It just occurred to me, after talking with some secular neighbors, that many people are not Christians, yet desire to celebrate Christmas anyway. How do they do it? One friend of mine (who is ostensibly Christian) is having what I call The Movie Christmas. On Christmas day she is driving to a Scandinavian-themed town to have Belgian waffles, and then will go see a horror movie with her friend. This stirred up a feeling of vague unease within me, hence the topic of this post.
I've been so wrapped up in my religious musings that I forgot to take non-religious people into account. They have weak faith or no faith at all in Christ. And yet, rather than be militantly anti-Christmas, they feel entitled to take part in whatever secular offerings our culture (yech! I hate that phrase, yet it fits so often...) serves up for the holiday. Visiting with friends and family, shopping, eating, recreating, movie-going, or just simply sleeping is, for them, the best way to spend the day.
You can't try and tell these people that they're wrong. Deep inside, they must know. That's why they have to do SOMETHING. But the trouble is, the something they end up doing isn't for God, or other people. It's ultimately for themselves. If we're not confessing Christ, we must try to actively avoid Him. If we de-throne God, we end up placing ourselves in His place. We must hurry and scurry to gather up nuts to try and fill up the hole in our hearts He has left behind. We must salve the wound by some means--
1) The Big Money Blow-Out Christmas
Surely, these people are out there. They are the ones who watch the ads, because they've been saving up all their wants for "big stuff" all year, and now they're determined...they're finally going to buy the new BMW, the huge flat-screen TV, the mondo stereo system, or the 15' tree. Folks of more modest means end up spending way too much money--especially to impress jaded kids--because that's what they've been led to expect. The trend of Protestants cancelling Christmas day services merely feeds this tendency--we pay lip service to Jesus, but it's really all about fun, family, food, and new stuff.
2) The Vintage Christmas
Nostalgia, not faith, gets these people going. They long for Christmases past, watch old holiday films--like Miracle on 34th Street or It's a Wonderful Life--with religious intensity. They scan magazines to create the perfect traditional Christmas decor for their homes, without any images of the Nativity or mentions of Christianity. They may have kept lists for months and shopped for days so as to have just the perfect gift on hand for everyone. They want the frosting without the cookie, light without heat, and the egg-nog without the calories. They often have huge parties or place great emphasis on "family time" as the reason for the season.
3) The Football / Shop-til-you-drop Christmas
This kind of celebration often happens concurrently, with the men holed up in the house roaring over bad referee calls while the women escape to the mall for deep Christmas-day discounts. What's sad about this kind of Christmas is that it divides families and keeps them focused on other stuff. Unfortunately, we have probably all had one of these, because it keeps people at large family gatherings from killing each other.
5) The Bah Humbug Christmas
This is the kind of Christmas that old people have after the kids have left the house, and with them, any kind of religiosity on the part of the parents. "Oh, we used to put on such a production for the kids," they chuckle. "But this year we didn't even put up a tree. Harold is asleep on the couch, and I'm due over at Barb's for Bunco." Pretending that Christmas is not happening is the magic bullet for them.
So what do we do? I don't want to judge these people, I want to evangelize them. In a block full of blow-up santas and light-up deer, I really wanted to have a nativity scene, but I couldn't find one. My cookies have fallen flat (I made them with margarine--DOH!). I would like to distribute some small token gift to my neighbors, but don't want to offend. So, I invite suggestions. How do you deal with this problem? What other kinds of secular Christmas revelry have I missed?
Monday, December 18, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
The thinning of the veil
As I write this, my grandfather is dying. They have "sent him home to die"--said he had six to twelve months left, depending on how his diet and medications are balanced. If even ONE little thing gets out of whack, he's dead. They argue over whether he can have another piece of bread, and my mom says he's hungry all the time. He sneaks candy when no one's looking. My black-sheep uncle is staying with them and overseeing everything, but he hasn't got the greatest bedside manner, says my mom.
When I asked if he had received the Anointing of the Sick, my mom and grandma seemed nonplussed. "He'll never accept that," said my Mom. "He thinks it's Last Rites, and he can't face his own mortality. He never even made a will." My grandma said, "He's had a good run, and it's in God's hands now." Meanwhile, I am struggling with my own frustration...yeah, but we can help him to accept his birth into eternity with grace--I tried to say in the gentlest way possible.
In 1999, I was in Hong Kong with the boat for a quick liberty stop. But it happened to be the Chinese New Year--and you could read microfilm by the skyscrapers set ablaze with electricity. In contrast, our Christian New Year begins with a hush and an old song with a somber lilt. O Come, Emmanuel! The Office readings all have as their refrain, Come, Lord Jesus! Come save us from our sins, from the darkness. Be our light. What happens in the beginning of a wedding, when the bride reaches the altar? He raises her veil, so that all can look upon her beauty. Your light will come, Jerusalem. The Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.
Seems like people shut into themselves in winter, when trees drop their leaves and people finally start to put on some clothes. But what we should be doing is baring our souls. Our liturgical readings blend Christ's Second Coming with his first, to remind us of death, last things, judgment. Recently, two people I know have died. When I pray at night, I try to wrap my mind around the sum and span of their lives--the mere 40 or 50 years these two have known on this earth (taken by surprise), with no hint of an ending--compared with eternity. For eternity they are either for or against Jesus, spending the deathless ages in unspeakable joy or remorseless misery. Makes you think.
One of the things it makes me think is that our real work is not in this life. Think of the great saints who have died declaiming completely the worth of all their heroic works. "Now we begin," St. Francis is reported to have said at death. "For from before until now we have done nothing." St. Thomas Aquinas claimed all his great theological works were merely "straw." St. Therese of Liseiux wrote that, while she would have preferred to have become a missioner, even to suffer martyrdom--she was, rather, only a little plaything of the Child Jesus. Jesus told St. Faustina Kowalska that she was to be the Secretary of His Divine Mercy for her life on Earth. Any guesses as to what she's doing up in Heaven?
Flip on a television and watch the commericals for five minutes, and you'll get a completely opposite view. "Your future is now!" the ads scream. "Life is only worth all the pleasure and enjoyment you can get out of it...pursue health, wealth, beauty, and fame, and you've got it made. Live for the moment, because that's all there is, folks!" But what a bare, poor life that is compared with even the flashes of joy we experience in this life, the fullness of which can only be achieved in Heaven. And yet the thick, suffocating veil of materiality seems impenetrable. How can we deepen our sense of the endless? How can we apprehend immortality?
1. Advent is a great time to start praying. If you don't already have some kind of daily devotion, start one now. Since last year I have been praying Morning and Evening Prayer, with the super-abbreviated breviary, and it's mostly worked out. I love being steeped in the liturgical year instead of the secular year. It's a great way to meditate and memorize Scripture. Plus, it's cool to sign your correspondence with "The Feast of the..." just like bishops and cardinals do.
2. Start singing. Remember any hymns from church? Christmas carols? I'm having to re-learn them because they've been weeded out of radio and TV and the grocery store. I copy down hymns after Mass while my husband is dragging the toddler to the van, then sing from my scraps of paper when I'm alone with the kids.
3. Turn off the voices. It's hard to cultivate an inner dialogue with the Lord when you've got the TV blaring in the background. I limit TV time to Sesame Street and Bob, but after that it's off. Sometimes I listen to Catholic radio. But not always.
4. Take a mind trip. The imagination is a transcendent thing. It's no accident that every human being walking around this planet has an entire galaxy between their ears. Try imagining that when you're driving down the street. Whoa...if they only knew. When you lay down at night and your back/knees/feet/head is hurting, say to yourself, I've got a brand new one in Heaven. If you've had a bad day...I'm one day closer to being home with you, Jesus. Then try and imagine Jesus holding you, comforting you, welcoming you. Try to imagine what would happen if you died tonight. What if you woke up to...Him?? How would you live your day differently?
Don't accept the morbidity that surrounds death in our culture. Surrender to your own mortality. Accept the blinding fact that Jesus waits just beyond the curtain, and what he holds in trust for you is beyond your imagination. And you can't wait to get there! But if you just try to imagine it, using what faculties he gave you--he might grant to you a glimpse through the veil. I hope He gives something like that to my grandpa.
Please pray for him, his name is Harry.
When I asked if he had received the Anointing of the Sick, my mom and grandma seemed nonplussed. "He'll never accept that," said my Mom. "He thinks it's Last Rites, and he can't face his own mortality. He never even made a will." My grandma said, "He's had a good run, and it's in God's hands now." Meanwhile, I am struggling with my own frustration...yeah, but we can help him to accept his birth into eternity with grace--I tried to say in the gentlest way possible.
In 1999, I was in Hong Kong with the boat for a quick liberty stop. But it happened to be the Chinese New Year--and you could read microfilm by the skyscrapers set ablaze with electricity. In contrast, our Christian New Year begins with a hush and an old song with a somber lilt. O Come, Emmanuel! The Office readings all have as their refrain, Come, Lord Jesus! Come save us from our sins, from the darkness. Be our light. What happens in the beginning of a wedding, when the bride reaches the altar? He raises her veil, so that all can look upon her beauty. Your light will come, Jerusalem. The Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.
Seems like people shut into themselves in winter, when trees drop their leaves and people finally start to put on some clothes. But what we should be doing is baring our souls. Our liturgical readings blend Christ's Second Coming with his first, to remind us of death, last things, judgment. Recently, two people I know have died. When I pray at night, I try to wrap my mind around the sum and span of their lives--the mere 40 or 50 years these two have known on this earth (taken by surprise), with no hint of an ending--compared with eternity. For eternity they are either for or against Jesus, spending the deathless ages in unspeakable joy or remorseless misery. Makes you think.
One of the things it makes me think is that our real work is not in this life. Think of the great saints who have died declaiming completely the worth of all their heroic works. "Now we begin," St. Francis is reported to have said at death. "For from before until now we have done nothing." St. Thomas Aquinas claimed all his great theological works were merely "straw." St. Therese of Liseiux wrote that, while she would have preferred to have become a missioner, even to suffer martyrdom--she was, rather, only a little plaything of the Child Jesus. Jesus told St. Faustina Kowalska that she was to be the Secretary of His Divine Mercy for her life on Earth. Any guesses as to what she's doing up in Heaven?
Flip on a television and watch the commericals for five minutes, and you'll get a completely opposite view. "Your future is now!" the ads scream. "Life is only worth all the pleasure and enjoyment you can get out of it...pursue health, wealth, beauty, and fame, and you've got it made. Live for the moment, because that's all there is, folks!" But what a bare, poor life that is compared with even the flashes of joy we experience in this life, the fullness of which can only be achieved in Heaven. And yet the thick, suffocating veil of materiality seems impenetrable. How can we deepen our sense of the endless? How can we apprehend immortality?
1. Advent is a great time to start praying. If you don't already have some kind of daily devotion, start one now. Since last year I have been praying Morning and Evening Prayer, with the super-abbreviated breviary, and it's mostly worked out. I love being steeped in the liturgical year instead of the secular year. It's a great way to meditate and memorize Scripture. Plus, it's cool to sign your correspondence with "The Feast of the..." just like bishops and cardinals do.
2. Start singing. Remember any hymns from church? Christmas carols? I'm having to re-learn them because they've been weeded out of radio and TV and the grocery store. I copy down hymns after Mass while my husband is dragging the toddler to the van, then sing from my scraps of paper when I'm alone with the kids.
3. Turn off the voices. It's hard to cultivate an inner dialogue with the Lord when you've got the TV blaring in the background. I limit TV time to Sesame Street and Bob, but after that it's off. Sometimes I listen to Catholic radio. But not always.
4. Take a mind trip. The imagination is a transcendent thing. It's no accident that every human being walking around this planet has an entire galaxy between their ears. Try imagining that when you're driving down the street. Whoa...if they only knew. When you lay down at night and your back/knees/feet/head is hurting, say to yourself, I've got a brand new one in Heaven. If you've had a bad day...I'm one day closer to being home with you, Jesus. Then try and imagine Jesus holding you, comforting you, welcoming you. Try to imagine what would happen if you died tonight. What if you woke up to...Him?? How would you live your day differently?
Don't accept the morbidity that surrounds death in our culture. Surrender to your own mortality. Accept the blinding fact that Jesus waits just beyond the curtain, and what he holds in trust for you is beyond your imagination. And you can't wait to get there! But if you just try to imagine it, using what faculties he gave you--he might grant to you a glimpse through the veil. I hope He gives something like that to my grandpa.
Please pray for him, his name is Harry.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Starving for Beauty
NO, this is not a post on anorexia--just a little epiphany I had today while wrapping presents. I got this mega-huge bag of old ribbon spools at Goodwill a few months ago, everything from red and white gingham to chartreuse polka dots, with a lot of good Christmas colors, but other crazy stuff too. And I had to wrap a big pile of presents so I used a good bit of the crazy stuff in there too. I got more and more elaborate with the wrapping, meditatively matching (and mis-matching) colors and patterns on top of the already-printed wrapping paper. I reminisced about past Christmases and thought about what made them special. All the time I thought, "I'm stupid for wasting time doing up these packages that are going to be shredded in no time flat."
But I wanted everyone who happens to be in our house to "feel special." I mean, when you're over 30 and you know that what's under the paper is no more exciting than socks and butter cookies, I thought that maybe we can squeeze just a bit more enjoyment out of the packages themselves. Maybe it will help the adults feel like kids again, just for a moment. Maybe it will help visitors feel especially loved and welcomed, just for a moment. Maybe it will stick in the kids' memories 20 years from now when they look around their college dorms and think, "Man, I wish I could be home for Christmas." Since we are moms, we can do that. We can take the time and make the cookies, use a little extra ribbon on the gifts, put a little extra flair into our decorating. Now I'm no Martha Stewart, mind you. I've got a downright scary toilet that needs cleaning, so I am neglecting things in order to wrap these presents, that I should perhaps be doing. But I couldn't tear myself away!
I got to my presents and started to feel sorry for myself because I had to wrap my own presents. How stupid, I thought. It's so much work, and it's not like I'm going to be surprised! I was tempted to skimp on ribbon and put less effort into my own packages. I mean, the baby is crying as it is! Then--WHAMMO--the realization hit me. We never think we are worth a little extra effort. A little extra attention. A little spot of sheer gratuitous beauty in our lives that sometimes seem as dull as...well, dishwater.
BUT...
God thinks we are worth it. God loves me! God loves me and wants to shower down presents on me. God thinks I'm worth a little pretty packaging, just because I'm me. Somewhere I had fallen into the trap of thinking that God loves what I do. But it's not true. A little tiny voice was trying to tell me, God loves you. He loves you as joyfully and abundantly and dearly and unconditionally as you love your kids, the little voice said. Even more. And when you exert yourself to add just a little bit of beauty to your life and the lives of others, you are doing His work. Those packages may go unremarked, but the likelihood is that the recipients will feel the love that you put into them, and they will treasure the love, not necessarily the wrapping paper or the socks. So I wrapped those packages and added plenty of frills.
That's what makes the home. It's the love that the mother can put into it, and any little touches of beauty that she can bring. That's what's missing in the culture "out there." There is pragmatism and commercialism and cold charity and cost. But not love. Yes, we have to scrape greasy dishes and clean up all the grimy stuff--life as real as it gets. But I think that we need beauty even more as an antidote. To remind ourselves that it's not just by changing diapers and fixing food that we show our love. This post goes into it a little bit better than I can think right now. But I am thinking, let's pursue an apostolate of beauty along with our wifehood.
But I wanted everyone who happens to be in our house to "feel special." I mean, when you're over 30 and you know that what's under the paper is no more exciting than socks and butter cookies, I thought that maybe we can squeeze just a bit more enjoyment out of the packages themselves. Maybe it will help the adults feel like kids again, just for a moment. Maybe it will help visitors feel especially loved and welcomed, just for a moment. Maybe it will stick in the kids' memories 20 years from now when they look around their college dorms and think, "Man, I wish I could be home for Christmas." Since we are moms, we can do that. We can take the time and make the cookies, use a little extra ribbon on the gifts, put a little extra flair into our decorating. Now I'm no Martha Stewart, mind you. I've got a downright scary toilet that needs cleaning, so I am neglecting things in order to wrap these presents, that I should perhaps be doing. But I couldn't tear myself away!
I got to my presents and started to feel sorry for myself because I had to wrap my own presents. How stupid, I thought. It's so much work, and it's not like I'm going to be surprised! I was tempted to skimp on ribbon and put less effort into my own packages. I mean, the baby is crying as it is! Then--WHAMMO--the realization hit me. We never think we are worth a little extra effort. A little extra attention. A little spot of sheer gratuitous beauty in our lives that sometimes seem as dull as...well, dishwater.
BUT...
God thinks we are worth it. God loves me! God loves me and wants to shower down presents on me. God thinks I'm worth a little pretty packaging, just because I'm me. Somewhere I had fallen into the trap of thinking that God loves what I do. But it's not true. A little tiny voice was trying to tell me, God loves you. He loves you as joyfully and abundantly and dearly and unconditionally as you love your kids, the little voice said. Even more. And when you exert yourself to add just a little bit of beauty to your life and the lives of others, you are doing His work. Those packages may go unremarked, but the likelihood is that the recipients will feel the love that you put into them, and they will treasure the love, not necessarily the wrapping paper or the socks. So I wrapped those packages and added plenty of frills.
That's what makes the home. It's the love that the mother can put into it, and any little touches of beauty that she can bring. That's what's missing in the culture "out there." There is pragmatism and commercialism and cold charity and cost. But not love. Yes, we have to scrape greasy dishes and clean up all the grimy stuff--life as real as it gets. But I think that we need beauty even more as an antidote. To remind ourselves that it's not just by changing diapers and fixing food that we show our love. This post goes into it a little bit better than I can think right now. But I am thinking, let's pursue an apostolate of beauty along with our wifehood.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
An attempt at using my degree...
So can I, like, start a meme? What's the worst book you ever read, that just had really bad writing? I don't mean it wasn't a page-turner, or even a bestseller, but that the writing just made you wince.
