7 Quick takes: Lessons in Trust

--- 1 ---

This semester, I am taking three philosophy classes, one honors humanities class, and the capstone honors class, which is basically a seminar about memory. Needless to say, I have a lot of reading to do. This takes up most of my time.

--- 2 ---

When I'm not doing my homework (or, let's face it, playing on the internet) I am doing one of either two things. One is participating in study sessions for comprehensive exams, which are at the beginning of March and can cover anything and everything we've learned.

--- 3 ---

The other is job hunting. Kevin and I are probably both going to get jobs for next year, although he may get an MA in theology first, depending on funding. We are very much hoping to stay in the area, and I have a good solid lead on a job. (Prayers or fingers crossed or well wishes or whatever your expression of choice would be greatly appreciated.)

--- 4 ---

I can't find it in my heart to stress out about any of these things. For a long time now, I've been an untrusting person. When I started to pray for trust, I was handed all these opportunities to develop my trust: about to enter the workaday world without a job, engaged to someone else without a job, preparing for comps without the greatest foundation due to having taken some courses out of order, and so on. In any previous semester, I would be a basket case.

--- 5 ---

A few months ago, though, I was talking to a friend, and I said, "Well, I guess this is God teaching me to trust Him." It was out of my mouth before I even knew I was going to say it. As my friend said, "Wow, that's a good way to look at it," I was thinking Wow, yeah, that is a good way to look at it!

--- 6 ---

So far, this seems to be working. When I am calm, I am better able to study for comps. I have a good lead on a job that works very well with my long-term plans, which basically fell into my lap. (I'm not announcing it publicly in case things fall through last minute.) Many people were concerned that being so trusting would mean nothing got done, but so far this hasn't happened. A priest I know said in his homily on Wednesday that there's a fine line between Pelagianism and quietism, and I think this is equally true here.

--- 7 ---

I have found where I want to be on that continuum. Much as Descartes embarked on a project of radical doubt, I'm embarking on a semester of radical trust. We'll see where the road takes me this year, but I have no doubt that it's in God's hands and that He will provide.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Budgeting

I am trying to set a budget and stick to it. It's rather difficult, because since I work on an hourly basis, my pay isn't constant from week to week. I also get paid on the 10th and 25th of every month, which offends my sense of order because I can't just have the two categories of the first and second halves of each month.

This first paycheck, which I just got, is also unusual because it includes my pay for tutor training--eight hours I won't usually have.

Also, my two different jobs pay different amounts! It all gets rather confusing.

To add to all that, I have four bank accounts. I have a checking and a savings account from my mother's bank, which I have had since the beginning of college. Last year, when I was going abroad, I got a checking account and a savings account from Bank of America, since they have better terms for people going abroad. I also have a credit card from them.

Here is what I'm thinking as a budget. Obviously, once I graduate and have to pay rent and utilities, this will all have to be reworked.

10%: charity
15%: general spending
15%: short term savings
60%: long term savings

I have got a budgeting app called EEBA. The app doesn't seem to like a flexible income very well, but that's ok. We'll see how it goes. Since this paycheck is unusual, I'll just track my spending for the next two weeks and see what I spend. Then I'll input my actual numbers from the next paycheck and see how it goes. If anyone thinks another app is better than EEBA, let me know!

Happy 4th?

I have a rather complicated identity when it comes to nationality. I have dual citizenship: US and Canadian. I spent three of the first eight years of my life in two different foreign countries: Canada and Germany. I have never had any other passport than a US one, and I've had four passports.

As a child, I was constantly called un-American by my friends. Some of their reasons were completely trivial (I didn't like cheeseburgers when I was younger) and some were more substantial (I refused--and still do--to say the Pledge of Allegiance). From the ages of, oh, nine to eleven, I identified more with the Canadian side of me. It's easier to agree that no, you aren't really American than it is to fight back. Then we moved back to Germany, and I became an American again. If you normally live in America, and you have an American passport, you count as American to the Germans.

