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.

On Beauty (or, I Could Just Eat You Up)

What do you do with a sunset? You can gaze and forget yourself, sublimated, called forth from your isolated being into the furnace of Deity—watch it gutter like a swamp fire, fade, and drop you back to earth. You can paint it, answer its life-giving blaze with your own small creative powers, slap a frame on it, hang it somewhere, leave it for the spiders. You can take a picture of it, fumble for a grip on its majesty, stuff the eye of God into your phone and hope to reawaken the awe with the tap of a screen. What do you do with it?

In our wiser moments, we remember that Beauty isn't there for us to use it like a toaster oven. It was there before us and it would be there if we were not; it would be closer to the truth to say that we are there to serve Beauty's purposes than the reverse, but that's not quite true either because there's nothing for which Beauty needs us. We are simply permitted to behold it (not to hold it), and the only proper answer is gratitude. And despite my lemme get your attention opening paragraph, gazing and painting and taking pictures are perfectly honorable responses to the sunset, as long as the intent is to honor it rather than to possess it. Beauty comes to us in its own season, and not at our whistle; if we receive it with joy and trust and patience, it'll stay and glimmer quietly below our waking minds.

So all that being said, what emerges as the basic error behind the sin of lust? Obviously, the desire to possess the other, but not the actual person: only the beauty of the person, as if that could be detached and put in our pocket. That's why, as others have pointed out, a man will go to a strip club although he wouldn't go to a restaurant where they slowly unwrapped a burger, waved it around, and then put it away again. Tacitly, he believes that a woman's beauty is a thing he can pull off of her like Peter Pan's shadow and consume without any need of her. You can make the same philosophical mistake with a sunset, but it's less pernicious because you can't get your hands on the sun. A man who sleeps with a woman in the desire to ingest her beauty and discard the person like a peanut shell, actually does the opposite: her beauty can't be owned and his desire therefore won't be satiated, but her personhood can be progressively devoured until she's an object in her own eyes as well as his.

But here's the insane part. You can't hold a sunset, you can't consume a woman's soul. But the source of all beauty, Beauty Himself, has made Himself physically consumable. A tiny wafer, the sort of thing you might gobble by the dozen while you watched the Super Bowl—a commodity. Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, all fit easily in your wallet like a silver dollar. Bizarrely glorious indignity. Now life's question: what do we do with it? What do we do with Him?