bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Boundaries and whom to set them with.

    One of my guilty reading pleasures is advice columns. I’ve been drawn to them since I was a kid hunkered over the hometown newspaper, which featured Ann Landers and Miss Manners directly opposite the weekday comic strips. I think I found them so fascinating because to me, the world of social interactions was challenging enough at the elementary school and familial level. I loved that there were people out there who seemed to know exactly how one should behave, and were happy to tell anyone who asked.

    I’ve never lost my love for advice columns, although the older I get, the more discriminating: I no longer have illusions that all of them know what they’re talking about, and some of them are much better writers than others. But they still frequently open my mind to new ways to think about navigating the difficult situations of the world, even if wholly hypothetically (one of my very favorites is workplace columnist Alison Green of Ask A Manager, even though I hardly spend any time in anything remotely resembling a workplace anymore).

    Anyway, that’s just a preface to segue into commenting on this entry in Carolyn Hax’s column at WaPo.

    The person who wrote in described how her son was engaged to a “wonderful young woman” from a “fun, warm, and welcoming” but also “quite wealthy” family—much wealthier than the writer:

    Her parents recently had a sit-down with the kids and told them they’d like to spend $75,000 on the wedding. They also said they’d like to invite my husband and me for a visit so we can all work out the details about who’s paying for what.
    I don’t know what to say or do. They are such genuinely nice people, and we really do want to contribute as much as possible, but there’s no way that we can come up with anything near that. Honestly, we’ll be lucky to scrape together even a few thousand dollars, and that fills me with bone-deep shame.

    He’s our only son. We love him so much but feel like bumpkins with bupkes to give them. What can we do?

    This was one of the questions that Hax opened up to readers’ comments. As I settled in to read them, I expected comments that addressed the hypothetical uncomfortable conversation during the visit with their future daughter-in-law’s parents: how to broach the subject of their financial disparity, for instance, or how to agree on a more affordable event, or how to decide what they can afford to spend, or perhaps how to overcome their misplaced feelings of shame.

    But the first response got right to the correct point: Whom the groom’s mom and dad should be having this conversation with. The reader advised:

    This is something you should be discussing with the couple, not your son’s future in-laws.

    Oh—that’s right.

    …My parents weren’t able to contribute nearly as much to our wedding as my in-laws. We asked each parent what they were able to contribute, figured out the amount we were willing to contribute, and then we came up with the wedding budget from there.

    I would call your son and explain to him how much you can give. Your financial situation is likely something your son already knows, right? If not, it is an opportunity to explain it.
    Then leave it to the couple to determine what the budget should be. Maybe her parents will choose to pay for everything; that’s a very traditional take on weddings. Or maybe the couple will decide that a big wedding isn’t worth it and will choose something small.

    This is so exactly right, obvious as soon as it was pointed out, and a great example of why I keep reading advice columns. Because I am the sort of person who is easily sniped by a Problem to be Solved, and sometimes I see the side issue first.

    Like so many others, this questioner needs advice about how to set and enforce a boundary. But the first boundary that needs to be decided upon here isn’t a cap on contributions that they are going to have to explain to twice-removed wealthy in-laws. It’s whom they are willing to explain their cap to.

    This is exactly the kind of thing I often forget about boundaries: Whom you explain things to, including your other boundaries, is itself a boundary. Sometimes this kind of discretion protects you: you don’t have to have uncomfortable conversations if the necessary information can be handled another way. Other times it protects others: from your nervous oversharing, from violating privacy, things like that.

    If contributions to a wedding are to be a real gift, then they go to the couple who can decide what to do with them. The letter-writer cannot control how much the fiancée’s parents offer and she cannot control how much of that gift the young people accept. (She also can’t control whether the other family’s contribution implies an expectation of a degree of control over the details, like choosing the venue.)

    It’s better to be honest with the engaged couple and let them take responsibility for what to do with what is being offered.

    + + +

    Anyway, the broader boundary-setting lesson will stick with me. Before plunging ahead to decide what boundary to set with someone, or what words to set it with, consider whether the boundary should be set with the first person who came to mind, or if someone else in the affected circle is a more appropriate channel for the information.

    Careful—discretion in channel-choosing mustn’t be confused with triangulation (involving a third person in a conflict in order to manipulate someone by bringing pressure on them from a different direction). In this case the groom-to-be’s parents would be gently extracting themselves from a perceived pressure situation that was probably unintended, even if it could have been prevented had the other family been a little more self-aware.

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  • Neighborliness.

    Well, it’s been a fairly crazy week here in Minneapolis.

    First the president of the United States called a lot of people “garbage”: about 100,000 Minnesota residents, the vast majority U. S. citizens.

    Then for the past few days my own neighborhood has been crawling with out-of-state-plated SUVs as ICE trawled around looking for people to kidnap, such that community leaders are advising local U. S. citizens to be ready to produce their papers, please:

    “What’s happening to our Somali Americans in Minnesota is unacceptable, un-American and dangerous,” said Khalid Omar, an organizer with the coalition of faith groups ISAIAH. “Over the last few days, our community has been terrorized by federal agents and ICE officers.”

    Omar said immigration officials have been asking Somali-Americans who are U.S. citizens to produce passports and other legal documents.

    Asad Zaman, executive director of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, said he is reluctantly advising fellow naturalized citizens to carry their passports with them.

    “Today it broke my heart that, in my sermon, that was among the advice I gave my people,” Zaman said.

    But:

    People are holding potlucks to meet their neighbors and plan for how to help.

    People are sharing lessons learned from Chicago and other cities.

    People are pledging to be ready to stand as a peaceful witness and document illegal overreach by masked agents, ready to provide those who are unlawfully detained or injured with the video evidence they need to press charges or sue.

    People are learning their rights and their neighbors’ rights.

    People are organizing to watch over the neighborhood surrounding schools at drop off and pick up times.

    People are delivering groceries and meals.

    + + +

    This is frustrating. Infuriating: the casual dehumanization that is a feature of the current administration, the intentional cruelty, the delight in violence.

    But we know that being neighbor to someone is, in however small doses, a worthy response.

    + + +

    I am sorry to say that I have never really prioritized neighborliness. There’s a little bit of social anxiety that gets in my way. I have friends mostly outside my neighborhood. My kids, being mostly homeschooled, never went to the neighborhood school (one went to a city magnet high school). I go to church at a Jesuit parish, not any of the ones much closer to us, except sometimes when the schedule is more convenient here. We have a traditon of even trick-or-treating at a holiday party with friends in another town.

    I’ve been trying to change, gradually. I became an election judge and I serve in my own precinct, in part so I can serve my own neighbors. I have made a point with my younger kids to use the neighborhood library and walk to the neighborhood grocery store much more than I used to. I joined a little neighborhood chat group for my immediate block which has actually helped me get to know the people living around me much better than before: at least I can put names to addresses, and occasionally help with little needs like misdelivered packages and lost dogs.

    It’s time to change a lot faster. What do I really have to fear, after all?

    Photo of a brass whistle on a short chain with a clip.
    Photo by Hans Braxmeier made available under the Creative Commons Zero license.

    —

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  • Seventeen years later (part II): looking back at a series I wrote about “Gains.”

    In the last post I looked back at 2008 and a series of posts I wrote about, back then, learning to face some serious mental issues around food. I’m sort of looking at how far I have come, how my thinking has evolved over the years, and where I am now. Especially, I’m inserting some important caveats where I think my writing back then was really wrong—if you didn’t start there, please go back to see what I mean.

