Fra Angelico

Today’s the feast of Fra Angelico. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. 

He’s in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints in the section “Saints are people who create.”

I’ve got the first page of the entry below (click for a clearer view) and you can click here for more excerpts. I tried to embed it, but it won’t show up – and I’ve got to get someone to a pipe organ lesson, so…another time. 

 

 

Cain & Abel

Our first readings at daily Mass continue from Genesis. Today it’s Cain and Abel. Here’s my retelling from The Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories.

Remember: the stories are arranged according to when a child (or others!) would most likely hear them in a liturgical context.

 

 

Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories

Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories

Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories

I have this book and some of my other titles for sale at my bookstore. Go here for that. 

Here’s a Thought

This Sunday’s Gospel – for those of us not blessed with Septuagesima Sunday –  is the Beatitudes as presented in the Gospel of Luke – in the context of a Sermon on the Plain, rather than a Sermon on the Mount as in Matthew.

Those of you who have studied or taught anything about Scripture, including these passages, know that one of the things Scripture teachers love to do – especially at non-specialist levels – is to have you compare versions. Compare and contrast the Infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke! Compare and Contrast the telling of the Parable of the Sower! The Transfiguration! The Passion Narratives! The Resurrection Appearances!

Make charts! Draw conclusions about each Evangelists’ perspective and intended audience! Jew? Gentile! Mixed!

This is fine. Sure. Hey, I’ve done it. Why do we do it? Besides the fact, of course, that it provides an easy framework for assessment. There’s that. Well – it’s true that the approach does indeed, offer important insights, helps us establish context, and yes – the differences are hard to miss, even for the casual reader – I’m reading about the Nativity in Matthew – wait, where are the shepherds?  – but I’ve always had a problem with making that kind of distinction-noting a core of Bible study. It plants seeds of skepticism. It puts the Gospel writer at the center of our consciousness rather than Christ.

I’m not arguing for fundamentalist, out-of-context readings. I’m just saying that at least when I was teaching, that sort of focus was the center, even of high school Bible courses, and I don’t think, in the end, it helped students approach Scripture as God’s Word, powerful and effective in their lives.

And as I listened to the Gospel reading yesterday evening, I was reminded of one of my odd ideas, that I don’t think I’ve ever shared, probably because I’m afraid it’s too simplistic.

But here we go. Take it for what it’s worth.

So – we have two different accounts, we say, of the Beatitudes. We read the Beatitudes in both gospels then, with distinction-making and context-examining our priority. How does this reflect Luke’s priorities and themes? How is that different from Matthew’s presentation in the Sermon on the Mount?

Perhaps you heard that in your homily this weekend.

And then we perhaps take some mental side-roads into the Forest of Inerrancy, and that’s a fun place to be, isn’t it?

Well, how about this?

Jesus preached for a while, in different places to various audiences. He told parables shared wisdom, had words to say about the Kingdom, about authority, about the Law, about life, about himself.

Do you really think he told a parable only once, to one audience? 

If what we now call the Beatitudes were so vital to his preaching – do you think he only shared them one time, in one context? 

Or is it possible that has he traveled and preached over those months and years, he shared the same parables and ideas many times? He certainly responded to individuals and their situations in unique ways, but when it comes to those parables and other themes at the center of his preaching, like the Beatitudes – wouldn’t it make sense that he shared them often, perhaps with slight differences in the telling sometimes?

That’s not to dismiss the role that the evangelists and their audiences play in the composition of the Gospels. The Gospels and the rest of God’s Word reflect the reality of the Incarnation in a different way, certainly – the qualities and characteristics of human witnesses and narrators  play a role in how it’s communicated and shaped. It’s not to say that’s not worth studying. And understanding this truth is essential for helping us understand how God, indeed, works in the world – in our world, our everyday world. It helps us understand to not expect oracles from on high when discerning God’s will or presence – that God’s here, in the messiness and weirdness of human life that is limited and ambiguous.

But as I said, for a time, this notion of distinction-drawing has been an important focus of non-specialist Bible study, and I’ve never been comfortable with it as a defining activity or preaching point, especially when the preaching repeats, over and over, “Here, Matthew has Jesus” or “Here Luke has Jesus….”

