Category: Beauty

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Human Rights (Hobbes & Hunger Games)

In Pope Leo’s encyclical on human dignity and artificial intelligence (Magnifica Humanitas), he appeals to three truths that serve as a foundation for any attempts to build a more just society: (1) the human person created in the image of the Trinity; (2) the equal dignity of each human being; and (3) the supreme value of human rights. You can read my previous posts to learn more about truth #1 and truth #2. Today I conclude this three-part series with a reflection on human rights. In the months ahead, time permitting, we can continue with Leo’s five principles of social justice that build upon this foundation.

Some might object that all this talk about “human rights” is newer in human history and newer in the teachings of the Church. It’s true that you won’t find that exact phrase in Scripture or in many centuries of Christian theology. The concept is there from the beginning, like an acorn waiting to sprout and grow. It’s taken ongoing reflection to deepen our understanding of just how much dignity every human being has and all the implications that stem from that dignity—such as recognizing how violating it is to coerce consciences, to force religion upon people, or to traffic human beings. Recent centuries have increased our awareness of these principles. Yet somehow those evils are as pervasive as ever.

Human rights and human dignity are inseparably linked. Pope Leo reminds us that “human rights are not an external addition to the person, but an expression of intrinsic human dignity, which the international community is called to protect and promote” (n. 54). When a culture respects the dignity of each human person, it will also protect and promote human rights. When a culture views some humans as valuable and others as expendable, human rights quickly dissipate.

Philosophy really matters here—especially in a pluralistic culture in which religious appeals can be dismissed. I certainly believe that the proclamation of the Gospel transforms hearts in a way that philosophy cannot. But not everyone is ready to receive the Gospel, and you don’t have to believe in God to believe in human dignity and human rights.

One of my side jobs is serving as an adjunct philosophy professor in our deacon formation program. You could even say that I’m the entire department—but they only have one course. I do my best to introduce a few important themes, and to spark a lively conversation.

This fall, we will no doubt be talking about the ways in which modern philosophy in the West (starting about 500 years ago) set us on our current trajectory, with AI now serving as rocket fuel. Not a few are fearing what kind of crash may be coming, if we do not reclaim our sanity.

I’ve reflected already on the influence of Francis Bacon and René Descartes. Today I want to consider Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). His political philosophy views human rights as an “add-on,” rather than something intrinsically connected to human dignity. In Leviathan and elsewhere, he sees human civilization as a social contract that we’ve all entered into out of a desperation to survive the harshness of our nature. Unless we agree to give up some or most of our rights, human existence is bound to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (the famous quote from Leviathon).

The philosophy of Hobbes is brilliantly and chillingly represented in The Hunger Games. In those novels and films, some citizens live amidst privilege and luxury in “the Capital,” while the other districts subserviently provide for their luxurious appetites. Every year, the other districts are compelled to hold a lottery in which they send children as “tributes” to fight to the death in “The Hunger Games.” In Songbirds and Snakes, we learn the backstory of the dictator Corialanus Snow. We meet the creepy character of Dr. Volumnia Gaul, an early pioneer of the Hunger Games. She slowly warps the mind and heart of a young Cornelius with her insinuation that we need to have powerful leaders who rule ruthlessly. We need to sacrifice some people’s rights because—if we don’t—everyone’s existence will be like the Hunger Games. That is Hobbes’ political philosophy in a nutshell!

In ways that can only be rightly named as grooming and abuse, Dr. Gaul intentionally exposes young Cornelius to violent settings, slowly seducing him to embrace her way of being. As he feels increasingly complicit with the violence, she provides a steady drip of her Hobbesian interpretation. Consider these quotes:

“What happened in there? That’s humanity undressed. Filled with the terror of becoming prey. See how quickly we become predator? See how quickly civilization disappears?”

“Oh your fine manners, education, background, stripped away in the blink of an eye. Leaving a boy with a club who beats another boy to death to stay alive.”

Needless to say, this view of human nature is incompatible with the Christian view, in which God has chosen to create each of us in his own image and likeness, and to invest us with infinite dignity. The core of human nature is not isolation, poverty, violence, and death.  Those are conditions that emerge when human dignity is violated. They are conditions that become intensified and perpetuated when Hobbesian dictators seize power over others under the pretense of showing benevolence. From the beginning, it was not so. We were always meant to be in healthy, trusting relationships, to live in stable and healthy communion with one another, and to bear abundant fruit.

