KA-SMASH

We have cliches for a reason. Certain experiences are just endemic to the human condition; sooner or later, qua human, we all experience them. When ol’ Homes wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, he wasn’t the first person to point out that war sucks and it’s good to come home: those are things we’ve never not known. He just said it better than anyone else. Great literature doesn’t tell us new truths—it revivifies ancient ones.

Head-on collision the other day. Thank God Almighty, Sonya's fine. Totally fine. The other car came all the way across our lane—cops said we can't tell you much, but the other driver seems to have been high—and smashed into the right-hand side of us. Our little girl was buckled in the back behind the driver's seat, so apart from a momentary scare, she's already moved on. Ellie's got a broken sternum. I'm physically fine (my guardian angel seems to have a real talent for car crashes, I keep walking away from them), but I'm more shaken up than I'm thrilled to admit. Jumping at noises a lot; lots of knots in the belly. Not quite the action hero calmly walking away from explosions in slow motion. Not yet.

Anyway, the cliches. As soon as our poor totaled car stopped spinning, I was out the door and clawing at Sonya's door handle. I think I can unequivocally file that under "worst single moment of my life to date." She's so, so lively—never not moving, never not kicking, barely still even when she's asleep; the idea of her lying motionless still makes me want to curl up in a ball. But she was okay. Crying a bit, from the shock; but as soon as I took her out and snuggled her up, she calmed right down. Tiny little scratch on one cheek, already faded by now. I think, I hope, that I appreciated her before. But now? Dear Lord Jesus, I love her so much, so much, so much. I've talked already, I think, about how having our girl has excavated our souls and given us greater capacity for love: this car crash did the same, and I think we now love her even more. But God, it hurts, that excavating. There's no anaesthetic, I guess, when they're bulldozing down through the floor of your immortality. But yeah, the old saying's true: you almost lose what you've got, you suddenly treasure it again.

Advent's always been a momentous time for me and Ellie. We fell in love during Advent. Almost split up during Advent, when I couldn't find work. Got married in Advent. Went to New York during Advent to deal with our fertility issues. And last year, during Advent, we bought the house where Sonya was born, mere weeks before Sonya was born. This year we're shaking off a car crash and trying to take care of our girl. Thank God for our family and friends, who keep coming around to help us. I think we would have starved to death by now. And thank God for God, Who keeps on patiently bashing us over the head with reminders that He's here to take care of us, over and over again.

I don't seem to have any profound observation to make about the state of the world right now. Just wanted to take a moment to say merry Christmas from the Toners, and thanks for all your prayers. We love you guys, forever and ever and ever.

Valediction

So, friends. This is my final post. At least for awhile. Partly, I feel that I've said everything I have to say right now and am beginning to repeat myself. Partly, I'm running low on the energy and time that it takes to maintain a weekly blogging regimen. And partly, 50 posts just seems like a good strong number to end on.

It was Father's Day of last year when I learned that Sonya was coming. (Or little James, as we initially thought.) It is imbecilically inadequate to say that a great deal has happened since then. But, a great deal has happened since then.

Part of being a writer is learning the limits of language. There are things that words can't do. The next part, of course, is trying to do those things anyway; but you remain aware that no matter how many digits you add, you'll never reach a numerical infinite. I can see as many pictures of charging lions as you please, but it won't truly convey the experience. Labor and childbirth—somebody cloned Scar from hyena poop, and he's pissed.

Ellie and I discovered [were smashed over the skull with] depths to our relationship that we'd never suspected. We found out stuff about taking care of each other and trusting each other that simply hadn't been asked of us before. It often makes me think of the old saying that God asks of you what He thinks you can handle, and just how crucially wrong that saying is. He knows exactly what you can handle, and He absolutely always asks more of you. Partly to make you learn; partly to make you lean. As hard as pregnancy was, I know and love Ellie's pride and strength, and I would not have missed the chance to be the one she allowed herself to lean on.

Even Sonya, at an age you could still conveniently count in hours, was asked to do more than she could. Eating, pooping, sleeping—things it no longer occurs to us to consider enterprises—they were all Everest-scalingly difficult for her. Right now she's struggling to sit up, and it's taking every bit of power and determination she can muster. It's easy enough for a grownup to dismiss a child's struggles—oh gee, you have to learn the alphabet, your life is so hard—but watching my daughter grapple with gravity makes me glad adults don't have Seraphim dropping by to scoff at us. "Ooooh, someone fired a fifty-megaton thermonuclear warhead at your nation's capital, poor baby. Pfff, I could stop one of those with my theologically mysterious pinkie."

Okay, so—obvious follow-up—why don't you? Why allow Hiroshima, Nagasaki? Why do I have to give Sonya medicine she hates while she cries and wriggles and looks at me with hurt, betrayed eyes? Why can't I just carry her instead of forcing her to learn how to walk? And there's my answer, right in the question. Which, intellectually, one already knows, but it feels a lot more true now.

I wish I had more to say. Getting to the last post was a relief, but getting to the last paragraph is a little bit sad. I love you guys. Thank you for reading, and please pray for us. May God bless and keep you. May His Face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And when the war's over and we find our seats in the tavern at the end of the world, the first round is on me. So long for now, friends. Keep fighting.

On Roadtripping (or, To Whom Much Is Given)

So last week we took our first road trip with little Sonechka. Saw my folks, caught up with dear friends, went to a wedding. Had the best margaritas in the Western Hemisphere and did some almost halfway decent karaoke. Good times. But, also—yeesh—rough times.

She's four months old now, not counting time served in utero, and can often sleep through the night with only a few wake-ups for feeding and cooing; and so, we mostly drove at night. But on the way home, we got up early and tried to drive through the day in hopes of sleeping in our own bed before returning to work the next morning. Our beloved treasure did not assent to this undertaking.

A good marriage, of course, requires complementarity. My Ellabelle is a highly organized and motivated person, thank God, and part of her job is to poke me when I get scattered or lazy; and part of my job in turn is to soothe her when she gets a skosh or a soupçon too motivated. But a tolerable marriage also wants similarity, and she and I definitely share a rather sensitive temperament. So after listening to Sonya cry for approximately infinity, we were all three of us crying; and we ultimately got a hotel room two hours from home and drove the last stretch at 4 in the morning with Ellie in the back seat consoling our girl and me almost weaving across lanes for fatigue. In short, traveling was quite a bit easier before we became parents.

We love our cat. (Shut up, Dan.) It was awfully nice to come home and find him waiting for us. But it was also nice to stick a cat-door in the window, throw some food in a bowl, and leave him alone for ten days. It turns out you can't do that with an infant.

What manner of infant are you?

The soul-shaking, cosmos-changing gift of offspring comes with a hefty price tag. Which—technically, that's not exactly a gift, is it. I guess it's more like a sacred trust. Which—honestly, not any less intimidating.

Road trips are kind of a parental rite of passage because there's no buffer, no refuge, no veil: it's just you and the kid(s) stuffed together in a tiny space for as many hours at a time as it takes to burn a tank of gas. Then you stretch your legs, buy some Dr. Pepper, and cram right back into the car. Hopefully you all like each other!