This is conjecture on my part, and I’m generally not a fan of conjecture or scene-construction when it comes to Jesus words and activities in the Gospels, but this simple possibility – that Jesus could have told similar stories and made similar points in many different contexts  – might point to, for some of you, perhaps, a more helpful way to the presence of Jesus in the Gospels than the constant focus on intra-Gospel differences and authorial intention does.

So, with the Beatitudes, instead of emphasizing Luke here has Jesus or Matthew here has Jesus – what can we learn from what Matthew has Jesus say? – the preacher or catechist could explore what we can learn from the different ways Jesus presents these core ideas.

Just throwing it out there.

 

Paradise Lost

That’s today’s Mass reading

Here’s the first and last section of the retelling from The Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories. 

The story is in the “Lent” section – remember that I have the stories organized by how one would generally hear them in Mass during the course of the liturgical year.

Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories

Go here for more on the Loyola Kids series. 

But Look How Much I Gained

 

 

Where were we?

Post 1

Post 2

I’m going to veer a bit from my original “plan” on these posts, and jump ahead to a conclusion of sorts. And then next week or over the weekend, I’ll move back and elaborate. I just want to describe the landscape and what I’m reacting to.

Let’s summarize what I was attempting to communicate in those last two posts (found here and here.)

Human beings come in two sexes, male and female (noted: intersex conditions.) 

Gender is not the same thing as sex, but is intimately related and rooted in what male and female are about: procreative roles and powers.

Beyond that, we should be wary of identifying traits as “feminine” or “masculine.” That type of discourse can certainly help in exploring our personalities and identities, understanding the challenges in relationships and building community.

But, taken even an inch too far, fixating  on and defining “feminine” or “masculine” can become confining, limiting, exclusionary, confusing, oppressive and harmful.

There’s a deep mystery about the human person, including about sexuality. We seek to understand it, but always in humility and awareness of our own limitations.

As I wrote in those posts, I come at this from two angles: first, looking at the contemporary cultural and pop spiritual scene in which there are strong movements to associate spirituality with femininity or masculinity. I’ve said that many are helped and built up by that – and that’s great. But if you are a woman or man who can’t imagine attending a Catholic or Christian women’s or men’s conference or study group – that’s great too. That was really just a side point.

But – and this is the more important point – in observing the broader culture, I’m astonished, puzzled and increasingly angered by this paradox of living in a time in which I thought we were supposed to be past gender stereotypes – but finding that, in fact, gender stereotypes are quickly becoming pathologized.

Last year, ITV aired a series called Butterfly about a male child with gender dysphoria. Sarah Ditum wrote about it and what she said echoes what I’ve been trying to say:

Butterfly, though, is storytelling. It’s emotionally appealing. It’s accessible. It’s simple. In fact, it’s very simple indeed, which is why it’s quite boring, and also why it’s dangerous.

That’s a strong word to use of a primetime drama, but consider what Butterfly is telling its audience. It offers a starkly segregated version of childhood: boys do active, sporty things and girls are decorative and pretty. Max’s parents first of all try to “fix” him into having the appropriate interests – his dad with corporal punishment, his mum by treating the “girly” things as a shameful secret to be kept to the bedroom – and, when that fails, they solve the problem instead by recategorising him as a girl. The possibility that Max, like 60-90% of children with gender dysphoria, might simply turn out to be a boy who likes pink, isn’t given house room here.

And so here we are – in this transgender moment.

Now, wait. It’s a tiny percentage of people who identify this way, you say. Why take time to pay attention? Why comment? What’s the big deal?

A couple of reasons.

First, it’s interesting. One of the aspects of history in which I’ve long been interested in is social movements. I did a lot of work in graduate school on the 19th century woman’s movement, especially in relation to religion. I’ve studied feminism, and this is a crucial moment – it really is fascinating to see assumptions and ideologies flipped around in this way.

What we’re seeing in this moment, thanks to transgenderism, is a deep, even violent clash between social movements and ideals. It’s startling, to be honest. Some look at what is going on with a sort of Schadenfreude  – “Always entertaining to see the Left eat its own.”

