Virtue Quest

No need to wait for Thanksgiving Day

I’ve mentioned before that I have some trouble with gratitude; my self-centered sense of entitlement is uncomfortable with needing to thank anyone for anything.

This is why I’m always glad for the fourth Thursday in November to roll around. Though it’s a “secular” feast, Thanksgiving Day accomplishes everything a sacred holy day should: it draws me out of myself and directs me to others, and particularly to the transcendent reality that surrounds us. It reminds me that life is a gift, and that the proper response to a gift is, “Thank you.”

So, in the spirit of the holiday, I’m making a gratitude list. Here are some (definitely not all) of the people and things for which I give thanks:

• My parents
• The English language, and all those who gave it such beauty – Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Tolkien, etc.
• My friends; I’d start listing your names, but you are legion and are all far better than I deserve
• Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas – for teaching me how to think more clearly
• Saints like Catherine of Alexandria, Dominic Guzman, Catherine of Siena, Thomas More, and John Henry Newman – for showing me that what is impossible for me is possible for God
• Public libraries – ’nuff said
• Twenty-first century communications technology
• Garlic, chocolate, bacon, blue cheese, which all add so much joy to the obligation of eating
• Clouds
• Cardigan sweaters
• Dishwashers and washing machines
• Mountains, and the snow that caps them

I’m sure that, if I spent more time, I could keep on adding to this list. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, for example. But it’s a start. And if you want, feel free to tell me what you’re grateful for in the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

How can you mend a broken heart?

So there are a couple people in my life that make lots of bad decisions. (I don’t think they read this blog, but I won’t name names anyway.)

I’m not talking about decisions I disagree with, like choosing the creme brulee when there’s chocolate mousse on the menu. I’m talking about undeniably bad decisions, like burning bridges and painting yourself into a corner.

It’s hard to love someone in that situation, for two reasons. First, their bad decisions put up obstacles to receiving love; and second, I just stop wanting to love that person.

The limits of love

To love is to will the good of the one you love. (more…)

For me? Aw, you shouldn't have!

I had one of those “a-ha” moments over the weekend. I was thinking about words, as I often do, and I was trying to find a way to articulate the difference between recognizing life (or a friend or a privilege or whatever) as a gift and taking life for granted. And I realized, the phrases look roughly identical.

A grant, after all, is a kind of gift. It is something given to me by someone else.

So I started exploring whether there are any words we use for that sense of entitlement we call “taking something for granted” that don’t in fact refer to receiving something from someone else. (more…)

Fireworks over Lake Union

I always feel awkward around the Independence Day holiday. I’m not by inclination a patriot, just as I’m not by inclination a church-goer. I am both these things because I’ve come to see that my own inclinations, or desires, or vices, have led me astray from reality.

So I recognize the honor that is due to the nation of my birth, and my own responsibility to be as good a citizen as I am able. I just have a hard time bringing any emotional *umph* to the celebration.

I also recognize that, while I’m inclined to focus on the naughtiness of my nation and my speculations on how it ought to change, there is a real need to celebrate what is good and true and virtuous in the United States of America. Perhaps it is especially important for someone like myself to participate in the celebration, exactly as a corrective to my own erroneous inclinations.

The virtue of patriotism

Thomas Aquinas does not list “patriotism” among the virtues, but he does note that all people are both subject to law and responsible for the good of society, and that Justice requires respect for authority and Charity requires action for the good of one’s fellows. As he puts it,

Consequently, this very act of loving someone because he is akin or connected with us, or because he is a fellow-countryman or for any like reason that is referable to the end of charity, can be commanded by charity, so that, out of charity both eliciting and commanding, we love in more ways those who are more nearly connected with us. (ST II-II q26 a7)

These are what make up the essence of patriotism: loving one’s country and fellow citizens exactly because they are one’s fellows. It is closely related to the love of family, whom we do not choose but whom we must love anyway, whether we like it or not. Family and country are, in a sense, a school of charity; they teach us how to love even when loving is difficult.

