answered, "It is to be disturbed by nothing." ... Naturally this means not to be voluntarily disturbed, not consciously or deliberately disturbed, because nature always worries.... The main thing is not to consent consciously to anxiety or a troubled mind.

The moment you realize you are worrying, make very quickly an act of confidence: "No, Jesus, You are there..." Perhaps He is sleeping in the boat, but He is there.... It is really an offense against Him when we worry voluntarily about anything....

I emphasize this concept of "worrying with the full consent of the will," for it is very important in the spiritual life to make a distinction between our nature and our will, united to the love of Jesus. "Homo duplex:" my nature says "No"; my will says "Yes." ...My nature is troubled and afraid; my heart recalls the divine testament: "Peace I leave with you"... My nature revolts; I force myself to say, "All is well, Jesus; do not change anything." It is a fight which we must take up again and again without ceasing, for our fallen nature always rears up its head. St. Francis de Sales says it dies a quarter of an hour after we do! This is the drama of our life. But the beautiful thing is that Jesus sees our will united to his by a fundamental choice -- the profound, habitual disposition of having only one will with Him. All those movements of our nature, if we do not consent to them, do not exist for Him. There is no sin without consent.

 

This is precisely the passage I needed to see most right now [in this summer of 2015]. A handful of life events recently have shown me the degree to which I was reared to confuse nature and will, ignorant of the fundamental inner freedom of voluntary choice.  

Where do I come from? A land of "this is the way that you are and always will be: accept it."

Of "This is the way it has to be."

Because the alternative is to live in a land of understanding right and wrong, of calling good good and evil evil, and that is ... uncomfortable.

+ + +

To be blind to the distinction between nature and will is to be mired in one of three terrible errors about the totality of being human.  And that's because our nature is truly a mess -- but it doesn't make any of the errors right.

-- The first error is to live in the hopeless apathy of predestination: the best we can do is pretend to be among the elect, only to find out at the very end whether we really are.

-- The more popular error is,  rejecting that (because who wants to stay totally depraved?) some of us *cough* strive endlessly to redeem our own nature by the powers of that nature, in endless programs of self-improvement and collective social reform. (We are encouraged by the appearance of progress, as we harvest a little waste heat and turn it into power for good; but it's nothing more than a slight improvement in efficiency.  There is a theoretical limit that is inherent to the material system.  Thanks for the analogy to the very French Jules Carnot.)

-- The third error rejects the others, recognizing correctly that there is something good in all of us, and concludes that human nature is usually not depraved at all,  In this vision human nature is fundamentally good, at least in a wide variety of its forms, and must be affirmed and celebrated everywhere -- except where one's affirmative expressions infringe upon the inclinations of other natures.

But better than all three is to realize that our essence, and our acts, are not the same:  even as the former makes the environment for the latter, and the latter prunes and shapes the former in its development.

+ + +

The saints learned to rejoice in humility and humiliations... I speak here, obviously, of a love that is pure will, for our fallen nature does not seek humiliations or love them.

I wrote in the margins, "We forget again the distinction between nature & will & we often ascribe to the saints a holy Nature instead of a holy will, & then we see our own nature & despair."

+ + +

Frequently make what I call the examination of the prayer "O Jesus, I thank you for everything." It should be the fruit of your disposition of will, of heart, and of soul to bless Jesus for everything that He wills or permits for you, for everything that happens to you... In this short and simple prayer there is at the same time humility, an immense confidence in merciful love, abandonment, and thanksgiving.

+ + +

There is a repeated theme that Jesus rejoices with us in our wretchedness because it enables him to act in his role as Savior. That we should be thankful even for our misery because it leads us to seek mercy, and that the act of seeking mercy is itself a joy. And to be completely confident in that mercy.

The Curé of Ars: "Our sins, grains of sand beside the great mountain of the mercies of God." St. Thérèse..: "All possible crimes, a drop of water thrown into a blazing furnace."

