Well that would have been good to know before

I've dated a lot of non-Catholics. A lot of non-Christians. This includes people who were raised Christian and are now non-practicing or militantly atheist or simply agnostic, as well as people who were raised in no faith tradition whatsoever and are now religious or continue to not be faithful at all. So that's five different categories of men, for whoever is counting.

I never thought dating a non-Catholic was an issue, I mean, most of my family is protestant and hardly anyone actually marries a Catholic. And I never had a problem with dating a non-believer, practitioner, or christian, because I always thought that if the dude was a good person, supportive of me in my faith, and we had all the similar goals etc whatever is necessary for a relationship to work out, then it'd be fine. Ecumenical is the name of the game, and extending that idea to non-Christians makes sense.

But recently I've had relational encounters with this new species, the dude who was not raised in any sort of faith tradition whatsoever and is not Christian now. This is quite rare, especially for the Midwest I'd say, because most everyone had parents who at least forced them to go to church service growing up, so it was a new, and unsuccessful, experience for me.

I really felt this particular dude had no idea how to love me, or anyone, which was genuinely confusing for me. How could someone who really does care about people seem to be so totally unloving? It's contradictory. I couldn't wrap my head around it. So I was praying about how I love and how I expect to be loved, in a self-reflective "what went wrong here" exercise, to figure out how in the future I can better communicate my needs to some poor unsuspecting fella.

How do I love? I love with a Christian, donative, self-sacrificing love. And I expect a donative, self-sacrificing love in return. Now, I say that I love with Christian love, because that's how I was taught to love. I was shown this image of Christ on the cross and was told, "this is how we are called to love one another, as God has loved us." And I realized that someone who was never taught this, never shown this sacrificial love of God, wouldn't know HOW to love like that. Blew my mind. Because even my exes who were non-practicing, if they were raised Christian, have that foundation, and loved me in this donative way (if they loved me at all). They had the capacity for the type of love that I expect. So this is good. I recognize that I cannot expect something from someone if he never learned it in the first place. But how weird is that? Not that I have expectations, that's normal, but that there exist people who were never taught how to love. Not even the basics bc I myself had to learn much about loving, but the foundation was there. For me, the question is how can I best love the person at hand, not wtf is love in general. So, this may cause problems for me in future relationships, in that I now have to go in saying "look, I need and expect this self-sacrificial love from you, and I will be satisfied with nothing less, but I will love you with a complete giving of myself in return and that's how love works." What if I need to date Christians in order to be happy and feel loved? This changes my whole dating strategy, which previously was "just date anyone."

I am now intrigued by non-Christian faith traditions, and want to ask people "how does God expect you to love?" to see, are other traditions taught sacrificial love? Are they taught to give of themselves even unto death? If not, this is an important thing to know.

A new thought

It seems quite possible that celibacy (and chastity) is not so much about what you do (or don't do), with your body, but more about what you do with your heart.

Read: Tender Fires - Fran Ferder and John Heagle

ok, I know it's another book post this week. but this is the last sexual/spiritual book I packed for the summer so I won't be posting another book reaction until August. and I have thoughts on other subjects but I haven't figured out how to flesh them out yet. not that I'll ever really think things through before posting them. I'm pretty sure that's Elyse's style, not mine.

Anyway. Elyse, I will loan you this book. It's worth reading. I was a bit nervous because I read a different book by these two authors and while it wasn't bad, it just wasn't what I was looking for. This book is more what I want in a spirituality/sexuality book. so that's a good thing. The authors have a couple of points where they're a bit too product-of-the-sexual-revolutiony, but they do say some nice things.

a negative: I hate the typeface. Seriously. if I had found this book in a physical bookstore instead of online, I would not have bought it because of the choices of fonts. it's a typeface I associate with weak new-agey style spiritual writings. I found it desperately distracting. but I should write something substantive, no? an actual thought I had while reading?

They talk a bit about singledom, of obvious interest to me at this point in my life. They discuss it within the context of relationship diversity, meaning the different types of relationships people have. there are different types of singledom, never married, divorced, widowed, in a relationship, living alone, living in community, consecrated, unconsecrated, whatever. this I think is an important thing to think about, because I do definitely believe that all these states of being are equally valid. and all the states of being in relationship I didn't name, of course.

