It’s been a busy week; I’ve had a lot of university-related business to take care of, and, much more enjoyably (for me at least), one of my closest friends just defended her dissertation. Consequently, there was much coordination and planning of festivities and chocolate cake!

I’ve been thinking about this blog quite a bit though, trying to figure out what tone to strike. I don’t have the eloquence of really great bloggers, nor do I have the wisdom and knowledge of some of the excellent Catholic bloggers out there.

On the retreat that our RCIA group made before Easter, some of us commented that we had never really known whether we were praying correctly, whatever that might mean, or that we were doing the “lectio divina” thing properly, or whatever else. One of our team leaders pointed out that “Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing badly.” In other words, just pray — just try — just do it.

Earlier on in the process, we had read together Romans 8:26-27 (“In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.”) and talked about how relieved we were in just being able to put ourselves in God’s hands — that we didn’t need to do all the work in prayer. (This is going to sound naive to any cradle Catholics, and crazy to any non-Christians — but who knew there was so much wisdom in scripture? Growing up agnostic, and reading the Bible only for its literary or cultural significance, I never saw any of as speaking to me. Now I am bowled over whenever I read.)

So. Whatever is worth doing, is (still) worth doing badly. I will not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I will plunge boldly forth into this blog!

I am not sure how much I would like to post about the Vigil itself, other than to say that it was wonderful, simply wonderful. Every once in a while I have a sudden feeling of certainty that my conversion isn’t simply a matter of play-acting, of going through the motions, of simply getting sucked into the music and incense, of simply responding to human-created beauty rather than the divine, of being tricked by clever theologians, of being swayed by loving, believing friends. Because certainly I have doubts. How could I not? But at the Vigil — I had no doubts. I was hit over the head with awe.

(Between being confirmed and my first Eucharist, I still had the time for a few unkind thoughts about others to flit through my head. I thought to myself — “how can I have time for these thoughts? But how regularly they come! Clearly baptism hasn’t cured me from being a hater.”)

The experience of the eucharist itself was overwhelming for such a brand new Catholic. Yup, definitely God.

For the last week, people have been greeting me with “Congratulations!” and “Welcome to the family!” It’s been nice. One very very very old Jesuit wandered down all the steps of our department to my office to find me, to wish me welcome and to give me a hand-made Easter card. I certainly do feel welcomed — I wonder what it will be like when I am no longer in an environment that is so explicitly Catholic? When Catholics are in the minority? It will be different — and different from before, when I was simply an agnostic amongst other agnostics and atheists. For now, however, it is nice to have the community around me.

I was also fortunate enough to attend a talk by Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., of the Vatican Observatory. He presented a wonderful slide show of pictures and stories. My favourite line from his talk was that it is “Difficult to do science when you’re looking into the microscope and going ‘Wow! … oh right, I was supposed to be getting a number out of here.” (Other favourite line: “Being a Jesuit, I’ve got a counter-example for every idea I’ve got.”)

After his talk I took out his book Brother Astronomer out of the library, and treated myself that evening by reading it cover to cover (dissertation be damned!). I heartily recommend it — he is chatty, humble, caring, and quite smart. He writes about the Galileo affair, his own vocation, his experiences in the Peace Corps, his trip to Antarctica gathering meteorites, and how the Church often shows up in the media.

What struck me as relevant to this blog is the sense of finding wonder and beauty in the universe — certainly the starry sky inspires all of us with awe (Kant of course wrote that the two things that inspired him with awe were the ’starry sky above me and the moral law within me’). For Br. Consolmagno, investigating science is another way to experience God and God’s presence. But how is it that Br. Consolmagno sees his awe as somehow divinely oriented — in the awesome workings of the cosmos he sees the same personality, sense of humour, sense of mystery (with an invitation to join the mystery), as he does in prayer — and others see it as non-divine? That ascribing any divinity to it is simply wrong-headed and misguided?

I am in the middle here, I suppose. In the midst of my previous agnosticism I had always felt that there ought to be some divinity to the starry, starry sky (my foray into Neo-Paganism had a lot to do with an excuse to reverence the Moon!) — I just couldn’t countenance, on empirical grounds, moving from ‘there ought to be a divine element here’ to ‘there is a divine element here.’ Now, however, it just seems obvious.

I ask, of myself, how I made that leap. I ask of others what their own response would be.

