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Today two girls came to the front door. I answered. They explained to me that they were from Obama's social action group. One of them, the one who didn't speak, was awfully cute. She had a glimmer in her eyes, and she never took them off of me. But, as I am remarkably handsome, I was not terribly surprised.
Nevertheless, I had to explain myself to them. Thus I said: "Oh...Well, since I didn't actually vote for Obama, I might not be very helpful to you." The cute girl smiled at me, an amused look on her face. The other one said: "Okay. Have a good one." Acknowledging their farewell, I shut the door.
My sister overheard it. She found it very amusing.
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Today, as we take to heart the lessons of the current economic crisis, which sees the State's public authorities directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions, it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and remodelled so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today's world. Once the role of public authorities has been more clearly defined, one could foresee an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally, that have come about through the activity of organizations operating in civil society; in this way it is to be hoped that the citizens' interest and participation in the res publica will become more deeply rooted.
I can't agree more with the need to more clearly define and re-evaluate the role of public authorities. especially the role of national (and global?) authorities.
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24. The world that Paul VI had before him — even though society had already evolved to such an extent that he could speak of social issues in global terms — was still far less integrated than today's world. Economic activity and the political process were both largely conducted within the same geographical area, and could therefore feed off one another. Production took place predominantly within national boundaries, and financial investments had somewhat limited circulation outside the country, so that the politics of many States could still determine the priorities of the economy and to some degree govern its performance using the instruments at their disposal. Hence Populorum Progressio assigned a central, albeit not exclusive, role to “public authorities”[59].
The Pope is addressing a globalized world. In terms of production/consumption, this means that the producers and the consumers are now different people. According to Aristotle, economics begins when someone must give a just amount of x (say, cabinets, if he is a cabinet maker) or y (say, houses, if he is a house builder). Since a house is valued as much greater than a cabinet, the cabinet maker must give many more cabinets then the house builder requires. Therefore a "neutral" commodity is established by common consent and a relative value is given of the various commodities in relatin to this other commodity. ergo: money.
One of the problems of "globalization" is that the social realities cannot govern the justice of the exchange of commodities, for this society (e.g. the US) can afford a much higher standard of living that that society, can therefore buy many extra products, and that society (whatever it may be) gladly produces them, thus raping their natural resources, and sells them for a price that would clearly be unjust were the products manufactured in the same place they are bought.
So the producers do not get the just value and the product.
Come to think of it, though, this problem is not new. The Athenians had slave states to produce for the citizens, and most societies have had slaves.
What is new, however, is that localism is almost completely dead. In fact, stateism and nationalism are not in much better shape.
The new situation is exactly how the Pope has described. China is now right now the street from Ann Arbor.
It is interesting to note that the Pope does not openly criticise this development, which seems to me to be, if not directly opposed to justice, at least materially retardant to it. The Pope merely, and probably wisely, states that this change has happened. The judgement that this change has set back the prospects of justice is my own, and possibly one the Pope would not agree with.
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I like the Pope's repeated notion of the integretity of human development that must be achieved in social issues.
Then again, I like key words like integrity, harmony, organic unity, and subsidarity.
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I'm reading Pope Benedict's new encyclical. I'm currently on paragraph 22. Not to stand in judgement over the Pope, but I have to say that so far its pretty good. pretty good, but not earth shattering. I suppose the Pope thinks this is what the world needs to hear right now. I won't contradict his wisdom. Yet it seems to me that the message the world needs to hear right now now is much more along the lines of Pius XI encyclical Quadragessimo Anno, which, to this day, remains the best social encyclical I've ever read, and seems extremely relevent to today.
I have yet to read Populorum Progressio. Perhaps this is my invitation to do so. It is entirely possible, I suppose, that the wisdom of the encyclical has been generally overlooked and forgotten, and this really is the encyclical the Church needs to be reminded of. In my own limited intellectual explorations, however, I have found Quadragessimo Anno to be the real forgotten gem. If we need a papal reminder to reread any encyclical, I believe that it is Pope Pius XI's masterpiece.
Why, do you suppose, Pope Benedict has yet to mention the Bill of Rights of social encyclicals? Maybe he does a little later. Then again, maybe not.
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There is a lyric in a song by Brand New that reads: Do me a favor, baby, don't reply, cause I can dish it out, but I can't take it. The cry of that line is surely a cry of weaknesses. In fact the need to lash out is almost always a sign of weakness just as much as the inability to defend oneself is. I would like to take a different tack.
For a long time now, that is since my childhood, I have liked the Rocky movies. They get me fired up. I find myself doing pushups, punching punching-bags; my heart pounds sometimes: I just want to get up and run. The interesting thing about the Rocky movies is that he does successfully in the ring what he attempts to do and often fails to do in life: he takes it all and keeps going until he wins some sort of victory. Punch after punch flies at his face. He becomes battered and bruised, falls down: he keeps on going. Outside the arena, his life is often tragically doomed, and, with his lack of social grace, his attempts to right it often turn out to make it worse rather than better. Yet he fails until he succeeds; takes the criticism and negativism, the bad turns and the unfairness in stride. He keeps getting up and attempting to fight, even though there is no guarantee that he will win.
I would rather be someone who can take it all and still move forward than someone who can give as good as I get. I am not quite there yet, I have to confess, although I think I am rather close. There is a part of me that cowers and withdraws, a part that is still afraid. That part of me shall not conquer.
Don't get me wrong. I strongly believe in defending myself when and as it is appropriate. Yet if I am really secure in who I am, and God grant that I am such, there is no reason why I have to make myself weak enough to need to battle other people or their thoughts. Let people think badly about me. I, personally, chose not to live in my insecurities to the point where I have to justify myself in another's eyes or, even worse, bring another down to prove myself.
Whether or not I dish it out, I can take it.
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I've been reading Laura T.'s book. When I decided to buy it, it was more as a personal favor to a friend. I don't read. Not very much at all. I didn't know whether I would ever get around to reading this book.