    Skipping over some of those old posts now. I ended the series by wondering about the future:

    Will I keep getting hungry between meals, ever?  Will I never eat an entire pizza?  Will I always ask for the half portion?  Will I forget about ever filling up on bread, ever again?  Will I roll over in bed when my stomach growls at 3 a.m., saving that appetite for breakfast?  Will I throw out the kids’ sandwich crusts?  Will it start to feel wonderful, instead of worrying, to believe that the eating-till-I’m-stuffed is over? 

    About two years after writing that, after I’d had another baby, I wrote this post looking back on the same questions:

    That is the writing of someone who is frightened by the idea of never eating an entire pizza again.  I write now as someone who is relieved by the idea of never eating an entire pizza again.  Even by the idea of never having more than, say, a quarter of a pizza at a sitting….

    If I learned I only had a few months to live … I still wouldn’t want to eat an entire pizza.   I wouldn’t want to stuff myself with food, even really tasty food.  I guess I might eat a higher proportion of my food from the Deep-Fried Group, but … “not stuffing myself” doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, like any kind of self-denial.  It’s what I want to do now and for the rest of my life.  I feel so much more free about it than I did when I ate whatever I “wanted.”

    And now it’s seventeen years later and I will answer these questions again!

    …Yes, I still let myself get hungry between meals. Meals are better when you are hungry! I am kind of addicted to that feeling, in fact.

    …No, I basically never eat an entire pizza, with the rare exception of Neapolitan style personal pizzas, and even then I have to be really ravenous.

    …Half portions: pretty much, if the “small” is a standard menu size, that’s what I order.

    …Yeah, I don’t fill up on bread. Not a problem. Not even really tempted, unless caraway rye is involved.

    …I cannot remember the last time I got out of bed in order to eat. Drink water, yes. Maybe if I was sick.

    …Kids’ sandwich crusts? Not a thing anymore around here. I admit that last night I nibbled on their rejected salmon patties at the end of dinner.

    …And for a really, really long time, I’ve preferred the feeling of “ate enough” to “ate so much I feel full.”

    So I wish I could go back and reassure myself back then: I was really fixing some things in my head. A lot of things got better and they stayed better.

    + + +

    In fact, I kept up all those generally good habits, and felt good, and stayed about the same size, for ten years, including two pregnancies. In 2018, when I was 44, a few months after I stopped breastfeeding for good—yes, if you’re doing the math, I’m one of those people that lets the child set the pace, so I’m not exactly sure when it ended but around there sometime—my weight started to rise very very slowly but steadily, and that without me changing anything at all. I chalked it up to the end of breastfeeding, but it could just as easily have been the onset of perimenopause; maybe both.

    For a little while I stressed out about it and tried counting calories and things like that, but after the pandemic hit and there was a sudden new source of stress in my life, I decided to change my thinking and my approach instead.

    For one thing: My teenage son installed a squat cage in our basement, and I switched from swimming and running at the suddenly-unavailable YMCA to barbell training and long walks. I figured that if I was going to be slowly putting on weight, I might as well try to nudge some of it into becoming muscle.

    That turned out to be really good for my mental health and body image. Ever since then I’ve been too busy thinking about performance, and avoiding injury, and getting enough protein, etc. I’m really focused on the long term now. Eventually I added the running and swimming back in, by the way, though it’s hard to do that more than once a week now that I really prioritize not skipping weight training.

    It isn’t too far off to say that I am thinking seventeen-plus years in the future. I don’t worry anymore that I will develop seriously disordered eating (in either direction) but I do wonder about that older, hopefully wiser me. When my youngest child is twenty-eight and my oldest child forty-two—when I am sixty-eight—how will I feel? Will that not-disordered-eating be something that is actually easy and natural by then, or will I still have to sort of think about it to keep it in balance? Will I still be lifting barbells? Will I have made it through to menopause with adequate bone strength? Where will I have landed in my endless waffling over wine consumption: “life is short, go ahead and enjoy this great pleasure of life” or “learn to cut back and live longer?” Will I have entirely, instead of mostly, stopped viewing my body critically in the mirror? Will I have gone full salmon-and-kale-and-avocadoes, or will I still demolish a plate of nachos or a bowl of spaghetti bolognese from time to time? (No judgment there, by the way. I’m just wondering.)

    It’s tempting to think that I’m ahead of the game in a couple of areas. First, I’m not afraid of or ashamed of aging per se. I’m nearly the age my mother was when she died of cancer; I don’t take these years for granted; I’m pleased to have reached my fifties, pleased even by the visible signs of being older, the gray hair and the fleshiness around my chin, and by Mark (who has nineteen months on me) growing older beside me. Second, I’ve got a few really good habits that I’ve been keeping up since my thirties. I hope those can make up for the wine a little bit longer.

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  • Seventeen years later: Looking back at a series I wrote about “Gains” .

    It seems amazing to me that it’s been seventeen years since I first began writing seriously about the weight loss I experienced in 2008. I’m revisiting some of those posts now as I work on getting my blog tidied up now that it’s moved to WordPress.

    One major reason for the revision is that I’ve come to reject some of the language I used during that series—and it’s all the more important that I go back and add some caveats and things because that language really seemed to resonate with people. I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time, and so I’m glad I finally have a chance to do so.

    Some of the mental habits I developed along the way were not very healthy ones, and I came to a place later on where I decided I would rather have a healthier mindset and accept a larger body if that turned out to be the consequence. I don’t regret that change one bit.

    I also would like to strengthen the position that body size is not supposed to be a source of shame, period, nor a reason to deprive anyone of access to medical care, education, transportation, or recreational facilities. I don’t know if it is possible to go back to those old posts and keep what’s useful in them but still remove any material that inadvertently reinforced all the societal expectations which create adverse mental, physical, and social health outcomes for people who have larger bodies. Instead I’m choosing to acknowledge that I didn’t consider that enough, to assert that it was negligent on my part, and to leave the posts up. I hope that’s the correct decision, or at least sufficient.

    So let’s take a look at some of that old stuff.

    Gains part 1.

    “I decided to try, um, eating less…. I started [a food diary]… more like a feed-forward record, or a plan… I carried planned, premeasured snacks… I believe that… my habits have been addressing the underlying mental defect that’s been causing my lifelong weight dysfunction… I thought to myself, ‘I’m ready to try being okay with being hungry.’”

    Gains part 2. What’s wrong with me.

    “Here’s the root of my problem [in 2008, remember!]: I have an irrational fear of getting hungry.”

    Was this an accurate assessment then? Is it still true?

    Speaking now in 2025: I am extremely confident that this was true then, and also that it is not at all true now. One way or another, I killed that fear dead.

    I wrote out the evidence. It’s interesting to look at it now because some of it is entirely absent from my life now. For example:

    • I used to explicitly think “I’d better eat extra so I won’t be hungry later.” Nope. I am not thinking that.
    • “I get very antsy on road trips as mealtime approaches.” No. This is no longer a problem. I might get interested in thinking about what I’ll get to eat, as I get hungrier, but I’m not worried about it. This is now a fear-free situation.
    • “I get irrationally irritated when I’m at someone’s house for dinner and food is delayed.” No. This is not a big deal at all. I can deal with not knowing when dinner will be.

    And here are some elements that I identified as “fear of hunger” that are still kind of an issue. But without the context of the missing three items above, I no longer interpret them as a “fear of hunger” thing.

