Reflections on Reflections

(Shocking disclosure, in case you hadn't picked up on this already: I'm a Catholic.)

I was saying the rosary a couple of weeks ago, and I noticed the shadow of some of the beads on the pew. In a generous estimation, I think I'm maybe at a 2% successful meditation status for the rosary; this day was no different. I started looking at the shadow because it was so pretty. I was really good at focusing on that shadow. There was something attractive, or, shall we say, entrammeling about it. I spent the next little while going over it in my mind, and trying to figure out why I liked the shadow so much more than the rosary in my hand. Because really, though I say it myself, I do have a be-yoo-ti-ful rosary.

This question prompted other questions.

1. What's the deal with shadow puppets? and other shadow games?
2. Why are we obsessed with taking pictures?
3. Why do babies like mirrors?
4. Why do children play make-believe?
5. Why do we like books, movies, or other forms of art?
6. What are the troglodytes focusing on inside Plato's cave?

 (Maybe one of these days I'll start thinking about, you know, Mary and Jesus when I say the rosary. Here's hopin'. . .)

People are all about imitation. That's certainly part of it. There's a fruitfulness, a richness, and a reminder of the power of creation (which is, mind-blowingly, a partly human power) in every copy of something real. As for kids playing make-believe:

Notes on Imagination

There must be a reason to children's building
castles out of blankets,
a reason they're the masters of all
they see, without self-conscious
inhibitions.

Are they bridging a vast native gap
as they scale imaginary forts, or is it
merely a blanket, held
down on a rocking horse with a heavy book
they can't read?

I have a special place in my heart for that poem; it was the first thing of mine I ever saw in print for distribution, and it has a great back story (thank you, Joshua Neu). I bring it up now, though, because I think it gets right to the heart of all these questions.

We are powerful. We are the privileged of all God's creations. And men and women are beautiful creatures, physically and spiritually. And that spiritual part, that part we can't disect and touch and put band-aids on, that part we can't fully understand and that sometimes scares the you-know-what out of us, is a good enough excuse for us to try to hide from reality. Shadows, excessive pictures, escapist novels and grown-up make-believe can all become and often are a way of hiding from real life. Some plausible answers to that list of questions:

1. What's the deal with shadows?
I should have been dwelling on the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption of the world. But instead, I was looking at the poor copy of beads that help me count to ten, because I can't even stay focused long enough to do that five times on my own. Way to go, Ellen. Now, more seriously, we're fascinated with them because they are a reminder of our creative power; our shadows can't exist without us, and they'll copy every single thing that we do. And they keep us company all the time. They must really love us, right? So we love them. Just ask Peter Pan.

2. And pictures?
How many times have you heard: can you please just put the camera down? Or have you been to a wedding where you were asked not to take pictures during the ceremony? Too much of the time, our efforts to record reality end up distracting us from reality. We see through a glass dimly.

3. And mirrors?
 Usually I take a baby to a mirror when he's crying. I show him my hand in front of the mirror, and then hold up his hand, and let him see how his mirror-hand and my mirror-hand mimic our real hands. Almost without fail, this stops him from crying, makes him forget about whatever made him upset, at least for a little while. But fascination with mirrors is a dangerous thing, isn't it? Don't forget Narcissus, or the mirror in the Harry Potter books that destroys men with longing and divorces them from reality, or, for that matter, the mirror of Snow White's wicked stepmother.

4. And children's games . . .
Children playing make-believe is a good thing. Stretching their imaginations, learning to think of ways and possibilities outside of their immediate reality, and sometimes connecting their own selves to great archetypes that they'll learn to follow and live up to, all help them to be better people. But even children can use their imaginations to escape from reality in less than innocent ways (yes, I'm talking about lying little mischief-makers). Eventually, though, children grow up, and they'll have to stop living in a world of make-believe, steady the rocking horse, and find out what the heavy book says.

5. Books and movies.
Grown-ups (?) who live in novels and movies, even if they're good ones, are living in a fabricated world. They are the children who never figured out what the imagination is actually for. Imitation of something real is good, but only if it makes you think about the real thing in a new light, not if it's such a paltry or misused imitation that it makes you forget, or wish you could forget, what is actually real.