Pope Leo is inviting not only Christians, but all humans, to reflect on human dignity and human purpose. You need not be a Christian to desire flourishing for the human race as a whole and for each individual. If you read the Ethics or the Politics of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, you hear a much healthier view of human nature and civilization. It is our nature to relate and be social, to enter into profound friendship, and to seek flourishing together. That doesn’t mean it is guaranteed to happen. Rather, it is a desire and purposefulness we will all find if we look deeply within ourselves. It is an ultimate fulfillment that we can all seek both individually and collectively. The sharing involved in civilization is for the sake of abundance, not because we are otherwise inherently dark and depraved. In the end, the political philosophy of Hobbes or Machiavelli allows dictators to rationalize their seizing of power over others. There was plenty to rationalize in the 1500s and 1600s.

By no means am I suggesting that all modern Western philosophy is bad. Indeed, by providing an increasingly subjective approach to philosophy, it has allowed us to reflect more deeply on these very truths of human dignity, human freedom, and human rights. There is great value in asking subjective questions (“What is it like to _______________?”), just as there is great value to seeking after objective reality (“What IS ____________?”). Curious philosophers do both!

Even though the AI landscape is changing faster than Taylor Swift at a concert, I suggest that artificial intelligence is not so much a radical new thing. Rather, it is a powerful amplification and acceleration of what is already there. The AI models still rely on programs and algorithms, and are data-driven and language based. In my understanding (someone tell me if I’m wrong!) that means they can still ultimately be reduced to ones and zeroes. They are neither human nor relational. They can only take what is already there and move it forward at an incredibly fast pace – and (if we don’t heed Pope Leo’s pleas) without the intervention of human compassion and wisdom.

Ideas have consequences – all the more so when those ideas are programmed into powerful machines. Leo asks for greater transparency about who is creating algorithms and for what purposes. He invites us to renounce ideologies that are willing to disregard the human rights of some. Throughout human history, minorities tend to be marginalized, while women and children and immigrants tend to be exploited for the sake of sex and power and greed. The biblical prophets spoke dozens of times in defense of the rights of the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien. Every pope for the last 135 years has done the same.

Our current pope is warning us—if we do not have a transparent dialogue about the values and priorities of AI models and how they are being trained, those age-old trends of exploitation are likely to accelerate exponentially. In the words of Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Leo describes it to be a shared responsibility. Safeguarding human dignity and human rights is not just something “those people” have to do. It’s something we all do, both individually and together.

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Equal Human Dignity

In his new encyclical letter (Magnifica Humanitas), Pope Leo articulates three truths that serve as a foundation for any attempts to build a just society: (1) the human person created in the image of the Trinity; (2) the equal dignity of each human being; and (3) the supreme value of human rights.  Last time I reflected on foundational truth #1; today we move on to truth #2.

All humans have “equal” dignity because every human being has an infinite dignity. At this point, the math nerds in the room may point out that some infinities are larger than others. We are not speaking of “infinity” in any mathematical sense. Human dignity cannot be quantified, period.

You may remember a year ago, when I wrote about Francis Bacon and René Descartes. In the early 1600’s, their thought heralded a seismic shift in the West. Knowledge and scientific inquiry became increasingly focused on quantitative analysis. Bacon boldly declared, “Knowledge is power,” and Descartes insisted that we can only know things if we have clear and distinct ideas.

There is nothing inherently wrong with quantitative analysis. It’s just that not everyone and everything is quantifiable. As amazing as some of the “progress” of modern science is, there is an increasing risk of dehumanization. Can you see the connection to AI here?  At its core, artificial intelligence operates exclusively in the realm of the quantitative.

Quantification can get humans to the moon. It can split the atom. Maybe it can even cure cancer. But there are so many things that transcend the quantitative – including all the qualities Leo lists that set humans apart from artificial intelligence: undergoing lived experiences, embodied joy and pain, maturity, relationships, love, meaningful work, friendship, responsibility, moral conscience, judging good and evil, empathy, understanding, affectivity, spiritual perspective, and growth in wisdom (n. 99). We human beings, bearing infinite dignity, are capable of all these things. Trained AI models are not, no matter how powerful they become. Their power comes from the massive amounts of data utilized in their ongoing training, which allows predicting the “right” answer with an increasing amount of accuracy. The learning remains data-driven and not qualitative.

This may seem shocking to say, but I do not see anything truly “new” in AI. It’s an accelerant on ideas and trends that have been smoldering for four centuries. But AI is far faster and therefore much more powerful.