    • “Certain foods that I eat compulsively if they are just sitting around.” That is still kind of true, although I’m less likely to do it if they aren’t something I actually really like a lot.
    • “I rely on external cues” like if there is food left, if others are eating, if something will be thrown out. Yes, this is still an issue.
    • “When I am responsible for feeding a crowd, I am very preoccupied with there being ‘enough’ food.” Okay, this is still true. But even back then, I tagged it as “hostess anxiety” and, well, it still is, I guess.
    • “Recurring dream… where someone gives me piles and piles of food and I know I have to eat it.” I still do get that sometimes.

    The only one that I think might perhaps qualify as evidence of being preoccupied with hunger is the last one, and it’s just my subconscious dealing with some kind of anxiety about food.

    Instead, I have… sort of ordinary issues? Environmental ones? Maybe more having to do with the social interaction aspects of eating and serving and enjoying food with other people? None of which I would classify as an “underlying mental defect.”

    So, back then, I described my success as having a two-prong approach: find ways to soothe the fear of hunger that didn’t involve pre-emptive eating (for example, pre-emptive carrying of snacks), and getting used to the idea that hunger is okay.

    …But now, I already know that hunger is okay. I’m actually pretty good at hunger! So what worked then primarily on that particular problem is not likely to do anything for me now.

    On the other hand, I can explore the social-interaction and environment aspects. They might not ever have really been evidence of fear of hunger at all, but instead may have been evidence of something else that caused me trouble. Maybe circling back to those will do me some good.

    + + +

    I’m in a whole new stage of life now. I’ve been through whole stages of life! In July 2008 I was thirty-three years old. I had three children under the age of eight. I was breastfeeding a toddler. Back then, raising children took most of my attention, and even though I was thinking a lot about taking care of my own health and improving it, a lot of it was because I hoped to have another pregnancy and wanted to be in better condition for it, and maybe come out on the other side without having put on a bunch of weight that wouldn’t come off (because I was thinking about trying to be thinner, too).

    Now I’m fifty-one years old. Those three children are adults. I did go on to have two more children, who are now a teen and a tween. I stopped breastfeeding, let’s see, seven and a half years ago maybe? And now when I think about taking care of my own health and improving it, I’m thinking about aging well. I’m thinking about taking steps to not fracture my hip someday. I’m thinking about protecting my heart and lungs. I’m thinking about remaining flexible and strong. I’m wondering how menopause, which hasn’t come close to starting yet, will treat me.

    This isn’t unrelated to the “good life” stuff I mentioned before; in fact it’s quite related. I think since I’m digging into my archives anyway and revising and revisiting them, I will use those old posts as springboards for thinking about the future. Stick around and we will see where they take me.

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  • The sudden sensation of “the good life,” part II: what do they all have in common?

    Last time I wrote about a sudden sensation of—for want of a better term—”the good life”:

    Have you ever been engaged in some pleasant or satisfying activity, or maybe passively enjoying an experience, when, suddenly, you become suddenly aware of it? And there’s a thrill that goes through you at the awareness of it? Here am I, doing something cool, feeling something delicious. It’s sort of the opposite of a flow state, in that it suddenly takes you out of the activity or the sensation: you become an observer of your own thoughts and feelings But in a good way, a delightful way.

    The best explanation I can come up with: it’s sort of like being outside on your way somewhere, and suddenly catching your own reflection, unexpectedly, in a shop window at an odd angle, and being delighted by this vision of yourself in the midst of the world, a little glimpse from outside yourself.

    I listed some of the things that give me that sensation. Drinking wine with my husband at the kitchen table, wandering around an airport, running on a lovely day. I wanted to try to interrogate (a) what do these experiences have in common, such that they all give me this same sensation? and (b) why do I want to call it the sensation of “the good life”?

    I spent a good long time thinking about (a). (Notice, it’s five days since I wrote the post!) And I think I’ve come up with some answers to that part.

    I tend to get this sensation when

    • I’m not wholly immersed—I’m perceiving myself;
    • I perceive that I am doing something “right,” not something “wrong;”
    • I feel connected and belonging in some way that is important to me;
    • I am having an experience that once I didn’t think was possible for me: I’m pleasantly surprised to see myself in this experience.

    In some ways I think the dominant feature of all these experience is that last bit: the surprise. There’s an element to every part of it that seems to say: If only I could show this to my self of five, or ten, or twenty, or forty years ago. I’d never have believed this was possible.

    And I suspect that part of what I didn’t believe was possible? The doing something right. The connectedness and the belonging.

    + + +

    Sometimes the doing something “right” has to do with doing something that is, well, good for me, or doing good for someone else. So, going for a run, or making myself a plate of healthy food, or having labored to make our home comfortable and welcoming. Some other things I can think of that I didn’t list.

    Other times the doing something “right” means: I’ve learned how to behave in public, and nobody around can tell that I’m actually sort of a weirdo inside. I can make small talk and smile and wear clothes and carry myself like a real adult human woman. I am organized and capable. No one will point at me and laugh.

    + + +

    Sometimes the connectedness and belonging has to do with my close friends and loved ones. I’m with my grown children, who don’t NEED need me anymore, and they want to spend time with me and we can have fun together. I’m with my husband, and we are talking and laughing like old times, still interested in what each other has to say, or enjoying some other thing together. I’m with a friend who knows me and likes me a lot anyway.

    Other times the connectedness and belonging has to do with something a little more, well, invisible, or even mystical. I’m in my own neighborhood,walking home from the library where I see the same patrons and librarians regularly, or from the co-op where I pick things up once or twice a week; I’m seeing the neighbors’ gardens, perhaps a friendly dog; it’s my neighborhood, I live here, I belong. I’m reading in a coffeeshop, I’m surrounded by a gentle hubbub of voices and clinking dishes and traffic outside: a crowd of people, and I belong in the crowd among them; we all have something in common today, even if it’s only this coffee shop. I’m running around the lake in the city I call home; the city we have chosen to live in for more than twenty-five years; I can see the downtown skyline, I run past the bandstand, the racks of canoes; other runners pass me, all ages, all sizes; I see people fishing off the pier, or biking in all weather; I have a sense of place, of this being my place, and these people around me also chose this place and maybe they love it too.

    + + +

    What’s so unexpected about all this? Some of it I know, some of it I don’t. Once upon a time, I never expected to be much of a runner. (I’m still not much of a runner. I mean I never expected I’d run anywhere ever, let alone at least once every week or two.) Once I never expected that I’d get married at all, let alone stay happily married for as long as I have; someone told me once (over the phone, not quite to my face) that when Mark figured out what I was really like, he wouldn’t stay long. I certainly didn’t expect when I was younger that I’d want to have five children. Some part of me seems to be surprised to own a house, for some reason. I did expect to travel a lot when I was young, but then I unexpectedly spent a rather long time not traveling a lot, and that led to me being pleasantly surprised by it again now that relatively frequent travel is part of my life again.

    I’m just continually surprised to find myself loved and in love, at home, and out in the world, in any sort of ease. Having built a life that isn’t always easy but is frequently enough punctuated with successes, and connections, that it is just about always satisfying.

    + + +

    So that’s what all this stuff has in common: a joy and connection and satisfaction that somehow creeps up and surprises me. Look at you! it seems to say. You did not think you deserved this!

    …No, I want to correct that a bit. Because goodness knows we don’t want to talk about what we deserve. It’s more:

    You didn’t think you were capable of this. Or maybe: worthy.