And, well – I suppose there’s some of that.

But what’s going on deserves more serious attention than that – and it deserves it even from those of us who aren’t directly involved and see ourselves as distant from or unsympathetic to these concerns and issues.

Because what is going on is not just a squabble between interest groups or a struggle for acceptance and tolerance. The outcome is going to impact the law – in fact, one of the major explosive points in this conflict has come, precisely, because of a battle over law and policy in England over the past year – and the policies of organizations from Girl and Boy Scouts to your local high school and health club.

And we owe it to the truth to be thoughtful and clear-headed about the issue, and not get wrapped up into sentiment.

So what am I doing? I want to talk about what’s going on with this issue and share what I think are possible consequences – and help folks make sense of it, in whatever way I can.

I think this is a deeply important moment, and because of the power of rapid communications and the quick and harsh power that interests group can yield now, we need to pay attention. There’s a middle ground between:

• Seeing this as an issue that crazy people over there are squabbling about and since I don’t like most of what they are saying anyway, I’ll just point and laugh

and

• Blindly acceding to the nice-sounding  slogans of acceptance and diversity of the moment

 

Oh – and a warning. The material I’ll be linking to and quoting will, at times, be pretty out there and contain what some might find offensive language. And of course, I don’t agree with every other point made by writers and activists I’ll be citing. Just know that going in.

Here’s my entry point, and I think this pretty succinctly summarizes the current situation. The writer is a leftist feminist academic. Her field is not gender or sexuality, but I think this is a helpful summary of the core issues – it was published in 2015, but is still valid – again, her starting definitions are not those I necessarily share, but stick with it:

Transgenderism bastardises the core feminist insight that “woman” is a politically defined social category generated by male violence and the exclusion, expropriation and colonisation of female human beings. Rendered as a Leftist wedge issue, this insight becomes the distorted proposition that “woman” is a flexible human “identity” with which any individual might associate themselves – even fully-grown rational male human beings.

Rather than being a designator of subordinated social class membership, “woman” is a feeling that can swell in any man’s breast. Acting on this feeling, he might adopt sex-stereotyped clothing and behaviours, and others must hold these caricatured displays in high regard. Female pronouns must be used, and laws and policies must be changed to newly recognise women, not as an historically vulnerable social group, but as the product of an individual man’s inner thoughts and feelings.

The Leftist purge of women who refuse publicly to declare allegiance to such ideas of transgenderism is proceeding apace. It takes the form of the “no-platforming” of feminists at speaking events, the petitioning of conference venues to drop bookings from feminist groups, the public harassment and ridicule of dissenters, and lobbying for women to be removed from jobs and positions of public profile.

So what is she talking about in that last paragraph?

Basically, the war that has broken out, at least in English-speaking countries (that I’m aware of) between feminist, lesbian and transgender activists. It’s not a small thing.

The controversy exploded last year with proposed changes to the British 2004 Gender Identification Law – the changes would loosen the requirements for determining gender. The following is taken from an opinion piece by two scholars opposed to the changes:

One of the main reforms proposed is that anyone should be able to be formally recognised as a member of the other sex purely on the basis of self-identification. Therefore, the sole criterion for determining that a person is a woman would be that person’s belief (or stated belief) that they are a woman. Anyone who wants to be a woman would have to be viewed as one.

The effect of this proposal becoming law would be to erode the very concept of woman. It will erase women’s lived experiences, and undermine women’s rights. Being a woman is about sex and biology, in that our bodies determine so much of our experience, and also about the way we are constructed socially, which also helps determine our lived experiences. It is not about how a person feels or what they claim to feel.

Self-identification will allow anyone to access women’s spaces at any time, having self-proclaimed that they are a woman. This is  problematic for women accessing women’s spaces and services whose lived experiences (such as surviving sexual violence) or protected characteristics (such as religion that requires sex-segregation for certain activities) make it essential that women’s spaces remain sex-segregated.