Luckily, we like Sonya rather a lot. Much will be expected of us in the way of sacrifice and shared pain; but if she had come with a receipt and a refund policy, we wouldn't have kept them. When she's having an easy day, she's the sweetest thing I've ever seen, and it makes me love her all the more. When she's hard and frustrating, it makes me practice loving all the more. Everything she does deepens our capacity for love and keeps on filling us to capacity.

Mind you, all that being said—next trip, I think we're gonna fly.

On Storytelling (or What's A Heaven For)

Ever see Field of Dreams? If you're a man who ever played baseball and/or fought with his father, you should. Just be prepared to weep openly. It's all about a guy who goes on a sort of quest at the bidding of a mysterious voice in the corn. (The expression "If you build it, they will come" originates with this movie.) At the very end, and this isn't particularly a spoiler so don't worry, one of the characters enters the realm of the Voice, and that's basically the end of the film. Great, great flick. And we all understand: that which lies beyond the edge of the cornfield can't be captured in fiction.

Likewise, the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Reepicheep finally reaches the borders of Aslan's Country, and the story ends. The children go back to Earth, Lucy and Ed pass the torch to Eustace, and we don't see Reep again till the end of The Last Battle. (Which, if you're reading the books in THE CORRECT ORDER, is four volumes away.) Whatever's in there surpasses the limits of literature. Presumably.

But that's exactly where it gets interesting. I want to see what comes after the end. I want to see the thing that would break the story. I want them to show what can't be shown. What's inside of Barad-Dur? What do the aliens look like in 2001?

Dante did it, of course. Milton did it. The exceptions kind of prove the rule here, though: yeah, you can depict the transcendent, if you're one of history's great geniuses and devote an entire massive epic to the depiction. But most stories that try to show Hell or Heaven don't enlarge the reader's mind; they simply take what should be a beautiful or terrible thing and smoosh it into a petty frame, making God a big old white guy with a beard, making Lucifer a horned red jerk. Don't waste my damn time.

Thing is. Many people feel that the Inferno is the most interesting of the three Spheres visited by Dante, and it's easy to see why. I've been known to write some pretty dark shit myself, and it's largely because the Dark is mysterious and powerful, and more immediately evocative than nice stuff. Yoda called it the quick and easy way for a reason. But here's the point, and the question: How dark is too dark?

Every Catholic's go-to example is Flannery O'Connor. Again, for obvious reasons. But it was a rough century; we don't lack for good Christian writers who lavished their powers on showing us Evil. Charles Williams, Walker Percy, T. S. Eliot, Graham "for God's sake, somebody get this man a puppy" Greene. You could build a case that a (morally, as distinct from artistically) good story can show as much darkness as it likes, as long as it's clear that good is good and bad is bad. As long as you can depict evil without glorifying it.

Tricky. There's absolutely nothing easier than tipping that balance. Give the Devil his due, and don't pretend he's not attractive. Make him too attractive and you're suddenly doing his work. (C.S. Lewis argued that Milton fell into that trap.) But make him a clown with a pitchfork and you're making bad art. God creates, and created Man as a creator: to dismiss the importance of Art is a crucial and perilous mistake. But Salvation comes before all. But there are souls who would never find their way without the guidance of art. But woe to the artist who leads such souls astray. But, also, woe to him who hides his light beneath a bushel or buries his talents in the ground.

Short answer: you're probably screwing it up. But God knows you're trying. Schlep, man. Just keep schlepping.

On Self-Giving (or, What Is Love?)

Sonya: aaaaaaaa*plplplpl*babappplapla?
[Translator's note: Since leaving the womb, Miss Toner has naturally been exposed to dialectal influences from her own misguided generation, necessitating minor edits for clarity. For instance, "bro" and "dude" have been replaced with the preferred usages of "old sport" and "daddy-o."]
Sonya: What is love, old sport?
Me: To love is to will the highest good of another.
Sonya: That seems glib.
Me: Merely terse. I don't have room to cut and paste The Brothers Karamazov. But I grant you that there are nuances.
Sonya: I should say so. For example, I believe that I love you and Mother.
Me: We hope so.
Sonya: But with my ratiocinative powers being at such an early stage, I can scarcely be expected to understand the concept of your good as distinct from my own. I love you because you feed me and do silly things to make me smile.

Me: You do have a wonderful smile. But I take your meaning. Of course you can't yet pray for us or help with laundry or tend me in my age.
Sonya: Especially as you're so full of youthful vim.
Me: Why thank you.
Sonya: I get an allowance eventually, right?
Me: Well played. Point is: our highest good is to live out our vocation as your parents. So for right now, you love us by letting us love you. You keep eating and packin' chub onto those little legs, and figuring out speech patterns and all that stuff. Nothing makes us happier, or holier (funny how that works), than taking care of you. Now, since we're all equal creatures of God, there will no doubt be times when we can fully depend on each other, fully need each other, and truly sacrifice ourselves for one another.
Sonya: No greater love than this.
Me: Zackly. And before long, you'll be able to love actively, and give back to us in whatever way best suits the woman you're becoming. But remember that ultimately, none of us can give back to God. Everything we have is given to us by Him. So we're all in the position of loving Him solely by accepting His love. And of course by serving Him in one another. But like your mama said last week, what return shall we make to the Lord for all His gifts? We accept the cup of salvation and call upon His Name. And all the other loves flow from there.
Sonya: Trickle-down love-o-nomics!
Me: Was that a Reagan joke? Nicely done, old sport!
Sonya: Thanks, daddy-o.

MAMA CHIMES IN: A Mother's Consecration

by Ellen RM Toner

So. I’ve got two “holy” siblings: a nun and an almost-priest. Which is great, because not only do I never have to worry about getting myself to heaven (talk to me—I can hook you up), but every so often I get little custom-made bits of real spiritual wisdom from the two people who were nearest and dearest to me all through my childhood.

Something Sister Louise Marie said to me once was that suffering is the kiss of Christ. Sounds all very romantical and idealistic and kind of mushy on the surface, but it’s something that’s stuck with me because, at its heart, it’s deeply profound. As Jesus was the most innocent and holiest victim there ever was, when he chose to enter into suffering, it was of the acutest nature because it was so, well, unjust. But he made that choice, and so, in calling us to follow in his footsteps, to pick up our own crosses, he became the elixir. And suffering, when undertaken with our sights set on him, is our gold. So, in my words, what my Sister sister means is not that we should all go be a bunch of masochists, but that each time suffering is offered to us, or asked and even demanded, it is Jesus saying, hey, here are my shoes! I think you can walk in them. So, stand up, and show me what you got. Expect the Lord; do manfully.

