Value in Missing

In our world today there are so few opportunities to miss things. I miss missing things. I don't miss having access to food; I have access to food everywhere and at all times. I don't miss music; any song ever recorded is in my pocket. I don't miss light; I can make my house brighter than the sun any time I want. I don't miss being informed about the world; it takes a heroic effort to be uninformed.

It's hard to miss people, too. I have no excuse to have time apart from people. I can text or call or Facetime anyone at any moment.  Practically speaking, death or estrangement are the only ways we can get away with missing someone. There is no benign way of not speaking to or seeing someone for a while because doing these things are so easy.

I find, though, that I do miss some things. I miss a simple meal after a day of hunger. I miss a pitch-black night after a bright day. I miss that first moment of a concert or a CD or a record when I hear the music I've waited a long time to hear again. I miss places so absent of noise that I can hear the breeze blow over things. I miss the days I had where I used to wonder about the answers to things, but I had to wait until I could go to the library and find books about them.

I miss, most of all, the days when I almost forgot the way a person looked, or the sound of their voice, or the quirks of their personality, and then they were there again, in my presence, and I was flooded with joy.

A world without missing is a world without joy.

150 Psalms

I've never read the Psalms all the way through before, but by this week's end I will have, and I only started last Friday. I'm using a book I got soon after I became Catholic but never used much until now: My Daily Psalm Book, arranged by Father Frey.

The nice thing about this book is that it doesn't matter what time it is or what day of the week: there is always something to pray. Essentially, this is the Roman Breviary from before Vatican II, put in an English translation (from the Vulgate), and stripped of all the antiphons, readings, responsories, and extra prayers. So, this book divides the whole Book of Psalms according to the hours of the day for a seven day cycle.

I have been surprised how little time it takes and how straightforward it all is. I pray the hours aloud and typically do it during times when I might otherwise have checked my email or social media. Here is how I've been doing it:

Matins: right after waking up or (partially, since matins is divided into three parts called nocturns) the night before.

Lauds: immediately after Matins, or after my shower and coffee.

Prime: in my truck before going into the office.

Terce: during my midmorning break.

Sext: at the beginning of lunch break

None: in my truck before I drive home from work.

Vespers: right before dinner.

Compline: after dinner.

Matins (next day): right before bed if praying part of it the night before.

So far, so good. I find myself even getting excited for the next hour to pray. Matins takes the longest. If I pray it with Lauds it takes 25-30 minutes. Prime through None are the shortest. They only take a couple minutes.

I find, having the Psalms on my lips throughout the day, it influences my thoughts and actions. If I lose my temper or sin, and a few hours later I'm asking God to rebuke angry, violent, and sinful men, I immediately repent of what I've done. I find that in the Psalms I'm constantly hearing David complain to God about people like me. Then I tell God that I'm sorry for being that way, that I want to be a better man and be the kind of man praised by the Psalms. Then there are the Psalms of praise and thanksgiving, and they remind me of all God has done for me and all I have to be thankful for, which is easy to forget about in the midst of a busy day.

Numb to death

When I was in fourth grade my Aunt Susie died due to complications with polio and pneumonia. On Saturday mornings Dad would wake me up early and take me to work with him. My sister stayed home with Mom most of the time. I never knew what Dad did at work on Saturdays; he always dropped me off at Granddaddy and Meme's house. Meme was my step grandmother. Aunt Susie lived in the old house next to Granddaddy's. It was the little house my dad grew up in. There was a shortwave radio transmitter in the living room that they used to use to talk to relatives in England.

Uncle Pat, one of my dad's brothers, lived with Aunt Susie for a while too. He also had polio. I remember him as a quiet bearded man who used to wake up in the afternoon and would sometimes get around the house using his arms if he wasn't in his wheelchair. Aunt Susie could walk with braces, but most of the day she sat in bed and knitted or read. She had a cocker spaniel named Chelsea and a pair of blue and green birds in a cage on her porch. She had a hedge of Korean boxwood on the other side of the rail. I remember because one Saturday she let me borrow scissors so I could trim them. Whenever dad would get me in the afternoons Aunt Susie would give me a piece of carrot cake and strawberry candy. I wish I could remember the sound of her voice.

