bearing blog

Taking liberties with Jeremiah on St. John's Day: For the mothers.

Do you ever feel like you are fighting your children, and your children are fighting you, all day long?

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From the Office of Readings for today, the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist:

Jeremiah 1:4-10, 17-19

The word of the Lord came to me thus:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you,a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

"Ah, Lord God!" I said, "I know not how to speak; I am too young."

Too young, too old, too tired, too busy, too faltering, too selfish, too confused, too inexperienced, too unprepared, too overwhelmed.

But the Lord answered me,

Say not, "I am too young."

Or whatever. 

To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak.  Have no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

"To whomever I send you, you shall go." 

Because they come after us, we often think of the children as being sent to us.

But John turns this time-sequence on its head.  John testified:  He who is to come after me existed before me.

And though they didn't exist before us, this paradox recalls that, rather than them being sent to us, it's more true that we are sent -- to each child in turn, and at the same time.

"To whomever I send you you shall go."  

Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my mouth, saying,

See, I place my words in your mouth!

This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms,

(Or perhaps only over one family of children),

To root up and tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.

But do you gird your loins; 

Get out of your pajamas.  Put on your shoes and tie back your hair.  Wash your face.  Chin up.

stand up and tell them all that I command you.   

Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them; 

And boy, don't I feel that way sometimes.

For it is I this day who have made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass, against the whole land; Against Judah's kings and princes, against its priests and its people.  

The Lord fortified Jeremiah against Judah.  He expected conflict.  (And got it.)  Conflict, however, was not the purpose of their relationship.  The purpose was guidance, correction, reconciliation, love.  

In Jeremiah on St. John's birthday we are to see the purpose of "preparing a way for Christ" as well.  A road into the heart.

They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

If you had told me a few years ago, when my children were fewer and smaller, that I would read this and immediately identify with Jeremiah (knowing to whom I am sent), I probably would be horrified at the language of antagonism and conflict and power struggle.  Isn't our ideal a little bit more... collaborative?   Shouldn't we turn to language that sounds a bit more... encouraging?  Warm nurturing welcoming nourishing protecting cuddling sheltering blah blah blah?

<ringing sound of sword being unsheathed>

The Lord made my tongue a sharp sword; he hid me in the shadow of his hand.

Both, perhaps?

I am the voice.  The voice of one crying.  The voice of one crying out.

I have placed my words in your mouth.

Do you gird your loins.

It is I who have made you a pillar.

Fitness Friday: Do what you like?

I think I've mentioned before that I don't actually like running very much.  Although I do admit that I can sort of see the fun in going for an easy run -- that is, if there is such a thing as an easy run, which is only possible if you have endured many not-so-easy ones.

 Anyway, I was thinking that, for novice exercisers, one piece of advice I don't really buy anymore is the advice that, when trying to fit more physical activity into your life, you should choose your activity based on what you like to do or find fun.

I think the idea is that if you like the activity, you will have extra, intrinsic motivation to get out there and do it.  After all, if you enjoy (say) cycling, the thought of getting on your bike will fill you with eagerness instead of dread.  You will not f0cus on the unpleasantness of exertion but instead on the cool breeze and the changing scenery and the satisfaction of transporting yourself with your own muscles.  And therefore you will exercise more often than if you chose an activity that you didn't enjoy.  Right?

It's not a crazy idea.  But it may be unnecessarily limiting.   Here are some reasons why you might want to consider taking up an activity you don't like or find fun.

(1) Just because an activity is fun doesn't automatically mean you will do it often.   Skiing is really fun for me; I do it a few times a year if I'm lucky.  Going to a movie with my husband is fun; I think we've gone to fewer than five shows together since we had kids.  I also think rollercoasters are fun, and riding on trains, and visiting art museums all by myself.  Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons, I hardly ever do any of these things.    I am sure that if you pause for just a few moments, you will think of several activities that are good, that you would say "Oh, I really love doing that," but that... you don't do, or at least don't do much.   Why don't you do them more often, if they're so fun?  Things get in the way, hm?  Well, if it's true about movies, it's also true about bike riding or hiking or belly dancing.   I just don't see any evidence that picking an activity you "like" as your very own exercise plan will make it more likely that you will exercise more.

(2) Some things aren't fun until you get good at them.  I swim once or twice a week, myself.  I like swimming -- now.  I look forward to the physical sensations of pulling myself through the water -- now.  Once upon a time it wasn't so.  I had to take a year of swimming lessons before I really could relax and just enjoy swimming.  Now that I'm a competent fitness swimmer, I really do enjoy it, but there was a lot of hard work getting there.  And I didn't get there by restricting myself to activities that I already enjoyed.  I got there by deciding I wanted to be able to enjoy it, and knowing I would have to work to learn how, and then by signing up for lessons and showing up week after week.  I had to take up an activity that I did not already enjoy.

 

(3)  Many of us can't imagine finding any sort of exercise we like.  If you're a really, seriously virgin exercise newbie, maybe the whole idea of moving your body hard and fast is kind of scary.  Maybe you suffer from post-traumatic gym class stress disorder.  Maybe you hate the way it feels when you get winded just climbing the stairs.  If you've never known what it's like to get moving and enjoy it, how can you know what sort of exercise will appeal to you?  Don't let these exhortations to "find an activity you enjoy" intimidate you.  You don't have to enjoy it to do it.  It's not true that you are doomed to quit if you pick the wrong exercise.

(4) "Fun" is probably not the problem.  The biggest barrier between you and exercise is likely to be something other than disliking physical activity.     Inability to carve out time, or need for someone to watch the kids, or procrastination, or fear of being seen by others, or lack of access to a safe place to exercise, or lack of equipment, or lack of family support, or chronic illness -- none of these things will be "fixed" by choosing an activity you ordinarily would enjoy.    Figure out what you can do to knock down what's truly standing in your way.  It might mean picking an activity that's not your favorite, but at least you'll have an easier time getting there. 