Before I dive into this, I feel like I need to say something: I know I’ve talked a lot over the last couple years about how hard some things have been. While sympathy is helpful, and acknowledgement is healing, I hope that by sharing difficult personal things that the primary end is to share what I think are insights gained and to help other people to understand stuff that they’re wrestling with, or at least to know that they’re not alone and that it’s okay to suddenly be having a rough time of dealing with something that was “supposed” to be easy. One of the most helpful things for me in processing what happened the night Sonya was born was a conversation I had with a friend a few months ahead of time. Our labor stories, and our individual perceptions of our “performances” in them, are strangely similar, and so have helped me to put some things in perspective and not be so angry at myself. And though this is shared in a somewhat less personal arena than a living room couch over a cup of tea, I hope it can be just as helpful for some of you.

I want to talk about two things, both of which are front and center in my mind each time I go to mass these days. The words of the Consecration have gotten so much deeper over the last year, taken on a personal resonance that I didn’t know I was missing: This is My Body, which is given up for you. This is the Chalice of My Blood. Take, and drink. And I feel a bit like a little kid who thinks she’s jumping so high off the couch that she hollers for her daddy’s attention, and also, yes, like I’m putting on his shoes and clumping around, thinking they actually fit. But there’s only one way to grow up; little kids are ingenuous enough to reach for the stars and think they’ve actually touched them. That’s the only way to eventually get there.

First thing: what do pregnancy and childbirth have to do with Jesus, and, more specifically, the Consecration? Well, this is from a letter I wrote to a friend, shared with permission.

You’re allowed to hate being pregnant, you’re allowed to not be excited, you’re allowed to be angry and resentful and even a little shocked and horrified by how hard it is. Before I got so sick, I hadn’t really processed the fact that I was pregnant, and after I got sick there was only one day in my whole pregnancy that I felt all glowy and happy about it. One day. The rest, as I’m sure you know, totally royally sucked. Did I tell you I even prayed for a miscarriage? That’s how much I hated being pregnant. And I don’t think that means I’m a crap mom, and I know it doesn’t mean I don’t love Sonya loads right now. It just means that I felt trapped and foreign and so sick of being incapable. Pregnancy felt endless; I felt weak and tired, couldn’t sleep, got the most intense leg cramps, had a horrible shooting pain in my left side for the last half of the pregnancy, and Jamey trying to kiss me literally made me throw up. Being so incapacitated is absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever had to deal with, and I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to escape my own body/life/circumstances, and how many times Jamey and I talked about how we could never do this again.

About labor… I’m going to be straight with you, because one of the reasons it was hard for me is that I felt like no one had warned me about how brutal it could be. I went in thinking that I knew what it would be like, because I’ve seen it so many times before, but I was utterly, absurdly caught off guard, and I was super pissed at all the women in my life who had kept it a secret. Irrational? Yes. Because obviously there was no conspiracy to keep me in the dark, but still, why hadn’t they told me?! Maybe because there are no words. The only words I can think of to really get at the heart of it are from the Consecration: This is my Body, which is given up for you. I definitely thought a lot about those words during the pregnancy, for obvious reasons, but now each time I’m at mass I think about giving birth, and how everything hurt in ways I didn’t know existed, in blinding, searing, consuming pain that pushed every thought and image out of my head except the Crucifixion. At the very end, where they talk about feeling the ring of fire, I felt it all the way down to the soles of my feet. They were in the water, and they were burning. In between contractions I was alternately shaking, hyperventilating, whimpering and crying, and when each one started I was pleading and panicking to escape it. I felt trapped, cornered, outmanned and outgunned, and I didn’t have anywhere near enough time between them to gather myself and try to meet the next one. Cindy told me later that they were sometimes only 30 seconds apart. Labor started with my water breaking, and even then they were 2 minutes apart. It is unusual for them to be so close, especially for a first-timer; it’s very likely that you will have more breathing time.

After transition they did slow down, so much so that I kept falling asleep for a minute or two between them, was even having short snippet dreams, and I remember as each one pulled me back into reality I kept hoping against hope that the dreams were real and the contractions were a nightmare.

I was talking with M. about it, and she reminded me that even Jesus, before his Crucifixion, was in agony over what was to come, that even he begged and pleaded and prayed that he wouldn’t have to do it. It was really helpful for me to be reminded of that. One of the things that I’ve had a hard time with since the birth is looking back and feeling like I didn’t handle it well. I yelled and threw an ice pack across the room at one point because I was so mad at the whole damn thing, and I was hoarse for days afterwards because I bellowed and screamed so much. I felt like I didn’t do well with it at all, that I was a coward and honestly kind of a p**** about the whole process. Remembering the whimpering, panicking and wanting to hide is especially, well, shameful. But even Jesus himself didn’t want to do it. He gave up his Body, asking for a way out, though he did it anyway. And I didn’t really have a choice, and I couldn’t have gone back, and maybe my body was taken, not given, but at the end of the day it wasn’t mine and neither was his. Body and Blood painfully, atrociously surrendered, all for the good of another who has no conception of the astounding and terrific depths of the sacrifice made for them.

You want to know what went through my head when I held her for the first time? Never again. Never, never, ever in a million years will I ever do this again. And then, yes, I was mad again, super angry in my exhaustion, because the whole world had lied to me. It wasn’t worth it, and they were all hateful, idiotic, cruel deceivers.

But, the thing is . . . I can’t even describe to you how much I love her now. I look at her and want to eat her, hug her so tightly it hurts, and sometimes I start crying because she’s so beautiful. I could—and do—stare at her face for hours, learning her character, watching her learn the world around her, seeing Jamey and my siblings flitting across her face as she makes her crazy expressions. I have discovered that I don’t mind getting poop on me (at least, not much), because I’m so proud of her for accomplishing it, as it’s such an undertaking for her little person. A lot of the time I don’t mind getting up in the night for her, and I love it when she wakes up in the morning, because the first thing she does is coo and smile and wave her arms to show how much she loves us.

Everything is so intense. The stakes are just way higher than I ever thought they could be, but because we have to get on with life we sort of get used to it and move right along. Every couple days or so, or maybe a couple times every day if it’s that sort of week, the enormity of it all, good or bad and oftentimes both tangled up together, comes roaring through the surface and leaves you crying and overwhelmed and astounded. People say you forget, once the baby is born, the difficulties of labor and pregnancy. I have not found that to be the case, but I do feel like I have two overflowing glasses now. The intensity of the joy and wonder at my daughter, whose very existence I resented and wanted to run away from, has risen up so high that it’s met the tribulations head-on. I’m still not able to say, yes, it’s worth it, with full confidence. But what I can say is that this little girl makes me happier than I ever thought I could be, and I think I do want to have another one. Just not anytime soon!

I don’t really have much to add to all that, expect to say that I’ve never before come close to being able to empathize with Jesus. And not to say that I can do so now; but, I have scaled a foothill that I thought was The Mountain, and now I feel like, from far away and at the very bottom, I suddenly have some nebulous notion of the magnanimity of something I didn’t even know existed. Some people offer each contraction in labor for a different person, an individual need, a special intention. I admire them immensely for it, and have to say that I have no concept of how that is even possible. There were two moments in particular where events occurred that made the pain tear through me in a roar; during one of them my arms were stretched out on either side of me, fingers stretched in an effort to not tense them into fists, and my head was thrown back. And though the words did not form in my head, there was only one image I knew: Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani? And, all at once, Calvary has become personal.