As I have grown older, I have become more and more ok with the idea of being an American. And rightly, I think, because I *am* an American. There are many ways of being an American, and everyone who has American citizenship is an American. Two years ago, a friend said, of my opinion on a certain political matter, "Oh, you're just saying that because you're Canadian." I told him in no uncertain terms that I was 100% an American citizen and had every bit as much right as he did to have political views that differed from his and my opinions deserved exactly as much respect as his did, and then I walked out. No one has ever said anything like that to me since. For a while, I was secure and happy in my American-ness.

But now, I'm feeling conflicted again. I am willing to be an American, I want to be an American, but I am a Catholic first. And it's looking more and more like America doesn't want Catholics to be Americans. I can't support killing children with drones, a government that seems set on destroying the family, and a disturbing lack of religious freedom and conscience clauses. If being an American and being a Catholic aren't compatible, or if they soon won't be, then what? (Certainly Canadian citizenship won't help me here!)

To this day, I have never regretted not saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But over the past few weeks, I have become even more thankful that something held me back from it as an eight year old. The trend is a disturbing one, and unless things change, this will not be an America I want to be pledged to.

Orthodoxy and heterodoxy: 7 quick takes, vol 8

1. For some reason, questions about heresy keep popping up all over the place recently. And they all seem to lead me to the same thoughts.

2. It all started with reading the book, The Name of the Rose, which a good friend recommended and lent to me. The book is set during the Franciscan controversy, about whether Jesus had things, and whether Christians should have things, or whether they were required to live in poverty, and what that all meant anyway. One of the characters in the book made the point that the majority of people who get caught up in heretical movements are not trying to be heretics. An inspiring preacher comes along who talks about dedicating your life to Christ, so you follow him. And then it turns out his theology is all flawed and so he and you are both heretics, but you are just a medieval farmer, so you had no idea about theology anyway! You're a Cathar, because that's who came by, not because you're actually deeply committed to Catharism. I thought this idea was super interesting, and probably true.

3. Then, in my Medieval Mindset class, we talked about the same time period. My teacher advanced the theory that St. Francis was canonized so quickly because the Pope was worried that people would follow St. Francis rather than him, and so he canonized him to tie the St. Francis followers into the Roman Catholic Church. Now, to me, this sounds a little crazy, especially if you think that canonizations are divinely inspired. But what was very interesting was how much some heresies overlap with other, orthodox, traditions. The line between heresy and orthodoxy is so very thin in some places!

4. In my theater class, we discussed and saw the play Daniel Stein. It's based on a book which was originally in Russian, which is loosely based on a real person. Anyway, the story is of a Jewish man who works as a translator for the Gestapo in WWII. After he uses his inside knowledge to help a Jewish ghetto, he has to flee. He hides with Catholic nuns, becomes Catholic, and then a Catholic priest. He goes to Israel to try to found a community like the original church in the first century, before Judaism and Catholicism became so different from each other. However, he gets into all sorts of trouble with the church, because part of what he does is reject Church doctrines (like the Trinity) that were solidified in later centuries. These conflicts never get really straightened out because Daniel dies in a car accident. Nevertheless, it's interesting to me that what got Daniel into trouble was not so much his beliefs as his lack of beliefs.

5. A side note to a paper I am writing is the heresy of Joachim von Fiore. He wrote a book attacking Peter Lombard and his doctrine of the Trinity. Then he sent his book to the pope, to get an opinion on the orthodoxy of his opinions so he could know if they were in line with Church teaching. And, too bad for him, the Fourth Lateran Council condemned him and his book, and said that Peter Lombard was correct. It did praise Peter Lombard, though, for checking.

6. Yesterday, a friend of mine and I were discussing religion and the Church. (This is the same friend who recommended The Name of the Rose. He and Kevin and I have some awesome deep discussions. He also might be reading this, so hi!) Anyway, he started to ask a question, prefacing it with the two caveats that one, he hoped this wasn't offensive and he didn't mean it offensively, and two, he knew it might be hard for me to answer this question objectively, so I was prepared for some tricky theology question or something. But the question was, aren't there some popes and bishops throughout history who have done some really evil things? To which, of course, the answer is yes by any moral standard. My father likes to say that given the people who have led the Church in the past, the fact that she still exists is a testament to her divine guidance!