I remember her death more clearly than anyone's. She was the first person I loved who died. Dad got a call one afternoon. I was playing with toys in my room but I remember going to listen in because Dad sounded much quieter and more cryptic than normal.

Since Aunt Susie's death many more in my family and even some friends have died. Three years ago, I was walking through the art museum in Indianapolis with two of my first Ball State friends, Nathan and Chauncey. Now both are gone. This year, so many have died that I have too little time to process it before something else happens. It still doesn't seem real that my grandmother is gone.

This week one of my dad's best friends died. He was more to us than my dad's best friend. He had dinner with us almost every week for the past ten years. He was always there when I was with my dad. He was like family, and his family considered us family too. I went to his funeral today. His family decided to have him cremated and scatter his ashes. I could not believe this cloud of dust scattering across the field and blowing through the pine trees was the man I was sitting next to at dinner three weeks ago. It doesn't seem real.

True Friendship & Marriage

I wish to take up again the subject of true friendship and marriage. I believe that true friendship and marriage are separate but equal institutions (to use a phrase with an unfortunate history). True friends are one soul in two bodies. Spouses are two souls in one body. A true friend is another self. A spouse is a selfed other united by body.

True friendship has always been rare, due to its requiring excellence of character and its being biologically unnecessary, but in our culture it is in an actual crisis, as in it is no longer valued or understood as it should be. Friendship is a term thrown around very casually and haphazardly in our culture, and most real friendships are friendships of utility or pleasure. While these lower forms of friendship are not necessarily bad, and even essential for our social cohesion as a species, they do not live up to the highest and most praiseworthy friendships venerated among the ancients.

One way in which I think many good people in our culture have tried to fix the crisis of true friendship is to try to appropriate it into marriage. True marriage is also in a crisis and that's another discussion which I will not get into here. I think that the two institutions require separate treatments, and while fixing one will help hold up the other, they cannot be addressed as if they were one without causing confusion which hinders both.

In order to be both true friends and a spouse with another, one would have to be both one body and one soul with them. This violates the fundamental uniqueness and individuality of each person, and so God has not made this possible for us. Marriage is the bond of the masculine soul and the feminine soul. The boundary in marriage distinguishes souls. In order to be good spouses, there has to be a bodily union of two different types of souls that complement each other. Marriage requires the maximal expression of masculine and feminine polarity; in fact the bodily union is impossible without it. 

Friendship, on the other hand, requires that there be no carnal union. The boundary distinguishes the bodies. In the case of friendship between men and women, the masculine/feminine polarity must be minimized in order to maintain this boundary. In most cases true friendship is not plausible between men and women if there is a possibility of sexual attraction.

As I see it, then, in our very natures are written the propensity for man and woman to join bodies in marriage and man and man or woman and woman to join souls in true friendship. 

I am speaking of marriage and true friendship in terms of their relation to sexuality in order to distinguish them, but sameness of sex is, of course, not all that true friendship is about, nor is marriage only about being complementary in sex. There are many aspects of the two that overlap, such as trust, endurance, fidelity, good-will, exclusivity, etc. I think the overlapping qualities of marriage and true friendship are part of the reason why people confuse the two.

It's helpful, then, to contrast marriage and true friendship. For instance, while both are exclusive, they are not exclusive in the same way or in the same degree. A true friendship is exclusive in the sense that a true friend is in a true friendship with some but not with others. On the other hand, the exclusivity of true friendship is not jealous or possessive as in marriage, because true friendship lacks an element of eros and, furthermore, does not constitute a union of bodies (as the body has a right to the possession and jealousy of itself, so does the union of bodies between man and woman in marriage). 

The soul is more free to give and unite itself with a wider (though arguably not extensive) range of persons, for the soul is not bound by the same limitations as the body. Thus, while a body cannot unite with a third body without breaking union with the second, the soul can unite with more than one person simultaneously. Thus, marriage exhausts the unitive faculty of the body but true friendship does not exhaust the unitive faculties of the soul.

