"Ponder" – "To think about (something) carefully, esp. before deciding or concluding."
My sincerest apologies to anyone who actually reads this blog. The following blog post is a rather disjointed collection of insights that have come to me over the past few weeks. In that time, a good friend of mine died. As a result, my thoughts are somewhat more melancholy than usual.
I think Man is the only creature that can feel totally alone while surrounded by eight million of his own kind.
Waking down the street in Brooklyn on a breezy fall day, I am struck by the subtle, understated beauty of Man’s flawed creations. Rows of century-old brownstone houses, with cracked concrete and dirty glass. Street lamps, crosswalks, subway grates – all designed by someone, made by someone, installed by someone, and seen by a thousand someones a day. These dirty streets and cracked sidewalks are beautiful, almost despite themselves. They try so hard to be ugly, and fail. Try fail because, at their essence, despite their utilitarian construction, their worn-out materials, and their humdrum purpose, they are created. Every faded crosswalk and chipped telephone pole is there because some one made it. We have left our mark on our surroundings, and it is both beautiful and flawed, like us. The creation bears the creator’s fingerprints. What does a Brooklyn street tell us about ourselves? Could God ever forget and disregard his own creations the way we ignore the beauty of our own creations?
I think of the way I see a termite mound, or an anthill; what would aliens think looking at New York City? Would they marvel that these upright-walking creatures have made such a large nest, or would they puzzle over the fact that so many of them spend their entire lives interacting with perhaps one percent of the people around them?
The truth is, we men and women have a need for each other’s love which is deeper and more fundamental than our need to breathe. And what’s worse, our body doesn’t force us to love. Often you don’t love enough until it’s too late. A million hearts in this city are dying in their sleep. What can I do to save them? Can I even save myself?
Rest in peace, Jon Scharf. I learned many things from you in life, and I have a feeling our relationship is still at its beginning. Death is not the end – it’s the intermission. But it’s teaching me to put my heart and soul into Act One. Because there are no rehearsals, no second chances – this is our shot. Do we love like it’s our only chance?
I just got out of confession at St. Thomas church in Montague, NJ. What a wonderful feeling it is to be absolved! I received an insight today, however, which really made me think. It seems obvious, but sometimes these things escape me :) Today, as in countless confessions past, I confessed the same sins – “the usual”, if you will – that I had confessed many times before. As I sat in the pew in the little church afterwards, feeling the grace of forgiveness wash over me, I prayed once more that God would free me from the temptations that plague me.
But then I stopped. It occurred to me, for the first time, that I was praying for the wrong thing. Everyone is subject to temptation, from the moment they are born to the moment they die. Adam was subject to it in the Perfect Garden. Jesus himself was tempted thrice. Who am I to seek to be excluded? I then realized that I was trying to desert. I was like a soldier, throwing down his weapon and begging to be released from the Service, when what I should be doing is fighting the battle before me. I was asking for a discharge when I should have been asking for more ammunition. God is not pleased by obedience without choice. There is no merit in doing the right thing when it is easy.
God is glorified – and we are sanctified – in the battle. God receives his highest praise not when we say “sure, whatever,” but when we say “take this cup from me, but not my will but Thine be done.” By asking to be freed from temptation, I was asking God to take from me my opportunity to truly glorify Him. God doesn’t want me to be a blissfully oblivious child, free from temptation. He wants me to be a valiant warrior, who perseveres in battle despite bleeding from a dozen wounds. We will never be free from temptation, and that’s okay. For it is only when we are tempted that we must sacrifice to do what is right, and Love finds its perfect form in Sacrifice. Every time we die to ourselves in the face of temptation, we imitate the Sacrifice made by Love Personified. Who am I do decline such an honor?
UPDATE: As usual, God has a wicked sense of humor, and there is nothing new under the sun. Today, the following popped up in my facebook news feed:
”No one ought to consider himself a true servant of God who is not tried by many temptations and trials. Temptations overcome are a sort of betrothal ring God gives the soul.” – St. Francis of Assisi
Touche, St. Francis. Touche.
I had the wonderful pleasure of a week of retreat and renewal at one of the Apostolate for Family Consecration’s Family Fests a couple of weeks ago. My young adult group was given the opportunity to experience Jeff Cavins’ bible study on Genesis. Jeff’s analysis is, as always, solid and well-explained. One thing that struck me particularly, however, was a brief sidenote Jeff made on the significance of a name.
When God gives Adam authority over the beasts, the first thing he tells Adam to do is name them. Throughout the Bible, God gives people new names, signifying either a blessing or a curse: an exercise of his authority. More than that, however, the name that God gives to each person is a deep and meaningful sign of that person’s essential nature and meaning. Abram (“high father” is renamed Abraham (the “father of nations”). Jacob (“the deceiver”) is renamed Israel (“he who strives with God”). The Israelites are commanded not to speak the name of God in vain. And so on. In the Bible, a person’s name is both an exercise of authority over them and a symbol of their very essence.