6. The Troglodytes.
So, Plato's cave-dwellers, chained and watching those images, divorced from reality, thinking they know what is real, unwilling to hear that what they see is a shadowy imitation and not the real article at all, well, that's us, isn't it. They're focusing on what they wish were real, on what they have convinced themselves is real. But if they want to be grown-ups, one day they're going to have to break the chains, stop fooling themselves, and actually come face to face with real truth. A lot of things look real enough, are vague enough and ill-defined enough that we can make of them whatever we need to be comfortable with them. But they're only weak, insubstantial and paltry imitations of what we're really made for.

Reflections, games, books, stories, pictures and art are all good things, oftentimes beautiful things, which is why we like them. But they're not it. They're copies. So don't stop there. Stop when you find out what they're copying, and, more importantly, why it's worth being copied.

The Keats Quiz

How well do you know him? In honor of his birthday, I've made up a quiz for you all. (Yes, this is what I was thinking about lying awake at midnight last night when I should have been asleep; I hope you're grateful.) I don't know how to do the fancy actual multiple choice thing where you skip ahead to a new page for each question, so please do bear with my stone-age tactics. No looking up answers, all you cheaters out there! Honor system, please. And then, find out where you rank and what your score indicates about you.

1. Keats was:
A. Irish
B. Scottish
C. English
D. Welsh

2. The lady with whom he was in love when he wrote Bright Star was:
A. Fanny Brawne
B. Fanny Price
C. Fanny Dashwood
D. His mom

3. The disease which claimed him (and several of his family members) was:
A. Typhoid
B. Tuberculosis
C. Tendinitis
D. Love

4. Before he gave himself over to the muse of poesy, Keats studied to be a(n):
A. Apothecary
B. Barrister
C. Librarian
D. Farrier

5. At the age of 25, Keats died in a small apartment in Rome overlooking the:
A. Roman Forum
B. Tiber River
C. Vatican Gardens
D. Spanish Steps

Name that poem!
6. "Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
A. Ode to a Nightingale
B. Ode on a Grecian Urn
C. On first looking into Chapman's Homer
D. Endymion
E. Bright Star
F. When I have fears that I may cease to be

7. "Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair."
A. Ode to a Nightingale
B. Ode on a Grecian Urn
C. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
D. Endymion
E. Bright Star
F. When I have fears that I may cease to be

8. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever. . . it will never pass into nothingness."

A. Ode to a Nightingale
B. Ode on a Grecian Urn
C. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
D. Endymion
E. Bright Star
F. When I have fears that I may cease to be

9. "Darkling I listen, and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful death. . ."
A. Ode to a Nightingale
B. Ode on a Grecian Urn
C. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
D. Endymion
E. Bright Star
F. When I have fears that I may cease to be

10. ". . . before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain. . ."
A. Ode to a Nightingale
B. Ode on a Grecian Urn
C. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
D. Endymion
E. Bright Star
F. When I have fears that I may cease to be

Extra Credit: Arguably what he is most remembered for, he developed the poetic technique of (fill in the two blanks), something he discussed in detail in one of his letters to his brothers George and Tom: "... that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" (21 Dec 1817).

So, how did you do?

Answer key:
1-C; 2-A; 3-B; 4-A; 5-D; 6-C; 7-B; 8-D; 9-A; 10-F

Extra Credit: Negative Capability

And what does your score mean?

0-1: Go back to kindergarten!
2-3: You're lazy, but passably intelligent.
4-6: You passed high school English
7-10: You either were an English major or should have been one.
11: Grad school isn't good enough for you.

Fanny Brawne and the man himself.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Keats.

Shakespeare's English and Various Notes

Have you all seen this video yet?

Believe it or not, I'd be happy to marry into this family. Man, what a life.

Other exciting things:

• I'm relatively certain I passed my bio midterm. Also, a midterm with no essays? What world is this?
• I've been working on the staff of Dappled Things Literary Magazine for almost two months now. I get to blog for them! And edit for them! And sort submissions! It's lots of fun. Two of my fellow UD graduates are also on the staff, which makes me all kinds of proud of my alma mater. 
• I joined a writing group. Tomorrow they're critiquing something I wrote. Am I nervous? What do you think?
• An interesting reflection on language barriers from one of my little brothers: He's at a French seminary in Florence. Although many of the seminarians do speak English, it is preferred that everyone speak French. He's gotten to the point where he can understand it, and he can speak it well enough most of the time. But he said that when he hears people speaking French, he doesn't hear distinctions of voices; he just hears French. In English, he can hear variations and inflections and tones of voice that open up someone's character in a way that can't be done when he's listening to a foreign language. He didn't realize this was happening until one of the French seminarians started speaking English to a visitor. Not only was this the first time that he'd heard him speak English, but he said it was also the first time he heard his voice. Quite suddenly he had a much fuller, richer understanding of who his fellow student is. And this is another reason I love language. 