While I was chatting with her this afternoon, she asked me to read it, telling me it might be a little intense, yet wanting me to read it through and tell her what I think. So I've been reading it. It's interesting. The entire tone is so melancholy its sigh would be a hurricane. And there's a goodly part of me that loves it. Those of you -- you poor unfortunate souls -- who read the over-the-top rhetoric of my delightfully melodramatic bowel rending catharsis that graced this blog for several years will know that I quite enjoy revelling in these feelings. They are like a playground, and it is not just my heart the skims the monkey bars, but my stomach climbs the tower, and every part of my body plays in the sand. What a world of self-destructive fun!
By no means, of course, do I intend to imply that the man who is depressed merely does it for the fun of it. Yet there often does seem to be a 'game' element to it. That is the same element present in those -- unfortunate -- romantic relationships where, far from honestly talking with each other, every action and word is calculated to produce some emotional effect. I believe they call it "playing with one's heart."
In my case, these melocholic emotions are among the strongest I have ever encountered. And they feel a hell of a lot better than depression. Thus, in my memories, fall of '05 seems to much better of than spring of '06, for fall '05 was replete with nasty feelings, but spring '06 was merely callous emptiness. The attraction of the emotions, I think, is that there really are pains, struggles, trials; hurldles to high to leap, walls to high to scale. As the cutter cuts herself to, as Laura put it, avoid the pain in her mind (though I object to the world mind, it is a mute point), so the emotional addict creates a world of pain to avoid the world outside of himself. That's a hypothesis. It may not be correct.
I have, however, been there. I have escaped. My emotions are fairly self-contained nowadays. I do not explode as harrowing insults, I do not die at the serpent tongue. Sometimes I seem almost placid, unaffected by my surroundings. And my writings have less of the charge that used to pervade them.
Then I read something like this. All the memories come back.
I have avoided certain television shows, not listened to certain songs during certain moods, forgotten certain memories, altered how I feel about certain people. On a day to day basis, it is quite possible for me to completely ignore the profundity of the feelings I used to ignore. I usually have no desire to go back.
In some ways, this book is, for me, like emotional pornography. The words themselves have such power to affect an emotional state I'm not entirely sure I want.
St. Thomas Aquinas spoke of me and other animals as the "patient" of the emotions. That is, another agent works on us, producing the emotions in us. That is very much what the experience of reading this book has been like to me: like an agent has been working on my heart, producing feelings that I'm not invested in, feelings I'm only watching as a casual observer. I can deal with these feelings, because they're not mine. Yet I wonder what the best course of action is about them.
Should I deal with them? conquer and habituate them? come to have dominance over them?
Should I close the book and forget about them, recognising how much their place in my life has diminished over the past three years, and trusting that that process will continue?
I don't know. But for right now, I'll keep on reading.
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Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
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A few minutes ago, as I did all in my power to keep from being ill (I haven't thrown up in years -- and that time only because I had smoked too much), I had an interesting discursion within my mind. It was brought on by my answer to L.'s comment on a post of mine. It was a sort of reflexive encounter with my memories of writing. You see, I had mentioned to L. in my response what Henri de Lubac had written about how nothing can be read in the same way it was written. I suggested that this principle be extended to include yourself: you cannot read what you wrote in the same way you wrote it. This is obviously more true the longer it has been since you wrote it.
In the aftertaste of this thought, I reflected on writing the experience of the recent writing I have done.
One of the annoying things about high school English classes (undeniably!) is how they expect you to interpret the text of an author whose life, influences, cares, dream, and suchlike you know nothing about. They assume there is deeper meaning to the text (sometimes it seems like the text actually says what it means! the horror!), and they expect you to find it. The result is that students exercise their "creativity," which, in my case, normally meant making things up on the spot. Since I was good at instantaneously inventing ideas, I was quite often praised for very little work.
This may have annoyed me back in high school, for I felt dirty clothing my interests in famous authors words, but the truth of the "deeper meaning" is conveyed at least partially by the experience I'm about to relate.
 When I write there are, often subconsciously, all manners of thoughts going on that, usually because of inhibitions of one sort or another, never actually get written. These thoughts quickly are forgotten. Reading over what I wrote a day later, the thoughts that inspired and were beyond a particular sentence often will not even occur to me.
It seems like a hell of a lot is going on within us just where we don't want to look. I have to admit that I don't always or even usually know why I say what I say, say it in the way I say it; do what I do, or do it in the way that I do it. I bet its the same with you. Neither you nor I really know what's going on here.
But would you want to? would I want to?
In many ways, at least using that scholarly method I have immersed myself in, whereby thoughts are 'played with' and judgments rarely made, it is a lot easier and more fun to know someone else, because that knowledge need not hurt; it need not even affect you. You can navigate the streams of causality in someone elses life like someone navigating the river behind his house. You can do it thoughtlessly, without concern for the personhood of the other, or the immense subtlety you can find in another's subjectivity. You can do this, that is, so long as you don't identify yourself -- to some degree or another -- with that other person. As soon as you live that other person's life, even to the smallest degree, you loose the ability to navigate the emotional-subjective streams of the other objectively. But of course this has to be the case, because the other is not a subject in a similar way to how you are a subject. In this case, knowledge of another can hurt even more than knowledge of oneself.
Well, this isn't quite true. It seems to me that the more one knows oneself and stands within oneself, the stronger the judgment that even someone truly beloved to you is other than you will be. Being able to be yourself allows you to always have a separation between your self-experience and the experience of sympathy.
In a rather interesting inversion of my prior assertion, then, I have now reached the conclusion that knowledge of others is harder, for to know another as another I have to first know myself. But I am scary to myself, for I do not wish to acknowledge to myself my hidden motivations and my occult desires.
Would you really want to know yourself? to consciously hold yourself? to be aware of yourself? to stand within yourself?
To do this would be to acknowledge your faults and failings, to see the past and the present in a different light, to reshape your future.
Do you want to know yourself?
In St. Augustine's noverim te he begins: "May I know you; may I know myself." St. John of the Cross likewise has an interesting line in his poem The Living Flame of Love which roughly translates like this: "your lamps within my soul bright burning...turns the caverns of my soul to glorious light" The image in clear. My soul has depths and, as St. John would put it, potential 'centers' which are darkness to me. To explore them is scary because it involves tripping around in the dark, feeling my way through someone unknown.