They do say this:
"In some instances, people are alone, not because they want to be, but because
they haven't found someone to love."
How depressing is that?! I read this and thought "ooooh that is sooooo not me." I have many people that I love. I have many people who love me. so then I was thinking, am I alone? I'm single. I'm not involved with anyone at the moment really. I don't live in community anymore. But alone to me implies loneliness, and that I am not. reference the many people loving me. but now I am sad because I'm thinking of all those people who are alone because they have no one to love and presumably no one to love them. Makes me want to do some volunteer work or something.

They also speak of sexual diversity as being more than just orientation, which I think is also good. Elyse and I came up with this theory that because of the way that spirituality and sexuality are a part of each other, people with different spiritualities have necessarily different sexualities. This is something I will write more about later, but Ferder and Heagle don't disagree, I think. but for now, por ejemplo, the way that I understand and express my sexuality is developed from my spirituality, my relationship with and understanding of God. so if I had a different spiritual life, my sexuality would be different, even though my orientation wouldn't change perhaps. so, acknowledgement that sexual diversity is more than just sexual orientation, good. even though they're not coming at it from the same angle as I am. same ending point.

Read: Truly Our Sister - Elizabeth Johnson

I've decided that when I read books related to this blog it's not really book "reviews" that I'm writing. more book "reactions." book review implies a different sort of thing than what comes out of my head when I read a book. ok. here we go.

This book. I tried to think of a word to describe it and came up short. I'd say dense, but it's not difficult to read. Just full of a lot of information. She covers Mary, historically, culturally, theologically. I think the book came at an appropriate time in my life, obviously I'm in Mexico and there's a fierce devotion to our lady. I spend my time wondering what IS devotion to Mary. What does it mean? Where does it come from, and how does this devotion relate to my personal readings/studies/experiences of her? so how opportune that one of the books I packed for the summer was about Mary. Unplanned.

I have many thoughts. I won't blog them all. In a book with this much information, I'd be a poor student if I didn't have many thoughts. I'll keep it shortish.

Often in our Church we see Mary as the ideal Christian woman. But what does that mean? Everyone seems to read her a different way. I've never seen her as particularly meek, nor passively obedient the way that she is sometimes portrayed. There's nothing passive about childbirth. And this girl had to know that. It's not like she was raised only by men, no concept of what bearing a child is like. If she was old enough to get married she probably had friends, some of whom were already married and maybe had kids of their own. Take it from me. You don't have to be married to know what goes on during labor and pregnancy. Female friends are chatty about this stuff. And it is definitely not passive. Mary had to know. Pregnancy and childbirth isn't something that's done to you, nor could it have been for her. Seriously, science has shown that when women who are pregnant don't engage with the child, don't nest, don't get that sense of connection with the kid, then there are repercussions in the child, they don't comfort as well etc. So Mary wasn't hopping along with her pregnancy something God had done to her. It was something she had to take part in. She was a participant. So I see Mary at this point, saying yes to God, as an informed intelligent woman. While she may not have fully understood, because who among us could fully understand, she knew what she was getting herself into, she knew the power of her situation, the potential for disaster, the pain and discomfort, and she had trust in God. God's not putting one over on her.

So, Christian women! Educate yourselves! Trust God! Say yes out of a loving heart!

verbage

Lately I've been thinking a lot about love. ok that's not anything new. but my thoughts of late are fairly specifically focusing on love as an action.

I think this comes from the idea of love as a choice, a concept that's thrown around a lot but not always fleshed out. Everyone knows that love is more than just a feeling, right? Because people who are married for a long time don't necessarily feel love the way they used to feel love. You have to choose to love the person to whom you are committed. What does it mean to choose to love? It means action. You continue to give of yourself to the other person. You continue to put aside your individualism for the better of your community.

For me, love is sacrifice. If I love someone, then I am willing to sacrifice for them. I put their needs first. I buy them things they need/want, I spend time with just them, I help them with whatever they need. What is important is how I love. I ask myself in all my relationships, how can I best love this person right now? Let me tell you, if I truly think of the needs of the other person, how I should be loving them is not always how I want to be loving them.

so it comes down to this. I see love as a verb, not a noun. God loves us with an active love. God is love, and God is creator, redeemer, etc, none of which are passive. How God loves us reveals God's true nature to us. We know God through God's loving acts. Por ejemplo the Eucharist. A loving sacrifice. A total action, every mass God comes down and bam transubstantiation. So if God's love is active, how could our love be inactive? This perhaps goes into the whole "they'll know we are Christians by our love" thing. If we just sit around feeling love for people, is that truly love? I think not. The love that does not act is an empty love.