One reproach sometimes made to this spirituality of confident love is that it would entail the danger of presumption and of letting ourselves go. You shall see... how abandonment and obedience do away with this danger. I think, on the contrary, that there is a double danger in the method which diminishes the role of confidence and stresses the role of personal effort, subjected to numerous self-examinations. If we are successful, there is the danger of pride, of attributing to ourselves what is in reality the work of grace; on the other hand, if we see no signs of progress, nine times out of ten we fall into wretched, sterile discouragement.... But in order to live this sound doctrine to the fullest, we must be very convinced...

[E]ven the most beautiful souls... do not want to believe that confidence is the key which will open the door for him, becau this door is a wound made by love. They look for other ways, as if this way were too beautiful to be reliable.

...So what then? He calls me just as I am? I can go to him with all my miseries, all my weaknesses? He will repair what I have done badly? He will supply for all my indigence?

Yes, provided that you go to Him, that you count on Him, that you expect everything of Him...

+ + +

[W]e must live a presently existing love...What would a husband think who, when asking his wife, "Do you love me?" received the response "I have a great desire to love you; I shall work toward it; I hope one day to achieve it by dint of my efforts and generosity and sacrifice." You are right to smile. But is this not the spiritual disposition many excellent souls adopt toward Jesus?

Make rather the admirable response of St. Peter: "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love you."

That gave me a rueful little laugh of recognition, because that's how I often phrase it when I greet my spouse. Not the first way, but the second. "You know I love you," I will say. There is something a little desperate in that phrasing, I think, because always -- always -- I am tempted to think I do not love enough. I want, I think, to be reassured that, at least, I love enough for it to be known.

One of the great fruits of a good marriage has been the realization, no less astonishing to me for the frequency with which I realize it, of being beloved. I know and see my own faults constantly. And yet, someone (a pretty great person, if I may inject my opinion) loves me, really and for real. I wake up to it every morning and marvel, because it is marvelous, but at the same time I don't doubt it even for a minute. And I try with all my will to apply the same marvel as well as the same confidence to divine love and mercy, unfathomably vaster and more constant.

Perhaps returning to d'Elbée's little book of meditations will nudge me toward that confidence -- and, maybe more importantly, to let that confidence power real acts of love every day.

 

The poverty of nationalism.

I was driving to H's this morning for homeschooling, and listening to Minnesota Public Radio as Marketplace ended and local programming began. Kerri Miller was interviewing poet and professor Claire Rankine on the topic: what it means to be an American. She opened the segment with a quote from Langston Hughes, just as I pulled up in front of H's house to let the kids out and carry my books up the walk.

"'Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed,'" quoted the host, and the guest was beginning to comment: the line was a line of nostalgia, for a thing that in her view, has never existed in reality, but only in that dream -- and I turned off the radio and gathered my children and schoolbooks, never getting to hear the resolution, any challenge or dialogue, only a quote and a snippet of one reading, one reaction.

+ + +

We are living in a time in America when the specter of white -- or at least nativist -- nationalism has swelled up and tried to take its place in the public forum, out of the corner to which it had seemed the polite company had banished it. I doubt anyone really believed it was gone, but for most of my life it has been possible for me to live under the illusion that it was only really espoused by a Them, an embarrassing Them that made the rest of us look bad. It is dismaying to find it demanding a seat at the table, reminding us where we came from. We would all rather pretend not to recognize our own cousins.

Maybe it was Langston Hughes that made the connection in my head. My oldest is studying American literature this year, with H., and will probably encounter some of Hughes' poetry.

There are a lot of ways to design a course in American literature. There is a certain canon that you can stick to, without going too far wrong, but it's more interesting to take a thematic approach. You can go chronologically, choosing significant pieces that exemplify American thought at each stage. You can take a regional approach, examining the stories and sermons that came out of New England Puritanism, the dark twists of Southern Gothic writers, social commentary in urban realism and of the homelessness born of the Dust Bowl, the peculiar pastorales of Westerns and of frontier stories, friends on a river raft under the stars. My favorite theme, however, is the same topic as the radio show: what does it mean to be American?