(5) Give yourself more credit -- you are perfectly capable of doing all kinds of things that aren't particularly fun.  The flip side of "There are many fun things I don't do" is, of course, "I do many things I don't enjoy every day."  I hate folding laundry and yet I do it a couple of times a week.  I don't love to go grocery shopping with four children and yet when I have to do it I can get it done.  Heroically I perform countless no-fun actions every day for little or no thanks.  Why can't I do no-fun exercise too?

(6)  There are ways around the no-fun parts of a no-fun exercise, but it can take time to discover them.  I don't physically enjoy running, but in the years since I took it up I've learned some tricks.  Simple ones like setting up a series of carefully chosen music playlists in my iPod.  Mental ones like focusing on being grateful for forty minutes to spend on myself, or on offering up my tiny suffering for someone else.  More complicated ones like following a scripted training regimen.

(7)  Some of the things that are no-fun at first, you may learn to appreciate with time.  I used to hate the achy feeling that would appear in my muscles the day after a workout.  Now, I actually kind of like it.  Right now, in fact, I'm aware of a pulling feeling in the backs of my thighs, and I know that this is a mild ache from yesterday's run.  But every time I feel that slight burn in the muscles, I am getting a little glimmer of the thought, "Oh, yes -- I had a good long run yesterday, I can still feel it."  Achy muscles feel like an accomplishment to me now, and because of that I experience them, truly, as a pleasurable sensation.   Other things that have morphed from nuisances into pleasures:  the intense hunger that appears an hour or two after a workout (because whatever you eat tastes SO good when you're wolfishly hungry from hard exertion), and the sensation of jumping right into a cold swimming pool.  Used to hate them.  Now anticipate them with longing.

(8) Even something that is not fun can be made interesting, and maybe "interesting" will keep you coming back better than "fun" would.  I have had a lot of success, running, with turning it into a learning experience.  I  don't like running, but perversely, I do like spending eight weeks working on form drills, or following a training regimen for an upcoming 5k.  I have found that having a program and mixing things up in a certain way does not make running any more "fun," does not make me "like" the sensation any more... but it does make it interesting, and that keeps me coming back to find out what will happen in the next installment.  Tune in next time to find out if Erin will be able to run five two-minute intervals at 7.2 miles per hour, or if she will stumble and be thrown off the back of the treadmill!

(9) There are better rewards than fun.  Sometimes when I am running on the treadmill I hate every minute.  Hate it.  Really hate it.   Spend every breath wanting to stop, and suffering more for knowing that at every breath I could stop but won't.  And then when I've met my goal and the run is over and I step off -- I have this tiny spark of pleasure from knowing that I didn't quit.  Each time I don't quit the spark is a little bit warmer.  I am changing myself into a stronger person from the inside out.

So -- don't feel discouraged if you make lists of things you "like" to do and then realize that none of the things you "like" are realistic activities to engage in regularly.   Pick some activity that is realistic to establish first.  The nice thing about this is that, since it is realistic, you can start it right away.  Then consider committing yourself to learning to like it as much as you can.  That should buy you some time, at least, while you figure out how much it is possible for you to like it.  And even once you hit that limit, you never know -- there may be more to it than you think.

Sightseers.

A little background, first.

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One of the things I took away from my in-depth reading of Introduction to the Devout Life was the importance of making a distinction between sins and weaknesses.    I wrote here:

 Sin and weakness are distinct problems, and so Francis means to give distinct advice about them.  

Perhaps five hundred years ago people made more careful distinctions among the categories of sin, temptations to sin, and weakness. They are not the same. A sin is a specific act; a temptation to sin is an internal or external urge toward a specific act; weakness is, I would venture, a tendency to be assuaged by and easily overcome by temptations of a particular sort. The more I read this book, the more I come to believe that our attempts to reform ourselves are seriously muddied by treating weakness as sin and sin as weakness.

For example, lots of people write about their weaknesses (vanity, laziness, impatience, selfishness, gluttonous tendencies) with a distinct tone of guilt. But guilt or compunction is entirely inappropriate towards weaknesses. It's appropriate towards sin, towards sins -- towards instances when our weaknesses made it easier for us to be overcome by temptation, and so we committed sins against charity or whatever.

I wrote more specifically about the distinction between gluttony-the-weakness and gluttony-the-sin in the comments here.  I wrote some here about the replacement of the weakness of gluttony with the weakness of vanity.  And, pointedly, I came away from Francis's writings with the distinct impression that, in the confessional, confessing weaknesses as if they were sins is to accuse yourself of generalities, almost as good as making no confession at all.  

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That's one of the most fruitful ideas that I inferred from Francis's work:  that guilt or compunction is inappropriate response toward your own weakness.  (Just as condemnation would be an inappropriate response to someone else's).  Since I took that in and understood it, the sacrament of confession has been wonderfully simplified for me and -- I believe -- more honest.  

It is so, so easy to hide behind a screen euphemisms and generalities.  If you forbid yourself from confessing weaknesses, you are left only with your sins.    Not:  I was impatient with my children, but this:  I struck one child in anger and yelled hurtful things to another.  Not:  I keep getting distracted in prayer,  but this: I deliberately passed up opportunities to pray when my mind was clearer.  Not:  I am still struggling with gluttony,  but this:  I ate the last of the cookies, the ones that were supposed to be saved for the kids' tea time, and lied about it later.

You see how that works.

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During Lent I finally found a good time and place to go to confession frequently, and I've been returning monthly ever since.    And I have been marveling at the quiet but forceful effects of confessing regularly.

It works, I now see, because I found a time and place that's convenient to my schedule, not necessarily to my tastes.  I make my confession on a kneeler before a screen, in a "reconciliation room," off a small, modern chapel, deep within a large, old church near my home.  For privacy's sake, the sign requests penitents to refrain from occupying the small modern chapel; we wait in line in the hall outside, and after absolution we may go upstairs to the vast, high-ceilinged church.  This is what I do, partly because of the sign, and partly because the vast, high-ceilinged church is to my taste.  I kneel in a rear pew and say my penance, taking in the view, of the marble crucifix, the glittering tabernacle, the domed altar canopy, Mary's stone mantle spread over all.