I just finished a two-book series called Cordelia's Honor, the first book of which is called Shards of Honor, and the second Barrayar. My husband had it sitting on his shelf and I noticed it had a woman on the front and she was actually dressed. Might be interesting, I thought. Since it was a science-fiction novel, I thought it must have lots of space battles, or lots to do with space, or with technology. Wrong. This book was mostly about reproduction. That confused me, because I had misread the author's name, Lois McMaster Bujold, to mean Louis. I thought, "Why's this man writing what seems to me to be a really weird romance novel?" Talk about feeling stupid.
Now, I don't have time to give a full synopsis of the series, but it will suffice to say that this is mostly a romance told with a military backdrop. Both the man and the woman come from different planets, with totally alien social structures.
Cordelia comes from Beta Colony, where all buildings are underground to shield people from the desert sun. This is an appropriate setting for Beta Colony's sterile society, which relies on comconsoles (Article 1 of the Constitution: No one shall be deprived of information), psychotherapy and drugs to solve any social "problems," and whiz-bang technology to control the birth rate. Nobody gets "married" on Beta Colony. If two people decide that they want a baby, they have to meet certain physical, emotional, and economic tests, take classes, pass boards, and purchase a "child permit." The child is then grown in a "uterine replicator" while the co-parents go their merry ways.
In contrast, Aral Vorkosigan is heir to his father's fortune, estates, and political problems. His planet is locked in a perpetual cycle of wars and political intrigue that makes 14th century Germany look tame. He has to tread the treacherous waters of the Barrayaran military, while holding his familial and political loyalties in tension--all of which blow up in his and Cordelia's faces, once they are together on Barrayar. Their son, Miles, is disabled because of a poison gas attack and, preserved in a liberated uterine replicator, becomes the football in a deadly game of power politics.
On the face of it, this should not be a bad book. After all, it didn't start out bad--Aral takes Cordelia as a hostage after foiling a mutiny, and they gradually fall in love while tramping through the bush and trying to stay alive. The trouble is that once they get back to society, there is some kind of attempt by the author to set up a culture clash which she doesn't quite bring off. Despite Cordelia's constant little observations about how "savage" Barrayaran culture is, her society is shown to have all the bad tendencies of any super-centralized, "Big Brother"-style civilization. So after they try to force her to give in to their drugs and "therapy" (because she must, of course, be some kind of spy after her experience with Aral), she runs away and uses all her military skills to make it to Barrayar, where she comes upon the unsuspecting Vorkosigan, who had left his marriage proposal lying inert in her lap and was now drinking himself to death. Then there is about two lines' worth of white space on the page and the narrative begins again...guess when...several weeks AFTER their wedding.
Huh??
Any romance reader worth her salt knows that after the big leadup and falling-in-love section of the book, the "climax"--as it were--of any romance is The Wedding, and of course, The Wedding Night...or at least, The Clinch (for this is where we seem to be going these days). This is the only real motivating force behind the genre. And the author just skips it.
There she lost my trust, as a reader. I think it was a boneheaded thing to do. She did not have to give it explicit, gratuitous detail...but seeing as how she'd used the genre thus far, and made us care about these characters and want to see them happy...she needed to at least sketch in the rest of the structure before she left it behind and switched over to another genre. Which she does, then, with bone-jarring force. End book one.
Book two starts with a full-blown political crisis. The emperor is dead and the heir is only five years old. Vorkosigan is the only qualified Regent to be had, and Cordelia, as his wife, finds herself in a curious position. She's a commoner, a "galactic," a feminist in a male-dominated world, and something of a close-order tactician. She doesn't care about clothes, courts, or counts, but she does care about Aral and her friends. So when political tensions on Barrayar explode into an attempted coup, she must first regain her old sense of herself (while fleeing through the mountains) in enough time to foil the bad 'uns plot, save her son, and cut off the head of the pretender. Whoops, that was a spoiler. Not that you were really going to read the book.
I could write a ten-page paper on all the flaws in this novel(s), but thankfully John C. Wright has summed it up for me:
"We can see a pattern in...realistic fiction: the scenery is mundane and unimaginative. The props and events are ordinary rather than extraordinary, and hence unimaginative. The events also must lack the one thing the human imagination always reads into events, that is, a moral purpose or providential meaning. The way a dull and unimaginative mind sees life, as a flux of events in which no pattern can be found, is the viewpoint of modernism. No extraordinary characters, no men of sterling virtue or villains of blackest vice, can exist in modernism, because there is nothing extraordinary in their world. It takes an act of imagination to picture the personality and behavior of a saint or a serial murderer."
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/57689.html#cutid1
Why does this criticism apply to Cordelia's Honor? In fairness, I must say that the author admits in an afterword that these books, while the first to be written, were the last to be sold and amount to a prequel to the main series, which concerns Miles and his exploits. And in all frankness, it is a triumph of conceit to sit back and, not having written a novel oneself, proceed to take apart somebody else's literary labor of love. But that is what English Majors do.
THE HERO
Aral Vorkosigan would have been a great hero if he hadn't been castrated in the first book. Feminist sensibilities might make for good press, but they make abysmally bad storytelling. It's not enough for Cordelia to just be herself. She has to be a scientist and a soldier before she can be Aral's love interest. When he proposes to her, she is so formidable that he acts like he's negotiating a treaty. She escapes from his ship out from under his nose when her loyal troops (all men) come to rescue their Commander, yet before she leaves, she single-handedly saves his hide from another bunch of would-be mutineers.
THE LADY
Cordelia bears no relation to her namesake of King Lear. She'd rather wear her old tan Survey fatigues than a dress, prefers watching a fight over a ball, and keeps a running internal dialogue on how backward Barrayar is and how she wonders if Beta Colony would have her back. Incomprehensibly, the author keeps putting vague religious references into her mouth without anchoring them in anything stemming from her culture, upbringing, or even her own personal beliefs (which we never find out). She's not exactly a crack fighter, but all the action-oriented plot points hinge on her ability to snatch victory from defeat. She becomes pregnant in the second book, and although she muses impartially on the various advantages and disadvantages of reproducing "in vivo" rather than "in vitro," she becomes fixated on her son only when it seems certain he will die.
THE BABY-IN-A-CAN
This is the weirdest plot point yet. I don't have a problem with science fiction writers thinking through the likely technological developments of the future, but they need to think through the probable moral and social consequences as well. Wright's criticism of modernism comes into play here as we see more and more tales cranked out, especially in the science fiction genre, in which technology that revolutionizes some aspect of life is dropped onto the stage like a sandbag, and left there with no moral consequences. Ms. Bujold does a good job of thinking through the political in-fighting that is the meat of the plot, so one wonders why her treatment of these (surely) much more personal and contemporary concerns is so clumsy, especially since they are so germane to the main characters and to the baby who will become the main character of a lengthy series.
In fairness, Ms. Bujold's overarching theme could be considered pro-life--the whole point of Miles' story arc is that he is "disabled" and yet goes on to lead a life of adventure and significance. So when he is in the uterine replicator, there is some dialogue on whether or not "opening up the stopcocks" may or may not be the best thing to do in his situation. However, the theme is still problematic because when Cordelia and Aral discuss it, they admit that both their worlds practice eugenics in some form, and while it's not clear whether they endorse these practices, they seem to be resigned to their necessity.
There is not only NOT clear moral direction here, but there is no attempt to even draw distinctions, i.e. contraception is OK, but not infantacide, for instance. This makes no sense--in our times, such statements are hardly ever made, not because they don't matter, but because people argue endlessly about them. Ms. Bujold picks these topics up as one would a snowglobe, shaking it and watching the snow fall for a moment, then walking away.
THE WEIRD SEXUAL STUFF
Another hallmark of modernism that I've found is its treatment of the physical body and the sexual nature of man as just another biological function that can and should be manipulated, with no especial moral complications. We have stories and novels now in which characters no longer have sex--they are merely rutting like two farm animals might, and the rutting process is described in indelicate and painful detail. Sexual abuse figures largely in Cordelia's Honor, and I am still trying to figure out why.
After eschewing the Wedding Night scene in the first novel, I thought maybe Ms. Bujold just didn't want to be caught focusing on sex. This notion was blown out of the water by the second novel's opening gambit, a military maneuver that results in Cordelia's being taken as a prisoner of war, and chained to the bed of some sadistic Vice-Admiral for what promises to be a long, drawn out rape scene. The room is described in vivid detail, as well as all the Vice-Admirals "plans" for her. During this, Cordelia lies stoically on the bed, refusing to acknowledge pain or fear. She is a soldier, after all--at least in this scene. She does have a miraculous escape, but my question is why. Why the detailed rape scene that ultimately has no more than a footnote's significance to the overall story, while the consummation of the love the two main characters have in their marriage is conspicuously left out? Why must there be a scene in which a 9 1/2 months pregnant woman is sexually degraded? The answer is because modernism allows for brutality, but not love. Love points to a higher plane of being.
CONCLUSION
Without making any direct attacks on Ms. Bujold--who I assume does not have the gift of faith, and who had the guts to write, and keep on writing...even when the first couple of books didn't pan out--I reject this style of writing categorically. I thought one of the great advantages of science fiction was that you could address topics that weren't compatible with "realistic" (modernist) literature. You could address spirituality, love, the conflict of the human heart...even controversial topics that are almost impossible to show on TV or in film without an uproar. Cordelia's Honor makes an attempt at this...but falls far too short of success, and shows the bad tendencies of the modernist influence and how it ultimately fails the story, the characters, and the reader. One hopes that Ms. Bujold was able to work out these issues and capture some transcendent themes that, sadly, were only dimly reflected in these first books.
***
On a personal note, I stopped trying to write fiction after college because I felt it was no longer worth it. Unless you were writing for a specific genre and followed all their rules (which I felt was too restrictive), the only model you had to go on if you aspired to write literature was this modernistic garbage: where characters' relationships were like car crashes, and the blood and guts were described with obsessive detail...while the whole point of storytelling--what makes this life matter--was missing.
Oh, I almost forgot...I tag Amy Caroline, mary poppins not, and laurathecrazymama!
I just finished a two-book series called Cordelia's Honor, the first book of which is called Shards of Honor, and the second Barrayar. My husband had it sitting on his shelf and I noticed it had a woman on the front and she was actually dressed. Might be interesting, I thought. Since it was a science-fiction novel, I thought it must have lots of space battles, or lots to do with space, or with technology. Wrong. This book was mostly about reproduction. That confused me, because I had misread the author's name, Lois McMaster Bujold, to mean Louis. I thought, "Why's this man writing what seems to me to be a really weird romance novel?" Talk about feeling stupid.
Now, I don't have time to give a full synopsis of the series, but it will suffice to say that this is mostly a romance told with a military backdrop. Both the man and the woman come from different planets, with totally alien social structures.
Cordelia comes from Beta Colony, where all buildings are underground to shield people from the desert sun. This is an appropriate setting for Beta Colony's sterile society, which relies on comconsoles (Article 1 of the Constitution: No one shall be deprived of information), psychotherapy and drugs to solve any social "problems," and whiz-bang technology to control the birth rate. Nobody gets "married" on Beta Colony. If two people decide that they want a baby, they have to meet certain physical, emotional, and economic tests, take classes, pass boards, and purchase a "child permit." The child is then grown in a "uterine replicator" while the co-parents go their merry ways.
In contrast, Aral Vorkosigan is heir to his father's fortune, estates, and political problems. His planet is locked in a perpetual cycle of wars and political intrigue that makes 14th century Germany look tame. He has to tread the treacherous waters of the Barrayaran military, while holding his familial and political loyalties in tension--all of which blow up in his and Cordelia's faces, once they are together on Barrayar. Their son, Miles, is disabled because of a poison gas attack and, preserved in a liberated uterine replicator, becomes the football in a deadly game of power politics.
On the face of it, this should not be a bad book. After all, it didn't start out bad--Aral takes Cordelia as a hostage after foiling a mutiny, and they gradually fall in love while tramping through the bush and trying to stay alive. The trouble is that once they get back to society, there is some kind of attempt by the author to set up a culture clash which she doesn't quite bring off. Despite Cordelia's constant little observations about how "savage" Barrayaran culture is, her society is shown to have all the bad tendencies of any super-centralized, "Big Brother"-style civilization. So after they try to force her to give in to their drugs and "therapy" (because she must, of course, be some kind of spy after her experience with Aral), she runs away and uses all her military skills to make it to Barrayar, where she comes upon the unsuspecting Vorkosigan, who had left his marriage proposal lying inert in her lap and was now drinking himself to death. Then there is about two lines' worth of white space on the page and the narrative begins again...guess when...several weeks AFTER their wedding.
Huh??
Any romance reader worth her salt knows that after the big leadup and falling-in-love section of the book, the "climax"--as it were--of any romance is The Wedding, and of course, The Wedding Night...or at least, The Clinch (for this is where we seem to be going these days). This is the only real motivating force behind the genre. And the author just skips it.
There she lost my trust, as a reader. I think it was a boneheaded thing to do. She did not have to give it explicit, gratuitous detail...but seeing as how she'd used the genre thus far, and made us care about these characters and want to see them happy...she needed to at least sketch in the rest of the structure before she left it behind and switched over to another genre. Which she does, then, with bone-jarring force. End book one.
Book two starts with a full-blown political crisis. The emperor is dead and the heir is only five years old. Vorkosigan is the only qualified Regent to be had, and Cordelia, as his wife, finds herself in a curious position. She's a commoner, a "galactic," a feminist in a male-dominated world, and something of a close-order tactician. She doesn't care about clothes, courts, or counts, but she does care about Aral and her friends. So when political tensions on Barrayar explode into an attempted coup, she must first regain her old sense of herself (while fleeing through the mountains) in enough time to foil the bad 'uns plot, save her son, and cut off the head of the pretender. Whoops, that was a spoiler. Not that you were really going to read the book.
I could write a ten-page paper on all the flaws in this novel(s), but thankfully John C. Wright has summed it up for me:
"We can see a pattern in...realistic fiction: the scenery is mundane and unimaginative. The props and events are ordinary rather than extraordinary, and hence unimaginative. The events also must lack the one thing the human imagination always reads into events, that is, a moral purpose or providential meaning. The way a dull and unimaginative mind sees life, as a flux of events in which no pattern can be found, is the viewpoint of modernism. No extraordinary characters, no men of sterling virtue or villains of blackest vice, can exist in modernism, because there is nothing extraordinary in their world. It takes an act of imagination to picture the personality and behavior of a saint or a serial murderer."
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/57689.html#cutid1
Why does this criticism apply to Cordelia's Honor? In fairness, I must say that the author admits in an afterword that these books, while the first to be written, were the last to be sold and amount to a prequel to the main series, which concerns Miles and his exploits. And in all frankness, it is a triumph of conceit to sit back and, not having written a novel oneself, proceed to take apart somebody else's literary labor of love. But that is what English Majors do.
THE HERO
Aral Vorkosigan would have been a great hero if he hadn't been castrated in the first book. Feminist sensibilities might make for good press, but they make abysmally bad storytelling. It's not enough for Cordelia to just be herself. She has to be a scientist and a soldier before she can be Aral's love interest. When he proposes to her, she is so formidable that he acts like he's negotiating a treaty. She escapes from his ship out from under his nose when her loyal troops (all men) come to rescue their Commander, yet before she leaves, she single-handedly saves his hide from another bunch of would-be mutineers.
THE LADY
Cordelia bears no relation to her namesake of King Lear. She'd rather wear her old tan Survey fatigues than a dress, prefers watching a fight over a ball, and keeps a running internal dialogue on how backward Barrayar is and how she wonders if Beta Colony would have her back. Incomprehensibly, the author keeps putting vague religious references into her mouth without anchoring them in anything stemming from her culture, upbringing, or even her own personal beliefs (which we never find out). She's not exactly a crack fighter, but all the action-oriented plot points hinge on her ability to snatch victory from defeat. She becomes pregnant in the second book, and although she muses impartially on the various advantages and disadvantages of reproducing "in vivo" rather than "in vitro," she becomes fixated on her son only when it seems certain he will die.
THE BABY-IN-A-CAN
This is the weirdest plot point yet. I don't have a problem with science fiction writers thinking through the likely technological developments of the future, but they need to think through the probable moral and social consequences as well. Wright's criticism of modernism comes into play here as we see more and more tales cranked out, especially in the science fiction genre, in which technology that revolutionizes some aspect of life is dropped onto the stage like a sandbag, and left there with no moral consequences. Ms. Bujold does a good job of thinking through the political in-fighting that is the meat of the plot, so one wonders why her treatment of these (surely) much more personal and contemporary concerns is so clumsy, especially since they are so germane to the main characters and to the baby who will become the main character of a lengthy series.
In fairness, Ms. Bujold's overarching theme could be considered pro-life--the whole point of Miles' story arc is that he is "disabled" and yet goes on to lead a life of adventure and significance. So when he is in the uterine replicator, there is some dialogue on whether or not "opening up the stopcocks" may or may not be the best thing to do in his situation. However, the theme is still problematic because when Cordelia and Aral discuss it, they admit that both their worlds practice eugenics in some form, and while it's not clear whether they endorse these practices, they seem to be resigned to their necessity.
There is not only NOT clear moral direction here, but there is no attempt to even draw distinctions, i.e. contraception is OK, but not infantacide, for instance. This makes no sense--in our times, such statements are hardly ever made, not because they don't matter, but because people argue endlessly about them. Ms. Bujold picks these topics up as one would a snowglobe, shaking it and watching the snow fall for a moment, then walking away.
THE WEIRD SEXUAL STUFF
Another hallmark of modernism that I've found is its treatment of the physical body and the sexual nature of man as just another biological function that can and should be manipulated, with no especial moral complications. We have stories and novels now in which characters no longer have sex--they are merely rutting like two farm animals might, and the rutting process is described in indelicate and painful detail. Sexual abuse figures largely in Cordelia's Honor, and I am still trying to figure out why.