Self-identification is also open to abuse by men seeking to access women’s spaces and women’s bodies. We are already seeing people who were born and still live and present as men claiming that they are trans-women in order to gain access to women’s spaces, including convicted sex offenders demanding to be housed in women’s prisons; individuals videoing women and girls naked in women’s changing rooms; and individuals seeking to join all-women candidate lists in local or national elections. Allowing self-identification of trans people will enable and embolden these types of activities.

There is clearly a conflict of rights and interests at the heart of these discussions. This conflict needs to be aired and discussed.  

So what is happening?

Essentially this:

In organizations, movements and platforms throughout the English-speaking world, women who question and challenge transgender ideology are being pushed out, excluded, and threatened.

The nature of the questions and challenges range across various concerns:

• Transgendered individuals participating in girls and women’s athletic events.
• Transgendered individuals being admitted into all-women spaces, ranging from prisons to shelters to, of course, restrooms.
• Transgendered activists redefining women and aspects of female physiology.

Somewhat distinct, but of even more pressing concern is the impact of this on children and young people: encouraging children who are confused and – as most children and young people are – uncomfortable with body changes, fearful and confused about identity and the future – to latch onto gender stereotypes, accept hormonal treatments and surgery to “become” another gender.

I’m going to go into these in more detail in later posts. It’s easy to find all sorts of related news everywhere, but there are a few cases that interest me in particular.

What I wanted to focus on in this post is the impact on social movements – feminism and gay activism, in particular. You may not think it has anything to do with you, but think again. We should all know by know how quickly these demands develop.

One of the things you quickly – immediately – notice – is that the movement in this area is all in one direction:

Men identifying as women demanding access to traditional women’s spaces and activities.

It’s never the other way around. The pressure, the hate and the violence – yes, the violence – is emanating from men demanding to be identified as women.

And the pressure is on.  Here’s a good summary from Meghan Murphy – a Canadian journalist who this past week filed a lawsuit against Twitter for banning her – for saying, basically “men aren’t women.”

This is a long excerpt – and I encourage you to go read her entire piece for many more examples.

The statement that “Men aren’t women” would have been seen as banal—indeed, tautological—just a few years ago. Today, it’s considered heresy—akin to terrorist speech that seeks to “deny the humanity” of trans-identified people who very much wish they could change sex, but cannot. These heretics are smeared as “TERF”—a pejorative term that stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist—and blacklisted. On many Twitter threads, the term is more or less synonymous with “Nazi.” 

In many progressive corners of academic and online life, it now is taken as cant that anyone who rejects transgender ideology—which is based on the theory that a mystical “gender identity” exists within us, akin to a soul—may be targeted with the most juvenile and vicious attacks. “Punch TERFs and Nazis” has become a common Twitter tagline, as is the demand that “TERFs” be “sent to the gulag.” (This latter suggestion was earnestly defended in a thread authored by students who run the official Twitter account of the LGBTQ+ Society at a British university. The authors went on to say that the gulag model would, in fact, comprise “a compassionate, non-violent course of action” to deal with “TERFs” and “anti-trans bigots” who must be “re-educat[ed].”)

…

The reason why engagement with the most militant trans activists is fruitless, and yields only a slew of empty mantras and false stereotypes, is that one cannot argue with religious faith. At the core of transgender ideology is the idea that the old mind/body problem that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries has been definitively solved by gender-studies specialists—and that a female mind can exist within a male body and vice versa. Moreover, we are informed that these mystical phenomena are invisible in all respects, except to the extent that they are experienced from within—which means the only reliable indicator of supposed bona fide transgenderism is the self-declaration of trans-identified individuals (many of whom seem to have made these stunning discoveries as part of a sudden social trend).

…

Like other women who have been sounding the alarm about these trends, I regularly get accused of spreading moral panic, and of attempting to vilify trans-identified people as inveterate predators. But my issue isn’t with “transgender people,” per se, but, rather, with men. There is a reason certain spaces are sex-segregated—such as change rooms, bathrooms, women’s shelters, and prisons: because these are spaces where women are vulnerable, and where male predators might target women and girls. These are spaces where women and girls may be naked, and where they do not want to be exposed to a man’s penis, regardless of his insistence that his penis is actually “female.”

