What Women Want

While we are on the topic of abortion, let's side step to another "women's rights" issue and talk about birth control.  Most of the time you hear a dichotomy in conversations about birth control:

*Contraceptive hormones/devices vs. nothing

*Normal people vs. crazy Catholics

Every now and then there is an admission that such a things as "NFP" exists, although it is generally equated to "nothing," and every now and then there is an admission that some other crazy Christians join the Catholics.

And then I found these articles.   These two infinitely secular sources do not make an apologia for natural methods.  They simply point out that hormone-free methods of avoiding pregnancy might be something that women want.  The first article is less about what is being branded as "Fertility Awareness-Based Methods" (FABM) and more about the rejection of hormonal birth control:

[These women] buy organic kale and all-natural cleaning products, and so can’t quite get down with taking synthetic hormones every day... They’re sick of supposedly egalitarian relationships in which they bear the sole responsibility for staying baby-free.

The author's main point is actually the rise of the "pullout method," if such technique can be deemed a method of birth control, as a direct response to a rejection of the Pill.  The second article, a response to the first, is much more concerned with FAMB as a solution to this rejection:

Synthetic hormones come with side effects, condoms don’t feel great, intrauterine devices are kind of scary....surveys conducted by physicians at the University of Utah show that when natural fertility-awareness methods are described to women, 25 percent say they would strongly consider using one as their means of birth control. But thanks to its glaring image problem and a set of just-as-formidable infrastructural hindrances, ignorance of fertility awareness-based methods is widespread.

 This author goes on to explain that FABM is something that women want and do not have access to.  She blames two factors: 1) a branding image, where FABM is too closely associated with both the rhythm method (which it is not) and the Catholic Church (which has embraced a religious version); and 2) the fact that it does not bring money to the pockets of pharmaceutical companies.

I am always overjoyed to see discussions of this nature in the secular spheres.  One of the greatest harms the sexual revolution has done is kept women distanced from our bodies.  Medicine is learning so much about our bodies -- which are pretty amazing and complex -- but we are taught to reject these inner workings without even knowing what they are.

Regardless of your opinions on birth control, I think it should be fairly obvious that we have a right to know how our bodies work.  We can only make informed decisions on how to live our lives if we actually get information about ourselves.

Reminders

Yesterday marked the 41st annual March for Life.  As usual, the good Lord gave us a chance at redemptive suffering, this year sending ridiculously cold weather.  For a few weeks, I had been promising friends, former classmates, and former colleagues that I would find them in DC.  And I awoke Wednesday morning with day two of a cold -- the stage where standing up made me dizzy.  I took a sick day against the frigid outdoors and curled up with a cup of herbal tea.

The Captain and I had planned on going to the March together but without a group -- a couple of free radicals, wandering in and out of the pro-life masses.  I had just resigned myself to not going and missing all those cool people when the Captain told me that he was planning on heading into work if I was staying in.

With friends as my motivation and the Captain as my excuse, I bundled into a many-layered ball of purple fluff, with a scarf up to the apples of my cheeks and hat and hood pulled over my eyebrows.  As it turned out, almost everyone at the March was bundled up in a similar fashion, or with sunglasses or ski goggles fighting the bright sun.  This, combined with my reluctance to remove my gloves to use my phone, made it difficult to find people.  I tried standing on a bench to peruse the sea of signs... which only made my head spin more.

To make a long story short, we found no one and had as near to a solitary March as two people can in the midst of several hundred thousand fellow protesters.  In the end, I found myself rather disappointed and caught myself wondering, Why did we bother to come?

Thankfully, I recognized and rebuked this attitude.  God was using our solitude as a reminder: the March for Life isn't about friends, or reunions, or who you know.  It isn't about finding former roommates or showing off DC.

It is about the fact that people are dying and our society has given it a legal and cultural stamp of approval.
And until that changes, I need to be my tiny part in letting this nation and this world know that abortion is evil.

And until that changes, I need to be my tiny part of a generation that will not be silent until life triumphs.

And until that changes, I need to offer my tiny bit of redemptive suffering, so that love can win.

The Space I Occupy

When feminism was a fun idea and before I pursued it in a haphazard academic fashion, I learned a fact that surprised me.  Men and women are taught to take up space differently.  Men are taught to sit, stand, move while taking up lots of space.  Women, on the other hand, are taught to be self-contained -- folded hands, legs, tucking in ourselves and our stuff.  If these two Google searches don't sufficiently demonstrate the difference, watch this video without sound, just paying attention to body language and posture.  Or, take a train ride during rush hour. Sit down next to a window and pay attention to how the people next to you sit.

This particular lesson stuck out to me because I remembered learning how to sit as a child.  I would sit in the most comfortable position -- which often involved on foot on the opposite leg's knee (this is a great way as a small child to hold a large book) or my legs spread in some other way.  I had to learn (rather reluctantly) to sit with my legs together, making myself compact.  Now, I am very talented at this.  It amazes me at times the difference in the amount of space the Captain and I take up in a church pew -- despite the fact that we are relatively the same size.  