Hello! I’m a recently baptized and confirmed Catholic. I wanted to start this blog to record some of my thoughts and reflections on what that means. I hope you enjoy it. You can read something about me in my profile, though I hope to keep the focus of the attention away from myself and more toward playing with ideas.

This is still a work in progress, obviously. I have brought of the posts from another, personal blog I had to this one — posts which are less personal in that they don’t identify me specifically, but quite personal in that they are me trying to approach God as honestly as I can.

Picking up on my friend Ryan’s post on Christian atheism, I found the following ‘Blogthings’ quiz interesting. To the question, “You are most interested in…”, I could have happily answered either ‘Philosophy’ or ‘Serving God’s purpose’ — probably to a large extent because I see these as pretty intertwined for me. (To the question “You think God…”, I answered “is unknowable,” but that’s just good philosophy of religion, and good Aquinas)

When I answered “Philosophy”, the result was:

You are Agnostic

You’re not sure if God exists, and you don’t care. For you, there’s no true way to figure out the divine. You rather focus on what you can control – your own life. And you tend to resent when others “sell” religion to you.

What’s Your Religious Philosophy?

Which isn’t true, for me, because I do care quite passionately that God exists.

So, then, when I switched just that one answer over (saying that I want to serve God), the result is this:

You are a Believer

You believe in God and your chosen religion. Whether you’re Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu.. Your convictions are strong and unwavering. You think your religion is the one true way, for everyone.

What’s Your Religious Philosophy?

Which is, again, not quite right at all. Yes, I believe in God, and given that I’m going to be baptized this Easter, I’m committed to becoming Catholic specifically. I can reflectively affirm the Creed. But I don’t know if I would say my convictions are strong and unwavering — rather, my prayer is “Lord, I believe; Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). (See Ryan’s post, linked above, for more on doubt, or this spirited discussion on LiveJournal about the importance and nature of doubt.

Further, while I do think that my religion is true, I would qualify the statement that it’s the one true way for everyone. The Second Vatican Council acknowledged that there are a lot of obstacles between some people and the church — and includes the bad & hurtful & unthinking behaviour of some believers as among those obstacles. The Church recognizes that there can be non-believers who are, in their commitment to the good and to truth, very close to God.

And that’s Catholicism! I’m pretty sure a Hindu would be even farther from being characterized by that blurb.

Anyway. Just some thoughts. To sum up — I’m not surprised that with my answers I wavered between ‘agnostic’ and ‘believer’ — but the descriptions are lame.

Dear friends, bear with me as I work through some of this stuff. This is going to include some basic philosophy, which I know is boring to many of you, but will lead to some specific comments about Catholic teachings on gay marriage, which I know you enjoy picking on.

Natural law theory is the dominant philosophical position within Catholic social thought. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. presupposes it as the way to understand moral theory in general.

Basically, it works like this — divine law (which is eternal) can either be natural or revealed. Revealed law is pretty much what you’d expect — it’s given to us by relevation, through the scriptures. The content and nature of revealed law are therefore open to scriptural interpretation, historical criticism, and other forms of careful reading — there’s a huge issue there of how this is to be done, of course, and Catholics and Protestants will have very different stances on this. Further, there’s the issue of the Old Testament Law (mostly in the Ten Commandments) and the New Testament Law (the “New Covenant”, the “new commandment” of Jesus, to love one another as God loves us). I am not trained in theology or scriptural studies and so won’t begin to go into those issues. But basically, revealed law, by its nature, is speaking to those within a particular faith tradition. You have to already have faith in God before you can hear revealed law as speaking to you. You obviously can’t cite Scripture as a normative moral authority to those who do not already accept it as such.

Natural law, on the other hand, is way trickier. Natural law theory states, basically that there is such a thing as the “natural law.” The natural law is called the natural law because it presumes that there is such a thing as human nature, and that by virtue of being human, there is a certain way of proceeding that will be good for us.

The Catechism cites Aquinas: “The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation.” (Aquinas, Dec. praec. I; Cathechism #1955).

The Catechism goes on, at #1956: “The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties.” (Interestingly, in support of this claim, the Catechism cites the non-Christian Cicero. The idea of the ‘natural law’ is thus not necessarily just part of Christian philosophy — it just got picked up as A Good Idea by folks like Aquinas).

