Christmas Ornaments and the Coming of Christ

Growing up, our Christmas ornaments were kept in tall, round, tins with covered with what scenes of old-fashioned winter villages- the kind you imagine would illustrate an old copy of The Christmas Carol.  I have many vivid memories of wrapping my fingertips around the tin lids and yanking them off to reveal what looked like a crumpled pile of old newspapers.  But they were our ornaments- each one wrapped in newspaper or tissue, to be opened one by one at the start of the Christmas season.  These were the first family members to come home for the holidays, the first familiar faces that brought laughter and bright exclamations of “I remember that one!”  Each ornament carried with it a memory, a perfect way to start a season that is all about remembering.  Remembering while also re-living, remembering something that is happening in this very moment.

The past couple years I haven’t had a Christmas tree, and it’s only now that I’m realizing how much this affected my spiritual preparation. The past few Christmases felt disconnected.  They came and went without me really feeling “in the spirit.”  I felt almost surprised on Christmas day, and a bit disappointed when it was over.  People talk a lot about how the ritual of the Christmas tree is drawn from the ancient feast of Saturnalia.  Well before the arrival of Christ, human beings were striving for a connection with the mystical realm. There is an ancient, primal, knowledge that transcends formal religion- the language of ritual- that understands what it is to prepare, what it is to open ourselves, what it is make room for God.  There is no rational explanation for why the Christmas tree works- it just does.  Without it, the season is incomplete.

But of course, the absence of a Christmas tree cannot fully explain my disconnection from the Christmas seaon.  The root of the problem was I wasn't feeling close to Jesus. It’s sounds a bit trite, when I lay it out like that, but it’s the simple truth.  It’s hard to feel the joy of Christmas when you’re removed from the underlying source of the feast.  I’m reminded of a comment a friend of mine, a former Christian, made- “Believing in God is one thing.  It’s the Jesus stuff that’s hard.” And he was one hundred percent right.  God is abstract, undefinable. He or She can be anything you imagine, and his rules- or lack thereof- can be a ridged or flexible as is convenient.  Jesus is a literal historical person that claimed to be God.  (Or didn’t, depending on who you ask.) There are things that actually happened or actually did not happen. If Jeus is God, then there are things God must necessarily be.  There are things about love and morality and our destiny as human beings that also must be. (Destiny is a big word, but that is what we’re talking about here.)  It’s not a theoretical concept anymore- it’s much more real and concrete, and therefore much more difficult.  But it’s also much more beautiful.

So this Advent, I set a goal for myself to reconnect with Christ. Advent is the perfect time to do this, because the season is all about preparing ourselves for his arrival.  We prepare in a literal sense by decorating our home with lights, to guide his way to us, and we prepare internally, by clearing a path to our own hearts.  But where would I start?  My natural go-to when wanting to revive religious practice is the rosary.  Like the tree, it has ancient, eternal roots.  It always feels right.  But my relationship with Mary was fine. (Yes, it's ironic that I have an easier time believing in God’s mother than God himself, but that’s a logical conundrum that I have long since given up on.) But I realized that I’ve been nurturing this relationship with Mary without really tapping into the best part of what it has to offer.  I’ve never really asked Mary to introduce me to her son.  So I did.  In a simple prayer, I asked Mary to reintroduce me to Jesus.  And, little by little, she has.  It's still happening.  Not to say I've returned to faith-like-a-little-child, but I'm a lot closer than I was last year.  And I don't have to lean so hard on Mary as an intercessor.  And that's a really good thing. 

My favorite ornament growing up was given to my parents when I was a newborn.  It’s a glass ornament that depicts an angel in the form of a lovely young woman with long brown hair walking on a cloud. She’s holding an infant her in her arms.  The infant, by the logic of Christmas ornaments, is me.  I loved the ornament, because it was beautiful, but also because it made me feel safe.  It reminded me that someone out there was loving me. It really solidified an early image of God in my mind.  Every year, when I found the ornament, I felt a rush of excitement and joy before hanging it on the tree- always on the best spot I could find, a place of honor.

Every year, it was like rediscovering Jesus.