All right, then, friends. Back to work.

Your Festering Prayer Life

I picked up The Screwtape Letters again over the weekend. If you're not familiar with them, they are what I think to be one of CS Lewis' more ingenious scenarios: an uncle demon who is well-practiced in his trade giving advice to his nephew, a junior tempter. I mean, really, what a marvelous idea.

My roommate and I were discussing the third letter. In addition to what you might glean from the following excerpts, remember her words of wisdom on the subject; those "daily pinpricks" and "unendurable irritations" are cemented as such when the two people don't talk to each other about them, either out of fear of confrontation, or from some misguided attempt to "be noble" and "offer it up" and view the other person as "a source of constant mortification." Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that holding your spouse/sibling/roommate/parent in the same category that you do a medieval flagellum is not the way to love and respect them. A personality can be a mortification; we all have those individuals in our lives who "rub us the wrong way" with whom we just don't "mesh" (I'm using a lot of quotation marks -- sorry). But somebody you live with, rather than that person who runs in the same social circles and whom you should maybe just try to avoid, cannot remain in that box of "the person who exists to get me to heaven faster because they're so annoying." (And yes, I do realize that no one should be in that box. But if you're going to start getting people out of it, start with the people you live with.)

Confront them. Talk to them. Work it out. Realize that you're annoying, too. Don't let hatred fester in your "prayers." (I don't have it all figured out, either, just so we're clear. A note on my list of classes for this year: "COMM 114: Communication Skills - still required." Ouch.)

My dear Wormwood,

I am very pleased by what you tell me about this man's relations with his mother. Keep in close touch with our colleague Glubose who is in charge of [her], and build up between you in that house a good settled habit of mutual annoyance; daily pinpricks. The following methods are useful:

1. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.

2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his prayer for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very 'spiritual', that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. His attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining.

3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy -- if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed.
                                                                                                Your affectionate uncle
                                                                                                 SCREWTAPE

Bear in mind, if you find yourself prompted to return to this "collection of letters" or to pick it up for the first time, what Lewis warns in his preface:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

Evil is real and actively working to capture you. Be careful how and why you choose to grow in your understanding of it.

Marriage Lies and Mrs. Mike

One of the most common misunderstandings of marriage, and romantic relationships in general, is that you should never have to change yourself for the one you're with. Be yourself. Don't compromise who you are. Don't let him change you. If you have to change to be happy with him, he's not worth it and he doesn't deserve you.

The thing is, to a certain degree, all of those things are true. But it all depends on how you go about it. Yes, you should be yourself. Yes, you shouldn't allow someone else to forcibly compromise who you are. You shouldn't let him change you. But what it the best version of being yourself? Being someone who chooses to change for someone else. Being someone who sacrifices their own will for the sake of another. Being the you that changes for him.

(Pronouns - I'm a woman, so I'm writing from a woman's perspective. Guys, in case you're wondering, you have to choose to change for her, too. It's a two-way street.)

A few years ago, on one of my visits to see my Sister sister in the convent, I was having tea in the kitchen with one or two of the older Sisters. One of them asked me, "So, sweetie, do you think you might have a religious vocation, too?" "Well, no, not really, Sister." "So, then, tell me about the men in your life!" And suddenly there were five or six bright-eyed cheery little old Sisters gathered around me, giving me dating advice from their walkers. What a situation. One piece of advice has stuck with me, though, not because I necessarily have any control over it, but because of the wisdom nugget in there: "Well, dear, just make sure you don't wait too long. If you do, you'll be too set in your own ways and you'll never be able to change enough for each other. You have to grow up together, you know."

Have you ever read Mrs. Mike? It's one of those books that my sisters and I read a million times over in high school. I picked it up again recently because I don't have to give it much thought. Is it "high literature"? Well, no. But it's an easy read, and a really really good read. The heroine is Katherine Mary O'Fallon, a young woman from a Boston-Irish family who goes to live with her uncle in the Canadian wilderness. She ends up marrying Sergeant Mike Flannigan, leaving her family in Boston, and travelling far out into the frozen tundra to live with her new husband. As you might imagine, it is not an easy adjustment, and at one point she has a bit of a nervous breakdown. Mike is worried for her, and tells her that night that he's taking her back east in the morning; they'll work something else out together. But here's what happens:

Mike and I lay awake with our own thoughts. And in the morning he took me on, not back. It was that night that I really became his wife, for I knew that this white land and its loneliness were a part of Mike. It was a part I feared, that I didn't know or understand. But I knew that I had to know it and understand it, and even love it as Mike did. Because I wanted to be like Mike and then, after our lives had been lived, maybe I'd be Mike.