    And I really didn’t, and so it sneaks up on me and surprises me sometimes.

    + + +

    That leaves me wondering if the feeling really is a positive one. Is it more an appreciation of the good things I have? Or is it a kind of mirror-image of past sorrow, or memories of a time when I didn’t think I could ever access all these things?

    I’m not sure. Maybe this is the key to understanding why I think I chase that feeling a bit, for its own sake, and why I want to call it “the good life.” Even though there’s something unsatisfying about that label: and I can’t decide if it’s the label alone that is unsatisfying, or if I’ve chosen that label because it puts a finger on something that’s not quite right about the sensation, or about the chasing.

    Two glasses of wine on a table, on an outdoor restaurant table, with the glow of sky at dusk behind. One is white wine, one is a rosy orange. There is a pair of glasses folded on the table.

    —

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  • The sudden sensation of “the good life.”

    That’s what I’m calling it, anyway; maybe something else should go between the quotation marks, but it seems like the right choice, as a descriptor for something I have been taking the time to notice lately.

    Let me explain.

    Have you ever been engaged in some pleasant or satisfying activity, or maybe passively enjoying an experience, when, suddenly, you become suddenly aware of it? And there’s a thrill that goes through you at the awareness of it? Here am I, doing something cool, feeling something delicious. It’s sort of the opposite of a flow state, in that it suddenly takes you out of the activity or the sensation: you become an observer of your own thoughts and feelings But in a good way, a delightful way.

    The best explanation I can come up with: it’s sort of like being outside on your way somewhere, and suddenly catching your own reflection, unexpectedly, in a shop window at an odd angle, and being delighted by this vision of yourself in the midst of the world, a little glimpse from outside yourself.

    Some might call it a feeling of joy—I should go back and re-read Surprised by Joy and see exactly what words Lewis used to describe his “joy” sensation, to see if it’s similar. Some might call it being aware of being happy. For myself, gratitude is usually a part of it: thankfulness for the gift of the moment, or the company, or the opportunity.

    I hope this is a common experience, because it’s pleasant, and mine are often (not always) based not in rare opportunities but in simple activities that would be in theory accessible to lots of people. It seems to me that it should be. I hope it is.

    And it hasn’t been a daily experience for me, but it isn’t infrequent either. Since I deliberately started trying to notice it, I think I’ve noticed it more. Which is good, I think!

    + + +

    I started making a list of the kind of things that set it off. Note: it’s not the same thing as a list of “things I like to do” or even “my favorite things to do.” I like a lot of things. But it’s only sometimes that I get this extra little, oh, I don’t know, record-scratch freeze-frame kind of self-awareness; if there was flow, it pitches me right out of the flow and into conscious awareness.

    Here’s a list of recent times when the record scratched:

    • sitting at my own kitchen table with my husband, finishing any kind of dinner together and drinking a whole bottle of wine, laughing together and talking
    • almost any point when I am traveling, especially solo: airports after passing security but before I have to be at the gate, the NYC subway, walking briskly from one place to another
    • carrying a pile of books home from the library in our neighborhood, or a basket of groceries home from the store that I can walk to
    • when I walk into the kitchen to make dinner and me-from-a-few-hours-ago has cleaned it all up and left the countertops clear and the dishes running
    • sitting in my chair and drinking the second cup of coffee of the day
    • getting into bed when the bedding is freshly laundered, ideally with one of the aforementioned books
    • going out for a nice dinner with our adult kids
    • sitting down to eat a really lovely breakfast or lunch that I’ve made for myself just exactly the way I like it, something nourishing and balanced, and just the right size
    • going for an easy-to-medium run in cool, beautiful weather: autumn or spring any time of day, summer in the early morning
    • taking work to the coffee shop, listening vaguely to the hubbub of people around me
    • I got it just yesterday, during co-schooling at our house; I was having tea and working at the computer writing a test for my high schooler, half listening to H. leading the three 11-year-olds in a literature discussion. Whoosh, there it was.

    Again: This isn’t just a list of things I like to do or that make me feel happy or grateful. It’s a list of the things that have given me that specific, sudden feeling of self-awareness. There are many enjoyable things that almost never do. For example, going to the theater doesn’t ever do it. I’m too busy watching the play. Some of my favorite foods make me momentarily happy but don’t do this to me. I like swimming more than running, objectively speaking; I love a good swimming workout; yet I get this sensation from running outside, as long as I’m not working too hard, and I never get it from swimming. What gives? What’s the difference?

    + + +

    I think it is something cognitive that comes along with the sudden sensation of awareness of enjoyment. There’s some kind of interpretation happening in my head as well, that reverberates with the feeling to create a sort of mental-emotional feedback. And if I work to put words to it, this is the best I can do:

    This experience is evidence that I am living The Good Life.

    Isn’t that a funny interpretation? But examining it, I think that’s what it means. Something about these moments symbolize to me that I have landed, for now, in a place that is beautiful to be. Like, seriously unexpectedly beautiful.

    Not everything is beautiful. I have challenges in my life, I have dissatisfactions in my life, there are some worrying unknowns in the future; I know I am mortal and so are my loved ones; I know I am a flawed human being who must work hard to interrupt impulses of self-centeredness and to overcome the barriers that keep me from connecting deeply; I must grow in generosity and patience. I have frustrating days, sick days, lonely days, days when I feel very incompetent to handle the interactions I have to have with people.

    But these particular moments that come to me sort of make a context in which I am surrounded by beauty and connection. Whatever the challenges are, this is The Good Life.

    + + +

    I’m planning to write more about this. It strikes me that there are some opportunities here, but maybe also some dangers.

    For one thing, it’s an addictive feeling, or thought. I can see as I look over my list that I sometimes do things because I am trying to chase it, even though I wasn’t really aware of it as a specific internal state until recently.

    Also, “The Good Life” is a phrase that has some disconcerting associations. Do I mean material wealth and comfort? After all, many of these experiences have a component that is made more accessible because we are relatively-well-off. Do I mean feelings of invulnerability, like I’ve made it and nothing can touch me? I want to keep an accurate sense of the fragility of my houses of cards. Do I mean superiority, or that I have done something to deserve these good things? Is this only a good because other people lack it? Is it an improper attachment to the things that do not last, or is it a proper enjoyment and appreciation of them?

    So I’m interested in exploring this sensation that I have. What it means exactly, and why The Good Life seems to be the right phrase to describe it, even though (this is the weird part) I’m also a little bit turned off, or maybe embarrassed by, the phrase.

    And if there’s anything I can learn from it.

    A glass window seen from outside: through the glass is visible barstools and a bar, inviting and warm; superimposed is the reflection of the street outside. The viewer seems a few steps away from walking into the frame and becoming aware of their own reflection.
    “Urban reflection through café window” by Sami Abdullah. Marked free to use by the creator.

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  • The danger of relying on “in good standing.”

    Today’s gospel, Luke 18:9–14, is a story about two particular people and two particular types: but “tax collector” and “Pharisee” aren’t the types, that’s just background information. All tax collectors aren’t represented by the character in the story Jesus tells; all Pharisees aren’t represented by the Pharisee character either.

    But often when two people are contrasted in stories like this, they are types. Here we have two different personalities; two different worshippers; two different sinners. What are they?

    They are different types both externally and internally, and not in ways that are necessarily correlated. It’s the internal state of each that is important to his justification:

    Jesus addressed this parable
    to those who were convinced of their own righteousness
    and despised everyone else.