The idea of the natural law, therefore, is intended to account for why there seems to be so much commonality in certain moral practices. Whenever you are asked why you think something is “just plain wrong” or “clearly right,” and you say “Because it just makes sense, that’s what my heart tells me”, natural law theorists would say that you’re appealing to the light of understanding given to all human beings. That all human beings have access, sometimes dulled, sometimes clearer, to a basic sense of right & wrong.

This is because all human beings have essentially the same goal in life: to flourish in mind, body and spirit. Aristotle said that the purpose of human life was eudaimonia, which literally means something like ‘good-spirited-ness’, and is usually translated as “happiness”; my favourite translation in the literature (I forget for now who came up with it; maybe John Cooper?) is “human flourishing.”

Picture a plant which is flourishing in the way appropriate to a plant. It is strong, its leaves are a vivid green, it reaches for the sun. Now picture a plant starved of nitrogen, or starved of water, or obliged to put up with my very-warm apartment. Note how it limps, flops around, fails to flourish.

Aristotle’s idea is that humans are kinda similar. Obviously we’re different from plants. We can move around, we can dance and sing, we’re fundamentally social and political, we have culture, history, art, and we can reason. That said, the basic idea of flourishing is the same. Just as there’s a way for a plant to flourish as a plant, there’s a way for a human to flourish as a human — for all of its potential abilities to be developed and actualized. Aristotle’s idea of the goal of human life is for us to develop ourselves as much as possible.

Now, along the way, he notes that certain activities can be done well, or badly. For instance, we can let our anger run away with us, and that ultimately hurts us, if we become unable to hear the other side, or we become rash. Or, we might not have enough anger, and that hurts us too if we become cowards. There is a happy medium in between: rightful anger, which can still hear the other side, but not get pushed over. Aristotle proposes as a general rule that a virtuous form of activity is to be found in the middle of two extremes.

Aristotle’s account of virtue and vice, therefore, is not intended to be an externally imposed account of moral good and evil, but intended to guide human beings toward the flourishing most appropriate to them. It’s saying, “Look, human beings just are a certain way, and here’s some advice to live life in a way that will help you flourish the most, and not get dragged down by stupid things.”

Now, Aquinas picks up this account of human nature, human flourishing, and virtue & vice, but adds to it a specifically Christian understanding of the world & humans’ place within it (well, he also adds a good dose of Platonism, but I won’t get into that). So, humans are supposed to be happy — but their happiness isn’t just going to be the type of human flourishing that Aristotle describes. Because that is temporary, as even Aristotle recognizes — the most well-adjusted & virtuous person can still come down with a horrible illness, or lose their family in an accident or a war, and it’s really difficult to flourish in those circumstances. (Recall again that flourishing is for body AND soul — neither Aristotle nor Aquinas see the soul as firmly separated from the body. We are ensouled bodies.)

Aquinas suggests that what Aristotle was describing was an imperfect happiness, because of its fragility & vulnerability to harm. It’s the best happiness we can get when we’re alive on earth, and we should still strive for it. However, ultimately, after death we can achieve perfect happiness in beholding God. Perfect, because no-one can take it away. Perfect, because (unlike the pleasures of earth, which the more we receive the more we want, and ultimately they never completely satisfy – we always want more) God totally satisfies — God is infinite, after all! God gives us endless and unconditional love.

Now, if you read through a traditional discussion of virtue & vice, it starts sounding pretty stodgy and random. Why should some things be virtues and other seemingly harmless things be vices? (Aquinas has a great bit about how women & young men shouldn’t drink alcohol, because they don’t have the developed intellect to tell them not to get carried away by it & led into licentiousness. What-ever.)

But if you remember that the point of discussing virtue & vice is not (at least originally, or in its best form) to beat people over the head, but to give them practical guidelines as how to best be happy, then they’re less offensive.

(If anyone’s interested in the question of, “But aren’t the particular views of human nature that would spawn particular conceptions of what IS virtuous/vice-errific utterly relative to the culture and society in which they are formed?”, I can get to that. Because it’s an interesting problem that I’m still trying to figure out — so far my answer is “yes and no.” But that is for another blog entry, I think. And I’ll talk about Martha Nussbaum. And Hegel. And it will be fun. Maybe even Freud? and Foucault?)

OK! So, back to natural law theory. Natural law theory suggests that moral theory be based on an understanding of human beings as creatures able to flourish & be happy in particular ways, with particular things that would be HELPFUL to them and particular things that would be HARMFUL to them — thus we should put together a moral theory that rules those HELPFUL things as morally “good” and those things that are HARMFUL as morally “wrong”.