St. Augustine's prayer, before asking noverim me, may I know myself, asks, noverim te: May I know Thee!
The order seems significant.
You see, the Socratic injunction: KNOW THYSELF! is as valid today as it was when it was first read above the door that the Delphic Oracle. We have a responsibility to know ourselves as truly as possible, no matter how deep and dark this is. Yet we cannot do it alone. We need an interior guide, we need to do it in relation to someone or something else.
I go further yet. No one can really know himself without, even to the point of forgetting himself, seeking to know God. Noverim me always follows upon noverim te. To KNOW THYSELF is the privilege par excellence of the holy man. And because he alone really knows himself, he alone really have the opportunity to know another.
If you asked me whether I want to know myself, I do not know that I could answer 'yes.' Sometimes I would rather have said that I wished to know you than to know myself. But in that case I was unable to fully differentiate myself from you.
One thing, though, is certain:
If I knew myself in relation to God, I would not be afraid to know you.
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The following is written just for fun. It has no purpose. It may not be worth reading.
 Ever since LBJ2 told me she dreamt every night and I confessed mournfully that I never remember a dream, I remember dreams. I won't say often. I now remember dreaming most nights. To actually remember my dreams is rarer, but it still occurs a number of times throughout a year. Thus, for instance, I have had two dreams this year about Michigan football. This will be a reoccurring dream for me until kickoff of the first game. These dreams usually consist, as a mentioned in a post three years ago, of realizing toward the last game that I have forgotten about the season and missed all the games.
I needn't go into that. For now it is enough to relate to you a dream from last night.
Last night -- well, actually this morning/afternoon -- was full of dreams. Many I cannot remember except by vague impressions, and those awfully wierd (one dream had to do with pimples, and that's all I can remember...weird...!). One, however, was fairly developed and interesting. It is this that I shall relate to you.
It was about three before my wedding when she told me about her profound doubts. She, the girl I shall call M. for reasons obvious to everyone who knows me well, was small and petite; pretty, her face roundish and pale, her skin smooth and clear. In reality, the girl in my dream was a girl I had known many years before, had not really talked much to at the time, and have not talked much with since. Aside from the waking weirdness of thinking of us marrying, it seemed in the dream like the most natural thing in the world.
Except for this conversation.
What was weird about the conversation, though, is that she refused to let me in. I stood on the outside of her doubts, standing next to her, occasionally touching her outside, but completely unable to touch her inside, assuage her, or even share her doubts with her.
Time passed, and we kept on moving forward with our plans. Or, rather, the plans already set in motion progressed on their own. Eventually we came to ourselves in a car, in the long drive to the location where the wedding was to take place. We talked in the car ride, but, as with the last few weeks, the now unspoken doubts formed the background silence giving the lie to our words.
We arrived. Parents with excitement to see us. Hustle and bustle. Parties. Eventually we come to the wedding day.
Now you must understand that I had one thought, hovering -- always hovering -- but I never dared to think about it. It was whether she would go through with the wedding. Perhaps there was a certain desire on my part to not 'rock the boat' until after we were safety wed. I wondered, at the same time, whether I should go through with it. Yet I was confident that I could handle any problems that would arise after the exchange of troth.
The Church was...a protestant church! it must have been. There was blue carpet and individual padded chairs. A glass podium took the place on the Catholic altar. I saw no priest. Time ticked by as I waited for the wedding to begin.
It is here that the dream turns into the typical "...and then I realized I was naked..." dream, for suddenly I looked at my cloths. Everyone around me was dressed in tuxes. I had a battered suit coat on and an ugly mismatched and stained pair and pants. Embarrassment suddenly seized me. People had been talking with me for hours, guests coming and sitting down (the church was beginning to fill). No one had commented. Not even my own mother had commented. I held my peace for a little time, wondering what to do. Then, as time drew nigh for the ceremony to begin, I rushed up to my bride.
"What's wrong?" she asked me.
"Look at my pants!"
She looked displeased. "How did this happen?" she asked. I had to confess my ignorance.
Without another word, she rushed away, hurrying to my mother, who bolted out of her row and told me that she would be right back. She was going to the store. I felt better, but realized that, no matter what she returned with, I would look bad.
Then I touched my face. A blush formed instantly, for I felt whiskers, and realized I hadn't shaved. As a ran into the bathroom, I realized I hadn't showered or in any way prepared. Somehow the simplest things had slipped through my mind (and through the notice of everyone around me). As I ran into the bathroom to inspect my beard -- there were only a few hairs, hardly noticeable -- I looked up on my forehead. And there, partially hidden by my hair, was the worst cluster of bright red blistering pimples I had ever had.
This was too much for me, so I woke up. Thankfully, I was spared the embarrassment of actually going through the wedding. This also means, however, that I don't know whether we actually went through with it or not.
Now, if only I had a Freudian Psychoanalysist to tell me what it all means...or maybe I was dreaming in Jungian types...
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I heard a professor once quote C.S. Lewis as saying that love is a death wish. It was on a tape, and I was driving through Saint Louis. The professor spoke of Romeo and Juliet and the other so-called love stories. But the advantage that Romeo and Juliet had, he pointed out, was that they both died after a few days. There was, he said, no 'happily ever after,' to worry about. To illustrate this point, he would occassionally have his freshman students write a fictional dialog between Romeo and Juliet twenty years later. The students found it immensely difficult. For how could Romeo and Juliet translate into 'Ever After?'
I need not raise here my eighth grade Language Arts teacher's assertion that Romeo and Juliet is, indeed, a horror, rather than a love, story. The evidence to back it up is quite interesting, but quite beyond the scope of my current reasoning. Horror story or not, Romeo and Juliet is hardly a 'love story' in the sense that a happily married couple is a love story.
My parents represent quite the love story. Two people from extremely different backgrounds, who think quite differently, relate to the outside world differently: two people brought together by something held in common that was so powerful that their differences become the fodder the fed the wedded self they had to make together.
It is a different love story, a love story of real life.
Plato in his dialog the Symposium has a character tell the myth of original man -- a spherical being with four arms and two heads. This original man became man and woman, and man has from that day forward been looking for his 'other half.'