After eschewing the Wedding Night scene in the first novel, I thought maybe Ms. Bujold just didn't want to be caught focusing on sex. This notion was blown out of the water by the second novel's opening gambit, a military maneuver that results in Cordelia's being taken as a prisoner of war, and chained to the bed of some sadistic Vice-Admiral for what promises to be a long, drawn out rape scene. The room is described in vivid detail, as well as all the Vice-Admirals "plans" for her. During this, Cordelia lies stoically on the bed, refusing to acknowledge pain or fear. She is a soldier, after all--at least in this scene. She does have a miraculous escape, but my question is why. Why the detailed rape scene that ultimately has no more than a footnote's significance to the overall story, while the consummation of the love the two main characters have in their marriage is conspicuously left out? Why must there be a scene in which a 9 1/2 months pregnant woman is sexually degraded? The answer is because modernism allows for brutality, but not love. Love points to a higher plane of being.
CONCLUSION
Without making any direct attacks on Ms. Bujold--who I assume does not have the gift of faith, and who had the guts to write, and keep on writing...even when the first couple of books didn't pan out--I reject this style of writing categorically. I thought one of the great advantages of science fiction was that you could address topics that weren't compatible with "realistic" (modernist) literature. You could address spirituality, love, the conflict of the human heart...even controversial topics that are almost impossible to show on TV or in film without an uproar. Cordelia's Honor makes an attempt at this...but falls far too short of success, and shows the bad tendencies of the modernist influence and how it ultimately fails the story, the characters, and the reader. One hopes that Ms. Bujold was able to work out these issues and capture some transcendent themes that, sadly, were only dimly reflected in these first books.
***
On a personal note, I stopped trying to write fiction after college because I felt it was no longer worth it. Unless you were writing for a specific genre and followed all their rules (which I felt was too restrictive), the only model you had to go on if you aspired to write literature was this modernistic garbage: where characters' relationships were like car crashes, and the blood and guts were described with obsessive detail...while the whole point of storytelling--what makes this life matter--was missing.
Oh, I almost forgot...I tag Amy Caroline, mary poppins not, and laurathecrazymama!
Saturday, December 02, 2006
My Progenitor is Literary
So with all due respect to my dad, I'd never thought I'd say this...my dad is a great writer! And he needs to get published! Sure, it's taken him a good fifty years an' what-all to gettin' it sorted all out down below, but now-a see hyar what kind-a yarn tellin' this ol' fox is 'capable uv:
"Well sir, Ah was jest 'bout ta creep outa there in low-range when Ah got to thinkin. This hyar'd be a good spot to check the underside a ol' Gramps's fer any dee-regularities, what with the extra standin room under thar. So Ah grabbed mah flashlight an reached fer the door handle but it weren't there. So Ah looked 'round an found Ah was sittin on it. So Ah figgered that mehbe it wadn't such a good idea ta open that door at this partic'lar angle. Ah mean thar's prob'ly a ten foot drop a waitin out thar. An hyar Ah am an older gent, alone in the dark a sittin in a truk that's perched pre-carius a half mile up a steep an ragged gulley from a possible rocky water landin an no help fer fifty miles. Ah ain't even got no dawg ta whine over me. So discretion being the better part a valor, Ah'll just have ta go out t'other door."
And that's before anything really happens!
I guess t'other part-a this that really tickles mah hide is that the ol' feller asked me, his weak an' sickly girl-child, fer help with his hyar, what they call it, creatin' process that all writers and such-like do, and hyar ah am, jes' a mean and lowly housewife an' all. So ah'm a mite tickled by the ol' gent ya see, an' ah'm right grateful to have my o-pinyuns asked fer.
"Well sir, Ah was jest 'bout ta creep outa there in low-range when Ah got to thinkin. This hyar'd be a good spot to check the underside a ol' Gramps's fer any dee-regularities, what with the extra standin room under thar. So Ah grabbed mah flashlight an reached fer the door handle but it weren't there. So Ah looked 'round an found Ah was sittin on it. So Ah figgered that mehbe it wadn't such a good idea ta open that door at this partic'lar angle. Ah mean thar's prob'ly a ten foot drop a waitin out thar. An hyar Ah am an older gent, alone in the dark a sittin in a truk that's perched pre-carius a half mile up a steep an ragged gulley from a possible rocky water landin an no help fer fifty miles. Ah ain't even got no dawg ta whine over me. So discretion being the better part a valor, Ah'll just have ta go out t'other door."
And that's before anything really happens!
I guess t'other part-a this that really tickles mah hide is that the ol' feller asked me, his weak an' sickly girl-child, fer help with his hyar, what they call it, creatin' process that all writers and such-like do, and hyar ah am, jes' a mean and lowly housewife an' all. So ah'm a mite tickled by the ol' gent ya see, an' ah'm right grateful to have my o-pinyuns asked fer.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Our Papa Celebrates Mass in Ephesus
Just saw this video on JimmyAkin.org and thought I'd share it with ya'll. I don't know how to put YouTube vids on my blog, so if you click on the link below it will take you to Jimmy's blog and you can watch it there.
Several things struck me about this video. Every time an image of the Pope appears, whether it's on the TV or in a magazine--like this week's cover of Time, the atmosphere around him is electric. I mean, if spiritual graces were visibly manifested as something like...lightning bolts, for instance, he'd be a mass of trailing arcs and sparks. In contrast, I'd be something like that static-y thing that happens when you open your dryer.
Next, watch how the people treat him. I mean, no matter how much you disagree with Catholicism, you cannot argue that this is the one person on Earth who could actually "confront Islam," like it said on the magazine cover. Then watch how he treats the consecrated Host. There is no doubt in my mind that he thinks of himself as the lowliest servant of Christ. And yet, what does it do to a man to consecrate, handle, and consume the Body and Blood of Christ over a lifetime? You can see the love in his hands and face. He does not wear the regalia of a king for his own glory. He does it for the glory of his King.
BTW, there's a good close-up of a woman wearing a headcovering in the vid, although most of the women are not wearing one.
CHECK IT OUT.
Several things struck me about this video. Every time an image of the Pope appears, whether it's on the TV or in a magazine--like this week's cover of Time, the atmosphere around him is electric. I mean, if spiritual graces were visibly manifested as something like...lightning bolts, for instance, he'd be a mass of trailing arcs and sparks. In contrast, I'd be something like that static-y thing that happens when you open your dryer.
Next, watch how the people treat him. I mean, no matter how much you disagree with Catholicism, you cannot argue that this is the one person on Earth who could actually "confront Islam," like it said on the magazine cover. Then watch how he treats the consecrated Host. There is no doubt in my mind that he thinks of himself as the lowliest servant of Christ. And yet, what does it do to a man to consecrate, handle, and consume the Body and Blood of Christ over a lifetime? You can see the love in his hands and face. He does not wear the regalia of a king for his own glory. He does it for the glory of his King.
BTW, there's a good close-up of a woman wearing a headcovering in the vid, although most of the women are not wearing one.
CHECK IT OUT.
Monday, November 13, 2006
If this is pride, it's a funny way to go about it
Today I had to go to Lowe's, even though the kids and I are still sick, and the last thing I want is for them to get their gooey little hands all over a germy shopping cart. But my special order stain was in, and since this door job we're trying to do is more than three months overdue, I had to stuff everybody in the van and just go do it.
BUT before I could leave the house, I had to find a top/skirt/shoe/coat combo that would work with the weather and with my own ego. As I struggled with my closet on this, I had to ask myself (again) just why I am going through this. What is so wrong with just throwing on some jeans? It's not like there's anybody at Lowe's who gives a darn about what they're wearing (Lowe's is a lot like Wal-Mart in that respect). And I don't want to look like I'm headed to church. But it's hard to go casual in a skirt, especially in November. I wanted to look modest (thus the skirt) but also sporty and Northwest-y enough to "pass muster" with the fashion critics lodged in my head.
Was I falling victim to pride? I thought about it...and concluded that while my own desire to achieve a certain "look" was probably prideful, it would have been just as prideful to throw on the jeans and then smirk at everybody in the store who didn't look as "put together" as I did, or whose butts looked bigger in their pants, or whatever. I discovered that there's always pride, no matter what we're wearing. If anything, wearing the skirt humbles me because I can't be all that my ego wants, being constrained by the modesty standards.
But it made me think again about this whole issue of pride, and whether dressing according to modesty principles is "prideful" because dressing differently tends to attract attention.
This is, perhaps, the biggest reason why Christians don't adopt more conservative dress. Some do, and I'm not trying to exclude them. But for many people in the pews, the last thing they want to do is stick out in the crowd. Part of it is human nature. Heck, even animals try to blend in with their environment--it's a form of self-defense for them, and for us, too. However much we proclaim that we have a "free" country and that people can do whatever they want to do, it's the rare person that swims upstream in the way they dress. For some, this may be a source of pride, particularly if done in a rebellious spirit...like the first hippies who wore their hair long, or when women burned their bras. Their flinging off of social mores in dress was done to attract attention, to make a statement, and to send out a big Boston raspberry to the establishment.
But now our society is full of "hippies" who think they are swimming upstream by their way-out modes of dress, so the image has become rather commonplace. And I would say that the last thing this new hippie generation is doing by their dress is making a statement, political or otherwise. They are just trying to fit in with a particular group that they feel best represents their beliefs and opinions. And there's really nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't accuse them of pride at all, even if they felt "proud" of their particular group. It's OK to have pride in who you are. Some people, like Erykah Badu--who often wears a very large and very distinctive African headdress--wear garments that remind themselves (and others) of their roots, and there's no sin in that. Many Americans, out of political correctness, would fall all over themselves to welcome such people and make them feel comfortable, because we've been told that they have a right to express themselves.
What then, are we to think about those among us who adopt a distinctive dress because of religion? Are they way-out? Are they motivated by rebelliousness, or pride? On the contrary, whenever I see a Muslim man in a turban or a woman in a hijab, the last thing I think they are doing is being prideful. In some countries where certain religions are persecuted, people may not even be able to wear distinctive religious garments. We should be glad that Muslims are free to wear what they want.
Some Orthodox Jewish women practice a form of modesty called tznius, which is very strict and regulated. They delineate which areas of the woman's actual bone structure are to be covered or uncovered. Granted, it may not exactly be popular in this country, but is there a big outcry over it? No, the woman's beliefs are simply accepted, because she has a right to express her culture and her religion, and the last thing anybody wants to be accused of is anti-Semitism. Even the babushka ladies at the grocery store remind us that there are many eastern cultures that are making their home here in the United States, and we have a duty to be hospitable and welcoming to these new immigrants.
So now we come to that great silent religion, Christianity. We are the only religion that cannot express ourselves through dress without some form of persecution. But, oddly enough, the persecution tends to come from fellow Christians. Early on in the Reformation, "clerical" garb was quickly discarded by the reformers, because it smacked of Catholicism. Priests and religious have always made easy targets because of the way they dress. Even today, laws that punish religious garb--especially that of Catholics--are in effect or on the table in France and India. And do you think that, left to themselves, they would have wanted it that way? Probably not. There may be nothing harder to bear in the life of a priest than the constant stares, comments, and inevitable questions that arise because of his Roman collar.
Obviously there is a great good in the distinctive dress of priests and religious, as there is in celibacy, or the Church would not have decreed it. For some, the sight of a man or woman of God gives them great comfort and hope, even if they are not Christian. At least there is a person who stands up for what he or she believes and is available to others' needs, as it says in the Gospel. While Blessed Mother Theresa may have adopted her plain white sari because it was common, and poor, it has become the uniform of an army--her Missionaries of Charity. When a poor person looks up out of a gutter and sees that white sari, he sees Mother--and when he sees her, he sees the hand of God.
And I don't think that a laywoman of the Church who gradually transitions her wardrobe over to skirts, jumpers, and dresses is going to incite a lot of turmoil in other people's hearts. Despite Gospel ideals, human nature drives people to be far more concerned about themselves than they ever would be about somebody else's minute details of dress. If guys in the NFL can have dreadlocks cascading out of their helmets, it should not be a violation of anybody else's sensibilities if I put on a wool plaid skirt and go out into the rain.
Is dressing "differently," then, a prideful act? As I hope I have already proved, it can be if done in an in-your-face way, or for specious reasons. Or it can be one of the most humbling things you can do. I don't think anybody who wears offbeat dress for a well-thought-out reason is acting out of deadly sin-type pride. It can be just as dangerous to your soul to "blend in." You could make the argument that those who run to keep up with the latest fashion are falling victim to pride. You could say that aging women who dye their hair and teeth and wear lots of makeup are falling prey to pride. What about people who go to such great lengths to achieve and keep a perfect body? What about people who drive Hummers? Once you start pointing that finger, there is no end to it. The truth is that we are all battling pride in some form or another. And there is no telling, just by looking, who it is. I think the most dangerous thing we can do is second-guess people's motives for how they dress or act. We just don't know.
And when it comes to various stripes of Christian who are struggling to bring back more conservative and graceful modes of dress, in line with their own cultures and religious heritage--they should be encouraged rather than criticized. We may be a small minority, and our form of dress may not be everybody's cup of tea, but we are within our rights in this country, and we should use them while we have them, lest even what we have be taken away.
BUT before I could leave the house, I had to find a top/skirt/shoe/coat combo that would work with the weather and with my own ego. As I struggled with my closet on this, I had to ask myself (again) just why I am going through this. What is so wrong with just throwing on some jeans? It's not like there's anybody at Lowe's who gives a darn about what they're wearing (Lowe's is a lot like Wal-Mart in that respect). And I don't want to look like I'm headed to church. But it's hard to go casual in a skirt, especially in November. I wanted to look modest (thus the skirt) but also sporty and Northwest-y enough to "pass muster" with the fashion critics lodged in my head.
Was I falling victim to pride? I thought about it...and concluded that while my own desire to achieve a certain "look" was probably prideful, it would have been just as prideful to throw on the jeans and then smirk at everybody in the store who didn't look as "put together" as I did, or whose butts looked bigger in their pants, or whatever. I discovered that there's always pride, no matter what we're wearing. If anything, wearing the skirt humbles me because I can't be all that my ego wants, being constrained by the modesty standards.
But it made me think again about this whole issue of pride, and whether dressing according to modesty principles is "prideful" because dressing differently tends to attract attention.
This is, perhaps, the biggest reason why Christians don't adopt more conservative dress. Some do, and I'm not trying to exclude them. But for many people in the pews, the last thing they want to do is stick out in the crowd. Part of it is human nature. Heck, even animals try to blend in with their environment--it's a form of self-defense for them, and for us, too. However much we proclaim that we have a "free" country and that people can do whatever they want to do, it's the rare person that swims upstream in the way they dress. For some, this may be a source of pride, particularly if done in a rebellious spirit...like the first hippies who wore their hair long, or when women burned their bras. Their flinging off of social mores in dress was done to attract attention, to make a statement, and to send out a big Boston raspberry to the establishment.
But now our society is full of "hippies" who think they are swimming upstream by their way-out modes of dress, so the image has become rather commonplace. And I would say that the last thing this new hippie generation is doing by their dress is making a statement, political or otherwise. They are just trying to fit in with a particular group that they feel best represents their beliefs and opinions. And there's really nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't accuse them of pride at all, even if they felt "proud" of their particular group. It's OK to have pride in who you are. Some people, like Erykah Badu--who often wears a very large and very distinctive African headdress--wear garments that remind themselves (and others) of their roots, and there's no sin in that. Many Americans, out of political correctness, would fall all over themselves to welcome such people and make them feel comfortable, because we've been told that they have a right to express themselves.
What then, are we to think about those among us who adopt a distinctive dress because of religion? Are they way-out? Are they motivated by rebelliousness, or pride? On the contrary, whenever I see a Muslim man in a turban or a woman in a hijab, the last thing I think they are doing is being prideful. In some countries where certain religions are persecuted, people may not even be able to wear distinctive religious garments. We should be glad that Muslims are free to wear what they want.
Some Orthodox Jewish women practice a form of modesty called tznius, which is very strict and regulated. They delineate which areas of the woman's actual bone structure are to be covered or uncovered. Granted, it may not exactly be popular in this country, but is there a big outcry over it? No, the woman's beliefs are simply accepted, because she has a right to express her culture and her religion, and the last thing anybody wants to be accused of is anti-Semitism. Even the babushka ladies at the grocery store remind us that there are many eastern cultures that are making their home here in the United States, and we have a duty to be hospitable and welcoming to these new immigrants.
So now we come to that great silent religion, Christianity. We are the only religion that cannot express ourselves through dress without some form of persecution. But, oddly enough, the persecution tends to come from fellow Christians. Early on in the Reformation, "clerical" garb was quickly discarded by the reformers, because it smacked of Catholicism. Priests and religious have always made easy targets because of the way they dress. Even today, laws that punish religious garb--especially that of Catholics--are in effect or on the table in France and India. And do you think that, left to themselves, they would have wanted it that way? Probably not. There may be nothing harder to bear in the life of a priest than the constant stares, comments, and inevitable questions that arise because of his Roman collar.
Obviously there is a great good in the distinctive dress of priests and religious, as there is in celibacy, or the Church would not have decreed it. For some, the sight of a man or woman of God gives them great comfort and hope, even if they are not Christian. At least there is a person who stands up for what he or she believes and is available to others' needs, as it says in the Gospel. While Blessed Mother Theresa may have adopted her plain white sari because it was common, and poor, it has become the uniform of an army--her Missionaries of Charity. When a poor person looks up out of a gutter and sees that white sari, he sees Mother--and when he sees her, he sees the hand of God.
And I don't think that a laywoman of the Church who gradually transitions her wardrobe over to skirts, jumpers, and dresses is going to incite a lot of turmoil in other people's hearts. Despite Gospel ideals, human nature drives people to be far more concerned about themselves than they ever would be about somebody else's minute details of dress. If guys in the NFL can have dreadlocks cascading out of their helmets, it should not be a violation of anybody else's sensibilities if I put on a wool plaid skirt and go out into the rain.