The second thing I want to talk about is trying to feed Sonya, which I hope is a far more straightforward illumination of the Eucharist. Something I’ve talked about somewhere before (I don’t remember where; don’t ask!) is that prayer the priest offers in between receiving the Body and receiving the Blood of Christ. What return shall I make to the Lord for all He has given to me? I shall take the Chalice of Salvation. How do we thank God for giving us one enormous huge out-of-this-world gift? Well, by taking another one, as often as it’s offered, as often as we can! He wants to feed and nourish us with his own person, just as a mother feeds her baby; he wants that personal, physical, intimate connection, and the best way to show him we’re grateful for it is to keep coming back for more.

Sonya didn’t take to breastfeeding, to put it mildly. She couldn’t at all when she was born, like, physically was not able to, because her poor little tongue was tied all the way down to the very tip. She couldn’t lift it even the least little bit, which meant she couldn’t get any milk from me, and also that she couldn’t “tell me” that she needed milk, which meant I never made enough for her. So we fed her with syringes and tiny little tubes and bottles and supplemental nursing systems and snuggles and galactogogues and shields and formula and pumps and frustration and tears (from her and us) and determination and confusion. Every single time I tried to feed her without any of the training wheels, she would choke and cough and spit on me, making faces like she was tasting something sour and bitter, and would invariably start screaming.

Finally, after almost 12 weeks of the struggle, Jamey and I were talking over the pros and cons of continuing to try to breastfeed, and we just didn’t know what to do. So we said, let’s pray about it, and hope that it comes clear. Two days later, I sat down to feed her, and she would. not. eat. I tried to breastfeed her three more times that day, and again the next several days; she made it clear that she was absolutely done with me and it. And, happening when it did, it was so clearly the answer to our prayers, and our life is so much more sane with bottles and formula, but oh the rejection. I was literally bruised, bleeding and lacerated for her, crying for her to accept. And she still didn’t want me. Here, Sonya! Here is my body! I’m giving it to you! Eat! Drink! And instead she coughed and spat and beat me with her little fists, with no conception of what she was rejecting or how much anguish she was causing.

What is that, what does that mean, if not the most clear illustration of what Jesus offers to us, and what we have given him in return? How can we recover, make it better, try to fix what we’ve broken in ourselves and heal the hurt we’ve given him? All we have to do is say yes and accept the help he wants to give us along the way. We can’t scale The Mountain without Lembas.

As always, I’m here if you want to talk.

On Pain (or, The Spirit Drove Him Into The Wilderness)

Imagine being eaten by wolves. After they rip out your hamstrings, you can't run or hope to fight, so they leave your throat intact so you're fresh for as long as possible. Then it's just red snarling teeth tearing the cheeks from your skull, munching and yanking at your braincase, burrowing, tugging the entrails out of your stomach yard by yard. And the whole time you're shrieking and begging them to stop, but they don't understand and they wouldn't care if they did, and God won't make it stop because apparently that's not how God works. Now imagine being eaten by your own mouth.

Sonya's teething this week. How that works is, we have rows of teeth tucked up in our heads like manticores, and at a certain point they just start descending and pushing their way out through the flesh of the gums. The skin doesn't retract or soften or anything like that; the teeth just chew their way through our own faces. So at the age of three months, with no concept of self or time or this too shall pass, nothing but PAIN IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, she's tossed into a tiny Hell, a universe with nothing in it but suffering, and left there for days at a time. You rock her, feed her, wash her, give her Tylenol, and some of it helps for a while, but ultimately you stand in the kitchen at three in the morning and just hold her while she cries and flails and claws at your chest and screams.

Ever notice when you're praying the Joyful Mysteries that by midway through they're already turning sorrowful? Contemplate the funeral spice at the Nativity. The Presentation at the Temple comes with Simeon helpfully pointing out that a sword will pierce Mary's heart, and the Finding of the Child Jesus comes with Mary's own remark that "for three days we have sought you, sorrowing." It's hard to find pure joy; it can't not come with the inevitability of loss. But pure agony? Take a look at a teething baby.

After the Baptism in the Jordan (mind you, I can't fully approve of the Luminous Mysteries; they throw off the three-act structure), Jesus goes to the desert to be tested. But there are two translations of Matthew 4:1. One goes, "The Spirit led Him into the wilderness." The other one says the Spirit drove Him. Seems like kind of an important distinction. Sometimes we can choose to accept our suffering, offer it up, learn from it. Sometimes we can't choose anything because it's so intense that the person disappears and there's nothing there but a human shape filled up with pain. My last several posts have been about the importance of being in the moment, good or bad, living it, not just holding on and waiting for it to be over. But God knows there are days when even just holding on is almost more than we can do. I suppose those are the times we have to let the Spirit drive.

Come Back Down

Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” But he did not know what he was saying.

- Luke 9:33

a trudge of slobs—loans, budgets, jobs—

to nudge at knobless doors of faith

a cross and quest of bosses, stress,

kids flossed and dressed and pooped and bathed

a test of dross (caressed, then tossed)

by blast and frost of tepid wraiths

a mob of drudges—hobbling, crutched—

till Abba judgeth and He saith

WELL DONE, O DAUGHTER, SON, WELL SOUGHT,

WELL RUN, WELL FOUGHT BEYOND ALL HOPE

and looking back, the crooked track

we took, to hack and flail and grope

our way, is a perilous narrow stair rising through mountains,

through clouds and suns and nebulae, through the curve of time

at every point intersecting every point of every narrow stair

shaping or misshaping every step and turn and landing

where every foot must tread, from the first man’s fruit

to the last man’s interceding breath for Adam in purgation

each mercied act flinging out a cable into the abyss

for the rope-walkers from the storehouse of grace

each meanness sending out a lash for the back at the pillar

and from beneath

claws clutch at ankles from between the rickety stairs

and what missteps and stumbles we are spared

by the sufferings of those who walk the ropes

we may discover only in our own purgation

but what our anguish spares our fellow farers of the steps

we, and they, shall learn together at the peak

beyond both sorrow and gratitude

where the desperate loves of all the days shall merge,

and the one at the pillar shall turn to us,

and we shall be whole enough to see him as he is.

hell's shackles, hooks, false tracks, false books,

attacks that shook us on the slope,

those throttling tons of rotten scum,

have taught us gumption past our scope

to face the rays of Grace's gaze,

embrace the blazing heart of Charity—

in His time, when this vision ends

and is a memory of clarity.

Now then, dismissed from trembling bliss,

descend with this Petrine celerity

to daze our race with brazen grace

and raise the chase for Final Verity!

On Being Here Now (or, Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi Craves Not These Things)

One of the guys at Ace Hardware back in the day was on cashier duty, and business must have been slow. He tied a small metal nut to a piece of string two or three feet long, tied the other end to a hook on the impulse-buy candy rack by the exit door, and attached a magnet to the same rack, two or three feet higher. Then he adjusted the length of the string such that the nut couldn't quite reach the magnet, but was so close that it literally hung in midair, levitating, maybe a quarter of an inch beneath its goal. Four years I worked at that store, and our little magnet display never stopped being cool. Thing is, though: if anybody jostled the candy rack, even a little bit, the nut instantly fell. Hard not to be reminded of the spiritual life.

