Male and Female He Created Them

Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.

Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.

"In creating men 'male and female,' God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity." "Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God."

Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way.
--Catechism of the Catholic Church

There is a beautiful George MacDonald story called The Myth of Photogen and Nycteris. In the tale, the witch Watho abducts two young children--a boy and a girl. She raises the boy to be strong and fearless, but to never encounter the dark. She raises the girl to be wise and calm, but to never see light brighter than a small globe in her otherwise pitch-black room. Eventually, the two discover each other and make a daring escape from the witch's kingdom. It takes all of their shared talents and virtues to make the journey alive.

The story is, on top of being a brilliant tale in its own right, a poignant allegory for the relationship between men and women. Photogen is deeply involved in the world, strong, able to take care of Nycteris. Nycteris is my retired, thoughtful, but able to get Photogen through the darkest nights and his deepest fears. As a child, I loved that image of cooperation, love between two perfect equals necessary for each others' completeness. As a grown woman, soon to marry my own Photogen, I find the story even more compelling.

Perhaps that's why I was deeply disturbed to hear a Catholic priest recently questioning the idea that men and women have separate but complimentary virtues. That idea has been so fundamentally important to me as I've learned to accept and then love my identity as a woman. I don't want to go back to defining my worth by how well I embody the virtues I admire in men: strength, directness, assertiveness. Those aren't my virtues--when I tried to pretend they were, the only made me unhappy and disliked. But, if they aren't male virtues, why did valuing them feel so fundamentally wrong?

The priest's claim was that language about complementarity has only come into the Church's teaching during the past fifty years or so. As he frames it, the emphasis on men and women's separate virtues is a reaction to the feminist revolution--a resurgence of conservatism on the part of the Catholic Church. "I don't remember this kind of wording from my childhood," he said. Another priest corroborated. In a few days of searching, I haven't been able to find a single document that solidly proves them wrong. Even the texts cited in the Catechism (quoted above) all post-date Vatican II.

But what if the priest's causation is wrong. What if the emphasis on male and female virtue isn't a conservative redefinition? The Chuch didn't strongly assert the Oness of the Trinity until it was denied by the Nestorians. And it didn't clarify the two natures of Christ until the Monophysites challenged it. The Church only stands up to declare something true once someone else claims it is false. Otherwise, the Church usually takes the truth for granted.

What if, then, the new emphasis of male and female virtue is another case where the Church has stood up to say, "Wait. This is what we've always believed!"? What if the Church is warning us about the loss of a fundamental perception of ourselves that has always been our privilege and our right? What if complementarity--the truth of men and women being created by God as perfect physical and spiritual pairs--is true at so basic a level that no one ever bother up to defend it until it was challenged?

I don't know if I'm right. I don't know if I've bought into a reactionary conservative redefinition of my sexuality that encourages me to accept domination and control. But I do know that this image of femininity, that I am a Nycertis naturally equipped to love my husband and children, makes me feel more liberated and happy than the idea that I had to force myself to be like a man ever did. No two human beings have the same set of virtues, but I'll continue to work toward the compassion and love that I believe are the special aptitude of my sex

Loved, Part Two: CLC

I think you'll have to indulge a few days of nostalgia, or else come back next week when my life is a bit more settled. I'm leaving Oxford on Thursday. I'm trying to spend the next few days digesting what I've learned.

One of the priests at the chaplaincy suggested to me in October that I ought to join the Christian Life Community group here in Oxford as part of my marriage preparation. CLC is a lay Jesuit organization based on small groups of Catholic Christians praying together in community. The prayer is usually done as imaginative contemplation. To begin with, I was really skeptical. Imaginative contemplation seemed like a glorified RPG with disciples instead of wizards and a prayer guide instead of a DM. I've been really blessed to find out I was wrong.

I've posted before about imaginative contemplation. But I don't think I've put much effort into conveying how special and life-changing the community has been for me. There are six of us--three guys and three girls. We meet once a week to talk and pray. It's been absolutely wonderful being a such a consistently open and loving community. I've felt really loved and cherished.

More than that, though, the experience has really changed the way I perceive other people as Christians. I used to discount spiritual experiences I hadn't had--it seemed too impossible and distant to imagine there was more out there. But here I was, spending a night each week with five other people with distinct prayer lives and relationships with God. In a setting that intimate, there's no way to deny there are things about faith I don't understand. At the same time, the experience has made me feel more secure about myself as a Christian. I no longer feel compelled to squeeze my faith into the mold of the contemplative life--Christianity is more diverse than that. I'm not a contemplative, so I feel much happier in my relationship with God when I'm not trying to be.