Is dressing "differently," then, a prideful act? As I hope I have already proved, it can be if done in an in-your-face way, or for specious reasons. Or it can be one of the most humbling things you can do. I don't think anybody who wears offbeat dress for a well-thought-out reason is acting out of deadly sin-type pride. It can be just as dangerous to your soul to "blend in." You could make the argument that those who run to keep up with the latest fashion are falling victim to pride. You could say that aging women who dye their hair and teeth and wear lots of makeup are falling prey to pride. What about people who go to such great lengths to achieve and keep a perfect body? What about people who drive Hummers? Once you start pointing that finger, there is no end to it. The truth is that we are all battling pride in some form or another. And there is no telling, just by looking, who it is. I think the most dangerous thing we can do is second-guess people's motives for how they dress or act. We just don't know.
And when it comes to various stripes of Christian who are struggling to bring back more conservative and graceful modes of dress, in line with their own cultures and religious heritage--they should be encouraged rather than criticized. We may be a small minority, and our form of dress may not be everybody's cup of tea, but we are within our rights in this country, and we should use them while we have them, lest even what we have be taken away.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
One Ugly Baby
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but while I've never considered myself especially attractive, I'm constantly told that I have cute kids (must be my husband's half of the equation). This is Tom, who's one year old, and in this picture he is hanging onto the coffee table for the first time. Yeehaw!
Now this is what happens when my little guy gets his hands onto a dairy product.
Welcome to the world of food allergies. I used to do a lot of reading on this type of thing, when I was going through my "food fads" in college. But now I have absolutely no interest in the subject. When I was in the military, I came to respect ordinary food, so I now look askance at all the "health food" that's out nowadays and their claims to be fat-free, wheat-free, vegan, organic, or whatever. I never thought I would have a baby who couldn't do dairy. So now I have to cudgel my brain to figure out what to do with this baby. We've been feeding him soy formula, which he does OK on. I mean, would you put milk in his mouth if you saw it do this to his face?
My midwife insisted that it was I who caused the allergy by giving Tom his first taste of cow formula when I put his first bottle in his mouth at the nine month mark. I'm still not talking to her. My doctor says he's probably not allergic to it, but then again, she's never seen him like this. To me, this screams, "I HAVE A FOOD ALLERGY! DO NOT FEED ME THIS STUFF!"
So what's a concerned mother to do? He is now a year old, and I am getting really sick of buying $40 worth of formula at Wal-Mart every month. And yet, store-bought soy milk in the aseptic containers is almost as expensive, and not nearly as fortified as the powdered stuff. The cheapest I've been able to find it is for $1.25 a quart, if I buy it by the case on markdown.
The other wrinkle to this situation was the discovery of my own intolerance of dairy. So now I consume almost a quart a day, not counting what Tom would need. In desperation, I asked the Hillbilly Housewife what to do.
Her answer rocked my socks!
The solution is to buy a thing called a soy milk maker, which is apparently very popular in Japan and other Asian cultures that do a lot with soy. She linked to the Sanlinx web page where I found and ordered my new toy. While the machine costs $90 to $120, it pays for itself very quickly, since you can get soybeans for a song. It also comes with a one-year warranty, and right now they're offering a promotional two-year warranty, which I got when I ordered my SoyaPower. The thing that ultimately convinced me were all the unsolicited testimonials on their site, including some people who had a problem with their machine or a part and were satisfied with the service.
Making your own soy milk isn't as simple as making coffee, however. You soak the beans for at least 6 hours, then rinse and put them in the filter basket. You fill the canister up to the mark (about 1.8 quarts), then put the whole thing together and press a button. That's the simplest part. The machine heats the water, the blade pulverizes the beans, the cycle runs about 15 minutes, and beeps when it's done. Then you pull the top off and clean the heater element and blade. The filter you pull off and either save or discard the mashed bean by-product inside (hint: don't throw it away, lots of good uses for it). Then you have to clean the filter. The filter is not easy to clean. Your best bet is to buy the Magic Cleaner that they sell, or be like me and make the little sample they give you last as long as possible. You soak the filter in the solution, and next day it's pristine and ready to use again. Meanwhile, you pour the soy milk into a clean container and flavor it with sugar or vanilla or whatever you want to put in it. It takes some finagling to get a comparable taste to the store-bought stuff, if that's what you like. You don't need to buy the special "Laura" beans that they keep touting. One thing I did extra that really helps the texture is that I filter the final product through a paper towel in a Brita pitcher. Otherwise, there is a substantial amount of grit that gets through the filter.
For now I am giving Tom half soy formula and half soy milk from the SoyaPower. When the formula runs out, I'll give him all soy milk with maybe a dose of Poly-Vi-Sol a day. Along with his Claritin.
Friday, November 03, 2006
A Primer on Virtue, or...how not to feel like a failure
Geez, I wish I could think of more light-hearted things to post about. Maybe it's the weather, and the fact that my neck of the woods tends to be clouded over for more than half the year. In summertime, you only have to paint your toenails once and you could probably get through the whole sandal season.
This is the time of year when people tend to retreat into their homes, turn on the tube, and eat lots of treats. Lately I've been ruminating, a dangerous thing to do in winter when you have two little tykes and don't get out much. My bad habit is to start thinking about all the things that have "gone wrong" and all the things I should have done to prevent it. Like, I could have married another man to prevent Dean's gall bladder surgery and us having to pay the medical bills. Or how it was my fault we bought this house and now I can't get out from under all our home improvement projects.
It is so distressing when you have all these thoughts and plans and expectations built up about what's going to happen--and then something unforseen (and potentially disastrous) blows them all into smithereens. How do you get through this kind of thing, mentally? How do you avoid the thought that it's somehow all YOUR fault? Or that God has turned his face away, as it says so many times in the Psalms?
You could think about how much better you've got it than so many other people in the world. What I mean to say is, you could think things like, "At least we have a roof over our heads," "At least we have our health" (Oops! You can't think that unless everybody is healthy!), "At least we live in a free country" (even that is up for debate). Oh well, you get the drift. But that is a pretty negative way of looking at things, and it only makes me feel worse. Is there a more positive way to deal with stress and upset?
1. You could read the lives of the saints. Yes, 'tis the season to go and get yerself a volume of those, if they're not already on your shelf. Personally, I think saints are fascinating. Their lives were so difficult that you have to admire the fact that they got through it at all, and to top it off, made it to heaven to boot. Plus they are comfortably distant, so you aren't guilt-ridden over the fact that they are alive somewhere in the world suffering while you're making banana bread.
2. Read up on the virtues, and teach them to your kids. Wikipedia is a pretty good place to start to research something, even Catholic things. They list the cardinal virtues as: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. The theological virtues are faith, hope, and love--as in charity (it has been posited that only Christians can have these virtues). Alternatively, you could list out the seven deadly sins and then look to their antitheses: lust/chastity, gluttony/moderation, greed/generosity, sloth/zeal, wrath/meekness, envy/charity, and pride/humility. This would also make a good examination of conscience. Instead of trying to figure out what deadly sin you committed, you could ask yourself, "How did I fail to embody the virtues?"
3. Remind yourself that success in God's eyes is not success in the eyes of the world. Oh, how difficult this is! Don't think I am sitting here all smug thinking I've got the answers to everything. I am struggling just as much as anybody--I just choose to embarrass myself by committing it to a literary format. What I mean is, we have to keep telling ourselves that the Christian ideal has never been to put our kids through college and retire with fat bank accounts. Even the saints who have gone out into the wilderness to convert pagans, only to be murdered, were a smashing success in God's eyes. Even Mother Theresa (pray for us!) would have been a success in God's eyes if she never even opened one Missionaries of Charity convent. Because she would have been doing what He asked.
When things start going "wrong," what we need to do is to start examining ourselves and asking, "Am I living the virtues today? Which ones am I great at? Which ones are missing from my life?" If we could focus more on whether we are acting according to the virtues, then when disaster strikes we can at least tell ourselves we acted in the right way according to right intentions. The rest is up to God.
This is the time of year when people tend to retreat into their homes, turn on the tube, and eat lots of treats. Lately I've been ruminating, a dangerous thing to do in winter when you have two little tykes and don't get out much. My bad habit is to start thinking about all the things that have "gone wrong" and all the things I should have done to prevent it. Like, I could have married another man to prevent Dean's gall bladder surgery and us having to pay the medical bills. Or how it was my fault we bought this house and now I can't get out from under all our home improvement projects.
It is so distressing when you have all these thoughts and plans and expectations built up about what's going to happen--and then something unforseen (and potentially disastrous) blows them all into smithereens. How do you get through this kind of thing, mentally? How do you avoid the thought that it's somehow all YOUR fault? Or that God has turned his face away, as it says so many times in the Psalms?
You could think about how much better you've got it than so many other people in the world. What I mean to say is, you could think things like, "At least we have a roof over our heads," "At least we have our health" (Oops! You can't think that unless everybody is healthy!), "At least we live in a free country" (even that is up for debate). Oh well, you get the drift. But that is a pretty negative way of looking at things, and it only makes me feel worse. Is there a more positive way to deal with stress and upset?
1. You could read the lives of the saints. Yes, 'tis the season to go and get yerself a volume of those, if they're not already on your shelf. Personally, I think saints are fascinating. Their lives were so difficult that you have to admire the fact that they got through it at all, and to top it off, made it to heaven to boot. Plus they are comfortably distant, so you aren't guilt-ridden over the fact that they are alive somewhere in the world suffering while you're making banana bread.
2. Read up on the virtues, and teach them to your kids. Wikipedia is a pretty good place to start to research something, even Catholic things. They list the cardinal virtues as: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. The theological virtues are faith, hope, and love--as in charity (it has been posited that only Christians can have these virtues). Alternatively, you could list out the seven deadly sins and then look to their antitheses: lust/chastity, gluttony/moderation, greed/generosity, sloth/zeal, wrath/meekness, envy/charity, and pride/humility. This would also make a good examination of conscience. Instead of trying to figure out what deadly sin you committed, you could ask yourself, "How did I fail to embody the virtues?"
3. Remind yourself that success in God's eyes is not success in the eyes of the world. Oh, how difficult this is! Don't think I am sitting here all smug thinking I've got the answers to everything. I am struggling just as much as anybody--I just choose to embarrass myself by committing it to a literary format. What I mean is, we have to keep telling ourselves that the Christian ideal has never been to put our kids through college and retire with fat bank accounts. Even the saints who have gone out into the wilderness to convert pagans, only to be murdered, were a smashing success in God's eyes. Even Mother Theresa (pray for us!) would have been a success in God's eyes if she never even opened one Missionaries of Charity convent. Because she would have been doing what He asked.
When things start going "wrong," what we need to do is to start examining ourselves and asking, "Am I living the virtues today? Which ones am I great at? Which ones are missing from my life?" If we could focus more on whether we are acting according to the virtues, then when disaster strikes we can at least tell ourselves we acted in the right way according to right intentions. The rest is up to God.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Another $5,000 hospital bill!!
Sisters, please pray for us and for our little boy's health. And please vote for anything that will reduce health care costs! I hate money!
Veiling: update, apology, and explanation
Of my very few (but very appreciated) readers, some sharper-eyed ones may have noticed that the two posts "Taking the Veil" and "Taking the Veil...Part II" are gone. I originally wrote those posts after reading a whole raft of info on the issue of mantilla-wearing at Mass, concluding that there must be some kind of holdover from the 1917 Code of Canon Law requiring the wearing of the veil at Mass that the post-Vatican II Church just kept mum about.
In my pride, I felt that Jimmy Akin needed to be corrected, so I informed him of my disagreement with his interpretation of canon law on the subject, citing some traditionalist-oriented web sites as my sources.
Then I read all the discussion threads I could find on Catholic.com pertaining to this subject--and saw that all the veil advocates GOT ABSOLUTELY TROUNCED when they trotted out their arguments for veiling as required by canon law. I modified my opinion to accommodate the new information...which is basically that a satisfactory case for veiling being some kind of back-door requirement of the Church CANNOT BE MADE in such a way that it will be taken seriously. The veil has been consigned to the realm of "personal devotion."
Sadly, I discovered that even Magisterium-loving Catholics are divided into little subcamps. The Catholic Answers/EWTN crowd are called the "neo-cons" and the Latin Mass-loving, mantilla wearing (but not SSPX) crowd are called the traditionalists, or simply "trads" for short. This may not come as much of a shock to anyone but me, but I got really depressed over the whole thing. Can't we all just be Catholic, follow the Magisterium, and get along?
So I took my posts down, wrote a shamefaced little apology e-mail to Jimmy and am now lurking around at jimmyakin.org, afraid to show my moniker.
So by way of explanation, my goal here is to take a little snapshot of my current thinking on mantillas, or headcovering--which is an umbrella term for all kinds of coverings worn in all kinds of situations by all kinds of well-meaning women, be they Christian, Jewish, or Muslim (there is probably a Master's thesis lurking in here).
1. This is a huge issue. I have been reading for weeks, unable to piece together a cohesive Catholic perspective on the whole thing. Aside from the do-we-wear-one-at-Mass-or-not controversy, there are varying interpretations of I Corinthians 11, some of which dismiss the whole thing as an example of Paul just being overzealous, the Corinthians being a special case, or veiling being just a cultural practice specific to the times. While our sola scriptura sisters have a refreshing clarity when it comes to seeing this command jump out at them from Scripture, the Catholics shrink back and cry, "Not unless the Pope tells me to...preferably in person!"
2. If you do decide to wear a headcovering...there is NO GUIDANCE. This is a situation in which it would be a relief to be Amish, or CCF, where they tell you what type of headcovering you are to wear and what color and that's that. If you are Catholic, not only do you have no official direction from the Church on this, you have the active animosity of a large contingent of people who have/had a vested interest in "modernizing" the Church, and here you are drawing attention to yourself and implicitly criticizing their "reforms"-- and that's if you're only wearing a covering at Mass. What if you start showing up to all the non-Mass parish events in your covering? What happens when your lapsed-Catholic relatives get a gander at you come Thanksgiving? How do you explain your "new look" to your few remaining Protestant friends who don't really know anything about the Church in the first place? Right now there are too many unanswered questions for me to start wearing a headcovering full-time, although my heart is drawn to the practice.
3. I am afraid I'll be sending the wrong message...spreading confusion, instead of the gospel. This is the real kicker. We must be in the last, last days, because these days when somebody wants to appear overtly religious, they are either ignored or persecuted (and yes, I consider staring to be a form of persecution--it says, "Who do you think you are? I've got my eye on you!") You will quickly find out what people think of your faith when you wear it on your head. "You look Amish with that thing on your head," said my talkative neighbor Joe when he saw my black kerchief. Note: he didn't say, "Wow, I so appreciate your wonderful Catholic and Christian witness! You are making me think about the Lord!" Now times this reaction by twenty and this is what you will have to endure every day, every week, every year of your life until the end. It is not something to be taken on blithely.
And yet, I admire the Catholic sisters on my Yahoo discussion group, which is for Catholic women who cover and who feel called to plain dress, like the Amish (I didn't know they existed either). They offer up the pain of being noticed in this manner, of being mistaken for Mennonite or JW or some other conservative fundamentalist group, knowing in their hearts that they are trying their level best to follow the Scripture and live according to the immemorial traditions of the Church, even if that amounts only to a trough of irrelevance in today's day and age.
And so my agonizing dilemma goes...should I wear makeup, or shouldn't I? Should I wear my hair up every day or shouldn't I? Is it OK to wear pants around the house, or do I need the "feminizing" influence of a skirt even more when I'm inside? I really sympathize with those of you who just don't get the whole emphasis on "appearance." "Why are you spending so much time and energy worrying about it?" they wonder.
You know, I sometimes wonder the same thing. I guess it's like when you examine Christianity for the first time, and you realize that you're going to have to change everything about your life. And yet, what you've found is so beautiful, that you know once you've made the changes and are living only for God, that you'll be more at peace than you've ever been, you'll have more time and energy for Him because you're not being "tossed to and fro on every wind of doctrine."
I guess it's the same with women and the way we dress and present ourselves. Up until now, I've been tossed around when it comes to fashion and I'm tired of it. On the other hand, I don't want to just give up and wear a unisex uniform every day. When you're a stay-at-home, and you don't have all the "outside" stuff to keep you distracted, your soul yearns for beauty, delicacy and all the refined sentiments that women have that help us make a home and a family. When I'm dressed in a feminine manner that is correct for my role, it's like something that was dislocated gets put back into joint. It just feels right.
Here is a nice little run-down on headcovering by Hillbilly Housewife:
http://www.scriptures.hillbillyhousewife.com/beginners.htm
In my pride, I felt that Jimmy Akin needed to be corrected, so I informed him of my disagreement with his interpretation of canon law on the subject, citing some traditionalist-oriented web sites as my sources.
Then I read all the discussion threads I could find on Catholic.com pertaining to this subject--and saw that all the veil advocates GOT ABSOLUTELY TROUNCED when they trotted out their arguments for veiling as required by canon law. I modified my opinion to accommodate the new information...which is basically that a satisfactory case for veiling being some kind of back-door requirement of the Church CANNOT BE MADE in such a way that it will be taken seriously. The veil has been consigned to the realm of "personal devotion."
Sadly, I discovered that even Magisterium-loving Catholics are divided into little subcamps. The Catholic Answers/EWTN crowd are called the "neo-cons" and the Latin Mass-loving, mantilla wearing (but not SSPX) crowd are called the traditionalists, or simply "trads" for short. This may not come as much of a shock to anyone but me, but I got really depressed over the whole thing. Can't we all just be Catholic, follow the Magisterium, and get along?
So I took my posts down, wrote a shamefaced little apology e-mail to Jimmy and am now lurking around at jimmyakin.org, afraid to show my moniker.
So by way of explanation, my goal here is to take a little snapshot of my current thinking on mantillas, or headcovering--which is an umbrella term for all kinds of coverings worn in all kinds of situations by all kinds of well-meaning women, be they Christian, Jewish, or Muslim (there is probably a Master's thesis lurking in here).