Did He Really Just Say That? (What to do when you hear a bad sermon)

It's happened to all of us.  Anyone who, by choice or by force, happens to be a regular churchgoer, has heard a bad sermon.  I'm not talking about a priest who is a poor public speaker.  And I'm not talking about sermons that are too long.

I'm talking about the bad ones: the theologically questionable, the offensive, the hateful.  The ones that make you question why you keep coming back to this archaic religion anyway.  The ones that make you thank God you didn't choose this mass to introduce your friend to your faith.

I've heard some pretty nasty sermons over the past 27 years.  The worst by far was at a church in Florida where the priest informed his shocked congregation that "domestic abuse is terrible, but at least these women have husbands." (I assume no causal connection between the state of Florida and this man's warped view of family life.)  Last Sunday, I heard about half of a bad sermon.  The priest started out with a one-sided history of Islam that got my inner porcupine quills standing on edge.  Fortunately, he managed to (mostly) turn it around and make an important point about the rosary.  (It's not a good luck charm.  You have to actually pray it.)  But, by the time he got around to that, I had already pretty much shut him out.  I'm not proud of this,but I've heard enough bad sermons to know I don't want to be angry in church.  If I were more emotionally mature, I would do a better job of disagreeing without becoming angry.

I'll admit, I'm tired of being offended at mass.  I'm exhausted with men telling me about my "feminine nature."  (I haven't figured that who I am, so how on Earth do they know?) I'm tired of hearing other religions being put down, especially faiths that have been historically persecuted by Christians.  We're supposed to know better now- we have several beams in our eyes.  More than anything, I'm fed up with hearing hate preached in the name of God.  I'm not saying every sermon needs to be a fluffy, feel-good, pat-on-the back.  And I'm not saying I have to agree politically with everything a priest says, especially if I'm in disagreement with the Church. But I am saying that a sermon has to reflect what our religion actually teaches.  I want theologically sound sermons.  I want to be challenged and spoken to as someone who has a critical mind, has studied history, knows the Catechism, and has a basic understanding of theology.  In other words, preach to me as if you think I can read.  Because I can and will fact check you when I get home.

I know I am not perfect, and I know that priests aren't perfect.  I also know that most of the time I need to eat a humble sandwich.  (I'm always right, of course.  They're always wrong.)  But I'm concerned about the generations-old pattern of mindlessly nodding along when a man with no particular claim to holiness says something outrageous.  The sad truth is, many Catholics don't really know what their religion teaches; they know what their parish priest teaches. If the parish priest regularly misinterprets the faith, his parish is going to be left with a warped view of their own religion, and this leads to grave problems.

Take, for example, the Church's stance on divorce.  It is true that the Church teaches marriage is insoluble, but it is not true that the Church wants abused women to stay in their relationships.  (This isn't the place to get into the technical differences between an annulment and a divorce.) Whatever its shortcomings, the Church teaches that woman have dignity.  They have a right to safety and respect. Full stop.  If a woman in that Florida congregation was in an abusive marriage, and she heard that severely misguided sermon from a trusted priest, she might leave with the belief that the Catholic Church thinks she should stay with her abuser.  If she does find the strength to leave, it is extremely likely that she will also leave the Church.  Because of her experience, she will see the Church as contributing to her abuse.  Naturally, she will share this experience with others, cementing the perception that Catholicism is backwards, anti-woman, and morally bankrupt.  All because of a poor teacher.

So what do we do?  My natural reaction of getting angry and ranting about it has never proven effective.  I've also never felt comfortable discussing the issue of a questionable sermon with the priest in question.  (Fortunately, I've never heard an ugly sermon from the pastor at my own parish.)

The good news for Catholics is it doesn't really matter.  What matters is the Eucharist.  You don't come to mass to hear some guy talk.  You come to witness and partake in a miracle, and the beautiful thing is it happens whether or not you have a great priest. Because it's God, not the man, who makes the miracle. 