    And

    whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

    Okay, so one man in this story is, internally, a sinner and worshiper who belongs to the type that “exalts himself” —this is the type that Jesus is issuing the warning to, those who are “convinced of their own righteousness”—and the other is, internally, of the type who “humbles himself.”

    This internal state is what is important to Jesus, and what really makes one man go away justified. Don’t model your worship on the self-exalting type; model it on the self-humbling type.

    But in telling this story Jesus has also subverted the expectations of his listeners by assigning these internal states in an unexpected way to two opposing externally visible types.

    No, not “Pharisee” and “tax collector.” That’s just background information: neither represents every single person who might have that descriptor, then or now. It perhaps invites us to imagine some details about how each of them might have come to have the attributes in the story.

    No, these types are the worshipper in good standing, and the worshipper not im good standing.

    This tax collector’s adopting a less-visible position “at a distance” where he won’t attract attention, as well as his profession, and as well as the fact that the other man recognizes him as guilty of serious, ongoing, public infractions—his infamy!—are all elements that identify him as not in good standing. It is externally evident to everyone that he belongs to a class of public sinners.

    This Pharisee—let us take his word for it—commits no public sins, holds no disgraceful occupation, tithes and fasts correctly, and occupies a position that he owns or is assigned, it is “his.” He is a worshipper in good standing. He is also, in a nonpublic way, a sinner: his pride is invisible (though we hear about it thanks to our Omniscient Narrator), and anyway, just about everyone is a sinner including this guy, who should know better.

    The subversive part is that Jesus swaps the visible and invisible parts of the type. We expect that a worshipper who is in good standing is more likely to be justified than a worshipper who is not in good standing. But Jesus makes clear that it isn’t so.

    This concept of “good standing” is heavily suspect as a means of classifying people. Folks will give pastoral or canonical justifications why this or that person ought to be excluded from some role or another for reasons of “not being in good standing.” But we should interrogate these assertions. And we should never “despise” (Jesus’s word!) those without good standing, or count our own good standing, if we possess it, as points in our favor. It seems, according to this parable, that our reputation is entirely irrelevant to our justification, and our humility is extremely relevant. It also seems that “standing” may be, to certain interior types, a very dangerous thing to possess.

    UPDATE: Here’s Pope Leo’s homily on this Gospel.

    Brothers and sisters, this can also happen in the Christian community. It happens when the ego prevails over the collective, causing an individualism that prevents authentic and fraternal relationships. It also occurs when the claim to be better than others, as the Pharisee does with the tax collector, creates division and turns the community into a judgmental and exclusionary place; and when one leverages one’s role to exert power, rather than to serve.

    …With the same humility that [the other] showed, we too must recognize within the Church that we are all in need of God and of one another, which leads us to practice reciprocal love, listen to each other and enjoy walking together. It is based on the knowledge that Christ belongs to those who are humble, not to those who elevate themselves above the flock.

    …Dear friends, we must dream of and build a more humble Church; a Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone.

    James Tissot, Le pharisien et le publicain (1886-1894). Brooklyn Museum, accession no. 00.159.178.

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  • Bothering the powers that be.

    The parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) is a weird one, isn’t it? I’ve often thought that it’s hard to read. Praying to God for help is like bothering a nasty government official?

    I suppose that a parable that was meant to be read in all times and all places by all people, who should be able to derive meaning from it, is bound to be a little weird when one of the features is, well, the state. Because “the government” takes a lot of different forms throughout history. The judge has to stand in for officials, authority figures, the powers that be, of all kinds. It’s not crazy that the barest outline is what we’re left with.

    Let’s take a look, and then I’ll tell you about some details that were picked out in the homily I heard on Sunday.

    Jesus told his disciples a parable
    about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.
    He said, “There was a judge in a certain town
    who neither feared God nor respected any human being.
    And a widow in that town used to come to him and say,
    ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’
    For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought,
    ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being,
    because this widow keeps bothering me
    I shall deliver a just decision for her
    lest she finally come and strike me.’”
    The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says.
    Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones
    who call out to him day and night?
    Will he be slow to answer them?
    I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.
    But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

    The first thing that the homilist pointed out was something I’ve noticed before, something that is part of why this parable is hard to read. This unjust judge is a sort of “antithesis of God,” he said. I would go further and say, since Christ is a model Judge, that the unjust judge is a type of anti-Christ. Here’s the features the homilist identifies:

    • he is not a “God-fearer,” said the homilist, using a specific term meaning a non-Jewish believer in God who participated in some aspects of Jewish worship. (I don’t speak Greek but I can pick out words, and a word that makes this reading plausible—φοβούμενος—does seem to be there in Lk 18:2). So the judge is unlike Christ the model Judge in that he does not believe in or worship God.
    • he does not respect any human being, which is also not a characteristic of Jesus
    • he doesn’t do his job, which is to render decisions

    The widow, on the other hand, is in an extremely vulnerable position (almost by definition), plus she has an adversary. Nevertheless, the widow seems not to fear the judge; perhaps she has nothing left to lose? But the judge, who doesn’t fear even God, seems to be afraid of the widow! Like, physically afraid of the widow: “lest she finally come and strike me.” There’s something fearful here! So, he, also unlike Christ, shies away from threats.

    Another thing, not pointed out by the homilist, but that I noticed for the first time: In this parable, Jesus actually tells us what the most important part is. “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says,” says Jesus. Okay, so let’s do that:

    ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being,
    because this widow keeps bothering me
    I shall deliver a just decision for her
    lest she finally come and strike me.’

    That, I guess, is the main point, and if we get distracted by details about who the judge is, what the adversary wants, whether the widow is right or not, we might miss that. This is the most important bit. The judge, who does not act out of any kind of care about God’s laws, does not act out of any kind of care for the good of human beings, is finally moved to act out of pure self interest, because the widow demanded justice. Did she have any hope that he would do the right thing? Maybe not. But she demanded it (as was her right), repeatedly, in the face of repeated failure, and eventually he responded.

    The Lord goes on to say, if you can get results by persistently (faithfully) bothering someone who does not care about you or about God, then surely you can get results by persistently (faithfully) “call[ing] out to him day and night.”

    The parable ends with a question from Jesus: when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? I suppose this may mean, will we have given up asking God for help and for justice by then?

    + + +

    Remember, I said that the government takes many forms through history: the dishonest judge has to be meaningful to all people everywhere. I suppose that wherever there are officials of any kind, there are corrupt officials, or at least the threat of them. The homilist couched his description of the unjust judge in such a way as to illustrate that, today, in the United States of America, the concept of “bothering the dishonest judge” ought to remind us of, say, exercising your First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

    The judge isn’t doing his job. Well, sometimes the government seems not to be doing its job. And one thing we do, when that happens, is we demand better behavior. We write, we call, we sign petitions. We pour into the streets, demonstrating.

    A crowd of protesters in New York City, a library in the background, holding signs. An American flag is also being carried. Visible signs read: "So... do all lives still matter?" "Our democracy is under attack by our own government" "We the People say No Kings" "No Kings"
    People marching for the No Kings protest in Manhattan, New York, 14 June 2025. By Wikimedia contributor “Rhododendrites.” Published under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

    And sometimes the government, or the officials, respond. Not necessarily because they believe in doing the right thing, or because they care about us. We may not have changed anyone’s mind! But perhaps they fear the consequences, a little bit, some kind of real consequence, even if it’s just losing the next election.

