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Is attraction enough?

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Once, I sipped a water in a cruise ship bar and made eyes with a cruise ship drummer.

A good looking cruise ship drummer.

Who wasn’t wearing a wedding band.

Whose eyes’ contact with mine resulted in warm and fuzzy feelings.

This, I think, is the coveted “love” at first sight (which, to clarify, isn’t actually love).

It is instantaneous, inexplicable attraction. It is why when I met the cruise ship drummer after his set, I didn’t care that he hardly could speak English. It is why I wasn’t embarrassed by my embarrassing opener: “I don’t speak Spanish.” Not much matters except for attraction when we think the existence of attraction is enough.

But attraction alone doesn’t matter much. It is neither warm feelings nor fuzzy ones that deem the pursuit of a relationship necessarily advisable. Which is why I am mildly alarmed by the frequency with which relationships are pursued based solely on warm and fuzzy feelings.

This is when we are self-focused daters. When we want what we want because it feels good, not because it is good. When we date someone because we are attracted to him or her.

This is not to say we should date people to whom we are not attracted. (Awkward!) It is to say that attraction is not enough (especially if it’s inexplicable).

It is never enough.

The outcomes of self-focused dating vary. Maybe you get lucky and wind up with somebody good. Maybe you fight to sustain or revive an irrational relationship. Maybe you marry a person who, outside the attraction, you don’t even like.

But I can’t even tell you how much this hurts my heart.

My hunch is, in a culture as distracted as ours, most of us are satisfied when looking at, being near, talking to, or sleeping with him or her feels good.

Which is why few people probably stop to consider the magnitude of the self-focused pursuit and maintenance of relationships; to consider what it means that we are more concerned with how good somebody makes us feel than with whether he or she is mature enough to be a spouse.

Than with whether we become better or worse people by being with each other.

Than with whether he or she would be a good parent.

Than with whether we are being fair to our future kids when our future kids will grow up and turn into one of us.

My attraction to you and yours to me doesn’t render us prepared to be spouses or parents. My attraction to you and yours to me is necessary but insufficient for a functional relationship.

“But it feels good.”

But “it feels good” isn’t enough.

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Thoughts on Pope Benedict’s resignation.

“No way.”

This morning, in my dark bedroom, I felt for my glasses on my nightstand. Found them. With corrected vision, I looked again at my phone, at a post on Google+ shared by somebody in my circles:

“Pope to resign.”

I thought it was a hoax. By now you know it isn’t.

I have had a day to process the news, to begin to adjust to the reality that Rome will probably have a new Bishop by Easter.

Today, these have been my thoughts, in no particular order:

  • I want to cry a little.
  • What an example of humility and responsibility.
  • This excerpt from a 2007 Catholic News Agency article is a fabulous snippet of the big picture of B16’s wisdom:

    In contrast to this beauty and purity, the Holy Father turned to the young people of today who are, he said, “growing up in an atmosphere pervaded with messages that propose false models of happiness. These boys and girls risk losing hope because they often seem to be orphaned of that real love which fills life with meaning and joy,” Pope Benedict warned.
    Adults advancing false models of happiness, he said, were targeting children at ever-younger ages.
    “Adolescents, youths and even children are easy victims of the corruption of love, deceived by unscrupulous adults who, lying to themselves and to them, draw them into the dead-end streets of consumerism,” he continued.
    Pope Benedict lamented that in a consumerist society even human bodies become objects, saying that this objectification is occurring earlier and earlier.
    “How sad it is when young people lose the marvel, the enchantment, of the most beautiful feelings, the value of respect for one’s body,” he said.


  • I am stunned.
  • Toupster, Toupster! (…who just three days ago became a monsignor.)
  • I really hope I’m at home the day the chimney smoke turns white, or anywhere in front of a TV when it happens. How exciting it was to watch the white smoke rise live when the cardinals elected Cardinal Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI. How neat it would be to see it again when white smoke rises for St. Peter’s next successor.
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[Love and Responsibility] Part 1: Libido and the sexual urge.

This post is part 1 in a sex and love series based on what I learned from my favorite parts of the brilliant book Love and Responsibility by Blessed Pope John Paul II. All quotes, unless otherwise noted or used for emphasis, come from the book.

– – – –

In a chapter on the sexual urge, Pope John Paul II brilliantly differentiates the ‘libidinistic’ interpretation of the sexual urge (as popularized by Freud) from the ‘religious’ one.

The ‘libidinistic’ interpretation says the sexual urge is “fundamentally an urge to enjoy” whereas the ‘religious’ interpretation says the sexual urge is designed to “orient us toward another person,” according to Edward Sri. True orientation toward the beloved curbs a person’s urge to use somebody.

“Libidinistic” is a derivative of the Latin word libido, which means “enjoyment resulting from use.”

Freud’s version of the sexual urge is incompatible with life as Christ calls us to live it, for at least three reasons:

1. It’s a bummer for babies. A sexual urge based on libido requires acquiring pleasure to be the primary purpose of the urge. If acquiring pleasure is the primary purpose of the urge, “the transmission of life,” more commonly called makin’ babies, is simply a side effect. Which means orientation toward another person – be it the one with whom you’re having sex or the one you co-create while you do it – isn’t necessary.

2. It means humans are really just animals. A sexual urge based on libido requires little else of a person than sensitization to “enjoyable sensory stimuli of a sexual nature.” It encourages us to immerse ourselves in “enjoyment resulting from use” every time the opportunity to “use” arises. Then it convinces us that we have to. The result? We are governed by our urges (sort of like my dog is).

3. It masquerades as justification for contraception and abortion. If procreation is only a side effect of acting on the sexual urge (as it is when the urge is based on libido), abstinence is illogical. So when “the earth is threatened with overpopulation” but making babies isn’t a primary purpose of sex (as it isn’t when the urge is based on libido), “have less sex” makes less sense than “suppress fertility.” In other words, even when good reasons exist not to have babies (including but not limited to “I’m not ready to be a parent.”), people for whom the sexual urge is based on libido can’t conclude what JP2 concludes: “We ought to aim at limiting the use of the sexual urge.” Instead, they “aim at the preservation in full of … the pleasure of sexual intercourse, while at the same time curbing … procreation.”

My hunch is we who agree with JP2 on this are few and far between.

(But Jesus wasn’t kidding when he called it a narrow road.)

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[Repost] Empty.

A version of this post originally appeared on Ash Wednesday in 2011.

Lent is the season of the church that starts on Ash Wednesday (a week from today) and ends on Easter.

It is dark and somber. Solemn and quiet. Chock full of scripture, tradition and discipline.

Sometimes, especially toward the end, Lent is sad.

And I love it.

A few years ago, via email on Ash Wednesday, a Franciscan friar friend of mine explained the concept of kenosis. It’s the “process of emptying,” he wrote, and it’s “very common in our Christian spirituality.”

Especially during Lent.

Most practicing Roman Catholic Christians fast until dinner on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We abstain from meat on Fridays. Many of us make a 40-day long sacrifice. In past Lents, I’ve given up chocolate, bread, CDs, Facebook. I heard about a guy once who gave up his bed for Lent, and slept on the floor for 40 nights.

When we give up stuff, it puts a new perspective on the difference between the words want and need.

It frees up some of our time and attention.

It eliminates some distraction.

It empties us.

That, the Franciscan friar wrote, is the point.

“In order to let God fill our life, we need to empty it first.”

Here’s to an empty Lent.

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Three ways I intend to not fail grad school.

This is my “grad school equivalent of
senioritis” face. (Or a picture I accidentally
took with my phone the other day. Either way.)
The start of the spring semester last month marked the beginning of the end.
The end of grad school, assuming I pass comps so I can walk in May. 
I walked into class on Jan. 8, naturally overcome by the deep-seated confidence that I would fail comps in March as a direct result of the existence of the Lifetime Movie Network.

(Don’t judge me.)
I’ve been tired for awhile. Dreaming of the time to read for leisure, and write a lot more than I write, and partake in communication not mediated by computers. So by the time the spring semester rolled up, I was – to quote what I am fairly certain I recently said to my adviser’s face – “OVER IT.”
But the grad school equivalent of senioritis plus a slightly-more-than-mild case of test anxiety does not equal graduation in May. It equals the Lifetime Movie Network (who knew?).
So as of late, I have had to force myself to resist the TV and grab grad school by the horns for the final time. In the process, I have concluded there are three ways I intend to not fail grad school. And they are these:
1. By gratefully accepting the grace of God. Because frankly, it is ultimately by His grace that a young woman for whom it comes far more naturally to procrastinate than not has not already flunked.
2. By buying people lunch if they agree to quiz me. Attention local friends: Expect an invitation. I’ll buy your food and I’ll bring the flash cards. Boom. (Bonus: It’ll be like grad school for you, but faster. And free. And there’s food.)
3. By using the Pomodoro Technique. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank my friend and fellow blogger Edmund Mitchell for casually mentioning the Pomodoro Technique via Google Talk chat last month, because it is changing my life. I’ll sum it up like this: Set a timer! Work for 25 minutes, break for 5. Badabing, badaboom.
And great news:
The grace of God plus flash cards plus the Pomodoro Technique does not equal the Lifetime Movie Network.
Lord willing, it equals graduation.