When he held me, we were crushed into one, one body with one heart beating through us. And that's the way it had to be with our minds and our feelings. It was much harder because they get tangled in thoughts and caught in emotions. But in the end that's the way it had to be.

So I lay there, my second night in Taylor's Flat, and told myself, "If you love Mike, you'll love the things that go with him. And if you can't love them, you'll understand them -- and until you do you'll keep the fight to understand them in yourself, and not be carrying on and worrying him like you did tonight." I was cold and trembling under my covers for fear I'd talked to myself too late, that Mike would really send me back.

But Mike must have been talking to himself as hard as I was to myself, and he must have decided that I was still worth the trouble I caused, because in the morning he said nothing about sending me home. 

One night cannot dispose of a feeling or settle an attitude, and many a night on the way up to Hudson's Hope I had to fight back the thoughts of my home and my mother and the tears that came with them. Yet, it was a happy time and an exciting one, full of love and adventure and a new life opening up. The fears grew smaller, and all they could do was peck at my happiness.

Mike told me I was stronger. I knew I was. "And you've adjusted quickly in a country that is usually too hard for women." He was proud of me, and he acted proud in front of the men because where were their wives?

It's easy to crush bodies together. Melding minds and feelings into a unified one is a little trickier. But that's what's got to happen. Time for a platitude that we all keep forgetting: Love is sacrifice. It means cutting bits of yourself off because something else is more important than those bits. So get to it.

Wiseblood Books

Confession: I don't get short stories. Poems, by and large, are short snippets, a steady, heavy look at one big thought, saying one thing concisely. Novels create a whole world, an extended universe. However, as I've said to some of my friends, when I think of short stories, I see teenage chickens.

Yes. Teenage chickens. Newly hatched chicks are one of the sweetest things in the whole wide world. Grown up chickens, while they might be rivaled only by sheep in their level of stupidity, and by pigs in their stench, nonetheless have a certain dignity. But no one ever talks about the in-between-chicken. He is an ungainly creature. And that is my frustration with short stories.

I am, of course, frustrated by my frustration, because there are authors whom I adore, such as Flannery O'Connor, who wrote lots and lots of short stories. I've tried. Really I have. And if bourbon and good company and reading them out loud together can only muster feelings of mild appreciation rather than a delighted insatiable desire for more, well, then I guess I'm stuck. So I decided years ago to increase my acquaintance with O'Connor by reading Wiseblood, one of her two novels.

Like Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, she'll make your head spin as you attempt to decipher simple plot lines. Like Graham Greene and Robert Penn Warren, she'll make you feel sticky and dirty in the heat and the dust. And like Walker Percy, she'll put you at your ease and discomfit you all at the same time by how unfortunately true her writing is:

"That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.

Like I said, it was several years ago that I read Wiseblood, but she's been on my mind lately because, have you heard? Farrar, Straus and Giroux are publishing one of her journals! There is an article in the The New Yorker that has some long excerpts from it; I recommend whetting your appetite. Is it outrageous for me to say that part of the reason I'm so excited about this is that I identify with her? Let me explain; she's a young woman trying to figure out how and why and what to write, and wants desperately to do well at it and do it for the right reasons:

"Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted. . . Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story."

In all my searching and excitement for this book release, I came across another publisher who seems to be on the right track. Look into Wiseblood Publishing; they're doing a good thing.

I'm afraid that's all I've got for you today. I started my midwifery training three weeks ago, and my time and head are full of bio flashcards, placentas, and the distinctions between APA and MLA citations. Which I like! But, you know, not everybody wants to read about placentophagy. I'll spare you the details.

The Millennial Little Women

I watched  Little Women with one of my roommates last night. Both of us are at the point where we've seen it so many times that it's difficult not to recite it as we watch it, and bits and pieces of the script come up in every day conversation on an alarmingly regular basis. This is the roommate with whom, in college, I watched this whole movie in ten minute segments on youtube on her phone. I've been told this means we're addicts; I prefer to think of us as budget-restricted devotees.