Most importantly, CLC has told me a lot about love in action. After each prayer session, every member shares his or her experiences. It's just a time of sharing--no comments or responses. I've never had to listen that way, without considering a rebuttal or advice. It sharpened my attention on what it was my group members we saying and made their experiences seem more real. It forced me to be still in a way I never had before. When we started the group, I was always anxious about how long meditations would last. I needed to know I how long I would have to keep my mind quiet. Now, I usually feel comfortable in the silence. I don't always have the concentration to pray as long as the other members of my group, but I can enjoy the stillness of patiently waiting for them, basking in God's love and our love as a group.

So, I'm very grateful for CLC. I think the experience has made me more human and more willing to accept the humanity of others. I can't think of a more valuable lesson for marriage, or for life. Thank you.

Prayer List

I can't remember whether or not I've posted about one of our greatest areas for improvement. As comfortable as we are together, Adam and I find it a little difficult to pray together.

Ultimately, I think the problem may stem from the hard time I have praying by myself. It's so hard to sit down and focus for deep, contemplative prayer. This year, doing CLC has been a real blessing. I've learned to pray with and as a community, a lesson I hope to make use of with Adam. But it's something we're still working on.

But there is one way we already pray together that makes me really happy. Adam and I keep a list of vocations to pray for: people who we know are discerning a call to religious life and people who feel strongly called to married life, but just haven't found that special person. I hope I don't sound condescending, but Adam's been such an incredible blessing to me that I'd love to be even a tiny, tiny part of someone else's story.

So, if we know you're looking for someone or thinking about religious life, we're probably praying for you! And if we don't, we'd love to add you to our list.

Young Widowhood

One of my best friends went to a funeral today. I wish I'd known who it was for--I would have gone, too. The husband of one of my tutors from last year died. That might not be surprising to you, but it was to me. You see, the tutor can't be more than about ten years older than me.

Her face has haunted me all day. It's terrifying, the idea of being a widow at thirty five. The whole big, beautiful future that floats tantalizingly before me could melt away in an instant. I could lose Adam and there would be nothing I could do about it.

At the risk of trivializing something as serious as death, I have to say that being in love makes me feel just a bit like Edward Cullen from Stephanie Meyer's Twilight saga. "Have you ever thought about how fragile they all are? How many bad things there are that can happen to a mortal?" the immortal lover says of his breakable human girlfriend in Midnight Sun. Late at night, miles and miles away from Adam, it's hard not to dwell on how fragile he is--how fragile we are. Our huge, momentous love that means everything in the world to me now can disappear in the moment it takes a heart to stop.

I've written before about how morbid and flippant I sometimes find Adam's attitude toward death. "We all die when we're meant to die," he'll say. In some ways, it's the sentiment of someone who's never really suffered the loss of a loved one. But, in others, he's profoundly right. Part of the reassurance of being a Christian, particularly in a tradition that puts so much focus on vocation, is my faith that God has put Adam on the Earth for a reason. As much as it hurts me to think that reason might not include raising children and growing old with me, that's a fact of life I have to accept. If it's true that whoever tries to save his life will lose it, it must also be true that whoever clings to the life of a loved one will never take as much joy from their relationship as God intended.

I know none of this would help my tutor, surely grieving from her terrible loss. But I hope you will join me in keeping her, her husband, and their family in our prayers.

A Walk to Remember: or, When Is a Marriage a Marriage?

I finished watching Doctor Who on BBC iPlayer two days ago. So, when I needed something else to do to waste my time, I found myself fumbling through You Tube for old movies. That's how I ran into A Walk to Remember.

Just in case you missed the 2002 teenage romance, allow me to fill you in. Landon, a popular, somewhat troubled high school boy gets stuck doing community service for his school. In the process, he finds himself spending more and more time with Jamie, the socially outcast, devoutly Christian, minister's daughter. He is initially embarrassed to be seen with her, but slowly learns to admire her quiet faith and conviction to do good. Ultimately, he finds himself in love with her and the life-affirming presence that she represents. She surprises herself by loving him back.

As the story moves towards its climax, it is obvious that something is terribly wrong. "I'm sick," she confesses to him, "I have leukemia." Although he is first devastated and resentful, he resolves himself to helping her through the terrifying experience of death by disease.

