Mutually Clueless

I was in my 30s before I learned that the image I had of myself as a decent dresser (i.e., modest) was naïvely mistaken. I didn’t understand why even ordinary attire could evoke lecherous looks or darting glances. It’s not as simplistic as what I used to think: that certain men were lustful creeps, and others were mature. Rather, the vast majority of men—whether they manifest it outwardly or not—are affected by the same phenomenon. The fact is the sight of a female form has a much greater effect on a man than most women would guess. A woman wearing typical jeans and a T-shirt can be more tantalizing than she realizes.
     Human beings all have “buttons”. Certain buttons are standard (just about everyone has them); others are not. Some buttons are more sensitive or powerful on some individuals than they are on others. But we all have them. That’s what makes us different from the angels.
    Angels are persons—they have a mind and a will—but, being pure spirit, have no body. So they are not subject as we are to the pressures coming from appetites, or chemical imbalances, or hormones, or fatigue, illness, pain, etc.
     Animals have bodies as we do, but neither free will nor rational mind. They have stronger instincts, which guide their actions (though experiences and training can also influence them).
     We are, in the words of John Paul II, “embodied spirits”. Like the angels, we have a rational mind and free will; we have immortal souls; however, like the animals, we also have bodies. And that means we also have instincts and feelings and a whole host of other things impacting our desires and attitudes. The difference is that—unlike a robot or an animal—we have a free will. So we can choose not to obey an instinct or feeling. (Not that that means it’s easy to do so.)
     The key point here is that men and women have some buttons that differ. That is, either men have some buttons that women don’t and vice-versa, or at least if both sexes have the same buttons, then certain buttons are protected by a glass cover and thus are much less accessible on one gender than on the other.
    That certainly is the case when it comes to immodesty: seeing someone of the opposite sex dressed immodestly has a much bigger impact on men than on women. That’s why whenever the voluptuous girl-rabbit comes along, Bugs Bunny’s eyes bulge out and he stumbles around as though he’s under a spell.
    It’s as though the difference here is God’s way of continuing our species: He gave the husbands a very sensitive visual-stimulus button. Before the fall, I imagine, only the sight of one’s wife would set it off, but since original sin threw our body-mind-soul equilibrium out of whack, just about any woman can activate it. That’s why humans started wearing clothes in the first place.
     It’s like a  trigger. Humans have certain physiological triggers: "mouth-watering" foods really do trigger the production of saliva. The mere smell of bacon triggers a release of digestive enzymes. And the power of chocolate over most women is proverbial. Likewise, seeing the female form is a trigger stimulating a chemical reaction in a man’s brain.*

     And this particular trigger is usually pretty powerful. It’s like a high-energy young dog: even when he’s asleep, if you rattle his leash, he’ll leap up and race to the door, ready to go.
     It’s such a strong and quick stimulant that the sight of an immodestly dressed woman may even involuntarily conjure up in a man’s mind an image of how she looks unclothed. If he’s seen pornography (and most men have),† that will only intensify the reaction.
     In fact, often he can avoid this only by immediately looking away and thinking hard about something else. This takes a great deal of self-control, and really, grace. Without grace, why would he even want to do that? Only with a sufficiently close relationship to God and a well-formed conscience would he even bother. But even then, especially in a culture full of arousing images, he needs a lot of prayer and grace to do so.
     (How difficult daily life must be for many virtuous men, when sometimes every fifth or sixth person they see obliges them to exercise this self-control. For a woman, it would be like being on a diet with every sixth person she passes wafting a tray of chocolate truffles under her nose.)
     All this will come as quite an eye-opener to many women. Most are unaware of this trigger—or at least how potent it is—because we rarely experience it ourselves. Moreover, it isn’t socially acceptable for a man to show his reaction, so it’s often not apparent what’s going on in his mind. Thus, many women are fairly clueless about what they’re doing. A great many who consider themselves "good girls" are actually tempting men to sin, while being quite unaware of it.
     Meanwhile, many men don't realize just how clueless women are. In fact, some men think women have the same trigger. Such men conclude that an immodestly dressed woman wants to be ogled at. After all, there are other women who purposely dress immodestly to attract attention, fully aware of the effect. Other men do realize that many women are naïve about this but don't realize how naïve. 

