The Cemetery in Kraków

Next year I will write about this for my paper, but I have been writing to a Polish friend about it, so B.A.'s and my visit to a cemetery in Kraków on All Saints Day is very much on my mind.

There is still huge cultural pressure on young people in Poland to get married or embrace religious life, which is great when it comes to making adults behave like adults when otherwise they'd be tempted to become perpetual teenagers, but awful when it comes to women who don't have boyfriends or a religious vocation. The beauty and usefulness of unmarried, unconsecrated aunts must be stressed and celebrated. Maybe there should be a worldwide League of Extraordinary Single Aunts.

And I have a good reason to stress the family ties of Aunts, especially in Poland, because one of the sorrows of Singles is the idea that they don't have families when OF COURSE they have families. We're all born into families, and Poland has the family-friendliest culture I've ever seen. It even beats Italy because although Italians love children, too many (most?) married Italians have spent the past 40 years short-sightedly contracepting Italy towards extinction.

Nothing proved to me the importance of family in Poland more than All Saints's Day. All Saint's Day is a public holiday there, and Poles spend the day and night visiting and tidying the graves of their deceased relations. When B.A. and I were waiting very early in the morning for a tram, I noticed that the one that terminated at a cemetery was absolutely crammed with riders. And even on our less-crowded tram, there were many people with big bundles of flowers and pine branches in dirty plastic bags.

We went to Mass, in part because All Saint's Day is a Holy Day of Obligation in both Poland and Scotland, and after lunch, and fruitless attempts to see art or shop (the galleries and most shops were understandably closed), and a cancelled engagement, we decided to go to a cemetery ourselves.

I was in a tired and frustrated mood from linguistic difficulties, organizational shortcomings, and insomnia, but as we walked to the cemetery, joining the steady stream of people with flowers, branches and dirty plastic bags, and passing the opposite stream of people who now had just the bags, my heart began to lift. We were obviously witnessing something very new to us and very important to Polish culture. Tourists love to be "in the know", and it seemed that we were "in the know."

When we got to the cemetery, we crowded in as others crowded out, and there was still enough light in the early-darkening November sky to read the map. There were two long lists of the names of famous Krakowians buried there. I didn't see the Wojyła family mentioned, but I recognized the names Jan Matejko (the painter), Helena Modrzejewska (the singer) and--especially--Roman Ingarden, Saint Edith Stein's friend and colleague. So having located "our" grave, B.A. and I walked along the avenues to find it.

The tombstones were all raised; they were all big enough to sit on, and there were no flat markers on grass such as we see most of the time in Canada and the USA. They were more like real homes on real avenues; it was a city of the dead. There were trees and tombs as far as the eye could see in all direction, and each and every tomb had coloured, candlelit glass lamps on it. No tomb had been left neglected. There were several lamps on and around the Ingarden tomb; I wondered if family, colleagues or fans had left them there.

There were people everywhere, quiet but chatty and cheerful. Of course I could not understand most of what they said, but I could hear grandsons asking grandmothers how far away their grave was, and grandmothers assuring them not much further. A woman asked me in Polish, and then in a mix of English and Polish, where the Wojtyła grave was, and when I confessed to not knowing, she consulted an older woman who gave complicated directions with much dramatic pointing. In a distant corner, a middle-aged father and college-age son worked silent on and around a flat, raised tombstone, taking lamps and branches from bags.

From a small but ornate chapel, prayers and hymns were so amplified that we could hear them from at least a short distance away. And behind the chapel was a memorial to the victims of communism, in the form of a cross being grasped by many disembodied hands. There was a big crowd of people standing silently before this memorial, and in front of them hundreds of coloured, candlelit, glass lamps. No doubt some of the people were praying for family members who died in the horrors of the Stalinist period and after, but I suspect they were including all the victims in their prayers.

It was not just about family, this quiet cemetery festival. It was about neighbours and nation, too, and the Catholic awareness that our dead--the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant--are still part of our Church, still part of our families, and should not be left forgotten and neglected by us. For the first time in my life, I was well and truly ashamed of the Canadian/American Hallowe'en, with its pagan enjoyment of ghouls and prurient attitude towards our locked and silent graveyards. As a child in a Catholic school, I was directed to make spooky graveyard scenes with tombstones, ghosts, bats and skeletons, spindly trees, comic epitaphs. It was fun, but it had nothing to do with Catholicism because it had nothing to do with love.