    And it does take a certain sort of persistence for that to work. You have to keep at it long enough that the specter of consequences becomes real to the officials you’re trying to reach. As long as the officials “neither fear God nor respect any human being,” what you’re after is their self-interest, in the end. And the minute they don’t feel bothered, there’s no leverage at all.

    + + +

    Is it a distraction, or unacceptably partisan, to make a connection between the numerous, very large public “No Kings” protests on Saturday and the Gospel reading on Sunday? I don’t think so.

    It’s certainly not an inherently partisan observation; it’s easy to imagine the same connection being made about all sorts of protests against government injustice or perceived government injustice. And the homilist I heard did not dwell on the specifics about what the crowds were protesting, just observed them as a fact: the crowds saw injustice, the crowds came out and demanded justice.

    And like I said before, this parable is difficult to read because it’s not immediately clear how we’re supposed to understand the parts. Is God like this dishonest judge somehow? some readers might wonder. Are we to nag at him? I know I’ve been unsure how to read the parts of this analogy.

    But if you take a moment to translate the parable into the context that you really live in, if you think, no, this judge is like when our government officials are corrupt, don’t fear God, don’t do their jobs, don’t respect the dignity of all human beings as inherently worthy of love… and the widow demanding justice is like us, protesting (something that doesn’t “get things done” by itself)… then it feels a little more familiar?

    Because we can certainly imagine, that if we’re persistent, the corrupt government officials may act to preserve themselves or their power, and it might go our way. But the persistence is necessary. We can see that. We can understand that. If we give up, we lose our leverage over them.

    So maybe this parable is about being persistent? And another word for persistent is faithful. Be persistent in faith, the way that you have to be persistent in nagging at government officials to get them to do something right for a change.

    Even though God is nothing like these government officials. But if we can be bothered to rise up and call for justice from them, then we can also be bothered to call out to God as persistently.

    And after all, the last question of the parable is one about whether we will have been persistent in our faith till the end.

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  • Really, really done?

    You know the near-universal recurring nightmare people have of being back in high school or college and there’s an exam you have to take and you realize you forgot to go to class for the whole semester?

    For more than 20 years I have had one of those about graduate school. The details vary but the story is always the same: I haven’t really finished the requirements for my degree and I have to go back. Sometimes this comes as a surprise and I have to drop everything in my life and become a student again, occasionally complete with leaving my family and moving into a small apartment near the university. Sometimes it represents a to-do list that has been pending for 20 years, and I struggle to find time and childcare so I can do a shift in the computer lab.

    So I had that dream again last night, but it had a new feature that I am sure I never dreamed before:

    In the dream, I interrupted my work and said to myself and the people around me: “Wait a minute, I don’t have to do this. I graduated a long time ago. I wrote my thesis, it was accepted, it’s on a shelf at the university library, I passed my defense, I’m done.”

    And that was the end of that dream! I woke up. It was about 4 AM. I remembered that. I went back to sleep.

    Wouldn’t it be great if, now that my subconscious has gotten the message at least once, I never have that nightmare again?

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  • Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te: On love for the poor. (III)

    In the last two posts, I’ve looked at two themes in Leo XIV’s new document Dilexi Te:

    1. What should I believe about the poor?
    2. What should I, as an individual, do for people who are experiencing poverty?

    In this post, I pull out excerpts which address a third theme that runs through the exhortation: What should groups, institutions, the Church, and governments do with their collective power and resources to address the needs of the poor?

    Like theme 2, much of this direction rests on ideas found in the first theme, ideas about who “deserves” help, what is meant by “the poor,” and what is the purpose of having possessions that are “ours” in the first place.

    Let us see what Pope Leo teaches us we ought to do collectively. I’m going to wind up repeating some of the excerpts I posted in the two previous posts, but looking at them from the collective angle.

    + + +

    Again, the preferential option for the poor, and how it calls the whole Church to choose in favor of “the weakest”:

    This “preference” never indicates exclusivity or discrimination towards other groups, which would be impossible for God. It is meant to emphasize God’s actions, which are moved by compassion toward the poverty and weakness of all humanity. Wanting to inaugurate a kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity, God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.

    What might that mean? Off the top of my head: Some of your parish funds might need to go to improving functional accessibility for disabled people, or multilanguage materials in the foyer, or whomever among you needs something. “The weakest” is not always the same individuals. The preferential option for the poor is a guide for making decisions about priorities.

    Here’s the bit about who deserves help:

    [Some Scriptural t]exts call for respect — if not also love — even for one’s enemy: ‘When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free’ (Ex 23:4-5). Here the intrinsic value of respect for others is expressly stated: anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance.

    Boy, I’ll tell you what this made me think of immediately: Vice President J. D. Vance recently insinuating that only some people in need deserve to receive emergency medical care. He said, “If you’re an American citizen and you’ve been to the hospital in the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that wait times are especially large and very often somebody who’s there in the ER is an illegal alien. Why do those people get health care benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens?”

    I, personally, do not think that undocumented immigrants count as “enemies.” But surely, if, as Pope Leo says, anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance, then that should answer this question posed by the Vice President, or indeed by any Catholic.

    Governments, indeed, are supposed to defend the weak against the strong and care for those in need. It’s not something that ought to be left to the private sphere, at least when government has been given competent powers. Almsgiving—specifically religiously-motivated, self-giving help—is not the only action to be taken on part of the poor. We must also demand that “competent authorities,” including government, use its powers to care for the poor and secure justice, as is its responsibility:

    Those inspired by true charity know full well that almsgiving does not absolve the competent authorities of their responsibilities, eliminate the duty of government institutions to care for the poor, or detract from rightful efforts to ensure justice.

    The following message, articulated by Pope Francis, is about the mission of the Church, but we would do well to consider whether as Church we are speaking this truth to the worldly power and demanding that they treat our migrant brothers and sisters as people and not as a problem:

    Pope Francis has recalled that the Church’s mission to migrants and refugees is even broader, insisting that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. Yet these verbs do not apply only to migrants and refugees. They describe the Church’s mission to all those living in the existential peripheries, who need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.” He also said: “Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved.

    Benedict XVI also called for collective action “capable of guaranteeing” support that would free people from hunger:

    Amid the multiple crises that marked the beginning of the third millennium, the teaching of Benedict XVI took a more distinctly political turn. Hence, in the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, he affirms that ‘the more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them.’ [88] He observed, moreover, that ‘hunger is not so much dependent on lack of material things as on shortage of social resources, the most important of which are institutional. What is missing, in other words, is a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water for nutritional needs, and also capable of addressing the primary needs and necessities ensuing from genuine food crises, whether due to natural causes or political irresponsibility, nationally and internationally.’

    Although it can make moral demands on worldly powers, the Church is not supposed to be like the kingdoms of this world (which is one of the things that enables it to make those demands, I think!) and should resemble Jesus more than it resembles the world’s power structures:

    “[In the early days of the Second Vatican Council] [t]here was a growing sense of the need for a new image of Church, one simpler and more sober, embracing the entire people of God and its presence in history. A Church more closely resembling her Lord than worldly powers and working to foster a concrete commitment on the part of all humanity to solving the immense problem of poverty in the world.”

    Doctrinal rigor, promoted without mercy, is empty. It’s a mistake to be concerned only (or even, maybe, primarily) with that rigor, and not concerned with how the poor (of every type) receive it. There is a grave mistake in assuming that if the Gospel is not received well, the fault lies entirely on the hearer.