1. This is a huge issue. I have been reading for weeks, unable to piece together a cohesive Catholic perspective on the whole thing. Aside from the do-we-wear-one-at-Mass-or-not controversy, there are varying interpretations of I Corinthians 11, some of which dismiss the whole thing as an example of Paul just being overzealous, the Corinthians being a special case, or veiling being just a cultural practice specific to the times. While our sola scriptura sisters have a refreshing clarity when it comes to seeing this command jump out at them from Scripture, the Catholics shrink back and cry, "Not unless the Pope tells me to...preferably in person!"
2. If you do decide to wear a headcovering...there is NO GUIDANCE. This is a situation in which it would be a relief to be Amish, or CCF, where they tell you what type of headcovering you are to wear and what color and that's that. If you are Catholic, not only do you have no official direction from the Church on this, you have the active animosity of a large contingent of people who have/had a vested interest in "modernizing" the Church, and here you are drawing attention to yourself and implicitly criticizing their "reforms"-- and that's if you're only wearing a covering at Mass. What if you start showing up to all the non-Mass parish events in your covering? What happens when your lapsed-Catholic relatives get a gander at you come Thanksgiving? How do you explain your "new look" to your few remaining Protestant friends who don't really know anything about the Church in the first place? Right now there are too many unanswered questions for me to start wearing a headcovering full-time, although my heart is drawn to the practice.
3. I am afraid I'll be sending the wrong message...spreading confusion, instead of the gospel. This is the real kicker. We must be in the last, last days, because these days when somebody wants to appear overtly religious, they are either ignored or persecuted (and yes, I consider staring to be a form of persecution--it says, "Who do you think you are? I've got my eye on you!") You will quickly find out what people think of your faith when you wear it on your head. "You look Amish with that thing on your head," said my talkative neighbor Joe when he saw my black kerchief. Note: he didn't say, "Wow, I so appreciate your wonderful Catholic and Christian witness! You are making me think about the Lord!" Now times this reaction by twenty and this is what you will have to endure every day, every week, every year of your life until the end. It is not something to be taken on blithely.
And yet, I admire the Catholic sisters on my Yahoo discussion group, which is for Catholic women who cover and who feel called to plain dress, like the Amish (I didn't know they existed either). They offer up the pain of being noticed in this manner, of being mistaken for Mennonite or JW or some other conservative fundamentalist group, knowing in their hearts that they are trying their level best to follow the Scripture and live according to the immemorial traditions of the Church, even if that amounts only to a trough of irrelevance in today's day and age.
And so my agonizing dilemma goes...should I wear makeup, or shouldn't I? Should I wear my hair up every day or shouldn't I? Is it OK to wear pants around the house, or do I need the "feminizing" influence of a skirt even more when I'm inside? I really sympathize with those of you who just don't get the whole emphasis on "appearance." "Why are you spending so much time and energy worrying about it?" they wonder.
You know, I sometimes wonder the same thing. I guess it's like when you examine Christianity for the first time, and you realize that you're going to have to change everything about your life. And yet, what you've found is so beautiful, that you know once you've made the changes and are living only for God, that you'll be more at peace than you've ever been, you'll have more time and energy for Him because you're not being "tossed to and fro on every wind of doctrine."
I guess it's the same with women and the way we dress and present ourselves. Up until now, I've been tossed around when it comes to fashion and I'm tired of it. On the other hand, I don't want to just give up and wear a unisex uniform every day. When you're a stay-at-home, and you don't have all the "outside" stuff to keep you distracted, your soul yearns for beauty, delicacy and all the refined sentiments that women have that help us make a home and a family. When I'm dressed in a feminine manner that is correct for my role, it's like something that was dislocated gets put back into joint. It just feels right.
Here is a nice little run-down on headcovering by Hillbilly Housewife:
http://www.scriptures.hillbillyhousewife.com/beginners.htm
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Reader mail (I always wanted to say that!)
Here is a reader question that recently appeared in the comment box, followed by my response. I think it is a good letter, and that it points out some needed clarifications:
Hi, I'll try to answer your question, but I'm not an authority, only a housewife :)
1. www.catholicmodesty.com
Standards of Modesty in Dress
Imprimatur dated Sept. 24, 1956
"A dress cannot be called decent which is cut deeper than two fingers breadth under the pit of the throat; which does not cover the arms at least to the elbows; and scarcely reaches a bit beyond the knees. Furthermore, dresses of transparent materials are improper."
The Cardinal Vicar of Pius XII
I just used the phrase "Pope test" as shorthand...thanks for pointing out to me that it needed to be clarified (you mean somebody actually read my blog?? Whoo-hoo!).
2.
a. Only God knows. It's a path He's drawn me to. Without grace, without Scripture, and without the Church, there's really no point in delineating any standards at all. The modern culture just continues to slouch toward Gomorrah, so there's no standards there. Just what won't get you busted. Also check out Deuteronomy 22:5: "A woman shall not be clothed with man's apparel, neither shall a man use woman's apparel: for he that doeth these things is abominable before God." I think some of the gender-bending fashions we've seen in history are the exception, not the rule.
b. I applaud your journey. I think we all get to a point after conversion where we have to listen deeply for God's call and His personal will for our lives. You know He wants you to be Catholic, but what kind of Catholic will you be? Do you know He is calling you to sainthood? That He is calling every person on earth to sainthood? Do you know that when men can see the separation of your legs...it doesn't matter what you're wearing, they are staring at the rear of the woman. Please don't be offended...I try to be a very refined person but sometimes women don't seem to realize that men are so plagued by concupiscence that we are shocked when we find out! I am not saying that men are animals, or that they all want to do this, but they are bombarded all day with things that tempt them to sin. We can help our brothers out by "veiling" our intimate parts.
c. I totally agree about winter!! You freeze, because modern skirts aren't made to keep you warm--you can't fit anything under them. But jeans aren't necessarily any warmer. My advice is, find or make a longish skirt that is cut a bit fuller than "normal" and wear some exercise pants or soft pajama pants underneath. That's what bloomers are, just pants that women wore beneath their skirts to stay warm. And then I daresay you will be warmer than the skintight Levi's club. Also I think a split skirt that is cut very modestly would be appropriate for sporty things. I am a member of a couple of Yahoo groups where we discuss this kind of thing. Some are very modest and never appear unless they're in a skirt, even if they're weeding in the backyard. Some are much more casual, just exploring the concept of modesty and looking to dress more feminine, like you.
You sound like a very earnest and thoughtful person. Pray about it, read some more, think about what God might be calling you to. Thanks for writing and God bless.
"I read what you wrote, carefully. I have some questions.
1) Where can I find the "Pope test"? Sorry, I read your post
and checked the links, and I cannot find it!
2) Pants: I admit since I converted (first to Christianity in general,
and then to Catholicism) the way I dress has been changing. I am dressing in a
more feminine way (before I used to either dress in shapeless, grayish,
unflattering clothes or in too short skirts and shorts. I avoided colour, also).
I find myself more drawn to long skirts and more feminine pants. But I still
need the pants. When it's raining or cold, nothing can beat the pants. I still
have some pants from "before", which I hate, because they make me seem ugly and
masculine. But the new ones have a feminine, more classic cut. Why do you
believe all pants are not feminine? Why can't they be like skirts: there are
masculine skirts, as the kilts from Scotland or the traditional garb from Apulia
seaweed collectors (Portugal), or the skirts the men from Miranda (Portugal)
wore. Why can't there be masculine pants and feminine pants?"
Hi, I'll try to answer your question, but I'm not an authority, only a housewife :)
1. www.catholicmodesty.com
Standards of Modesty in Dress
Imprimatur dated Sept. 24, 1956
"A dress cannot be called decent which is cut deeper than two fingers breadth under the pit of the throat; which does not cover the arms at least to the elbows; and scarcely reaches a bit beyond the knees. Furthermore, dresses of transparent materials are improper."
The Cardinal Vicar of Pius XII
I just used the phrase "Pope test" as shorthand...thanks for pointing out to me that it needed to be clarified (you mean somebody actually read my blog?? Whoo-hoo!).
2.
a. Only God knows. It's a path He's drawn me to. Without grace, without Scripture, and without the Church, there's really no point in delineating any standards at all. The modern culture just continues to slouch toward Gomorrah, so there's no standards there. Just what won't get you busted. Also check out Deuteronomy 22:5: "A woman shall not be clothed with man's apparel, neither shall a man use woman's apparel: for he that doeth these things is abominable before God." I think some of the gender-bending fashions we've seen in history are the exception, not the rule.
b. I applaud your journey. I think we all get to a point after conversion where we have to listen deeply for God's call and His personal will for our lives. You know He wants you to be Catholic, but what kind of Catholic will you be? Do you know He is calling you to sainthood? That He is calling every person on earth to sainthood? Do you know that when men can see the separation of your legs...it doesn't matter what you're wearing, they are staring at the rear of the woman. Please don't be offended...I try to be a very refined person but sometimes women don't seem to realize that men are so plagued by concupiscence that we are shocked when we find out! I am not saying that men are animals, or that they all want to do this, but they are bombarded all day with things that tempt them to sin. We can help our brothers out by "veiling" our intimate parts.
c. I totally agree about winter!! You freeze, because modern skirts aren't made to keep you warm--you can't fit anything under them. But jeans aren't necessarily any warmer. My advice is, find or make a longish skirt that is cut a bit fuller than "normal" and wear some exercise pants or soft pajama pants underneath. That's what bloomers are, just pants that women wore beneath their skirts to stay warm. And then I daresay you will be warmer than the skintight Levi's club. Also I think a split skirt that is cut very modestly would be appropriate for sporty things. I am a member of a couple of Yahoo groups where we discuss this kind of thing. Some are very modest and never appear unless they're in a skirt, even if they're weeding in the backyard. Some are much more casual, just exploring the concept of modesty and looking to dress more feminine, like you.
You sound like a very earnest and thoughtful person. Pray about it, read some more, think about what God might be calling you to. Thanks for writing and God bless.
The B-team is here!
Whew-eee!
Thanks to all of you whose patience has finally paid off. I've cudgeled my brain into messing with my blog template, and ...the B-team badge & blogroll are finally UP!
Check out my new links!
Learn about Catholicism!
Have fun surfing the B-teamers' blogs!
I'll be getting another cup of coffee...head hurts...
PS: Any of you bloggers who can give me tips on how to make my blog fancy-er, they're welcome...
Thanks to all of you whose patience has finally paid off. I've cudgeled my brain into messing with my blog template, and ...the B-team badge & blogroll are finally UP!
Check out my new links!
Learn about Catholicism!
Have fun surfing the B-teamers' blogs!
I'll be getting another cup of coffee...head hurts...
PS: Any of you bloggers who can give me tips on how to make my blog fancy-er, they're welcome...
How do you deal with JW's?
I am sorry to report that after my post on how to treat door-knockers in a gospel manner, I hid from some JW's today. I guess I could cop an excuse--my baby is sick, that's why we're home from Mass today, I was upstairs with my toddler helping him go potty--but really I can't say I wouldn't have hid from them if I had no excuse at all. Why? If Catholicism (however unattractive it is in its contemporary form) is the TRUTH, why should I shrink from sharing it? Are there any legitimate reasons?
1. I am afraid of persecution. Yep, you heard it here--I was just afraid. I probably wouldn't balk at a couple of grassroots fundies going around the neighborhood sharing the "good news," but JW's in particular are notorious for being organized, aggressive, and explicitly anti-Catholic. In the literature they left me it showed a picture of a Catholic priest among their image montage exposing "false religion." And when you read it, you can tell that when they say "false religion," what they really mean is the Catholic Church.
2. I am unprepared. I know, I know, after being on an apologetics diet for 1 1/2 years, you'd think I'd be loaded for bear when these guys show up. I know enough to defend the Church in casual conversation with friends and relatives, but I don't feel ready to go up against professional religious salesmen.
3. I don't feel safe with strange men in my house. I have a right to feel safe in my own house, and if Dean's away, that usually means that I don't invite anybody in unless I know them. Maybe I would have been less intimidated if it was a couple of ladies. But they were older, heavyset men in business suits. Eh.
It is important to spread the Gospel, and these days that's my mantra. It's what Christ told us to do, and when I realized I didn't know the gospel all that well, I started keeping an open Bible by my bed, so that when I get ready to go to bed, the words are already staring me in the face.
That's why I've been exploring modesty and headcovering. It's such a powerful witness, and you don't have to say anything. Even if I had just opened the door, my long skirt and hair up probably would have conveyed some kind of witness. Maybe they would have been nicer to me. But there'e so much going on around here and in my head that I just couldn't take the chance.
So I apologize for being an intimidated, unprepared chicken. I really hope those men go with God and stay on the path to His truth, wherever it leads them.
1. I am afraid of persecution. Yep, you heard it here--I was just afraid. I probably wouldn't balk at a couple of grassroots fundies going around the neighborhood sharing the "good news," but JW's in particular are notorious for being organized, aggressive, and explicitly anti-Catholic. In the literature they left me it showed a picture of a Catholic priest among their image montage exposing "false religion." And when you read it, you can tell that when they say "false religion," what they really mean is the Catholic Church.
2. I am unprepared. I know, I know, after being on an apologetics diet for 1 1/2 years, you'd think I'd be loaded for bear when these guys show up. I know enough to defend the Church in casual conversation with friends and relatives, but I don't feel ready to go up against professional religious salesmen.
3. I don't feel safe with strange men in my house. I have a right to feel safe in my own house, and if Dean's away, that usually means that I don't invite anybody in unless I know them. Maybe I would have been less intimidated if it was a couple of ladies. But they were older, heavyset men in business suits. Eh.
It is important to spread the Gospel, and these days that's my mantra. It's what Christ told us to do, and when I realized I didn't know the gospel all that well, I started keeping an open Bible by my bed, so that when I get ready to go to bed, the words are already staring me in the face.
That's why I've been exploring modesty and headcovering. It's such a powerful witness, and you don't have to say anything. Even if I had just opened the door, my long skirt and hair up probably would have conveyed some kind of witness. Maybe they would have been nicer to me. But there'e so much going on around here and in my head that I just couldn't take the chance.
So I apologize for being an intimidated, unprepared chicken. I really hope those men go with God and stay on the path to His truth, wherever it leads them.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Hallowed Souls All Around Us
I've been watching a lot of movies lately, since the weather turned. And since I've converted, I'm noticing some Catholic "pearls" that get dropped in here and there by Hollywood. Not many, but a few.
A lot of films try to play with reality. Some are more effective than others. The Matrix, for instance, tried to introduce this idea in a hip, stylish way to the young. Unfortunately such fantasies are unproductive, increasing the nihilism and sense of disillusionment that young people already feel. But after watching A Beautiful Mind again, this time with a Catholic eye, I realize that movies like these do show us glimpses of truth, only they often do so negatively.
John Nash's delusions do harm to his grasp on reality. They get in the way of him living his real life. So by the end of the film he has to ignore them. "It is only in the mysterious equations of love," says Nash at his Nobel acceptance, "that any reason or logic can be found." But what if the opposite is true? What if what the Bible and the Church tell us is actually true: that each person has a guardian angel. Each person has a purpose and a life plan ordained for them by God. We live life, not in a metaphysical vacuum, but in a "cloud of witnesses." Each person has to make a choice: to live out their purpose with God's help, or rejection of God's plan and a spiral into sin. Unlike Nash's retinue of unreal characters, we are surrounded with real persons, who stand by to guide us, to guard us, even to follow our orders.
It will not succeed unless you put on the eyes of faith. As long as you look around and see only walls, you will scoff at the notion of a personal God. But if you pray long enough, a little each day I mean, persevering in prayer and not letting the devil convince you that nobody hears you, you will start to sense little echoes of the supernatural all around you. Read a book about miracles and you will not doubt that every thought or action we take is witnessed immediately and acted upon by supernatural forces. If you're mired in sin, demons rush to do your bidding and solidify your indifference. If you are struggling to be holy, angels breathe on you and transmit your holy prayers and thoughts to heaven. And if you are a saint, then (spiritually speaking) you are "a bulldozer bearing down on a field of marshmallows" to paraphrase Fr. Benedict Groeschel.
It is spiritual warfare to try to be holy in the world. There's really no way to be an "average" Catholic. You are either fighting the good fight or you are aiding and abetting the enemy by your indifference. Remember what Jesus said, "Whoever is not for me is against me." Do you think he is going to look kindly on those of us that are sitting on the fence? It's hard, because the world seems so much more real than the metaphysical realm.You get discouraged, you start to believe that this or that happenstance is a freak incident, another is coincidence. You suffer over something and get angry and depressed, not knowing what it means. The world seems ugly and cold. Then the devil moves in and tries to convince you that the source of your healing, the Church, is really a nasty mess of bad people that you are much better off without. All you really need is yourself, he says. If you could only dispense with all the morons in your life, and do things "your" way, your suffering could at least be palliated, you could insulate yourself from the pain and loneliness you feel.
And then something truly bad happens. Loved ones go to the hospital, enormous bills land in your mailbox and life becomes a round-the-clock of work with no respite in sight. Your mind is filled with the stress of knowing that all the little plans you've built up in your mind, of what you were going to do--provided everything went peachy--are gone. There comes a point when you can't plan, you can't think, you can only react. But once you become physically and mentally exhausted, once you hit that moment of helplessness, when you can't solve all your problems yourself--that's when you go to your knees and God can finally take over.
And then you start to understand how you can have peace that surpasses understanding. Looked at objectively, she should be having a nervous breakdown from all the stress. But there goes the humble little servant of God, trusting in His plan like a child. So she can nurse her children, do the dishes, make the phone calls and dispense the medicine. Even when she doesn't understand how all this is going to come out.
I will watch through the dark til the morning comes
All the light I'll take you through the night to see
A light showing us all love can be
I will guard you with my bright wings
Stay till your heart learns to see
--Will Jennings
A lot of films try to play with reality. Some are more effective than others. The Matrix, for instance, tried to introduce this idea in a hip, stylish way to the young. Unfortunately such fantasies are unproductive, increasing the nihilism and sense of disillusionment that young people already feel. But after watching A Beautiful Mind again, this time with a Catholic eye, I realize that movies like these do show us glimpses of truth, only they often do so negatively.