Another way in which true friendship and marriage contrast is in the direction of gaze. True friends, united in soul, gaze together at a common direction. Spouses, united in body, gaze inward at each other. So, for instance, true friends may grow together as men; they may gaze together toward the goal of being good men, but they do not give their manhood to each other or gaze toward the manhood of the other to possess it. Likewise, a man doesn't grow in manhood together with his wife; they do not share the common goal of excellent manhood; rather, he gives her the gift of the growth of his manhood, and she returns likewise with her womanhood.

These are just some of the reasons why I believe true friendship and marriage are separate but equal relationships. I do not mean in saying these things that men and women cannot be true friends with each other, but that they can only be true friends if the conditions are in place that make marriage between them impossible. And likewise, men and women can only be spouses if the conditions are in place that make true friendship between them impossible.

The mutual exclusivity of marriage and true friendship are not a bad thing at all; in fact by standing against each other they hold each other up. If it were even possible for true friends to be spouses, the world would be a worse place, because each person could "have it all" in one relationship, and every family might be tempted to become an island. But, by engineering us such that we cannot be one soul in two bodies with the same person with whom we are two souls in one body, God encourages us to turn also outside the family, and this is how He wants the love to spread around. And that makes the world a better place and fulfills us more as humans.

What am I?

Man is not capable of knowing what he is. What man is must be revealed to him by God. This is one thing (flowing out of the thought of St. Augustine) I read in Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition, which I have been reading since I went to Savannah.

I think that whenever a people has an overly narrow idea of what man is, God proves them wrong by bringing into existence men who don't fit this idea. Oftentimes people wish or do violence on these enfleshed reproaches; it is not the reproaches whom they are angry with, it is with the God who delivered them.

I have been angry with God, but I thought I was only angry at myself or at other people. I wasn't ready to accept what He made me to be. I wanted to fit the narrow ideas that the world offered for my compliance. But, learning that God wishes to speak to me and through me in my very being, I now wish to be silent to learn what He has to say. Allowing God to speak can be a dangerous thing. Many times I prayed but was afraid He'd say something.

The thought that God willed me into being in order to speak through my being may be the most frightening thing I've ever thought about myself. What if I don't want to speak what He has to say? What if I'll be hurt? What if I won't make it out alive? What will become of me if I don't allow Him to speak? And yet, He speaks without my consent. He speaks while I'm asleep, while I'm daydreaming, while I'm busy with other things. Even now.

And what applies to me, applies to everyone. Therefore for whomever I wish were never or were no more, I wish to silence God.

'Black Beauty'

Yesterday seemed like a good day to take out my macro lens and get some photos in the garden.

Lilium 'Black Beauty'

Lilium 'Black Beauty'

Coreopsis pubescens

Cosmos sulphureus

Cosmos sulphureus

Sabatia angularis (wildflower)

Justice & Mercy

Yesterday after work I stopped by my parish church for a bit and later went to downtown Opelika for our monthly young adult group meeting.

Lee County Courthouse, downtown Opelika, Alabama

St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church

Epictetus on the topic of philosophy

The Stoic Epictetus has become one of my favorite philosophers. For him, as for other ancients, philosophy is not merely a theoretical exercise but must be lived. Epictetus teaches that negative emotions, such as anger, fear, sadness, jealousy, etc. can be overcome by focusing on what one is able to control in the present moment. Here are some quotes from the Enchiridion, a collection of his pithy aphorisms.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions (Enchiridion, 1).

The first and most necessary department of philosophy deals with the application of principles; for instance, 'not to lie'. The second deals with demonstrations; for instance, 'How comes it that one ought not to lie?' The third is concerned with establishing and analysing these processes; for instance, 'How comes it that this is a demonstration? What is demonstration, what is consequence, what is contradiction, what is true, what is false?' It follows then that the third department is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. The first is the most necessary part, and that in which we must rest. But we reverse the order: we occupy ourselves with the third, and make that our whole concern, and the first we completely neglect. Wherefore we lie, but are ready enough with the demonstration that lying is wrong (Enchiridion, 51).

