"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...

"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…

A Burning Clarity

I sit in my office, brimming with excitement and anticipation for a future never contemplated, never entertained, never thought possible. It is amazing when one’s life goes beyond simply “making sense” to “being so very clear.” The difference between sensibility and clarity is a matter of degree—the former simply being a case of a logical, acceptable and progressive trajectory; the latter being an absolute understanding of where past, present and future are seamlessly coming together. This clarity is a witness to a life not accidentally constructed or whimsically contrived, but purposefully unified where all events rise and converge into the culmination and consummation of the very moment which embodies the future. I had one of these moments today. When I saw my life not as some random set of experiences, but a meaningful narrative with an intricate, elaborate plot leading to the current chapter where the story doesn’t just make sense, but perfect sense. It is an amazing high when these moments occur. Today was perfect because of it. I was able to dream and discover today that these dreams are actually in reach. What I discovered was not a particular epiphany, but it was an insight whose revelation will undoubtedly affect the course of my life—regardless of the response. I saw my life’s unity today. I will not forget it. It was clear. It was a blessing to come to know toward what one’s life can be directed and how all that one has done will be called upon for that task. We are in God’s hands, as it has been made clear to me today. And those hands are ever mindful of an ordered plan—“God draws straight with crooked lines.” My life has been a conglomeration of seeming miscues, spontaneous tangents, random extraordinary opportunities and blessings. It has plotted me in so many places. And today, despite its sporadic nature, its crooked path, I saw the straightness that God’s Hand has wrought for my life. The happiness that it brings is indescribable. At best, I can only say that I am on fire. Praise Him!

Joy is Selfish...

One of the most pivotal and formative writings for me, personally, comes from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s work "Wind, Sand, and Stars." In this volume he writes, “to be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.” While this doesn’t seem harmful (in fact, laudable) to promote, it has the ability to be intemperately used. I know I have misused it. Duty and commitment are not whimsical and silly things, but they are also not the only things. This we must remember. To be a man does mean being responsible, but it also means being more.

And what more ought we seek to be? Well, quite frankly, simply more. We need to be more. Each of us. This begins as a personal task for the person for their own sake. Yet this Christian’s mind sometimes gets too caught up in the virtue of responsibility that it forgets that it is not the only virtue. This is what leads people to becoming Stoic. They neglect to go beyond rampant duty toward the ecstasy of joy. This Stoic formation is driven by duty’s tendency to demand an absolute selflessness which perceives any self-accommodation as vice. I am certainly guilty of this. When this practice becomes habit, the joys of life become moments of personal shame—for we view the joy as an indulgence which translates into selfishness.

This rabid selflessness, however, becomes more self-destructive than self-promoting. As Christians we are to be at peace, not constantly warring with ourselves (yet not constantly passive with ourselves, either). G.K. Chesterton reminds us that duty is not the exclusive mark of a man when he writes, “Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.” We must be responsible, but we, too, mustn’t forget to foster joy within ourselves. Certainly this is a selfish indulgence, but this does not make it an evil. The evil is a question of the motives for the indulgence. Christians are not called to be selfless, but rather, self-giving. And this becomes a critical distinction, I believe.

The Lumen Gentium reads:

“While man extends his power in every direction, he does not always succeed in
subjecting it to his own welfare. Striving to penetrate farther into the deeper
recesses of his own mind, he frequently appears more unsure of himself…Man
painstakingly searches for a better world, without working with equal zeal for
the betterment of his own spirit.”

From this, we realize: a) our own welfare is not to be ignored; b) man’s power is meant to be directed toward his own welfare; and c) this personal welfare consists in bettering his own spirit. Selfish? Well, yes. Evil? Vice? Absolutely not. Why? Well, it seems to me that a person’s endeavoring for personal growth that brings moments of sheer joy can’t be wrong simply because it is personal and/or joyful. The question of evil and vice is not a question of self-promotion, but rather a question of absolute self-preservation. Why do we build ourselves up? What is the purpose? These answers will dictate the appropriateness of the selfish act.