The cemetery in Kraków was full of love. Not romantic, sexual love, although perhaps that was there, too, flickering in the hearts of widows and widowers and surviving sweethearts as they prayed for their lost beloveds. Just love: love for family, love for neighbours, love for the dead, love for the saints and parents of saints. Love for God. Love.

Tentative Thoughts on Woman and Guilt

There's a funny line in Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983) which goes something like "She slept with men and pretended she didn't." You get a sense that Weldon doesn't mind the activity described by the first part of the sentence but deplores the pretense described in the second part.

I, of course, have a different perspective. I think that if you have slept with men (i.e. ones you weren't married to), you usually should keep your mouth shut about it, except to your confessor, and then try to live a chaste life hereafter. (As penance for your sins, it would be nice to stick up for girls whose own sex lives are being gossiped about.)

On the other hand, Weldon may have meant that her character pretended to herself that she didn't sleep with men, and I can indeed see how this would be a problem. Lying to yourself about yourself is always a bad idea.

There are women who seem to have a compulsion to tell their sins to all and sundry as a way to reassure themselves that they are still lovable. Their script seems to be, "Would you still like/love me if...?" This is imprudent.

Then there are women who try to dress up their sins as something noble. Their script seems to be "If you don't accept me for 'what I am', then you're basically a Nazi." This is perverse.

And then there are women who try not to know what they are doing when they sin, like freshmen who get drunk to lose their "inhibitions" or pregnant women who convince themselves that unborn babies are only "clumps of cells." This is delusional.

The human capacity and longing to separate oneself from reality never cease to amaze me.

However, at the same time there are women who beat themselves up for non-sins, like being overweight, or underweight, or flat-chested, or big-chested, or grey-haired, or shy, or loud, or dim, or opinionated.

There are also women who recite harsh litanies of self-blame for sins and non-sins, either to themselves (which suggests they are sincere in their corrosive self-disgust) or aloud to friends (which suggests they want their friends to say "No, no. We still love you.")

Given the female tendency to beat ourselves up rather badly, I can see why some women (including me) go absolutely mental when someone blames us for something that really is a personal failing. And this is most often when the action can be attached to a label. For example, if my husband comes home from work and notes that there are still dirty dishes by the sink, I feel resentful because dirty dishes by the sink = I am a Bad Housewife, and how dare he notice something painful about myself I'm trying to forget?!?!?!

Many people have a problem separating critique of their actions, work or ideas from critique of their own selves. When a writer has work rejected, she sometimes feels that it is she, not her work, who has been rejected. Women are supposed to have this problem more than men do. I don't know about that. Men are certainly not free from this tendency.

The trouble of female guilt may lie in a haunting sense that Men=Action, and Women=Being. In this climate of feeling, men do, women are. (I'm not saying this is true; I'm saying that this idea seems to permeate our culture.) It feels as though men can do or even just be accused of bad stuff without it affecting their being, whereas women are somehow ontologically changed.

I'm expressing myself badly, so I'll bring up the most obvious example, which is the fear of being called a slut.

In my mind's eye I am imagining a perfectly nice, inoffensive, mildly humorous, and mildly attractive young man who is active in Catholic Chaplaincy. It comes to his ears that for some crazy and mysterious reason, a rumour has sprung up that he is a male slut. As the farthest he has ever gone in his life was to make out with a Czech girl he met at World Youth Day, he is astonished at this rumour. He is even slightly amused. When asked about it, he says he cannot imagine how this rumour came about.*

Now I am imagining a perfectly nice, inoffensive, mildly humorous and mildly attractive young woman who is active in Catholic Chaplaincy. It has come to her ears that for some crazy and mysterious reason, a rumour has sprung up that she is a slut. As the farthest she has ever gone in her life was to make out with a Czech guy she met at World Youth Day, she is outraged. She is crushed. She feels violated, betrayed, and almost suicidal. It is simply the worst day of her entire life. When asked about it, she rages and cries.

In short, as far as he is concerned, the label slides off the guy like water off a duck's back, but as far as the she is concerned, the label is stuck to the girl's forehead.

(You'll have long ago noticed that the expression is "male slut" as if sluts, like nurses, are usually female.)