7. But what it all comes down to, I think, is authority. Does the Church have authority, or not? If the Church has authority and is inspired by the Holy Spirit, then you follow her. If not, you don't. The line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy is fine, but the line is there. To a regular person, it's so hard to sort out. For God, it's easy. I would hate to be a Protestant and have to figure everything out by myself. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have the Church to guide me in my theology, especially in my metaphysics.

3/50

I have already done three of the things on my summer fun list! This is what I have done so far:

1. Read The Name of the Rose. (Spoiler-free review coming up!) I thought this book was fascinating, for sure. It was recommended to me by a dear friend who I have had many a philosophical and theological discussion with. The basic setup is a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. The detective is a monk who is interested in the philosophy of Francis Bacon and reasons much like Sherlock Holmes. At times, the prose got very thick and I felt like I was wading rather than reading, but I did enjoy reading this book anyway. I don't think there are any characters I agreed with completely, but there are some very interesting threads of thought running through the book. The two threads I found most interesting were the questions about heresy and the question of whether books and knowledge should be restricted and/or censored.

9. Try gluten-free beer. I found gluten-free beer at the health food store across the street, so I thought I would try it. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't terrible. I would say it tasted like a standard American beer. Or maybe the Americans I know don't drink the standard American beer. Anyway, it was not tooo expensive (1,19E for a bottle) and I will be keeping it in mind for things like cookouts where beer is far and away the most appropriate drink.

25. Go to the Augustiner Museum. This is an awesome museum if you like medieval local art. It had lots of stained-glass windows and statues that were taken out of the cathedral at some point.

I doubt I can keep this rate of completion up, but we will see! Every time I post one of these updates, I'll update the original list with the date I completed each thing.

Why I stopped reading body-positive websites

As someone who loves to sew, I find myself falling into the world of fashion at times. I don't usually read things that are about designers specifically or anything like that, but one non-sewing related area I used to find myself reading was websites about positive self image and loving the body you've got.

Some of these blogs I then started reading more regularly. They were written by intelligent and funny women (always women). Then I realized that they were doing more harm than good, and perpetuating the lies of our culture. These women, clearly all well-intentioned, were accepting the framework society gives them and trying to feel good, and help others feel good, inside of the framework.

As a Catholic and an Aristotelian/Thomist, though, I think this framework is based on a lie.

First, while trying to talk about beauty, they strip the word of all meaning. Beauty is a wonderful thing, and a necessary thing, but it comes in so many more shapes and sizes than what our culture tells us. Body image blogs try to step outside this framework by saying that everyone is beautiful, but that's a mistake too. First of all, saying that everyone is beautiful is like saying that everyone is smart. You water down the original word until it doesn't mean anything any more, so it can be applied to everyone. But those are words that are used to pick out things that are more special than the others. If we all looked like supermodels, we would find another criterion to use to call people beautiful. Being beautiful can, and should, be used to refer to more than just blond-haired blue-eyed bathing beauties, but if we expand it so everything and anything is beautiful, it loses all meaning. Which brings me to my second point.

It doesn't matter if we're beautiful. Our value does not come from our beauty--our beauty comes from our value. Of course, all other things being equal, being more beautiful is better, because it is one step closer to perfection, but there are other, more important ways, to improve yourself. Would you rather spend time with someone who spent their days getting waxed, trimmed, shaven, colored, dyed, and primped, or someone who spent their days reading or helping others? Me too. Of course there's nothing wrong with using some tools to make yourself more beautiful, but moderation is lacking in so much of it these days. I read the comment thread to a blog giveaway where to enter to win a gift card, you had to complete the sentence "I feel most confident when..." Almost all the entrants were woman, and almost all the entries talked about clothes, hair, or shoes. This is a pretty sad state of affairs, people, and I think this overemphasis on beauty is to blame. We need to focus more on inherent human dignity and less on beauty. Because really, some people aren't beautiful. They don't need to hear "Oh, if you buy all this stuff and spend four hours a day, covering up what you really look like, then you will be beautiful." They don't need to hear, "You're beautiful the way you are" because they know that that is based on a redefinition of beautiful and does not mean what it means for other people. What they need to hear is love for them as a person, not for them as a body which could be attractive if it were stuffed full of silicones and painted over with chemicals.