I've got problems. At the end of a good day, I can look back and only check off half a dozen of the Seven Deadlies. But I wonder sometimes if my greatest failing mightn't be my tendency to coast through the work day, waiting for it to be over, instead of engaging it, living it. Rarely is my mind on where I am, what I'm doing—and if it is, I resent the necessity of focus, the intrusion on my private thoughts. My favorite tasks are ones like pulling weeds or stacking chairs, that draw no cerebration. And sometimes that's okay! As long as the work gets done, it's not awful if you happen to be composing goofy couplets in your head at the same time. But.

"Whether you eat or you drink or whatsoever you do, do it all to the Glory of God" (Corinthians 10:31). Any task, every task, becomes holy if one simply remembers to consecrate it. At the beginning of the day (on a good day) I say a prayer that goes like this: "O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in union with Your Most Precious Blood poured out on the Cross and offered in every Mass, I offer you today my prayers, works, joys, sorrows, and sufferings, for the praise of Your Holy Name and all the desires of Your Sacred Heart, for the conversion of sinners, the union of all Christians, our Holy Father the Pope, and our final union with You in Heaven." It's a beautiful prayer, and it starts the day in a beautiful way. Except then something horrible happens. I have to get out of bed. And when I'm petty or petulant during the day, I fear that it's worse than it would be if I hadn't dedicated my actions to the Lord. Aspiring to the height always means a longer fall.

A Christian should look forward to death. It's a bad thing in itself, but it's been transmuted into a doorway to all Good. And I do look forward to it. But I don't want to find myself in a nursing home (like the place where I spend every working day) looking back on a life spent looking forward to the grave. When He finished writing the world, God looked on all that He had made and found it good. It's not a place we should be coasting through.

The Quotidian Mythic

I am a maintenance worker at an upscale retirement home. It's a good job and I'm very blessed to have it. Before this I was a maintenance worker at a Catholic church and K-8 school; before that I was a maintenance worker at a grocery store, and before that I was sort of an all-around "go do something useful" employee at a hardware store. Easy enough to see how I've ended up in my current job, but there's a funny twist.

Over the years, I've known some extremely intelligent people who suffer from dyslexia. I'm grateful that I don't have that particular affliction; but I don't need to use my imagination to empathize. To read the same passage over and over, have someone explain it, read it again, and still just not get it: I know what it's like, because that's how tools and machines are to me.

I can read the instructions, listen to the explanation, watch my coworker do it. Plug it in. Hit the on button. Bam, it turns on. He leaves the room. I plug it in, I hit the on button. Nothing happens. I do it fifty times, harder and harder, till I gash my hand on the corner. Then I call for help, he comes back in and pushes the button, and it turns on.

Then I do whatever I'm doing for as long as I can. Pray I can finish before I have to go to lunch or help someone move a shelf or recalibrate the capacitor or whatever. But eventually I have to turn it off, and I'm not quite done, so then I have to turn it back on. Please, just this once, let it work. Please, God, please, just this one time. Plug it in. Hit the button. Nothing. I try very hard not to blaspheme, but these are the moments when I fail.

So how have I wound up working with tools and machines for the last twelve years? Dunno. I'm really hoping it's some kind of installment program to help me get through a big chunk of Purgatory while I'm still on Earth.

When I was young, I wanted so badly to live a life of adventure. I wanted to jump away from explosions, swing over pits on well-placed ropes, rescue attractive and interesting people from villains who were deeply committed to nunchuck-based villainy. So I went looking for those things, and because a lot of good-hearted people were looking out for me, including my insanely badass Guardian Angel, I never happened to get knifed or imprisoned or raped. But I did, very slowly, get huge red nails of knowledge and understanding pushed through the sockets of my eyes.

All of this—the labor, the lostness—this is my adventure. I don't get to punch ninjas or vault over velociraptors, because you don't get what you expect or what you think you want. You get what will get make you into a saint. I see now that being a super action hero would have made me arrogant and insufferable, stone-deaf to the weakness of men and to the still small voice of God. My hero's journey is no less arduous than (say) Frodo's to Mount Doom—and neither is yours, friend reader—but we may not get the fireworks on this side of the Vale of Tears. It's okay. They're waiting for us, just across the way.

This small, humble, day-by-day adventure story of the common life is what I'm trying to accept as my own legendary quest, my own long quiet crucifixion. I call it The Quotidian Mythic, because I find it validating to make up pompous names for things. And if you, good friend, should ever feel that Christian life is boring—just remember that the excruciating dullness is all part of the trial, and therefore part of the quest. Schlepping across mile after dreary, dusty mile of Mordor was not exciting for the schleppers. Being a hero, being a saint, is not about you and me having a cool, exciting time. It's about saving the fucking day.

On Qi (or, If It's True, It's Christian)

Sonya has begun to coo. She's coming up on three months outside the womb now, and apparently cooing is a normal part of vocal development; but to me it feels like God saying, "Here's a gift for all the hard times behind you and before you. Remember how very worth it she is." Upon reflection, I think I can say definitively that it's the sweetest sound I've ever heard. It's so beautiful that it's almost physically painful. I keep finding myself hugging my own stomach as if to keep it from bursting. It brings to mind my old friend Anthony Giacoma, with whom I've sadly lost touch, who used to say that Beauty wounds the heart. I don't think I understood what that meant before. I mean, I grasped it intellectually, by way of analogy with (go ahead and laugh, Jes) Goldschlager Cinnamon Schnapps, which contains flakes of gold that allegedly make tiny nicks in your stomach lining and thereby let the alcohol into your bloodstream faster. Likewise, the little flakes of Beauty we encounter in the world cut our hearts and let in graces from the world beyond. But not till my daughter's first few trusting coos did I truly, viscerally understand.

I am a martial artist. For many years, my self-definition was, "Catholic, writer, martial artist." When I married Ellie, it became "Catholic, husband, writer, martial artist," and now it's "husband-and-father." But the new does not diminish the old; rather, by the action of Providence, my capacity has been enlarged. If you have a cup of gold and a cup of silver, and someone gives you a cup of diamonds, then the silver constitutes a smaller percentage of your treasure but remains as precious as ever. And, as with all good gifts, each of these things enriches the others. I am absolutely better at writing because of my fighting—and that brings us to the main topic.

It's about time, young man!

Qi is variously translated as blood, breath, energy, spirit, and other English words that hint at a concept we don't exactly have. I'm partial to "life-force," myself. It's pronounced chee by the Chinese and kee by the Japanese; I spell it with a Q to allow either pronunciation, and also because it looks cool. It is undisputedly a pagan belief. But in the words of Justin Martyr, "If it's true, it's Christian." Our task is to recapture neglected truths that have fallen into heathen hands. As Chesterton said of two of our greatest saints, "St. Francis of Assisi used Nature much as St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle; and to some they seemed to be using a Pagan goddess and a Pagan sage." But pre-Christian thinkers and worshippers were not wholly forsaken; they had Reason and Conscience, and God must have treasured their strivings to find Him, even though it wasn't yet the fullness of time. It is even conceivable that they held onto fragments of grace or wisdom that the West lost sight of after we were given the whole picture of which they fought so hard to catch glimpses.