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This church is large, old, beautiful, and important.  And so, among the booklets of prayer devotions and flyers for crisis pregnancy centers, its keepers stock on the tables behind the rear pew many helpful information sheets detailing the history of the building, and also brochures explaining the points along the self-guided tour.  Sightseers take the brochure with them and make their own stations, audibly appreciating the quality of the historic art.  Today there are several different small groups milling about the church as I say my Our Fathers and my Hail Mary and my Act of Contrition.   A woman walks up to a stone confessional, unhesitatingly swings open the wooden door and peeks inside -- it's empty, I'm glad she chose that one, instead of the one on the other side of the church that I happen to know is used for storing cleaning supplies -- before she turns and moves on to look at something else.   The sightseers do not disturb me -- they are probably checking out the church before they leave to get ready for the lovely wedding that will surely take place here in a few hours.  I say a prayer for the unknown couple, that they will be and remain in God's friendship.  

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I do, however, feel a stab of selfish desire to be sightseen, even though I do not appear in the self-guided tour.  I have a dollar in my pocket, that today no panhandler asked me for; I get up and carry it to the corner where only two or three of the votives are yet lit.

 Here we have the high altar, 24 feet square.  And here we have the bronze doors, added in 1955.  And here, before the chapel of the Immaculate Conception, we have a woman on her knees in tears.  

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The statue in the chapel of the Immaculate Conception is tall -- life-sized, or larger, I don't remember.  The statue is unpained stone, pale, perhaps faintly rosy.  Pale Mary crushes the pale serpent's head, and she wears a crown of pale flowers.  I have taken my sins to confession and received absolution for them; but the weaknesses remain, they ought not be confessed, and they cannot be absolved.  Only burned away.    Still, here is a place, it occurs to me, where I can ask for help with them, beg prayers -- that God will -- what?  Break, blow, burn, and make me new.   O Lovely.  O Beautiful.  O Immaculata.  Here is beauty, bare and silent stone.   

The Immaculate Conception receives all graces.

One of these days I will remember to bring tissues.  

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The sightseers are still here, watching with interest as some staff member  fiddles with the candles on the wide bronze chandelier, which has been lowered by a pulley to within reach of a ladder.  I leave my one-dollar votive flickering before the Immaculate Conception and cross the aisle.  The striking of my heeled sandals echo in the hollow space as I cross to the chapel that is its left-hand mirror image, before which many more candles glow.  

Which is it?  Ah yes:  the Virgin of Guadalupe.  I kneel before the mosaic, which is a very recent addition to this church, but a faithful representation of the image, and a beloved one, to judge from the candles.  

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I feel emptied out from my time before the chapel on the other side.  I can find nothing more to say to the Virgin or to ask from her.  I study the glittering chips that make up the picture.  I open my eyes and study the picture.  This Virgin is colorful, even gaudy.   This Virgin, it seems, answers back.  

Her hair, her skin, her clothes are a message.  You know the story, don't you? Her dark skin and black hair reveal her as a mother of the Americas.  Her clothes reveal the Savior.   The jewelry at her throat bears a cross.  The arrangement of the floral pattern on her dress means she, a woman, is the mother of God.  The black belt announces that she is pregnant.  Her mantle is the color worn by queens. It is strewn with stars.

The Virgin of Guadalupe answers all vanities.

One of these days I will remember to bring tissues.

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I came to the church as an adult, not a child -- well, really, somewhere in between.  Catholicism remains for me strange and exotic even at the same time as it is my home.   I have never really been able to tell the difference between what is for all the natives, what is for the sightseers, and what is just for me.

Perhaps there is no difference.

Gluttony: Drawing the line.

So, I said a few posts ago that I would try to write some ideas about what is, and what isn't, gluttony.  This is one of those posts where I become an armchair theologian.  I might be on to something, or I might be completely wrong.  Take it with a grain of salt!

Aquinas's definition of gluttony seems to have one glaring problem:  it lacks a bright-line rule.  "Gluttony means inordinate appetite in eating," he tells us, and we rightly ask:  What do you mean, "inordinate?"  Out of accord with the natural order of things, one supposes.  He clarifies:  

Now in eating there are two things to consider, the food that is eaten, and the eating thereof. And consequently there may be a twofold inordinateness of appetite: one in respect of the food itself that is taken; and thus in respect of the substance or species of the food one seeks dishes that are expensive; in respect of the quality one seeks dishes too elaborately prepared, that is, daintily; in respect of quantity one exceeds in eating too much. The other inordinateness is in the taking of the food, either by anticipating the due time of eating, which is too soon; or by not observing due mode and manner in eating, which is too eagerly.

We've been over this before:   we can be a glutton by eating too expensively, too daintily ("pickily"), too much, too soon, or too eagerly.  This is a nice categorization because it expands the usual definition of gluttony, but it still leaves us asking:  But Thomas, what do you mean by "too" anything?  If one can eat "too" expensively, then surely one can eat "just expensively enough," and so forth.  Where is the line?  How do we know when we've crossed over from eating promptly, to eating "too soon?"  Eating with relish, and eating "too eagerly?"   Selecting good food and being a glutton of pickiness?

I think the answer is that gluttony, like most concupiscence, abhors restraint; what makes gluttony different from other vices, such as sloth or lust is that the restraints it abhors all have to do with food.  Different people live under different sets of restraints, some more stringent than others; and different times call for different restraints; so the boundaries of gluttony cannot be defined clearly as a set of rules that are appropriate for everyone.   And so eating quite a lot of food, or eating expensive food, or eating at odd times, isn't inherently gluttonous; what makes it gluttonous is if the eater is supposed to be exercising restraint, but isn't.

What kinds of restraints might we live under?  Well, here are some:

The restraint of charity.  We should be gracious guests;  we shouldn't make onerous demands on the people who prepare and serve our food; we shouldn't demand the most or the best, always leaving lesser portions for others.  We shouldn't make messes that others have to clean up.  