This is a rich and fruitful theme because -- because -- the answer is not simple or obvious. Nor is it complete, because every generation adds its own gloss. I think it is the underlying theme of all literature which is properly "American" rather than literature, even the greatest, produced by American writers: although many American writers have produced great literature that is part of the universal human heritage, only some of it is "American" in the sense that it reflects on the aspects of America that make it itself.

The reason that the answer is not simple or obvious is that nationalism, nativism, is the wrong answer. That is the simple and natural human answer to "What is a nation," the answer that countless failed nations (and a few that have not yet failed) have fallen back on, fallen on, for ages and ages.

You cannot build much of a literature with meaning on the idea that our nation is made up of people who look like us and talk like us and were born here of parents who were born here.

At least, you can't make very much of it when your nation is only a couple of hundred years old.

+ + +

But you can build a great tradition of struggling, in prose, in poetry, in song, with the different possible meanings of your national identity when you are willing to listen to the many kinds of experience that are produced by a troubled country struggling to interpret and apply an idea with justice, struggling even with the meaning of justice itself. What does "equal" mean? What does "free" mean? What does "men" mean? We have been grappling with these words, with more or less success, from the beginning. It is what our nation is made from. And grappling with words is what makes a literary tradition.

I place "What does it mean to be American?" at the center of all themes of all American literature. American literature is regional literature -- because we are a country that has imperfectly but persistently united disparate regions, with much bloodshed. American literature is populist literature, and intellectual literature, often embodied in the same work. American literature is the writing of the wealthy landed class, and the writing of the marginalized immigrant. American literature is written in languages that aren't English. American literature is sometimes written neither by nor for Americans (I am looking at you, de Tocqueville). American literature is sometimes written outside our borders. American literature is genre and canon. American literature aspires to Old World respectability and hails invective upon Old World failures and shame. It puffs itself up and is its own harshest critic. At its best it reflects honestly both something great and something fallen; perhaps even when it tries only to do one or the other, it proves its own opposite, is at once both commentary and artifact, not timeless or universal, but anchored in time and place.

And yet, that's timeless and universal too, because all of us do have a time and a place.

To reject the great question at the center of American literature -- the question of American identity -- is to reject the questioners. It is to discard all that thought and discourse, with all its challenges and contradictions, in favor of a simple and intellectually poverished American neo-Know-Nothing-ism. It is a minor tragedy, compared with the real-life marginalization of individual lives, loves, livelihoods. Is the tragedy more or less poignant because the tradition of that intellectual grappling is, today, so often cast off by free choice?

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Compassion, pity, and blame.

Even though it's probably irresponsible to diagnose, amateurishly, from a distance via the Internet, I'll tell you what I think to be true: Donald Trump is mentally ill.

Or, more specifically, and more fundamental to his nature from the very beginning -- after all, mental illness can come upon a person late in life -- I think he has a personality disorder, almost certainly one of the Cluster B disorders, probably narcissistic personality disorder.

I'm not going to take the time to marshal the evidence here -- it is easy enough to find. Here's my point.

If Donald Trump's mind and personality is as deeply disordered as I think it is, then there is not much point in hating and blaming and cursing the man. If there is ever an appropriate place for hating and blaming and cursing a person, it is surely not because of a mental condition that he has probably been affected by since he was a small child. Indeed, there's even something unseemly in mocking him, the person, as ridiculous and clownish and mean as his words and actions have been.

The man is sick. I truly believe that. If we are human persons and he is a human person, the only acceptable response to him is a response of love. And if the only form of love we can muster for a mean, small, twisted, stunted mind and heart like his is the form we call "pity," then we should muster it with all the strength that we can.