Back when we started training, Sensei kept telling us, "empty your teacup." People (mostly men, actually) tend to come to the martial arts thinking that we already know everything, because of all the movies we watched and all the backyard scuffling with our older brothers or whatever. But the master can't fill your cup if it's already full. First you empty yourself. If you're the Bible-thumping sort, that phrase might call to mind St. Paul's remark about Christ emptying Himself and taking the form of a slave (Phillippians 2:7). In a similar way, when life is ended, if we've managed to accomplish the work of a lifetime and scrape out all the selfishness within ourselves, then God will fill us up with light. And here's how this all ties in.

A certain kind of powerful joy glows in the pit of your stomach—exactly where the qi resides. I think when we get to Heaven, that joy will be so strong that it will fill us with the Qi of God. "We know that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2). And our sleeping bodies will shake off the grave-dirt and rise like rocket-ships with Qi for everlasting fuel.

MAMA CHIMES IN: Losing Freedom, Finding Home

by Ellen RM Toner

Like probably every new mother out there, and I'm willing to bet every new father, too, anticipating and accepting the monumental changes that accompany parenthood has not been easy. We're just about eleven weeks in now, and I'm definitely struggling with a lot of the sacrifices I was afraid of. But, as Jamey is writing in The Chamber tonight, and I'm revising this piece and keeping an eye on our tranquil Sonya Rose, not quite fast asleep next to me, it's comforting to remember that not everything has to change entirely. So, for all you new parents out there who are missing what once was, I hope you can find both some commiseration and some comfort in my thoughts on the matter.

Tuesday, January 09, 2018

33 weeks and 1 day

Dear Sonya,

Your Dad and I are buying our first house this week, provided no last-minute nasty surprises get in the way of signing papers on Friday. And then we’ll move on Saturday! We have really loved living in this sweet little yellow house, but we knew when we moved in here last January that it was only temporary. And how glad I am for you that you will be born in the same house that you will, almost certainly, live in for your whole childhood! My own parents, your Grams and Pops, have moved so many times over their marriage. I just had a dream last night that was set in the house that I grew up in in Lancaster (’96-’05). It’s funny how much a place sticks with you, and colors your thoughts, conscious and subconscious, for years and years. I always dream about that house when I have dreams with my siblings and parents in them. What I hope for you, little girl, is that this house will be your home for decades to come, and when you are far away and grown up and building your own life, you will still dream about it and remember it as a place where you were calm and happy, at peace, safe and protected.

To tell the truth, Baby, I’m not doing so well these days. I’m feeling awfully scared and worried about how to be a parent, how to be a working mom, how to take care of you and your Dad, stay on top of my job, and be available to my siblings and especially my parents as they get older. I had so much more energy even five years ago than I do now. And I could do so many things---writing and studying, singing, calligraphy, heck, even socializing---that I just don’t even know how to do any more. Your dad is writing a lot these days, and even being asked to write articles, and getting paid to do so, which is so great for him. That’s all he’s ever wanted to do, and it’s finally and literally paying off for him. It’s been such a good year for his writing, between finishing his set of Hyperions, getting published in The Wanderer and solicited by Public Discourse, writing his blog about you, and even being asked for novel manuscripts (still no publishing deal on that, but just give it time). I really am happy for him, but I confess I’m also a little jealous, not just of the proliferation and mental energy he has (when is the last time I wrote something that I really loved?), but also because he comes home from work and hunkers down and writes and I miss him, and resent how it takes him away from me. And, the thing is, it’s not like he is an inattentive or unaware guy, not in the least little bit; the care he has given me in the past two years is something for the books. He’s been phenomenal. I’m just… I just miss him, and am frustrated and peeved that he’s able to just write and write and write and I’ve produced nothing really good since last March.

We went to visit your Nana and Pappy down in North Carolina over Christmas. We were listening to The Great Gatsby in the car, and there’s this part in it I remembered from last time I read it, where it talks about how before Gatsby kissed Daisy for the first time, wedding his unutterable visions to this mortal, earthly creature, he romped with the mind of God above the stars, potentially sharing in some kind of divinity, being in a place where all the best and highest and most unattainable things of beauty and richness were possible. But, when “the tuning fork struck against the stars” and he kissed Daisy, all of that vanished; he became mortal, and eventually got shot and killed on an inflatable mattress in a swimming pool. Of course, before everything was just potential; you can go on potentiating forever, Hamleting around about being or not being and never doing anything. At least he kissed the girl and got his feet on the ground. He was human, after all. He wasn’t made to live in the stars. Not yet, anyway.

This is how I feel when I look at the last ten years of my life, and look ahead to what I can tell of the next few decades. Most of my 20s I was pretty free and unencumbered. Not to say that there weren’t plenty of rough times. But the possibilities! And I’m so glad I took them when I had the chance. Applying to grad school, even though I chose not to go, studying midwifery and publishing, joining some intensely wonderful choirs and learning so much about singing from incredible people who became phenomenal friends, hiking the Camino, hiking in Scotland, the Rockies and in Shenandoah, learning calligraphy, establishing a voice as a writer and because of that falling in love with a warrior poet. But I kissed him, and everything else fell away. And it is so much better to be with him than to be without him, and it is so much better that we are starting to learn to be parents than that we never had a chance at it, but I loved romping with the mind of God.

When I look ahead, I see increased worries about how to pay the bills, afford a second car that won’t poop out on us, how to balance being a good employee with a good mother (this is a paradigm that I know is the right one for us, but not one I know, and honestly one I wish we didn’t have to worry about), how to be a good daughter, sister, aunt and friend while still putting the needs of our own little household first, energy pulled in so many different ways, none of which are artistic or creative (at least not in the ways I’m used to), and nothing like the freedom I have known. 

There’s this Robert Frost poem about a woman who is like a tent pole, providing cover and shade and protection, tied down by silken (?) stays that pull in all directions and somehow balance her out and allow her stay upright by tying her down. I guess that’s what marriage, adulthood and parenthood are all about. Like your dad wrote to me long before we started dating, choosing one thing means saying no to everything else that might have been. And, as he often reminds me, it is so much better that we leave one thing still loving it and knowing that we will miss it, rather than shaking off the dust with a good riddance. A good metaphor (and an intentional practice set up for us, no doubt) for what death will hopefully be like when our time comes.

On Heroes (or, New Level, New Devil)

I turned twenty in a graveyard. Literally, because I was alone in a cemetery at midnight; and figuratively, because by that birthday I had already tried college, the military, and the monastery, and failed at all of them. The upside is that, as I came right out of the gate with such colossal disgrace, I've always had some handily ego-crushing memories to keep my pride in check along the journey. (Not that I've always availed myself of that, of course.) Since that bad start, I've been through some things which, at least in my own eyes, have restored my honor; but I haven't forgotten what it is to look in a mirror with deep, deep shame.