    Many other Fathers of the Church, both Eastern and Western, have spoken about the primacy of attention to the poor in the life and mission of every Christian. From this perspective, in summary, it can be said that patristic theology was practical, aiming at a Church that was poor and for the poor, recalling that the Gospel is proclaimed correctly only when it impels us to touch the flesh of the least among us, and warning that doctrinal rigor without mercy is empty talk.

    The Church should see all people as worthy of love:

    Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. It spans chasms that are humanly impossible to bridge, and it penetrates to the most hidden crevices of society. By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic: it works miracles and knows no limits. It makes what was apparently impossible happen. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today,

    And as autonomous individuals whose cultural expression has value to the wider world—in a bit of a rebuke to Catholics in mainstreamed or wealthy cultures who profess shock when they see faith practices take unfamiliar forms among marginalized communities:

    “[C]onsider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others. This means that such communities have the right to embrace the Gospel and to celebrate and communicate their faith in accord with the values present within their own cultures. Their experience of poverty gives them the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see; for this reason, society needs to listen to them.”

    There’s a lot to chew on in this document. An entire theme that I haven’t touched is a sort of history of how the saints, and religious communities, have modeled service to the poor, to prisoners, etc. I recommend reading the whole document. It isn’t difficult, and it ought to bear fruit in our discussions of public policy, pastoral mission, and private charity.

    Altar and crucifix in front of a few wooden pews in the Catholic chapel at Fremantle Prison, now a tourist site in Western Australia.
    “Catholic Chapel, Fremantle Prison,” photo by Mitch Ames. Used in accord with Creative Commons license  CC BY-SA 4.0. This historic prison, located in Western Australia, is now a World Heritage Site.

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  • Apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te: On love for the poor. (II)

    A couple of days ago I posted some excerpts from Pope Leo’s recent apostolic exhortation “Dilexi Te,” that address what we should believe and say about the poor. Today I want to post some excerpts about the responsibility of the individual towards the poor.

    Some of this, by necessity, leans on the material I posted in part I. For example:

    • What we legally possess does not belong just to ourselves, in accord with the principle of the universal destination of goods;
    • Serving the poor is “an encounter between equals”;
    • “Anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance;”
    • “the poor” is a broad category, including the materially poor, the socially marginalized, “those…in a condition of personal or social weakness,” those who have “no rights, no space, no freedom.” And also: those who are examples of moral and spiritual poverty: those you might be tempted to call “bad people.”

    Here’s some excerpts that have to do with the acts of individuals.

    Stock photo of a person carrying a box of donated canned goods
    Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

    Pay attention, don’t be numbed by your own comfort, don’t “discard others without realizing it,” don’t “tolerate” poverty “with indifference”:

    [T]he illusion of happiness derived from a comfortable life pushes many people towards a vision of life centered on the accumulation of wealth and social success at all costs, even at the expense of others and by taking advantage of unjust social ideals and political-economic systems that favor the strongest….

    This means that a culture still persists — sometimes well disguised — that discards others without even realizing it and tolerates with indifference that millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings.

    Do not harden our hearts to what the poor ask of us:

    In hearing the cry of the poor, we are asked to enter into the heart of God, who is always concerned for the needs of his children, especially those in greatest need.

    If we remain unresponsive to that cry, the poor might well cry out to the Lord against us, and we would incur guilt (cf. Deut 15:9) and turn away from the very heart of God.

    No gesture is too small:

    The simplicity of that woman’s gesture [anointing Jesus with the costly oil] speaks volumes. No sign of affection, even the smallest, will ever be forgotten, especially if it is shown to those who are suffering, lonely or in need, as was the Lord at that time.

    Our works of mercy are a sign, evidence, that our worship is authentic and changes us. The example given is Lk 14:12-14, inviting the poor to the banquet.

    [W]orks of mercy are recommended as a sign of the authenticity of worship, which, while giving praise to God, has the task of opening us to the transformation that the Spirit can bring about in us, so that we may all become an image of Christ and his mercy towards the weakest.

    In this sense, our relationship with the Lord, expressed in worship, also aims to free us from the risk of living our relationships according to a logic of calculation and self-interest. We are instead open to the gratuitousness that surrounds those who love one another and, therefore, share everything in common.

    In this regard, Jesus advises: ‘When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you’ (Lk 14:12-14).

    Parable of the last judgment is absolutely not ignorable. We cannot be holy and ignore its demands. (“Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”)

    The Lord’s appeal to show mercy to the poor culminates in the great parable of the last judgment (cf. Mt 25:31-46), which can serve as a vivid illustration of the Beatitude of the merciful. In that parable, the Lord offers us the key to our fulfillment in life; indeed, ‘if we seek the holiness pleasing to God’s eyes, this text offers us one clear criterion on which we will be judged.’

    The clear and forceful words of the Gospel must be put into practice ‘without any “ifs or buts”’ that could lessen their force. Our Lord made it very clear that holiness cannot be understood or lived apart from these demands.’”

    The Apostles forbid us to grow rich on the labors of others not justly paid, or to refuse help to those in need (remember from the last post, anyone in need):

    James goes on to say: “Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter” (5:3-5).

    These are powerful words, even if we would rather not hear them!

    A similar appeal can be found in the First Letter of John: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (3:17).

    Don’t use your theological reasoning about these texts to give you excuses to distance yourself from their demands, but instead to get closer to the real situations they describe:

    The message of God’s word is ‘so clear and direct, so simple and eloquent, that no ecclesial interpretation has the right to relativize it. The Church’s reflection on these texts ought not to obscure or weaken their force, but urge us to accept their exhortations with courage and zeal. Why complicate something so simple? Conceptual tools exist to heighten contact with the realities they seek to explain, not to distance us from them.’

    Do not forget, or forget to help, the prisoner:

    The early Christians, even in precarious conditions, prayed for and assisted their brothers and sisters who were prisoners, as the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 12:5; 24:23) and various writings of the Fathers attest.

    Are we disturbed and bothered by the sight of a poor person? People collected in tents in an urban or suburban homeless encampment, perhaps, or someone injecting drugs on the light-rail train, or a beggar with a sign by the street corner where we come off the expressway? Are we afraid of them, or disgusted by them? Do we avoid eye contact and hurry past?

    ‘[C]aught up as we are with our own needs, the sight of a person who is suffering disturbs us. It makes us uneasy, since we have no time to waste on other people’s problems. These are symptoms of an unhealthy society. A society that seeks prosperity but turns its back on suffering. May we not sink to such depths! Let us look to the example of the Good Samaritan.’

    Are these people not Lazarus to us? Are we hoping they will do labor to comfort us out of our disturbed feelings?

    “Every minute we can find a Lazarus if we seek him, and every day, even without seeking, we find one at our door…Therefore do not waste the opportunity of doing works of mercy; do not store unused the good things you possess.”

    Consider almsgiving in specific. Maybe we mostly do it by writing a check and mailing it off to a charity with boots on the ground. And that is good, because “no gesture is too small.” But there is another dimension of almsgiving which implies real contact, a social type of almsgiving:

    Almsgiving at least offers us a chance to halt before the poor, to look into their eyes, to touch them and to share something of ourselves with them. In any event, almsgiving, however modest, brings a touch of pietas into a society otherwise marked by the frenetic pursuit of personal gain….

    Both the Old and New Testaments contain veritable hymns in praise of almsgiving: ‘Be patient with someone in humble circumstances, and do not keep him waiting for your alms.’”