There's a certain charming quality to a myth like this. Think of Sleepless in Seattle, a movie I doubt I have seen more than once. Think of the romanticism exhibited by Meg Ryan's character as she watches an affair to remember, which, incidentally, was my grandmother's favorite movie. She wants to find her other half. Now compare that to the moment where she gets off the plane and he sees her. There -- as they see each other for the first time -- the movie has us live out the "reality" of the romantic myth. And there's something about it that seems so right.
Actually Sleepless in Seattle tells its own myth, the myth of reincarnation: that the two missed each other in a previous life and so are looking for each other in this life. Regardless of the myth chosen, the picture painted is one of two people who are so inside of each other that they cannot but be in love.
Such a thing may happen. I hope it does. But, short of Mel Gibson's power to hear women's thoughts -- and that actually comes off as manipulative -- I doubt most people will encounter it in their lives except in moments. For most people, it will be like my parents, folks from different backgrounds (auto-workers family and liberally educated family, in the case of my folks), with different personalities and ways of speaking, different ways of approaching the world. For most people, forming a household will be a struggle, and will require a lot of patience and willingness to communicate and overlook faults.
That too is poetic. The couple that has learned to live a common life over the course of years, who has stopped expecting the other to 'be in his head' (as L. put it), but has come to understand the other person both as an individual and as an other half. Seeing people learn to love is quite poetic.
The professor I mentioned above told a story about two elderly people that he saw. He imagined that they had been together for 60 years. They went into a restaurant, not really speaking, just walking side by side. They didn't hold hands. They didn't touch. They only occasionally glanced at each other. As an aging married man himself, he was convinced that this expressed being 'in love.' I don't know about that, but I think it is poetic. The level of acceptance of the other person implicit in the imagine is astounding.
My papers this semester were on the unity of life and the unity of being respectively. I was forced, against my will, to come to a conclusion I originally wished to avoid. That conclusion is that individuality is, inescapably, prior to commonality. We are first and foremost individuals.
Where, then, does eros fit into it? If eros is, as C.S. Lewis stated, a death-wish, why do we have this death wish? It was Christopher West who said that there are three rings in marriage, beyond the two wedding rings, there is suffering. Why is it that passion drives us to the point of throwing ourselves headlong into something that would involve suffering and death? (the image of the crucified comes to mind...)
Eros is a death wish. I don't really doubt that. But it makes sense when you really think about it. If eros is to last, I have to die, and you have to die. It must become 'we,' and 'we' has to be more than the combination of you and me. I have to die to myself to be yours, and you have to die to yourself to be mine: otherwise I remain mine, and you remain yours.
Eros, which always gives the feeling of unity, even when the unity is ficted (I mean feigned or faked, but not intentionally so), encounters the frustration of individuality. Eros ultimately despairs, for it cannot flower as it would flower. Perhaps this is why all the great examples of love in ancient times were tragedies. Eros is the story of life, but the life of love is the story of death.
Where do these reflections take me? they are so far away from what I've been thinking for the last few days. I have been swept along in this post by the tag end of a particularly interesting day. I never thought, even 4 hours ago, that the day could possibly end like this. Thought of 'love' and 'ever after'? an appreciation of the poetry of life? it is so different in character from the day I just traversed, and even from all my thoughts of late. What has made me suddenly so cheerful?
Cheerful. Yes. But cheerful with a certain savor of bittersweetness. For, you see, I have come quite a long way in a mere 9 days, and where I am is tenuous. I do not doubt that I love poetry, myths, fairy tales, and the like (though I don't so much like poetry, myths, fairy tales, and suchlike). It is pleasant to enjoy it. And I do so hope that my friends lives are/will be fairy tales (bearing in mind that the fairy tale never hides the bad). The savor of bittersweetness, a sidetaste on my palette, comes when my reflective thoughts turn reflexive.
I wrote a few entries ago, to the spirit of the road less traveled by, of my excitement regarding my own future, that I was at a fork, and I did not know which way I would take, but either way it would be poetry. I have no doubt of this. My life will be poetry. What I lack now is the fork. It was not just one direction of the fork that vanished since I wrote that a fourth of a year ago: it was both paths. Fr. Myer's homily on Sunday was on fortitude as a gift of the Holy Spirit. That is certainly what I need right now. Fortitude and patience. For it will surely be at least a year before my life starts moving. I shall fill the year or more: I shall get a job, write, take the GREs, etc. It will be an enjoyable year, but I suspect it will be a year of limbo: a year where I am coming from nowhere and going to nowhere.
That can introduce bittersweetness into things, because love is a deathwish, and I would plunge into the depths of death's dark dread without a second look back. That option is not open to me. And that too is poetic. But it isn't a poem I can get exciting about. It is the poetry of the hidden years of Christ and day to day toil of a man. It is the poetry that goes unloved and unnoticed while it's being written.
But love is a deathwish, and I will not die alone.
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Some unworked thoughts. We'll see how many of them I end up embracing.
We are aware in this day and age that sex is often merely regarded as an activity like any other: something to do that is somewhat enjoyable. Those of us with strong experiences of the numinal (read : the wonder and awe that results from encounters with the transcendental) oftentimes emphasize at least the religious if not the sacred nature of sex. The religious nature is also used by the mundane to argue for and against such things as homosexual unions. But we emphasise the sacred because we recognise that sex has always been an act of worship. It is not without reason that many temples had prostitutes, that prophetesses prophesied in the thralls of passion, or that orgies often accompanied religious services. The pagans who engaged in this were, in my opinion, in no way filled with the sort of mechanistic lust that consumes modern man. Cult prostitution is not an experience like street prostitution, nor orgasmic worship an experience like the modern worship of orgasms. Sex as sacred is an experience outside the purview of most men today, as sex as vital and sex as spiritual is likewise out of ken.
There is a tendency to deny one of the possible aspects of sex for either ulterior motives, compromise with concupiscence, or simplification. Sex is certainly religious, likewise numinal, also sacred, sensible, sensuous, spiritual, serious, silly, and social. Some embrace the religious without any experience of the numinal or sacred in order to either preserve traditional marriage or embrace new forms of marriage. Others recognize the sensible nature or even the sensuous nature of sex while loosing the sacred or the spiritual. Some make it so serious that they cease to be silly or, indeed, to have fun. Others so lessen its notional content that it looses its somber character, ceases to be anything more than minimally expressive, and even stops being meaningful beyond the viewpoint of a rather exterior form of experience. Yet the solace of sex is lost to some degree when some true element of its notion is utterly lacking in experience.
