I told my therapist once that family problems always seem to unfold with a strange, tragic sense of irony.
Years ago, my mother watched as one of her family members slowly grew to over 500 pounds. I have vague childhood memories of this extremely large woman, her floral print dresses, and her funeral. This experience, plus a joyous mix of trauma and disappointment and things I won't mention, contributed to my mom's anorexia.
Her illnesses, physical and mental, played a role in the "dissolution" (as the newspaper put it) of her marriage, and I saw this, and I was going through a mysterious, chronic ailment of my own, drowning in family darkness, and I told my (now-ex) girlfriend, "I don't want this to happen to me, to us, I don't want to become my mother." But it did, and I did.
I remember the moment when irony laughed right in my face. I was standing in my kitchen, my dad on my right, my mother in front of me, and my newly exed-girlfriend on my left. They were talking, but I was quiet, mesmerized. There they all were: my mom who didn't like my ex, my ex who hated my mom (and I certainly shared that feeling at times), and my father who was filing for divorce and had moved out and left me to clean up his mess. A matrix of broken relationships and irony howling. All the chances that I'd had over the past year to get out, dancing like sugar plums in my head (hey, it's almost Christmas). But there I was.
"How did I get here? What terrible decisions did I make in my life which lead me to this point?"
But just when it seems like tragedy and irony have had the last laugh, there's paradox. Someone or something rips open the curtains and lets the bright winter light come pouring in through the windows of your black room. The chain breaks. Your lover leaves you. And suddenly, perhaps with the help of St. Lucy, you see clearly all your shit and all your misery and your life for what it has become. And purpose and strength come surging back into your body and your spirit rises. You get a grip, you remember who you are, you stand straight, Spartan-like, and you see The Road once again.
Sometimes the best way to help those we love is to not try to help those we love. Treat adults like adults. Give back lost dignity. A little respect goes a long ways. It isn't "tough love." It's love done right. I mean, I'm no expert, and I don't know if it works, but the only time lately I can remember my infinitely stubborn, irrationally contradictory mom not challenging me on a point is when I said, "Hey, I'm going to try something new. From now on, I'm not going to ask if you've been eating. You're an adult. You have the right to eat what you want, when you want, in whatever quantity you want. You come as you are." Things changed between us for the better after that.
It's Advent, it's almost Christmas, and there's a lot of talk about Jesus and gingerbread and hope and "love." That ex-girlfriend liked to talk a lot about "love." I get it. It's an important part of the faith. But it's not the only part of the faith. The old virtues still matter. Catholic virtues, Greek virtues, American virtues. They're important! They're vital!
It's the difference between love as the only thing and love as the greatest thing. The old "cheap grace" sermons of traveling holiness preachers are jingle-belling in my ears, and dammit I won't sit here and while a mob of candle-holding, carol-singing "We are the World" minions destroy the planet by trying to save it.
When love is the only thing, it looks like sweet words, mindless affirmation, "helping people," the "humanitarian with a guillotine." Isabel Paterson's classic line comes to mind: "Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends."
When love is the greatest thing, it inspires courage, compassion, rootedness of life, attention to detail, self-respect, and beautiful life-keeping. It observes the image of God in our brothers and sisters and puts their dignity first. I guess what I'm saying is this: let's learn how to love without trying to fix, save, or control everything and everyone with our oh-so-impressive mind powers and own our shit first. That's the paradox of Advent. That's the...hell, there are so many paradoxes in Advent and the manager and the cross and all the rest of it that I'll be up all night if I go any further. Just know that there's a paradox bubbling under all this.
I hope your Feast of St. Lucy was a blessed one. My apologies to G. K. Chesterton, whose picture I used for this post but never mentioned. He is the Paragon of Paradox. I'm blowing out my candle, reading a chapter from Walden, and heading to bed. Good night, Holy Landers.
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