The classic objection to natural law theory is that it loads the dice — that it has a predetermined sense of what is going to be “good” or “wrong,” and reaches around for excuses in human nature to justify its presuppositions. So, for instance, a natural law theorist who is homophobic will reach around in human nature to find an excuse to call homosexuality “disordered” and hence “wrong”, but the view of human nature itself was already clouded by the theorist’s own homophobia.

Now, that history & culture can condition us into seeing falsehood instead of truth is obvious; consider, for instance, this excerpt from Pope John Paul II’s 1995 Letter to Women:

Unfortunately, we are heirs to a history which has conditioned us to a remarkable extent. In every time and place, this conditioning has been an obstacle to the progress of women. Women’s dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity.

But here’s the question I want to consider: Is this a reason for discarding the idea of “the natural law” altogether, or a call for trying to do it better, in the light of the many discoveries and realizations we have made about human beings?

I’m not sure of the answer.

Folks are trying to work this out, of course. James Alison, in his book On Being Liked, addressees Catholic teachings against homosexuality and asks why, given that we are beginning to understand that homosexuality is quite simply a fact (like, say, left-handedness — which itself used to be associated with a disordered nature!), shouldn’t our understanding of what will contribute to the flourishing of human beings (which is, after all, what God wants from us — our flourishing and happiness in Her!) similarly be updated? (This thread comes up again & again in the essays in the book, but especially in “Being Wrong and Telling the Truth,” which was originally given as a lecture at St. Joseph’s in the Village Parish in NYC in May 2002). (I just finished this book, and have another one of his books – Faith Beyond Resentment on the way from Amazon — great stuff!)

Similarly, Jean Porter, a professor of theology at Notre Dame, gave a lecture at Fordham last year entitled “Human Nature and the Purposes of Marriage.” Note the plural in “purposes”! The paper was an argument that gay marriage was not contrary to the natural law, and it was rooted in 12th and 13th century scholars’ ideas of examining social institutions, such as marriage, in terms of what purposes they serve (again, purposes intended to promote human flourishing). The paper did not conclude with an “anything-goes” approach to marriage — but suggested that there were good reasons not to emphasize the procreative aspect over the unitive aspect. (I have an unpublished copy of the paper, in case any of you would like to have a look at it).

Now why did I post this very long post? I was looking back through Tokyo Tintin’s blog and reread his entry on Pope Benedict’s recent statements about gay marriage. The pope’s ideas on gay marriage — and modernity in general!! — are of course kinda frustrating for me. Anyway, TT links to a Star article which I shall briefly quote:

While he did not specifically mention gay marriage, thousands of listeners at the fairgrounds in Verona’s outskirts strongly applauded the two parts of his speech about the family and “other forms of unions”.He urged them to fight “with determination … the risk of political and legislative decisions that contradict fundamental values and anthropological and ethical principles rooted in human nature”.

The Pope said they had to defend “the family based on matrimony, opposing the introduction of laws on other forms of unions which would only destabilise it and obscure its special character and its social role, which has no substitute”.

In another section of his speech, the Pope made another apparent reference to homosexual marriage, stating that the Church had to say “‘no’ to weak and deviant forms of love”.

He said the Church wanted instead to say “‘yes’ to authentic love, to the reality of man as he was created by God”.

Note the reference to “anthropological and ethical principles rooted in human nature.” That’s the natural law theory at work (and the fact that it’s natural law he’s talking about, and not just revealed law, is why he feels justified in saying that Catholics should resist this politically, and not just, say, avoid it for themselves. Natural law is, after all, supposed to be universal.)

But if God wants us to flourish, and plants within us an understanding of the natural law intended to help us to do so, then why does the repression of homosexuality lead to lies, closeting, and anguish, a lack of emotional & spiritual flourishing, while the acknowledgement of it as simply normal for many men and women leads to honesty and emotional maturity?

OK, I realize that the way I’ve posed this question loads it, and wouldn’t convince anyone who didn’t already agree. But I simply don’t understand why, if God wants us to be happy and loved and love each other, the Pope’s position is any more obvious? In a way that I can actually understand? In a way that doesn’t utterly conflict with all of my experience?

