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.