If a saint can overcome her instinct of fear and disgust to clean and bind the sores of a dying, diseased, homeless person, then surely we can overcome our disgust at the sight of a festering and starved spirit.

What good will it do? They all die in the end.

A question to ponder, no?

+ + +

Pity and forgiveness does not compel us to stand within reach of an abuser, however. Dangerous tools must be removed from the reach of the people who would hurt themselves and others. That's prudence. That's justice: we protect the innocent, even from people who can't help being who they are. Justice also demands that we insist on right and just behavior, we forcefully condemn injuries and wrongs.

There's no excuses here.

But where mocking ceases, pity can remain.

+ + +

And on the other hand:

There are a large number of people who, let's put it bluntly, out of pure self-interest and the love of money and power, colluded to put dangerous weapons in the reach of a literal madman, colluded to excuse his ravings and to call them sane.

Those people?

Not born that way.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about what compassion for them should look like.

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Cognitive dissonance and 2016.

One significant casualty of the Trump candidacy might arise from massive cognitive dissonance among well-meaning early supporters, like the primary voters who made this all possible, and people like them who told their friends and family and/or local news crews that they planned to pull the lever for Trump in the general election.

It is well-established that people will unconsciously go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid admitting in the face of new evidence--even to themselves--that they have made a serious error in judgment. See the Wikipedia article "Cognitive dissonance" for an overview of the details:

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

A key tenet of cognitive dissonance theory is that those who have heavily invested in a position may, when confronted with disconfirming evidence, go to greater lengths to justify their position....

Dissonance is felt when people are confronted with information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. If the dissonance is not reduced by changing one's belief, the dissonance can result in

• restoring consonance through misperception,
• rejection or refutation of the information,
• seeking support from others who share the beliefs,
• and attempting to persuade others.
  

So let's review what we have got out there. Unless you assume that most Trump supporters (instead of a small fraction) consciously relish the notion that girls and women are objects, seethe with more-than-implicit contempt for minority groups, and argue that Constitutional checks on executive power are part of the problem --

-- and I don't think that's true --

-- there's a large bloc of people out there who are being faced with numerous pieces of evidence that they have judged very, very poorly, but are already "invested" in that judgment.

A population experiencing cognitive dissonance.

Some of them undoubtedly will walk back their support. A number will do so in the privacy of the voting booth, and then will hope that their mistake will just go away. Some will renounce their former support even publicly. They will admit that they were taken in -- they might come up with some way to save face, to insist that given the information they had at the time, it wasn't such a crazy idea (the past, even the 1990s, is a foreign country). Those people will attempt to start fresh.

Good for them.

But some fraction of this well-meaning voting bloc, faced with the choice of either accepting evidence that shows they chose poorly, or of forcing the evidence to fit their own unconscious desire to avoid that discomfort --

-- some as-yet-unknown fraction of what is a pretty large chunk of the electorate --

-- some of those are going to adapt by a psychic doubling-down on the notion that "what America needs is someone like Donald Trump."

For a number of this fraction of the electorate, the doubling-down is on "Trump is objectively bad, but the spectre of a Clinton presidency is probably worse." This development is not what I would call surprising, given the state of political discourse; America has already demonstrated, in spades, that we are willing to think and believe massively terrible things of even decent people in the Other Party. And because it maintains some hold on the evidence, it isn't quite as alarming -- "who will be worse as president" is, technically, a matter of opinion and prediction of an unknown future -- even as the question is sidestepped: How bad would your candidate have to get, anyway, to change your mind?

I'm concerned about the fraction who can't comfortably think of themselves even as reluctant supporters of an objectively bad man, or who are already invested in the notion that Donald Trump is the leader that America positively needs.

A number of people will not be able to deny that Trump said the things he said and did the things he did, but they also will not be able to divest themselves of their enthusiastic early support. And these people have only one refuge: to maintain that what Trump evidently is...

... is what America really needs.