This is, of course, an universal human trait. In almost any culture, when a child is born, the parents name him. Names in primitive societies are attributes, labels, very literal expressions of what we are: “John [the gift of God] of [from] Judea.” They can also be aspirational, “Eagle’s son” or “He who is swift of foot.” A name is a gift, a definition, a sign of who and what we are.
But name-calling can also be a weapon. In the words of my favorite gay man, Steve Gershom: “[T]here’s all the difference in the world between a name and a label. A name is the secret of who you are, the one thing that sums you up: it is your Word, the way the Son is the Word of the Father. A name is rich and full. A label flattens, simplifies, steamrolls.” When someone names or labels us, they exercise power over us. A rebel is described as either a “terrorist” or a “freedom fighter”, depending on the viewpoint of the speaker, and it matters greatly to the rebel which one he considers himself to be.
When we are injured by someone who exercised power over us in a wrongful way, we often retaliate by naming them: “he’s a jerk,” or “she’s just jealous.” It calms us and soothes our anger to name those who hurt us. We feel like we have, in some way, exercised power and judgment over them. It seems silly, but we have. We have exercised the power of naming over them. For the same reason, we are deeply hurt when others do the same to us, when other people call us a “slut” or a “douchebag”. We may pretend not to care, but we are lying. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words cut deeper than a two-edged sword. Names in particular.
It must come as no surprise, then, that this power to name is vitally important in the culture wars, in the to-the-death arena of ideas and arguments.The power to name one’s enemy or his ideals is the power to destroy them. Sometimes, however, we forget this fact and we allow ourselves to be labeled in ways that are destructive to both our dignity and to the success of our ideals. Do we allow others to name us? When others call us “radicals,” “anti-choicers,” “homophobes,” or “teabaggers,” they exercise power. We need to be conscious of the power of names. I, for one, will be more conscious of the war of labels in the future. I used to endure the labels of others – “arrogant kid,” “anti-choicer,” and “homophobe,” among others. I used to think that, by allowing others to label me as they wished, I was somehow “rising above it”, “turning the other cheek”, and being the better man. But there is a difference between charity and surrender. We must not allow others to label us against our dignity and against the Truth. The next time I am called a homophobe or an extremist, I am going to correct that person, in charity and courtesy. Because there is great power in a name, and great destruction in a lie.
So, I really shouldn’t be blogging four days before I take the Bar Exam, but one particular headline jumped out of my Twitter feed at me today, and I just couldn’t resist: ”Beckhams a ‘bad example’ for families.” Doesn’t sound like too much of a stretch, does it? The long litany of failures of celebrity parenting have certainly given us grounds to be unsurprised at such a headline. What, you may ask, was Beckham’s crime? Drunkenness? Neglect? Abuse? No, it was something far worse.
The Beckhams had the audacity to give birth to a fourth child.
Before we go breaking out the pitchforks and Molotov cocktails, let’s get our facts straight. Here to give us some valuable context is Simon Ross, CEO of the UK-based Optimum Population Trust:
“We need to change the incentives to make the environmental case that one or two children are fine but three or four are just being selfish . . . The Beckhams, and others like London mayor Boris Johnson, are very bad role models with their large families. There’s no point in people trying to reduce their carbon emissions and then increasing them 100% by having another child.”
Now I’m not usually one to speak with authority on environmentalism – I am a proud hunter, meat-consumer, and have cut down my share of trees in my day – but this seems to me to put environmentalism in a slightly bad light. After all, if an excess of human beings is the problem, well that makes us enemies of the environment, doesn’t it? If we can’t coexist, I’d rather live, thank you. Suddenly, all my affection for the environment seems to have vanished in favor of self-preservation.
Fortunately, the Malthusian pessimism/”Population Bomb” theory has been disproven time and again. And it’s hardly a new idea – fearmongers have been saying that the world would soon become overpopulated since 200 A.D., and it hasn’t happened just yet. At least it’s just a few British “eccentrics” making such claims. Wouldn’t it be awful if the United Nations was pressuring nations to change their laws based on the same discredited theory?