It seems to me that to deny the beauty & human flourishing in the same-sex relationships I have witnessed would simply be lying to myself. And “lying is the most direct offense against the truth.” (Catechism #2483).

Catholicism has, over the years, gone from promoting and endorsing the slave trade, to repudiating it. It has gone from openly stating that women are defective, to repudiating that. So I’m hopeful. And I’m hopeful that the development in Church teachings here could even be articulated according to the Church’s own natural law way of doing things.

So, while I’m still not sure that I can fully endorse the idea of the natural law (I need to do more research; and I have a lot of concerns with its premises), I think that it need not be simply repressive. It can similarly be used as a tool for critique:

How best can the Church assure and promote the flourishing of all its members, gay and straight? What is the truth about human nature that we simply hadn’t let ourselves discover until recently, that will permit us to tell the truth about how we love each other? Why can’t our new understanding of human beings and their multifaceted love continue to contribute to our broader understanding of “authentic love”?

I’ll close with some James Alison, from “Creation in Christ” (also in On Being Liked –

…one of the firmest consequences of the instistence on the natural law is the denial of the arbitrary or capricious nature of divine commandments. This is evident traditionally in the rejection of the voluntarist and nominalist positions with respect to morals. If God forbids us something it is because doing it does us no good. Which is to say, the holiness of the commandment is in the fact that it is for our good, and it is not the case that our good is to be found in following commandments independently of their consequences for us, just because they are commandments.Well then, if this is valid, we can see that natural law is, in the first place, and before any of its possibly polemical use in the world of non-believers, a very powerful instrument of self-criticism with respect to our own moral teaching. If it is used correctly, the first consequence of the use of this instrument would be having confidence that we can change our own understanding of morality in the light of our growing appreciation of what is.

—

I also just want to add that not all Catholic teaching based on the natural law is as problematic — it also leads to great stuff on the importance of a living wage and justice among nations.

I’ve gone on long enough though — I had meant to clean my room today, and get some work done on my dissertation. Oh well. Time to make some more coffee.

Note: Edited April 10, 2007, to remove personal details.

St. Ignatius of Loyola developed his Spiritual Exercises to help develop & practice being able to discern what helps move us closer to God, what opens us up & makes us more loving (movements of consolation) and what moves us farther, what closes us off & makes it harder for us to love (movements of desolation.)

My friend D. talks about knowing that a movement is good if it brings us closer to ourselves (personal authenticity; be your own self), closer to others, and closer to God.

So all of this seems to make quite a bit of sense, and of course there’s nothing that says a person has to be Catholic because of that.

But, if exploring Catholicism, going to Mass, regularly talking to Catholics about how they understand their spirituality, and praying — if all of these readily make me feel more loving, more courageous, more hopeful, more patient — then this seems to be a good thing. And does seem to indicate that, for me, there is wisdom in moving closer to this community.

Now, obviously there are problems within this community, and obviously there are ways in which the problems even within this community extend out and risk harming others (I’m thinking of the Vatican’s dissemination of false info about condom effectiveness in areas ravaged by HIV/AIDS, specifically, but other things – hey, witch burnings – could be included here.) Yes. Yes, there is sexual abuse. Yes, there is an essentialist view of women even amongst some of the more ‘progressive’ folks. Yes to all of that. And obviously I have to come to terms with that. And I don’t want to minimize it.

I was talking to a Jesuit the other day who has significant reasons for disareeing with the Church’s sexual teachings, and hated the Church. He left as a teenager, never to come back, or so he thought. And coming back was hard. Further, he says that even now, the tension never really goes away. The tension between ‘what is now’ and ‘what is to come.’ The tension between the ‘now’ of Ratzinger & the recent Vatican document* about rooting homosexuality out of the seminary & all that, and the ‘what is to come’ of — well, that’s a mystery. The words ‘God’s kingdom’ ring a little hollow to me. They remind me too much of those crazy Christians. The crazy ones. Yes. And it’s going to take me a long time before I can wrap my mind or my heart about what exactly Christians mean by resurrection. But I believe a better world will come. In which we really actually fucking love each other, all of us, recognizing our unity in God. I can’t point to any statistic, or trend, or data, or anything, that would prove this. But I believe it.

And further, I always have believed it, even before I admitted to myself that a holy mystery might have something to do with it. Faith, hope, and love.