It had been a while, though, since the last time I saw it, so of course lines that I thought I knew suddenly made new sense; I heard different things than I've heard before. Besides, I think I used to be a Beth, and it's possible that I morphed into a Jo somewhere during the last 5 years.

             

The part that really got me is when she's talking with her mother after telling her dearest friend that no, she doesn't want to marry him. She's fretful and unhappy and feeling lost and confused, and it doesn't help matters that her aunt has taken her little sister to Europe instead of taking her:

"Of course Aunt March prefers Amy over me. Why shouldn't she? I'm ugly and awkward, and I always say the wrong thing. I fly around, throwing away perfectly good marriage proposals! I love our home, but I'm just so fitful that I can't stand being here! I'm sorry - I'm sorry, Marmee - there's just something really wrong with me. I want to change, but I can't. . . and I just know I'll never fit in anywhere."

"Jo. You have so many extraordinary gifts! How can you expect to lead an ordinary life? You're ready to go out and find a good use for your talent. Although, I don't know what I shall do without my Jo. Go, and embrace your liberty, and see what wonderful things come of it."

Okay, I know this is a sentimental movie. But oh my goodness, is it just me, or is this the eternal story of the flustered 20-something? It's not news that every generation has their own challenges, and that they think that their set of challenges is bigger and more monumental than the challenges any other generation has faced before. Ever. And this is what I keep hearing about my own generation, those of us who have been dubbed, "The Millennials." We're hopelessly floundering around our 20's, with little direction, mediocre accomplishments and nothing to be proud of or to hold on to. And no one has ever been so lost as we are now, right?

Well, not exactly.

If I had twelve sons, I might name every one of them Augustine. (Kidding. Maybe.) Born in 354, he didn't figure out his life till he was 32. In his own words, with my emphasis added,

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you. You were within, but I outside, seeking there for you, and upon the shapely things you have made, I rushed headlong, I, misshapen. . . You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance. source

Fast forward almost 900 years. In 1181, a cloth merchant's wife gives birth to a boy whom he names Francesco. He's fairly well spoiled, likes throwing crazy parties as much as Augustine did, and wants adventure in the great world. His big turn around happened gradually during his mid-twenties, and what a turn around it was. Luckily for Francis of Assisi, he didn't end up living too long; he did a good job of making an ascetically penitential life for himself, and earned, as far as I can tell, an early retirement.

Go another 500 years. A wild Spanish knight named Ignatius is wounded in battle, and has to lie in bed for months waiting for his leg to heal up. Bored out of his mind, the 31 year old picks up the book someone left on his nightstand. Thus, in 1521, were the Jesuits born, totally kick-ass missionaries of Christ imbued with a soldier's love of discipline and order. Have you seen The Mission, starring Robert De Niro, Liam Neeson, and Jeremy Irons? Go watch it, and thank Ignatius of Loyola for what he started. (And maybe ask him to help get the Jesuits back to their former glory; they've hit a bit of a rough patch.)                  

So, I have two things to say to you, my fellow millennials.

First, get over yourself. Your challenges are really nothing special in terms of the scope of the universe and all the people who have lived here and what they've had to deal with and figure out. Everybody has to fight against something to know his own place. If we didn't, why then how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable would seem to us all the uses of this world (name that play!). Warning: sometimes they (those uses) will seem that way anyway. For example, bear in mind that figuring it out might take being imprisoned (St. Francis) or getting your leg mauled and lying on your back for a year (St. Ignatius). Get used to the idea, and buck up.

Second, you yourself are actually something pretty special. God never made anybody with the thought, "Now I will create a thoroughly mediocre individual whose highest possible level of accomplishment is unenthralled complacency." If you are anything like the rest of us, which you are, you'll hit that moment of crisis comparable to Jo's. A good life was offered to her; a man she loved, one of her dearest friends for years, asked her to marry him. But she knew it wasn't right, somehow. She didn't know what was; all she knew was that she was fitful and felt awkward and ugly and out of place and had to do something not that. Luckily for Jo, she had a wonderful mother who told her the right thing. She was meant for extraordinary things. She had talent, she had desire, she had passion, and she had an intellect. She didn't take the first thing that was offered simply because it was offered and seemed like a "good enough" idea. She went out to test herself and to make her fortune in the world -- and that is a story as old and lasting as the hills.

Millennials, your existential crises are nothing more or less than the eternal plight of the human condition. You have a multitude of comrades in the battle. Rise to meet it, revel in it, and be something extraordinary.