Feeling "Supported"

A few days ago, I posted about the pleasure of learning to make "grown-up" decisions with Adam. The most difficult part of learning to think like a team has been learning to "own" each others decisions. We both tend to blame decisions that don't quite work out on each other, so it's been an interesting learning processing accepting someone else's ideas as our own decisions.

As for me, I like to blame boring evenings on Adam--"if we'd listened to me we would have had a lot more fun," etc. For Adam, learning to take responsibility for money we both spend has been more difficult. It's not that he's a cheapskate, but we need to be careful right now and he gets irritable when he thinks we aren't being. That's why I was especially nervous about asking him if we had the money for me to seek treatment for the chronic pain in my shoulders. Having tried everything else I could think of, I was ready to try acupuncture. I wasn't sure at all what Adam would say about such an expensive and somewhat questionable treatment.

I wasn't giving Adam enough credit. He completely accepted my need and my desire to try acupuncture. We sat down and talked about how to cut back on the budget and that we could afford a few visits to the acupuncturist before my job started. As I should have known, he never grumbled or complained about a legitimate expense.

But he didn't just support my decision financially--he invested himself in it. He actively encouraged me to find a doctor. He even came to the appointment with me--having him sit through my interview with the doctor and listen to my medical history was a surprisingly intimate experience. He sat in the room with me, calming my fears about needles. He even lay on the floor to talk to me through the hole in the table. (He said I looked like a chubby astronaut.)

I guess I learned from this experience that, even though we might fight about incidental expenses (which do, of course, add up), I should trust Adam to be willing to spend money where it is important. I learned to appreciate how supportive he is of me--financially, personally, physically, and spiritually. We're a team, partners. If we can learn to make responsible decisions without arguing in large matters, perhaps we can learn to make them in small matters, too.

Beatrico

After a brief hiatus in Georgia to pick up the new car (aka "the Millenium Falcon"), ...and Enide is back...

Over the past few days, Adam and I have found ourselves re-exploring Dante's Divina Comedia. Both of us read The Inferno in high school, but neither of us has ever explored the rest of the three-part poem in depth. I'm only now realizing how deprived I've been.

In The Inferno, Dante finds himself alone in a dark wood. Virgil (of Aneid fame) finds the frightened Dante and proposes that they both undertake a most surprising journey--through hell, past purgatory, into heaven. Virgil guides him through the nine circles of hell, protecting him from demons and monsters, until they escape hell and begin to climb the mountain of purgatory. Again, Virgil prove himself a loving and powerful guide through purgatory. At the gates of heaven, the pagan Virgil leaves Dante in the care of Dante's beloved Beatrice.

The first time I read the poem, I focused on Virgil. Virgil is Dante's guide in his imaginative realms of hell and purgatory, as well as a literary guide for the writing of the poem itself. I've only gradually realized that to pay attention only to Virgil--even in The Inferno and Purgatorio--is to completely miss the point. Beatrice is Dante's guide in the poem, and in his life, whether she is present or not.

In my own defense, I think I lacked the context to understand Beatrice's role when I read the poem as a Protestant. She's Dante's intercessor, the one who brings his cause before heaven. It's a role saints like Beatrice can only play when we accept the communion of all believers, living and dead. Even in the darkest pits of hell, Beatrice sends Dante help and hope.

But Beatrice is far more than intercessor. She's an active guide in Paradiso, but also in The Inferno and Purgatorio, as well as in the whole of Dante's life. Her name itself--meaning "bringer of gladness"--takes on an allegorical meaning. She is the person in which Dante sees God. She's no false idol for Dante, but a presence that makes him feel irradiated with God's love. Dante sees God in Beatrice. Thinking about her, writing about her, striving to reach the heaven in which she resides--all these things draw Dante closer to God. Her role as guide through heaven is the perfect allegorical fulfillment of her role in Dante's life.

That's a role I never understood until I fell in love. Adam is my "Beatrico." In his love, I feel God's love for me shining through. Adam's goodness and compassion give me a model for behavior, but by themselves draw me closer to God. He's not just my fiance and won't just be my husband. He's also a walking allegory, a representation of what God's love looks like and feels like. That's why I feel so strongly called to the vocation of marriage--the love of the man I hope to call my spouse draws me further up in and further in to God's love every day.