I think that the two places that we have most lost the experience and even the notion wholistic sex are the realms of the sacred and the social. I don't even see many people trying to restore these two realms. Sex as a sacrament is sex as worship. Sex as a procreative type act is sex as political activity. But we see sex as private. Is sex is worship and political activity, it is not purely private. It has consequences and ramifications. God has no place in the world of private passion. Neither is it possible to betray, injure, or even impact those not present. Sex, inherently social because it most of needs involve two people, becomes hedonistic and even narcissistic. In fact, sex always involves nor than 2 persons. It impacts a field of persons and has societal ramififications. It also includes at least divine if not angelic persons. It is a rich spiritual act, an immense vital action, a biological activity.
Some thinkers have posited that through the primordial activities of sexual, one enters into a stream of life that brings about unity not just with persons, but even unity with all of life. In sex one is most like the angels and most like the animals.
Of course, I won't deny that it is absolutely ridiculous to deny that sex should be a private as of love between two people.
That I do not deny that is, however, exactly my point. I want to feel free to live in the tension of battling truths. I do not want to deny the mundane character of it in favor the supernal. Nor to reject the private or public character. To reduce it to mechanism, sensation, sensuality, vitality, or spirituality. I do not want to notionalize it excessively nor deny the meaning content of it.
People are too ready to either shrug off completely the philosophy (or theology!) of sex or solve the experiential tensions by reducing its cognitive content to something simple.
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We can speak of feelings and sensations as 'pleasant' or as 'unpleasant;' we can identify 'pain' and 'pleasure;' we can feel 'sorrow' and 'joy.' But these do not always overlap. There is a 'sweet sorry' an 'happy pain,' an 'unpleasant pleasure.' Like Shreck's onion, our sensitive-emotional life is full of layers and contradictions. Indeed, I dare maintain that the various levels on which we can react to something are so complex that we cannot possible -- in any case -- ever fully predict all the sensitive-emotional effects any given action will have.
Having brought forth this basic notion of complexity, I shall now turn to the primary thing that is interesting me. And that is the question of 'being hurt' or 'hurting oneself.' 'Hurt' is certainly a nebulous concept; a multivalent word predicable with an almost infinite number of analogies. The basic notion -- the most abstract form -- of the word is related to 'damage,' i.e.wounding the integrity of a thing or causing something due to the thing as a whole to cease being present. And even this most abstract form can be used analogously. So, for instance, to say 'that thought hurt my mind' does not exactly follow that most abstract sense of the word 'hurt.' For in this case, as when I say 'exercise hurts my muscles,' the 'hurt' is not detracting from the wholeness except accidentally. But there is a common experience between the two, and even some temporary loss of wholeness.
I have diverged into boring tangents. Back to my thoughts.
One of the worries involved in intense interpersonal relations is the fear of hurting the other, or, perhaps, of being hurt by the other. I can ask myself, 'will x hurt me?' Of course this question only makes sense in relation to other factors. If we take the most abstract notion of 'to hurt,' and even more if we allow for analogies to that notion, we can honestly say that there is not a single thing we ever do that does not in some way hurt. For, if even diving love hurts, everything 'hurts' in some sense.
Reflecting back on my life I can honestly say that there has never been a single moment in my memory when I was not experiencing some sort of pain, nor a single time when something did not hurt, nor a single action or passion that did not in some way hurt me. So what? Does that mean that I have not had a single pleasant moment, nor ever experienced joy, nor was ever able to call myself in any way happy? ...everything was beautiful...and nothing hurt... God forbid! I can -- and have -- called moments intensely pleasurable, insisted that I was filled with joy, and even termed myself unequivocally happy. But I never really have had the experience of both experiencing everything being beautiful and nothing hurting at the same time: because beauty hurts.
To ask the question: will this hurt me? it is not enough to wonder whether the outcome will be pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow, or even pleasant or unpleasant. Chances are that the outcome will be all of these. on some level.
For, as 'hurt' can be a multivalent word, so also are all the others. Used absolutely, one would presume that 'happiness,' for instance, could not include any imperfection, pain, or sorrow (thus can Aristotle say that a man is not truly happy whose descendants turn out bad, even though he be dead before they turn out bad). But I can recognize being 'happy' and 'unhappy' at the same time. And depending on what I take to be 'mostly me,' I can define myself as 'happy' or 'unhappy' in relation to any number of joys or sorrows.
'Will this hurt me?' presupposes both self-knowledge and a certain judgement about what is most important in me. I have to be willing to accept this imperfection or that unfulfillment because I judge that those will not hurt the 'me' I regard to be 'mostly me.'
As I attempted to do some of my late work this afternoon, a thought occured to me. Previously went I had thought about 'hurting' or 'being hurt,' I had thought about it personally: this will hurt me; or: this will hurt you in some way. What I had not considered was the virtual ways in which one can be hurt. Some things may not hurt now that hurt later: I may not be hurting the 'present me' but I may be hurting the 'future me.'
An obvious instance of this is when I cut off my future options. Obviously there is a great amount of immediate damage that is done, for instance, by me helping an hypothetical girl to procure an abortion. What may not occur to me instantly, however, is that I have -- should I have chosen to do that -- have hurt myself by establishing an impediment to the priesthood. If I should ever wish to be ordained later in life, I would then realize the damage I had done to myself.
A point: decisions have consequences. And the consequences are not always immediately available to us. What man, for instance, in choosing to help a woman procure an abortion considers and accepts that this will prevent him from joining the priesthood? But this sort of thing is happening all the time. It is unfortunate that it is often not until the decision has already been made -- and often not until much later -- that I realize the totally ramifications of a decision and the way in which I have hurt myself virtually.
I believe that people realize this when they complain that the consequences of a decision keep on coming. That, in fact, they can never fully escape some rash decision of the past.
