Beauty

God’s love is written on this world in three languages: Goodness, Truth and Beauty. Together they tell of Him for all to hear. Goodness tells of Him most directly, Truth most clearly, but Beauty tells of Him in her own way. She speaks most strongly, most subtly, most intimately, and when the other two have been abandoned, she is the last one left speaking for any who can still listen.

Smouldering Wick

I love you, my friend, cracks and all, but still

I cannot love the sin that saps your soul.

I hate it with a perfect hate. My will

Engages in the hate, the selfsame goal

That drives my love, drives that hate. The whole

Of my being loves you, for Love must fill

My entire being. We cannot mete and dole

His essence out in coffee spoons. We kill

Love’s fierce vitality, enslaved by shame’s control.

Blind fool that I am, ignoring the bruised reeds,

If I drive my righteous rota-tiller across your soul,

How will I not exterminate what I most love?

Even angelic wisdom cannot take the weeds

Without destroying the wheat, ‘til the final roll

Is called, and all is sorted out above.

Transparent Mask

I see my friends when I love them. Love is not blind,

It hides nothing. I see them warts and all.

Even at my most besotted my wakeful mind

Sees and notes with eyes undimmed. My call

Is not to help you hide or build your wall

But to see and love what you most fear I’ll find.

I will not pretend. I will see unafraid. The fall

Denies perfection. May as well be resigned

To scraggly teeth and extra pounds, why try

To be a false ideal? You mock your own face

And silly quirks, far worse than I could ever do.

All my friends have cracks, and so do I,

And yet we muddle on by Love’s own grace.

Hide your cracks? I love them! They are you.

When Reality is too Real

I have been taking a course in Cultural Anthropology for the last 8 weeks (I've decided to try to get an edumacation! Woot Woot! About time I done some o that there fancy collage type stuff!)

At any rate, the final assignment was the summary of two aritlces from our Classical Readings text book (500 words per article. A joke! My biggest struggle in blogging is keeping my posts under 2000 words!)

One of the articles I summarized was called "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" By Horace Miner.

This selection is a somewhat humorous “outsiders view” description of American life. It describes the health and hygiene rituals of the typical American citizen (male and female), but in a way that an outsider might describe them if her were totally unaware of their purpose and rationale. For instance, shaving is described as “a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument.” Not far off from the point of view of someone who has five-o-clock shadow by noon, grows facial hair with the consistency of wire bristles, and is required by his job to maintain a clean shaven appearance every day.

In addition to daily hygiene rituals the author also describes the health practices, including doctors (medicine men), pharmacists (herbalists), dentists (holy-mouth-men), hospitals (latipso) and nurses (vestal maidens… in distinctive costume and headdress.) He describes the (very real) oddities and horrors of modern medicine, including needles, high cost, bed pans and even the fact that the patients do not always recover.

At one point the author briefly discusses body image issues, especially the fascination with breast augmentation and reduction surgeries. He says, "General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation."

I thought this was an excellent point, if somewhat scary. One need only take a look at magazines on the supermarket rack to realize that the body image presented to us by our culture as our ideal and goal, for both women and men, is quite obviously false. Compare them to the people that you see in the street. Even the healthiest and most active of us very rarely look like the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. The models are starved and exercised, pinched and photo-shopped into a shape that is virtually impossible for most people to achieve.

This fascination with unreality, this inability to accept the real, is pandemic in our culture. Indeed, I would say it is the lynchpin of our culture. It isn't that much of our society is built upon a lie, but that most of our society is thoroughly invested in telling and selling and buying and sharing the lie.

Our preference for unreality takes many forms. I will probably talk about a few of them in follow up posts, but here are a few examples for starters. The whole fashion industry is based upon unrealistic ideas of what men and women actually look like. Video game addiction is the preference of a fantasy world to the real world. Pouring out your heart and soul on facebook instead of phoning a friend is another example of this phobia of reality. Our entire custom of dating is based upon the lie that you can build deep emotional and physical intimacy, and then end that connection and move on as if nothing had happened, and that it will not affect your ability to do it again.

My Grandpa once said, "You know, I think you can make a lot of mistakes with your kids, but as long as you give them one thing, they will be all right. As long as they can acknowledge the truth when they see it, they will never go too far wrong." I was about ten when he said that, or maybe younger, but I remembered it. I think he was right. A life that is not based upon a respect for the truth is going to end up disillusioned and destroyed eventually, and rightly so. It is not a punishment from God for our stupidity. Suppose you painted over all the windows in your car and drove down the road at 50MPH. Would you wrapping your car around a tree be a punishment from God? Or would it simply be a natural consequence of not being aware of the truth, i.e. that there is a tree in front of you. God letting us crash and burn is mercy, not punishment. He gives us chances, many and varied, to come to the knowledge of the truth before we close our eyes forever and it is too late. Every failure of mine that crushes me and makes me question Him, is really just me not paying attention and bumping into the curb, or scraping along the guardrail that He has put there for my protection.

Holy Spirit, open our eyes.

Dilemma

Late at night the poet wields his pen

Revealing the strange things everybody knows

To eyes that see but do not look, and ears

That hear but do not listen. The sons of men

Cannot survive reality’s hammer blows

Without some armor, but armor only kills

And must be chinked and softened by many tears.