Ironically (given the whoop-de-do about Church and State in this particular country), it is the Catechism of the Catholic Church that, I think, states most clearly what patriotism is all about:

It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom. The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity. (CCC 2239; emphasis in the original.)

What is critical, to me at least, about this approach is the balance it strikes: one’s country is to be loved, but not because it is better or stronger or more worthy than any other nation; rather, exactly because it is one’s own. I did not choose to be born an American; but I was, and it is as an American that I love the U.S.A. A Canadian or a Chinese might love the U.S.A. for some other reason. Perhaps they admire the American ideal, or perhaps they enjoy economic benefits from America, or any number of other reasons. But my own love of my country is founded simply on the fact that it is mine, or rather, that I belong to my country in a similar way that I belong to my family.

(I’m tempted to add a video of one of my favorite patriotic satires here, but instead I’ll just provide a link.)

American virtues

So, given that it’s not at all to my credit that I am American, what is it that I’ll celebrate with grilling and fireworks and other forms of pyromania today?

First off, I’ll celebrate the very good things I have myself received from the United States: a certain economic opportunity, even in difficult times such as these, to make ends meet without resorting to undignified or immoral work; a definite social opportunity to meet and converse with people from all walks of life and all regions of the country (and even the world), and to learn from their experiences; the English language which, thanks to American dominance following WW2 (augmenting the impact of English colonialism), has become a global language, giving me the advantage of communication with those I would otherwise have no connection; a political system that provides real opportunity (even if limited and corrupted by “special interests”) to contribute to and impact the governance of the society I live in.

I’ll also celebrate the genuine good that the United States has done in the world: through the citizens’ works of charity, of scholarship, of invention; and through the occasionally wise governmental policies, such as developing our highway system or contributing to the reconstruction of Germany and Japan after WW2.

Mmm... cheeseburger

Celebrating the good does not mean I stop critiquing the bad; it simply means I acknowledge that there is virtue to be found even among rampant vice. It means I extend to my country the same charity I extend to my neighbors and myself. I will celebrate my brother’s birthday, even if my brother is a criminal; I will celebrate my friend’s success, even if my friend is often a fool. So, although I am highly critical of many aspects of American politics and culture, I will celebrate America’s birthday with both gratitude and joy. In other words, I will practice the virtue of patriotism, trusting that both I and my country will grow toward greater virtue through practice.

And besides, who can pass up an opportunity for grilled meat?

Tomorrow, that is, on the first day of July, I will awaken as a published author.

Sure, this blog is a publication of sorts. But I’m of the old school that believes you’re not really published until someone else – indeed, someone not related to you or biased by friendship – decides your work is worth putting out there. For me, that will happen tomorrow.

Where? you might ask. In a small on-line journal called This Great Society. It’s a quirky little corner of the internet, and well worth a read. I hope that recommendation includes even my own contribution to the issue.

My essay is entitled “Following Distance” and is a kind of meditation on the psychology of driving. I note that the space that separates cars on the road is also a medium of communication, and that giving another driver room is a sign of respect.

This message could not arrive at a more perfect time for me. On Monday, as I was driving home from work, I got in a fender-bender. I rear-ended the car in front of me. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the damage seemed minimal. (I left a pair of dimples on the other car’s bumper in the exact shape of the bolts holding on my front license plate.) And although the other driver called the police, I didn’t receive a ticket. The officer let me off with a warning, for “following too close.”

It ends where it began

I actually dreamed about “Lost” last night. Scary. I should definitely talk to my therapist about that.

Anyway, here’s something approaching a thoughtful response to the “Lost” series finale, and actually to “Lost” as a whole. Needless to say, there will be SPOILERS in this post, so if you haven’t yet seen the finale, you can watch it on Hulu. And if you haven’t seen the rest of the series, well, most of what I say won’t make sense anyway.

What “Lost” found

Let me start with what I loved about “Lost.”

First and foremost, Hugo “Hurley” Reyes. Easily the heart of the show, Hurley has been the only character I have never lost hope for, and my hope was not disappointed. As soon as Jacob’s “candidates” were mentioned, I declared that I wanted Hurley to end up as the new Jacob. He was the only one whom I would trust with The Island, and I’m pleased to see that the writers agreed with me.

I loved that it ended with “nobody dies alone”. A major theme of the whole show was the forming and challenging of relationship and of community. As a Catholic, I see shadows of the idea of the communion of saints here, and the idea that none of us ever is utterly alone or disconnected from the rest of humanity.

I was super-pleased to see Sayid and Ben find a kind of redemption. I was particularly worried about Sayid after he lost his emotions, but it’s clear that his growth in virtue over the years was not lost – not entirely, anyway.

I could go on for hours listing all the details and small beauties of the show, but I’ll simply say that I loved the fact that the writers took each and every character (with the possible exception of Kate, who at times seemed little more than the prize that Jack and Sawyer were competing for,) seriously, and gave each one room to grow and develop. I loved that they took the mystery of The Island seriously, and left even Jacob a bit in the dark (so to speak) about the Light. I loved that they took morality seriously, and showed how each character’s choices formed and changed his or her personality. Despite the bizarre and sometimes inexplicable turns of events, the writers basically kept the characters real, and that invited me (and the rest of the viewing public, I hope,) to give the show what Tolkien called “secondary belief”: an honor due only to a really creative (or sub-creative) world.

My problems with “Lost”

That said, “Lost” was far from perfect. And the finale in particular brought out a number of the most serious problems with the show. Being a hyper-critical kind of guy, I just can’t let those imperfections pass without comment.

To start with, the “LA story” of this final season ultimately didn’t hold together for me. I get that it’s a kind of purgatory, but I don’t quite get Eloise Hawking’s warnings to Desmond – does she really know what kind of reality she’s in? And I don’t entirely understand the presence of Jack’s son. Is this a “younger Jack” (like the “younger Jacob” that appeared on the Island)? And what does Ben still have to work through in this “place”? Maybe his relationship with his father? Not really clear.

Most of all, the whole, “This is a place you created together, so that you could find each other again,” just doesn’t make the connection that I think they’re trying to make to their life on The Island. It makes it all feel like a gimmick to get the whole cast back together for a sentimental ending. I think I would have bought, “This is a gift from the Island for the service each of you provided,” or something along those lines, but the way it was is just metaphysically muddy to say the least.

Which actually brings me back to The Island. From the first season, The Island was developed as a kind of living being, with a will and a character of its own. I think the “Across the Sea” episode was intended to draw together the threads of The Island’s own story. But come on … a Light at the Heart of The Island – oooh! I want something a little more.

My main question about The Island throughout the series has been, what is the connection between The Island and the rest of the world? And despite Alison Janney’s explanation that “if the light goes out there, it goes out everywhere,” I just don’t buy it. I need to see that there’s a real connection between the state of the Light on The Island and the state of … hope? humanity? something in the rest of the world. And when the Light is “uncorked” in the finale, well, it turns red, and dimmer, and Smokey becomes mortal, and the Island shakes, and… it doesn’t seem to affect the persons the way it should if the light within them is threatened. Wouldn’t they all have become like Sayid, or like the Smoke Monster? or something?

So, ultimately, I’m left wondering what the whole point of The Island is in the first place. I wonder what really would have been so bad about the Light going out and The Island sinking into the sea. What difference would it make?

So that’s a rather disappointing place to be.

And, in the end…

As with the things I loved, I have tons of nit-picks that aren’t worth going into. Overall, “Lost” was an ambitious and often inspiring show, and I don’t regret a moment I spent watching it. Maybe it failed in its ultimate aim, but the effort was a worthy one on every count, and I have learned a great deal about myself and about telling stories from the show.

And that’s quite a lot for one show to accomplish.

