"Thy law's abridgement, and thy last command is all but love..."

It is really no surprise that modern economics prides itself on diversification. The tendency to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket defines the current era. Mankind has managed to establish a system of security (socially, financially, politically, &c.) by justifying non-commitment. At some point in the late 19th Century there must have been an underground declaration of war against vulnerability, because this is precisely what the current institutions are hedged against. We gained security not by seeking the higher ground, but by simply shoring up the railing from the “Great Below.” We simply decided to be complacent with where we were; as opposed to going any further, we resolved to simply not slide backward. We fortified our position by destroying vulnerability. We can avoid slipping by avoiding any significant risk. But you also avoid significant growth. Instead, diversification permits very slow, evolutionary trends to emerge; trends slow enough and small enough to be amply combated and rectified if the direction is found to be unfavorable.

All of these ideas have had far-reaching consequences into the psyche of Mankind. What diversification really breeds is a similar tendency and drive across the culture. Diversification is nothing more than disguised isolationism, a cloaked non-commitment, a pact toward neutrality. It says that spreading oneself out across the wide plane ensures overall success, or at least self-perseverance. It says monogamy is really bunk because polygamy, while it may not offer more, at least diminishes uncertainty. Diversification forgets that the only significant statistical change is from zero to one, while all the rest become interesting incidentals of lesser import. We prize peace-of-mind enough to wage war against the didactic and dynamic force of unfettered ambition and zeal. Content with baby-steps we forget how to stride out much beyond ourselves. We become contained by a wide, diversified world. The world we find ourselves in is one unwilling to rock the boat, tolerant and appeasing in the face of evil, complacent in the company of trial and injustice. Nothing is pressing enough to merit attention in this world because nothing can hurt us enough. We needn’t concern ourselves with anything because there isn’t anything we perceive capable of reaching us. We have managed not to be unified in the world but perfectly and painstakingly spaced out enough from everyone and everything else to give the illusion that distance is somehow a common bond. Diversification has amazingly sold the public on the bogus concept that to come together we must fall apart.

But what does it mean to live? We have created a world which never asks us to be vulnerable. In this world we have come to imagine freedom is about choosing and drifting whimsically according to these choices. There exist no proper aims, no clear directions. We have simply confused living with locomotion and license. But really, living is about loving. And loving asks us to be bound, to become vulnerable. To live is to love. And anything short of that is falling short of true life. Loving means pouring oneself out in a dutiful way to another. Yet this duty is not obligatory, but totally gratuitous. Love is a responsible action—it is ever-mindful of another toward who it is ever-prepared to respond to. To be responsible means you are capable of response. That you are poised, ready, and willing. But to successfully be responsible means making certain choices—it means focusing, it means binding, it means committing. Love is overwhelming because of its flattery, as well as its demands. Love doesn’t ask you to ignore the world for the sake of one; rather, it asks you to care for the world, to find the whole world within the one. It asks you to concentrate your efforts in the singular—to stop being a jack of all trades and master of none.

The virtue of Love compared to diversification is that Love is progressive. Diversification is content with the status quo and imagines the Kingdom of God may be found in the set of things that already exists. Love, on the other hand, imagines the Kingdom of God will only come by creating entirely new systems through relationships. Diversification seeks to alleviate the anxiety of uncertainty by retreating from it; but Love recklessly embraces the very anxiety. Love does so because Love knows that it can and will prevail against all it is put up against. Love is the universal acid that cuts through even our deepest fears of isolation, uncertainty, and insecurity. Diversity does not slay the dragon, but only builds a grand separating wall. The great economists have taken as an enduring truth the lesson taught the Third Little Pig—that bricks and mortar save. But Love does provides contentment by eradicating the very source of fear, not just isolating it (or us). It destroys the Big Bad Wolf, the anxiety in our hearts, by showing us the futility and negativity of an unholy imagination. Our great fears are no match for Love. And Love is willing to prove it not by saying, “I’ll remove you from all these scary things,” but, rather, by saying, “I will make you vulnerable, I will put you in the midst of the very demons and prove to you that you will survive because you know Me, because you know Love.”

Love binds us, hems us, attaches us, adheres us to a fixed mark so that our anxieties can find no personal venue, no moment for attention. Through Love we learn to step outside our own shallowness and triviality and into the deep mystery of another and be lost in something laudably worthy of wonder. In the life of another our imagination can nobly run wild in holy, fascinating ways. What is vice for the self-centered finds its virtue in the other-centered. We are encouraged to put all our eggs in one basket not because the secret to life is about having one basketful of eggs—quite the contrary, the secret to life has nothing to do with eggs or baskets, Love ultimately exclaims, “Load ‘em all in, who cares!” Because Love knows that joy is not derivative of woven crafts or poultry ovum, individually or collectively. Rather, it knows the truth to which St. Exupery directs us, “there is no joy except in human relations…Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in this warmth of human relations…Only a comrade can grasp us by the hand and haul us free” (Wind, Sand, and Stars). And as Chesterton further articulates, “[if] his root horror had been isolation, [the] there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy” (The Man Who Was Thursday).

It is joy we seek. Not security. It is happiness we seek. Not certainty. Diversification has the wrong aims. Love will show us joy and happiness, if only by vulnerability. It will show us precisely how silly anxiety is compared to the riches found by loving another. What we discover is that which we cannot control has the most to offer to us and the world—that risk, while it can cause plummeting falls, can also permit soaring flight. Living is about traversing a world with few certainties and few safe havens. Souls and free will actually cut against this inclination toward absolute security. We must simply have faith that we may come to hope that we may ultimately learn to Love. To demand anything more will actually result in gaining less. “Thy law’s abridgement, and thy last command / Is all but love; oh let that last will stand!” (Holy Sonnet 12; John Donne)

Ode to Woman

Feminism has always fascinated me. Being raised by strong women whose circumstances forced them to “step-up,” I have always been surrounded by able, hard-working women. These women proved to me an invaluable lesson in my youth—that women are capable creatures. And I respected this creature—one that could care for me in maternal and providential ways. This reality meant I always found myself perplexed by sexism and questions concerning equality for women. But I also respected this creature not only because of what good it could do for me, but also because of what harm it could bring to me. We respect fire enough to avoid it and be careful around it.

I have never been without an operative philosophy of woman. Some of these philosophies have been very tragic, very pessimistic; others very misguided; others very cautious and untrusting. Sometimes my damning and cursing the entire race of women has been postponed only because of the presence of my grandmother and aunt in the world and my life. Women, like any creature, are capable of inflicting much pain upon souls and the world. And I think the pain inflicted by a woman on the world and upon our souls is doubly-hurtful not because it is quantitatively different, but qualitatively different. I have always wanted to love the women around me—even the most rough and edgy. There is something distinctively unique (at least for me) found in a woman—something we expect to be inspiring and mysterious. And when we come to the realization that the grace we seek from our encounter is withheld or already dead, we are crushed. This has been the case with many of the women in my immediate family. We want to love them, and deep down we know we do, but there is a hesitancy, because women can not only hurt, but mortally wound. Especially mothers, sisters, and lovers.

Reconciling where and how I feel about women has always been a struggle of two extremes. I know that at one point I abused my authority as a track and cross-country coach and commenced what seemed more like an athletic “no-girls-allowed” club. I never had any good things to mention about women to the young men under my care and simply advised them to focus upon other things exclusively, entirely, and eternally. Maybe, I thought, if I could form these boys into self-sufficient young men they might not need a woman. At the opposite extreme of men-loving-&-women-hating was the misguided phase of woman-loving-&-men-hating. For five years I thought maybe I could reconcile women with the world by directing Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.” Maybe women were simply oppressed, misunderstood, and needed a venue to say whatever, wherever. Maybe this would shed light on the plight in my mind—perhaps it would all eventually make sense by the time the curtain fell. This opportunity afforded much insight into women—it brought me into contact with many, with many ideas, and many discourses—but I never have been able to point to the redemptive value (if any) that existed in this work. We raised a small fortune for domestic violence shelters, and we assuredly inspired many—but what harm did we do? Like advising a young runner to avoid women, to what avail is it to let women be immodest and vulgar on a public stage? Was this simply anger being disguised as medicinal?