    Augustine’s spiritual guide (remember, Leo is an Augustinian) was St. Ambrose, who insisted on the ethical requirement to share material goods:

    ‘What you give to the poor is not your property, but theirs. Why have you appropriated what was given for common use?’ For the Bishop of Milan [Augustine], almsgiving is justice restored, not a gesture of paternalism.

    In his preaching, mercy takes on a prophetic character: he denounces structures that accumulate things and reaffirms communion as the Church’s vocation…. ‘Observing your brothers and sisters, you know if they are in need, but if Christ dwells in you, also be charitable to strangers.’…[Almsgiving] is, so to speak, the ordinary path to conversion for those who wish to follow Christ with an undivided heart.”

    That bit, about almsgiving being justice restored, is personally helpful to me. I struggle sometimes with almsgiving (and mostly delegate decisions about our household giving to Mark), because I struggle with gift-giving and gift-receiving.

    In ordinary gift-centered occasions, Christmas and birthdays and such, I find it hard to do correctly. This is about me, not about the poor, a self-centered sort of problem, rooted in certain experiences I had growing up and also in a kind of social anxiety. But this concept attributed to St. Augustine, that “almsgiving is justice restored,” may help me disentangle alms from ordinary human gifts. What Augustine says, and what I have had a hard time seeing, is that alms is not an ordinary human gift. It has a different purpose. And thinking on that may help me give alms more… peaceably, I guess, with less worrying about whether I’ve done it correctly.

    Assuming that you’ve already made up your mind to give alms, and not deliberately made distinctions about which needy person “deserves” or “doesn’t deserve” your help, it seems that your own feelings of pride or paternalism, or expecting/demanding a certain show of gratitude, would be the main ways to get tripped up.

    Yeah, it’s possible to do it wrong. But there are a lot of ways to do it in which “being right” is the last of our concerns.

    —

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    2 comments on Apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te: On love for the poor. (II)

  • Apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te: On love for the poor. (I)

    Last week Pope Leo XIV released an apostolic exhortation, addressed to all Christians, “On love for the poor.” Its Latin title, “Dilexi Te,” is taken from the opening phrase of the document, and means “I have loved you”; it’s a quote from Rev 3:9. Leo makes clear that the context, reaching back into the prior verse, is “I know your works…You have limited strength, and yet you have kept my word… they will know that I have loved you.”

    Leo is a very clear and easy-to-understand writer, and he’s laid out a thorough but readable discourse on the responsibilities of Christians to the poor, at both an individual level and a societal level. He has backed it up with Scriptural arguments as well as arguments from the historical writings and practices of religious communities and of individual saints.

    I read the document through carefully, and I came away thinking that the document benefits from three separate readings, each attentive to the answer of a different question:

    1. What should I believe about the poor?
    2. What should I, as an individual, do for people who are experiencing poverty?
    3. What should groups, institutions, the Church, and governments do with their collective power and resources to address the needs of the poor?

    These aren’t three separate sections of the document, but rather are themes interleaved through it.

    + + +

    Let’s look at some pull quotes on the subject of the first theme: What to believe about the poor, and by extension, how to speak about the poor.

    There exists a preferential option for the poor:

    “[W]e can also speak theologically of a preferential option on the part of God for the poor…. This “preference” never indicates exclusivity or discrimination towards other groups, which would be impossible for God. It is meant to emphasize God’s actions, which are moved by compassion toward the poverty and weakness of all humanity. Wanting to inaugurate a kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity, God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.”

    What we legally possess does not belong just to ourselves (the principle of the universal destination of goods):

    “‘In their use of things people should regard the external goods they lawfully possess as not just their own but common to others as well, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as themselves. Therefore, everyone has the right to possess a sufficient amount of the earth’s goods for themselves and their family… Persons in extreme necessity are entitled to take what they need from the riches of others… By its nature, private property has a social dimension that is based on the law of the common destination of earthly goods. Whenever the social aspect is forgotten, ownership can often become the object of greed and a source of serious disorder.’ This conviction was reiterated by Saint Paul VI in his Encyclical Populorum Progressio. There we read that no one can feel authorized to ‘appropriate surplus goods solely for his [or her] own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life.’”

    People are not problems, but brothers and sisters:

    [Pope Francis] said: “Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees [and by extension, ‘all those living in the existential peripheries’] do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved.”

    We must believe in the dignity of every human person, and feel in response to the knowledge that some are denied that dignity:

    “There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything. Nevertheless, the dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow, and the extreme poverty of all those to whom this dignity is denied should constantly weigh upon our consciences.”

    Love everyone, enemies included:

    “Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies…. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.”

    A major theme is that we must not think of the well-off as superior to the poor in any way.

    Do not regard the poor paternistically, but as fellow human beings equally possessed of dignity and autonomy, and capable of creativity and self-determination—as well as teaching the not-poor:

    “[C]onsider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others. This means that such communities have the right to embrace the Gospel and to celebrate and communicate their faith in accord with the values present within their own cultures. Their experience of poverty gives them the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see; for this reason, society needs to listen to them.”

    In fact hearing poor is a way of hearing Jesus. Respecting the poor means believing they have something to offer the rest of society, not just that society has something to help them:

    “The same Jesus who tells us, “The poor you will always have with you” (Mt26:11), also promises the disciples: “I am with you always” (Mt 28:20). We likewise think of his saying: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). This is not a matter of mere human kindness but a revelation: contact with those who are lowly and powerless is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord of history. In the poor, he continues to speak to us.”

    Another quote on similar lines:

    “[T]he poorest are not only objects of our compassion, but teachers of the Gospel. It is not a question of ‘bringing’ God to them, but of encountering him among them. All of these examples teach us that serving the poor is not a gesture to be made ‘from above,’ but an encounter between equals, where Christ is revealed and adored.”

    And again, reminding us that people develop behaviors that are adaptive to their circumstances, and to see this adaptation we need to understand the circumstances:

    “Growing up in precarious circumstances, learning to survive in the most adverse conditions, trusting in God with the assurance that no one else takes them seriously, and helping one another in the darkest moments, the poor have learned many things that they keep hidden in their hearts. Those of us who have not had similar experiences of living this way certainly have much to gain from the source of wisdom that is the experience of the poor. Only by relating our complaints to their sufferings and privations can we experience a reproof that can challenge us to simplify our lives.”

    There is no one in need of whom we can say “They do not deserve our help”:

    “[Other Scripture] texts call for respect — if not also love — even for one’s enemy: ‘When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free” (Ex 23:4-5). Here the intrinsic value of respect for others is expressly stated: anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance.’”

    The idea of “the poor” actually has broad application, because one person may be poor in one area of life but rich in another.

    “In fact, there are many forms of poverty: the poverty of those who lack material means of subsistence, the poverty of those who are socially marginalized and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities, moral and spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, the poverty of those who find themselves in a condition of personal or social weakness or fragility, the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom.”

    This last really struck me: moral and spiritual poverty is a condition that can and often does coexist with material riches, good health, and social status.

    Which means that we must still maintain a certain concern for people who appear to have all social and economic advantages, yet are morally stunted; those who seem incapable of spiritual growth or responding to their many blessings with any flowering of virtue are also poor, in a way, and deserve our consideration as God’s poor in that dimension.

    This might be the toughest lesson to learn of all. Can we really believe in the common humanity we share with, well, the “worst” people, the ones with no regard for others? Believe that they deserve help? It’s hard to do but also hard to deny that it’s the logical conclusion here.

    —

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