The bad news for Catholics is... it doesn't really matter.  This can lead to a sense of complacency, a lack of caring about what is happening in our parishes and in our hearts.  Plus, it's a bitter pill to swallow for non-Catholics who want to know why we keep going back to a place where nastiness is spewed on the alter.  In that sense, it matters a great deal, because it affects the spiritual health of our community.  People have left the faith over misconceptions born in the homily, and bringing them back can be difficult.  Even in my own heart, after a particularly bitter sermon, there is an emptiness, a sadness, that the Church I love so much is so broken.  And this is only one small part of it.

So, aside from ranting and raving, here is a short list of possible responses to a bad sermon.
You could:

1) After calming down, discuss the elements of the homily that troubled you with your family and friends.  It's important to listen to their perspective, rather than trying to teach.  (This is extremely difficult for me.)
2) If the priest is someone you are comfortable with, send an email or drop by the office to talk about what you heard.  It's possible you misunderstood.
3) If you're not comfortable, or the priest won't listen to you, bring the sermon up with another priest.  It's likely he'll have an entirely different take.
4) If the problem persists, switch parishes.
5) Pray about it.

What about you?  What do you do when you hear a bad sermon?
If you no longer attend church, was this a factor in your leaving?

Let's talk about it.

The Resurrection Cycle: Or Why It’s Okay to Cry on Your Birthday

Yesterday, I turned 27 on the 27^th.  The golden birthday.  It also, coincidentally, was my very last birthday as Emily Schmitt.  I’m getting married in July, and I am going to be Emily Baroz.  I’m very excited about this.  I want to be Emily Baroz.

But I’ve liked being Emily Schmitt a lot.  It’s the name I share with my parents, who I’m very close with.  It’s the name on my high school and college diplomas, where all my greatest memories were made.  It’s the name my friends, most of whom have known me longer than my fiancé, most associate with me. 

It was my mom who first brought it up to me, casually, as if it were  changing my hair color. (Which I NEVER do, by the way.) “Today is your last birthday as Emily Schmitt!”  She chirped.  “I’m so excited about that!” I sang back.

  And I was.

About midway through the day, I started feeling sad.   Not deeply sad.  Sort of a vague, barely there, dull feeling.  I pushed it down, because, well, it was my birthday, and one thing you’re definitely not supposed to be on your birthday is sad.   

Quick background: for reasons ranging from petty to frustrating to I-don’t-remember, I have cried on four out of my last five birthdays. Not a statistic I was particularly happy about.  But grad school is over, and I have a job, and my partner is no longer working out of state, so I was determined that this year that was absolutely not going to happen.  (As everyone knows, the best way to avoid crying is to tell yourself you’re not going to cry.)

As the day went on, it only got worse.  I started to feel downright depressed.  Why?  ON MY BIRTHDAY. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being wished a happy birthday.  I enjoyed the well-wishes on Facebook and the cheerful texts and calls.  But there were just so many of them, and it was getting overwhelming. They wanted me to be happy, I wanted to be happy,  nothing was wrong, and I just could not be happy. It started to feel like a sort of macabre funhouse situation. 

So I did the logical thing and got mad at birthdays.  I even went so far as to question the entire concept of a birthday.  People shouldn’t celebrate themselves, I reasoned.  I thought about girls in college who used to celebrate their “birthday month,” and I was disgusted. (This always annoyed me, but now I was obsessing.)  I went so far as to question the moral validity of birthdays.  Why do Christians celebrate birthday’s?  I thought. If life begins at conception, what difference does it make when you were born?  The whole thing promotes the sin of vanity.  The Jehovah’s Witnesses have it right for sure…

To clarify, it wasn’t a bad birthday.  It was a really nice birthday. I had a great time at an improv show my friend was in.  Another friend bought me a bottle of red wine and Chipotle.  We went to a bar and got the coveted half-inside-half-outside-seats.  Then we started drinking.  And I started running my mouth.

I dug in on my somewhat-newly-formed philosophy about “Birthday Culture.” My prime example was a woman from a previous job who- let’s just say- made a big deal of her birthday.  To me, a comically big deal.  I told what I thought was a ridiculously amusing story of an adult who was obsessed with her own birthday for weeks. Repeat: I thought I was being funny. 