All these musings are meant to lead up to this Upworthy video that wandered across my Facebook recently.  A young woman recited a bit of slam poetry that addresses how men and women take up space.  She spends much of her time discussing food, but I think it goes deeper than how much pizza we can eat:

Allusion Five: The First Amendment

I offer you the fifth and final installment in my Portugal series:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

~1st Amendment to the United States Constituion 

I suppose it is natural to understand the new by comparison with the familiar. (Hence Portugal story-telling through allusions.)  I recognized there how much I was viewing things as an American.  Our first morning, we grabbed an “ethnocentric breakfast” from Starbucks -- apparently coffee in paper cups is an American thing and not done in Portugal.  And while I came away thinking that coffee in real mugs is a very civilized thing, that was our first day and we slept in and needed coffee and to make our tour on time.  At that point, the idea that I couldn’t walk into a coffee shop and get a cup to carry out was a little bizarre.

Coffee was not the most distinctive way that I was American, though some of the other differences helped me understand “American” a little better.  We learned from Day 1 that Portugal is very in touch with its history… and its history is older than anything we know.  In 1755, an earthquake shook Lisbon and destroyed an ancient city -- at a time when our oldest cities were still rather nascent.

I’m used to playing tourist at monuments, museums, and parks, not churches, palaces, and castles.  But when your history stretches back a thousand years, those are the places to see.  The first stone cathedral we visited was in the Lisbon cathedral, which impressed me with its cavernous interior.  The Captain, having seen (and sung in) European stone churches before, was less easily awed.  And two days later I discovered why.

The monastery of St. Jerome in Lisbon was built by Henry the Navigator as a thank you for the safe return of an expedition.  We came straight from the tiny village houses of Fatima into the stone and gold and marble richness of the Prince’s thank you.  My mind flew in several vaguely formed directions at once:

*The disparity!  The contrast of royalty to peasant, rich to poor.  I understood the Protestant Reformation and other rebellions against the Church so much better.  This point was brought home even more when we visited the Church of São Francisco in Porto, which was covered in 900 pounds of gold leaf.

*Wow -- I wish I could thank God like that.  It’s hard to imagine having the kind of gratitude, let alone the resources, to give a mountain-sized church to God.  I could use a lesson in gratitude.  My thank-you gift to Him tends to be something more akin to a Glory-Be, or a decade of the Rosary, or Mass if I’m really ambitious.

*The First Amendment.  Not only was the church built by a prince, but by-gone royalty lined the transepts, born in marble tombs on the backs of marble elephants.  As I got a clearer picture of the intertwined nature of Church and State, I began to see a tad better what our forefathers did not want -- in terms of both religion and royalty.

The same musings on the foundation of our country struck me when we visited the National Coach Museum.  The Captain had much more enthusiasm about it than I did -- I thought I was going to the medieval equivalent of a car show.  I misunderstood the purpose of the coaches.  Functionally, of course, they took royalty from point A to point B.  But the purpose… to show off.  So the coaches were covered with elaborate woodwork, gold leaf, and detailed paintings and upholstered in velvet.  The purpose was beauty, but obviously more than beauty -- to impress upon the viewer the wealth and status of the owner.

The former stock-exchange, the Stock Exchange Palace, incidentally, was a way for the country to say the same thing.  The whole building was impressive, but one room in particular, the Arabic Room, was created to make sure foreign visitors had a visceral experience of the wealth of the nation.  The brightly-colored room glistens with Moorish-inspired detailed patterns of red and blue, outlined with gold leaf.  

The whole impression of these structures was to overwhelm in a way that none of our stark, Romanesque national monuments possibly could -- we were built on escaping royalty.  A bunch of idealistic, democratic rebels.

I hate to give America the final word in a series about Portugal.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a photographic offering to end our adventures:

Portugal, the Atlantic Ocean, and a castle, as seen from a palace

Allusion Four: Harry Potter

I refuse to help the craze by linking to anything... if, somehow, you don't know Harry Potter (not sure which among my 3.14 loyal readers would not, but it's possible), a quick Google search will fill you in.  


When we left Lisbon, midway through the trip, we took a bus north to a land called Porto.  When we checked into our hotel in Porto, the receptionist pulled out a map to show us must-sees.  Among them was a cafe which, she told us, was where J.K. Rowling penned Harry Potter’s first chapter.  She was married to a Portuguese man at the time, and Porto claims the inspiration for the novels.

I am willing to give it to them -- though, having never visited London, the verdict might be premature.  The magical Harry-Potter places include:

The Porto train station.  The station itself is a huge white stone building on the outside.  The inside is covered with murals in blue tile -- called azulejos -- depicting historical and religious scenes.  The walls are covered with kings and queens and knights and peasants and farmers and saints and statues and little girls processing.  Through the vast arches waiting the trains, which just burst through the mountainside -- the tracks lead in and out of a stone tunnel.  We took a cruise up the Douro River to visit wine country (and visited some of Europe’s oldest and highest lock systems) and returned on a train to this station.  As we chugged along the dark countryside, I agreed with the assessment that this was the Hogwarts Express.