An evening in Auburn

I took some photos as I walked around town this evening.

To most Auburn alumni and many residents of Alabama and the Southeast, this is the Most August Sublime Basilica Temple of the Holiest of All Beatific Sinai-Zion-Olympus-Valhalla-Rome-Mecca of the Empyrean Transcendent Deity of All Idolatry. To everyone else it's called Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Petrie Hall and Knockout roses

Cater Hall. My mom's office before she retired was in the top left window.

Ross Hall and big crape myrtles. Chemical Engineering is here, I believe.

Shelby Center. Headquarters of the College of Engineering and named after the Alabama Senator. Most of my friends in Auburn have offices in this area.

Shelby again.

Little old building next to Langdon Annex.

Toomer's Corner in downtown Auburn. 

Restaurants and apartments in downtown Auburn.

St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church

Auburn United Methodist Church. One of the oldest surviving buildings in Auburn. I was baptized at this church.

More restaurants along Magnolia Avenue. Hamilton's had brief local fame when Mel Gibson ate here while in Auburn to visit General Hal Moore.

Now used by Auburn United Methodist Church, this was the old St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, where I was confirmed and received into full communion. No one seems to miss the old cupcake church much.

W i d e A n g l e

I saved up and finally bought a wide angle lens for my camera. A 24mm tilt/shift lens without autofocus, it's the most "manual" lens I've ever owned. You can't really use it well without a tripod. That said, based on the few photos I've taken so far, it's one of the sharpest lenses I've ever used. It has a learning curve, but I love it already.

My living room.

 After lunch I walked around Auburn University campus and took photos.

Comer Hall, housing the College of Agriculture, my alma mater.

Samford Hall, Auburn's most iconic building, now used for administration. A few years ago they cleared most of the shrubs and small trees off of the front lawn which, in spite of being a horticulturist, I loved. I don't like a lot of plants cluttered in front of buildings.

Langdon Hall, one of Auburn's older buildings with Greek Revival influence. Tradition says if you step on the seal in the pavement you won't get married.

24mm wasn't quite wide enough to get Hargis Hall and Samford Hall together. I'll step further back next time.

Samford Hall again, after the sun broke through the clouds.

Ave Maris Stella

I watched Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet again this week. It's the first time since I am Catholic. I failed to notice most of the Catholic elements in it in my earlier viewings. The music, in particular, is interesting. There's a part of the film that features the melody of the Salve Regina chant. And, then there's this setting of the Ave Maris Stella by Nino Rota, who composed the film's soundtrack. It only has the first stanza of the Ave Maris Stella, combined with portions from the Hail Mary and Salve Regina.

What is a man?

Since I was a child and learned more and more about what science tells us about ourselves, I was always fascinated by asking myself who we are as human beings. So many things we know go against what we intuitively think about ourselves.

For instance, there are more bacterial cells in our bodies than human cells. Yet, I think of my mass as 100% human and not part-human, part-bacterial. I don't say I weigh 170 pounds minus the contents of my digestive tract and the bacterial colonies populating my skin and hair. No, I just say I weigh 170 pounds.

I also consider that the materials that make up my body are continuously flowing in and out and replenishing themselves. Every time I inhale, eat, drink, or apply substances to my skin, new materials are incorporated into "me." Every time I exhale, urinate, excrete, and sweat little pieces of me leave and diffuse into the environment. This so happens over time that after a decade or so, little or none of the matter that once made up the past "me" is now part of the present "me." Those parts are all in the air, in the soil, in the water, in other animals, or in plants. Maybe some escaped into space.

I wonder about this in relation to Christ as well. Did only the matter which made up His Body at the time of His death rise from the dead, or did all the matter which ever made up His Body rise also: the spilled blood, the sweat, the tears, etc? Some of this matter, if it did not rise also, is still in the world. Atoms that made up Christ's body could still be all around us, diffused around the world in the intervening millennia.

Diogenes the Dog, who when reminded that he had once defaced the currency, replied that there was a time when he also used to wet his bed.