The restraint of obedience.  Men and women in religious life observe a rule of set mealtimes.  Children must obey their parents who tell them, "Don't spoil your dinner."  Employees might be enjoined to refrain from eating and drinking during working hours or in work areas.    A husband and wife might agree to save money by curtailing impulse food purchases or restaurant meals.

The restraint of resources or money.  Each person has only so much money to spend on luxuries, and the luxuries we enjoy shouldn't cut into our budget for necessaries.

The restraint of physical health.  We have a responsibility to guard the health of our bodies, and to do this we must keep our diets within a certain range, one which varies from person to person.  Certain illnesses (diabetes, food intolerances) might restrict us further.  And many of us have experienced the immediate uncomfortable effects of too much of the wrong food (or drink) in too short a time.

The restraint of religious or ethical duties.  These are culturally specific:   Some people keep kosher.  Some people swear off factory farming.  Some people don't eat meat on Fridays during Lent.

The restraint of manners.  Also culturally specific, but significant:  We don't start eating until the blessing is said, or we have courses in a certain order, or we eat with utensils and not our fingers, or we don't ask for refreshments until they are offered, or we graciously try some of everything served to us -- whatever the standard of polite behavior regarding food may be, wherever we are.

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My point here is that I can't draw a bright line such as "Eating 15 minutes before a meal is to be served, is an example of Aquinas's 'eating too soon' and is therefore gluttony."  That's because some of us live under circumstances where snacking fifteen minutes before dinner is doctor's orders, some of us live under circumstances where snacking fifteen minutes before dinner causes no problem to anyone at all, and some of us live under circumstances where snacking fifteen minutes before dinner would be a serious violation of a duty to obedience.

But  all of us live under some duties of gastronomical restraint.   Sometimes the restraint is imposed from outside, for instance by medical advice, common manners, appropriate authorities, or monetary limits.  Other times the restraint is entirely of our own making:  we may set a goal to cut out sweets, reduce our carbon footprint, lose weight, or eat more vegetables.  Or the restraint may follow naturally from trying to live out our convictions, as in being a gracious dinner guest, or making sure that others have enough before taking seconds.

Whatever the restraint we live under may be, I think gluttony is the inability or unwillingness to bear the restraint.  To the extent that it's an inability we are talking about a weakness, a vice or a character fault; to the extent that it's an unwillingness we are talking about incidences of sin.   The weakness and the sin happen to share the same name, but I think it is not too difficult to tell the difference.

If I can't or won't set limits for myself, or if I constantly promise myself to set a limit and then break the promise, this is a symptom of gluttony.  It's not a sin to eat a sweet.  It's not a sin to promise myself I won't eat any more sweets tonight, and then give in and have just one more before I go to bed.  But if it's a pattern that I promise myself every night I won't eat sweets, and then every night I eat sweets anyway, then there's good reason to suspect I have a problem with the sin of gluttony -- because I have the habit of giving in, of detesting even this small self-imposed  restraint.    And of course, if I suffer from this weakness, it's so much more likely that I will fall into the sin.

The demon that feeds on fasting.

 

It just goes to show:  Never brag.  A couple of days ago I wrote a weight loss update in which I mentioned that when I tried to drop a pound, I hadn't been able to do it without effort, and (not really wanting to make the effort) I hadn't pushed it.  "But I'm holding pretty steady, and that's okay," I wrote. 

So, a couple of days after I'd been traveling, I suddenly saw my weight SPIKE.  Probably water, most of it; but my experience is that if I don't reverse it quickly, the water weight sticks around and becomes non-water weight.  Maybe a better way of putting this is that I suspect that the first sign I'm beginning to store some fat is a sudden episode of water retention.  Only a hypothesis, and only about me -- but still.  I was alarmed, and even more alarmed the next day when it didn't go away but was higher.

How big a spike?  Well, I've been a stable 113 pounds for about six weeks, but one morning the scale said 116, and the next 116.6 .  Yow!  I haven't seen either of those numbers for a long while.  And I have a philosophy about the scale:  don't bother too much about daily ups and downs, except when I see a number I haven't seen in a while.  I notice those.  The big ones scare me.

Like, really scare me.  Lie-awake-in-bed-sweating scared. 

And maybe here's the right time to mention a significant spiritual struggle.  Gluttony was a real problem for me, and somewhere between my asking and God answering and my work to meet Him where He wanted me to go, it's not a problem for me (much) anymore.  Yay me!  Except:  enter vanity.  I am now seriously, seriously afraid of regaining weight.  I like the way I look and feel now.  I am proud of myself -- not necessarily in a good way.  Am I diligent about getting to the gym... or obsessive?  It's hard to tell the difference. 

It's only natural to be pleased with my success so far.  There is, I am sure, a correct attitude somewhere, where I could be grateful to God for the gift of self-control, diligent in my stewardship of the health I have been graced with, pleased to adorn myself attractively for my husband and to reflect to the world my inward happiness and peace, and still unattached to the world and to my flesh.  I am not there.  I fear that I have made thinness and physical health an idol. 

Maybe it's always been an idol for me, but it was perhaps safer when I couldn't attain it.  Now it's my precious, y'know?  And I think the surest proof that it's really a problem is this:  I pray earnestly, "Please Lord, take away my vanity...." and what pops up in the mind is "...but even more than that please please please don't do it by making me fat again."   Don't make me choose between You and my body, I mean.  But I know darn well that God has already made me choose between Him and my flesh.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple."

Oh yes, I know what THAT means.

And meanwhile I keep looking for a way around it.

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If any of my readers think of gluttony as a big spiritual problem for themselves, then maybe this sounds self-indulgent. Wish I had your spiritual struggle instead of mine, Erin!  But bear with me.  Back when I was fat, it was really obvious that food was a sort of idol for me. Looking back at those struggles back then, they seem so simple compared to these crazy mind games.   Simple, simple struggles of the flesh versus the spirit.  All I had to do was deny the flesh!  Just like it says in the Bible!  It wasn't easy to do, always, but it was easy to understand.  Such a childish little weakness, wanting more cake.  Now I struggle with spirit against spirit -- it's not myflesh that makes war against God's will, but instead my love for my flesh.  So much harder to root out cleanly.