Thirdly, and most importantly, I am convinced that the phrase "love your body" itself is harmful. It encourages a Cartesian mindset where you are not your body, and your body is not you. This is a trap I find myself falling into all the time: My body prevents me from running more than ten miles a week. My body prevents me from eating noodles. My body hates me. And I hate it. But this is all wrong, and this, I am convinced, is why we have such a body image problem. You are your soul AND your body. Your body is a part of you. Life is full of enough necessary divisions and distinctions. Why let society and bad philosophy divide us in two, and turn us against our very selves?

At this point, I am often challenged by someone to give my own fix, then, if I know so much about it. So I will.

Stop worrying about it.

Be healthy, because that is part of basic self-care. I'm not giving you license to eat whatever you want and never exercise. Be sensible and healthy, but just stop worrying about how your body measures up, either to others or to some societal standard. It really doesn't matter, because this is the body you were born in, and this is the only one you get. It can do what it can do, it looks like what it looks like, and that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Stop worrying. There are more important things to worry about.

Readjusting thinking

So I spent the last week rather frustrated, because I feel like this semester is a bit of an academic waste. Two of my four classes have almost zero work involved, and the other two are not super challenging either, although I have high hopes that that will change. I was getting cranky about this, and wondering if it was a bad decision to come to Germany.

Then I had a conversation with my father, who managed to cheer me up and give me a new way to think about this semester. He said that I should look at this semester as an opportunity to learn a lot about something I want to learn about. Rather than being frustrated that I'm not learning a huge amount in class, I can use my extra free time to learn a lot outside of class!

Since hearing that, I have been so much more cheerful. It makes perfect sense, and yet I never thought of it! I don't want to spread myself out too thin, so I picked two goals for this semester, besides the inevitable improvement of my German skills. Here is what the goals are:

Work on my Greek. A lot. And hopefully improve it substantially. I have been reading the New Testament with Kevin, but I am also going to get a copy of the Gorgias and read that, since I'm taking a grad class on it next semester.

Get my writing sample for grad school in order. I need to pick a paper I already wrote and lengthen, expand, and polish it. I hope I won't need to write a whole new one.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life!

μετὰ λόγου

So I was thinking about nothing yesterday and I think I had an insight. Or possibly I just realized something that everyone else already knew.

Who are the three groups of people who are most likely to be killed or institutionalized in modern society? The answer, I think, is the unborn, the very old, and the mentally ill. What is one factor which is common to all of these groups?

A large percentage of their members can't speak, either properly or at all.

My theory is that we subconsciously have a hard time recognizing people with whom we can't communicate as human. On a large-scale level, we see people who cannot speak at all, like the unborn, as not human. On a smaller scale, we see people who have lost the ability to talk, or who never figured it out right, or even who speak a different language, as less human than us.

Even Aristotle might agree with this...sort of. He says that the proper function of man (the thing that man can do that other animals can't) is to act "in conformity with rational principle." (For those who care deeply: Nichomachean Ethics, 1098a, whatever translation is on the Perseus project.) What is the phrase "in conformity with rational principle" in Greek? It's the title of this post, μετὰ λόγου.  Now logos, as everyone has probably been told seventy times at least, is a complicated word. It can mean rational principle, but it can also mean speech or word. For Aristotle and all the ancient Greeks, the very concept of rationality is tied up with language!

Having said that, I don't know what the next thing to say is. I mean, clearly, as a Catholic, I think people who can't speak are people too. People who can't think are also people too. So I don't know that I have a point here, so much as an observation. Nevertheless, I would be interested to hear people's thoughts. First of all, am I missing a category of people who tends to be killed or locked away that can speak? Is not being able to speak is the reason, or is it something else? (The obvious one that comes to my mind is the weak, but I think--and correct me if I'm wrong on this too--that the physically weak are not discriminated against in the same way the mentally weak are.)  Any other thoughts, musings, observations of your own? Does some this suggest some change to public policy? Should it? What about our private behavior? I really have no idea what the answers to any of these questions are. So chime in with your own thoughts!