      So ladies, when you open the closet in the morning, make sure you don't pick an outfit that's of the leash-rattling variety. As to what clothes fit that description, we'll have to save that for another post. 




     *Dr. Judith Reisman has written and testified before state and federal committees on the “psychopharmacology” of viewing pornography, which releases a number of chemicals in the brain. In an email to me, she wrote: “Anything that applies to images on a page applies to images walking down the street” (Mar. 14, 2005). See “The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography Restructuring Brain, Mind, and Memory” available at her website: www.dr.judithreisman.com.
      †Unfortunately, with the prevalence of internet porn nowadays, it’s a problem even among Christians: according to Family Safe Media, 53% of survey respondents at an event nearly ten years ago for Promise-Keepers (Christian men dedicated to marital fidelity) admitted looking at Internet porn in the previous week.

A Priceless Pearl

          to my mother

Your love is a pearl in my life.

Creamy as a pearl is your love,

cream-like in color and character. 

A love both lush and live-giving.

Though mother's milk could not continue,

the cream of your love never curtailed:

rather it gushed a rich river

nourishing my soul.

Hard like a pearl,

durable as rock,

your love could not be crushed 

by contrariness or calamity.

Rather its roundness

allowed it to roll through the troubles

that rumble and roar in every life.

Precious the pearl of your love,

how precious to me;

without which I would not have lived,

sustaining me through sorrow,

enriching my soul,

and grandest of all:

engraining the image, and

mirroring in miniature,

that I might perceive

the Pearl of Great Price.

Not merely a pearl-like love,

but a maker of pearls.

For mothers are pearlmakers;

the Maker of All made them that way.

To take what to any other 

is just another

grain of sand

from an endless expanse of sands

and encompass it with affection, 

surround it with devotion,

transforming its annoyances,

coating them, rolling them

over and over in love,

and shaping that sand-speck

into a precious pearl.

And you yourself are a pearl.

When the time comes

for the shell of your life

to be cracked open,

The Great Pearl-Seeker

will dive into your heart 

and pluck out your soul.

He will hold it to the light

and admire its milky whiteness

and whisper, "Ah, priceless!"

And I must agree,

oh dearest:

my mother, of pearl.

Dreaming of the Day

Every once in a while, I have the same bad dream. 

     I find myself waiting in the wings as the curtain is about to rise on a play in which I'm to perform—only I don't know any of my lines. I think, "I'll just have to improvise"; then I realize I don't know the plot nor even the name of the play!

     I have another recurring dream with a similar theme: I'm back in school, and it's finals week. I'm sitting in a classroom, waiting to take the final for a course I forgot I had. Somehow the whole semester went by, and I only attended the first day. I guess I blew off the class so often I forgot I was even signed up for it. I have no notes, no study guide; I haven't read any material—I don't even know what the class is about.

     I've heard from others that they have similar dreams (for my musician husband, it's a concert, rather than a play, that he's to perform). Such dreams may arise from a fear of forgetting some duty in our hectic lives. But I wonder if they might be gentle reminders from above of that Big Day that awaits each one of us, when we'll meet Him face to face. A day that perhaps we're forgetting to prepare for.

      It's so easy to forget. Not only do we generally shy away from thinking of our own death, but we even have a hard time believing that it's really going to happen. Yes, yes, we know intellectually that we could go any day, but many of us don't act accordingly.

     Off the top of my head, I can think of several people I knew personally who died unexpectedly. There were the schoolmates in junior high and high school who were killed in car accidents. There was a neighbor in his forties, a runner who appeared to be in great shape—only one day he didn't come home from his run. He'd had massive heart attack. I knew two people—one a new friend in her 20s, the other an old family friend in her 70s—who died twenty years apart but in very similar circumstances: each was happy and excited, then, almost in mid-sentence, suddenly succumbed to a brain aneurism.

      Even when we know people who've died suddenly, the reality of one's own death can be so hard to grasp.

      When we still have unfulfilled hopes and dreams, we hold on to this life. But even if every day is a dreary drudgery, we still see life stretching out to the horizon. With either perspective, how hard it is to live for the next life; how hard it is pass up little comforts; how hard to delay gratification that long.