AI may be able to simulate empathy, but in truth it doesn’t care one bit about human dignity. It can’t. It’s simply not a relational being capable of mutual intimacy.

The more I’ve accompanied survivors of grooming and abuse, the more I’ve come to realize that these trained AI models can behave like abusers – attuning quite skillfully to the emotional state of the participant and exploiting that vulnerability for someone else’s gain at the person’s expense. If those training the models are willing to exploit emotional vulnerability, AI will learn from those biases and amplify the exploitation.

In the early years of social media, we began seeing this trend with “nudges” offered at moments in which a person showed a state of emotional vulnerability – and therefore greater susceptibility to clicking on a link that seemed to offer a solution. Today, a typical social media user is exposed to AI-generated clickbait dozens of times a day. There are also millions who are finding an AI chatbot to be a better emotional companion than any of the humans in their lives – even though the “relationship” and the emotional connection is entirely simulated.

In discussing equal human dignity, Pope Leo is especially concerned about some humans getting treated as having less dignity than others – especially if high-powered AI models increasingly replace human decision-making. Leo calls for transparency regarding the algorithms and the motives behind the humans involved in training those models.

There are many troubling ideologies that do not respect humans as image bearers, nor as bearing a dignity that is beyond calculation. In the words of Leo, “Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective” (n. 51). There are nearly five centuries of a modern western bias that prioritizes doing over being, producing over relating, and profitability over love. Given that AI-training algorithms and data sets tend to be applied with corporate interests, these biases are bound to be reflected in the operating model that emerges and whatever “solutions” it “decides.” The thing is, humans like Ebenezer Scrooge still have a conscience and the capacity to experience moral and spiritual conversion. Machine learning does not.

Leo points out that “dignity” has various meanings when it comes to human beings. We can speak of moral dignity depending on whether human choices are directed towards goodness or evil. We can speak of social dignity by considering people’s living conditions and what level or respect they are receiving from the rest of society. We can speak of existential dignity in terms of how much meaning or purpose each person feels or what their quality of life is like. At the foundational level, however, every human being bears an ontological dignity.  As Leo explains it, “This is the dignity that belongs to every human being simply by virtue of existing, of having been willed, created, and loved by God” (n. 52).

Every human person has an ontological dignity that cannot be quantified or calculated. This inherent dignity runs deeper than any strength, talents, power, or productivity. None of those are the source of our human worth. But the ontological dignity of each human runs yet deeper: “No sin, failure, humiliation or exclusion can diminish the profound value of a human life that God has willed and called into being” (n. 52).

This is the same truth that I heard in person 24 years ago from an aging John Paul II. I stood with 800,000 pilgrims at Downsview Park in Toronto for World Youth Day. Most of us had camped out the night before, endured the morning rains, and now joined him for an outdoor Mass. As the sun burst forth, he boldly proclaimed one of his most-repeated truths: “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.”

What a contrast from the local radio broadcast I had overheard the day before, cynically mocking him – including his age and frailty, his struggles in walking and his drooling. In one sense it was true – gone was the vigorous youth of one who loved to hike, ski, swim, or act on stage. He was nearing the end of his earthly life. It was then, more than ever, that he witnessed to human dignity.

The modern West has increasingly exalted those who show a capacity to be strong, to succeed, to produce, or to stay youthful in appearance. Those who don’t measure up are viewed with contempt, as are those who dare to break the mold and live differently. These tendencies have become so normalized that we no longer notice them as the ocean we have been swimming in. They are, unfortunately, the values with which most AI models have been trained.

Pope Leo is inviting us all to step back and notice our biases. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can show respect to the inestimable dignity of every human person—beginning with ourselves, whom we often hold in contempt more than anyone else. We can extend that same respect to everyone around us. We can demand transparency and accountability for any training of AI models, collaborating at every level to ensure that they align with an unshakable respect for human dignity.

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Image Bearers

I finally finished reading Pope Leo’s encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”). He signed it on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum (“New Concerns”). Back in 1891, the previous Pope Leo began a longstanding trend: Catholic popes reflecting on how we can best apply the age-old principles of Christianity to new social challenges. Back then, it was the new challenges opened up by the Industrial Revolution, including dehumanizing working conditions and polarizing economic ideologies. Today, there are new forms of dehumanization opened up by the revolution of artificial intelligence. Back then, popes wrote encyclical letters to their brother bishops. Today, people from rather diverse backgrounds are curious to hear what the pope has to say.

