Freedom

I was recently running an imaginary conversation through my head (I do that a lot, sometimes to prepare for a coming conversation, sometimes to work out an argument, and sometimes because I'm bored. Usually 'cause I'm bored). I played a modern 'feminist' against the Church with the claim "the Catholic Church oppresses women and gives them no freedom."

The response is quite interesting: "The Church gives women the freedom to be women. Society denies her this right and tells her to be a man. Who really oppresses?"

To suggest that freedom is bound up in the idea that one can have the freedom from their very nature is absurd and dangerous. It is like suggesting that trees are oppressed because they have not been given the freedom to be mountains and all trees out to be mountains because they are bigger and stronger and exert a greater influence on the world. And once all the trees are mountains, the mountains will be bare and ugly.

The nature of something is what makes it what it is. A 'freedom,' or rather exile, from one's nature is a destruction of one's being. When a tree becomes a mountain it can no longer be a tree and thus is no longer the same being.

Society's attack on feminity and masculinity lies upon these lines, that nature is as interchangable as clothing. One can simply shuck their feminine nature for a masculine one just like changing pants. The problem is, it is more like leaving the pants and changing the person inside of them. A lack of foundation results in a lack of person.

The only response is the freedom to be what one's nature is. If man is free to be a man he is not scared of it and has no reason to desire to be a woman and vice versa. If one can embrace their nature they would have no reason to change it for both masculinity and feminity are, on their own, perfect, complimenting each other.

A woman's greatest gift is to be female and a man's to be male. It cannot be given up.

The Lessons of Illness

Monday evening I became quite ill. It was the first time in six years that I had really been physically sick and it taught me a couple of things.

A few times over the past year and a half or so I have suffered intense emotional pain, associated with anything from the death of family to loosing faith in another. While these pains were very intense, they were of a quite different form than the physical pain I suffered just the other day and it made me think.

As I was curled up in pain, I had a variety of thoughts, most on the lines of "make it stop" or "this hurts" (when you are in major pain you sort of forget to say 'ow). One thought I had, however, I find rather interesting. One moment I really wanted the pain to stop, the next I wondered how, if I could not handle this pain, I would be willing to let my (hypothetical) wife go through the pain of childbirth. It would be horrible of me to stand by my wife in labor and say "you can do this," etc. while having been completely unwilling to go through pain myself.

In addition, this experience reminded me how we are not designed to suffer. God created us to enjoy eternity with Him, an existence free of suffering. But we are broken (by our own free act) and so we suffer the supernatural experience of pain, the wounding of body and soul. The more we suffer the easier it is to see that we are made to be without it.

Beyond the actual pain, I gained an understanding of sacrifice and penance. I drink a decent amount of caffiene (probably seven caffienated beverages a week) and contimplated giving it up for Lent (as I had already given it up for Fridays) but wondered how I would be able to function without it.

Turns out pretty well. My total Caffiene intake for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday was two Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans and I was awake enough to function until past midnight on Wednesday. During the same time my total food intake was hardly anything (having been virtually unable to eat for much of Tuesday) and I still functioned fine.

I am beginning to see why so many saints were ill for much of their life. While the cause may be explained by their poverty, very often I think the illness helped bring them to sainthood. When our bodies our weakened it takes less of the pleasures of life to fulfill our desires and it is clearer that we need less of what the world has to offer. It is in rejecting the world that we accept heaven.

Sacrifice

There seem to me to be two things Americans don't think they can live without: wealth and noise.

Everywhere you turn people are buying things, generally things which are loud. There is no quiet in the world anymore. If we don't have a radio, TV, or computer (with massive speakers) available, we get our IPods out and listen to that. It seems that every moment is oriented either toward listening to things or purchasing new things.

It's not that everything should be quiet, just that we should, at times, enter into quiet places. When there is too much noise (particularly noise aimed at communicating something, such as modern music or TV) it is much more difficult to think.

Wealth is equally problematic. When there is always something to buy it is much more difficult to use money on others.

These are just a couple observations without solutions but we can take the first step. Don't buy the next thing you want to and don't listen/watch the next program you want to. One step toward being free of the cultural norm.