John Nash's delusions do harm to his grasp on reality. They get in the way of him living his real life. So by the end of the film he has to ignore them. "It is only in the mysterious equations of love," says Nash at his Nobel acceptance, "that any reason or logic can be found." But what if the opposite is true? What if what the Bible and the Church tell us is actually true: that each person has a guardian angel. Each person has a purpose and a life plan ordained for them by God. We live life, not in a metaphysical vacuum, but in a "cloud of witnesses." Each person has to make a choice: to live out their purpose with God's help, or rejection of God's plan and a spiral into sin. Unlike Nash's retinue of unreal characters, we are surrounded with real persons, who stand by to guide us, to guard us, even to follow our orders.
It will not succeed unless you put on the eyes of faith. As long as you look around and see only walls, you will scoff at the notion of a personal God. But if you pray long enough, a little each day I mean, persevering in prayer and not letting the devil convince you that nobody hears you, you will start to sense little echoes of the supernatural all around you. Read a book about miracles and you will not doubt that every thought or action we take is witnessed immediately and acted upon by supernatural forces. If you're mired in sin, demons rush to do your bidding and solidify your indifference. If you are struggling to be holy, angels breathe on you and transmit your holy prayers and thoughts to heaven. And if you are a saint, then (spiritually speaking) you are "a bulldozer bearing down on a field of marshmallows" to paraphrase Fr. Benedict Groeschel.
It is spiritual warfare to try to be holy in the world. There's really no way to be an "average" Catholic. You are either fighting the good fight or you are aiding and abetting the enemy by your indifference. Remember what Jesus said, "Whoever is not for me is against me." Do you think he is going to look kindly on those of us that are sitting on the fence? It's hard, because the world seems so much more real than the metaphysical realm.You get discouraged, you start to believe that this or that happenstance is a freak incident, another is coincidence. You suffer over something and get angry and depressed, not knowing what it means. The world seems ugly and cold. Then the devil moves in and tries to convince you that the source of your healing, the Church, is really a nasty mess of bad people that you are much better off without. All you really need is yourself, he says. If you could only dispense with all the morons in your life, and do things "your" way, your suffering could at least be palliated, you could insulate yourself from the pain and loneliness you feel.
And then something truly bad happens. Loved ones go to the hospital, enormous bills land in your mailbox and life becomes a round-the-clock of work with no respite in sight. Your mind is filled with the stress of knowing that all the little plans you've built up in your mind, of what you were going to do--provided everything went peachy--are gone. There comes a point when you can't plan, you can't think, you can only react. But once you become physically and mentally exhausted, once you hit that moment of helplessness, when you can't solve all your problems yourself--that's when you go to your knees and God can finally take over.
And then you start to understand how you can have peace that surpasses understanding. Looked at objectively, she should be having a nervous breakdown from all the stress. But there goes the humble little servant of God, trusting in His plan like a child. So she can nurse her children, do the dishes, make the phone calls and dispense the medicine. Even when she doesn't understand how all this is going to come out.
I will watch through the dark til the morning comes
All the light I'll take you through the night to see
A light showing us all love can be
I will guard you with my bright wings
Stay till your heart learns to see
--Will Jennings
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Thoughts on Modesty
Why is it only Catholics that seem to have a problem with "dressing up" for church?
As a convert, I've noticed this from the beginning. "Boy, these people are skuzzy," I thought. "If what they say about the Real Presence is true, you'd think they'd have more respect" (confession has done a lot for me since then!). But my thoughts failed to take any real form until, in my veil-reading, I discovered the concept of Catholic modesty. And while concerns about clothing and appearance may be merely a female proclivity, I think we can all look around us and assess the damage that a wholesale disregard of this virtue has produced. Just look around the next time you attend Mass. Outside church it's even worse. Women are supposed to be "liberated," but when we expose our bodies, we lose our dignity. What's liberated about having to dress like a hooker and then be evaluated on your "hot" factor?
As a housewife, I'm concerned because I place as a priority my own vocational development as well as the moral and spiritual well-being of my family--particularly my sons. As their mother, I am modeling femininity to them. I am saying, "This is what a woman is. This is how she dresses and this is how she acts. The way you treat me and the way your father treats me is how you should treat your sisters and your future wife, as well as other women." And on this point I agree with feminist New Agers: the feminine is sacred. At least it ought to be, in our kids' eyes at least.
I don't think mothers who work are as concerned about this because they're always out in the world. Having to go to work, competing with everybody on every level throughout the day, imbues in us the message that we are where we fit into the pecking order. Clothing is a visual language that tells other people, "Hey, I'm with it. Check me out. I've got the latest shoes, and my handbag isn't too behind the times. I'm committed to this job and I deserve that raise." Imagine a Mennonite woman working in an office. Just doesn't compute. Her costume says, "I may be in this world, but I'm not of it." The working woman has to communicate to her employer that her job is her number one priority or she risks losing her paycheck. Her clothing is the most visible and obvious way to do this.
Well, how is modesty defined? Today modesty seems to mean anything that doesn't get you fired or busted for violating indecent exposure laws. But in Scripture, modesty is named as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the Church has, for 1900+ years, held it up as a virtue. Modesty used to mean the universal enforcement of at least an unwritten dress code for women. That dress code included longish skirts or dresses, becoming but not revealing blouses and shirts, and (in the not-too-distant past) a hat or bonnet or headcovering of some type.
The Catholic literature about modesty is some enlightening reading (see links below). I could quote all kinds of stuff from it, but there's just too much--and more easily read by yourself. It all pertains to the dignity of woman, her sacred role as guardian of the home and primary nurturer of children. There are also explicit guidelines as to what exactly a women should be wearing, and these guidelines rule out 85% of what passes for fashion today. I was amused and dismayed by turns as I examined the web sites with their "modesty clothing." "This is so Little House on the Prairie!" I moaned. There were even patterns for bloomers and petticoats!
But then I reminded myself of just how ugly fashion was getting, and how I have almost given up on wearing anything beautiful. I had resigned myself to wearing jeans and T-shirts for the rest of my life because, as a housewife, "Just who and what do I think I have to dress up for?" I even prided myself on "macho" behavior (probably because I was in the military) and being able to compete with men when it comes to coarse language. But I love old movies and period fashion plates, and my "Jane Austen" videotape collection is well-worn. I have also forced myself to wear skirts to Mass because of the crazy outfits people wear. And I'm always glad I did, especially when there's a guy behind me.
So I read voraciously everything I could find on modesty. And I was so convinced by this reading, that I went up to my closet and pulled out everything that didn't pass what I called "the Pope test" (it's in the literature--see below). Then I went down to Goodwill and spent two hundred bucks on things that did pass the Pope test. I emerged looking like a silhouette from the forties, but with modern touches. The look is a little retro, but not Little House on the Prairie. And what is even more important, I felt beautiful.
I did not buy any pants.
Two things I noticed immediately. On coming out of the Goodwill store, I encountered a man in a "wifebeater" tank top and a mullet. When he saw me, he did this sort of double take and automatically opened the door for me. The second thing I noticed was that I stopped carping at my husband. Didn't take any effort at all. Now why should that be? I thought modesty was only about changing my clothing, which I was willing to do anyway, for the sake of my kids. But I discovered that changing my clothes ended up changing my heart, and my marriage--overnight.
My husband is the most wonderful man in the world. I honestly don't think I could have gotten myself a better. But he's not perfect. He's not neat, he's not "healthy," and he's not handy. I'm the one who cleans and reads auto manuals and handles the finances and nags him about his cholesterol. "Oh, if he'd only listen to me!" I'd think. "All his problems would be solved!" The criticizing always hits a crescendo around PMS time when he either sulks or explodes and then I cry out of remorse. Sound familiar? I think the same refrain goes through the head of every fallen woman since Eve ate the apple. But what if we could break the cycle? Could it be possible that when a woman dresses according to her sacred role, it tends to bring out true masculinity in men? Women, what if we could make our husbands be the men we have always wanted them to be by simply putting on a skirt?
Why are there teaching documents from cardinals and archbishops urging women not to wear pants? Because the pants represent a blurring of the sex roles. When a women puts on pants she immediately thinks of herself not in the role of sacred feminine, but in terms of her utility. And then feminism seizes on this and tells her that she can do anything a man can do. Is it any wonder then that the woman feels driven to compete with her husband, along with everyone else?
Can you imagine the Virgin Mary in pants?
Looked at another way, our clothing proclaims to the world where our hearts are. Last week, I went along with my husband to his work site in Vancouver, British Columbia. There is a public, wholesale endorsement of the gay lifestyle there. In one of the brochures in the hotel, there was a pamphlet with tourist destinations within it that included "the vibrant gay and lesbian community." The pamphlet showed a man and woman tourist, but no kids. The front of the pamphlet was an opened zipper with the statement, "Expose yourself to Vancouver, British Columbia." This is where we are headed, gang.
We went to the farmers market there and saw a teenage boy in a dress. Not in drag, but in a dress. What struck me about him was that this was not a joke. He was dead serious, and you could tell that he expected people to take him seriously. The next time someone accuses you of focusing merely on the externals, ask them what they think about men going to job interviews in dresses and expecting to be hired. What does that say about what's inside?
Now how is modesty related to the veil issue? Are they separate? I think they are linked. When women dropped the veil, they started wearing pants and the "battle of the sexes" was on. The veil is a "sign of submission," of the woman to her husband. When women started to drop this sign, it wasn't simply a matter of convenience. It was an act of rebellion. It says, I am no longer going to be subject to any man--and that goes directly against Scripture. And the secular culture is only too happy to back her up on this. "The Church was wrong for 1900 years," it says. "Now you can become who you really are." And let me interject here that I don't believe this passage means that every woman is automatically any man's slave. The Scripture says a woman is subject to her husband, and to her husband only. She is subordinate to him, not all males or anybody else.
Christianity dignified women by lifting them up from the status of slave and giving them the place accorded to the Church by Christ. Christianity offered protection to women, rights and privileges they didn't have in the pagan world. If you have a problem with St. Paul on this, ask yourself whether it is more dignified for a woman to answer to her husband, in private, over whom she exercises the whole of her feminine gifts--or to some indifferent boss in the public square who values her only for her quota of man-hours? Is it more dignified for a woman to submit to the man who needs her most, and has the most to gain from her cooperation, or the corporate moguls and government officials who set social standards far more rigid than anything that prevails in a home?
In the traditional context, the veil is not merely a "sign of submission,' but a badge of honor, and a privilege. When I was promoted in the military and was given the rank insignia to wear, did I complain about how I was to be subordinate to the next higher rank? No! I gloried in my new position, I wanted to learn all about it, and to do right by everyone who happened to be below or above me. And to the angels, the veil signifies that we accept our proper place in the worship of God, just as they do--because the angels cover themselves before God.
Now that 40 years have passed, and the veil has been so completely eradicated, it seems unthinkable for women to willingly respond to an exhortation from the Church about this--even if the hierarchy felt the urge to do so. Where has the Church been through all this? In a tailspin after Vatican II, fighting social phenomena like contraception, abortion, and homosexuality in the priesthood--which was not exactly a position from which to exhort women about something like veil-wearing. The literature cites a few examples from the 50's or the 60's, a cardinal here, an archbishop there--promoting the ideal of modesty and attempting to set some standards. But they are like voices crying in the wilderness.
Anyone with the courage to obey risks becoming socially irrelevant--because in today's society, if you're not going along with the dress, you're not going along with the culture. Secular, unisex, and immodest clothing SHOULD be anathema to Catholic women, but we all want to "go along" with the crowd. It may be ugly, and utilitarian, but it's comfortable and practical, which seems to be the only criteria on which to judge something these days.
However, if a Catholic woman wants to take the virtue of modesty seriously, she must consider the veil a part of the package. Covering a woman's hair has ALWAYS BEEN DONE in Christian societies. It wasn't until the 20th century that women started to buck the tradition. Now am I talking just at Mass, or all the time? Well...that is a whole other can of worms. I haven't found definitive information yet from the Catholic perspective, but I have found a few Protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist sects which exhort and defend the practice of veiling at least for worship and some of them all the time, based on St. Paul's passage in I Corinthians. There is very strong Catholic evidence that the veil is to be worn at Mass--it just seems to be ignored by everyone. I haven't found a jot of support in Catholic circles for veiling outside of Mass, however. I am still looking, so check back for updates.
Some sites to check out:
http://www.catholicmodesty.com
http://catholicplanet.com/women/index.htm
and you can jump off from there...
As a convert, I've noticed this from the beginning. "Boy, these people are skuzzy," I thought. "If what they say about the Real Presence is true, you'd think they'd have more respect" (confession has done a lot for me since then!). But my thoughts failed to take any real form until, in my veil-reading, I discovered the concept of Catholic modesty. And while concerns about clothing and appearance may be merely a female proclivity, I think we can all look around us and assess the damage that a wholesale disregard of this virtue has produced. Just look around the next time you attend Mass. Outside church it's even worse. Women are supposed to be "liberated," but when we expose our bodies, we lose our dignity. What's liberated about having to dress like a hooker and then be evaluated on your "hot" factor?
As a housewife, I'm concerned because I place as a priority my own vocational development as well as the moral and spiritual well-being of my family--particularly my sons. As their mother, I am modeling femininity to them. I am saying, "This is what a woman is. This is how she dresses and this is how she acts. The way you treat me and the way your father treats me is how you should treat your sisters and your future wife, as well as other women." And on this point I agree with feminist New Agers: the feminine is sacred. At least it ought to be, in our kids' eyes at least.
I don't think mothers who work are as concerned about this because they're always out in the world. Having to go to work, competing with everybody on every level throughout the day, imbues in us the message that we are where we fit into the pecking order. Clothing is a visual language that tells other people, "Hey, I'm with it. Check me out. I've got the latest shoes, and my handbag isn't too behind the times. I'm committed to this job and I deserve that raise." Imagine a Mennonite woman working in an office. Just doesn't compute. Her costume says, "I may be in this world, but I'm not of it." The working woman has to communicate to her employer that her job is her number one priority or she risks losing her paycheck. Her clothing is the most visible and obvious way to do this.
Well, how is modesty defined? Today modesty seems to mean anything that doesn't get you fired or busted for violating indecent exposure laws. But in Scripture, modesty is named as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the Church has, for 1900+ years, held it up as a virtue. Modesty used to mean the universal enforcement of at least an unwritten dress code for women. That dress code included longish skirts or dresses, becoming but not revealing blouses and shirts, and (in the not-too-distant past) a hat or bonnet or headcovering of some type.
The Catholic literature about modesty is some enlightening reading (see links below). I could quote all kinds of stuff from it, but there's just too much--and more easily read by yourself. It all pertains to the dignity of woman, her sacred role as guardian of the home and primary nurturer of children. There are also explicit guidelines as to what exactly a women should be wearing, and these guidelines rule out 85% of what passes for fashion today. I was amused and dismayed by turns as I examined the web sites with their "modesty clothing." "This is so Little House on the Prairie!" I moaned. There were even patterns for bloomers and petticoats!
But then I reminded myself of just how ugly fashion was getting, and how I have almost given up on wearing anything beautiful. I had resigned myself to wearing jeans and T-shirts for the rest of my life because, as a housewife, "Just who and what do I think I have to dress up for?" I even prided myself on "macho" behavior (probably because I was in the military) and being able to compete with men when it comes to coarse language. But I love old movies and period fashion plates, and my "Jane Austen" videotape collection is well-worn. I have also forced myself to wear skirts to Mass because of the crazy outfits people wear. And I'm always glad I did, especially when there's a guy behind me.
So I read voraciously everything I could find on modesty. And I was so convinced by this reading, that I went up to my closet and pulled out everything that didn't pass what I called "the Pope test" (it's in the literature--see below). Then I went down to Goodwill and spent two hundred bucks on things that did pass the Pope test. I emerged looking like a silhouette from the forties, but with modern touches. The look is a little retro, but not Little House on the Prairie. And what is even more important, I felt beautiful.
I did not buy any pants.
Two things I noticed immediately. On coming out of the Goodwill store, I encountered a man in a "wifebeater" tank top and a mullet. When he saw me, he did this sort of double take and automatically opened the door for me. The second thing I noticed was that I stopped carping at my husband. Didn't take any effort at all. Now why should that be? I thought modesty was only about changing my clothing, which I was willing to do anyway, for the sake of my kids. But I discovered that changing my clothes ended up changing my heart, and my marriage--overnight.
My husband is the most wonderful man in the world. I honestly don't think I could have gotten myself a better. But he's not perfect. He's not neat, he's not "healthy," and he's not handy. I'm the one who cleans and reads auto manuals and handles the finances and nags him about his cholesterol. "Oh, if he'd only listen to me!" I'd think. "All his problems would be solved!" The criticizing always hits a crescendo around PMS time when he either sulks or explodes and then I cry out of remorse. Sound familiar? I think the same refrain goes through the head of every fallen woman since Eve ate the apple. But what if we could break the cycle? Could it be possible that when a woman dresses according to her sacred role, it tends to bring out true masculinity in men? Women, what if we could make our husbands be the men we have always wanted them to be by simply putting on a skirt?
Why are there teaching documents from cardinals and archbishops urging women not to wear pants? Because the pants represent a blurring of the sex roles. When a women puts on pants she immediately thinks of herself not in the role of sacred feminine, but in terms of her utility. And then feminism seizes on this and tells her that she can do anything a man can do. Is it any wonder then that the woman feels driven to compete with her husband, along with everyone else?
Can you imagine the Virgin Mary in pants?
Looked at another way, our clothing proclaims to the world where our hearts are. Last week, I went along with my husband to his work site in Vancouver, British Columbia. There is a public, wholesale endorsement of the gay lifestyle there. In one of the brochures in the hotel, there was a pamphlet with tourist destinations within it that included "the vibrant gay and lesbian community." The pamphlet showed a man and woman tourist, but no kids. The front of the pamphlet was an opened zipper with the statement, "Expose yourself to Vancouver, British Columbia." This is where we are headed, gang.