Leo XIV does not condemn artificial intelligence any more than Leo XIII condemned the industrialization of labor. Both popes relentlessly invite us to reflect on what it means to be human. I look forward to sharing several of Leo XIV’s insights in the weeks ahead.

I find the majority of Americans, Catholic included, to be unfamiliar with the last thirteen decades of Catholic social teaching. Leo offers a masterful summary (nn. 28-45). Then he provides his own synthesis of the truths that repeatedly emerge in each age. Even though new and complex situations require dialogue and debate about the best path forward, there are certain foundational truths and first principles that do not change, because of who God is and who we are as human beings.

At the foundational level, Leo identifies three truths: (1) the human person created in the image of the Trinity; (2) the equal dignity of each human being; and (3) the supreme value of human rights.  He then articulates five principles of Catholic social teaching that build upon that bedrock foundation.

Today we are considering that first foundational truth – that every human person bears the Imago Dei, the image of God. As Leo puts it, “At the heart of the Christian understanding of the human person lies the great biblical affirmation that men and women are created in the image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-27) of the Triune God” (n. 50).

God is love. That is to say, God is a communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is not an isolated individual. God is inherently relational. We see in God a mutual sharing of love. He didn’t have to create a universe. He didn’t have to create human beings. He would have been just as good and just as great without us. In the Trinity, we find a mutual love that is already infinitely perfect. But God did choose to create us, and he eagerly desires to share his love with us.

We humans, as male and female, bear the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Philosophers and theologians have often reflected on the ways we resemble God – such as our intellect or our free will. Drawing from the wisdom of John Paul II, Leo especially emphasizes our human capacity to receive love and to share love. We discover our truest and deepest identity when we make a free and wholehearted gift of ourselves. It is then that we are living icons of the Trinity.

If we want to learn what human love looks like, we turn to Jesus, the new Adam. “His humanity is completely free, open to others, capable of building healthy and beautiful relationships and committed to the total gift of self” (n. 49). As John Paul II would put it, when we love more and more like Jesus, we become who we are.

Notice that neither pope teaches that we gain more human dignity by living holy lives. Even when we sin, even when we live in dehumanizing or degrading ways, we never lose our inherent worth. We remain bearers of the divine image. In the words of Pope Leo, “Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities, wealth or position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; instead, it is a gift that precedes and transcends each person, endowed by God as an expression of his unfailing love” (n. 50).

In the West, some of us Christians have fixated on the concept of “original sin,” a phrase that originates with Augustine of Hippo (354-430) in response to the heresy of the British monk Pelagius. Yes, it is important to remember that salvation is always God’s work – from beginning to middle to end. We find ourselves in a human condition that is weighed down by sin. But sin is a condition. It is never our identity.

Eight years ago, I reflected on the Parable of the Lost Coin. Has it really been eight years since I began this blog? Wow, time flies. Anyway, Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) reflects on a gold coin, stamped with the image of the king. It retains its value no matter much it becomes coated with filth. Once cleansed, it shows itself to be what it always was.

Gregory was from Caesarea in Cappadocia (which today is in central Turkey). He was unaware aware of the teaching of the faraway Pelagius (even though their lives overlapped). Gregory’s focus was on the abiding love of the Trinity, and on our amazing human capacity to share in God’s glory.

Every human person has an inestimable dignity, because every human person bears the image of God. John Paul II would add that every human person is a unique and unrepeatable mystery. Each of us bears God’s glory in a way that no one else ever will.

In my more mature moments, I’ve come to appreciate this core truth of Magnifica Humanitas: every human person is the bearer of magnificent beauty.  Whenever I remember that the person in front of me bears the image of God, when I become curious about this person’s story, I am never disappointed. Sometimes there are forcefields around barriers around shielded gates that are manned with a platoon of armed guards. The fiercer the self-protection, the more precious and tender the child of God on the inside. I’ve learned not to push past people’s defenses, rooted as they often are in an intense fear of being unlovable in their deep-down desire to be loved. God always respects our freedom, and so will I. God always delights in the way his glory is uniquely reflected in us, just as a mom or dad marvels at the baby they’re holding in their arms.

Unfortunately, we live in an age of intensifying contempt. The seduction to dehumanize our fellow humans is intensifying to historic levels. If we pay attention, we may realize that we humans are being steadily manipulated by AI into even greater contempt for ourselves and others.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll consider the alternative path Pope Leo offers us. For now, I invite each of you to pause and reflect on how you truly bear God’s image, as do “those people” whom you may find it harder to love. We were all created to share in the amazing capacity to receive and give love. By God’s eternal design, we bear a dignity that cannot be taken away.

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From Dust to Glory

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

So we are reminded every Ash Wednesday. So Adam was reminded as he left the Garden of Eden, following his failed attempt to become like God by means of his own grasping and striving (Genesis 3:19).

God had created Adam from the dust of the earth, breathing life into him (Genesis 2:7). God had invited Adam and Eve to depend upon him for life and every other blessing. That dependence allowed a level of intimacy and joyful connectedness that the devil simply could not stand. From his envy and malice he viciously attacked, by means of subtle seduction. He pretended to offer what God had already planned and desired to give – to share ever more fully in His Glory.

Remember.

Remember who you are. You are dust. You came from the soil of the earth and will return to it. This world and all its desires are passing away (1 John 2:17).

Remember also that you are destined for Glory. Lent leads us to the rescue and deliverance experienced in the Passover of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection.

We ache for so much more. Every human heart knows the longing, even if it is buried beneath layers of busyness, rugged survival, or mindless distractions. The desires of this world may be passing away, but we remain image bearers with an insatiable desire to return to our true home.

If you’re looking for an early Lenten read, the first chapter of Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness is breathtaking. You will be in good company, because Pope Leo has invited Varden to offer a Lenten retreat to him and the other workers in the Vatican from February 22 to 27. I was thrilled when I learned that. During these modern centuries in which many in the Church have forgotten what it means to be human, Varden is a voice crying out in the desert, inviting us to remember who we are.

Drawing from the desert fathers, he describes the painful nostalgia we experience, if we are bold enough to let ourselves feel it: “homesick for a land I recall, but have not seen.”

I remember how I began to experience that nostalgic ache with intensity after I had allowed myself to seek help and healing, beginning nine years ago. I stumbled onto the Welsh word hiraeth, and immediately resonated. There are parallel words in many languages, in which homesick humans attempt to describe this wistful longing within: saudade in French, Sehnsucht in German, banzo in Portuguese, Yūgen in Japanese, and many more.

This fall, I visited the cemetery in my former parish. I tend to weep there as I remember so many beautiful people whom I personally entrusted to the dust of the earth. The grave from one such man, who passed five years ago, bears the inscription, “There is no greater Sorrow than to Remember happy times.”

It is especially in our encounters with beauty that our longing for more is awakened. Even amidst the delight, there can be undercurrents of sadness. It is then that we perceive the enormity of the gap between where we have come from and where we are going.

“I am dust with a nostalgia for glory.” This is the fuller truth of Ash Wednesday, as named by Erik Varden.

We prefer to ignore both sides of this human paradox. We turn instead to our shallow survival strategies, whether we cover our nakedness with feeble fig leaves (Genesis 3:7) or mighty monuments of folly (Genesis 11:4). We pretend that we are not really dust. We create a manageable version of “glory” that we can control. Sooner or later, it all comes tumbling down.

Humility is the answer. The word “humility” comes from humus – the earth or soil or dust from which we are created. Humility grounds us. It allows us to accept both our bodiliness and our profound ache for more.

Humility opens up space for Hope, which is how we abide in the tension. We may be from the soil of the earth, but God has planted a divine seed within us. We would so much rather rid ourselves of the tension!

This urge to escape tension is a potential pitfall amidst the sudden widespread interest in healing. I have met many in healing work who are uncomfortable being present to the pain of others in the messy in-between. They feel an urge to fix or figure out, or to rescue. We can harm others when we do so, leaving them feeling more shame and abandonment in their pain.

As Jake Khym and Bob Schuchts pointed out in a recent podcast episode, healing is not about getting rid of pain (even if it sometimes happens). If that is our goal, we are turning God into a vending machine. Rather, healing is an ongoing encounter with God’s love and truth that brings us to wholeness and communion. Unfortunately, most Christian communities, even in healing ministry, are still more comfortable with spiritual bypassing.

Most of us are familiar with the notion that people turn to perfectionistic striving or to numbing addictions to medicate pain. More particularly, however, it is the vulnerable desire for Glory that we are fleeing. Desire is the most dangerous place in the human heart, often fiercely guarded by shame and contempt. I’m not talking about fleeting earthly desires, but the homesick longing for more. If I let myself feel that longing, I am no longer in control. And what if everyone rejects or abandons me then? It seems far better not to go there – except that this self-protection becomes increasingly exhausting and lonely.

“The Shattering of Loneliness” – what a title for a book! We each experience a desperate loneliness because our trust in God and self and each other has been shattered through betrayal. Through his Passion and Resurrection, Jesus now shatters our loneliness. In our survival outside of Eden, we have been striving to manage and control or to hide and escape. It is once again possible to connect and receive – if we are also willing to wait in Hope.

God so honors us as image bearers that he desires us to grow into His Glory, at our own pace and with our full consent. We need healthy community to do so. Ash Wednesday is a marvelous shared witness to these truths. It’s a truly communal experience. As a priest, I can offer a private Mass, but it would be absurd for me to impose ashes on myself in my private chapel on Ash Wednesday. We witness with each other in God’s presence what it truly means to be called from dust to Glory. We recommit to our shared sojourn through the shadowlands. We rekindle our ache for home.

In the witnessing and connectedness of healthy community, and in being reconnected to the love of our Father, our loneliness is shattered. It’s not that every longing has been totally met. We might actually suffer more in our longing once it’s witnessed – just as poets often feel agonizing desire in the presence of beauty. Some of the holiest disciples I know suffer the most when they feel intensely connected to God. They desire more, and are painfully aware of the gap between human dust and God’s Glory. They are holy because they keep daring to desire, to be known in their desire, and to be stretched in the tension of waiting.

As we receive our ashes this Lent, may we encourage each other in remembering who we are: dust that is called to Glory.

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Embracing Paradox

I’ve been appreciating Brené Brown’s newest book (Strong Ground). She names some of the paradoxes that wise and courageous leaders learn to embrace.

I immediately resonated with the chapter on the importance of “negative capability.” It’s a concept she found in a letter from the poet John Keats (1795-1821). Keats praises this capacity that he perceives in great men like Shakespeare – “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

There are moments when abiding in love and truth is particularly painful. These are the moments of the in-between, when we have only partial insights or unsatisfactory options. We feel the pressure to make something happen and get away from the tension as soon as possible. It becomes almost unbearable to abide and wait for fuller truth and goodness and beauty to emerge.

To be human in a fallen world is to live in this tension. We are stretched by two seemingly incompatible truths. On one side is the harsh reality of impermanence. As much as we attempt to deny it, our earthly existence is fleeting. Nothing gold can stay. On the other side is the nonstop human tendency for meaning-making. We insatiably interpret what is happening and why – a task that our brains engage both consciously and unconsciously, even while we sleep! We don’t like waiting to receive the fuller truth. We both desire and need to belong securely and trustingly to something solid.

To put the paradox differently, our human hearts were not created for endings, and everything good in this world comes to an end. What can we do?

As Brené Brown puts it, “Negative capability is a difficult muscle to build.  We’re wired to resolve tension and seek certainty.  This capability requires the ability to reach inward toward stillness rather than out toward counterfeit facts and reason.”

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Even in turning to God, we are likely – in our urge to escape the pain of this paradox – to engage in yet another form of irritable grasping or controlling in the face of eternal mysteries that are never for sale, and will repel any attempts as seizing or sieging.

I’ve been reading the comments of a few thousand participants in the listening sessions I facilitated for my diocese this fall. You can feel attempts at grasping among many of our longtime parishioners who (in a world where everything has changed so much and so rapidly) expect their parish church to be the one place where nothing changes – only it already has, many times over. You can feel the grasping in the comments of hundreds of others who expect everyone else to adopt their political or liturgical ideology. If only we all thought this way, or all did things this way, our pain and suffering would go away. They forget the flaming sword that will not permit us to return to Eden (Genesis 3:24).

I empathize with their fear and restlessness because I know those movements in my own heart! I have my own versions of grasping or striving or hiding when the tension feels unbearable.

The real invitation is go deeper into the paradox without trying to escape it, nor to escape the tension found therein. This is exactly what Jesus and Mary do on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Jesus, true God and true man, does not erase or eliminate the dreadful consequences of our human freedom. Rather, he brings eternal love into the depths of our humanity, loves us to the end, and invites us back into relationship – with his Father and with each other.

His mother Mary does not do what so many churchgoers do when feeling the powerlessness of this paradox. She offers no fixing, no advice, no comparisons with others who have it worse, no backing away from his Cross. She stands with and witnesses.