      St. Thomas Aquinas points out how stupid that is: “They must be esteemed to have lost their sense, who either pursuing abundance, or fearing lack of temporal goods, lose those which are eternal.” 

     What makes the saints extraordinary is their ability to perceive, believe, and live out spiritual truth, not to be taken in by the illusion of permanence. St. Clare of Assisi reminds us: “Our labor here is brief, but the reward is eternal. Do not be disturbed by the clamor of the world, which passes like a shadow. Do not let the false delights of a deceptive world deceive you.”

      St. Paul frequently urges us not to let our minds get fogged up by the day-to-day trivialities that are always clamoring for our attention. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col 3:2). Instead, we should prepare ourselves: “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable” (1 Cor 9:24).

      Fr. Martin Connor, a wonderful speaker and retreat master, once told us that each year he sets himself a “death-day”. He picks a day some 6 to 9 months off and thinks of it as if the doctor told him that's how long he has to live. It helps him keep his priorities straight.

      How does one prepare for that day? What spiritual and relational and temporal matters need to be addressed? If you knew you had only a week, what would you make sure to do?

      St. Dominic Savio was only a youth when he died, but he had already figured this out. When he and a couple companions playing soccer were asked by St. John Bosco what they would do if they learned that they would die the next day, his answer was unique. One boy said he'd run to confession, another that he would spend time before the Blessed Sacrament. Dominic replied that he would keep on playing soccer.

      He wasn't callous—he was prepared. He had already attended to his spiritual duties, and earthly duties, so he was free to enjoy a little recreation (another—though lesser—duty).

     Dominic didn't see any need to stop playing soccer, as he believed it to be God's will for him to play soccer right then—and he had dedicated himself to doing God's will at all times.

      Perhaps that is the secret to being prepared.

Knights of the Dinner Table

Anyone who knew me growing up can testify to my being a notoriously picky eater. Many kids are finicky, but I was ridiculous: I didn't even like pizza or french fries.

      It came to a head one night when I was told I couldn't leave the table until I'd finished what was on my plate. Somehow a pile of refried beans had found its way there (I certainly didn't put it there!). I concluded I would have to spend the rest of my life at that table. I wasn't being stubborn; I simply viewed it as impossible. It was akin to being asked to eat a scoop of mud.

      I don't know how long I sat there, but it was dark, and everyone else had scattered to their bedrooms. Finally the punishment was upped—I can't remember what was said, but somehow I was motivated to give it a teeny tiny try. There was melted cheddar cheese on top—which I didn't like either, but it wasn't as bad. I flipped the whole thing over so the cheese, not the beans, would touch my tongue, gave a quick chew or two, and gulped it down with some milk. I survived! I kept on doing that, 'til bit by bit, it was gone. It was a miracle.

     

When Jesus sent out the seventy-two disciples to preach the Good News, he gave them very specific instructions. What we usually notice is that they weren't to bring anything with them—no money, no bag, not even sandals. Amidst such tough directions, this verse tends to get lost: “Eat whatever is set before you” (Lk 10:8). As a kid, that would have been much harder for me than going barefoot!

      But now, I see it as a great verse to add to my arsenal of Helpful Scriptures for Parents. It's a perfect verse to whip out when the kids start complaining about dinner.

      And it's great advice too—at least assuming you have a conscientious cook, preparing a healthy, well-balanced meal. If we only eat rich and fatty foods, avoiding the icky vegetables, we won't get all the vitamins and nutrients we need, but will probably get diabetes and heart disease instead.

      But there's more to it than physical health. Jesus wants us to do the same at the dinner table of life: that is, we need to accept whatever He sends us, trusting that it's good for us even if bitter and hard to swallow. A diet of all desserts and no vegetables is no better for our souls than for our bodies.

      Of course, that's easier said than done sometimes. Jesus must have realized that, for after all, He did say, "What father among you, if his son asks for bread, would give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, would give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (Lk 11:11-12). Sometimes what's on our plate sure looks like a scorpion, but we must trust our heavenly Father enough to believe that He knows what is good for us.