I don't have love. I do love. I love.

start em young

As a preface, I am temporarily living in Mexico City and have experience living in other parts of Latin America too. Latin American spirituality and sexuality is...different. I have been raised with a very EEUU type of spirituality. Of this I am aware. But I do appreciate Latin American devotions, in a way. Today I went to the Basilica de la Virgen de Guadalupe, where the virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego. It's pretty cool. I climbed the hill to where the apparition happened, and while looking in one of the stalls for a keychain I saw this bad boy. A virgen de guadalupe coloring book. how nice.

Not only that, a Virgen de Guadalupe coloring book with a cover that reads "Virgencita plis mandame un novio," which for all you non-spanish speakers out there translates as "little virgin, please send me a boyfriend." other pages in the book say things like "virgencita, take care of my boyfriend," or "virgencita, take care of my baby" or "virgencita, give me a boyfriend."

ok now. it's a cute coloring book. but there are plenty of problems in Latin American culture that involve girls getting boyfriends and then getting pregnant way early, plus the whole machismo thing. There was no boy coloring book saying "please virgencita send me a girlfriend." No other page in the coloring book asks the virgen for anything. only a boyfriend. And what kind of message are we sending to little latina girls when we say "pray to the virgin for a boyfriend?" I think we're saying, "hey, you're not worth anything unless you're in a relationship, so if you find someone who is willing to date you, even if he's abusive and treats you like crap, he's your novio so stick with it." maybe I'm biased because I've seen so many women stay in so many abusive relationships in Latin America (as an aside, there are good ones too). But this is where it starts. Telling little girls that what they most need in life is a boyfriend? no thank you. Though I did buy this coloring book. It is totally hilarious! and inappropriate.

Read: Sex & the Soul - Donna Freitas

Sex & the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses by Donna Freitas is an often disturbing study of sexual and spiritual experiences, as told by American college kids. Freitas interviewed 111 college students at seven different schools across the country, public and private, secular and religious. She draws an important distinction between evangelical and Catholic universities, as the sexual and religious cultures differ.

Freitas talks about the hook-up culture that is prevalent on many college campuses these days, and how men and women alike find it unsatisfying and unfulfilling. Kids are spiritually searching, which often results in separating their spiritual lives from their sexual activities and that creates problems. There seems to be no way around it. Everyone seems to wish they could talk openly about sex without being judged. Some religious students feel guilt for sexual activities, some chaste students feel societal pressure, some sexually active students feel like something is missing from their relationships. Freitas provides plenty of personal accounts from individual students, and while the framework is different for each one, rare is the student who is happy with both their spiritual and sexual lives.

This I found sad. Though not surprising. I went to a large public institution for my undergraduate education, and I saw this hook-up culture first hand. I am well-aware of the objectification of women that happens. It's disturbing. Freitas didn't help. I found some of her stories so upsetting that the next night I actually had a bad dream about mistreatment of women. The attitude towards women held by students (male and female) and recounted in the book is appalling, but we need to be aware of it. College kids need to think about their actions and whether said actions are reflective of their true beliefs. Though obviously, college is the place where people are figuring out what they truly believe, so who knows. This is not a problem that can be fixed easily. But being aware that it is a problem is the first step.

I'm not going to comment too much on her methodology. Only a little bit. Some of her claims, such as how students at Catholic universities aren't as religious, I'm sure aren't true for all Catholic universities, but she doesn't claim causality. She doesn't really do questionable statistics, she just provides numbers. If she had attempted to do some multivariate regressions I'd have something to say, but she doesn't. Her conclusions aren't "don't send your kids to a Catholic school" but are "ask questions about campus culture when you're picking schools." That I find acceptable, though what kind of campus tour guide is going to answer questions about girls dressing like hos for a theme party?

In short: who knows if the science is good, but the message is worth thinking about.