The question is answered, not by minds, but wills.

The Truth will kill you, if you let it reach

All in you that is not true. It does but slay

What is already dead. The image shields

From nail wounds, but one might as well say

That we are shielded from the dance by other dancers.

We will not learn so the poet cannot teach,

Cannot conquer because we will not yield.

So full of questions, but no longer believe in answers

 Perfect love casts out all fear, but there

Is precisely mankind’s dilemma. The apple grove

Is littered with rotten cores snatched down still green

From living trees. The unready, stolen gift

Turns our stomach sour and tears a rift

In the fabric of the cosmos. All this has been

Our curse, that now it is precisely perfect love

I vitally need and most supremely fear.

 

Oh Rivers clap your hands, ye mountains dance

And by your dance say things too full of truth

To be said with prose; by bright-eyed paradox

Shielding hearts from the Lover’s fiery shocks.

Burning into our hearts. The fire of youth

Hides in ancient patience. We look askance

At giddiness; not all is gold that gleams.

But wisdom hides in foolishness and so we dream.

Spiritual Stomachs: Rambo Style

I came up with a theory of spirituality this weekend, based on a quote from Rambo: First Blood. I think I made a real stride forward in spiritual understanding.
We all know some people who just can't seem to thrive spiritually. Whether it's in our church or our family or a larger circle of acquaintances, they just can't seem to draw any nourishment. A sermon or homily that inspires and ennobles me leaves them cold and somewhat put off. A book that I think is wise and profound seems to them harsh and uncaring. C.S.Lewis is too stuffy, JPII is too learned, the parish priest is not understanding enough, the deacon is too pre-vatican II, the youth group leader is too post-vatican II, etc.

I am not talking about the people who simply live to find fault with whatever they are hearing or reading. That is a different problem. I am talking about people with real emotional or intellectual hangups that make them unable to draw nourishment from something. Maybe the person preaching is reminding them of the emotionally abusive preaching they heard as children. Maybe the book is echoing overly rigid parental moralizing, or duplicating guilt trips taken as a teenager.

See, when you are a teacher (and we are all teachers at one time or another) there is more to teaching than the truth you are saying. There is also the intent with which you say it, which is sometimes very hard to come to terms with. Nothing makes a more effective battering ram than the truth, precisely because the one using it as a weapon can quiet his conscience with the fact that what he is saying is true. Or mostly true. Or based on the truth. Or very likely true.

Even more important is the person receiving what you are saying. Not everyone can receive everything right now. Some people simply aren't ready yet. This requires the teacher to listen, really listen, far more than he speaks. It is only by listening, not just with ears but with mind and heart and whatever intuition you are gifted with, that you can begin to understand how your listeners are hearing you and whether you are helping or hindering them.

It's like cooking a meal for someone. Some people are allergic to wheat, or dairy, or peanuts, or yeast. Some unfortunate people are allergic to everything except white rice and water. No matter how delicious the food you buy, it can be ruined if you don't cook it well. Even if the food is good and you have cooked it perfectly, it is worse than useless if your guest dies of anaphylaxis after the first bite.

In the same way it isn't enough to ensure that what you are saying is true. That's the necessary starting point, since no one can cook make mud nourishing, no matter how good a cook you are. But also you must learn to present it in a pleasing manner, and makes sure that you are cooking it so that your recipients can eat it.

I have been singularly blessed in this matter. My spiritual stomach is almost as solid as my physical stomach, which is all but unshakeable. I have eaten worms from a pit that a hundred men had been rolling around in for days. I have eaten road kill. I have eaten raw meat, grass and bugs, drunk creek water, and eaten food off street shops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea. Nothing upsets my stomach (except too much caffeine, weirdly enough). It's like cast iron. I have almost no food hangups either. There is only one food I have ever come across that makes me gag trying to swallow it and that is soggy bread. For some reason I still can't eat that.

Spiritually my digestion is very similar. I can read any book and draw something from it, including, but not limited to, the Leveyan Satanic Bible, Fight Club, and Once and Future King, (words cannot describe how much I loathe that book. Given the choice I would re-read "Fight Club" before I resubjected myself to Once and Future King.) There have only been a few books in my life that I've thrown out without finishing. I once ordered all the works of DeSaad and threw them away without even opening them because I read a summary of his life before they arrived. There are limits to what I can and will imbibe and I am getting pickier, especially when it comes to movies. But when it comes to people, I can't remember the last time I was unable to stomach something someone said. There is always something useful, even in the most abusive, or angry, or foolish, or pigheaded opinions, even if the benefit comes simply from suffering them gladly and praying for them.

I can eat things that would make a billy goat puke.

When we share the faith we are serving a banquet for our brother or sister. Let the food we serve be nourishing, let us cook it to the limit of our skill, doing justice to the greatness of the substance by presenting it well. And let's not douse it in hot sauce if our guests don't like spicy food. That's only courtesy.

I know what you're thinking, "What does this have to do with Rambo?" To answer that I embed the following clip from what is pretty much the most awesome cheesetastic movie ever: