The Cardinal Sins
Two years of work in social psychology had
convinced me hat the narrowness of the
Church's annulment policy was
unconscionable. Half the people in the country
to got married were psychologically incapable
of contrating a union that reflected the love
between Christ and the Church, which is what a
sacramental and hence indissoluble marriage
was supposed to be.
'It's a loan?' she said, seeing
the life preserver in the water and trying to
reach for it.
'Nope, we're not in the lending
business. We give presents to those we
love.' I stood up and walked towards teh
door. Her shoulders sagged; her body slumped
wearily. She looked at the envelope as if it
had been desposited an her coffee table by a
flying saucer.
'I don't want to have to chose,
Kevin' she said, her voice choked with
pain.
'For or against life?' I said, my hand
on the doorknob.
She nodded.
'Well, your friends have done a very cruel
thing to you. We're forcing you to make
that choice.'
At forty-three my water sprite radiated
mature, saisfied sexuality the way a golden
mum radiates joy in the face of the
inevitability of winter.
Yet, increasingly, she needed someone harsh
and cruel, someone who would inflict pain that
would override the deeper pain that was always
within her.
'What is the point in celibacy,
Kevin?' she said with that innocent smile
I had learned to fear.
'Maybe we ought to make it optional.'
I knew as soon as I spoke that I was going to
be outrageous. 'Yet I'd hate to see us
lose it. The world, Catholic and otherwise,
needs the witness of a few people who are
living proof that you can intensely and
passionately love members of the opposite sex
without having to jump into bed with them.
Afterword: The so-called cardinal (or
'deadly' or 'capital') sins
are not sins at all but seven disorderly
propensities in our personality that lead us
to sinful behavior. Pride, covetousness, lust,
anger, gluttonly, envy, and sloth are sound
and healthy human proclivities gone askew:
self-respect, self-preservation, communion,
personal freedom, self-expression,
celebration, relaxation. The cardinal sins
result not from fundamental evil but from
fundamental goodness running out of control,
from human love that is onfused and frightened
and not trusting enough of love.
Thy Brother's Wife
Passover note: On Holy Thursday, when eating
unleavened bread with his followers, Jesus
commited himself to them irrevocably.
I can't provde to you the existence of
God. Nobody can prove that. All I can say is
that whenever you experience love, you
experience god.
"It made you a brave and honest churchman
and Nora a successful businesswoman,
didn't it?" Jimmy was guessing, but
he had no choice but to play for high stakes
here on Wabash Avenue at mightnight.
"Isn't that the crooked lines of God,
drawing good from evil?"
'Why do you stay with Dad?'
'There are many kinds of love, Eileen. All
loves are different and they all have their
own commitments. You keep the commitments
until they become absolutely impossible.'
'Why? why should you be stuck with a
commitment you made a long time ago?'
'Nora felt lightheaded and wished she had
a cool gin and tonic. 'Because if people
don't keep their committments, no one can
trust anyone else.'
You damn fool, he wrote. You missed
God's sign for thirty years.
He crossed out the words, tore the paper into
little pieces, and threw them into the
wastebasket. Because he had lost his mother,
God sent him Nora, the best sign of God's
love he would ever have. The same father who
had taken away his mother brought the shy
little girl into his life so long ago. Talk
about the twisted lines of god.
A Personal Afterword: The answer is that,
since the beginning of humankind, religon has
been most effectively communicated in stories
that appeal to the whole person instead of
being communicated in doctrinal treatises
aimed at the intellect alone. The purpose of
the religous take is not to edity by to
shatter preconceptions, to open up to the
imagination new possibility of living in the
world and relating to the Universe.
This particular religous story will be
successful if the reader is disconcerted by a
tale of committments imperfectly made and
imperfectly kept -- but that are still kept.
And by the images of a God who draws straight
with crooked lines, who easily and quicly
forgives, and who wants to love us with the
tenderness of a mother.
Ascent into Hell
"And you'll satisfy the crazy Donlon
notioin that if something is hard, maybe
impossible, than it has to be what God wants.
And it its soemthing that's fun and will
make you happy, then it has to be
sinful."
Hugh felt as if someoone had opened a door
inside him and let in a tiny sliver of light.
He slammed the door shut. "You're
just being a romantic", he said, as
something wonderful and terrifying faded away
into the dark.
Rumor had it that the job had been offered to
Sean Cronin in the class ahead of him. Cronin
was a moody, intense young man...
"Think about it, Hugh. And don't marry
her because you feel responsible. There are
other appropriate motivations for human
behavior."
"Like what?" The words slipped out of
Hugh's mouth before he realized how
damning they were.
Like survival.
Liz believed in turning points -- kairoi, as the Greeks called them -- times when there were special opportunities.
She didn't know what to do. Her man's simple depths had been twisted and bent. How could she remake him? Only two gifts could she offer -- laughter and love. No anger in return, no long discussion, no self-defense. She wouldn't let him fight with her. She simply laughed and sang and tried to find him again.
You marry not because you need a husband, nor even because you want one, but because you can't do without this particular man.
As dusk spread, Hugh felt a burst of light and warmth engulf him, drawing him toward the same Love who had crept out of the hadge in front of Maria's house to take Grace Monaghan home.
It was an implacable and impulsive Love, that forgave without being asked, never turned away from the beloved, and wanted only that the beloved surrender to Love and be happy.
A Love like Maria.
The ancient Greek Easter greeting leaped out of his memory, in explanation for everything.
"Christ is risen, Maria, alleluia."
"Bet you think I don't know the answer to that." The Maria of raspberries and cream had come back. "He is risen indeed, alleluia!"
A Personal Afterword: Stories of God are designed to disconcert, to open us up to the power of God's shocking love and to disclose to us new ways of living in the world with the illumination and power that comes from that love.
. . .
The priesthood finally forces him to turn his own word on himself and to realize that the worst sin in his life was to exempt himself from grace.
. . .
Perhaps the reader who can imagine Maria as a sacrament of God and a revelation of how God works, will then be able to see new ways of living in the light of a story of a God who, like Maria, is illusive, reckless, vulnerable, joyous, unpredictable, irrepressable, unremittengly forgiving, and implacably loving.
Lord of the Dance
The only God worth believing in is a dancing God.
~Fredrich Nitzche
The story says
he dances still.
That is why
down to this day
we lean over the beds of our babies
and in the seconds before sleep
tell the story of the undying dancing man
so the dream of Jesus will carry them to dawn.
~John Shea, The Storyteller of God
The Passover (author's note): The union between the male (fireL and female (water) was interpreted by early Christians to mean that when Jesus rose from the dead, his marriage to his spouse, the church, was consummated, and that those who are baptized in the waters of EAster are the first fruits of this union. It is therefore the Christian conviction that the fire and water ceremony of Easter Eve tells the story of human love that is a correlation and revelation of divine love.