I’ll finish this blog post with a quote from Karl Rahner, a theologian that I really dig– one of the biggies from the 20th century & an adviser at Vatican II. This is from an essay that I read about a month ago, when I was first thinking that maybe I could be a Catholic:

Hence when we say that one should learn from the experience of one’s life whether Christianity is the truth of life, this does not demand anything which is beyond us. It simply tells us: ally yourself with what is genuine, with the challenging, with what demands everything, with the courage to accept the mystery within you. it simply tells us: go on, wherever you may find yourself at this particular moment, follow the light even though it is as yet dim; guard the fire even though it burns low as yet; call out to the mystery precisely because it is incomprehensible. Go, and you will find — hope, and your hope is already blessed interiorly with the grace of fulfillment. Anyone who sets out in this manner may be far from the officially constituted Christianity; he may feel like an atheist, he may think fearfully that he does not believe in God — Christian teaching and conduct of life may appear strange and almost oppressive to him. But he should go on and follow the light shining in the innermost depth of his heart. This path has already arrived at the goal.

From Karl Rahner, “Thoughts on the possibility of belief today,” in Theological Investigations (1966). I copied that into my journal March 25. On March 22 I wrote in my journal that I wanted some sort of proof, some sort of ‘bang!’ flash of light. On March 12 I wrote in my journal “What is the mystical? What is in that silent still place? What was it I used to try to reach? I’m honestly more comfortable with the idea of magic than of God. If there is a God there is no getting off the hook. The promise is infinite, and so is the demand. Am I capable of that?” So you can see there’s some development. (And also why it’s good that I have a journal that no one sees, as well as a blog!)

Alright. So… I could go on about other stuff I’ve been reading, or other thoughts about how/why the Church is both messed up (human!) and divine, but what I’ve written is probably the core of what I’ve been thinking lately. So, I don’t think I’m crazy, and I’m certainly not going to become a mindless drudge (I doubt St. Thomas Aquinas, even with all of his particular shortcomings when it comes to writing about women, would approve of that).

Off to go indulge in the delightfully Catholic pastime of drinking, with two non-Catholics. Huzzah!

–
* Update, 22 April — I had ‘encyclical’ here, but D. corrected me. I need to brush up on my differing levels of Vatican documents! Anyway, the document re. homosexuality in the seminaries is much less formal than an encyclical — as i understand it, it’s more of a directive to folks, from the Vatican’s education ‘dicastery’ (like a department). Thanks D!

Note: Edited slightly April 10, 2007, to remove personal details. I think it’s interesting to see what was going on in my mind a year ago! This was originally posted on my old blog, and was addressed to my friends, who were justifiably skeptical about this new stage of my life.  I am happy and blessed in their friendship; they have stuck by me, and I love them dearly.

So how about I make a list of all the possible objections that I could have to becoming Catholic. Y’all can tell me if I’ve left any out.

1. The teachings on sexuality with regard to marriage/pre-marital sex/masturbation/etc.

2. The teachings re. homosexuality.

3. The abortion issue.

4. The lack of ordination of women.

5. The history of patriarchy.

6. scary conservative Catholics who get together with scary evangelicals & call for John Kerry to be excommunicated for promoting abortion.

7. I’ve been brainwashed by my university.

8. the issue of needing to be obedient to the Magisterium [pope & his folks] (hell, just the word ‘Magisterium’ itself).

9. obedience in general (as opposed to freedom).

10. America is corrupting my morals.

11. I just want a nice community of folks & am therefore selling out in order to ‘belong.’

12. I’m making it all up because it fits together nicely & philosophically.

13. I’m deluded by beauty.

14. What about other religions? less offensive ones?

15. Believing weird stuff about life after death.

16. believing that Jesus was resurrected.

17. Believing that Mary was free of original sin.

18. Having to believe in original sin, period.

19. Legacy of crusades, inquisition, burning witches, etc.

20. anti-feminist.

Let me know if you have any others. Brainstorm! Fun times!

Basically, I’m on some sort of path. I don’t know where it leads. Even if I were to start taking Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults classes, it would still be at least a year or two before I was even baptized. So there’s no need for me to rush anything. And I trust you all, and thus am genuinely interested & open to anything you could have to say.

Note: these are edited slightly to remove personal details.