The Christian life calls us to kenosis. If your body is a cesspool, kenosis (like loving a friend) is not all that difficult to do. Nor is it all that beneficial to the formation of God’s Kingdom. If your body is truly a well-kept temple, full of joy and love and vibrancy, then your gift of self suddenly becomes something awesome and grand. This is not meant to promote Rand’s premise of the virtue of selfishness, but precisely the opposite. It is a call to find joy in life—to take care to find joy and foster it in our lives even if it means focusing on ourselves sometimes. Our lives were meant to be enjoyed. The joy we experience could well be an indwelling of God within us. And through that joy God may be emanated into the world. We foster it to give it. We build up ourselves so that when we are called to surrender ourselves that we might truly be a useful gift for God’s Kingdom.

If joy is a fundamental nature of humanity, then it needs little justification. It might be well to ask “Why?” simply for its sake, but know that any answer will suffice. We needn’t articulate reasons for wanting to be happy, to love, to experience joy. We must simply resolve to do it, fully and unreservedly. It is selfish. But is it self-preserving? Will you reflect the happiness, love, and joy to another? To the world? Will you make of your well-formed self a gift to others? If, yes, then reasons be damned. Just feel. Acorns do not reason themselves into great oaks. They simply react and respond, being at the same time docile and determined. Acorns grow in a very self-promoting way. But they bear fruit which they share with the world and glorify God by becoming the more that they can be. Thus, their selfishness is not in vain; rather, for the world. We must love ourselves if we are to love the world. That’s what measures the very value of the gift-of-self we hope to make. Joy-filled lives brimming with potential are the stuff kenosis lives for—look at Christ (he was no slouch). Find joy to share joy. Find love to share love. Care about yourself that others might care to accept your personal sacrifice for them. Joy is selfish. Congratulations on being a human! Ain’t it great! Now, share yourself with God and neighbor.

“Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.” G.K.C.

Hope is Charity's Teacher

This weekend I had the privilege of speaking with Knoxville Catholic High School students about how to “Be More.” Inevitably I leaned on my old friends Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas to speak to these young people about what it means to be a “thing.” Equipped with an acorn and the image of an oak tree, I proceeded to demonstrate the dual nature of all things as having both act and potency. It is an amazing thing to look into a perplexed and captivated high school student’s eyes when you are traversing new territory with them. I love thinking. I love seeing other people think. For a moment it makes us aware of another’s soul. Perhaps the best combination is when we think together—for it is then we know our souls are not venturing into the great unknown alone. That is the benefit of the Church, the Communion of the Saints; indeed, it is as a beloved professor once told me, “Never do theology alone. It will only turn out bad for you and God.”

As I was speaking to these young people about sanctification I used the familiar process from St. Paul: faith, hope, and charity. We begin all conversion by faith. We must first believe. Then we must truly believe in the promise of that belief—trusting totally in God’s Providence to provide the elements our faith espouses. Only then can we engage in great acts of charity. Only then. You see, I think most of us, at least myself, want so badly to change the world that we get in too big a hurry. We want to go from acorn to oak, from faith to charity, and just skip all the intermediate steps. While the world may see this impatience as admirable, it actually demonstrates a certain spiritual decay. How are we to love the world until we trust in God’s love? Whose love are we loving the world with? It was at this point in my presentation that I felt my own words convicting and convincing myself.

Hope is not one of my strong suits. Hope is the virtue that asks us to relinquish ourselves to the strength of God exclusively; to commit ourselves to the total vulnerability of His Will. It is the theological virtue that demands the most patience—it asks us not for a simple ascent to a set of truths or to a certain set of actions. Instead, it asks us for a series of inactions—it asks us for our time to be put to God’s use, to prayer, to trust, to surrender. Recent events in my life have forced me to reconcile my lack of hope in life. It is easy to disguise holiness through strong faith and what seem to be acts of charity. But without hope no work can be charitable. The difference between a charitable work and a good work is the presence of God’s Love. Hope is the only way we come to personally know God’s Love; and without that knowledge we have nothing to offer a situation but manipulation, at best.