It wasn’t until later in the night when I found out that some of the people there had been less than amused.  Thoughts ranged from “Is she okay?” to “She’s ungrateful” to much worse.   One friend felt I was being racist.  The woman in the story is Black.  She saw me as being hyper critical of a Black woman who took the time to celebrate herself.  She did not directly confront me about this- it was my birthday, after all.  My fiancé told me on the way home.

Cue birthday tears.  I had staved them off all day, and now here they were, on the subway, about 2 am.  Fiancé was very patient with me.  I could tell he felt bad.  He regretted telling me my friend had been offended.  He said all the right things. And I said all the typical things a White person says when they’ve been accused of racism. (It was the way she said it that hurts.  If she has a problem, she should tell me to my face.  Doesn’t she know who I am?  Doesn’t she know I have a good heart?)  But it soon became apparent, to me, and I think to him, that I was more upset than was even warranted by the comment.  Sure, that was part of it, but certainly not all.  This was all the stuff I had stored up all day.  This was my Birthday Crisis.

Specifically, it was an identity crisis.  I’m 27 now.  I’m closer to thirty than twenty.  I have my first job that’s totally un-theater-related.  I’m changing my name.  And now this. Am I even a decent person? Is Emily Baroz someone I’m going to like? To be clear, I’m not dismissing my friend’s observation. Racial judgement was probably an element in my story.  I have to reflect more on that.  I am certain that I was making unnecessary value judgements about someone else based on my personal emotions. This is never a good sign.  Jesus had a lot to say about judgments. 

Recently, I’ve been reading Marshall Rosenburg’s Nonviolent Communication. He describes moral judgement as “the tragic expressions of our own values and needs.” In other words, if what I need on my birthday is to grieve, and that need isn’t being met, I’m going to start judging those who don’t behave the way I want to behave.  I’m going to start judging people who are happy on their birthday.

 

This is true for so many transitions: holidays, graduations, big moves.  It’s especially true for the upcoming transition of my wedding.  What if, I worry, my need to grieve is not supported?  What if my loved ones spend my engagement and wedding trying to “fix” me? Will I, in frustration, turn into a horrific bridezilla?  And, most frightening of all, will my friends and family read my desire to grieve as a sign of ambivalence about my upcoming marriage? Will they be less supportive of my marriage because of it?  Will the trauma of multiple divorces make it impossible for my family to take the risk of fully supporting me during my less-than-perfect transition?  Because I’m going to need their support.  And, if necessary, I’ll try to push back the tears to get it.  And we all know how that goes.

In the 19 hours since this event, I’ve reflected a lot.  I have a lot more reflecting to do.  But, for now, I’m left with the most essential Christian story: Jesus dies and there are three days of silence.  Of mourning.  The world stands still and everyone is just waiting, a dull sadness in their hearts.  Then the Resurrection happens.  Jesus is risen, but He’s different.  Way different.  Better. And he’s radiant and there’s joy.  There’s so much joy.  But he had to go into the tomb to get there.

I want to thank everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday.  This promises to be a beautiful year of growth, love, and- yes- joy. 

Why I didn’t go to the Black Lives Matter protest. And why I wish I had.

It had something to do with the specifics of the demands the protestors were making.  One of them required the courts to overturn a previous not guilty verdict, which was the equivalent of double-jeopardy, which I could not support…. Or something.  That’s the rationale I gave myself.  For not going to the Black Lives Matter protest in 2014.

The real reasons were much more personal.  Since moving to New York some of the people I have become closest to are members of the NYPD.  They are members of my soon-to-be-family and they are good people and I love them.  Even if I might disagree with them on just about every political front imaginable, they are kind, decent people.  And I don’t know even a fraction of the sacrifices they have made in the line of duty.  They are brave people and they are honorable people.  And I saw how they were hurt by the protests, and by the media frenzy, and I saw their names dragged through the dirt and I couldn’t bring myself to protest because I felt like protesting would be protesting against them.  And I couldn’t shake the feeling that they would feel the same way.  Worse, I was afraid that the man I love might not love me any more if I hurt his family like that.  So, as with most decisions, my motivations were more emotional than rational.  But the result was the same as if I didn’t feel a thing: I just didn’t go.