The internally experienced mystical conceits of a man’s mind do not affect any of the reasons why sex-segregated spaces were created in the first place. Female firefighters in Canada had to fight for years to have their own facilities like locker rooms, bathrooms, and showers, after suffering regular harassment in previously shared spaces. Such are the gains that the radicalized portion of the trans-rights movement wants to roll back. Generations of feminists have made it their life’s work to help women feel safe in historically male spaces. But in the name of ideological fashion, that has been flushed away in the name of male demands for “inclusivity.”

In May, nine homeless women signed on to a lawsuit against Naomi’s House in Fresno, California, after they were forced to shower with a biological man who, while claiming to be a woman, made lewd, sexually inappropriate comments to them, and leered at their naked bodies. In Toronto, similarly, Kristi Hanna filed a human rights complaint against the Jean Tweed Centre, which runs Palmerston House, a shelter for female recovering addicts, after she was told she must share a room with a hulking, plainly male-bodied individual claiming to be a woman.

….

Friends sometimes tell me that I shouldn’t worry too much, because Twitter “isn’t real life.” But online fights have an effect on “real life.” Last month, Canada’s Greystone Books, with which I’d been working on a manuscript for almost three years, told me they were dropping my book. The manuscript had just been completed, and I’d agreed to all the suggested edits with regard to the material on transgenderism. The email sent to me by the owner of the company was completely out of the blue, and explained, “I cannot and will not accept a manuscript for publication at Greystone which is hurtful to individuals or groups because of what they believe about their own gender.” When I responded with shock and confusion, he declined to explain what it was about my analysis that suddenly had become “unacceptable” to him. Presumably, he was just late getting the memo about “TERFs.”

We are indeed in an era of social panic. But this panic isn’t directed at trans-identified individuals, who, in fact, are now called on to lead parades. Rather, the panic is directed at anyone who claims that 2 + 2 = 4. After stickers with the words, “Women don’t have penises” appeared on campus at Memorial University in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Jennifer Dyer, interim head of the gender studies department, blamed “TERFs.” And university president Gary Kachanoski responded immediately with a statement that called the stickers “transphobic” and “hateful.” Bailey Howard, director of external affairs for the Student Union, saidthat not one, but two meetings were being planned to “discuss next steps.” An anchor for NTV, Newfoundland’s provincial news program, labeled it a “hate crime.” All of this hysteria was set in motion by a set of stickers that express a sentiment endorsed, at least privately, by most members of our society. It feels like a Monty Python sketch come to life.

I was angry to have lost a Twitter account with tens of thousands of followers. I was angry to have lost a book deal. But I will recover. I am resilient, if nothing else. I will find another publisher and other ways to communicate with the public. I have countless supporters, and my career is far from over. Certainly, I don’t plan on shutting up.

But this isn’t just about me. It’s about a cultish movement that is flexing its muscle on campuses, in civic organizations, at public events, and in the back offices of social-media companies, to strike down anyone who dares point out that the gender emperor wears no clothes. It is about our ability to debate important issues and speak the truth in the public realm. It’s time for all of us—not just women and feminists, who are now taking the worst of it—to put their collective foot down and demand a return to sanity.

 

TO REPEAT:

You can look at all of this  and say, Hahaha – what do you expect from progressives? Feminists getting a taste of their own medicine!

I suppose you can do that. But it’s not a serious response. For this isn’t a battle being fought only on Twitter and in academic departments. We’ve seen how quickly the social landscape changes.

For this can, in a way, be a teachable moment, can’t it? It can be an opportunity for us to take a deep breathe and indeed reconsider what it means to be a person, a woman, a man – and consider whether or not certain old truths still might be…true.

I mean, look at the bolded paragraph section up there. And think about, compare it to this article asking – is the soul sexed? 

…..

Fair Play for Women is a UK-based organization that has all the resources you need to get started. 

Here they are on Twitter.

We are concerned that in the rush to reform transgender laws and policies women’s voices will not be heard. Run entirely by a team of volunteers with skills in many different disciplines, without any corporate sponsorship or formal funding, we have worked hard over the past year to bring this issue to public attention.

