It’s Human Nature to Believe in Human Nature, Even If We’re Wrong About It

This past week the California legislature, ever the harbinger of progress, passed a bill reducing, under certain circumstances, the penalties related to physical intimacy between adults and minors. It involves a reduction in (not elimination of) penalties for adults (18 and up) who engage in certain activities with minors (under 18), provided the age gap is 10 years or less and the minor is 14 or over; the upshot of the bill (if California governor Gavin Newsom signs it) is likely be unfortunate rather than dire.

This is not the bill to be worried about, if you are a social conservative. But it does raise questions, for — like all such bills — it relies on the notion of consent.

Consent is the sine qua non in extra-familial relationships: without it, the term “relationship” is rather meaningless.  But though consent is necessary for a healthy relationship, it is insufficient.

Consider, for example, the analogy of finance, or labor, or sports.  We might obtain verbal “consent” from 10-year-old Rupert to invest his inheritance in mutual funds; but the law generally does not accept that Rupert has the judgment to determine his investments, and so requires that his financial interests be vested in a parent or guardian until he “comes of age.” Again, 12-year-old Evangelina might want desperately to contribute to the family finances; but modern child labor laws frequently presume that her consent to a working arrangement should be overridden for her own good.  And finally, 14-year-old Arthur, when he signs up for the competitive soccer team, signs a waiver about injuries and indemnity — but, critically, his parent signs too, because it is assumed that Arthur, being a tender 14 years of age, is not mature enough to sign away his own ability to sue the living daylights out of the soccer coach, should his malleus, incus, and stapes fracture in an ill-advised headshot.

There are plenty of other things government and society (let alone parents) do not think that children and teens are competent to decide: many medical procedures, whether and what school to attend, the right age for walking to the park or riding the subway alone or watching in a public theater an NC-17 movie (the very restriction is baked into the designation!).  In all these cases the presumption is that a young person’s consent is not sufficient: and the implication is that there is a deep sense in which people do not always know what is good for them. Their consent, we might say, is uninformed — not simply because they lack information intellectually, but because their lack of emotional and life experience makes them necessarily less able to handle decisions that even adults can agonize over.

And yet — and yet — there is one area in modern life in which young people are supposed to be able to consent: the matter of SB-145.  When it comes to intimacy, our culture accepts that a 14- or 15- or 16-year-old has the judgment and maturity to make decisions.

I would not attempt to argue that all teenagers are too immature to determine what constitutes a healthy romantic relationship; but such maturity is rare. In ancient and medieval times the nobility (but not, notably, peasants) were frequently married quite young — to people chosen by their parents. Nobody thought Romeo and Juliet were old enough for informed consent; and Shakespeare hints that they may have been the exception that proves the rule.

The same holds true today: I know of a few people who got together in their teens and are living happily ever after; but most people would agree that their teenage judgment about who constituted a worthwhile partner was atrocious.

So what gives?  Why are we careful to protect teenagers from bad choices about money, work, safety, movies, and drugs, but casual about potential bad choices in the area of romance?

Read the rest at the Register: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/it-s-human-nature-to-believe-in-human-nature-even-if-we-re-wrong-about-it

God Gets the Last Laugh

 Out of the many tragedies of coronavirus days — from lost lives to missed playdates, from broken marriages to unemployment — has been the silencing of music. While it certainly does not deserve to be classed with more major, life-altering events, music is one of those things that makes life worth living. But now Broadway is online; community theaters are shuttered; church choirs are disbanded in favor of cantors or — nothing at all.

Nor is this a trivial alteration, the cancellation of one sort of “entertainment” that can easily be replaced by another, as if knitting parties by Zoom could somehow sate the human spirit’s need for song. Music is unique: its presence in every culture, its uselessness, and its frequent employment in worship suggest that it answers a universal desire to express something deep in human nature, even something transcendent. Its unique role earns it a cameo in The Screwtape Letters, where C.S. Lewis puts the following sentiments in the mouth of the experienced demon instructing a junior tempter:

The whole house and garden [of a certain girl] is one vast obscenity. It bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human writer made of Heaven: ‘the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.’  Music and silence — how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since Our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise — Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile — Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.”

Music and silence are, of course, the two modes that lift the liturgy into the sacred. In the traditional Latin rite the canon is silent or sotto voce; in the Eastern churches it is sung. Even today, the option to chant or speak quietly for the canon is present in the Novus Ordo, and adopted on solemn occasions like Christmas and Easter. (Now, if only more priests could treat every Mass as a solemn occasion!) And of course, congregational participation in hymn singing is a part of the liturgy for most Christian churches in America.

It seemed, therefore, like a particularly cruel joke from an infernal perspective that music got the ax early in coronavirus time. Multiple cases and two deaths resulting from a choir practice in Mount Vernon were followed by videos and expert testimonies about how singing might spread water droplets carrying the virus, infecting far more people than mere conversation. So the singing stopped, even in those places where services were still being held (distanced, with masks, etc., etc., etc.). It wasn’t as if Catholics were ever very good about singing in the first place; now, we might as well all be deaf and mute.

Read the rest at the Register: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/god-gets-the-last-laugh

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (IV)

I think it has always been this way.  We are certainly seeing an age in which public standards of behavior and speech are degraded; but they have never been particularly good, especially in any place touched by politics.  If you don't believe me, spend a little time with the history of Tudor England, Imperial Rome, the early American Republic, or (probably) any other point random point in history.  Political leaders have always been sketchy at best; political rhetoric has always been disgusting.  It's always been a Flight 93: one is always constrained to choose between a bad man and a worse man, always forced to rely on checks and balances, on senates and parliaments and busybody nobility, and hope that they do their job keeing the king, the emperor, or the president in check.

And that means, of course, that in another sense it's never really a Flight 93 election.  If political choices are always constrained between bad and worse, then--however execrable our own political period may seem (and there is no doubt that it is execrable)--and however poised on the point of civil strife we may be (and there is no doubt that the civil unrest in our country is real)--nevertheless, our historical position is not entirely unique.  We cannot justify anything by appealing to our current situation.  The ordinary rules of political choice--the need to choose for the sake of the good, and to decry what is evil--still apply.  It's just that those rules have always been sadder, and more attuned to our fallen condition, than some of us would like to acknowledge.

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (III)

I do not think this example of study is merely about semantics.  I think, rather, it illustrates the importance of intentions--of having one's heart in the right place, as it were.  There is a world of difference between the attitude that says, "Health is not important" and the attitude that says "Study is important enough that other things, even things like health, must temporarily give way to it."  The first is simply wrong, both factually and morally; the latter is a judgment call, a weighing of priorities prudentially, which may or may not be factually right, but is hard to morally impeach.  And hence the problem with the Machiavellian formulation, that anyone directly wills the bad means: it is too simplistic.

So likewise in the case of politics, it seems too simplistic to me to say that someone who votes for a politician who is a bad man is choosing to vote for a bad man in order to further the common good (or, more likely these days, stave off common evils).  That may sometimes be the case: some people may say, simply, "I choose this evil because it is lesser."  But I think most people would say, rather, that they are not choosing an evil but choosing a good, however limited and constrained.  You vote for a man or woman in spite of their flaws, not to flaunt them or to speak as if they did not matter or are trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (II)

It does not help the Flight 93 crowd's efforts to escape the imputation of Machiavellianism that the intellectually rigorous elements within their school of thought have that connection to Claremont, with its connection to Harry Jaffa and ultimately to Leo Strauss, and thence to a slightly more positive reading of Machiavelli than is usual in conservative circles.

But while the purely end-based ethics of Machiavelli are execrable, it is by no means clear that a focus on the end over the means is always wrong.  Indeed, to insist that the means in any human endeavor have all the splendor, moral and otherwise, of the end at which they aim, would be foolish.  If the means were as splendid as the end, they would as often as not simply be the end (hence the phrase "an end in itself").  None of this is to say that one can deliberately choose evil in order to achieve good--one cannot, for instance, commit theft in order to give to the poor.

But one should certainly not be surprised if, in the complexities of ordinary life, one finds oneself facing difficult choices; for reality is rarely so pure as examples like "theft to give to the poor" suggest.  Thus, for instance, I might find that in order to study for an exam I have to neglect sleeping and eating healthfully for a short period of time.  A Machiavellian would look at this and say that I am choosing an evil (neglect of my own health) in order to obtain a good I perceive as greater (knowledge and good grades).  But a believer in double effect theory would say (or at least hope) that I was rather choosing to study, and that the neglect of sleep and healthy eating were unfortunate, foreseen, permitted, but not deliberately chosen consequences of that choice to pursue the higher end of study.

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (I)

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (God rest her soul) has led to a predictably intense conversation about the who, what, why, where, when, how, and if of her replacement by President Trump.  And that's just on the right.  It's been ugly on Facebook, including among my own friends, people I like and respect, people who went to the same college with me, people who espouse the same religion.

A lot of the ugliness, I think, goes back to the question of the Flight 93 paradigm.  The (in)famous 2016 essay (read it here, if you wish to be annoyed, edified, scandalized, or whatever: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/) posited that America was at a crossroads, about to be destroyed, and that any means should be taken to save it, up to and including supporting politicians lacking in moral fibre.

This position was, and remains, the position of many on the right--and, I might add, the left.  It has also been decried by many of those on the right for putting pragmatism over a real interest in the common good.  If the right becomes focused merely on power, how are we not the bad guys?  Are we any different from Boromir, wanting to use the ring for good?  How are we not Machiavellians, acting as if the good end (saving the country) justifies the bad means (electing the morally bankrupt)?

Shouldn't the Good Guys Be Better Than This? (I)

Fear not, mon freres.  No politics today.  It is simply that I have been reading in disparate places about the scandals of bad Catholics and bad bishops, and pondering the challenge that these realities pose to the Catholic claims about the sacraments.

In a nutshell, the case is this.  Catholics claim that the sacraments--Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation (aka Confession aka Penance, which is all a story in its own right), Eucharist, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction are both external signs and conduits of divine grace.  Jesus Christ instituted them during his time on earth, taught them to his apostles, and the apostles in turn passed them on to the Church.  Or, as the Baltimore Catechism more succinctly puts it:

Q. What is a sacrament?

A. A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.

So if an ordinary Catholic has received at least Baptism and Confirmation--and presumably makes use of Penance and Eucharist as well--and more likely than not has received Matrimony--then why aren't we all much nicer than our non-Catholic neighbors?  And for priests and bishops, who have received Holy Orders, why are they not holier still?  Why are catty Catholics and wolfish shepherds a thing?

Bad Stuff Happens, I

 When I was in college, some of the other students liked making short films.  Although it was strictly a liberal arts school, a few of them had an interest in going into media and movies; it was good practice for them, and a lot of fun.  The films generally made it into the entertainment that opened our four or five annual dances.  They were almost always nerdy, full of inside jokes, frequently parodic of more serious fare (The Godfather, samurai cinema, murder mysteries, etc.).

One of the ones that has stuck with me was a film--I forget the title--with the oft-repeated tagline "bad stuff happens."  I could not tell you the plot, although a burglary was involved, along with serious bodily harm to (I think) the burglar.  At which the narrator solemnly intoned, as if we were in a Victorian morality play, "Bad stuff happens."  I believe his last iteration of the words was followed by the sententious statement, "It's for the children."

In the never-ending news cycle of 2020, with civil wars and dying supreme court justices and pandemics and fires and, well, bad stuff happening, I can't help but think of that movie and laugh.

Bad stuff happens all the time.  It always has.  History is not merely one darn thing after another, it's mostly one bad darn thing after another.  (Come to think of it, maybe that's what the "darn" was there for in the first place.)  And so we make funny films about people who take it too seriously.  I don't think this is apathy.  I think it's realism.  There's absolutely nothing I can do about the Bad Stuff that Happens.  It is not unique.  And that suggests that it's not as important as the never-ending news cycle tends to make us think.

Why I Studied Literature

 Sometimes I feel a need, probably false, to defend having studied literature, particularly as opposed to philosophy, in which I majored (more or less) as an undergraduate.  It's the sort of field that the Scott Walkers of the world tend to want smallified; and of course, if philosophy and literature meant merely what they seem to mean most everywhere these days, the Scott Walkers of the world would be right.  That's why the following piece was so refreshing.

https://theamericanscholar.org/teach-what-you-love/

It's a bit long, but the author has a way with words; and his point about the importance of loving what you teach is spot on.

Death by a Thousand Papercuts, II

The larger point, of course, about “death by a thousand papercuts” is the same one raised in the old comic series, “Laughter Is the Best Medicine.”  If you can manage to laugh at a thing, it doesn’t seem nearly so overwhelming.

The key words there are “if you can manage.”  Laughter is all about perspective—about the ability to recognize a disproportion—hence Aristotle’s claim that the ridiculous mistakes in comedic drama are a species of “the ugly,” ugliness being a kind of disproportion (e.g., having a nose that is too big or small for one’s face).

But having perspective means standing in some sort of position.  You don’t have a perspective without some sort of principles—ideally, the sort of principles that give you the broadest possible perspective, that allow you to see as much of reality as is humanly possible.

So it happens that, for all that there is a tradition of lampooning “sour saints,” I think that the ability to laugh at life’s mishaps is probably greater among people who have a healthy religious mindset than amongst those who lack it.  I say “healthy” because, of course, the dwarfing of everything else by the specter of eternal life can produce melancholia and irritability and disregard for one’s neighbors.  But at its best, a believe in eternity, rightly understood, is what makes it possible to laugh at the thousandeth papercut of the day.

Because after all, even if that final papercut were the end of the world, what’s the world?

It’s not so much that laughter is the best medicine, as that it’s more pleasant to die laughing.  Which is why I’ll never agree with the philosophy of this movie …

… as much as the philosophy of this movie …

Things to Say VIII

This has been a long series, talking about how people (especially students, but not exclusively) find things to say, so I’ll sum up the steps covered.

(1)   Have a generally broad background knowledge and a working knowledge of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and websites that will fill the gaps in that knowledge.  (Hopefully you read a lot as a kid.  If you didn’t then, start now.  Throw your smart phone in the trash first—or, if you can’t bear to do that, download a Kindle or Overdrive app so you can read books on it, and delete your social media apps, so that you actually DO read books on it.)

(2)   Read a text, any text.

(3)   How do you feel?  Write that down.

(4)   Now ask yourself why you felt that way.  Write that down.  Do your reasons make sense?  Why or why not?  Do you think the author meant you to feel that way?  Why or why not?

(5)   Now that you’re had feelings and rationally analyzed them, are you ready to make a judgment about whether your feelings were justified?  In other words—do you agree, disagree, or a little bit of both with the author?  Or perhaps, do you need more information before making a judgment?  Whatever the answer is, write it down.

(6)   If you do need more information (you probably do), go back to step one.  Look up what you need to know, write it down, and then repeat steps 2-5.  Keep repeating 1-5 until you feel you are in fact ready to make a judgment about what the text is saying and whether or not it is true, good, beautiful, useful, funny, etc., or otherwise.

(7)   Now that you have a judgment, write that down.

(8)   Congratulations!  You have a thesis statement and an extensive array of notes, some of which are emotional arguments, some of which are rational ones, and some of which are factual.  In other words, you have done all the prework for writing a paper.

Of course, seasoned writers often do most of this in their heads.  Guess what?  Student writers do too.  That’s why most of them never learn how to actually write—because no one’s explained to them that this is how it works.  This is how you actually engage with a text.  This is where ideas come from.

But now that I’ve realized this, I have a secret weapon.  Yes, Mrs. Finburg has a new worksheet.  And if I ever get my hands on freshmen again, they will be introduced to the eight-step process, and turning their processes in, before ever a paper lands on my desk.

Things to Say, VII

Instead of having the emotional reaction that my poor student had, and just saying, “Priest! Gross! Ick!” hopefully your son or daughter will understand that the real gross/ick thing here, as far as Austen and her substitute Lizzy are concerned, is the idea that one can marry someone who is far less intelligent, sensitive, and kind than you are, to the general applause of your family and your social circle.  Austen, in other words, is against marriages of convenience; and Lizzy’s reaction to Mr. Collins’s rhetoric is rooted in the fact that he is proposing precisely that sort of marriage.

Here, then, is how that freshman class should have gone.  The students laugh at the proposal, find it funny, but find Mr. Collins a little icky, obnoxious, etc.  They have, in other words, roughly the same emotional reactions to him as Lizzy has.  Once they realize that fact, they have to ask why.  Once they ask why, and can identify the difference of belief between Mr. Collins and Lizzy (pro/anti marriage of convenience) they can then have at least four really interesting discussions:

(a)   Why, historically, did marriage of convenience make sense and why did European society drift away from it?

(b)   If Mr. Collins really wanted to persuade Lizzy to marry him—but could not change his own fundamental traits or character—what sort of rhetorical argument would he have to make to her that might have a chance of getting her to take his proposal seriously?

(c)   Speaking universally, are marriages of convenience moral, immoral, or amoral?

(d)   What role does this introduction of the marriage of convenience have in the novel’s overall plot as a piece of literature?

Four big questions, one philosophical, one rhetorical, one historical, and one literary.  Each enough, really, for a senior thesis—and most students struggled to find enough in the scene to write an interesting two page paper.  And that was, at least partly, my fault—because I didn’t know how to show them how to look.

I think I have a better idea now.

Things to Say, VI

I felt really bad for my writing students, not least because I had not the slightest idea what the cure for their problem was.  I couldn’t go back in time and tell them to read more things—but that really was the only thing that could have fixed their problem.

But parents, for the love of Mike—have your kids read more things.   Have them read all the things.  Read for an hour a day, at least.  And then—no book reports—but ask them at the dinner table about their reading.  If they’re confused about a plot point or a concept, help them understand it; and if you’re not sure you understand it, look it up.  Don’t be necessarily satisfied with the first answer you find online, either—look for several, and figure out which one makes the most sense, or what the consensus is.

Help your children learn how to learn.  Don’t assume that because they did their homework and got passing grades in school they’re good to go.  They.Are.Not.Alright.

And then, if you do all that, when they get to college, they’ll have enough background to actually understand why Lizzy is amused by—and refuses—Mr. Collins’s proposal.

Things to Say, V

I’ll give one example of how bad the situation is in a typical university these days; trust me when I say that this is far from the most entangled problem one could encounter.

I once taught a passage from Pride and Prejudice as part of a rhetoric class—specifically, the scene where Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzy Bennet.  I started with a video clip, had the students read the texts, had discussion and writing assignments tied in.  It was funny, it was grippy, a lot of the students at least enjoyed the assignment, and maybe one or two learned something about rhetoric.

But imagine, for a moment, that I had a student who was convinced that Lizzy refused Mr. Collins because he was a minister, and ministers/priests are not supposed to be married.*  This student is utterly convinced that he has pinpointed Mr. Collins’s rhetorical failure, and utterly, devastatingly wrong.  He was convinced that Lizzy refused Mr. Collins’s proposal because it is grossly immoral to marry a priest.

There are all sorts of problems with this, no?

(a)   The text refers to Mr. Collins not as a (Roman Catholic and hence, presumably, bound to celibacy) priest, but as a clergyman; and the Church of England had married clergy at the time—it was, in fact, the norm.  The student has no concept of the possibility that older texts might use words like “minister” or “clergy” more flexibly than his own experience allows, and assumes that they are mere synonyms for “priest.”

(b)   There are different cultural rules for priestly marriage in any case, in different places and times.  Pagans, Christians, and Jews have all had married priests; and the Roman Church in the west even today grants exceptions for some married priests, for instance in those cases where a man entering from, say, Anglicanism is already married.

(c)   Furthermore, while there are some cultural matters (such as infanticide, spouse-beating, and slavery) which are sufficiently contrary to natural law that they might possibly trigger alarm bells even for those within a culture, there are other cultural matters—like whether religious leaders should marry—which are more obviously about prudence than about right and wrong.  Bottom line, from this and (b), Lizzy can’t be morally outraged by something that is neither absolutely wrong nor considered wrong within her culture.

(d)   And finally, er, well, there’s nothing in the text to indicate that Lizzy is upset because Mr. Collins is a clergyman.  (Her baby sister, on the other hand …)

But all of this assumes a tremendous background of knowledge—not reason, not innate intelligence, but just knowing stuff about human history—that the student doesn’t have.  And I can’t provide it all in one or two or even ten meetings.

The students I taught weren’t badly educated.  Too often, however, they simply were undereducated, and they didn't always know it.  And so that text and just about any other that they were going to encounter were going to be locked to them for the foreseeable future.

*I say “imagine this” because I actually never had a student make this particular error.  I would not out a student, even anonymously, on a blog.  But trust me when I say that I had students who made interpretive mistakes and clung to them tenaciously.

Apocalypse Soon?

California is on fire, again.  Still?  I guess it never went away; it just retreated from this neck of the woods.  Now the ash falls are back, the sun is a pale pink color, and the sky--well, I keep thinking of this song:

Technically, the sky is more of a golden brown color; but who's counting shades on the color palette these days?

Things to Say, IV

I would be loathe to see students stop at their emotional reactions to a text, of course.  After all, a good deal of the destruction of public discourse has to do with overly emotional reactions to how certain situations, words, and concepts make us feel, as opposed to whether or not they are actually true or false, good or bad, useful or otherwise.

But the fact remains that, while a merely emotional reaction to any text is inadequate, an emotional reaction is better than no reaction at all.  And too often, as a teacher, that was what I saw: not that my students (some woke, some not) would get angry or offended by what I presented to them, but that they simply would not care.  The most that would happen was a sort of mild approval or disapproval, usually evoked when they perceived a text as being in agreement or not, respectively, with what they felt they believed.

But oftentimes, their understanding of the text or concept was so superficial that they didn’t really know whether they agreed with it or not—and they didn’t know how to react—and hence, apathy.

What they really needed to learn was how to recognize when a text was opaque, and how to dig into it.  But they needed such a vast array of tools for that task, so many of which were lacking, that it was impossible for me to provide them with everything they needed.

Things to Say, III

Jonah Goldberg once related a piece of advice a mentor gave him—one of those little tricks of the trade that writers pass along to each other—to wit, to read and then write about what made him angry.  And certainly if one is devoted to the daily column or (in my own case) the daily post, there is worse advice.  Indeed, many of the posts in this return to the blog have been incited by my frustration with a general public habit of failure to think things through.

But perhaps a better piece of advice, when it comes to looking for things to say—whether one is a pundit like Goldberg or a blogger or a student (heaven help you) in Mrs. Finburg’s first year writing class—is to read and then to write about what got your blood going.  That could be anger, but it could also be amusement, agreement, curiosity, confusion, sadness, joy, disdain, humiliation …

Good ideas, I think, have to come from some sort of engagement with the text; and for any normal person (present company excepted) that usually means first an emotional engagement.  Indeed, even for people who are habituated to approaching things from a rational standpoint, the emotions frequently run ahead before the logical analysis.  It’s simply how human beings are made.

Good ideas, in fact, have the same birthplace as bad ideas: in the gut, in the heart.

Things to Say, II

That’s the trouble with silence: it may be the silence of meditation (as in the case of Our Lady), but it can also mean being checked out.  And while naturally the results of getting checked out students to talk are, well, really bad classroom conversations, it’s not clear to me that this is worse than never having those conversations at all.

Admittedly, calling students cold for their first reactions to a text is not the best way to get them to practice deep thought—it’s a great was to get them to practice tongue-wagging.  Is there some way for them to practice thinking first, to prime the pump, as it were?

Writing is one possibility—if a student writes about a text, it may help them to talk about it too.  But then the problem simply moves backwards: the student who is idea-less in the classroom is liable to be equally so in the dorm room, as I know to my sorrow and chagrin.

Where do good ideas come from, anyway?

Things to Say

I don’t usually share other’s work and ideas on this blog, which probably creates an inaccurate representation of how my thought processes work (98% perspiration of reading someone else’s stuff, and 2% inspiration from yours truly).  But this piece is too good not to share: https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/defense-students-who-never-say-anything.  Please go read it and come back!

My first thought, on reading that, was Yes.  And my second was Not quite.  And my third was …

I went to two very different Catholic schools for undergrad and graduate school.  Aside from their shared Catholicity, they could hardly have been more different—in large part because my undergraduate education was so distinctive.  It actually meshed reasonably well with my graduate school.  But the undergraduates that I taught in grad school were as different from myself and my fellow undergraduates at the previous school as fish from fowl.  And, while freshmen were supposed to engage in class discussion at both places, the capacity of freshmen to talk—and even to talk sensibly—was simply much greater at my undergraduate institution than at the school were I taught.