 
Gluttony isn't that complicated to fix (it's tough, but uncomplicated), because you only have to change something visible.  Your attitude doesn't have to change right away.  You can will your fist to put down the plate, and your heart can let go later, when it sees that it is safe feeding on the Lord.  But now I have to change something invisible, while not changing the visible all that much.  Can my heart let go of the idol of health, while my decisions and actions still responsibly preserve it?  What does that look like?  Does it look like anything at all, or is it entirely within?  How?  If I could only drive this demon out by prayer and fasting -- but on fasts, this demon grows sleek and strong.

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Today, vanity or no, I'm controlling calories and experiencing hunger.  I am thankful for obedience, which relieves the heart of some of its responsibility to ferret apart good and bad intentions.  It only makes sense to follow through with my plan to respond to a weight spike with careful attention to my food intake. 

At the same time, I am troubled by the intensity of my worry, and I wonder if I can somehow find peace.  I know, rationally, that the answer is not to set my heart on thinness and health and youth and beauty -- even though these things are often rewards of a disciplined life, I must not love them.  I must love God more.  And He has not yet asked me to choose between Him and those things -- except in the tiniest possible ways, just enough to chide me, to show me where my heart lies. 

I must be willing to lose it all, cheerfully.  I am not willing.   And yet I must be willing.  And I'm not. 

Yet.

"He went away sorrowful; for he had many possessions." 

Yet.

Tagged: Ephesians 5. (Part II - Okay, but like I said, what does "wives, submit to your husbands" mean?)

So Darwin tagged me and asked that question about Ephesians 5, and I went and wrote a post of several paragraphs of, er, scriptural analysis.  Which everyone knows is the easy part.

Now I'm sitting down to try to answer the hard part.

Even though I liked my fellow taggee Dorian's ranty post about it , and I wish to validate her with a "Yeah!  What she said!",  I repeat:  "Wives, submit" isn't about paid work or childcare.   Sure, in a given marriage, paid work may be a big issue.  So can sex, money, whether to have another child....  Ephesians 5 gives us the framework for discussing the issues, not the issue itself.

Thinking that it's about assigning the woman the stay-at-home job (an error peculiar to our age) can even lead us in opposition to Ephesians 5.  In this model we sometimes think of the husband ruling in his providerly way over the external-world sphere, while the wife rules in her nurturely way over the domestic sphere.  But guess what?  The wife doesn't get to rule over the domestic sphere anyway.  Just as the church is subject to Christ, so must women be subject to their husbands in everything.  Everything!

And anyway, does the domestic sphere even count as subordinate to the external-world sphere?  Only in the eyes of the world.  

+ + +

Darwin writes:

It makes sense and seems true to me, and yet I can't think of specific rules as to what "headship" means in our household, much less formulate some sort of universally applicable principle which must apply in all circumstances.

I think it's hard because the only universally applicable principle is apparently "in everything," which either means nothing or it has to be applied uniquely and individually to almost every point of contact between the spouses.  So, no un

I think it's hard because it's exquisitely intimate.  When I try to write about specific ways I "submit" in marriage, I feel unacceptably laid-bare -- I am not writing about sex, but it feels as if I am trying to write about something equally interior and private.  I don't have the right to explain how it is between us.  

And I think it's hard because we're both trying to think of things that we should do.  I think that submitting is more about things that we should not do.

So I come back to this idea that it must mean something  that sets us apart from the "pagans" around us, from those who haven't internalized the Christian message.  Does he order Christian wives to submit because it's natural and right to submit.... or does he have to order us to submit because it does not come natural to us?  Does he perhaps have to tell us to submit because to do so is not natural, but supernatural?

It's within the domestic sphere that this matters, when wife and husband are together, and so perhaps he's warning us against becoming the petty ruler of the home, treating our husband as if he were an intruder or worse, one of our children.  Haven't we known women to say things like this?

It's like I have three children instead of two.

or

I can't get it together on the weekends when he's home, he messes up all my routines.  I don't know how I'll stand it when he retires.

Yeah, we want to be avoiding an attitude like that.

+ + + 

So what is "not submitting" like?

One way would be to undermine his authority with the children:  denigrating him in any way in front of them, or colluding with them against him.

Another would be to undermine his standing outside the family:  denigrating him to your friends.  I know.  Many of us do this.  It's a cliche of the culture that women complain about their husbands.   Especially in a group, it's extremely difficult to avoid joining in on the husband-bashing.  Maybe there exists some fine line between husband-bashing and confiding your troubles to a trusted and close friend.   Maybe it depends whether you're trying to find an answer, or whether you're just complaining.  I'm not exactly sure about that.  But it's definitely something to be cautious with.

Yet another would be, ironically, to demand he take a more assertive role in something.  Erm, to put it another way, don't top from the bottom.  "I want you to assert your spiritual headship of this household more forcefully!"  Doesn't really work.  

I once tried to make Mark be more "involved" in the homeschooling decisions.   It didn't go well.  I finally had to accept that I have been blessed with a husband with a very hands-off managerial style, who trusts me to make wise decisions in this area.  Homeschooling is delegated very firmly to me, and in this case, submitting means I don't get to pass the buck to him on day-to-day operations.  

And then there's decision-making.  Often we discuss submission in terms of the hypothetical Big Decision That You Discuss And Discuss And Can't Come To An Agreement On.   Someone has to give, the theory goes, or the marriage can't survive; and if marriage is to survive, the "who's gonna give" must be pre-decided.  Might as well be the guy, for reasons explained in Eph 5.

But how often does this happen in a marriage?  Three or four times, maybe?  A dozen, if one or both of you is exceptionally dramatic?  But aren't there daily or weekly tiny decisions where the wife gets to decide if she's going to do things the way her husband has asked her to or if she's going to do it her own way?   Don't we all do little things that drive each other crazy?  Can we not actually try to stop doing that small thing that we know bugs him so much?    Would it be so hard to try?  