Women get called transphobic for simply asking questions. Women are afraid to speak out and fear for their jobs and reputation if they do. We provide the safe platform necessary for women and men to voice their concerns, share their real-life stories and expert knowledge.

4th Wave Now looks at it from another angle:

The purpose of this site is to give voice to an alternative to the dominant trans-activist and medical paradigm currently being touted by the media

Twitter.

Jane Clare Jones is a writer with a strong voice. She blogs here. Her most popular post is “The Annals of the TERF-wars” found here. Again, warning for strong language.  

 

Trans activists: So hey, when we said we’d like you to treat us like women that wasn’t right, because actually, we ARE women and we demand that you treat us exactly like women because we are women and that you to stop violently excluding us from all your women things.

Women: Um, we thought you were male people who had to transition to help with your dysphoria?

Trans activists: No, that is out-dated and pathologizing. Women are women because they have a gender identity which makes them women.

Women: Um, we thought we were woman because we’re female?

Trans activists: No, you are women because you have magic womanish essence that makes you women. We have the same magic womanish essence as you, it’s just that ours got stuck in the wrong body.

Feminists: That sounds kind of sexist. Can you tell us what this woman-essence is, and how it gets stuck in the wrong body, because that sounds like a weird metaphys…..

Trans activists: It’s SCIENCE.

Feminists: Science says there’s ‘magic woman essence’??? Are you sure? Because feminism would…

Trans activists: Shut up bigots.

But it’s hilarious. And true.

Julia Beck, on Tucker Carlson this past week, describes in this long piece how she was kicked off the Baltimore LGBTQ Commission for calling a guy “he.” 

Our very first meeting was in May. To make the commission “as inclusive as possible,” Mayor Pugh invited applicants to a welcoming reception. When I arrived,  Ava Pipitone, president of Baltimore’s Transgender Alliance, was preaching everyone’s favorite buzzword: “inclusion.” He seemed a caricature of femininity with overtly demure mannerisms and performative vocal fry. At the end of his prepared speech, Mayor Pugh tenderly embraced him, thanking him for being “so brave” at the podium.
….

When I arrived to the first Law and Policy meeting, Ava Pipitone, of BTA, shook my hand and greeted me by my full name. I knew I was in for a show. I asked him what he does for a living, and he gushed about the app he’s developing with engineers in California — “like if Air BnB and OkCupid had a baby” — a dating website based on rental locations, every pimp’s wet dream. It was no surprise to hear him confess later in the night that he’s an agent for the global pimp lobby, the Sex Workers Outreach Project.

Before we could talk about bylaws, Pipitone announced the rejection of my written comments on some new policies from the Baltimore Police Department. He further derailed the conversation by asking me to name his sex. There was no point in lying. I said, “You’re male,” but my Co-Chair, Akil Patterson, a gay man, disagreed on the grounds of gender identity. When I asked Patterson to differentiate “gender” from “sex,” Pipitone accused me of gaslighting. Instead of answering, they deferred: Why does a stranger’s identity matter so much? Why can’t you just support trans people? What does it have to do with you?

I brought up Karen White, a convicted pedophile and rapist who was placed in a UK women’s prison, despite being legally male and undergoing no steps to socially or medically transition, where he then raped two inmates. White’s case illustrates how easy it is for men to manipulate the law, but Pipitone smirked and claimed I was being performative. In delicate tones, he expressed concern with my leadership. He claimed Lesbianism and transgenderism are incongruent political forces (probably the only thing we agree on). Instead of enacting “lateral violence” against transfolk by crashing “our parades,” he argued that lesbians should assimilate with male lesbians to “punch up” at an unnamed oppressor.

Incidentally, Beck’s piece is at the website After Ellen – a lesbian website whose editor is today under attack from transactivists for some reasons I really don’t understand.

****

Several years ago, when I first started observing these movements, the following popped into my head. If you read my first post on this, you know that the thought of Germaine Greer and 80’s era feminists who questioned the impact of reproductive technology on women has been very important to me. What all of these thinkers – as well as pro-life feminism –  emphasized wast the cultural and social temptation to, as it were, castrate women to make them more productive cogs in male-defined social and economic structures – make them easier to sexually exploit, with little fear of pregnancy – and render them more efficient workers. Hence the title of Greer’s book The Female Eunuch. 