Dear God, what is this creature that you have graced the world with? What is this helpmate suited for us? She is, indeed, a mystery. But mysteries can elicit two results: attraction and repulsion. I never could figure out what made women tick. I couldn’t fathom how a creature with such capacity to build and destroy could ever take up the latter as I often saw her doing. And so I revolted and recoiled. She was a mystery to run from, not to. This was certainly one attractive aspect about seminary (and still is, for that matter). Celibacy isn’t so much a white-flag of surrender as it is a declaration of neutrality, avoiding a quagmire. When you avoid one mystery, you find another—one that appeals, that attracts, that offers you growth. Personally, this has been what the Church has offered me this past year. It has called me out of myself and presented me with something of significance to embrace—something not prone to wounding, but keen on fulfilling. It is exactly as St. Paul describes it: “a great mystery.” Yes, yes, indeed.

How surprising and intoxicating, then, for all the voids the mystery of the Church filled, for all the wounds She healed, for all the growth She promised to foster, to find an even more intriguing mystery elsewhere. And where, of all places, but in a woman?! What has been revealed is the magnificent and optimistic ability that women can have. Their mystery resides in their double-edged nature. One edge can hurtfully cut, but the other edge can craftily sculpt. It is this latter ability that I have not known until now (and the ability we innately know and expect women to exhibit). Its potential far outweighs the possible harm. Nobody likes the depths that heartbreak can cast one into, but we cannot forget to temper that against the ecstasy of love. We forget all too easily the peaks compared to the valleys. Of course, nobody likes being low; but we only know we are low because we have been brought down from above. One cannot fully love Grace without the Fall, I imagine. We were not made to trudge and mope in valleys, although we will spend our fair share of time in them. But simply because this is where we find ourselves currently, or most often, does not mean we belong there. Summits are our home. They are high, they are hard to get to, they are scarcely honed into a precise and narrow pinnacle, and they possess a great apex from which to hurl even the slightly careless down. Yet, difficulty to maintain, and reach, likewise, does not mean we do not belong there. “Hardship is the pathway to peace.” There is nothing noble or special about letting gravity affect you. Rocks have this capacity. But there is something special about scaling and climbing “by slow degree…more and more.” Acorns become oaks only by reaching away from the place they comfortably know and towards an uncertain height. Potential is precisely not act because it asks for more than you currently find. It necessarily carries with it the ability to succeed, as well as the ability to fail. To become means we must let go.

With this in mind, I was blessed with the opportunity last week to speak to the young ladies of St. Cecilia Academy where I hesitantly approached the topic of femininity and being Children of the Light. Nervous and somewhat intimidated, I wondered what a former woman-hater turned director of the Vagina Monologues might offer these women on what womanhood was all about. Well, come to discover, being a woman is all about having the potential to truly change the world—to follow in the revolutionary footsteps of Our Blessed Mother. “When man loves woman, it follows that the nobler the woman, the nobler the love, the higher the demands by the woman, the more worthy the man must be” (Fulton Sheen). Women are a two-edged sword—and it is by their standards that the world moves forward (or backward), depending on how they wield the sword. Women can maim. But they can also be revolutionarily artful. These are the creatures that, after all, can create and foster life! Whatever man wishes to be, it will be found from within the mystery of woman. The self-sufficiency I preached to my student-athletes for so long to keep them from having to engage with women was precisely incorrect. Man can only be sufficient in union with woman. We are nothing without them—their standards, their nobility, their demands. We pursue only the greatness they are willing to make manifest in this world. If it is saints we wish to be, our example and impetus will be at their bequest. When a woman enlists you to become a saint your life’s work is established and nobly ordained. Women will call us out of our old selves to pursue them in the world and affect it, them, and ourselves all at the same time. It was this single speech that made the most sense of a lifetime of confusion and fouled attempts of articulating a true philosophy of woman. Yes, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord” and the greatness of women, too, for that matter…