Matching Tracksuits

The use of temptations. It depends on the relative strength of the soul and of time. To go on for a long time contemplating the possibility of doing evil without doing it effects a kind of transubstantiation. If we resist with merely finite energy, this energy is exhausted after a certain time, and when it is exhausted, we give in. If we remain motionless and attentive, it is the temptation which is exhausted — and we acquire the energy raised to a higher degree.

For a little boy, temptation is a simple thing; for a little boy who can move about under his own volition, it’s a simple thing that’s simply everywhere. Closets hold treasures. Desks sit over snaking cables and wires.

Cabinets hold bags of flour, sugar, and other mysteries. Desk cabinets conceal pencils, markers, and other goodies. 

The Boy doesn’t resist temptation, reaching his pudgy fingers toward dangers and toys alike.

But he’s at that lucky point in life when temptation is all about learning, and vice versa.

Some Christians explain it with the doctrine of Original Sin. Muslims reject the notion of an inherently sinful nature in humanity but believe that pride (an unwillingness to submit) is humanity’s chief sin (ReligionFacts.com). Judaism seems to have no established doctrine on the matter, but the Jewish experience of the twentieth century — indeed, in most centuries — probably led many to believe in the tendency of humanity toward evil. Through countless rebirths, Buddhism  teaches, humans are to overcome a seemingly natural tendency toward attachment. Hinduism teaches that there is a reality beyond the everyday — the Brahman — that humans can achieve by changing not only their view but also their behavior, suggesting that the original state is an inferior state. Secularists use the term “human nature” to explain the simple fact that all religions recognize: the natural movement of the will tends to be downward.

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analagous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception (Gravity and Grace, 45).

Yet life is generally about improvement. We want to become better people We want the “I” of today to be somehow more elevated than the “I” of yesterday and not quite so much as the “I” of tomorrow will be. Yet all this movement is relative to a standard. If we’re saying “better” and “worse,” it’s in relation to something. And even though we could say, “Well, yes: that ‘something’ is our former self,” that’s still not quite satisfying. We seem to have the desire to move toward an ultimate goal. It’s always about rising above the natural state we find ourselves in, and more often than not, it’s about detachment. The things that drag us down are things that we can leave behind, religions teach us, and the first step to rising is to make ourselves lighter. Gravity can pulls down harder on more mass; grace works to remove those weights and pull us upward.

While it sounds somewhat more Eastern — more Buddhist or Hindu than Christian — than Fr. Robert Barron, in Catholicism, points out that there is an element of detachment in Jesus’s most famous teachings, the Beatitudes, specifically the four, seemingly negatively framed Beatitudes. Barron begins by reminding us that Thomas Aquinas said there were four substitutes for God: “wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. Sensing the void within, we attempt to fill it up with some combination of these four things, but only by emptying out the self in love can we make the space for God to fill us” (43). The negative Beatitudes, then, are formulas for this emptying, and they form a perfect parallel with Aquinas’s four substitutes.

1. Wealth: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Barron suggests a slight reformulation: “how blessed are you if you are not attached to material things, if you have not placed the goods that wealth can buy at the center of your concern.”
2. Pleasure: Another negatively framed Beatitude becomes surprisingly apt for our culture when we reformulate it as Barron does: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” becomes “how blessed […] you are if you are not addicted to good feelings.” It’s easy, Barron says, to see this addition to good feeling in today’s society with its “prevalence of psychotropic drugs, gluttonous habits of consumption, and pronography” (44).
3. Power: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” Barron reforms this into, “How lucky you are if you are not attached to the finite good of worldly power” (44). We might be tempted to think this applies only to those with political power, but we all — even children —  have some degree of power and control over someone in the world.
4. Honor: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The polar opposite of honor is persecution, and while honor is good, “when love of honor becomes the center of one’s concern, it, like any other finite good, becomes a source of suffering” (45).

This is what Lent is all about: giving up some of the distractions and attachments that tend to pull us downward (often material objects) while paying special attention to the things that lift us up (often some form of giving). It’s a sacrifice of the things for which we often sacrifice everything, our little mini-idols that occupy unhealthy proportions of our thoughts — forty days of detachment.

opinion has an effect

Humility is the great sin of the modern age. Whether it’s “I’m okay; you’re okay” or “I’m the king of the world,” humility is on the other end of that spectrum. Many in the secular world find the notions of Christianity — Catholicism in particular — about the true, fallen nature of humanity to be distasteful because it offends the relatively modern sense of the inherent goodness in humanity. I think it probably has more to do with the humiliation of humility than it does with supposed dignity and inherent moral goodness. This is, of course, not to say that all individuals in today’s culture lack humility — just the prominent ones, the ones we as a society generally look up to.

Humility has as its object to eliminate that which is imaginary in spiritual progress. There is no harm in thinking ourselves far less advanced than we are: the effect of the light is in no way decreased thereby, for its source is not in opinion. There is great harm in thinking ourselves more advanced, because then opinion has an effect.

Having too positive an opinion of ourselves distracts us from the goal almost all religions set before us: the purification of our will. It not only distracts us; it deceives us.

Illusions about the things of this world do not concern their existence, but their value.

Keeping a proper perspective about the value of the things around us — the everyday things in our lives, the this and that which are so much more than merely this and that — is probably made both easier and more difficult by the simple fact of having a family. Children and a spouse create routine, and routine risks monotony.

Therein lies the danger.

Saturday morning — breakfast, Skyping with Dziadek and Babcia, taking L to ballet, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, planning for the next week of school, correcting this or that assignment. This mix of truly the meaningful with the truly mundane risks making it all seem mundane.

Therein lines the illusion.

Weil is speaking the illusion that makes actions of inherent evil seem good in some circumstances, but the reverse is equally likely, and probably equally dangerous.

As a teacher, I think often about authority and legitimacy, and the simple fact that if I lack one, I lack the other. The problem with legitimacy, though, is that many of my students come with different definitions of what legitimacy looks like. I might just have two strikes against me from the beginning — two, or more. When our differing definitions collide, someone often ends up losing. Win-win is a lovely idea, but sometimes, it’s just not practical. Sometimes, the option seems taken before the situation even reaches a full head.

When I read Weil’s suggestion that authority without legitimacy is a nightmare, I realize that, from time to time, my classroom must be a nightmare for these students. It’s a difficult thought to accept.

Technically speaking, the Sundays within the Lenten season are not fast days; Sundays, the Church teaches, are always feast days. Which means that theoretically, all the things one gives up for Lent are fair game. “Isn’t that cheating?” I’m tempted to ask.

After all, I really didn’t sacrifice anything of real value — that’s sort of the purpose of Lent, that realization. What’s in my life that has any value remains: family. Cigars? Alcohol? Coffee? Sweets? These things are all relatively meaningless in the larger picture — again, what Lent helps us focus on.

It’s not like I’m only just barely refraining from desperately grabbing at this or that. Sure, the things I give up for Lent give me a certain amount of pleasure, but they come with a price. Cigars, no matter how infrequently enjoyed, are in no way healthy. Alcohol is easily enough abused and doesn’t add much to life other than some relaxation and pleasure. Sweets? No problem: it’s not really surrender if you hardly ever do it. Coffee? Well, I thought in giving up coffee for the first time this year I might actually be sacrificing something I would really notice, and believe me, that first day without caffeine, I noticed it.

But after that first day, it was no problem at all. (A small admission: I did drink coffee today. Couldn’t resist.)

Still, when taking into account all the things I could lose, voluntarily or not, I think most all Lenten sacrifices are fairly insignificant — again, a realization that gets at the heart of the whole point of Lent.