But how about when it's the other way around, when there's something we really think he ought to do that he's not doing?  Demanding that he change is apparently right out.  Is there then nothing we can do?  

On the other hand... "men ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies..."  We can, I think, ask to be loved and provided for in the way we wish to be loved and provided for.  

I remember a disagreement Mark and I had in the past year, one of those situations where I was absolutely, positively sure I was right and he was wrong, and looking back on it I can see how I tried to put my foot down about it and how uncomfortable and awful and wrong and upsetting that felt.  How much better it would have been had I simply ... asked for what I needed, and trusted that he would want to find a solution that would work for both of us.  

(Even without my asking, he did find a solution.  So.)

So what have I come up with?

1. Don't be bossy about how to interact with the house or the kids.
2. Take all his suggestions seriously.
3. Don't undermine his authority with the children.
4. Don't undermine his standing outside the family.
5. Try not to do that thing that drives him nuts.
6. Ask for what we think we need.

Yeah, that's a start.

Tagged: Ephesians 5. (part 1 - general considerations)

Darwin tagged me yesterday morning, along with several other married women bloggers, in a post asking opinions about Ephesians 5.  For context, read his whole post  -- but the main question is, what are we to think of "Wives, be submissive to your husbands?"

Here are a few points, in no particular order.

No, I don't think this represents a "high" or symbolic or unearthly ideal.  This is a piece of pragmatic advice to husbands and wives living out their relationships in the world.  As evidence I point to the context of Ephesians 4-6:  "Be humble and gentle and patient," "give up living as pagans do," "if you are angry, do not... let sunset find you nursing your anger," "have done with spite and bad temper, with rage, insults and slander," "no coarse, stupid, or flippant talk," no "fornication and indecency of any kind..."  

No, all these injunctions are about Christian conduct in a pagan world, the same in which we largely find ourselves today.  So it is with "Wives, be subject to your husbands."  He is calling Christians to live differently from the wider culture around them.  If it didn't manifest itself in distinctive behavior of some kind, it would not be the uniquely Christian life.

Any relevance to working inside or outside the home, acquiring or eschewing advanced education, or taking responsibility for child care is a red herring.  These (yes, even the child care, when we speak of how its duties are to be divided) are economic activities.  We live today in a vastly different economic system from the one in first-century Ephesus.  The meaning of "men's" versus "women's" work, the boundaries of "the home" with respect to the economy, the nature of education available to people of each gender -- totally foreign system.  If
I may go so far as to interpret the text, it is a practical instruction in Christian conduct, but it is not really speaking of economic activity -- it is giving us no instruction in how we ought best to support our families.  Again, it's telling us how to distinguish ourselves from the pagans:   avoid the sinful excesses that are common among the pagans, and have Christian relationships -- that is, relationships that are marked with the special features unique to Christians.  Husband-wife, parent-child, and servant-master relationships are to be palpably different in Christian households than in pagan ones.

I want to stress this because I see a fair amount of confusion between these two concepts.  Yes, there's probably a big overlap between "people who take this passage seriously" and "people who believe wives, or at least mothers, should minimize work outside the home."  Yes, there's an undeniable tendency to connect the two emotionally, as for many of us the decision to change our lives in response to Ephesians 5 and the decision to abandon a career or an education in the service of our marriage are intertwined in time and in intention.  But they aren't the same argument.   No, Ephesians 5 has little if anything to say about who should bring economic value into the home from outside and who should generate economic value from within it.

That said, I agree with Darwin that casting the wife in the "primary-provider" role probably creates some tensions because it runs against some of the nature of husband-hood and wife-hood, of fatherhood and motherhood.  A stereotypical example of this might be the perennial complaint that working women have to pull a "second shift" of child care when they get home, a workload that seems never to fall on Dad in quite the same way.   But if they exist, these tensions arise because the family's choices (however prudent and correct) run up against the natures of fatherhood, motherhood, and childhood, not because they demonstrate lack of submission on the part of the wife. 

Besides, casting anybody, husband OR wife, as the primary provider creates tensions when either spouse is still very invested in the equality/sameness model of marriage rather than the reciprocity/complementarity model, or when either spouse is still very invested in a vision of one's economic work or education as being largely about self-fulfillment and not about serving the best interests of the family.   

The triple-dipole structure of the chapter is obvious and important.  The three paired injunctions must be taken in the context of each other.  Wives, be subject to your husbands; husbands, love your wives.  Children, obey your parents; fathers, do not goad your children into resentment.  Slaves, obey your masters; masters, do not threaten your slaves.   Is it irksome to see "wives" set in parallel with "children" and "slaves?" Sure.  Doesn't mean we can ignore it.  I think the reason these are set parallel to each other is that these are the three hierarchical relationship-pairings within a household.  Paul is calling for Christian households to be radically different from their pagan neighbors, transformed from within because of their vision of the purpose of human life -- not least because of an equality they know they possess in the eternal sense.

+ + +

The specifics of what "Wives, be subject to your husbands" means is worthy of another post, which I'll get to later.  UPDATE.  Here is the second post.

"Life" language: political vs. pastoral, political vs. Christian.

I have been doing a little bit of out-of-season pondering about politics and morals.  No election is coming up, so maybe we can explore the topic of "single-issuevoting" without being bogged down in discussions about any particular candidates or ballot initiatives.  

(N.B.:  For simplicity and clarity, I am restricting the following discussion so that "pro-life" and "pro-choice" refer primarily to legality of abortion.  I won't be discussing in this post issues that many people find blurrier, like cloning or same-sex marriage laws.  I might generalize my arguments to these in a later post, but for now "legal abortion" is the model "life" issue:  that is, I will write as if it is the only one.)

* * *

Not quite two years ago I wrote a post called "Putting the careful thought up front," in which I described a conversation which gave me insight about being a so-called "single-issue voter:"

 

[My friend] said she appreciated hearing about my decision (not made without some struggle) to become what is often called a single-issue voter.  So often the so-called single-issue voters are derided for not putting much thought into the decision.  But in describing the process by which I became convinced to vote pro-life, I'd pointed out without noticing that there is usually a great deal of thought put into those decisions up front --- and that careful and reasoned thought shouldn't be discounted.  