St. Paul says there's no remittance of sin without the shedding of blood. File under all-caps YUP. Redemption is a dry, cracked country and a burden of broken glass. But there are easier ways. There's Nietzsche's way, for instance: you just decide you're beyond all that. You're not bound by the bovine morality of the common man, because—uh—because you're so smart! Whew, yes, that's it, because of your mighty intellect, which they fear and envy, and that's why they're upset that you never pitch in for drinks. And therefore, every act of which you were once ashamed becomes a source of pride, a tactical strike in the war against yesterday. And the deeper you go, the more you hate any concept of decency, just as a Nazi despised the Jews more and more as he treated them worse and worse. I toyed with the Ubermensch mentality for a little while in the puddle-deep adolescence that carried well into my twenties, but (thank God) I found martial arts and got my ass kicked a few too many times to escape without at least a smattering of humility.

And then there's the middle way. The tepid way. The way of the other Adolf. The trains to the camps ran smoothly and efficiently, always on time and always cattle-packed with undesirables. Herr Eichmann saw to that, and then he clocked out in the afternoon and went home to his loving family. He gave us a new paradigm for evil, one with a tie and clipboard instead of claws and fangs. How did he balance the Satanic horror with the suburban humdrum? Dunno, but apparently it's not that hard. Click here and you'll see an article by my father (the other James) about a priest he knew in his youth, a childhood hero of such goodness that his example nearly inspired Dad to join the clergy himself—a priest who, after his death, was revealed as a member of a ring of priests who regularly, for years, took trusting young men to a camp in the woods and defiled them. You could pile up examples of depraved double lives, of course; but for me, this one comes home because my own family once touched the very hem of the ghoulish obscenity that continues to scourge the Body of Christ.

The world's crammed to the rafters with rapists and adulterers. How is it that even completely non-religious people instinctively know it's worse when it comes from a priest? Well, whom did Jesus not treat with compassion while He was reaching out in mercy to prostitutes and tax collectors? Whom did He call vipers and sepulchers? Obviously, the paragons of the Faith, whose hypocrisy could lead astray the ordinary people who looked to them for guidance. Blasphemy is the reversal of the sacred, so it's inevitable that there is more carousing in Hell over the ruin of one hero than over the continuing debauch of a hundred already-corrupted hearts. I can't imagine Moloch gets too excited about a bored Planned Parenthood worker vacuuming out his hundred and fifteenth skull this week; but think of the revels when a terrified young woman who came to them for help in planning for parenthood finally gives in to their pressuring and agrees to her first abortion.

By the nature of things, an approach to holiness means increasing proximity to the world of the Spirits, bad as well as good; and the more one grows in the grace and knowledge of God, the harder the Enemy works to twist one's soul. When Jesus was in the wilderness, Satan came in person to offer Him the kingdoms of the earth. When St. Anthony was in the desert, Perdition sent demonic courtesans to curdle his purity. Now by contrast, back in '06 I spent all of Lent sleeping in a drainage ditch in Santa Fe, and nobody offered me any kingdoms or courtesans. My greatest temptation was to trip balls on cough medicine just for a few hours' escape from the crappiness of it all. Clearly, the Devil had bigger fish to fry. There are upsides to being little, as St. Therese of Lisieux well knew.

But not because you're afraid, and certainly not because you're lazy. St. Teresa of Calcutta said (sing along, you know the words) we must do little things with great love; and that demands as much heroism as doing great things, if not more, and therefore comes with temptations as dire as the corruption of great wisdom or power could ever be. There's a reason St. Teresa asked for the Rites of Exorcism near the end of her life, and St. Therese said on her deathbed, "I did not know it was possible to suffer this much." But that is our road, the only one there is. And as Christ told St. Paul: "My grace is sufficient unto you" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

I have come to believe that it is not well for a man never to have stumbled. One who has not failed or fallen (or doesn't acknowledge that he has) can't, I think, be a true hero. Not even Our Lord Himself could carry the Cross without help. That doesn't mean that it's ever right to do wrong. We don't follow the rules because they're rules, we follow them because we love Jesus and we know it adds whip-cuts to His back when we break them. But we also know that all things work to the good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28), and that if we repent of our sins, He can bring fruit out of the fertilizer of our filth. I am not glad of my sins, of my cowardice and selfishness. But I am glad, now that they are past, that God was able to use them to teach me lessons which (perhaps) I would not have learned otherwise, especially the lesson of mercy toward others when they sin towards me and mine. I would like to be a knight, and a saint. I'd like to be a hero to my little girl. And because I've tasted shame, I hope I will remember it when those who look up to me do shameful things of their own, and I hope that I will let God reach out to them in mercy through my hands.

On Abortion

There's a pro-choice bumper sticker one sees now and again that says "Keep your laws off my body." No good comes of dismissing your opponent's argument, and it's not hard to imagine the repugnance of a woman crushed by poverty and commodified by men at the thought of some well-fed stranger in a $5,000 suit placing ordinances on her womb. The thing is, though—every law is on our bodies. That's what a law is: something to restrict where we can physically go or what we can physically touch. They can't govern our minds, and it would be a nightmare if they could. We have laws, ultimately, to keep us from killing each other; and they're enforced by those who, in the last resort, will physically restrain us from breaking them. Keeping my laws off your body would mean blood and rape and anarchy in the streets.

At the 2015 Women in the World Summit, Hillary Clinton stated that "deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed." Crudely shrewd, sandwiching "religious beliefs" between a neutral phrase and a negative phrase, lest we should discern any distinction. The "structural bias" of men being larger and stronger than women has always been basis enough for a culture of oppression without the need of any religious justification; and if religions have often ratified that oppression to varying degrees, at least some of them have urged the view of women as fellow children of God, thereby opposing and offsetting the structural bias of nature. But without deep-seated religious beliefs to offset that natural bias, there's nothing much to staunch the oppression of the unborn, who after all are smaller and weaker than any of us. Mrs. Clinton has always impressed me as a person who is not so much pro-choice as pro-abortion. I try to love her in the sense of willing her good, but I fear and hate what I think she half-knowingly serves.

In 2013, pro-lifers singing "Amazing Grace" outside an abortion facility in Texas were drowned out by a crowd of pro-choicers who broke into a spontaneous chant of "Hail Satan." In 2015, former "high wizard" Zachary King confessed to performing over 150 Satanist rituals during abortions. In 2017, the Satanic Temple in Missouri worked with Planned Parenthood to oppose anti-abortion legislation of the grounds of religious liberty.

Religious liberty.

We need to remember that, despite various anti-woman positions held by feminist leaders (Margaret Sanger's hair-raising malice towards black women, for example), the feminist movement has fundamental truths behind it. Women are and have been stomped on by the patriarchy, particularly under the Islamic religion that American feminists so confusingly adore. The sins of those who were entrusted with power in order to uphold virtue have brought about the profoundest possible crack between truth and love. Far too many men down the centuries have read as far as "Wives, obey your husbands" (Ephesians 5:22) and stopped before "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and laid down His life for her" (Eph. 5:25).