      Culinary courage is more than a healthy habit or an apt spiritual analogy, though. It is also a will-builder. I tell my kids to eat their vegetables not only for their health, but also so they can learn to make themselves do things that are good but that they find unpalatable. We need that kind of daily exercise in discipline or our wills will become flabby and weak. It is by being faithful in the small things that we gain the strength to conquer greater challenges.

      We may not have dragons in our modern world, but there are still threats that make us wish for knights like St. George. We can start training them, at the dinner table, to conquer themselves first and offer up the sacrifice involved (which for a kid might be sizeable!). And while we're at it, maybe we can do a little will-training and sacrificing of our own. 

     It might seem useless, but just because spiritual benefits are invisible, doesn't mean they're not real. Remember, it's the One we're praying to, who can make the real difference. Just as He did with the five loaves and the two fish given by the little boy, He can multiply our little gifts of prayer and sacrifice into splendid results.

The Medieval Church: Lessons for Modern Times

In teaching medieval history a few years ago, I noticed a pattern. During that time of tremendous growth in the Church, over and over again some of her own children turned against her. Yet each time, a saint would come along to counter the heresy or corruption, a saint whose personality and fidelity to the Holy Spirit formed the ideal duet to meet the dilemma.
     When Nestorianism began spreading in the fifth century, the Lord raised up St. Cyril of Alexandria to combat its errors. Soon after, Manichaeism and Donatism were met by the brilliance of St. Augustine, and Pelagianism and Monophysitism by Pope St. Leo the Great. When the iconoclast heresy took hold in the Eastern Empire in the eighth century, St. John Damascene—a Christian courtier in a neighboring Muslim land—was in the perfect place to write on the truth about icons without fear of reprisal from the Byzantine emperor. And in the twelfth century, St. Dominic was the right man in the right place to pull the teeth of Albigensianism. Each time, the Lord did not merely defuse the heresy, but He used the opportunity to bring forth a clearer understanding of His teachings.
     Heresy has not been the only threat to the Church arising from within her ranks. Time and again, complacency led to a worldliness and corruption creeping into the lives of Church members. And time and again, God has called forth saints to oppose materialism and sloth, especially by their exemplary lives. In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, St. John Chrysostom in Constantinople followed St. John the Baptist's example by critiquing the emperor and empress' moral failures. St. Boniface made enemies by calling priests to obey their vows in Germany in the eighth century. In the twelfth century, when many were content with a Christian veneer, the challenge to die to self for love of Christ was given by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the monastery and St. Francis of Assisi in the world. In the fourteenth century, St. Catherine of Siena respectfully reminded the popes of her day of certain duties, and Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross in the sixteenth century countered laxity in their religious orders, while encouraging all—lay and religious—to seek the joy of meeting God in contemplative prayer. And these are merely the most famous of such voices calling for reform.
     The pattern is perhaps most clear at the end of the Middle Ages. In the early sixteenth century, Rome was so rampantly corrupt that it is no surprise that Martin Luther was scandalized when he visited there as a young monk. Yet about this time, St. Philip Neri was born—a saint whose extraordinary love of God and neighbor, joy, preaching, and example would lead to a reform in that city and to his being dubbed the “Apostle of Rome.” At the same time that the laity were confused about the Church’s actual teaching on indulgences and Luther was concluding that he need not obey the Pope anymore, St. Ignatius of Loyola was forming a new religious order that would catechize the laity and dedicate themselves to doing whatever the Pope might ask of them. 

      When the Church at last managed to convene a general council to sift through the protests against her, St. Charles Borromeo was there to help define doctrine and establish reforms. And he eagerly carried out these reforms in his own archdiocese, especially in rooting out error from the clergy and founding new seminaries. In the same period when five million Europeans left the Catholic Church, nine million native Americans entered the Church in the decade following the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego in 1531. 

     This pattern is instructive to us in two ways. First, we must realize that this problem will always be with the Church. This shouldn’t surprise us, for didn’t Christ give parable after parable on this: wolves in sheep’s clothing; weeds amid the wheat; sheep and goats being separated at the end of time?

     Secondly, when we see false teachings and scandals in our own time, we must look for the saints God is raising up to counter them. We may recognize among them Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, confounding the materialism and selfishness of our age, and Blessed John Paul II, already called “the Great” for his profound and rich illumination of the truth in the darkness of this "culture of death" in which we live. 