We went to the farmers market there and saw a teenage boy in a dress. Not in drag, but in a dress. What struck me about him was that this was not a joke. He was dead serious, and you could tell that he expected people to take him seriously. The next time someone accuses you of focusing merely on the externals, ask them what they think about men going to job interviews in dresses and expecting to be hired. What does that say about what's inside?
Now how is modesty related to the veil issue? Are they separate? I think they are linked. When women dropped the veil, they started wearing pants and the "battle of the sexes" was on. The veil is a "sign of submission," of the woman to her husband. When women started to drop this sign, it wasn't simply a matter of convenience. It was an act of rebellion. It says, I am no longer going to be subject to any man--and that goes directly against Scripture. And the secular culture is only too happy to back her up on this. "The Church was wrong for 1900 years," it says. "Now you can become who you really are." And let me interject here that I don't believe this passage means that every woman is automatically any man's slave. The Scripture says a woman is subject to her husband, and to her husband only. She is subordinate to him, not all males or anybody else.
Christianity dignified women by lifting them up from the status of slave and giving them the place accorded to the Church by Christ. Christianity offered protection to women, rights and privileges they didn't have in the pagan world. If you have a problem with St. Paul on this, ask yourself whether it is more dignified for a woman to answer to her husband, in private, over whom she exercises the whole of her feminine gifts--or to some indifferent boss in the public square who values her only for her quota of man-hours? Is it more dignified for a woman to submit to the man who needs her most, and has the most to gain from her cooperation, or the corporate moguls and government officials who set social standards far more rigid than anything that prevails in a home?
In the traditional context, the veil is not merely a "sign of submission,' but a badge of honor, and a privilege. When I was promoted in the military and was given the rank insignia to wear, did I complain about how I was to be subordinate to the next higher rank? No! I gloried in my new position, I wanted to learn all about it, and to do right by everyone who happened to be below or above me. And to the angels, the veil signifies that we accept our proper place in the worship of God, just as they do--because the angels cover themselves before God.
Now that 40 years have passed, and the veil has been so completely eradicated, it seems unthinkable for women to willingly respond to an exhortation from the Church about this--even if the hierarchy felt the urge to do so. Where has the Church been through all this? In a tailspin after Vatican II, fighting social phenomena like contraception, abortion, and homosexuality in the priesthood--which was not exactly a position from which to exhort women about something like veil-wearing. The literature cites a few examples from the 50's or the 60's, a cardinal here, an archbishop there--promoting the ideal of modesty and attempting to set some standards. But they are like voices crying in the wilderness.
Anyone with the courage to obey risks becoming socially irrelevant--because in today's society, if you're not going along with the dress, you're not going along with the culture. Secular, unisex, and immodest clothing SHOULD be anathema to Catholic women, but we all want to "go along" with the crowd. It may be ugly, and utilitarian, but it's comfortable and practical, which seems to be the only criteria on which to judge something these days.
However, if a Catholic woman wants to take the virtue of modesty seriously, she must consider the veil a part of the package. Covering a woman's hair has ALWAYS BEEN DONE in Christian societies. It wasn't until the 20th century that women started to buck the tradition. Now am I talking just at Mass, or all the time? Well...that is a whole other can of worms. I haven't found definitive information yet from the Catholic perspective, but I have found a few Protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist sects which exhort and defend the practice of veiling at least for worship and some of them all the time, based on St. Paul's passage in I Corinthians. There is very strong Catholic evidence that the veil is to be worn at Mass--it just seems to be ignored by everyone. I haven't found a jot of support in Catholic circles for veiling outside of Mass, however. I am still looking, so check back for updates.
Some sites to check out:
http://www.catholicmodesty.com
http://catholicplanet.com/women/index.htm
and you can jump off from there...
Friday, August 25, 2006
Bob the Bummer
The last time we gave money to OPB, they cancelled my favorite show. I was so mad, we took a long hiatus from watching any public programming. I mean, it just feels like a betrayal, because they always take something good and replace it with something stupid or just ruin it.
Take Bob the Builder. At first, I thought it was a little too "cutesy" and simplistic, especially the refrain, "Can we fix it? Yes we can!" The show centers around Bob and Wendy and their crew of construction vehicles that all have names and personalities and even hang-ups. Bob goes around doing construction jobs for the community, with no job being too small. Every member of the community has Bob on the payroll, it seems, and there's no lack of business from the mayor. So every show is a pack of three mini-episodes following Bob and the gang on their latest job, interacting with various other characters, and solving every problem with a mixture of teamwork and serendipity.
I quickly got over my first impression that Bob was a dippy show, however. Soon I began to appreciate the jerky stop-action animation, the cute animals and the anthropomorphic machines. There was an innocence about the show, that transcended bills and permits and contracts to show a simple world without sin, in which everyone worked together for the good of all. One time there was a segment oriented purely at the parents, who were told that, "By learning how to solve problems together, children learn to work together as a team." That was the extent of any overt messages in the show. Although Bob occasionally interjected that such-and-such was a salvageable material that should be reused, or mentioned "green" building methods from time to time, the main thrust of the show was fun, friends, and problem-solving. I got hooked on it, and for the last few weeks, Bob has been the high point of many hectic mornings.
Until now. I may be late to the scene--apparently Bob the Builder has been on for awhile--but after the first season of the show, the focus shifted. Bob and his team have been given a new mission: to develop picturesque Sunflower Valley into an environmentally-friendly community. The new focus was pitched in a full-length episode featuring an architectural contest in which Bob's green utopia was pitted against an ugly mass of skyscrapers. Bob wins the contest, to the relief and enlightenment of all, and is awarded the task of making his vision come alive. During the episode, Bob is what he usually is not--a man on a mission. No more civic redecorating or barn-raising for him! This is a real job. At several points in the episode, he even had all the vehicles chanting "Reduce, reuse, recycle! Reduce, reuse, recycle!" I almost choked on my coffee in annoyance.
Now each mini-episode consists of Bob alone in the wilderness, building his dream one step at a time, while delivering homilies on environmentalism to his captive audience of adoring machines. While Carl still enjoys the show, it's been ruined for me. Now instead of drifting briefly into fantasy land, chuckling over the townspeople's small foibles and unintentional bits of comedy, I'm having this environmentalist agenda shoved down my throat. Even the PC-ness of Sesame Street isn't stressed this much. It's bad enough that children can't just have fun anymore (everything having to carry an "educational" message), but the new, unmistakably political, tone of the show is cruel.
How so?
It's cruel to take a child's little memories and pleasures and twist them to reflect the agenda of some adults who just happen to be in charge and stand to profit from forcing their agenda. You can practically see some producer cackling with glee in anticipation of his next promotion, and some committee of writers sitting around going, "Well, what can Bob say about protecting the environment today? Who cares...somebody brew another pot of coffee and we'll spend 30 seconds chanting Reduce-Reuse-Recycle again." This is not to say that I'm against protecting the environment. It's just that "protecting the environment" has become the mantra of liberals, covering up their real agenda of killing human beings through abortion and euthanasia. They took a sweet little story and turned it into a half-hour long commercial for their platform.
It's cruel to eradicate every last vestige of imagination from television, especially when PBS gets public money to fund programs for poor children which should go toward something besides inculcating an ideology. "Wait a minute, it's just recycling," you point out. "Who can argue with that?" Nobody can. That's the point. It's the camel's nose in the tent, pitched at two-year-olds to soften them up for more propaganda once they get into the schools, where recycling bins proliferate and common sense goes out the window. And even if you don't agree with that, you'd think that there would be a better way than to take a good show that had good writing and production value and turn it into a platform of talking points.
Finally, it's cruel to all the rest of us who live in a diminished world, a world that has sold its birthright--the faith delivered once by Jesus Christ to the saints--for this mess of pottage: a world of paranoia and pornography, of political correctness and contraception, of anti-religious totalitarianism and casual killing. It's cruel to destroy every oasis of joy there is to be had in this howling wilderness, in which human beings exist only to use and be used, and children are simply pawns to be won to one agenda or another. Like the world, Bob has become boring...and that's a real bummer.
Take Bob the Builder. At first, I thought it was a little too "cutesy" and simplistic, especially the refrain, "Can we fix it? Yes we can!" The show centers around Bob and Wendy and their crew of construction vehicles that all have names and personalities and even hang-ups. Bob goes around doing construction jobs for the community, with no job being too small. Every member of the community has Bob on the payroll, it seems, and there's no lack of business from the mayor. So every show is a pack of three mini-episodes following Bob and the gang on their latest job, interacting with various other characters, and solving every problem with a mixture of teamwork and serendipity.
I quickly got over my first impression that Bob was a dippy show, however. Soon I began to appreciate the jerky stop-action animation, the cute animals and the anthropomorphic machines. There was an innocence about the show, that transcended bills and permits and contracts to show a simple world without sin, in which everyone worked together for the good of all. One time there was a segment oriented purely at the parents, who were told that, "By learning how to solve problems together, children learn to work together as a team." That was the extent of any overt messages in the show. Although Bob occasionally interjected that such-and-such was a salvageable material that should be reused, or mentioned "green" building methods from time to time, the main thrust of the show was fun, friends, and problem-solving. I got hooked on it, and for the last few weeks, Bob has been the high point of many hectic mornings.
Until now. I may be late to the scene--apparently Bob the Builder has been on for awhile--but after the first season of the show, the focus shifted. Bob and his team have been given a new mission: to develop picturesque Sunflower Valley into an environmentally-friendly community. The new focus was pitched in a full-length episode featuring an architectural contest in which Bob's green utopia was pitted against an ugly mass of skyscrapers. Bob wins the contest, to the relief and enlightenment of all, and is awarded the task of making his vision come alive. During the episode, Bob is what he usually is not--a man on a mission. No more civic redecorating or barn-raising for him! This is a real job. At several points in the episode, he even had all the vehicles chanting "Reduce, reuse, recycle! Reduce, reuse, recycle!" I almost choked on my coffee in annoyance.
Now each mini-episode consists of Bob alone in the wilderness, building his dream one step at a time, while delivering homilies on environmentalism to his captive audience of adoring machines. While Carl still enjoys the show, it's been ruined for me. Now instead of drifting briefly into fantasy land, chuckling over the townspeople's small foibles and unintentional bits of comedy, I'm having this environmentalist agenda shoved down my throat. Even the PC-ness of Sesame Street isn't stressed this much. It's bad enough that children can't just have fun anymore (everything having to carry an "educational" message), but the new, unmistakably political, tone of the show is cruel.
How so?
It's cruel to take a child's little memories and pleasures and twist them to reflect the agenda of some adults who just happen to be in charge and stand to profit from forcing their agenda. You can practically see some producer cackling with glee in anticipation of his next promotion, and some committee of writers sitting around going, "Well, what can Bob say about protecting the environment today? Who cares...somebody brew another pot of coffee and we'll spend 30 seconds chanting Reduce-Reuse-Recycle again." This is not to say that I'm against protecting the environment. It's just that "protecting the environment" has become the mantra of liberals, covering up their real agenda of killing human beings through abortion and euthanasia. They took a sweet little story and turned it into a half-hour long commercial for their platform.
It's cruel to eradicate every last vestige of imagination from television, especially when PBS gets public money to fund programs for poor children which should go toward something besides inculcating an ideology. "Wait a minute, it's just recycling," you point out. "Who can argue with that?" Nobody can. That's the point. It's the camel's nose in the tent, pitched at two-year-olds to soften them up for more propaganda once they get into the schools, where recycling bins proliferate and common sense goes out the window. And even if you don't agree with that, you'd think that there would be a better way than to take a good show that had good writing and production value and turn it into a platform of talking points.
Finally, it's cruel to all the rest of us who live in a diminished world, a world that has sold its birthright--the faith delivered once by Jesus Christ to the saints--for this mess of pottage: a world of paranoia and pornography, of political correctness and contraception, of anti-religious totalitarianism and casual killing. It's cruel to destroy every oasis of joy there is to be had in this howling wilderness, in which human beings exist only to use and be used, and children are simply pawns to be won to one agenda or another. Like the world, Bob has become boring...and that's a real bummer.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Be Nice to Knockers
And now, for a word about door-to-door solicitations.
DISCLAIMER: In taking up this topic, it is not my wish to alienate anybody who simply does not give to any unsolicited requests for donations as a matter of principle. I quite understand this sentiment, as I make it a rule never to commit money over the phone unless I'm the originator of the request.
What I'm after is finding a method of dealing with them that not only does justice to both parties involved, but that harmonizes with Christian, and especially Catholic, principles. I will also not be talking about those solicitations you get over the phone, partly because I have a rule for not giving to them, and partly because elements of the strategy below will also work with phone solicitors.
But doorknockers are a special category, since they are people, and people by definition have souls--souls which you should be interested in saving. Now I'm not talking about handing out tracts, stumping for the Church, and asking them whether they want to go to Mass with you. That would be termed, popularly, as the evangelical approach. What we're talking about here is something subtle, human, practical, and very Catholic, that anyone can do without feeling embarrassed or apologetic about it.
Therefore, doorknockers are a special problem--and a special opportunity. They are also in-your-face unavoidable, and you can't exactly slam down the phone after making pretend static noises and get away with it. You have a commission from God to spread the Gospel, in whatever form you can, even if it means just not being a jerk. Here are some methods I've used that do not pass the test:
1) PRETEND TO NOT BE HOME. This does not work. Either I end up skulking in the bathroom, feeling like an idiot, or the two cars in the driveway and the shrieking toddler give me away. One time the "solicitors," two little neighborhood boys, peeked in our front window, and I was indignant enough to give them a dressing-down for it. Then I felt like a mean idiot.
2) PUT UP A SIGN. This does not work because in order to make the sign effective, it either has to be SO LARGE that all your neighbors can see it from across the street, and thus becomes a real eyesore--as well as making you look reclusive and inhospitable--or it is so small as to be easily ignored by the doorknocker. I once created a sign that I could put up in the window as needed, in lieu of opening the door, but this approach creeped me out, as well as the doorknockers (from what I gathered of the looks on their faces). The effect was, "Help, I'm a prisoner in my own home! Call the 6 o'clock news!"
3) GET RID OF THEM. This involves opening the door, listening to them just long enough to get a word in edgewise, and then declaring your disinterest and slamming the door in their faces. This approach is so repugnant that it not only drives people to use methods 1) and 2) above, but it doesn't always work because you are not always close to a door. For example, today's encounter happened while I was out front mowing the lawn.
4) THE PAYOFF. Let them get their spiel out, squirm a little bit and dig around for a buck or two just to get them off your property.
OK, so how do we deal with these people in a humane and Christian manner?
First, let me say unapologetically that we are on every do-not-call list in existence, and our name is on file with the DMA to not send us all those catalogs. There is nothing wrong with that, in my estimation. Being a Christian does not mean that you must invite an inundation of wasteful, irksome, and sometimes obnoxious marketing attempts. There is nothing wrong with telling people that this is not a good time, their cause is not on your priority list, or that you simply can't afford to add to your charitable donations this month. But you could always consider them for next month. This leads me to strategy #1:
1) SEE THEIR SOUL: The fundamental idea is trying to spread the Gospel to every human being you find in front of you, no matter where you are. So remind yourself that this is a person beloved of God, that he or she has an immortal soul, and "you are the only Bible they may ever read." So quickly pray and ask yourself, "How can I be Jesus to this person?" Not, "What would Jesus do?" but "How can I show the love of Christ and the truth of the Gospel to them, even in just a few minutes?" This necessarily shapes what comes next:
2) LISTEN. Hear them out. Give them a chance to practice their spiel, and try to consider their request. Chances are they're footsore, have been all over the neighborhood, and the rough treatment from some of your neighbors is probably getting them down. You don't have to invite them inside for tea and cookies, but at least give them two minutes of your time. That tells THEM that you truly care about them as a person, even if you aren't buying.
3) ASK FOR MORE INFORMATION. This is the true Gospel test. If you definitely aren't interested, and there's no way you'd ever use that service, tell them politely, smile, and say you're sorry but you hope they have better luck. Practice your manners. BUT if there's any possibility you might use that service, or give to their cause, go ahead and ask some questions. This serves a dual purpose. If you ultimately do not decide to accede to their request, at least you've given them a fair hearing. You may find out about information that interests you but seems unrelated. If you ARE interested in giving or subscribing (or whatever), you need to ask a few more questions simply to verify that you are dealing with a reputable organization, not just a shyster cruising the neighborhood. If they are serious and their organization is legit, they'll be happy to take some time and answer all your questions. Only a crook would suddenly be in a hurry.
4) BE HONEST. I was talking with a DISH satellite sales guy and had come to the point where he was using my phone to inquire about the tax rates attached to the service, and I was reading through the fine print on the contract. The reason I was considering the service was their low promotional rate and the fact that they offered a family package with EWTN, a Catholic cable channel. But the contract was very long, with rigid terms and steep fines if you didn't do everything on the nose. I handed it back to him and said, "I'm sorry. I really would like to do it, I just don't think I can live up to my part of the contract. Sorry to have wasted your time." He was very persistent, but all was polite.
5) BE GENTLE. I don't know quite how to quantify this, but I guess it means that since I started dealing with solicitors in this manner, I've never felt the need to be rude, brusque, or brassy. I always make lots of eye contact, shake hands, and call the person by name. A final note: if there's an opportunity to simply mention my faith in the course of the conversation, I do so. We might be discussing the weather or current events and you could say, "God's in control." Or you could say "Praise God!" if the person relates some good news that seems particularly heaven-sent. "I'll say a prayer for that," can be appropriate if a personal matter enters the conversation. A simple "God bless you," or "Godspeed," as they go on their way will not fall on deaf ears. As an additional note for evangelizing, it occurred to me that I could have a small sign, needlework in the window, or lawn ornament that depicted a blessing, Scripture verse, or saint, so that whoever even knocks on our door will know who we are and what we stand for, and will shape their reaction accordingly.