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Saturday, February 28th, 2009
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I finally read part of the sappy, other-the-top, outrageously Catholic, cheerful-go-lucky romance novel I wrote a few years back. It had taken me awhile to build up the courage to read any of it, because I remember it being so sappy.
I was not dissapointed!
And yet, what I had thought would make me depressed, actually made me quite happy.
Unfortunately, the novel is incomplete! Some of the best parts have yet to be written! And I think I should finish it; just so that my work of -- incredibly funny -- art may be perfected. I shall, then, finish it with little over-the-top prose sections, such as the following one that I just composed for your amusement.A period of silence passed over them as the evening wind grew cooler. The one drew the other closer to himself to the point that she actually rested half on top of him, his arms enclosing her completely and his fingers gripping each other as if to establish a bond that could not break. A cloud had briefly passed over the moon, but this only served to make more striking the stars that both gazed upon.
At last Tony broke the silence.
"I think I want to buy a field after we're married."
A look of shock. "Why on earth would you want to buy a field?" she asked, then, with her eye-brows arched slightly and head tipped to the side, she presented him with a feigned look like one baffled. "You're not trying to take up farming, are you?"
"That's not precisely the idea," stated the man, "but I think I would like to take up plowing. Maybe just as a hobby."
"Plowing?" the look was genuinely baffled now, "Why plowing."
"Because," he said, tossing a quick kiss at her down-turned lips, and kissing again, "I," and again, "think it's rather a good occupation for a husband. Don't," another kiss," you," and another one, "agree?"
The tinkle of her laugh sounded in his ears; her faked frown vanished. "And why, my dear, is it such a good occupation for a married man?"
He didn't answer, but rather looked at her seriously. Then a twitching began at the edges of his soon up-turned lips and his eyes began to glimmer with mirth. "Think about it, dear," he told her.
Then, a moment later: "Hey!" said Maria in an infuriated tone, "you shouldn't be thinking about plowing me! I'm not a field!"
"Oh? Then how come children grow in you?"
"I just... I don't..." she stuttered for a moment, then she too began to laugh.
"Besides," he assured her, "it's sacramental."
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I had blessed today Holy Salt and Holy Water -- or, rather, Sanctand Salt (Salt to be Sanctified) and Sanctand Water (Water to be Sanctified). The priest gave me a little bit of grief, and I may have told a white lie. I'm not sure. He asked me whether the blessing of salt and water I wanted him to use was 'for baptism;' I said 'no, for ordinary use.' I claimed that it was from the Roman Ritual and, but not for baptism. That may have not been true. You see, I trusted that these prayers were fine for use outside of baptism because I had always heard of the use of Holy Salt, and these were the prayers all the websites said to use. But when I had actually searched the Roman Ritual, I couldn't find the prayers, except under the rite for baptism. I assumed, however, that I didn't know where to look, and that all the websites were correct.
What he wanted to know was whether the this sacramental (holy salt) was a traditional one. He had never blessed salt before except for use in baptism. I assured him that I thought that this was a traditional sacramental used in many different purposes. He agreed to pray the prayers.
My conscience doesn't really bother me about what I said, at least not much. What I asserted was technically beyond my knowledge, but I was fairly sure that what I was asking him to do was legitimate, and it was that that I was trying to assure him by answering his question with the words: 'No, for ordinary use.' I hardly even thought before I said that.
I do have one doubt, however, and that is not about the exorcism of the salt, but about the exorcism of the water. I've heard of Holy Salt all the time, but I've never heard of Exorcised Water used for anything except baptism. My impression was that the priests blessed the water with a simple blessing.
In any event, I feel great now that I have these demon-free sacramentals! I have struggled with oppression my whole life. Satan and my personal temptor -- lets call him Temptie (damned be his name) -- surely hate these sacramentals. Along with constant recourse to St. Benedict and St. Michael, the recitation of prayers against the devil, and the use of my St. Benedict medal, I am confident that God will grant me victory in these daily battles. But this through no merit of mine own. Only because the Lord is granting me the prudence to use spiritual weapons -- weapons that rely not on mine own strength.
Ho ho! I think I figured it out! I shall have to check, but I suspect that the exorcism of salt comes not from the section entitled 'Blessings for Items Designated for Ordinary Use,' but, rather, from the Exorcism section. I know that Holy Salt has many uses beyond just baptism!
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My memory experience is, to a large degree, affective, as opposed to imaginative or discursive. What I mean by this is that, when I bring a memory to mind, my most conscious experience of it is not imaging it or 'thinking about it' but, rather, just feeling it. It is like my memory presents content to my emotions, and my emotions penetrate the memories and swim around within them.
The memory, when it has been brought to mind, has several important qualities; and these are what I wish to examine briefly here. The first important quality about 'a' memory is that 'it' is given as a 'whole.' The memory has a definite boundary to it from the moment I bring it up. If I imagine it, I begin somewhere, and I end somewhere. If I describe it within my mind, I eventually reach the point where the memory ceases -- where no further description is possible, because I have reached its termination.
The next important quality is that a memory is comprised of memories, and each memory is a discreet event. More often than not, I experience memories in this sense as individual and discreet 'freeze frame' fantasies. These are usually sense related, in fact, they are usually visual. Sometimes I have a smell in my memory, or a taste, or a touch, or a sound: but usually the discreet event is an image. Still, it need not be imagined at all. I even if I describe a memory 'We did this, then this, then this,' I describe 'it' as a series of discreet events.
Take, for example, my description of that fateful day in second grade when I 'fell in love.' I present the atmosphere ('the snow swirled around us, like a wall on every side, isolating us from the world. The sound of the wind dampened the noises of children floating from across the playground. Everything else seemed distant and far away, except the tires we tread upon, and this "other"...') The atmosphere may have images attached to it, but it is more an expression of feeling. The wind and the snow had purpose, and the purpose was understood by the affective content of the event. But the purpose in describing it is both to provide the affective atmosphere necessary to understand the memory ('...isolating us from the world...'; '...damped the noises...'; 'Everything else seemed far away...') and the data necessary to imagine it. You know, by the phrases of intimacy, the feelings that provide, to a large part, the content of the memory, and you know (in a not unrelated fashion) the sights and sounds you should be imagining: swirling snow, subconscious far off noises of children playing. In my case, the description includes a set of images as well, all the images connected to the location: the trees, the play structures, the field, the houses, the parking lot, the buildings, and the various things people did on them, to name a few.