But none of this, none of this, justifies the murder of the innocent. The failures of the Church, so numerous and awful, are reasons to fight harder for the Church—not to turn away and serve the Enemy. No one really believes anymore that unborn children can't feel pain, can't move and dream and start to know the voices of their parents: there's just too much science in the world now. More and more, this issue becomes a naked struggle between muddy Earth and howling Damnation. We all know the solace of John 3:16, but we mustn't forget the admonition of Revelation 3:16—"Because you are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm, I shall spew you out of my mouth." There's no room for neutrality here. We have to stop this thing.

On Mary (or, Six Words, Seven Words)

I'm very fond of the old carol "Away In A Manger." It's simple and sweet, with a sort of childlike wisdom and piety about it, and the melody is nicely hummable. But I have questions about one of the lines: "The little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes." That can't be right. He was like us in all things but sin; obviously He cried and pooped and spat up like the rest of us. In fact, as my old pastor Fr. LaValley once observed, Our Lord's dual nature is perfectly summed up in six words: "And Jesus wept" (John 11:35), showing his humanity; and "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11:43), showing His Divinity. (It does puzzle me that we never see Him laugh, but that's a whole separate blog post.) Anyway, the little Lord Jesus definitely made crying.

There's a bit in The Everlasting Man where G.K. talks about how you never see statues of Christ in His wrath, and how it's probably just as well because that would be terrifying, but it's extremely important to keep it in mind all the same. Even as we sit here at our computers, you and I, the Day of Judgment is getting closer, and we'll both of us be hearing either "Well done, thou good and faithful servant," or else "I never knew you, ye accursed." In a similar way, you never see images of the Blessed Virgin holding a sobbing Christ-child, and it's just as well, because we turn to our Mother for comfort and peace. But it's also good to remember that her task and burden was not to lug around a golden facsimile of the human form, impervious to pain and passion, but to feed and bathe and swaddle an infant born to poverty. Because she never sinned, she can't have given in to anxiety or annoyance, but there's no doubt that they beleaguered her as much as they do every loving parent.

I mentioned once that having a cat had given me daily occasion to ponder how asinine we must seem to the Host of Heaven, always thinking we're on the wrong side of the door. Likewise, having a child has given me (if it's not too audacious to say it) a fresh emotional insight into how Our Father must feel about us. She hasn't done anything whatsoever, apart from simply being my daughter, to make me love her; but as God gives me strength, I would eye-gouge a grizzly bear for her, let follow what might. Her crying rends my heart, and the tiniest flicker of her smile warms the pit of my stomach. Small wonder that Love Himself was willing to suffer and die for her.

Sonya doesn't talk yet. (She's been outside the womb seven weeks.) But when she's hungry or frightened or lonely, Ellie or I will lift her up and hold her close and rock her back and forth, and then she hears the seven words that matter most: "I'm here. You're safe. I love you." When little Lord Jesus was crying in the manger, Mary said those words—not in Aramaic or in Latin, but with her arms and with her warmth; and his human nature heard and was comforted, even as His Divine Nature held her back, and murmured those same seven words to her.

On Ignorance (or, My Hands Tie My Shoes)

Ever see Boondock Saints? These two Irish Catholic brothers decide to start shooting all the criminals in Boston, and wacky hijinks ensue. It's a fun movie, but I've always been confused by the beginning. As the film opens, we're in the middle of Mass and the priest is saying the Our Father. I'm pretty sure Catholics do that. It's odd that he's the only one speaking, though. Not even one single person in the congregation is joining in? And then he blows right past "deliver us from evil" and goes straight on into "For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power &c." without any liturgical embolism like, you know, "Deliver us, O Lord, from every evil, grant us peace in our day, in Your mercy keep us safe from all distress," and so forth. I guess he's really in a rush to get to Communion. But wait, now another guy's getting up, a monsignor (that's a thing, right?) and he's giving—the homily?! Where the hell are we? What part of the Mass is this?

In my experience, most people who attack the Faith are attacking something else entirely, which they've mistaken for the Faith, and which I would typically join them in attacking if they would listen to me for a moment or two. We had a friend called Olivia back in the day who once asked me how I could believe that the Pope is never wrong about anything. And when I said, "Liv, honey, that's not what Catholics believe," she objected that her info came from her college philosophy professor. Now, I'm sure that nigh on every teacher who's ever drawn breath has been stuck teaching a subject outside his or her field from time to time. But for mercy's sake, this was in the year 2000. We had the Internet.

Problem is, you can't use the internet, or any other resource, unless you know that you don't know. If I'm writing about (say) the Crimean War, then I'm conscious of my ignorance and I can invest 0.72 seconds to learn that it ended in 1856. But if I'm writing about World War II, then obviously there's no need for me to fact-check because everybody knows that World War II ended in 1944.

We think we know things. We think we know things that we don't, and we base beliefs and opinions on faulty premises, and we end up with dangerous conclusions. In the ancient days, the Oracle revealed that the wisest man in Athens was Socrates: the man who knew he didn't know. 'Course, it's a bit different now that Truth is one of us; there's a few things I'm willing to say I know. And I can't teach a child how to navigate the Earth while constantly qualifying every lesson with, "But remember, this might be totally wrong." Sometimes you just have to take a swing and hope you're not too far off the mark.

I literally, and I'm using a gravely injured adverb correctly here, literally don't know how to tie my shoes. I do it every day of my life, and have done since I was like what, five? Six? But that knowledge is not contained in my intellect or accessible memory. My hands know. When it comes time for me to teach Maggie Rose to tie a pair of shoes, I will first have to sit down and relearn the skill by watching myself do it. I find that absolutely fascinating. Our Sensei used to hide advanced techniques inside of beginners' rote movements, and when it came time for them to learn the more complicated maneuvers, he'd say, "You already know this; you just don't know you know." Socrates in the Meno elicits a complex mathematical proof from an illiterate slave boy with a series of basic questions. Sometimes we know more than we think.

Wait, weren't you just saying we know less than we think? Put down the bourbon, Toner. Ha, joke's on you, I'm not drinking bourbon. It's Jamesons left over from St. Patty's. But anyway, note the denominator. It's when we're prideful—oh, that silly 2,000-year-old bastion of philosophers, I can breezily find holes in their logic that no one's ever noticed before—that we tend to overestimate ourselves. It's when we're being humble—how could I, a lowly blue belt, already have Dim-Mak strikes hardwired into my muscle memory just from practicing First Kata?—that we discover greater wisdom within us than we suspected. That's the really interesting thing about so much of Jesus' advice. It's always, of course, designed to make us holier (you take the lowest place at the banquet because humility is the root of all virtue); but it also tends to conceal surprisingly shrewd pragmatism as well. It's precisely when you choose to start at the bottom that you're likeliest to be told, "Friend, go up higher."

My niece Lily being adorable as usual.