I also think about my past self in terms of actions and memories. I have no more control over actions I did five minutes ago than any stranger on the street, since neither of us has the power to alter the past, and yet I have the sense that those actions belong to me and not to the stranger. I take responsibility for them, and I assign responsibility to others for their past actions.

Thinking of the child who wet his bed, I say that I wet my bed, though the atoms that made up that child's body are not part of my body now, nor do I have any control or influence over the actions of that child who I claim was me. And by what authority have I the right to claim he was me? By memory I claim he was me. But what is memory and why have I so uncritically granted it this authority? I have some of this boy's memories, but I do not have all of them. Some of them he lost, and I have no control over what he lost. Perhaps, then, since I am dependent on his choices rather than he on mine, I should say not that he belongs to me but that I belong to him. Yet, we would not say that a man is slave to the boy he once was. He may have left behind some memories which I possess, but he has no more control of my present actions than I do of his past actions.

A possible conclusion from these thoughts is the absurd idea that we can never call a man good or bad except based on what he is currently doing, and whenever we call someone good or bad we are only describing persons who no longer exist. Since he has no control over his past, he can neither claim credit for any good nor incur debt for any bad. Those all belong to a past self, which is no longer in existence except for the memories bequeathed. And, since the present is always flowing into the past, we could argue that we can call no man good or bad, even in the present, for by the time we begin to speak we speak of a person in the past.

The price we pay for accepting credit for what someone else did is to accept blame for what someone else did. The price we pay for assigning blame to one for what another did is to give credit to one for what another did. We do all this unconsciously with our belief in the continuity of the self, which is somewhat in contradiction with empirical evidence.

Fighting Nature

All problems in the garden can be boiled down to one cause: a gardener who is, whether he knows it yet or not, waging war against nature. All who understand nature refuse to fight her. Wisdom has, after all, always called her "she".

A war against nature is a fool's errand. Nature, like wood, punishes those who move against the grain. Nature never loses a battle; those who fight her inflict all their own wounds. Better to call it quits and take a step back to assess the situation.

On the other hand, those who take up nature as an ally find that she shoulders most of the work.

The Universe is Biased Toward the Good

I once heard someone say that we are usually right in what we like and wrong in what we dislike.

I think this is so. It is tempting to think that the world is indifferent, that good and evil are on equal footings, but this is not so. The universe is biased toward the good. Evil is relative but good is absolute. There is not anything which does not have some good, while anything that is all evil doesn't even exist.

If we were to take up a thing which is thought to be evil - take Adolf Hitler as an epitome - and stack up the evil in him against the good, we would find the evil to be like a piece of dust and the good to be like the mass of Earth. Even in Hitler the good so outweighs the evil that the evil can be thought of as negligible. I have no special regard for Hitler; I only use him as an example of what popular opinion conceives of as a greatest evil. Sometimes in church I hear such things as "God loves each of us as if we were the only one who exists." Being a man, this applies to Hitler too. In fact, try as I may, I will never love Hitler as much as God does. God loves Hitler more than any man will ever love his wife, more than any mother will love her child. God loved Hitler so much that He made Himself capable of death in order to die to save him. Knowing the zeal with which any parent comes to the defense of their child, dare I wish evil on Hitler, whom God cares for far more?

If Hitler would not have committed suicide, had escaped, and were found decades later, would not just about anyone turn him in to be killed? And yet, if he were found as the last human alive by an alien civilization that had been searching for other intelligent life for thousands of years, would he not be taken in and cherished? Would they not lavish their wealth on him to keep him alive and, if possible, ask questions? Would they not behold him in absolute wonder, marvel at all the workings of his mind and body, thoughts and feelings, and seek to preserve his life as long as possible? Because human life appears to us to be so abundant, we are prone to regard some lives disposable. But if we were to see things as God does, every human life would be as precious as the only human life.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). If anyone stops to meditate on the fact that a human being is so precious that God considered him worth dying for, even while he is still sinning and not only after conversion, there can be no argument about the goodness of even a sinner. There is a prophetic insight in a fragment from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus: "To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right."