Next I describe what happened ('We spoke only once, to introduce ourselves to each other. Then, laughing, we scampered back and forth, and again, back and forth'). You can see how multiple 'events' are described here. These 'events' could easily be broken up into other 'events.' The introduction is actually multiple events: I introduce myself, she introduces herself, I ask where she lives, she asks where I live, I ask whether she's Catholic, I ask what Church she goes to.
What seems interesting to me, and the reason why I began writing this in the first place, is the difference between the event givenness of the memory, and the immediate experience at the time. It seems quite interesting to me how memories are given in acts and events, but at the time, it all flowed together.
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Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
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St. Josemaria Escriva, to whose writings I return again and again, wrote (The Way, 360): "How frankly you laughed when I advised you to put your youthful years under the protection of St. Raphael, 'So that he'll lead you, as he did young Tobias, to a holy marriage with a girl who is young and pretty -- and rich,' I added jokingly. And then how thoughtful you became, when I went on to advise you to put yourself under the patronage of that youthful apostle John, in case God were to ask more of you."
This seems like particularly good advice to me! I have never had a particularly strong devotion to either of these Saints, though both have had a special place in my heart. I shall try to think of a way to implore their patronage in particular ways.
That question of 'trusting God' is quite a difficult one to me. Again and again in recent memory I have had to turn to God and say, in essence, 'not my will, but Thine be done;' and again, 'Jesus, I trust in Thee;' and again, 'Whatever Thou willest, Lord!'
There is a tension between two attitudes, seemingly in conflict. One, a quietistic attitude, refuses to do anything without the movement of the Lord, as if our nature was so depraved that even our basic inclinations were not good. The other attempts to justify doing whatever corresponds to one's basic inclinations, as if God communicated His will in no other way than by inspiring our desires and frustrating our choices contrary to it. As with all virtues, the truth is moderate. It is neither.
I have at times gone to extremes one way or the other. My understanding of 'listening to the voice of God' certainly traversed the line into the paralyzing realm of the first extreme. I corrected it by, for a time, going to the other extreme. Because I had the insight through a class that the objects and correspond to natural desires are good. This was followed by a further insight that a decision to pursue something good can be a good decision. But I took these insights too far. I derived from them that, because human nature was good, and grace did not destroy nature, the proper way to act was to make good choices and assume that if they didn't correspond to God's will, He'd correct them.
The truth is, of course, somewhere in the middle.
I should neither, our of fear that my desires are not within the will of God, operate according to my desires with a certain rebellious attitude, an attitude that proclaims: whether this be contrary to the will of God, this I have chosen to do. If I do that, my life falls apart. Neither, out of fear that my desires are not within the will of God, should I be immobilized and refuse to move until I am 'certain.'
Rather, I need to fly to prayer, and to the patronage of the Saints who best concern my interests. I need to continually mortify my will, but still make decisions -- but with prudence.
These Saints, Raphael and John, are quite good for my current life. I have been afraid for so long to pray in any way that I be lead to a good women for my wife. precisely because I desire it. St. Raphael is perfect, because I have had such a love of the story of Tobias for so many years. But St. John also is perfect, because it is not my will that must be done.
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It has so happened, from time to time, that I have seen the face of someone fair and someone beautiful. It has so happened, from time to time, that that face has not moved me. I do not speak merely of the mass produced beauty on display in every street -- the women walking about without character or individuality, but with only makeup and ficted personality. There genuinely, and naturally, beautiful people -- men and women -- whom I have seen yet who have not grabbed me.
The faces that have moved me -- the ones on which my heart has gazed and in which it has rejoiced -- have oftentimes not been the ones others would consider fairer than the sons of man. Indeed, it has so happened, from time to time, that the face that was to grip me and fill my fantasy did not even at first attract me! or, other times, that it registered as a fine specimen of a face to me, but in a dispassionate way.
Some have said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some have been wrong.
Beauty is in the thing being itself; it is in the proportion of the thing, the nature of the thing, and the harmony of the thing. To place beauty within the eye of the beholder is to err exceedingly.
But it is not so much to err because it is far from the truth, but rather because it mimics so precisely the truth.
And this is the truth: that not everything that is beautiful is seen as beautiful, and not everything that is more beautiful is seen as more beautiful, nor everything that is less beautiful as less beautiful. Because beauty is, in fact, so closely connected with the eye, or, more precisely, the heart of the beholder. But this not as the creator the beauty, but as the illuminator. Love may not create the beauty, and it may not be the place where the beauty principally resides, but love permits the eye, the mind, and the heart to sense, know, and enjoy beauty.
A beautiful face cannot be seen as beautiful until grace, that is favor, is poured out upon it.
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I just started another specialty blog. I bet you all think I'm going over board. This one is a quote journal. It's to help me record and keep organized all the various quotations I find during my studies. We'll see if I use it.
This brings my total number of blogs up to seven, or eight, if you count this one.
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My life is a poem. Or at least it will be a poem. As I have studied tonight, thoughts have plagued me. The excitement that studies brew within me oft overflows into a basin of wonderment. And I wash my hands in it.
I must wonder exceedingly at what hath happened since the New Year. It is amazing how different the characters between one semester and another can be. I read through the day before yesterday some journal entries from last semester. Horror engulfed me. I was horrified at who I was, at what I did, at the passions that persisted within me and my lack of fortitude in fighting them. I was a slave. And far from the handmaiden of the Lord, I was the slave of a cruel mistress. My eyes were on her until she showed me mercy. But the mercy I wished for was death.
Not so this semester, not so. My struggles have been much more surface, for the mode of my living has rather stable. I have had a greater foundation.
So much hath happened. Not, surly, as happened last semester, when the happenings rendered me hapless. Hope. That has been the content of this years happenings so far. It is like a road stretching out before me. I wonder at it.
But down the line, only a little ways, I see a fork.