Abundance

Without going into too much personal detail, I have to own up a little concern about living expenses for the summer. I've been living fairly frugally in Oxford (and Adam in Seattle), but frugal living isn't really the kind of living I like. It's not that I crave a life of luxury or nice new things. But I would like to go out to a nice dinner or two with friends, to throw parties with nice food, or to be able to buy nice presents for others. A summer back in DC with people I love but no money seems...well... unideal.

That's why I was so encouraged by today's scripture reading, 2 Corinithians 9: 6-11:

Consider this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work. As it is written: "He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever." The one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You are being enriched in every way for all generosity, which through us produces thanksgiving to God.

I know money isn't necessary to do nice things for others. But I felt really blessed by the reminder that God will take care of us and that always, no matter what, there will be enough leftover for us to help take care of others, too.

Men and Social Change

Several friends and I have been running a discussion group at the Chaplaincy this term called "Catholicism and Economics." The focus is primarily on distributism, an economic system based around the small and the local. Once again, I'm the only woman in a "serious-minded" discussion group, but, for the very first time in my life, I think the under-representation of my sex may bother me.

At one time in my life I was pleased, honored, and self-congratulatory when I found myself in a male-dominated discussion group. To be surrounded by men, discussing real issues in serious tones with big words seemed like a step forward. I loved to hear people--ie men, and particularly in Washington, DC--discuss the world's problems, and the grandiose, intricate plans they had designed to correct them. This was the same time in my life when I thought that success in life meant being like these men. Someday, I too, would join in the machine of government. I, too, would change the world.

But that was before. Three years of living and working in Washington changed my mind about changing the world. Humans fail. Systems fail. The humans who design systems fail. And Washington, any center of government, goes around in circles creating grand plans on a national level to correct local, human problems.

It really struck me tonight, sitting in the economics discussion group, how very masculine a way of thinking about the world that is. I joined the group to find out how I can make moral economic choices for myself and my family; these men want to start a revolution. How very confident, and mostly admirable, to see a problem and seek to correct it in a sweeping, universal way. The only problem is, I'm increasingly skeptical that any kind of real change comes from the top down. Or at least that that's the way I'm supposed to operate in the world.

Instead, I think I'll choose to change the world in a more feminine way. I'll focus on my own moral choices, and encouraging others to make moral choices also. I'll work--with Adam--to build up a community of people seeking to make moral choices and to live happy lives together. It's an approach based on family, on community, and--I think--part of the woman's vocation as a woman, a wife, and a mother.

Registries: A Moral Qualm

When I went registered at Macy's, I was shocked by how much I was taken in by the system. Just standing in the store, I started to create a mental picture of my life with Adam, one of opulent wealth. Not that the kind sales attendant who helped us at Macy's was anything but extraordinarily professional--she didn't bully me into anything. It was the structure of the entire "wedding gift" department of the store. It made me want things I didn't even know existed. Or, perhaps want is an understatement: I was almost convinced that these things for sale in the store were requite for future married happiness.

Adam and I have found registering a difficult moral question. Two good friends of ours, adult professionals in the late twenties, decided not to register for themselves at all: they've chosen to register for a family benefiting from Habitat for Humanity. At first, Adam and I assumed that was a clear moral choice. We've decided to strive together to live below our means; expensive presents will only tempt us to purchase more nice things to match. There are so many people in this world with less than we have and, more importantly, fewer opportunities than we have. We wanted to give something to them.

These, thought, weren't the only questions we had to consider. What about those people who really want to give something to us that would support our lives together? We aren't altogether sure it was right to refuse the gifts they wanted to give in love. Are there things Adam and I really do need? As much as we don't want to clutter our lives with superfluous things, we want to be able to keep a pleasant home, showing hospitality to others as often as possible. And what about the overarching temptation of my life? If I give away my wedding presents, can I really avoid feeling self-righteous about it?

These aren't trivial questions. Adam and I are serious about trying to make moral choices together in every aspect of our lives, including finance. How do we use a system so strongly based on generosity, but so liable to materialism, correctly?

In the end, Adam and I decided to register for ourselves. Our compromise is to ask only for things that will last, or at least promise to last, a lifetime and only things that we need or will help us show greater hospitality to others. We also decided to register through the I Do Foundation. Partner vendors (including Target and Macy's) give a certain amount of the purchase price of gifts back to the charity of our choice--Habitat for Humanity International.

Still, I'm not sure what the right answer is. Generosity is a good. Materialism is a bad. I suppose the balance between the two will probably crop up for the rest of our lives together.