Why?  Some of the difference, doubtless, was that my undergraduate institution recruits a specific type of student, one who will do well in class discussions.  Some of the differences may have been due to intelligence—though at both schools, the quiet students included some of the brightest ones.

More than anything else, though, I think it comes down to habit: to whether you have practiced thinking out loud or thinking through writing or thinking in your head.  And of course, you may believe yourself to be proficient in thinking in any or all of those modes, only to hear from a teacher that your “thinking” may not be terribly thoughtful at all.

The good thing about thinking through talk (or writing) though, is that—however banal the thoughts expressed may sometimes be—it is evident to the teacher that the student is practicing thinking.

The Red Shoe

There we were, outside in masks (because California), sitting with our children in socially-distanced bubbles.  The kids were mostly too shy to want to play with each other anyway, after months of seeing much less of each other than normal.  It made for a pretty quiet mom's group, which is to say nothing worse than a dull roar, except when the leaf-blower man came by, which turned the affair up to a less dull roar.

Then came the man with the dog.  About fifty or so, by the look of him, and t'other a pup of the I'm-totally-not-a-rat variety.  For some strange reason, I.T.N.A.R.  was off-leash, which meant that he came in amongst us, sniffing and snuffing.  The man mumbled something that might have been an apology (the leash was dangling in his hand) and just when it looked as if the dog might have lost interest, lo! a pair of red shoes, of smell intriguing, inches away from the foot of a mysterious woman.  Who needs two shoes anyway?  And without a second thought, I.T.N.A.R. was off, and the one shoe with him.

Nervous laughter erupted.  The man seemed oblivious to the stir he had caused.  I went after I.T.N.A.R..

"He won't put the shoe down," the man explained.

Indeed, no amount of coaxing seemed to help, and I had little inclination to tackle-grab someone else's fun-size wiener.  It seemed like the sort of thing that might make even a relaxed Eastern-European-Californian upset.

"She can't leave without her shoe," I said rather grimly, and marched back to the group, defeated.

As I explained the situation to the others, one of the ladies saw the man disappearing (leash still in hand) into ... the restrooms?  I.T.N.A.R. wandered about outside the closed door for a moment, befuddled.  Then he dropped the shoe.

Reader, I sprinted.

The shoe was little the worse for wear when I dropped it (from a distance, mind) on its former owner's blanket.  As we were all laughing again (this time in relief), she said she might just walk back to the car in one shoe anyway.

"Dogs can carry COVID," she explained.

"Oh yes," said someone else, "I heard of a dog dying here in the States of COVID."

Reader, I was already feeding my children, and I had definitely not sanitized my hands.

But you know, I feel much more comfortable these days going to mom's group.  Because, after all, instead of lots of "It's just a cold" children sharing sippie cups, you know what?  The worst thing I have to worry about is whether I.T.N.A.R.'s owner has or has not been socially distancing.  And given what we saw of his social skills, I'm thinking I'm probably in the clear, dog spit or no.

The Solidity of Things Is from God, VI

There are all sorts of imperfections with that analogy, of course, beginning with the fact that we are not children but adults.  Surely God should treat us as such!  Surely we should get to decide when it is time to restrain our appetites—to suffer—and not be handed suffering on a time-table from the heavenly dictator, no?  For we are adults.

Then again, are we?  Are you?  I’m not always so sure about myself.  The things I cling to—my comforts, my time—I hardly cling to in an adult fashion.  I may not do the angry dance my toddler does when something doesn’t go my way, but—I would prefer not to think about how I do tend to react.

Because really, the things that I value and hate losing and fear to lose are about as solid, in the end, as pea crisps.  They are beautiful, and even sometimes have a sort of glory to them: in moments, they make me happy.  But I know that their solidity comes from somewhere else; they are not sustained of themselves.  I hesitate to say, with many of the saints, that they are trash—after all, God made them and gave them to me.  But they are petits riens, little nothings.  And when I enjoy them, whether I know it or not, I’m really enjoying something much bigger, and older, and stronger, and better; something so terrifying that I can’t quite face up to it yet.

Now I know how my kids feel looking at their dinner plates, I guess.

But hey, they actually enjoyed the meal by the end of it!