So when I started seeing this moment evolve, here is what I thought, and I can’t shake it:

When historians look back on this, they’re going to see the ultimate triumph of  misogyny, enabled by technology: The ideal woman – is a man. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Bunch of links this week. First – check out my posts on gender issues from earlier this week. To be continued either today or over the weekend. (Just click backwards on the post links above.)

Also – I have a bunch of mostly book-centered posts over at Medium. 

I was in Living Faith on Wednesday. Read that devotional here. 

Preparing dinner at a local shelter Monday night.

— 2 —

My hilarious and brilliant friend Dorian is blogging again – it’s a trend! Blogging is back!

—3–

Another friend, Villanova prof Chris Barnett has refashioned his blog – Theology + Culture. 

–4–

Good piece on the “Unfulwilled Promise of the Synod on Young People.”  I’d be more cynical than the author, but all that means is that he’s more charitable, and therefore a better person.

–5 —

Did you know that there’s been a spate of serious church vandalism incidents in France? Yup. 

–6–

Our Cathedral rector with an excellent post on “morbid introspection” as a spiritual danger. Spot.  On. 

A classic paradigm for prayer is ACTS — adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, supplication. Where does morbid introspection fit into this? It doesn’t. Adoration centers mostly around praise. Contrition involves introspection, but turned back to God for his mercy and healing. Thanksgiving perhaps also involves introspection, as we thank God for the ills from which he has already delivered us and for all the other blessings he has given. Indeed, thanksgiving often involves praise. And supplication may involve some introspection as we ask for what we need — but praying for ourselves should usually be secondary to praying for others and the world, lest we end up becoming too self-involved.

If you struggle with a tendency to grow sad by focusing on your problems/difficulties, the advice that Fr. Kirby gives is right on, and I’ll paraphrase: cut it out, and praise God instead.

I’m reminded of some passages from St. Jane de Chantal that I’ve highlighted in the past:

Pray what does it matter whether you are dense and stolid or over-sensitive ? Any one can see that all this is simply self-love seeking its satisfaction. For the love of God let me hear no more of it: love your own insignificance and the most holy will of God which has allotted it to you, then whether you are liked or disliked, reserved or ready-tongued, it should be one and the same thing to you. Do not pose as an ignorant person, but try to speak to each one as being in the presence of God and in the way He inspires you. If you are content with what you have said your self-love will be satisfied, if not content, then you have an opportunity of practising holy humility. In a word aim at indifference and cut short absolutely this introspection and all these reflections you make on yourself. This I have told you over and over again.

–7–

Septuagesima Sunday! Check out this post!

I’ve created a Lent page here.

And don’t forget – .99 for my short story The Absence of War  – here. 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

Thursday

This is just going to be a digest day. I need a break from Big Blogging Thoughts. I have a story I really want to finish a first draft of this week because another one has started popping up in my head, fighting for time. I’ll return to gendered thinking on Friday. Maybe this afternoon is this morning is fruitful.

So:

Watching: Unfortunately, I spent a couple of hours night before last rewatching Mad Men again. I say “unfortunately” because I’ve already seen these episodes at least twice, so there’s no valid reason for me to spend some of my brief, valuable time here on earth with those people again.

But then it’s season 6 and we get Boss Peggy and the genius casting of Harry Hamlin as Cutler and Bob Benson.  And great, great lines like Roger Sterling,  trying to sort through his feelings about his mother’s death with his therapist:

“My mother loved me in some completely pointless way and it’s gone. So there it is. She gave me my last new experience. And now I know that all I’m going to be doing from here on is losing everything.” 

So, yeah, I got sucked in.

Stayed up too late. Again.

