"for life's not a paragraph..."

“since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things…
for life's not a paragraph…”
-e.e. cummings, since feeling is first

Life is not a paragraph. It is not governed by the tyrannical grammarians armed with their red ink pens brimming to wreak havoc on our expression. Nothing in life is as neat as Strunk and White would have you believe. Life, while it can demand rigor, cannot demand arbitrary adherence. When you need to breathe, well, just throw down a comma. Whether the clause really begins there, it is your Life, it is your clause, and you can make it your own. And if it is more than a breath, might one suggest simply taking a rest. Put down a period. You’ll be able to pick up where you left off. It is your life—you’re doing the writing. And just expect, my friends, for those occasional epiphanies which come in the strangest of times, in the oddest of ways. Be armed with an onomonopiac and an exclamation point. Forget prudence or so-called “good manners;” if you want to shout, I say shout. It is just as Bradbury reminds us, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” Regulations cannot be systematized. Expectations are one thing, but the details cannot be micro-managed. We must simply have faith in the humanity of Humanity, else why do we even care to protect it with our regulations. We devise systems to ensure optimal opportunity for humanity to express itself. Over time, these systems take on a life of their own—we forget that they began at an arbitrary point of history—they begin as a means to an end, and not an end in themselves. Systems would help us reach God; at least that was the claim. But even if you bought into that tenuous claim, the systems didn’t become gods. Yet that is where we are, in the midst of the Callistratus Idolatry.

You simply must refuse to live according to the pattern of Introduction—Corpus—Conclusion. You cannot let each day be tied to a single topic sentence with three supporting points and a summation. Reason is really only useful to Man if it permits Man to be. Rules must support life, not become a cancer. The heart cannot be abandoned or worse yet, quashed by rubrics. The syntax of things is vaster than the rules can anticipate. We are not dealing merely with words in this world. Nor are we dealing with simple ideas. But we also are dealing with hearts and souls—depositories of infinitude and life from whence fateful courses emerge. We cannot harness that. We cannot rein it in. No system is so comprehensive as to contain the ability to detain infinity.

Embrace life simply. Sometimes we must conclude before we begin. This is what Life calls resolve. Sometimes we must stumble around before we find the point, the thesis. That is what Life calls discernment. Sometimes we must begin with a particular notion only to discover that somewhere through the course of justifying it that we actually conclude otherwise. That is what Life calls living. Life is not in the structure of the sentences, but in the movements, in the spaces not only between words, but between letters. Life is in the contact of the pencil point to the paper being pulled along loopily and lifted purposefully. It is all over the paper—in the doodles, in the smudges, in the coffee stains, in the crinkles, in the indentations in the margins made by the desperate struggle to revive a dying pen. But it is even beyond all of this. For Life is beyond the very margins. Nothing contains life. There is no universal acid that can pierce its dignity. Frankly, this is because Life is the universal acid itself—it is the force whose dignity cuts through all. Its preservation, its growth, its sustenance takes precedence in all of history. It is the enduring and prevailing supersession of any theory of containment—whether it be grammar, political, or religious. Life dictates and will not be dictated to. It is not a paragraph because it is the source of paragraphs. There is more in an ounce of love than in a warehouse of dissertations—“The best gesture of my brain is less than / your eyelid’s flutter which says / we are for each other:”—because it is from Love that Life springs. Thus, if it is Life you are interested in, then Love you must find. The longer you wait, the more Death has already prevailed upon you—for loneliness and isolation are but the foyer to the grave. The hardened heart of a rule-zealous Stoic will be the very rock from which his tombstone is chiseled.

“Wholly to be a fool…” Life is in the foolishness prolonged by the ellipsis. I fancy that the three periods are tokens given to the wayfarer to tote alongside to sprinkle intermittently along his course. For it is here he will find the stuff of Life, the experience of Love, the opportunity to be lost, to be found, to take wrong turns, to know the hot and cold, to think about being wise and to share enduring kisses. Yes, there will be a story. Its order, however, will not be determined by the rules of grammar, but simply by the path and steps of our traveler. It is he who will put the periods where they belong…

"Christian, recognize your dignity!"