Because the penalties for being (heterosexual) sexual sinners have usually been relatively light for men and extremely heavy for women, it is easy to see why my hypothetical guy is calm and my hypothetical girl frantic.

I keep thinking about a couple at a wedding. The man wears dark colours and, heck, he may have rented his clothes. No biggie if he spills something on himself. The woman wears a costly white dress, and if she spills something on herself it will show and AAAAAAAH!

Anyway, my tentative suggestion is that men don't feel as threatened as women do that admitting to personal non-violent sins will somehow make them less in the eyes of the world. There are reasons for this. The sooner Hugh Grant said sorry for paying a prostitute, Divine Brown, for her "services", the sooner he could go back to being floppy-haired and loveable on the silver screen. But I do not recall Divine Brown, the prostitute, apologizing for anything. Instead she brazened it out and became a minor celebrity. Nobody, however, ever forgot that she was a prostitute.

But this double-standard has no basis in reality. Men and women are both sinners and sin has the same effect on us. If a human being, male or female, commits a mortal sin, he or she falls from grace. If the fallen human being, male or female, feels contrition, confesses and does penance, he or she is forgiven. Men are changed ontologically if they become priests, and both men and women are changed ontologically when we first have sexual intercourse of our own free will.** But that's it for ontological change. (Oh, maybe baptism is in there.)

It does not seem right, then, for women to carry a bigger or smaller burden for our sins than men do. A Catholic guy with a past does not really worry that this will stop him from getting married one day. A Catholic girl who slept around before she saw the light sure does. Not fair. But then there are thousands of women who have gone to doctors to have their unborn children killed and then go ballistic if they hear a word of blame.

The only solution to this uncomfortable state of affairs is to acknowledge that we are all, men and women, sinners, and that sin ranges from unpleasant to truly horrible, but that we are not our sins. We are people who sin. Women are not sin. We do sin. And we can and should be forgiven if and when we ask.

Meanwhile anyone who begins or passes along rumours about a guy or girl being a slut has committed very serious sins indeed--both detraction and scandal. The pain of the victim, whatever he or she might or might not have done, will cry out to heaven for justice.

*My hypothetical college student does not experience same-sex attractions. Young men of traditional religious backgrounds who experience same-sex attractions often suffer very much from the salacious gossip of others. I've noticed that their female friends are often very protective of them, possibly because the women know intuitively how damaging it can be on many levels to be labelled a sexual sinner.

**I am currently fact checking this. I could be wrong. The Ancients and Mediaevals made SUCH a song-and-dance about virginity, they really did, that I may have been misled by their enthusiasm. Or by the fifty-cent word "ontological." Baptism wipes your soul clean of original sin (and any extra sin accrued, in case of those over 7), and priesthood gives the priest's soul a priestly character. Marriage does NOT stamp a permanent character to the soul. I guess the question is whether loss of virginity changes a person in any significant way. The Ancients and Mediaevals and whoever recruits Consecrated Vrigins might very well say "YES." Whether it has any affect on the SOUL, however, is something I am completely unsure of. I don't see why it would if marriage does not. ANYWAY, side issue, peeps. The point I am trying to make is that repentance and forgiveness of sins DOES wipe your slate clean, and so admitting to your sins does not make you a worse or "a bad" person, it makes you better.

As Strong as Death

Yesterday I went for a walk, bought a coffee and sat on a bench by the sea. I thought about the tide and love and gravity and the little dogs running about on the beach. I thought about reality and the illusion of reality. This is not a total cliche when you are 39 years old and squashy.

What I determined, in all these thoughts, was that there are real, solid, permanent loves that affect you invisibly, like the pull of the moon upon the tides, and there are the little crushes, little infatuations that make us run hither and thither like the little dogs on the beach. The solid loves look dull but are as terrible as the grave, and the little crushes look exciting but are basically trivial in themselves.

Crushes are like matches. If you're playing with matches, you light one, it looks pretty, and then it goes out. Sometimes a match lights a warming fire, which is marriage, but unfortunately sometimes it burns down the house, which is your crush ruining your life and perhaps the lives of other people, too. However, both things take fuel. Again, a match on its own is pretty trivial.

Family love is like the moon in that it certainly has an invisible pull and it can seem terrible (terrible as an army with banners) at times. We spend our lives arguing internally with our parents and perhaps also with our brothers, sisters, and children. Families speak languages that no-one else can understand and have dynamics that outsiders cannot see. People panic as they hear themselves sound increasingly like their parents: despite all their attempts to escape mom and dad they find out that, to a certain extent, they are mom and dad.