Her with-ness and witness continue on Holy Saturday, a day of Sabbath – a day of stillness and rest. “Be still, and know that I am God” – these words sound so pleasant and peaceful in other settings. Not so much on a day of Sabbath rest in which your Son is buried in the tomb, and you are utterly powerless. Even then, rather than grasping or escaping, Mary embraces the promises of Jesus and waits in Hope amidst the paradox, not knowing how he will fulfill these promises until it actually happens.

Even after the Resurrection and Ascension, when so many questions remain unanswered, when the disciples are still downcast and doubtful, she abides with them and prays with them for nine days (Acts 1:10-14). They learn from her the capacity for passion and compassion that she exhibited so beautifully at each earlier moment of her discipleship, a capacity which grew and deepened as each mystery unfolded.

Yes, prayer and liturgy and Church are all part of our human response to this painful paradox – not so much being the answer itself, but the context in which The Answer can be encountered, again and again, stretching our capacity to receive – which also means stretching our capacity to suffer! The suffering of the Saints does not diminish as they grow closer to God. The greater their longing, the greater the gap feels between them and the living God. The greater their willingness to stay connected to others, the greater their capacity to suffer with. Show me even a few such saints, and I’ll show you a church community that is thriving on mission!

I find Brené Brown’s words both comforting and emboldening: “Resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist. The longer we can hold that paradox, the greater our capacity to see and honor one another in our fullness AND in our contradictions.”

Faith and Christian community are essential, not as an escape from the tension of this world, but as a shared receptivity of the eternal, and of the mystery of each human person. It is in abiding relationship and receptivity that we can glimpse and taste the goodness of the Kingdom of God, and can persevere in our sojourning until this world definitively passes away, when Jesus comes again with full righteousness, wiping every tear away and abolishing death forever.

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A Mood Change

What is life like when we change our mood from “imperative” or “subjunctive” and learn to live in the indicative?

If that question makes no sense to you, don’t worry – I’ll explain along the way.

I love language. I love learning new languages. I love the experience of connection with someone else’s insights, beautifully expressed – all the more so when the words bridge a gap of time and culture. In another life, I could have been a philologist, like Tolkien or Lewis.

I even love grammar. I’m grateful to my high school teachers, who placed such great emphasis upon it. It served me well later in life when I was wrestling with Latin or Greek or German. With my own writing, being grounded in grammar is not unlike the months of training that Daniel underwent with Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid. Good grammar doesn’t make good writing, but it lays a sturdy foundation, without which creative expression will stagger and stumble.

During my many years of study, I had nine semesters of Latin and five of Greek. I answered hundreds of questions about declension and case, gender and number, tense and mood. My Latin Composition class in 1998 was at times a torture. Dr. Petruccione relentlessly and manically drove us through Bradley’s Arnold, always sporting a bowtie. Twice every week, we submitted our elaborate sentences, translated from English into Latin. If you missed one time, you dropped a letter grade. If you missed a single class, you dropped a letter grade. Late every Friday afternoon, I would wistfully watch my friends go to goof off, while I plodded off to class. The professor could tell that my mind was wandering, but could never catch me!

“And what mood is that, Mister Sakowski?” At the sound of my name, my distracted brain jolted to attention, frantically poring over the last 10 seconds. Somehow, I always come up with the answer. “Subjunctive!” He screwed up his face with a look of “I’ll get you next time!!” But he never did. What can I say? My body pays attention even when it’s not paying attention. I guess hypervigilance has its advantages.

What kind of overachieving college student enrolls in a challenging elective class on late Friday afternoons? The same kind, I suppose, as the high school student who spends four weeks of her high school summer vacation learning Latin, along with seven of her peers. In 1999 and 2000, home for the summer, I taught Latin upon the request of students at my alma mater. We had a blast.

Most of the students were highly competitive overachievers, but one struggled significantly. Honestly, he only passed because I found creative ways to give him points on his tests. It wasn’t hard, because he made up for his lack of Latin prowess with a wicked sense of humor. One section asked them to parse different words. I had to give him bonus points as I howled at his answers:

  Person?  Magister   [“Teacher” – the name the students called me]

  Tense? Very

  Voice? Sometimes mumbles

  Mood? Depends on the day…

As some of you know, verbs can have different “moods” – indicative, imperative, subjunctive, etc. The indicative mood describes or asks about matters of truth (what actually is, was, or will be the case). The imperative mood gives commands. The subjunctive mood expresses the “woulds” and “coulds” and “shoulds.”