“Pray for us O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

One of the many things I love about the Cathedral of the Incarnation is the Angelus being written high above the congregation. My favorite line upon which to meditate is “ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.” And there is no better place to do it from to-date than as the book-bearing altar server—because his seat is perfectly situated to face this line of the prayer. From my seat, I can contemplate that line during the liturgy and dwell upon it exhaustively before receiving the Eucharist. And since I have told you my favorite line, my favorite vantage point, why not hone in and let you in on my favorite word: “promissionibus.”

Translated as “promises,” I think most of us have a sense of the word which reflects commitment or loyalty through a vow or pledge. We pray to our Blessed Mother that we be made worthy of Christ’s commitment or loyalty to us—we be able to receive the fruit of His vow. “Promises” is one of those words in English that we use all too often that we simply neglect to dwell on its meaning—we sort of hear it and forget that it might be worthwhile to unpack what it means. That is why I like seeing it written in Latin so much: “promissionibus.” While the root of the word is ‘promissum,’ I can never help seeing the rendering in the Angelus as ‘pro’-‘mission’ followed by ‘of Christ.’ And while we are praying that we be made worthy of Christ’s sacrifice, too, we must be praying not only on a passive level—that we may simply receive worthiness to receive His vow. We must pray it on an active level, where we ask to be made worthy to do something—that something, I contend, is a mission-for-Christ. The etymology of ‘promise,’ shows that it is not wholly incorrect to view the word as a personal charge—the root of ‘missum’ is ‘missionem,’ which means ‘the act of sending out;’ ‘pro’ simply means ‘before.’ When it is read as for-the-mission-of-Christ, the prayer takes on a whole new facet—a great prayer of humility and anticipation. We pray that we be up to the task of taking Christ and all He stands for into the world. As the Soul of the Apostolate reminds us, “it is through men that men are to find out the way to salvation.” Indeed, the Canticle of Zechariah affirms this: “You my children shall be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” That is your mission. May the Blessed Mother pray we be worthy of this—Christ’s charge to us.

I think about what that means for me often. Why has God chosen a slug like me to take Him into the world? Sometimes I think Heaven must really be hard-up and scrapping the bottom of the barrel. But that is precisely the problem that I think too many of us imagine when faced with such a grand calling. We feel unworthy; which seems to follow upon the prayer to be “…made worthy…” But there is a difference between humility and being unconfident and shirking responsibility. The humble man certainly oughtn’t walk haughtily, but neither does he have to slouch and crawl. We can simply walk. We can be dignified without being cocky and arrogant. This is precisely what I think of when I hear St. Leo the Great, “Christian, recognize your dignity!” We cannot shrink away for the promises of Christ, from the mission-of-Christ. We cannot think we are so unworthy as not to accept it. But we mustn’t be too proud to think we are beyond the need of prayer when entering upon the task. We are His prophets. We will bring Him into the world. Wow. What a dignity! Embrace it confidently, but prayerfully. Do not despair at the awesome task of taking the Cross upon your back to journey into the world—for it is by that act that the world will be exalted. Armed with your Cross you become a one-man, sin-killing machine—you become Christ, Himself! Indeed, “Christian, recognize your dignity!”

This dignity has been dominating my thoughts as of late due to discussions about the Pope’s recent comments on contraceptives, as well as concluding my critique of liberation theology for a class at the divinity school. In his private papers and notes preparing to respond to the ‘phenomenon of liberation theology’ in the mid-1980’s, then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, “We shall only survive this crisis if we succeed in making the logic of faith visible in an equally compelling manner and in presenting it as a logic of reality, i.e., manifesting the concrete force of a better answer attested in lived experience. Since it is so, since thought and experience, interpretation and realization, are equally called for, it is a task for the whole Church. Theology alone is insufficient, Church authority alone is insufficient. Since the phenomenon of liberation theology indicates a lack of conversion in the Church, a lack of radical faith, only an increase in conversion and faith can arouse and elicit those theological insights and those decisions on the part of the shepherds which will give an answer to the magnitude of the question.”

In accepting the charge of Christ’s mission in the world, we must remain steadfast and focused on what war we are fighting, what battles are the real battles, and why they are more worth fighting than worldly battles. We are prophets of the Most High who will bear witness to humanity’s salvation by the forgiveness of sins. Sin is the enemy, the root of all evil. Like a rabid weasel, go for the throat, my fellow Christians! Only then will we eradicate the enemy that enables all the visible evil in the world. The battlefield is the hearts and souls of mankind. Distraction and discouragement operate at their optimal height in the midst of this fight. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, pray that we be made worthy...