One of Us

This was one of the  morning intercessions listed in Magnificat today:

For those who are rich in the gifts of the heart,

- that they may find blessing by loving those who are unlovable and unloved.

I was struck by the notion of being "rich in the gifts of the heart." What does that mean, exactly? When I was younger, I imagined that I was rich in this way, but I was mistaken about what the gifts of the heart really are. I fancied myself someone who had a limitless capacity to love, especially when it came to the men who interested me, men who tended to be sad, troubled, angry, addicted, oddballs or misfits, or some combination thereof.  Like many other women, I convinced myself that these particular men needed me in particular --  needed my own peculiar "gifts of the heart." I believed I had some sort of solace to offer in my love, something remedial, therapeutic, even redemptive; I even went so far as to believe that my ability to love gave me some sort of power.  I pictured myself wading out into deep waters, saving troubled men with the power of my love, men who would, in gratitude, love me forever in return. Strangely, that never happened.

Nonetheless these men were by no means entirely unlovable, just lonely (though a friend of mine used to caution that lonely guys were lonely for a reason). Still, they were intelligent, and relatively clean. When I ask myself now who is truly unlovable, a parade of images comes rushing into my mind: mentally-ill homeless men and women whom I saw on the subway or the street over many years; barefoot men and women whose feet were toughened and blackened with dirt, or who had improvised plastic grocery bags for shoes; men and women with wild hair and bulging eyes; men and women who stank so badly that they could clear a subway car; men and women I would shrink from. It would take someone rich in the gifts of the heart indeed to love these men and women, these brothers and sisters, these children of the Father. I was not that rich.

Our son Jude, who is coming soon, is a "waiting child." That is, he is in danger of being forgotten and unloved, and he might even be considered unlovable by some, because he has a birth defect.  But there are parents far richer in the gifts of the heart than I could ever be -- parents like self-professed Jesus-lovin' Air Force wife Sonia.

When I read the petitions in Magnificat today, what came to my mind, in addition to homeless men and women, was the cult-classic horror film Freaks. Freaks was made in 1932, before the Hays code began to be strictly enforced in Hollywood, and I'm quite sure it could never get made even today -- perhaps especially not today. It's the story of a circus troupe -- compellingly acted by a cast of actual sideshow performers with a variety of disabilities and deformities -- and its moral is that these "freaks" are more loving, more human, than the attractive, able-bodied strong-man and trapeze artist who are having an affair, and who plot to destroy their disabled colleagues. "One of us" is the motto of the freaks, who accept the trapeze artist as one of their own, in spite of the fact that she is an outsider who knows nothing of their own culture of mutual aid and kindness and who seeks to exploit it (this motto comes again at the end of the film with a chilling twist -- if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it).

"One of Us" is also the name of a song by the little-known American composer Theodore Chanler, the last number in a song cycle called The Children, in which Chanler set poems by, of all people, Leonard Feeney, S.J.  I could not find any Youtube videos of this song, but here is the text:

 

Husbands and wives!

Are we not your little lives?

Fathers and mothers!

Who but we will be your others?

Why do you fear us, freeze us out of your heart?

One of us was Jesus;

He played our part,

In His little manger,

Smiling in His smallness,

To protect us from the danger

Of nothing-at-all-ness.

One of us was God.

Has this not been told abroad,

To some by song,

To some by star?

Then when will we be known

For what we are? 

I have heard this song performed several times by my friend and colleague Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, a gorgeous soprano and a scholar of music and disability studies. Fr. Feeney, who must have written the poem in the 1940s, was most likely referring to contraception, but Stephanie has noted that it also speaks eloquently to the question of who has the right to live. 

Since we can all accept that everyone has the right to live -- even the most disabled, the most deformed, the most likely to suffer, the most likely to cause suffering, the most likely to invoke horror, the most likely to die -- may we all become rich in the gifts of the heart. These gifts, like all of what Amy Welborn calls "gifts 'n talents," must be disciplined, and this is the hard thing. Love should be prodigious rather than prodigal. We must not be reckless in love; we must learn to love in the right way, that is, to love steadily rather than wildly, and with quiet force rather than frenzied ebb-and-flow. If everyone has the right to live, then we must not just accept that right in theory; we must somehow find a way to love everyone, even the unloved and the unlovable. I'm pretty sure that to do so is what differentiates Christians from pagans. 

As Father Zossima says in The Brothers Karamazov:

Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. 

Love is a Teacher, But a Hard One to Obtain

Kyle Cupp has written a moving post about the brief life of his daughter Vivian. When I read it, it seemed to me to illustrate perfectly the quote from The Brothers Karamazov that prefaces this blog.

The Only Word for Love is Everybody's Name

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.  (Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov)

It's hard to argue against the position of Dosoevsky's saintly Father Zosima, and yet this raises the question: what does it mean, then, to be able to love?

I've noticed that the orthodox Catholic circles I began traveling in since my reversion in 2002 provide, among other things, a harbor for people who seem not to believe that they are required to fulfill the great commandment to love one another, and much less that to love their enemies.  To be clear, I've never heard anyone say that he thinks he is exempt from this command, but, just as the progressive church waters down some of the more difficult teachings of Christ, so does the orthodox one -- or at least, in my experience, so do many of its professed adherents -- water down this one, which is no less difficult, and perhaps infinitely more so.  For example, during the brief period when I dated a moderately-well-known Catholic journalist, I suggested that he pray for abortionists and for those who promote abortion.  He replied, with disarming honestly, that the thought had never occurred to him.

Indeed, I have often heard orthodox Catholics, when speaking of their responsibilities vis-à-vis other people (not forgetting, of course, that other famous definition of hell -- that it is, itself, other people) use the word "charity" in place of the more powerful, intimate "love."  But even in the Douay-Rheims Bible, favorite translation of the orthodox Catholic, Our Lord's commandment is "Love one another."

But my point is not to scold; I'll leave that to others who have far more right to it than I do.  My point is to ask the question again:  what does it mean to be able to love?  And how does one do it?

I've been reading some of the unpublished writings of English mystic Caryll Houselander, and in one diary from the 1930s, she writes:

Nothing helps me more to love other people than doing penance for them.  If it is an individual for whom I have any bitterness it is a sure cure, but since I took to praying and offering penance daily for all sinners I have found my love of people growing in proportion . . . It seems that in proportion to the love we give to God, He gives us love for each other.

Houselander was a natural-born misanthrope, and yet she strove to love other people; she also noted that Christ himself "sought [the] love" of others.

I used to think I knew all about love.  I now know that I know approximately less than nothing about it.  But there is a beautiful line in a beautiful song by Dar Williams, "It Happens Every Day":  "the only word for love is everybody's name."  How do we put that into practice, I wonder?

You can here the song performed live here, starting at 2:42.

"The world will be saved by beauty"

"The world is altered by good, new poems. It is made larger, given new windows that open out onto different landscapes and that also shine an altered light back into the known, as opening a new window in what used to be a wall changes not only the wall but the room.”
--Jane Hirshfield