What makes the picture particularly beautiful is the way in which he helps her. Earlier in the film, she admits to him that she keeps a "to do list" of all the things she wants to accomplish before she dies. With an unexpected sense of urgency, he helps her with as many of them as he can as her health slowly deteriorates. He takes her to the state line so she can be in two places at once. Her helps her apply a temporary tattoo. He even builds her a telescope so she can observe a comet.

But the most beautiful moment in the film is the moment he asks her to help him meet the goal highest on her list: she wants to get married in her mother's church. She agrees. They marry. And she dies at the end of the summer.

After I finished hysterically crying, the film forced me to think about some of my own less-than-orthodox questions about marriage.

Landon and Jamie truly love each other. Each values the other over his or her own happiness. Their love makes them better, and makes the people around them better, too. They are a part of one another, long before he asks her to marry him. Why aren't they married already? What has the ceremony changed?

As a medievalist, the answer is not as straightforward as you might think. Historically speaking, marriage just requires the consent of two adults in front of witnesses. There are medieval anecdotes of parents who catch their daughters in bed with men. They tell her parents they plan to marry. The parents go back downstairs, considering the marriages valid and binding--which, for all intents and purposes, they were. Even now, the Church recognizes that the priest doesn't administer the sacrament of marriage at all--the couple administers it on themselves. The Church doesn't make two people one: two people decide to become one. All silly anecdotes aside, mutual love and commitment make a marriage, not a priest.

Given that fact, it's difficult to determine what makes the significant difference in what a marriage is if it performed in a church in front of a priest. Landon and Jamie gives themselves to one another a long time before their wedding takes place. And Adam and I decided to become one, to give our lives to each other, a long time ago. I feel irrevocably bound to Adam already. It's virtually impossible to believe either of us could walk away at this point without leaving a piece of ourselves behind.

Obviously there are problems with marriage purely by intention, else the Church wouldn't have bothered to clarify. Marriages require the formal sanction of the Church for our own sakes, to protect the sacramental and legal validity of our marriage. How else can they assure that neither partner is being coerced or misled. Plus, marriage is more than just the formal commitment in ways that Jamie and Landon, and Adam and I, haven't satisfied. I plan to follow the traditions of the Church and to continue talking about and treating Adam as my fiancé, rather than as my husband. Still, the three months that stretch before us seem like an endless formality given what we already spiritually share.

I posted a few weeks ago about what engagement is. I suppose that deserves a clarification. Adam takes the idea of engagement more seriously than I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any less committed to him than he is to me. We are, as I believe many couples are, more than engaged. We've already given our lives to each other. We're just waiting to close the deal.

Please do comment if you have any insight! I know I'm not being particularly orthodox. I'd love to better understand what marriage means.

Vocation

One of the greatest blessings of my conversion to Catholicism has been learning about the idea of vocation. In modern usage, a vocation is usually another word for job. But the word comes from the Latin "vocare," to call--a vocation is literally a calling from God.

I assume that I will eventually want to post about my vocation to marriage, but that isn't what's on my mind tonight. Tonight I want to think about vocations in the here and now. Long term, (I think) God is calling me to marriage, family, teaching, and maybe writing. Where does that leave me, an engaged graduate student pursuing my own studies thousands of miles away from my family?

Graduate study in insular enough that it encourages a kind of self-focus. It's really no ones fault, just the nature of spending hours a day focused deeply on an obscure topic. Life becomes about your thoughts, your research--it really has to, or no one could contribute anything to greater human understanding.

But that doesn't mean life as a graduate isn't often sickeningly lonely. And not in the way people normally think.

Universities normally pack graduate calendars with events and load up on counselors to combat graduate depression. We're supposed to be lonely because we spend all day in the library, isolated from our peers. Perhaps that's part of the problem, but I don't think it's the origin of the malaise. I think the real problem is that, for so many of us, we're in a bit of a holding pattern--we have a vocation, but we aren't doing it.

Of course, that realization doesn't make finishing my degree any less important. It's part of the preparation for my vocation, preparing me to be a better teacher and writer. The answer can't be to drop out and come home. Instead, I need to adjust my way of thinking--my studies are to prepare me to answer my calling. It's all a part of God's plan for my life, which I should enjoy here and now, as it comes. "Bride Alison" needs to learn to love "Student Alison" for what "Student Alison" is equipping her to be.