Family love is the cradle for married love, which also has an invisible pull and can also seem terrible (terrible as an army with banners) at times. It is not the same thing as romantic love; romantic love is its rebellious servant. Married love is as wonderful and terrible as love of one's mother. Incidentally, about 70% of all divorce actions in Scotland are at the instance of wives. Elderly widows, as we know, usually survive widowhood for decades. Elderly widowers usually keel over within a year. Men, often so reluctant to marry, are equally reluctant to allow marriage to stop.

I doubt I'm ever going to blog much on marriage. B.A. is the most patient, tolerant chap alive, and I don't want to take advantage. But I will say that there are terrible moments in which I have to choose between "Non Serviam" and "Serviam" and grace alone gets me to choke out the latter. And no doubt B.A. experiences the same.

Friend love can also exert its pull and be terrible (terrible as an army with banners). However, such friendships are rare--except, and I am guessing, inwar zones, where soldiers put themselves in serious danger ultimately because of their buddies. Women are used to seeing our good friends suffer, and we bring them soup, perhaps, and sometimes we talk about them behind their backs and say "Isn't it a shame?" and "If only she wouldn't bring it on herself!", but sometimes we suffer agonies because our best friend is suffering agonies. We can't even talk about it. At such times, friendship isn't fun, and we're back to the choice between "Serviam" and "Non Serviam."

Then there is romance and flirting and crushes and wit, and these are all very nice, when you don't allow them to muck up your life, but they are really secondary. I wonder, though, if love of romance isn't the biggest marriage killer out there. Men don't read romance novels. Women read romance novels and, in Scotland, 70% of divorce actions are... you know.

But I like romance, just as I like the little dogs that run around on the beach, and I like flirting and crushes and wit. Like novels and paintings they add not a little colour to the strong outlines of life. But in the grander scheme of things, they are just human inventions. They don't really matter. What really matters is family love, married love, friend love and, of course, the love of God, which is truly, truly terrible (terrible as an army with banners) indeed.

Evangelium 2010

I'm going to Evangelium 2010, and if you are between the ages of 18 and 35, you should go too. Yes, I am too old, but I was asked to go, so I'm going. I shall bring a big box of my books, too, as they are Grade A orthodox and so is Evangelium. My pal Dr. Alan Fimister says so, and if he says so, it is so. Believe me on this.

The conference will be from August 6 to August 8 at the Reading Oratory School, which is a school founded by the future Cardinal Newman in England. There are way more Catholics in England than in Scotland, so I am longing to rush down and check them all out. If you are a British Catholic and you look at the list of lectures on the website, you may see some names you recognize, like "Fr. Aidan Nichols" and "Joanna Bogle."

I am told there will be Mass offered every day in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms, and in the Roman and in the Dominican Rite. How accomodating is that?

The fee is £95, which does not sound bad for a weekend mini-break with solid Catholic speakers and a gang of fellow young Catholics. So if you think you can make it, and it should be easy for European Union citizens, fill out the online form and circle the date on your liturgical calendars.

I shall not be officially speaking, but I shall be plugging my beloved book, so if Singles want to talk to little me in person about Singledom, you may. (If you have HFCWG questions, though, there will be lots of priests and a couple who do marriage prep who would LOVE to talk to you!)

Eeee! I'm so excited! There are, like, only 50 people or so in my TLM community, so the prospect of seeing lots and lots of people at a Catholic conference in my new island home fills me with glee.

Happy Easter, My Little Singles!

Today is Easter Sunday, a day of joy and hope. And I send wishes of joy and renewed hope to all my Single readers, those who hope to find the loves of their lives, those who hope to rejoin their loves on their own Easter, and those who have already found the love that passeth all understanding in their vocation to the Serious Single Life.

More Spirituality for Singles

Poppets, if you are European this is a terribly late post for Sunday, but I have been out all day at Mass and then socializing with Singles both Serious and, er, somewhat stuck.

So instead of writing a long post, here are four quotes for you to ponder. Three are from Susan Annette Muto, whose book really is good, even if you don't agree with everything (as I don't), and one is by Blaise Paschal, found also in Celebrating the Single Life:

"Loneliness slowly turns into solitude when I recommit myself to the Lord and enjoy his company."