     But it's not enough to look around, wondering where the saints are, why there aren't more of them stepping up to the plate. We must also look in the mirror and recognize that God also has a part for each one of us to play.

Fear Is Useless

Among possible motives for sin, pleasure probably comes to mind, selfishness seems to cover all the bases, and of course the “love of money” has St. Paul’s vote as “the root of all evil”. With those obvious contenders, fear may not even make a blip on the radar screen. Nevertheless, I think fear’s a big motivator, and shouldn’t be overlooked.

     It’s not obvious usually. I mean, if you lived under a dictatorship, then it would be obvious: people around you, and you yourself, might do or fail to do things you wouldn’t otherwise, out of fear.

     But living in a free country as we do (at least at this point), fear doesn't seem to play much of a role in our day-to-day lives. And since we don’t like to admit we have any fears, we certainly don’t go looking for them.

     It’s when you start digging deeper in your spiritual life that you discover it. When you start trying to root out sin, a good practice is to back up and ask, Why do I do that? Sometimes you have to back up a few times before you stumble on the real reason, and not infrequently that reason is fear.

      Let’s say you keep blowing up at your family members in a certain situation, say, when they make you late. Why does that make you explode? You might say because you really hate to be late. But why is that? If it’s not an important event, could it be that you’re afraid of what people might think? Maybe it's the fear that the person waiting for you will be annoyed and like you less. Or that the person will lose respect for you, or that you won’t be able to maintain your own sense of superiority over that person. Maybe you're afraid that it will tarnish your image as having it all together—either in the eyes of someone else, or in your own.

      Or let’s say you keep putting work before family. That could spring from a lot reasons—maybe your self-image is too caught up in being successful, for instance. But fear could play a role too. Maybe behind that desire for success is a fear of being a failure, or even a fear of being average. You’ve got to be Somebody, or you’re nothing. Maybe it’s more serious: you’re afraid that you’ll get passed over for a promotion, or you’ll lose your job.

      It takes a lot of courage even to admit those fears, let alone overcome them. Usually it’s only during a retreat or a time of ongoing prayer and reflection that we can open ourselves to seeing these things. We build a lot of walls to keep from seeing these deeper areas of ourselves; usually if we do get a glimpse over a wall only to find the sight rather alarming, we quickly stop looking.

      Jesus was being sensitive to the situation when he told Jairus: "Fear is useless; what is needed is trust." (After all, the poor synagogue leader had just been told that his daughter was dead.) To many of us, he could say rather, "Fear is worse than useless—sometimes it's downright dangerous.”

      We need to recognize fear, because it can cause us to sin. We can walk all over other people, be rude to them, or indifferent or blind to them, because we are so focused on avoiding whatever it is we fear. God doesn’t say, “Love one another as I have loved you…unless they stand in your way somehow, or endanger your self-image or the achievement of your personal goals or your livelihood.”

      No, no. Rather he says, “Be not afraid”—over and over and over again throughout the Bible. And John Paul II echoed Him: “Be not afraid” was one of his pet phrases—he who had lived under Nazi occupation and then Communist totalitarianism. How could someone who’d faced truly fearful circumstances say that? Because he trusted in God, because he looked beyond this life.

      Usually the best way to overcome a fear is to stop running from it, to face it. When you run away from what you fear, its shadow will follow and loom over you. But when you turn around and face it, it almost always shrinks considerably. What if X did happen? Really think about it. Usually you’ll realize it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

      But even it were something truly terrible, Christ has promised that with His grace we could endure it. If we were to give it over to Him, He could and would bring good out of it. And with His help, we could do what He does: we could bring good out of it too, if by nothing else, by offering it up. 

     Even if the worst scenarios we can imagine were to happen to us, ultimately it wouldn't matter, so long as we were seeking first God's Kingdom and His righteousness. "The only tragedy in this life is not to become a saint." Any suffering we may undergo can help us fulfill our purpose: to get to heaven and to bring as many souls with us as we can.

A Cluster of Crosses

It seems like just when I think I’ve learned to trust in God, He says, Oh yeah, how 'bout now? and takes it up another notch.

     Or two. 

     Or three, ... or five or six.