Reading: 

In recent New Yorker issues (checked out from the library) – an article on Nashville hot chicken – mostly about Prince’s, the establishment at the heart of it, but comparing it with latecomers, most notably the small chain Hattie B’s. We have an Hattie B’s near our house, and my youngest loves it. He probably would eat there every day if he could. Interesting to me was the cultural appropriation angle to the story – Prince’s being African-American owned and Hattie B’s started by white guys.  But – I have to say – going to the Hattie B’s near my house is one of the most diverse experiences in a diverse part of town in a diverse city.  Always a slight edge to African-American customers, usually an Asian group and most of the time at least one customer in a hijab.

This story by Emma Cline – evocative and depressing, which is fine, because life can be that way.

As I noted earlier in the week, I finished The Woman in White. Inspired by this post by Eve Tushnet, I started The Comedians  –  one of the few Greene novels I’d not yet read.

Oh – and you might remember that earlier in the week we were reading The Comedy of Errors in anticipation of seeing a production this Friday. Well, scratch that. Turns out the production is in a very small theater and is sold out. Sad!

Writing: 

I was in Living Faith yesterday. Here’s the driver who was the subject. Bought with his own hard-earned money.

I reposted a piece  on Flannery O’Connor’s book reviews on Medium. 

Here’s another son’s take on the film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Follow him on Twitter to keep updated on his movie posts and writing progress.

Joan’s eyes are wide with innocence as she navigates her interrogators’ questions, making them seem alternatively foolish and unserious. It’s both Joan’s strength and fragility, all told through Falconetti’s performance, that sells the conflict. We are with her from the beginning to the end, and it’s quite an emotional journey.

And of course, two long-winded blog posts. Just click back to the links at the top of this post for those.

Listening:

I stopped in Chick-Fil-A last night to pick up food for Son #4 since it’s Son #5’s church-thing-night where they feed him. I noticed this gaggle of women in there, all dressed in similar outfits – a little Boho, each wearing black hats with rims. They were clearly evoking someone or something and they sure were stoked, but I had no idea about who or what.

Shrugs. Gets a #8 Meal. 

After I got him his food, I headed back downtown. My destination was this concert – a free piano concert, an annual tradition at our Birmingham Museum of Art. M and I had attended last year. It was too bad he couldn’t go this year – but, hey – it was free and in the same vicinity as his church thing, so why not use that hour in an elevated way instead of killing time on a screen?

Well, traffic was horrendous. I was reasonably certain that the 2017 Van Cliburn competition silver medalist wasn’t attracting that kind of audience, so as I stopped at a light with a river of red taillights in front of me, I tried to figure out what was going on –

Ah – 

Fleetwood Mac 

Now it all comes together, not least the Stevie Nicks fan club in Chick-Fil-A. 

Well, I finally found parking a few blocks from the museum – really, I should have just parked at the Cathedral – and hustled down there. As I walked in the front door, applause echoed through the building, much louder than it should have been – the museum as a large auditorium on the ground floor, and this was just up the stairs, right in front of me.

And sure enough, the space that usually holds the tables for the museum’s restaurant was filled instead with rows of chairs with a baby grand at the head. As they were explaining as I snuck in the back, the piano in the auditorium was broken, they were unable to fix it, so here they were.

It was a lovely concert – although being in the back row on a floor that wasn’t graded meant that of course I couldn’t see anything. Which was fine – it forced me to really listen in a closer way.

He played:

César Franck | Harold Bauer Prélude, Fugue et Variation, op. 18

Johann Sebastian Bach Toccata in C Minor, BWV 911

Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, op. 110

I will say that listening to my son play his pieces dozens, if not hundreds of times, has taught me a great deal about music and made listening in concert settings – which I always enjoyed anyway – even more interesting.

Contemporary Catholic motherhood talk is still miles better than secular talk, but still, it tends to miss a few beats, I think. The talk is still all about me. About how motherhood makes me a better person.

Well, it does, yes.

But the most amazing thing about motherhood – about parenthood – is the gift of cooperating with God, even unintentionally and accidentally – in putting unique human beings into the world, people with interests and gifts and their own weird journeys.

And, to bring it back around to a self-centered bullseye on this Valentine’s Day – how that expands our world, doesn’t it? To help create a community in which you’re enriched and grow by engaging with all that they engage with – their sports, their movies, their music, their work experiences, their people.

Who would we be without them?