Eat, drink, and be merry!

Among the pungent foods, garlic stands out as my favorite. But onions hold a close second – especially sauteed or, still better, caramelized onions. This simple bulb hides an almost overwhelming variety of flavors that march forth in orderly fashion as it basks in low, slow heat: from bright and acrid to mild and savory to utterly buttery and ultimately to sweet in a way so different than every other sweet I’ve tasted that it’s almost a misnomer to call it sweet.

So when I was looking for a good burger the other night, I found the local restaurant Blazing Onion irresistible.

Let’s start with the virtues on display, right from walking in the door. They tell you where the beef comes from: Northwest raised, no hormones, just good local cows. They tell you what their proprietary “BOB” sauce contains: mayo, pepper sauce, spices. They even tell you that their “Butter Burger” is uber-high in cholesterol. So, they’ve got honesty down. I like that.

The staff joked around with each other and with me. They clearly know each other, like each other, and like working together. I like signs of humanity in a business.

And then there’s the creativity of the menu. Sure, they have the standard bacon cheeseburger, the requisite BBQ and bleu cheese burger. But they also have a Thai Peanut Burger with shredded cabbage and daikon radish; a Greek Burger with olive tapanade, pepperincini, and sun dried tomato; and burgers of buffalo and wild boar meat. In addition to the burgers, they have proper entrees such as salmon, sirloin steak, and fettuccine. Appetizers include a shrimp basket.

But all of this is before you even order. It was the quality of the food that convinced me to write a blog entry about this place.

I ordered their signature “BOB,” or Blazing Onion Burger. First thing I noticed was that they don’t skimp on the onions. Probably a 1:1 ration of onion to beef on that sandwich. And the onions had been sauteed to perfect butteriness. Most places that offer “grilled onions” seem to think it means heating the onions till they’re soft, and that’s good enough. Here, they clearly know what flavor they want from their onions, and they’re willing to take the time to prepare them correctly. Thank you!

Then the beef itself. One bite and I knew that they had chosen their meat with the same care with which they’d prepared their onions. There was no pink in the burger, yet the rich beef flavor emerged unscathed, which speaks of a good cow to start with and of cooks who know how not to burn it on the grill.

I don’t want to run on too long, so suffice it to say that the fries, the sauces, the French onion soup, and the couple other burger options I sampled from my friends plates (the Thai and the Greek) confirmed that Blazing Onion is more than a single trick pony.

I have only one critique: with burgers so bodacious, a toothpick or a paper wrap to hold it all together would have been helpful. But then again, I did enjoy licking my fingers when I was done, so maybe they planned that as well.

For those of you not blessed with a residence in the Puget Sound area, fear not: they’re planning to expand nationwide over the coming decade. When it does come to your area, do check it out, and see just how good virtue can be!

I, the party of the first part....

I was listening to the radio on the way into work this morning and heard a story about how some scientists are afraid they’ll have to throw out the past eight years’ worth of research on human embryonic stem cells.

The reason? It seems that proper consent was not obtained for some of the stem cell lines that President Bush approved back in 2001. I can only assume they were talking about these objections from a UCSF team.

I had to laugh. They can’t do the research because they don’t have a signed permission slip?

Yet these same people pooh-pooh those who object on the grounds that the embryos are human lives being destroyed. Because that’s just not an important question.

Consent: the sole criterion of the good?

My friend Mark likes to point out that our culture seems to have rejected every virtue except tolerance, and every standard of goodness or value except informed consent. He notes that neither of these are sufficient to base a human society on; in fact, they both ultimately lead to a society that collapses upon itself.

I think the problem is that we have, by and large, accepted unquestioningly the myth that we are first and foremost individuals. A nation, a community, even a family, is presumed to be something that we enter into by choice. We have a “social contract,” and all our relationships suddenly have the nature of a contract. They are negotiated, agreed to, and disputes are adjudicated based on the terms of the contract as understood by the parties.