Right now, if I look to my left or to my right, I can see through the thick trees of poetry, the prosaic industrialization of 'ordinary life.' But, when I reach the fork in the road, all I can see are tress, moss, flowers, leaves.
What amazed me, when thinking about this earlier tonight, was how different the two life paths I can take are; what difference in my decisions I would have to embrace to traverse the one versus the other. Both, of course, have the same final end: the glory of God and union with Him, and helping people to know, love, and serve God in this life, and be happy with him in the next. But the proximate means of doing these are so different, and the lifestyle either would entail is so different.
What amazes me, as I ponder this imminent distinction, is that both of these paths are pure poetry. The thought occurred to me, about an hour ago, that I am pure poetry; that my life is pure poetry. I cannot be part of industrialized man -- at least not fully -- because I a living poem. My life has to be an expression of poetry -- with all the glory and horror than entails -- because were it to be any different, it would be a lie.
Surely you think, by now, that you know what I'm getting at. I assure you that you don't. At least you don't know fully.
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 Every year, around this time, when the season of weeks has been traversed, and pre-lent is concluded, we enter into the Lenten season. Lent is a time of penance. Unfortunately the attitude of 'penance' has oft been replaced with the notion of 'giving something up.' Giving something up is, of course, all well an good as a practical means of penance, but it becomes totally useless when it replaces a spirit of penance.
This is my approach to Lenten penance. I do specific things. I hold myself to hard and fast rules. I do each one both to oppose some vice and promote virtue, and for some intention -- such as in reparation for previous sins, to obtain some grace, or for some person. But I do not stop there. I try to keep the notion of penance always habitually in my mind, so that it made also become a habit out of which I make decisions, and even a foundation for the way I emotionally experience the days of lent. Lent, then, becomes something not that I experience only when the craving for chocolate pinches me, but every waking moment, and even in my sleep.
Why do we need to do penance? There are, I believe, three reasons.
In the first place, we need to do penance because our sins have broken the order of justice, and we need to repair it.
In the second place, we need to do penance because our sins have hurt us, and we are in need of doing actions to beseech God for the graces of healing.
In the third place, we need to do penance because our sins remain with us in our will and in our appetites. Even after we repent of a sin, we can't fully undo the memory of it, the motion that we made to accomplish it, or the fact that we did it. The impression that this leaves on us hurts us; it has consequences both in that we may be more likely to commit that sin or another sin related to it again, and in that it destroys our self-integration. Penance produces purity of heart. By removing the creatures to which we are attached, we have the opportunity to focus our appetites on God alone; and, in so doing, to gather ourselves together, to possess ourselves, and to gain the ability to give ourselves to God. In essence, penance overcomes bad habits.
When we do the practices of penance, such as fasting, we are, in fact, imitating Christ. And we know we have to do things, that no one is exempt, because, even the one person who could exempt Himself from these practices did them. And in so doing, He sanctified them, and He infused them with supernal powers: powers to liberate us from our sins, to heal us interiorly, to undo what we have done, to restore lost innocence.
In my case, one of the central causes of interior damage is the Internet. It has been since before I was ten, but increasingly so as I got older. When I was in seventh grade, for instance, it became a source of exercising vain hope of contact with my unrequited loves. It has been the source of emotional outpouring, vain curiosity, idleness, interior dissipation, sloth, acedia, despair, lust, and all manners of intemperance. And all these things -- all these acts of the past -- remain within me in the ways described above. It makes it difficult for me to use the internet in the right way.
It is no wonder, then, that my biggest Lenten struggles so often involve the internet. I, as I do in the rest of my life decisions, begin with the purist of intentions. I make unreasonable decisions to pursue these intentions. When I can't follow through on my decisions, guilt grants me the grace to not feel so bad about breaking other decisions. Eventually I don't follow through on my intentions.
This Lent, I hope to be different.
I am living in a house with Internet, so in that sense it would seem to be harder. But the internet is Peter's, and it is password protected with his password. I once knew the password, but I have forgotten it. So, when the wireless password is deleted, the only way to access the internet is by network cable. So it is simplicity itself! I had worked it out with Peter that he will hide the network cables and only bring them out on Sundays (after First Vespers) and when I specifically ask him to, giving him the reasons why I want it.
That leaves the school internet. I could -- for I know myself too well -- end up habitually dwelling in the computer labs. After all, the agony of being separated from the internet when I know it so so close is so hard to bear! Even earlier today, when I was downstairs reading for a paper due at 2:15, I felt it. I sneered at it for awhile. I laughed at my roaring appetites. But, eventually, a good blog idea hit me, so here I am, typing away (and I'm not even typing the idea that hit me!)
How do I protect myself from over using the internet at school and, gradually, breaking all my internet abstentions?
I believe the answer lies in limiting my use of the internet.
Thus am I announcing my internet policy:
First:
Because the primary attachments are to Facebook, I am 'giving up' Facebook for lent. Completely. Utterly. Not even signing in on Sundays. If you catch me cheating, please, rebuke me utterly.
Second:
Because news, information, the new, and the exciting are all major motivators of my habitual curiosity (the 'lust of the eyes' as it was once called), I am 'giving up' Google reader. Once again, if I share anything on Google Reader, hold me accountable. Shame me into keeping this! I am giving up Google Reader for the entirety of Lent, Sundays in included.
Third:
Because there is no much that one can 'surf,' and I can find ways to sublimate the 'freedom' not using Facebook and Google Reader can give me, I shall not be visiting any website during the week except my primary e-mail accounts (the joe at gryniewicz account, and the totustuus at gmail account), and responding to comments on my blog.
Fourth:
I shall continue blogging. But I will do it by writing the blog posts on my computer during the week while I am off-line, and only posting them on Sunday, after First Vespers.
Fifth:
On Sunday's I will give myself to luxury of visiting any section of the internet I wish, except, of course, the two places already mentioned. This may include individual blogs.
This brings me to a very important point: I don't know your blog addresses by heart. I keep them on Google reader so that I don't have to know them by heart. Thus, if you think you might be posting over Lent, and you would like me to follow what you have to say, I would appreciate it if you would leave me a comment at end of this entry.
Which is now.
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totustuusmaria's journal
melancholy.
thoughtful.