Fortunately, the United Nations Population Fund does not speak for the majority of humanity. According to pro-population control UK Green Party MP Caroline Lucas: “The horrific consequences of China’s one-child policy and of other draconian efforts to regulate procreation have, for many, rendered discussion of the subject completely unpalatable.” Golly, I wonder why? Could it be because treating human beings as a disease to be eliminated violates the basic precepts of morality? It couldn’t possibly be that the idea that “I’m the problem” doesn’t resonate terribly well with most people. It is unsurprising, then, that the next generation of statesmen and diplomats is rising up to affirm inherent human dignity. And on July 26, as I undergo the Purgatory of the New York Bar Exam, these young legates will descend upon the United Nations and speak bravely in defense of basic truths. I applaud them. But I digress…
Mr. and Mrs. Beckham, be fruitful and multiply. I just hope your kids play sports as well as their father and sing better than their mother.
Amen, Brother!
Dear Friends,
I was reading a good book by Chesterton today, when I came across a short passage which seemed to me to be ahead of its time, and spoke to me as if the magnificent pipe-smoker somehow knew our world better than we ourselves do. I thought I would share it with you, and I hope you will share some of your thoughts and insights in the comments. It concerns the concept of “free love,” that ephemeral ideal which our modern culture from the 1960s on has chased after so hungrily. The term itself, “free love,” seemed to me an oxymoron, a term which defeated itself before it even left one’s lips, but I never could really express this thought in words. Enter Chesterton:
“The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words–’free-love’–as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.
Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-flavoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.“ – G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant, ”In Defense of Rash Vows.”
It seems to me that G.K. hit on something fundamental about love that we like to forget: that love is by its very definition not free. It is the antithesis of the “freedom” that we post-modernists so revere – the “freedom” to do whatever the hell we feel like at any moment. It seeks to bind us together, to inspire us to live not for ourselves, to swear to the heavens that we will do great things, and to do them. It takes from us the “freedom” to act alone and gives us the true freedom that comes only from denying oneself and sacrificing for another. But love is dangerous – it causes us to passionately defend, protect, and serve. It is as deadly as cyanide to a culture which seeks to control its citizens through self-absorbed apathy. And so this culture of selfishness seeks at all costs to prevent us from loving. It seeks to satisfy our deep and primal need for love by giving us a cheap imitation which is not love at all, but merely another, more dangerous, form of self-satisfaction. And we fall for it – and I am no exception. But I believe that the young mind, though easily fooled, is not so easily satisfied. And the young heart has a remarkable ability to sense lies and betrayal. I believe that the youth of the world can smell the stink of lies in the bill of goods that they have been sold, and are beginning to reject this false “love.” Am I right, my friends?
In Christ,
John
Victory Versus Vengeance
Last night, I had the decidedly Chestertonian pleasure of sharing great conversation with a couple of new friends over great beer. As intellects connected and the Hofbräu Oktoberfest flowed, the conversation naturally turned to the Culture Wars, the epic struggle over minds and hearts which defines our time. My excellent and insightful companions had many ideas and ambitions to reclaim the soul of America, planting the seeds of Truth deep, where they can grow and bear fruit in the long term. One of them, however, voiced the opinion that we, the Culture of Life, are “losing”. In his (admittedly astute) observation, the current crop of “culture creators”, the 20-30something artists who populated the East Village in which we sat, were less pro-life than the generation before. The battle for their hearts and minds had, in his opinion, been lost by default by a Church too blind or complacent to realize where the true battle lay. His observation got me to thinking.
You see, Truth always “wins” – eventually. You can no more deny fundamental principles as you can deny gravity. The man who does so soon finds the Truth forcefully asserting itself upon him – the ground rushing up to embrace him as he falls. That’s the problem with a lie – it’s not true. The trouble with wrong is that it’s never right. The modern age secular humanist fantasy is just that – a fragile illusion which requires no less than the fantastic human capacity for self-deception to keep it intact. The fantasy can only exist for so long.
This sounds like good news – and in a way, it is. But it can also be tragic. Truth is willing to be ignored for a time, to take debts and wait, but it always collects its dues. And Truth can be downright ugly – even vengeful. The modern STD epidemic is the Truth of the dangers of promiscuity forcing its way past the fantasy of “safe sex” and “free love”. The collapse of British society is Truth shattering the lie that children can be raised without parents or principles. The fall of the European economy is the Truth defying the fantasy that robbing the working man will make him rich. Throughout history both recent and distant, Truth when defied always comes back to claim its due. The trouble is that we usually figure it out once it’s already too late.
The issue, in my mind, is not whether Truth or Lies will prevail in our age. The Culture of Death is dying – that’s what it does. The question is whether my generation will die with it – whether we will experience Truth’s Triumph or Truth’s Revenge. Will we recognize reality and act accordingly? Will the rebirth of Virtue in America be a golden age of history, or will we cling to our sins as they drag us down into the flames? The question is not who will win, it is whose side we will be on. We will experience Truth’s Victory or Truth’s Vengeance – and the choice is ours. I, for one, must choose more wisely.