The journey toward hope is not easy. It is actually very unsettling. Hoping becomes what Chesterton describes in his story The Man Who Was Thursday as “ the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly upside down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all stars were under [Syme’s] feet. Then came the opposite conviction. For the last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really been turned upside down.” You see, in our pride, we see the world as we wish—we want our feet on the ground because we believe that it is there that we possess the control. We are happy being in a world where upwards is the way to go, for it is then we can pick the degree and trajectory of the climb. Yet this is not reality. Reality is that all is under the Providence and control of God. We are not happily seated by gravity, but levitating by God’s Grace. Our footholds are the Heavens. “All men are hanging on the mercy of God,” as Chesterton writes in another work. Hope is accepting this view. It refuses the comforts of the prevailing worldly paradigm. All is not as it seems, yet all will be well. Because God is in control. This is hope. And this is, like many other things Christ demands of us, a “hard teaching” (John 6:60).

There is a great bumper-sticker that reads, “Jesus is my co-pilot.” I’ve heard it said that if Jesus is your co-pilot, you ought switch seats with Him. We must give ourselves up. We must decrease that He may increase. For it is Christ that will make all things good, right, and well. Not us. It is He who loves supremely. Thus, if it is charity we seek to do, why imagine ourselves capable? Let Christ do it! Hope is this process of shrinking our will, our egos, our pride. The promises of Christ that we pray to be made worthy of derive from a docility that only the selfless and Christ-centered exhibit. We are worthy when we are willing to say, “Yes!” or “Do it unto me according to thy Word.” We love only when we have stopped being ourselves and let Christ love us and love the world through us. Acorns only become oak trees by shedding themselves of the security of their shells. Only by letting the soil influence them, by letting the rain invade their interior, by bursting forth into an unknown, uncertain world and trusting they find the Light, the acorn shows us the glory and exaltation of the thing.

Learning to hope is capsizing and captivating. It will rock your world because your world must be rocked. God will shake all things away until only He the unshakable remains (Heb. 12:26-27). Hoping is Charity’s teacher. It teaches us what love is by showing us how to trust in God’s Love. When we come to know this we are certain and secure in the greatest Love. From there we know how to share and what to share and know not to count the costs; for Hope teaches us that despite it all, God’s Love is real and that it will remain evermore. As we learn to Hope we learn what it means to be loved. In Charity we learn to love. Faith merely teaches us to know that God is love without the experience of it. Hope is so vital because it takes us from the theoretical nature of faith to the personal testimony of Hope. As a heroine of mine, Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “Abstractions, formulas, laws will not do here. We have to have stories. It takes a story to make a story. It takes a story of mythic dimensions; one which belongs to everybody; one in which everybody is able to recognize the hand of God and imagine its descent upon himself. Our response to life is different if we have been taught only a definition of faith than it is if we have trembled with Abraham as he held the knife over Isaac.” The problem with stories is they take time; they involve intricate plots, character development, awkward settings and scenarios. But it is an essential stage toward the pathway to Charity.

Oak trees don’t just appear ex nihilo. They are the product of docility to the elements of God’s creative power. No acorn lasts—if it refuses to take root, it will inevitably rot or be gobbled up by a squirrel. The course of human life begins at faith, then demands the metamorphosis of hope, only to arrive at the life of charity. There are no short-cuts to charity, for like the oak, it doesn’t simply appear ex nihilo. Charity is the product of docility to the Will of God. We only come to know it as we faithfully and hopefully forget ourselves. Faithful-do-gooders try to foil the three-step process of St. Paul by jumping the gun. Without Hope their heart is not correctly aligned to the acts they perform—which is just as important, if not more important, as the act, itself. As opposed to being faithful-do-gooders let us be hopeful-God’s-Will-doers. This will produce charitable results. It will transform our hearts. It will change our entire perspective of reality so that, despite the gloom of the situation, two things will prove possible, both of which are intricately related. We can love. And we will never despair. Never.