Since then, there has been more violence.  More senseless death of civilians at the hands of the people who are supposed to protect them.  And with every futile pop of media outcry I feel more ashamed.  Because what use are my feelings if they are never transformed into action?

I’m a White woman who didn’t do anything.  Who is continuing to not do anything… because of inertia? Shame?  Fear of rocking the boat? How ridiculous for me when I write it out like that.  That I should be afraid of retaliation in the form of angry words from people who love me.  Perhaps those people will cease to love me. I doubt it. But that’s about as bad as it could possibly get.  And people are losing their lives out there.  People are getting gunned down at traffic stops.  People are dying and I’m worried about my family being mad at me.

If that’s not White Privilege, I don’t know what is. 

As a Catholic, the situation is especially troubling.  Catholics, and Christians in general, have long been at the forefront of Civil Rights movements… where are they now? Well, times have changed.  The pendulum has swung so far Right that, for many, political conservatism is more important than regular attendance at Mass.  The reasons for this are too complicated for this particular post, but suffice it to say, Catholics fall hard on the police-apologist side of this particular issue.  

Unequivocally bashing the people who protect us, who risk their lives for us, is immoral.  Siding with people who attack police is immoral.  Succumbing to media brainwashing is immoral.  I can agree with all of that.  But our responsibility as moral thinkers requires us to see the difference between opposition to the police themselves and opposition to police brutality and institutionalized racism. 

But an even deeper problem with a Catholic approach to Black Lives Matter is that many Catholics struggle to understand racism, how it manifests systematically, and what it really means.  Catholicism is an extremely diverse religion worldwide, but in the United States it is largely a White religion.  (Although this is rapidly changing.)  White people in White social groups don’t have to ask themselves if they are racist.  It’s easy to “not see color” when everyone around you is more or less the same. Trying to explain why “All Lives Matter” isn’t the best approach from a moral perspective is difficult when we don’t realize how unequal the value of our lives are.  (Imagine if Pilot said to Jesus, “All Lives Matter.”)  

“We don’t believe in sins anymore.  The only sin we believe in is racism.”

 A close friend (who will remain anonymous) once said this to me in a moment of bitterness.  I understand what she meant.  She meant that young Catholics no longer take obligations such as chastity, fasting, and receiving the sacraments seriously.  She’s right.  We should be taking those things more seriously. But the shift in focus towards social issues is not the problem. Racism has always been a sin- it just wasn’t taken seriously.

One of the criticisms I often hear from people who have left the Catholic Church is that it’s a religion that requires you to feel a lot of shame.  You spend a lot of time thinking about your sins.  This is one of the things I love about Catholicism.  Sometimes, shame is the exact right thing to feel.  I am ashamed because I did not stand up for what I believe is right.  I am guilty because I benefit from a system where my life will go largely unchanged whether I do anything or not. I feel these uncomfortable feelings because I should feel them.  Because it is good to feel them.

To my fellow Catholics, I entreat you…

Remember that Conservatism and Catholicism are not identical. The word Catholic means universal. We are the universal Church. We ought not fall into party lines.

And we certainly ought not fall into racial lines.

We fall into what is right.

Remember, it was Christians who were abolitionists.

It was Christians who Marched on Washington.

Because racism has always been a sin in Christianity. 

And doing nothing in the face of wrongdoing has always been a sin.

And people like myself will continue to be sinners until we repent and change.  

A Catholic Feminist Grapples with Abortion Or: Why Isn’t Everyone Sad?

A few months ago I asked my tech-savy fiancé to create a Facebook filter that would eliminate all mentions of “abortion” from my Facebook newsfeed.  Just to clear a few things up, I am not squeamish about women’s issues, despite what this demeaning article would have you think: The One Thing Anti-Abortion Protesters Can't Handle Hearing.

 I know I have a vagina, and I take it with me wherever I go. 

I’m very comfortable with conversations about sex and sexuality and anatomy.  I know several Pro-Life doctors and nurses and I'm pretty sure they're comfortable with it too. Penis. Vagina. Condoms.  Okay, we cleared that up.  I also don’t believe that woman should simply “keep their legs shut.” (I will discuss my personal choices regarding sexual morality in another post.) So I didn’t block the abortion talk because I was afraid.  I did it because, as a practicing Catholic working in the New York arts scene, my Facebook feed was starting to seriously get me down.  By that I mean I was going through an existential crisis. Every day, I forced myself to read every article about the issue that some acquaintance of mine happened to post.  I did this because I wanted to be “informed.”  But, because of my unusual place smack in the middle of the Culture War, half of my friends are passionately Pro-Life and half are passionately Pro-Choice.  And they hate each other.  And they view each other as either stupid or evil or both.  And they bash each other on social media.  And they are all, without exception, desperately trying to avoid pain.   Finally, I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe.  When my fiancé asked what was wrong I said: “I’m sad about abortion.  I don’t understand why everyone else isn’t sad.”  So we cleansed my Facebook feed while I cleansed my mind.

With the recent Supreme Court decision, the posts are back.  They’re back because the word “abortion” has been replaced with the word victory. The Supreme Court has dealt a critical blow to state abortion regulations. The Pro-Choice groups are ecstatic.  The Pro-Life groups are aflame with righteous fury.  I still don’t understand why they’re not sad.  I’m not talking about the sadness that some religious people feel when they talk about the sheer numbers of unborn deaths.  I believe they are really sad about this, but what I’m talking about here is the sadness one feels when one realizes that one is human, and as part of being human, there is no option but to be in pain. 

The abortion debate essentially boils down to two incompatible conceptions of reality.

1)      Unborn children are human beings.  They are not partial, or almost, or potential human beings.  They are complete people worthy of respect and dignity.

2)      Women are human beings.  We are not vessels of childbirth.  Safe, legal abortion is the only thing that truly protects us from sexual slavery, the almost universal historical standard. Before legalized abortion, women were literally dying.

Actually, these statements are not incompatible at all.  If my undergraduate logic course is correct, the only way to prove a premise false is to find within it a direct contradiction.  Look closely, and it is obvious that there is no such contradiction.  So they could both be true.  I am not saying they are.  But they could be. And if they are both true, we as a society have to deal with that.

Most Pro-Choice activists solve this problem by simply denying the first concept.  I’ve never heard a convincing argument in their favor.  Many believe that a child becomes “alive” when it takes its first breath.  This implies that breathing is the essential quality of life, which is pretty poor science. The best arguments assert that we can’t know whether or not an unborn fetus is a person.  I say, when unsure if something is a person, one ought to err on the side of human being.  So as to avoid potentially killing a human being.  More often, though, these activists simply deny a fetus’ humanity because it is inconvenient.  It is horribly, painfully, and monumentally inconvenient for a fetus to be a person.  I agree.  But that doesn’t make it untrue.

In the Pro-Life camp, it is rare to meet someone who thinks women are just vessels for babies. (This despite the opposition’s characterization.) More likely, they will assert that unplanned pregnancy is hard, and rape is terrible, but murder is worst of all.  So we have to make murder illegal.  This stance is philosophically sound but leaves the bearer trapped in an armor of callousness.  What I’ve found to be the case, and was the case with me, is that the devotee will use the massiveness of the importance of saving lives as an excuse to patently ignore the feminine issues at hand.  We will deal with those issues, they say, once abortion is taken care of.  And that will be…. When exactly?  Never, it looks like.  Sorry women, for all practical purposes you don’t matter. 

(Sidenote: I admit that the Pro-Life movement is extremely disparate.  There are plenty of crazies, like the woman my friend stood by at March for Life carrying a sign that read “Women Wearing Pants Cause Abortion.”  I can’t speak for these people.  But there are plenty of Pro-Choice crazies too.  I met a girl last week who jokingly told me that she believes in “legal abortion up to three years.” I did not find that funny.  At all.)