I really appreciated that insight, because to be honest I hadn't been giving myself much credit for that up-front deliberation.  I'd sort of internalized that "single-issue-voters-don't-have-to-think-hard" message and have been kind of quietly bummed and embarrassed about being a primarily pro-life voter, as an identity, even if I've been fairly confident about each vote I've cast... 

 That struggle, that thought, isn't nothing.  It doesn't become nothing just because it is over and it ended in a firm conclusion.  

 

That conversation still ranks as one of the most personally important political conversations I've had, because it allowed me (finally) to "own" my identity as a voter who votes pro-life first.

So I was thinking a little bit about various bishops' directives of varying forcefulness exhorting the Catholics under their jurisdictions to avoid voting for pro-choice candidates.  I don't have a catalog in front of me of which bishop said what when, so I'm going with my general impression here which is that there's some variety in how they've phrased it:

• some have said that a Catholic incurs sin who votes for a pro-choice candidate over a pro-life candidate without a "proportionate reason," i.e., some political reason that the voter honestly believes is as grave as the life issues
• some have said that it's practically impossible for a Catholic to vote for a pro-choice candidate over a pro-life candidate without incurring sin, which is basically the same as the last category except that added to it is the force of the bishop's specific teaching that there is almost never an issue as grave as the life issues 
• some have only gone so far as to teach that a Catholic incurs sin who votes pro-choice candidates "on purpose," e.g. who really does support the pro-choice position and isn't even trying to balance the life issue with other political issues
• some may have been basically silent except for activities as part of the bishops' conference.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this sums up the various bishops' public pronouncements.  

Side note:  One thing I do not know anything about is whether any of the bishops have spoken about the case when voters are deciding only between pro-choice candidates -- may Catholics cast a vote for one of them, or must we withhold our vote?  I have generally assumed that if there aren't any viable pro-life candidates (this happens a lot in my Congressional district), we're still obligated to exert our voting power usefully, which to me means voting for the best candidate available, but I respect the choice to abstain from voting in this situation and, as I said before, I do not know whether any bishop has expressed an opinion or a directive telling his flock to avoid casting votes for pro-choice candidates even when there is no choice, or no viable choice, of pro-life candidate.

OK, so back to my main question.  One thing I want to know is:  What is the primary purpose of the bishops' teaching their flocks, with any strength at all, to avoid "voting pro-choice?"  Does that sound like a dumb question?  It's not.

Is it primarily:

(a) a warning to each individual Catholic to help each one of us avoid committing a sin in the voting booth, and to call to repentance those of us who have knowingly supported pro-choice candidates to a degree that constitutes sin.  This would be the bishop speaking to, and teaching, each Catholic as an individual.

or 

(b) a means of organizing Catholics into a bloc in order to get pro-life people elected so that we will get pro-life policies in our country.  This would be the bishop speaking to Catholics as a group, i.e., to the local church.

or 

(c) a means of spreading the Gospel, i.e., educating anyone who happens to hear or read the bishops' words, Catholic or not, about the operative principles here:  just about our highest worldly responsibility is to protect innocent and powerless people, and that means all kinds of innocent and powerless people, and when we live in a democracy we have to use our voting power as a means to do that.   Also known as:  converting hearts and minds.   This would be the bishop speaking to the whole population living in the boundaries of his diocese.

So, I'm thinking that all three of these purposes are probably in play, but that (a) and (c) are together the ones that actually comport with the bishop speaking in his role as a bishop.  (B) certainly is part of it, but I'm inclined to suggest that this constitutes what we would call "political activity" rather than "pastoral activity."  A bishop is a citizen, a voter, and a public figure and so he's certainly able to engage in political activity, so I'm not censuring him for engaging in it.  But I'm inclined to view the political purpose as secondary to the pastoral purpose.  After all, the role of the bishop is, mainly, successor to an apostle.  He is a pastor, which means that he properly confers sacraments and teaching.   (A) and (C) are teaching.  (B) really isn't.

So, why make the distinction?

Well, it occurred to me that a lot of Catholics speak about our religious obligation to vote pro-life as if it were equivalent to a religious obligation to get pro-life people elected.    These are not the same thing, and I think we should be more careful with our words, because of the logical consequences.  

The obvious difference here:  Individual vs. corporal.

To "vote pro-life" is an individual act, one act per vote, you could say.  I have a ballot before me:  assuming I understand the candidates' positions well, marking some of those boxes (depending on the roster of candidates) might constitute committing actual sin.  The bishop's role here in purposes A and C above is to help me understand the ramifications of the political positions so that I cast my vote in full knowledge and thus full freedom (even though with fuller freedom comes fuller responsibility and thus the possibility of fuller guilt).  The bishop's directive engages me just as if I were sitting in his office and he were telling me, "I really want to help you avoid doing something wrong, because I'm concerned about your soul."  He has a responsibility to teach in this way to every one of the Catholics in his diocese, and in a slightly different way to teach the non-Catholics he can reach as well.

But to "get pro-life candidates elected" is not like this.  No individual can "get pro-life candidates elected."  No individual can bear the responsibility to "get pro-life candidates elected."  

And yet, many Catholics who (like me) are personally convinced that they must vote only for pro-life candidates, at least when they have a chance of winning, put it in these terms.  

Why do you always vote pro-life?  Why are you a single-issue voter?  

 "I vote pro-life because the life issues are the most important, and we have to get pro-life candidates elected.  If only all the Catholics would consistently vote pro-life, then we would elect so many more pro-life candidates."  

This is probably true, but it is also a political answer.  When we answer that way, we are answering as a political actor, not as a Christian.  It is answering the question on a particular "turf":  the sandy ground in the arena of politics.

Now, in truth, we are both Christians and political actors, and so maybe in some situations the political answer is appropriate.  But the Christian doesn't have to answer on that turf, in those terms.  We could answer differently.  

Why are you a single-issue voter?  