The Goth Thing, or Theory of Wonderment

Written June 18, 2003:

The Goth Thing

Yes, I admit it. I am reprehensible on both sides. I was a goth in high school, when it was somewhat trendy (note that I was in high school in the late 1990s; note however also that I never succumbed to the Marilyn Manson fandom thang — I was somewhat “purer”, being a fan of Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, and Sisters of Mercy); and I “outgrew” it when I hit college and a change of city. Thus, I am neither free of the gothic taint, nor do I have the merit of being consistent throughout. I confess.

What I further want to admit is that now, as I’m technically an adult (I have moved countries, I am in graduate school, I’m paying rent and utilities and debts and my friends are marrying and having kids and divorces and so forth), I want to go back to my gothic phase. Not so much that I want to paint my face white and my eyes black and run around in velvet, but I that I long to regain the sense of mystery, of mystique, of everyday glamour that I had during that time. I would come home, light a candle, sing, and write poetry. Now, I come home, open a beer, and watch T.V. This is not progress.

So what is acceptable, and what is merely escapism? The university I attend now is fairly conservative. While I used to be an honest NeoPagan (which indeed calls for a separate essay), the philosophy I study leads me to a more agnostic position (cf. David Hume) and I feel like a poseur rather than a pagan wearing a pentacle.

I wear a large amount of black. I have black pants, black sweaters, black t-shirts, black tank-tops. My glasses are black plastic (yes, the trendy square kind). When I wear jewelry, it’s silver. I feel comfortable with these things. And yet the black that I do wear feels more like grad student wear, rather than Mystical Being of the Night. I guess this is reasonable, given that I’m far from being a Mystical Being yadda yadda. But I see people on the street who fill me with further ambition… Maybe I should wear a bit more black eye-liner, and extend the edges slightly?

I used to write a lot of short stories and a lot of poetry. I cannot write either anymore; my imagination does not tend toward those things. They were a way of living a mystical existence — I’m going to use that term, problematic as it is, to represent living somehow beyond the everyday. I’m not sure it’s authentic, in the Heideggerian sense, but it’s something beyond just “getting by”.

Any suggestions for how to regain this sense of the mystical are welcome. It’s not, I emphasize, that I’ve lost my sense of wonder — I do philosophy all the time, and I wonder plenty about that. But philosophy can sometimes be less… less transcendental (not at all in the Kantian or Husserlian sense! just in a layman sense!) than I’d like. Maybe what I need is religion? spirituality? But I can’t force myself to believe in things of which I’m skeptical. I just want a sense of extraordinariness to pervade the everyday.

Addition, August 13, 2003, 12.43 am:

Theory of Wonderment

After having reread two of my favourite books, Forests of the Heart by Charles de Lint and American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and having recently gone to a booksigning by Neil, before which I’d reread some of his Sandman graphic novels, I think I understand what I was getting at back in June. They both seem to have captured what I mean about a sense of extraordinariness in the everyday, a sense of gods, monsters, and assorted fey figures walking among us, hidden from us except for certain times, to people who are observant. One of the Sandman books, Brief Lives (the name taken from John Aubrey’s book, which is worth reading for its anecdotes of the lives of people like Hobbes and Descartes), opens with the overview of those who have lived far longer than the “normal” human life span – those who remember woolly mammoths, the last ice age, the first Atlantis, that sort of thing. Clearly they’re smart enough to stay away from scientific examination. Why not?

I don’t seriously think that there are such 10,000 year olds, but why is it more likely that there is a personal god, than that there should be fairies and djinn and people who pass among us who are not the same as we are, in some deeply magical way? Why? Why not?

Listen. I’m willing to carefully examine claims, critically and with detailed argument, when they concern something the outcome of which will affect human life and well-being. I’m not anti-scientific. I try to avoid being flaky. I just think that it’s possible that part of an honest agnosticism is also an admission that magic could be real, for the simple reason that it can’t be proven either way to be real or not real, just the same way that agnosticism involves the admission that god may or may not exist. (That’s why it’s so much more fun to take the agnostic position than the atheist one. And that’s why “Brights” are so dull.)

I don’t want a surgeon to say that she’s using magic to implant a heart, or scientists and politicians to think that the solution to the whole in the ozone layer is prayer to genies rather than implementation of Kyoto and stronger agreements and efforts. Really, it’s a difference that is no difference. There is nothing, I think, empirically different about the observed world if I admit to the possibility of magic or magical beings. But my outlook, my reaction to a moonlit night, to a moment of stillness within me, to missing keys, to hope, to despair — this changes.