This population, nudged by our common human need to not be wrong, is going to become invested in the notion that we need exactly what Trump is dishing out.

America needs, e.g., more honest talk, of the sort that goes on in locker rooms, where deal-making men don't have to worry about political correctness. (link)

America needs, e.g., to be tough on crime, not soft like that New York DA who let those five confessed black rapists out of prison just because of some so-called DNA evidence. They confessed, didn't they? (Link)

America needs, e.g., someone who will order U.S. troops to commit war crimes... what do people in faraway Geneva know about American interests? America needs someone who isn't afraid to offend people -- no, America need someone who takes visible pleasure in offending people. America needs someone who will stand up to obstruction in Congress, who won't let legislation or advice and consent stop him. America needs a strong man, a proud man, a man whose gospel glitters with prosperity, smells of it.

America needs to call evil good, and good evil.

That's what we will hear, because a number of formerly well-meaning Americans will need it, at a deep level, and they will need the rest of us to approve of it too.

They are going to say it out loud, and it will take an effort to fight this notion, because the more people are invested, the harder it is to cut their mental losses. It will also take more than a little self-discipline for the rest of us to fight it without sinking to that level ourselves, and to fight it effectively -- because what effectiveness requires is for the rest of us to craft a way that initially-well-meaning Trump supporters and endorsers can save some kind of face, emerge with their tattered dignity intact. And that means forgiveness, something that is hard for every human, because forgiveness itself requires overcoming cognitive dissonance of our own.

+ + +

To sum up: This is on the GOP leadership. By signing on enthusiastically, by squelching voices of principled dissent --- I watched the convention feed with my own eyes, don't tell me they couldn't see what I saw and hear what I heard -- by throwing their weight behind this man -- they legitimized a bad, bad candidate. They gave voice to ugly ideas. And they've harnessed human psychology to assemble an army of people whose easiest mental exit from the discomfort of what they've created is via 1930s-level nationalism.

We are going to be fighting this army with one hand, the other held out in an offer of peace-through-repentance, for a very long time.

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Pulled pork from a giant frozen slab.

Earlier this year Mark was offered the opportunity to buy many, many pounds of pork loin at a very reasonable price.  He did not realize when he agreed to purchase said pork loin that it would be delivered frozen in the form of "whole pork loin," which I think is a beast he had never before encountered.

Here is one of the pork loins inside my large deep freezer (baking soda box added for scale):

I'm not actually sure how many pounds this thing weighs, because I would have to take it upstairs and weigh it using the Baby Method, where by you step on the scale holding the frozen pork loin, then hand the frozen pork loin to someone else ("Here, hold my pork loin"), and then perform a subtraction, presumably while your loin-weighing partner is daintily juggling the meat from hand to hand so that it does not conduct enough thermal energy away from his or her skin to generate frostbite.

I do know that it does not fit in my microwave oven, crockpot, or sink.   Had it been delivered unfrozen, I might have cut it and its brother loins (we had something like eight of them) into reasonably sized pieces, wrapped them individually, and then frozen them as roasts and steaks and the like.  As is, I let them sit in my freezer most of the summer as I brooded over the best way to deal with them.  A repentant Mark offered to cut them up with some sort of power tool, but I accepted that, just as bringing home the bacon (so to speak) falls under his sphere of domestic responsibilities, preparation of said bacon mostly belongs in mine.*  

+ + +

Anyway, the frozen pork loin almost fits in my picnic cooler, so (after reading up on related topics, viz. the brining of Thanksgiving turkeys) I jammed it into the long-diagonal dimension of the picnic cooler.  Then I set the picnic cooler on my kitchen counter, with the little drain hole oriented over the sink for safety (but closed), and filled it with water by holding down the trigger of my sink-sprayer-on-a-hose for, like, ever.  I mostly closed it (it wouldn't quite close) and went away.

