January 11, 2010
When did this begin? When did I become a Catholic?
I started reading a book on major themes in literary theory this evening, and (naturally) the first chapter detailed the topic of “beginning” in literary criticism. The opening lines of Dante’s The Divine Comedy were among the examples treated in the chapter. These lines read: “Midway in the journey of our life I find myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.” The book’s commentary describes this beginning as a “middling”–a beginning in the middle of life, in the middle of a dark wood–suggesting that Dante’s opening communicates that, “there are no absolute beginnings–only strange original middles. No journey, no life ever really begins: all have in some sense already begun before they begin” (3).
I thought of my faith when I read these lines. I think the beginning of my faith was a middling.
Some people teach that Christian faith begins in baptism. (This idea of beginning seems particularly fitting for consideration, as it is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord today!) They might say that when I was baptized a Catholic by my parents as an infant, something about my existence changed in that moment. I became a Christian. Or, they might say that in baptism my parents established the context that would determine my faith in the the future. Baptism was the beginning of what would unfold in me later in life.
Others cite a one-time proclamation of Christian faith as the definitive beginning. When one accepts Christ as his/her Lord and Savior from sin, he/she becomes a Christian. Many people tells stories of this moment when they knew something in them changed. They became Christians.
But I think my faith began with a middling more like the one described in this textbook of mine: “There are no absolute beginnings–only strange original middles. No journey, no life ever really begins: all have in some sense already begun before they begin.” I cannot tell the story of how my Catholic faith began, so much as I can look back at the story of my faith and realize that it began before the moment that I recognized it. When I try to pin down a moment, I always identity some precursor–some prior person or event or moment or memory full of grace and faith and god–one that complicates any notion I have of “beginning.” Every “beginning” I consider becomes more like a “middling.”
I cannot tell of my faith’s beginning, only that it began. And the story continues.
[This entry is cross-posted on CTA's Young Adult Catholic Blog]
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/traerscott/3167629678/
January 10, 2010
Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, a regular op-ed contributor to the New York Times, has dedicated his influence to fighting against women’s oppression across the world. Most recently, with this wife Sheryl WuDunn, he released the popular book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf, September 2009).
Yesterday in the New York Times his op-ed was titled, “Religion and Women,” so naturally I was eager to read. And I really appreciated many things about this piece. It highlighted a multiply of oppressions against women, both some regularly witnessed and experienced by women in the US, and some more commonly associated with other parts of the world. He also illustrated how widespread these problems are in relation to religion–many types of religion throughout history and across the globe.
Most of all, I appreciated how Kristof demonstrated the complex relationship between gender and religion. Keep reading →
December 24, 2009
In an excerpt from her recently published diaries, Dorothy Day recalled a friend who, exactly 9 months before Christmas day, celebrated the Annunciation by getting on his knees, leaning over, and kissing the ground. This is the day that God entered Mary’s womb, he would exclaim. He delighted in the fact that Christ Christened the earth with divine incarnation on that day. With that day, the earth became sacred in the most tangible, significant event of Christian history.
While Christians think of the Annunciation and Christmas as distinct, Day’s memory of the Annunciation is a challenging Christmas memory for me. I so often think of Christmas day as the annual celebration of the Incarnation. However, this man’s celebration of the Annunciation challenges me to think of the Incarnation of God in the world as something that occurred not in a single day like Christmas, but rather, through an unfolding process–quite literally, though the season of Mary’s pregnancy.
And, really, the Incarnation did not reach its pinnacle with the birth of Christ in a manger. The Incarnation continued throughout Jesus’ childhood, adult life, crucifixion, and resurrection. And I think the Incarnation, the unfolding of the divine in temporal life, it continues today. It is my regular witness of it in ordinary life that compels me to believe this paradoxical religious claim with such devotion.
What if I lived each day like it was Christmas–the celebration of divine Incarnation in this broken, messed up world? I don’t mean to pose this question in some sort of sappy Coca-cola Christmas commercial kind of way. I mean it. What if I lived with the type of reverence for the goodness in this world that would compel me to kneel down and kiss the dirt? What if I took the time to recognize the continuous unfolding of the Incarnation like that?
Come to think of it, what if I simply lived Christmas day–one day a year–like that? Perhaps that’s a start to a new way of living out the whole year.
December 19, 2009
Socrates often called himself a “mino,” a midwife; it was one of his favorite metaphors for the teacher. He believed that teaching was not a matter of bestowing information upon a student, but rather coaching one through the process of giving birth to the knowledge that is already within oneself. I think there is something to this pedagogy. Even when one encounters “new” information, real learning and radical comprehension requires that one situate it within the complications of his/her greater intellectual framework. Surely, that is an active and arduous process.
I feel as if I have been in labor for the past four months, trying earnestly to birth the nascent knowledge of my time at Harvard Divinity School. There have been times in the last few weeks when I have reached out desperately for the hand of a partner, my mind amid intellectual exhaustion, my fingers tired from pushing, pushing the keys of this tiny white keyboard.
Keep reading →
November 21, 2009
Scruples. It is a silly-sounding world, and it describes what is possibly one of the most influential forces in Christian history.
Scruples literally means “an uneasy feeling arising from conscience or principle that tends to hinder action,” or “a doubt or hesitation as to what is morally right in a certain situation.” In the context of religion, where I have most commonly encountered the the term, scruples describes the plaguing skepticism surrounding one’s eternal salvation, particularly as it relates to moral works. Martin Luther, for instance, is said to have suffered from from a bad case of the scruples. His struggle with scruples has been cited as a major impetus for some of the views that eventually led to the Protestant Reformation: because he was plagued by his perpetual inability to perfectly execute Christian moral teachings, he constantly worried that his moral imperfection would prevent him from attaining eternal salvation. Tortured by these scruples–this belief that one can never be assured of their salvation through moral works–Luther (along with a chorus of other Protestant Reformers) asserted that we are “justified” or “saved” by faith alone. (I must qualify that this is a very simple explanation for a really complicated moment in Christian history, but I hope you get my drift for the sake of my present aim).
You see, I have scruples. A different kind of scruples than Luther suffered from, however. I am currently suffering from a mean case of the academic scruples. Keep reading →
When did this begin? When did I become a Catholic?