"I vote for pro-life candidates when I can because I know that if I cast my vote to support abortion, I'd be committing a real sin.*  I can't have that on my conscience and I won't take part in it, even if that means I have to sacrifice my best interests when it comes to the other issues."

This is a Christian answer and an honest one.  Of course, it is guaranteed to lead to an awkward silence in certain situations.  Because it is a Christian answer and an honest one.

In this post, notice that I haven't said whether Catholics do have an obligation, not just to cast our own votes without committing sin (a negative moral obligation in our political lives), but to do all we reasonably can to get pro-life people elected (a positive moral obligation in our political lives).  I want to explore this more and I will do so very soon in a future post.  To get you started down the same road I'm looking at, you could read this short post at Disputations.

________________________________________________________________

*Note that this answer involves I-language:  "if I voted to support such-and-such a candidate, I'd be committing a sin."  This is intentional and is more than psychobabble interventionspeak:  it would be false to say or imply, "if YOU voted for such-and-such a candidate, YOU would be committing a sin," because this rests on the assumption that the "YOU" has full knowledge of the candidates, comprehension of the issues, and the conviction that pro-life voting is necessary.  It isn't fair to hold people to that standard unless you know them very well and you are sure they meet it, or you are a bishop and it is your job to teach them and bring them up to that standard.  But it's always fair to hold yourself to a strict moral standard.

 

More on the body-person dissociation.

I wrote a couple of days ago about the idea, common among Christians but incompatible with traditional Christian theology, that the body after death is "just an empty shell" and that the "real person" is completely absent from the body.  (Christian orthodoxy, on the other hand, looks forward to "the resurrection of the body" and teaches that the human person is the union of body and soul.)

The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) has a story that illustrates another logical consequence of this sort of belief:  the idea that a mentally ill spouse (in this case, a person with advanced Alzheimer's disease) can be "not the person I married" and therefore that the marriage vows are no longer binding.

The comments on this article are very, very worth reading, as some people challenge Ms. Scalia's conclusions and others step up to explain them.  One commenter responds to the idea that those who remain with a seriously mentally ill spouse are only keeping up a "front" of devotion:

Yes, it's easy to chalk up calls to fidelity to a highly romantic belief that one can maintain unswerving devotion in the midst of a devastating kind of alienation. However, I generally give the people commenting here more credit that than. I believe that what's being said is that fidelity to the marriage is paramount even when it's hard -- even when the internal feeling doesn't match the external performance of duty.

BTW, if the person is maintaining a constancy toward the debilitated spouse, that is no "illusion." The difference between feelings and performance is not equal to the difference between reality and illusion. The devotion is still being shown, and most significantly, the violation ... is still refrained from.

Emphasis mine.  This is a point that far too few people recognize.

Anyway, it's just an example of how supposedly arcane details of theological belief, like whether "the body" is part of "the person," have real-world logical consequences.  If "the person" is reduced to "the consciousness alone, and only as long as memory and reason remain intact," we have a very different moral calculus towards those who have been struck by mental illness than we do if "the person" is "the consciousness as it is, and the body before us."  Care and disposition of a person's physical body, during life and after death, is a kind of care of the person.  

Separation.

Katie Allison Granju struggles with the imagery of her son's cremation.

I don’t remember much of that period immediately after Henry died, but I do remember the agony I felt every time I thought about what was going to happen to Henry during the autopsy and then later, at the crematorium.

Knowing that Henry’s body was inside a bag or refrigerated box in a cold, impersonal mortuary space at the hospital was bad enough. The thought of his body being transported in a hearse from the hospital to the crematorium made me ill. The understanding that strangers  would undertake the medical desecration of my child’s gorgeous physical self during the autopsy was even worse. But the thought of my baby being placed into a sealed wooden box and pushed into a white hot oven was honestly the most horrible thing I’ve ever considered – worse than any nightmare I’d ever had before. And yet, I made myself think about it. All of it. Every detail.  I forced myself to imagine exactly what would happen to his hair, his skin and  his eyes. I allowed the images of his burning body to flood my consciousness without pushing them away. This horrific  imagining was the only way I could sort of, kind of be with Henry as the burning of his body took place in reality.

In the days just after Henry died, when I would express my great pain due to the autopsy and cremation, people who love me kept telling me that it was “just his body.”

“The real Henry is gone,” they would remind me gently. “What he’s left behind is just an empty shell.”

I understood completely what they were trying to convey, and I know they wanted nothing more than to take away some of my pain. However, these particular words were no solace to me at all. In fact, there is nothing anyone could have said to make the impending burning of my son’s body any less painful for me. That’s because there is no way that any mother can EVER see her child’s physical being as “just an empty shell.”  While I understood and accepted that Henry’s spiritual self had been separated from his body at death, that didn’t make his actual body – his gorgeous, lithe, strong young body – any less important to me. I  didn’t love my child’s body any less now that his spirit had gone elsewhere. I loved it the way I always had, and that was a lot.

I would not presume to write a comment on a grieving mother's blog giving my own religious opinion, especially when I don't know her beliefs.

But I wish I could give my opinion directly to the people who told her that her son's body was "just" an empty shell.

It seems to be a pretty widespread belief that the body is an unimportant husk, that it somehow doesn't matter in an eternal sense.  You see it even among Christians.  And yet that's not the traditional Christian belief, which includes the literal "resurrection of the body."  Yes, the body.  The body, like the soul, is meant somehow for eternity, even if here in time it disintegrates.  We don't know how it is going to be re-made, but somehow it will be, and that is the traditional belief.  And that's why we know the body is important.

The body is not a "shell" containing the "real person" either.  The spirit is not the "real person."  The person is the body AND the soul.  That is why we are horrified at the earthly destruction of the body.  That is why there is incomplete solace even in the knowledge that the soul survives.  Solace is incomplete because the person is incomplete without his body.  

This is why we grieve at death -- the separation of the person into live soul and dead body.   However much we believe that all will be made new again, it's not happening yet, and while we wait, it hurts.

I would like to honor Katie's grief.  It would be unseemly for me to volunteer my own beliefs on a grieving mother's blog.  But I can write them here.