When it comes to discipleship and morality, moods also matter! I’ve come to appreciate living in the indicative mood, rather than the imperative or the subjunctive. Eagerly pursuing the good is much more possible when we can tell the truth with kindness, when we can name particularly what actually is without judging it or pressuring it to be a different way. I wrote recently about this calm noticing and accepting of what is as a prerequisite for virtue.

I remember my early years as a pastor. I was overwhelmed and putting all kinds of pressure on myself. I had just returned from Rome, where I had been researching and learning in seven different languages in the writing of my doctoral thesis. Now I was shared as a pastor of two previously separate parishes, and ministering to the Latino community in the region. I had 5-6 Masses each weekend and felt impossibly pulled in three directions. I lived daily with a fear of failure and a felt trapped in powerlessness. No matter how many “shoulds” I checked of my list, it was never good enough – not for many of the people I was trying to serve and not for my harsh inner critic.

Those first several years, I wrote out my Spanish homilies. One memory that is clearer amidst the blur is my struggle to find effective ways in Spanish to translate “should.” That should say something about the content of my preaching at the time – both to others and to myself!

It was only a matter of time before present pressures and past unhealed wounds converged in an unbearable torrent. When I finally reached out for help, I found myself swept away on a journey of transformation that continues nine years later.

I definitely experienced a “mood change” along the way. I’ve been learning and re-learning the joy of living and relating in the indicative mood – accepting what is and engaging it with curiosity and kindness. Then deciding what to do.

Advice is overrated. It is exceedingly rare for me to tell people what to do. I’ve learned to be with, to notice, to point things out, or to pursue by asking curious questions – all in the indicative mood. When I show up that way, the others can tell that there is no judgment, no pressuring them to be a different way than they are now. They feel my genuine curiosity, wanting to get to know them, and delighting in them as they are now.

To those driven by moral imperatives or living in a “should” fortress, this approach seems madness. In their view, you have to get people to do the right thing, or you’re not being a good Christian. Can you feel the fear there?

How  can we discern what is truly good if we don’t slow down, be with, and perceive what truly is? And how can we see what truly is when shame and fear are in the driver’s seat? They literally and figuratively narrow our field of vision.

I’ve learned to pay attention to what shame is up to. Where there’s contempt, there’s shame. When I notice self-contempt or other-contempt coming up, I get curious. I acknowledge the shame (if I don’t, the shame will power up even more!). But I ask if it’s ok to look at what actually is, setting aside judgment for the moment. Can I just be with you in what’s coming up now?

One would think that all the shaming and pressuring to do what you “should” would be a place of greater truth-telling, but it actually isn’t. When shame is talking, we utter strong-sounding and vague statements like “totally messed up” or “wacko” or “off the rails.” We speak in language of always or never, all or nothing, good guys and bad guys, us versus them. If we calm down and slow down, we can look more honestly at what is really happening – often surprised in the discoveries we make! Pretending like certain emotions aren’t there (or wishing they weren’t there) is not truth telling. Pretending like we can live reaction-less lives is not truth-telling. It’s dehumanizing.

Calming down and slowing down, wondering about what really is (even if it seems unglamourous or “bad”), also allows room for desire to breathe and grow.

Desire can take us places that shame never will. Some of you have seen Monsters, Inc. – the Pixar film about monsters fueling their power plant by capturing the fear of children. Then they make a revolutionary discovery – that laughter is far more powerful than fear. Similarly, desire for goodness is far more powerful than any amount of fear-mongering or “shoulding.” When Christians feel threatened, it seems like only fear and shame will get results. It is much messier to get down in the dirt and look up at what’s really going on. But that’s exactly what humility does.

When we humbly, calmly, curiously, kindly, and truthfully look at what is, we begin to see a much more truthful narrative. We start to see the ways in which deeper desire has been shamed, silenced, belittled, dismissed, or hemmed in. I find that shame is the loudest when desire feels vulnerable and exposed. Rather than allow desire (yet again) to be abandoned, betrayed, dismissed, or disappointed, shame will take over the controls. Setting down shame feels risky! But only then can desire be untethered to seek and find the good, and in finding it to desire it all the more.

What mood are you in today? Do you put pressure on yourself to be a certain way. Is your life one of “I should…” / “I just have to…”/ “I really need to…”? What would it cost you to dial down that pressure for a while, to be with a safe person, and to look at what is? You just might discover your deeper desires, and how your good Father is inviting you to soar.