So how does a Catholic feminist rectify this situation?  Pope Francis recently stated that Cafeteria Catholics, that is, Catholics that pick and choose which teachings they happen to like, aren’t real Catholics at all.  Pope Francis is right.  Christ didn’t say “Try really hard and I’ll cut you some slack.”  Christ said “Be perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) I fail at this command every day. And I wish with all my heart that I could return to my high school days when I was Pro-Life without qualms.  (Because killing is wrong no matter what, so no other arguments matter.)  But, short of surrendering my God-given conscious, I can’t allow myself to return to a world where, as bell hooks describes “men want sex and women fear it.”

So here’s what I do, and it may not work for anyone.  Probably, it doesn’t work for anyone but me, as I’ve come to learn about most of my opinions.  I consider myself Pro-Life without exception.  That means I believe that all children have a right to life regardless of projected disability, standard of living, or the circumstances of their conception, even violent conception. (Read: rape.)  Meanwhile, I oppose any and all legal restrictions on abortion.  Okay… I’m losing you.  Hear me out.  We cannot, from a truly life-affirming perspective, force women to have children.  I can’t imagine a scenario where such a practice would result in anything other than violence.  So what I do, to the best of my ability, is strive to create a society in which it is not only possible, but attractive for a woman to choose life.  This means a radical restructuring of our entire view of sexuality, pregnancy, and childrearing.  This means, if you’re really Pro-Life, create the support system which does not exist for women now.  This means get over your sexual rigidity and need to shame a woman for being a sexual being.  This means Pro-Life people should adopt.  They should adopt children who don’t look like them.  They should pay for the healthcare of pregnant women, even if they aren’t adopting their child.  Yes, I’m that serious.  Pro-Life people should be kind and empathetic.  And then, maybe, maybe we won’t need to be having this debate.  Maybe abortion will only be happening in the most extreme of circumstances.  (But it will still be tragic.  And Christ did say be perfect.) That’s really all I got. 

The specific legal ramifications of Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt are actually not that compelling to me.  It’s a bit bizarre that they threw out the part about abortion clinics having to meet fire codes.  That seems legal, but I’m no judge.  I understand that these requirements mostly existed as an excuse to shut down abortion clinics, and that’s a bad look.  (Why are we trying to be shady about this?)  What is alarming to me is unabated celebration of the Pro-Choice movement.  Victory. There’s no victory in a scenario where we must choose between harming woman and harming the unborn. 

This is the fundamental problem with American politics: we see most issues as a matter of winning.  We’re happy because we beat those bad Republicans, so who cares about achieving moral Goodness?  We stop caring about the ethical consequences of our “victories.”  The #shoutyourabortion movement, a key factor in my decision to newsfeed cleanse, holds as its basic principle that there is literally no downside to abortion.  Women should shout their abortion, because they refuse to be shamed. Their slogan is “This is not a debate.” (Um, yes it is.) It’s true that we should all share our stories without shame, but when did recognition of sadness become a bad thing?  Once again, the denial, the callousness, was hard to bear.

 How revolutionary for our society if the feminist were to say, “I believe in abortion, and I know this might result in loss of life. This pains me.”  How earth shattering for the Christian to say “I oppose abortion in all cases, and I know this could harm women. This pains me.”  If we were to truly grapple with ourselves, I imagine I wouldn’t be the only one waking up unable to breathe.  And that would be a good thing.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that everyone take my admittedly convoluted stance on abortion. Clearly, it doesn’t help me sleep at night.  Rather, I am challenging each of us to avoid the comfortable pattern of denial that allows us to cope with our decisions.  I’m challenging us to own our consequences.  In other words, take your ethics seriously. 

For those of us who support legal abortion, we should still allow ourselves to mourn.  We mourn that this is necessary for society to function. This is a sign of just how bad things are on this Earth.  And I do believe this is an evil planet, reactionary as it may sound.  We ought to learn to mourn without shaming ourselves and others.  We ought to learn to live with a little bit of shame, because that’s part of being human. Imperfect.  And not okay with it.  

And let’s consider, for a moment, the possibility that our enemy is not evil or stupid.

Let’s consider, for a moment, that we are.