There are two "either/or extremes that often tempt singles: either too much withdrawal or too much involvement."

"There is a reason for one's being single. The challenge of a lifetime is to discover what that is."

--Susan Annette Muto

"The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room."

--Blaise Paschal

Spirituality for Singles

So yesterday I was in the National Library of Scotland, and I had a look at a book called Celebrating the Single Life by Susan Annette Muto. I was struck my its solemnity. It made me feel like a frivolous soul. I imagined myself at a theological cocktail party with Susan Annette Muto, having the following chat:

Me: So what do you do?

SAM: I'm a spiritual writer.

Me: Oh, great! So am I! What have you written?

SAM: Well, among other things, I wrote a book called Celebrating the Single Life (Crossroad, 1985).

Me: That's amazing! I wrote a book about the Single Life too! It's called Seraphic Singles (Novalis, 2010).

SAM: Really? What school of spirituality did you employ?

Me: Um, what?

SAM: Did you delve into the importance of prayerful presence?

Me: Um, no.

SAM: Did you break open the scriptures to reveal the special message the Gospel holds for Singles?

Me: Um, um, wait. Let me think. Oh! Once. At least once. I'm pretty sure once. At least once. Maybe twice.

SAM: I was greatly helped by the guidance of Father Adrian Van Kaam.

Me: Well, I read The Rules over and over again.

SAM: I thought you said you were a spiritual writer.

Me: Ah, yes, well, I'm spiritual and I'm a writer, so, ah, er. ..

I'll tell you what Seraphic Singles is like. My book is like a collection of letters from a Catholic Single friend who gives a lot of unsolicited advice and has tragicomic romantic misadventures with Germans. Why Germans? Why, indeed. Anyway, it's like being able to read my blogposts without lugging your computer around. And now you can see the cover online! I'm so excited. (For more information, click on "Coming Soon.")

But for serious spirituality stuff, complete with suggestions for future readings, I recommend Muto's Celebrating Single Life. It won't make you giggle on the bus, but it seems to be full of good food for your soul. I'm going back to the National Library today to make sure.

Here's a passage from Muto's preface that struck me as particularly helpful:

Let us begin...with the bold assertion that the single state is the foundation of all human formation. We are born single (that is, unique) and we die single. In this world, before one chooses any other state in life, he or she is single. Only to the degree that persons accept this blessing of uniqueness can they enjoy the togetherness offered by marriage or community membership. Married couples who really love one another know how much the preservation of their relationship depends on respect for the other's uniqueness. Vowed religious agree that their solidarity as a community finds its greatest resource in each one's solitude before God...

Celebrating the Single Life is definitely in the school of thought that there is a real, permanent Call to the Single Life, quite apart from circumstantial singleness. So Serious Singles should particularly consider reading it. Those of you who are more-or-less sure you're going to be called to religious life or marriage might find in it more comfort as you wait for your marching orders.

There's a gem in the "Introduction" by Father Adrian von Kaam that explains how you might know you have a true vocation to the Single Life. A true vocation to the Single Life shows "little or no envy, spite, jealousy, discontent or tension over the peace, joy and nearness to God that others enjoy in their marital or conventual life...[S]uch a [Single] person is at ease in affirming others in their calling and showing them the respect they deserve."

My response is that there are some very saintly Searching Singles who don't feel envy or spite about other people's married or conventual happiness, but let that go for the moment. What I want to stress is that if you feel a deep desire to wear a Benedictine habit and sing Psalms all day or to have babies and scrub the kitchen floor while your spouse hoovers (vacuums) the sittingroom, and cry with loneliness after weddings and vow-takings, God is probably not calling you to Permanent Single Life. Not so far, anyway. You know you have been called to something (or, more accurately, in the case of a community or a person-to-marry, someone) when you fall in love with it (them, him, her).

One thing that drives me nuts is that vocations tend to be treated BOTH as something we choose of our own free will AND as something that God decrees of HIS own free will. Since people seem to act as though your vocation is something you have to pick (and yet also discern) by the time you leave university, they lead one into the temptation of telling the Almighty to hurry up already. But God is FREE. God gives FREELY. So we have to, and should, await upon our Lord's convenience and not go into super-panic in the third or fourth year of our B.A. degrees because He hasn't spoken yet.