No wonder we have so many lawsuits. No wonder politics has become the common religion practiced by Americans. No wonder the only solutions we can come up with to any problems are legal ones.

No wonder we pay more attention to a medical form than to a human life.

Why human nature is important

On the other hand, all the ancient and medieval thinkers knew that the human person is a social animal. “No man is an island,” as John Donne put it. We cannot be born without other people. We cannot survive without a family. We cannot accomplish any tasks without relying on others to provide what we cannot provide for ourselves.

And we cannot be fully human without other people to converse with, to laugh with, to play with, to work with. We actually are least human when we are isolated as individuals.

When we forget this, when we base our entire sense of goodness on my own individual consent – as if I were utterly independent of the rest of the world – then we lose sight of what is truly good for the human person: love, friendship, collaboration, joy and peace. All these are gifts; they cannot be legislated and are not subject to a contract. We have no right to them. The only consent required is the consent to receive them from those who love us.

Open me!

I had a great conversation with a friend this morning. She pointed out to me that none of us choose to be here – either in the sense of being born in the first place, or where we happen to be in a job or family or what not. My situation in life is not something I have much control over, and most of it I have absolutely no control over.

And I realized that, till recently anyway, I have been harboring resentment about that. It made me feel powerless and frustrated. I wanted more control. I wanted to be where I chose to be, rather than where I was.

But there’s another way of looking at it: my life, and my situation in life is a gift. It’s both a gift to me, in that there is a great deal of good – comfort, love, friendship, and so on – in my life; and it’s a gift to others, in that I have good things to give to the people I encounter every day.

Yep, I’m God’s gift to the world.

But then again, so is everyone else. You’re God’s gift to me, for example. So it’s not that big a deal.

Anyway, I just realize that I need to shift my attitude from resentment, which is focused on what I don’t have, to gratitude, which is focused on what I do have. And that’s more realistic anyway: what I do have is real, but what I don’t have is a product of my imagination.

What I usually look like in the afternoon...

My doctor tells me that it’s not uncommon to feel drowsy in the mid-afternoon, and that either a little snack or a bit of exercise is a decent alternative to a nap. For myself, the soporific tendencies begin around 3:00pm, and a snack will at best delay the lowering of the eyelids.

But today has been a particularly productive day in a number of ways. I solved a tricky network problem for my uncle’s insurance business, reviewed my parents’ taxes from last year in preparation for filing this year’s, finished reading Book IX of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and accomplished a few other little household tasks.

By three in the afternoon, I was certainly feeling sleepy, but I also wanted to keep rolling on this productivity streak. At the very least, I wanted to write a blog entry … but I knew if I sat down at my computer I’d sooner or later drift off into the Land of Nod.

Prudence to the rescue!

So I took stock of my situation. I was sleepy, but not really tired; I wanted to get some more work done, but didn’t have the energy. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t even feeling particularly lazy, for once!

Moreover, I’d just been talking with my mother about the taxes, and I knew that both she and I were trying to incorporate exercise as a regular part of our lives.

So I asked her, “How about a walk around the neighborhood?”

As we walked, she asked about this blog and I said that I was planning to write today about the relationship of prudence and justice. I described prudence as the virtue of being in touch with reality, with one’s place in that real situation, and making decisions in accordance with one’s nature.

And it only occurred to me at that point that I had used exactly that process in deciding to ask my mom to take a walk with me.

An action and then a habit

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about prudence, thinking about how to practice it, thinking about how it fits in with the other virtues, thinking … thinking …

Today is the first time I’ve actually caught myself being prudent. I don’t think it’s bragging to say that I’m happy about it. After all, it’s a fairly small act of prudence, and it’s still a long ways from being “second nature” to me. But every action helps to build the habit; and I’m going to remember this little action when I’m faced with future temptations to nap or to do anything else that avoids facing the real world.

After all, I know that I can do it, at least in a small way. And if I can do it, you certainly can as well!