The first time I did this, I dutifully changed the water surrounding the pork loin, as food-safety experts say you should now and again when you are thawing meat by submerging it in cold water.  This turned out to be more trouble than I expected.  After the drain plug, which is attached with a flexible strip of plastic to the outside wall of the cooler, the rest position of the pluggy bit interrupted the jet of water, deflecting a spray in all directions.  Just as I had had to stand there filling the cooler by holding down the trigger of my sink-sprayer with my aching thumb -- indeed, just as I would have to stand there again to refill the cooler by holding down said trigger -- I had to stand there holding the pluggy bit out of the way so that the water would course down into the sink, tracing a neat ever-diminishing parabola.

A very cold parabola.  After a while I thought to go find a thermometer (after momentarily re-plugging the drain) to discover the temperature of a cooler of water in which a fresh-from-the-deep-freezer, plastic-encapsulated pork loin has been resting for several hours.  I discovered that the temperature was, in fact, colder than my refrigerator, which food-safety experts assure me is a delightful and life-affirming location for thawing meat.  I decided not to bother changing the water again.  By this time the pork loin was squishy enough that I could close the cooler all the way, so I did.

+ + +

I did all that stuff right after breakfast.  The pork loin was thawed enough to cut into pieces by about two in the afternoon.  I cut it into about six pieces.  About a third of it went into my smaller slow cooker (the round one -- I think it's a 3-quart, but I'm not sure -- why the heck didn't Crock-Pot^® print the size on the outside somewhere?), and about two-thirds of it went into my bigger slow cooker (the oval one).  And then I added a carefully researched liquid, divided proportionally to match the proportional division of the pork loin, as follows:

Liquid What I Cooked The Slab O'Pork In

• One liter of Coca-Cola
• 3/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
• 2 Tbsp salt
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp chili powder
• A whole lot of freshly ground pepper

Oh, and I think the first time there was some pork sticking up out of the liquid, so I put a piece of bacon on that bit.

I put the slow cookers on low, and I cooked it for twenty-four whole hours.  I mean, it was three o'clock by the  time I had it all in the cookers, I couldn't exactly have it ready for dinner.  And I didn't want it for breakfast or lunch.  So, yeah, I cooked it for an entire day.

And then I shredded it and froze it in Ziploc bags with enough liquid to moisten, and I had something like 13 pounds of cooked pulled pork.

+ + +

Most of the time when I try new recipes, I figure out something I should do to tweak them.  None of that here.  The Coca-Cola plus vinegar is just the right blend of sweet and sour, the garlic and chili powder just the right kind of spicy, to be sufficiently neutral for all manner of applications.  

The first day we had the pulled pork on homemade wheat buns with an assortment of bottled barbecue sauces, cole slaw, and applesauce.  

Later I put the meat plain on telera rolls, topped them with sautéed peppers and onions, and melted Provolone cheese on it under the broiler -- sort of a cheesesteak, or rather, a cheesepulledpork.

Another time I made banh mi out of them, on baguette with pickled carrots, cilantro, Braunschweiger standing in for the French pâté, sliced jalapeños, and fish sauce.

Another time I made pork fried rice, with pineapples.

Another time I mixed it with hoisin sauce and we rolled it up in tortillas with gingery cole slaw.

Last week I stuffed it with barbecue sauce into baked potatoes and melted cheese on top -- a Budget Bytes inspiration.  (There are many recipes there that use pre-cooked shredded meat -- this was one.)

Anyway, just about anything that calls for shredded meat, this will work in, from pizza to enchiladas to tacos to stir-fry.  I highly recommend it.  If you are using a smaller piece of a pork loin that fits in one crock pot, use between one-third and two-thirds of the cooking liquid amount that I described.  Or go ahead and invest in a giant slab of frozen meat and a picnic cooler.  You won't be sorry, even if you wind up with an aching thumb.

 

 

_____

*Unless the propane grill is involved, the investigation of the reasons for which is a cultural-anthropology dissertation for another day.