I mention all this because I did have an encounter today with a doorknocker that convinced me I needed to write all this down. His name was Lawrence, and he volunteers for a missing children's outreach, Operation Lookout. He seemed puzzled by all my questions, but I carefully explained (just being honest) that we have a lot of solicitors come through and I wanted to know who I was dealing with before I donated. I gave him $12 and he gave me a nifty calculator (which, as a tightwad, I use frequently). I had him check over my pepper spray key chain and he gave me some info about that, and he mentioned as an aside that he fixed houses up and rented or sold them. Now I wish I had asked him for some advice on remodeling, but he seemed like he needed to go. But all in all I'd say I got a good deal.
Godspeed, Lawrence.
DISCLAIMER: In taking up this topic, it is not my wish to alienate anybody who simply does not give to any unsolicited requests for donations as a matter of principle. I quite understand this sentiment, as I make it a rule never to commit money over the phone unless I'm the originator of the request.
What I'm after is finding a method of dealing with them that not only does justice to both parties involved, but that harmonizes with Christian, and especially Catholic, principles. I will also not be talking about those solicitations you get over the phone, partly because I have a rule for not giving to them, and partly because elements of the strategy below will also work with phone solicitors.
But doorknockers are a special category, since they are people, and people by definition have souls--souls which you should be interested in saving. Now I'm not talking about handing out tracts, stumping for the Church, and asking them whether they want to go to Mass with you. That would be termed, popularly, as the evangelical approach. What we're talking about here is something subtle, human, practical, and very Catholic, that anyone can do without feeling embarrassed or apologetic about it.
Therefore, doorknockers are a special problem--and a special opportunity. They are also in-your-face unavoidable, and you can't exactly slam down the phone after making pretend static noises and get away with it. You have a commission from God to spread the Gospel, in whatever form you can, even if it means just not being a jerk. Here are some methods I've used that do not pass the test:
1) PRETEND TO NOT BE HOME. This does not work. Either I end up skulking in the bathroom, feeling like an idiot, or the two cars in the driveway and the shrieking toddler give me away. One time the "solicitors," two little neighborhood boys, peeked in our front window, and I was indignant enough to give them a dressing-down for it. Then I felt like a mean idiot.
2) PUT UP A SIGN. This does not work because in order to make the sign effective, it either has to be SO LARGE that all your neighbors can see it from across the street, and thus becomes a real eyesore--as well as making you look reclusive and inhospitable--or it is so small as to be easily ignored by the doorknocker. I once created a sign that I could put up in the window as needed, in lieu of opening the door, but this approach creeped me out, as well as the doorknockers (from what I gathered of the looks on their faces). The effect was, "Help, I'm a prisoner in my own home! Call the 6 o'clock news!"
3) GET RID OF THEM. This involves opening the door, listening to them just long enough to get a word in edgewise, and then declaring your disinterest and slamming the door in their faces. This approach is so repugnant that it not only drives people to use methods 1) and 2) above, but it doesn't always work because you are not always close to a door. For example, today's encounter happened while I was out front mowing the lawn.
4) THE PAYOFF. Let them get their spiel out, squirm a little bit and dig around for a buck or two just to get them off your property.
OK, so how do we deal with these people in a humane and Christian manner?
First, let me say unapologetically that we are on every do-not-call list in existence, and our name is on file with the DMA to not send us all those catalogs. There is nothing wrong with that, in my estimation. Being a Christian does not mean that you must invite an inundation of wasteful, irksome, and sometimes obnoxious marketing attempts. There is nothing wrong with telling people that this is not a good time, their cause is not on your priority list, or that you simply can't afford to add to your charitable donations this month. But you could always consider them for next month. This leads me to strategy #1:
1) SEE THEIR SOUL: The fundamental idea is trying to spread the Gospel to every human being you find in front of you, no matter where you are. So remind yourself that this is a person beloved of God, that he or she has an immortal soul, and "you are the only Bible they may ever read." So quickly pray and ask yourself, "How can I be Jesus to this person?" Not, "What would Jesus do?" but "How can I show the love of Christ and the truth of the Gospel to them, even in just a few minutes?" This necessarily shapes what comes next:
2) LISTEN. Hear them out. Give them a chance to practice their spiel, and try to consider their request. Chances are they're footsore, have been all over the neighborhood, and the rough treatment from some of your neighbors is probably getting them down. You don't have to invite them inside for tea and cookies, but at least give them two minutes of your time. That tells THEM that you truly care about them as a person, even if you aren't buying.
3) ASK FOR MORE INFORMATION. This is the true Gospel test. If you definitely aren't interested, and there's no way you'd ever use that service, tell them politely, smile, and say you're sorry but you hope they have better luck. Practice your manners. BUT if there's any possibility you might use that service, or give to their cause, go ahead and ask some questions. This serves a dual purpose. If you ultimately do not decide to accede to their request, at least you've given them a fair hearing. You may find out about information that interests you but seems unrelated. If you ARE interested in giving or subscribing (or whatever), you need to ask a few more questions simply to verify that you are dealing with a reputable organization, not just a shyster cruising the neighborhood. If they are serious and their organization is legit, they'll be happy to take some time and answer all your questions. Only a crook would suddenly be in a hurry.
4) BE HONEST. I was talking with a DISH satellite sales guy and had come to the point where he was using my phone to inquire about the tax rates attached to the service, and I was reading through the fine print on the contract. The reason I was considering the service was their low promotional rate and the fact that they offered a family package with EWTN, a Catholic cable channel. But the contract was very long, with rigid terms and steep fines if you didn't do everything on the nose. I handed it back to him and said, "I'm sorry. I really would like to do it, I just don't think I can live up to my part of the contract. Sorry to have wasted your time." He was very persistent, but all was polite.
5) BE GENTLE. I don't know quite how to quantify this, but I guess it means that since I started dealing with solicitors in this manner, I've never felt the need to be rude, brusque, or brassy. I always make lots of eye contact, shake hands, and call the person by name. A final note: if there's an opportunity to simply mention my faith in the course of the conversation, I do so. We might be discussing the weather or current events and you could say, "God's in control." Or you could say "Praise God!" if the person relates some good news that seems particularly heaven-sent. "I'll say a prayer for that," can be appropriate if a personal matter enters the conversation. A simple "God bless you," or "Godspeed," as they go on their way will not fall on deaf ears. As an additional note for evangelizing, it occurred to me that I could have a small sign, needlework in the window, or lawn ornament that depicted a blessing, Scripture verse, or saint, so that whoever even knocks on our door will know who we are and what we stand for, and will shape their reaction accordingly.
I mention all this because I did have an encounter today with a doorknocker that convinced me I needed to write all this down. His name was Lawrence, and he volunteers for a missing children's outreach, Operation Lookout. He seemed puzzled by all my questions, but I carefully explained (just being honest) that we have a lot of solicitors come through and I wanted to know who I was dealing with before I donated. I gave him $12 and he gave me a nifty calculator (which, as a tightwad, I use frequently). I had him check over my pepper spray key chain and he gave me some info about that, and he mentioned as an aside that he fixed houses up and rented or sold them. Now I wish I had asked him for some advice on remodeling, but he seemed like he needed to go. But all in all I'd say I got a good deal.
Godspeed, Lawrence.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
It's a Blaine Shame
Whenever current events are concerned, I always tell people that I'm behind on the news--unless it's something of 9/11 proportions--because news in general really stresses me out and depresses me, so I avoid it.
But I am usually not 130 years behind.
It was about that long ago that a certain Henry G. Blaine introduced an amendment to the Federal Constitution that would forever ban any revenues from the government going to support "sectarian" institutions--e.g., Catholic schools. He was taking advantage of a particularly strong current of anti-Catholic feeling among Protestants and "nativists" (those who objected to the hordes of unwashed Catholics showing up on their shores). Well, the amendment failed by only 4 votes, and Blaine wasn't even there to vote on it. But that's not the end of the history lesson.
Since the failure of the "Blaine Amendment," 38 states went on to adopt versions of this legislation in their state constitutions. Adoption of Blaine-syle legislation was, in fact, often a condition of acceptance into the Union for western states. Since controversy surrounding the immigrant problem has faded, so has public memory of the legal veracity of these laws--but they remain on the books. In fact, since they were written using rather general terms (referring to "sectarian" institutions and "religious" purposes, rather than singling out Catholics by name), they are now being interpreted ever more broadly in accordance with the current trend of scouring public schools and spaces of religious references. But the fact is that these laws are unconstitutional--and the Supreme Court knows it.
The legal fallacy these laws fall under is called "religious gerrymandering." Kyle Duncan, in a paper written for Columbia Law School in 2003 (http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=expresso) points out that, while it is allowable that government might make a law for the general public good that incidentally infringes on the religious practices of some, it amounts to legalized persecution to allow public goods and services to be allotted to the general public while excluding groups that have expressly religious purposes, simply because they are religious. For instance, just because the Federal Government prohibits polygamy does not mean that they are trying to persecute Mormons. The law applies to everybody equally. However, when the State of Washington says that a blind man can't use his state-allotted funds to study to become a minister--simply because, as a minister, he believes the religion--disqualifies him, under the Washington State Constitution, to receive the funds (Witters v. Comm'n for the Blind). Witters was singled out, just because he was religious.
"But wait a minute," you say. "Isn't that just separation of Church and State? I don't see the problem here."
The problem is that the law excludes religious purposes and institutions specifically and exclusively. Said another way: the law treats all citizens equally under the law except where it excludes a certain group precisely because they are religious. Let's say 10 blind people apply to the state for funding for higher education to pursue another career. The state looks over their declared majors: Biology, Computer Science, Music, Teaching, Theology, Master of Divinity, Comparative Religion, Basket-weaving, Forestry, and Criminal Justice. "Hm..." says the state official. "These all look OK except Theology and Master of Divinity. Now, Master of Divinity is right out, since that is a career path leading to the ministry, and we have a law on the books that says nobody can use our money who actually believes in their religion. What about the Theology major? Let's call him up and ask if he actually believes in any specific religion, or if he simply wants to study religion in the abstract, like the Comparative Religion major. If he doesn't believe, it's OK. If he does, then that counts as furthering a religious or sectarian institution and he can't have the funds." Now, if you can come up with a clearer-cut case of discrimination, I'll brew the coffee.
Here's another example. A religious group, wishing to practice a religious rite involving animal sacrifice, finds themselves the object of hasty animal-rights legislation that penalizes their religious activity while allowing the general industry of meatpacking to go on. It's OK for everybody else, except the religious group--because they want to do it as part of their religious practices. Now, if you were to flip these situations on their backsides, and say that it's OK for Mormons to have polygamy, or African cults to sacrifice animals, or blind divinity students to receive public funds, but no one else--these would all be violations of the Establishment Clause. The law can't single out religious groups for certain favors not extended to everyone else, but neither can they withhold resources that are commonly available simply because the applicant is religious or intends to use his share of the resources for religious uses.
On the contrary, the First Amendment Free Speech and Non-Establishment clauses tend to uphold the equal rights of all citizens to have access to benefits generally available to everyone, without regard to their religious affiliation. Hence, the state can't deny welfare benefits to Muslims because they're religious. Schools can't let any kind of club under the sun use their facilities while prohibiting religious clubs from enjoying the same privilege. The Supreme Court has actually developed quite a clean record of respecting people's religious freedoms, when they get the chance. However, at the State level, violations abound as many State Blaine-style laws go far beyond the FS/NE Clauses, as the Witters cases demonstrate.
So now you have the background, I can plainly name the elephant in the room. Thanks to Mr. Blaine and a century of legislative fox-trotting, public money is being kept out of the hands of people who actually want to exercise their religion freely. Catholic parents who want to send their children to Catholic schools are effectively taxed twice when they are denied the option to use whatever portion of public resources is theirs to educate their children in a way that is in line with their religion. Instead, they have to fork out ever-increasing tuition fees on top of their taxes in order to educate their children as conscience dictates. They are singled out in a silent way, since the money is taken out in taxes and no justification is ever advanced as to why they cannot participate equally in the educational benefits doled out by the state.
How do Catholics deal with this? Sadly, many Catholics have few options but to send their kids to public schools. Some can pay for private education if mom works. Some can't even do that. The home-schooling movement appears to be flourishing--for now--but isn't a viable option for everybody. The net result of the current system, I believe, tends to reinforce religious indifference for the Catholic. Catholic parents I've spoken to seem to put an unofficial "cap" on their family size when they get to the point where anxiety sets in about how they're going to pay for a proper Catholic education. The problem is that, while wanting to be good Catholics who educate their children in accord with Church teaching, they end up in a contraceptive mentality that dictates family size in accordance with perceived future costs--which is not Catholic teaching at all.
But I am usually not 130 years behind.
It was about that long ago that a certain Henry G. Blaine introduced an amendment to the Federal Constitution that would forever ban any revenues from the government going to support "sectarian" institutions--e.g., Catholic schools. He was taking advantage of a particularly strong current of anti-Catholic feeling among Protestants and "nativists" (those who objected to the hordes of unwashed Catholics showing up on their shores). Well, the amendment failed by only 4 votes, and Blaine wasn't even there to vote on it. But that's not the end of the history lesson.
Since the failure of the "Blaine Amendment," 38 states went on to adopt versions of this legislation in their state constitutions. Adoption of Blaine-syle legislation was, in fact, often a condition of acceptance into the Union for western states. Since controversy surrounding the immigrant problem has faded, so has public memory of the legal veracity of these laws--but they remain on the books. In fact, since they were written using rather general terms (referring to "sectarian" institutions and "religious" purposes, rather than singling out Catholics by name), they are now being interpreted ever more broadly in accordance with the current trend of scouring public schools and spaces of religious references. But the fact is that these laws are unconstitutional--and the Supreme Court knows it.
The legal fallacy these laws fall under is called "religious gerrymandering." Kyle Duncan, in a paper written for Columbia Law School in 2003 (http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=expresso) points out that, while it is allowable that government might make a law for the general public good that incidentally infringes on the religious practices of some, it amounts to legalized persecution to allow public goods and services to be allotted to the general public while excluding groups that have expressly religious purposes, simply because they are religious. For instance, just because the Federal Government prohibits polygamy does not mean that they are trying to persecute Mormons. The law applies to everybody equally. However, when the State of Washington says that a blind man can't use his state-allotted funds to study to become a minister--simply because, as a minister, he believes the religion--disqualifies him, under the Washington State Constitution, to receive the funds (Witters v. Comm'n for the Blind). Witters was singled out, just because he was religious.
"But wait a minute," you say. "Isn't that just separation of Church and State? I don't see the problem here."
The problem is that the law excludes religious purposes and institutions specifically and exclusively. Said another way: the law treats all citizens equally under the law except where it excludes a certain group precisely because they are religious. Let's say 10 blind people apply to the state for funding for higher education to pursue another career. The state looks over their declared majors: Biology, Computer Science, Music, Teaching, Theology, Master of Divinity, Comparative Religion, Basket-weaving, Forestry, and Criminal Justice. "Hm..." says the state official. "These all look OK except Theology and Master of Divinity. Now, Master of Divinity is right out, since that is a career path leading to the ministry, and we have a law on the books that says nobody can use our money who actually believes in their religion. What about the Theology major? Let's call him up and ask if he actually believes in any specific religion, or if he simply wants to study religion in the abstract, like the Comparative Religion major. If he doesn't believe, it's OK. If he does, then that counts as furthering a religious or sectarian institution and he can't have the funds." Now, if you can come up with a clearer-cut case of discrimination, I'll brew the coffee.
Here's another example. A religious group, wishing to practice a religious rite involving animal sacrifice, finds themselves the object of hasty animal-rights legislation that penalizes their religious activity while allowing the general industry of meatpacking to go on. It's OK for everybody else, except the religious group--because they want to do it as part of their religious practices. Now, if you were to flip these situations on their backsides, and say that it's OK for Mormons to have polygamy, or African cults to sacrifice animals, or blind divinity students to receive public funds, but no one else--these would all be violations of the Establishment Clause. The law can't single out religious groups for certain favors not extended to everyone else, but neither can they withhold resources that are commonly available simply because the applicant is religious or intends to use his share of the resources for religious uses.
On the contrary, the First Amendment Free Speech and Non-Establishment clauses tend to uphold the equal rights of all citizens to have access to benefits generally available to everyone, without regard to their religious affiliation. Hence, the state can't deny welfare benefits to Muslims because they're religious. Schools can't let any kind of club under the sun use their facilities while prohibiting religious clubs from enjoying the same privilege. The Supreme Court has actually developed quite a clean record of respecting people's religious freedoms, when they get the chance. However, at the State level, violations abound as many State Blaine-style laws go far beyond the FS/NE Clauses, as the Witters cases demonstrate.
So now you have the background, I can plainly name the elephant in the room. Thanks to Mr. Blaine and a century of legislative fox-trotting, public money is being kept out of the hands of people who actually want to exercise their religion freely. Catholic parents who want to send their children to Catholic schools are effectively taxed twice when they are denied the option to use whatever portion of public resources is theirs to educate their children in a way that is in line with their religion. Instead, they have to fork out ever-increasing tuition fees on top of their taxes in order to educate their children as conscience dictates. They are singled out in a silent way, since the money is taken out in taxes and no justification is ever advanced as to why they cannot participate equally in the educational benefits doled out by the state.
How do Catholics deal with this? Sadly, many Catholics have few options but to send their kids to public schools. Some can pay for private education if mom works. Some can't even do that. The home-schooling movement appears to be flourishing--for now--but isn't a viable option for everybody. The net result of the current system, I believe, tends to reinforce religious indifference for the Catholic. Catholic parents I've spoken to seem to put an unofficial "cap" on their family size when they get to the point where anxiety sets in about how they're going to pay for a proper Catholic education. The problem is that, while wanting to be good Catholics who educate their children in accord with Church teaching, they end up in a contraceptive mentality that dictates family size in accordance with perceived future costs--which is not Catholic teaching at all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