     Yesterday, a priest said that maybe I was going through these things so that I could help someone else by sharing it on my blog. On the way home, I started thinking about what I'd learned about suffering just this week, so here goes...

This past week I saw two daily Mass-goers with whom I'm acquainted, both of whom I hadn't seen in quite a while—say, about a year. In each catch-up conversation, something struck me.

      The first conversation was with a British fellow in his seventies. He was a lector at a neighboring parish, where my husband often, and I occasionally (used to), go to morning Mass. (Ever since my recent pregnancy, it's been too early for me.) I didn't know him very well; from my pew, he seemed holy and on the serious side—dignified. I liked his accent.

      When I saw him last Saturday, I hardly recognized him. I hadn't known that he had Parkinson’s, but now the signs were obvious: a constant struggle to control his head, his facial expressions, and especially his mouth. Even his delightful accent was lost in the difficulty of forming words.

      I immediately felt for him, but every time I tried to express my concern or sympathy, he'd turn it away with a joke. (When I asked him how he was, for instance, he responded, “Oh, you know how it is: one foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel.”) He just told one joke after another—and funny ones too.

      How many people in his shoes—having lost exterior charm and dignity—would become reclusive? How many, having trouble communicating, would stop trying? How many, in the face of suffering that was bound only to increase, would descend into self-pity or bitterness?

     Not he. Instead he evidently resolved to forget about himself and focus on others. He has a gift for making people laugh, and he's decided to keep on using it. And at the same time, he's a wonderful model of how to suffer gracefully.

The other person is in her sixties (though she looks about 50), whom I got to know last year at the evening weekday Mass at our own parish. She tended to be gloomy and to see things from a sardonic, if not negative, perspective, which I chalked up to temperament.

     When I saw her on Monday, she seemed more lighthearted and much more cheerful.

     When I mentioned that I'd been going through one thing after another, she replied, “That’s what last year was like for me. I’d feel like I’d just get one nostril above the water then—bang—I’d get knocked back down again. And I'd say, 'Lord, what are you doing?!' ”

     Her response stuck with me. Not only was it a humorous rendition of what I felt, but it also made me realize some things. First of all, maybe the gloominess I'd seen in her wasn't temperament, but a reflection of what she'd been going through. Secondly, seeing her more cheerful now and the words “last year” seem to indicate that that period of difficulty is apparently over.

     It's so important to remember what St. Teresa of Avila said: “All things pass.”

And the priest yesterday helped too. Not surprisingly, the Holy Spirit used him. He suggested that I picture myself in the lap of Mary (à la the Pietà) and pray a Memorare.

      It was powerful.

      It was a great comfort to feel the pity and sympathy of our Mother. Even though my sufferings are nothing compared to what her Son—or even she—had undergone, I felt that she still cared, still felt sorry for me.

      I realized how comforting sympathy can be—just having someone acknowledge that what you’re going through is hard, and care, can be a big help.

      Then I thought about how wise the priest was in having me turn to Mary, as it’s easier to imagine her being compassionate. Then I thought, wait a minute, Mary can’t truly be more compassionate than God—the Source of mercy, whose mercy and compassion are infinite.

      I realized that subconsciously I’d been thinking that God did not care about my sufferings; that He was indifferent. As if He were watching me suffer, and just casually shrugging a divine shoulder, and saying, “Yeah, well, you’ve got to suffer. This is good for you. What, you want a different cross?”

      As a parent, I sometimes have to let my children suffer, but that doesn't mean I don't care. Just because I let the nurse give my sweet little baby her shots (and even hold her down to help!) because I know that this suffering is less than the illnesses she could otherwise get, doesn’t mean that I don’t care that the shots hurt. I care tremendously, and feel so sorry for her, especially as she doesn’t understand.

      Surely God, the Father and model of perfect parenthood, has even more sympathy and love for us in our sufferings.

How can we ever say we've learned any virtue? When will we ever reach a point in our lives when we can say, "Ah, I've arrived. I have a reached the pinnacle of trust [or patience, etc.]"? Never. We'll always have more to learn and room to grow as long as we are drawing breath.

     But if the fruits of suffering include learning, coming closer to God, becoming more like Him, and helping others, then it’s all worthwhile.