The Majestic Cafe.  When people state that Rowling started writing Harry Potter on a napkin in a European cafe, I picture a small outdoor patio that blends the historic and hipster into one perfect cappuccino. Instead, the Captain and I found a noble tea-room serving high tea in china pots with scones silver baskets and cloth napkins.  The walls were tall mirrors lined with golden woodwork and topped with cherubs.  The table-conversations rose slightly above a murmur and were accompanied by live music from a grand piano in the back.  I honored the occasion with tea and scones -- accompanied by cream for the scones, something that fascinated the Captain.

The bookstore, Livraria Lello e Irmão.  When we were told to find the bookstore that inspired Harry Potter and saw its icon on our tourist map, I expected a grand library dominating a street corner.  Instead, we walked by the innocuous storefront at least twice before we realized it was the building we sought.  The inside, however, did not disappoint. Books, of course, lined every inch of the store -- and a metal track allowed a cart like a mining train to transport books around the floor.  And in the center -- a sweeping, doubled staircase, painted brilliant red next to rich wood, leading up to the second floor.  The walls hosted paintings and detailed woodwork.  And, of course, the books!  The Captain found it slightly less fascinating than I did -- he is still learning how to drag me out of bookstores.

Allusion Three: The Day the Sun Danced

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: Fatima!

I’m not sure this counts as an allusion, and, if it does, it is certainly not clever. The Day the Sun Danced is a children’s animated movie about the miracle of Fatima and the apparitions of Our Lady to the three shepherd children. If you don’t know about it, I would suggested more research than this video, but I would also recommend getting in touch with your inner child by starting here.

The Captain and I grabbed a bus from Lisbon to Fatima our second morning in Portugal. We started the morning with breakfast at a local coffee shop, a routine that quickly became one of my favorite things about Portugal. The dreary, drippy day (that got worse, rather than better as we approached Fatima) made me grateful for the water resistant jacket that the Captain had purchased to keep his bride warm. We trudged through the drizzle from the bus stop to the shrine, eager to find the information center, which I hoped was heated.

We found neither information nor heat, but instead a vast, cold basilica with an auditorium feel and an overwhelmingly gold mosaic. We did not linger long. Our next step took us to an underground series of chapels, all of which were closed, except for an Adoration chapel in the same empty, gold style as the basilica. Jesus was there, which made it awesome, but I was struggling with disappointed hopes for Fatima when we left the chapel.

We at last found a map in an otherwise barren building, which pointed us toward “Informacioãos.” That tiny building provided information only in the form of an English version of the map we already held. So we used it to explore.

Probably the greatest surprise I had in all of Portugal were those first couple hours in Fatima. The whole shrine felt… smoothed over. The cold basilica sat at one side of a huge esplanade, a vast stretch of concrete, asphalt, and limestone that stretched to a mountain of stairs, leading up to a covered outdoor altar and an older basilica. We gave ourselves a chilly tour of that basilica, a stone church built in the 1950s, and the resting place of the children who saw Mary.

Next, we set our sights on two meals -- lunch and then Mass. In between the two, we stopped at the Chapel of Apparitions, a three-sided glass and wood structure built to protect the small white house erected not long after the apparitions. We were surrounded by a few other pilgrims -- hearty, desperate, or determined, to be here in the grey. Praying there, so near to Our Lady, her presence so real, my heart broke. I know people come from all over for all reasons, but the ones that were most palpable were those from burdened hearts, overflowing to their mother -- people bringing their deep sorrows from this valley of tears. I was rather depressed as we returned to the old basilica for Mass.

Every Mass we attended in Portugal was, unsurprisingly, in Portuguese. My lack of understanding led to contemplative Masses. I brought before Our Lady all the aching I had felt in the Chapel of Apparitions. She took the aches… and gave me back her love. Her love that had led her aching heart, on behalf of her Son’s aching heart, to these particular people in this particular land, with one particular message -- that stretched across the world to spread her love and her Son’s love to people beyond that land. To touch even my heart in this valley of tears.

After Mass, I was much better disposed to the Shrine. The Captain saw people coming out of a building -- and since we were having trouble determining what was locked and what was open, we swam upstream into the building. There, I negotiated with a nun who spoke four or five languages in the only one we had in common (Spanish) to obtain tickets for a tour of the “exhibition.” I had no idea what to expect -- it turns out there were rooms filled with votive offerings left and sent to Our Lady of Fatima, from popes and pilgrims. I wished I had something to leave her.

By now, it was getting dark and we still needed to find our hotel. So we bought a couple candles and lit them in intercession for all the intentions that had been sent with us to Fatima.

Day Two of Fatima brought us to the countryside, about a mile from the shrine. We took a cab, whose driver was named John Paul -- “John Paul III,” he joked. This day, the sun favored us. The chill of the air and the damp of the dew, under the cloudless sky, made the morning feel new and refreshing. Limestone paths lead us into groves of olive trees, speckled with holmoaks and rock. We found a statue of Our Lady, marking where she appeared once to the children of Fatima, as well as statues of the Angel of Peace and the children, where he taught them a prayer of reparation and gave them communion. Out here, the world was at peace and so quiet that I felt as if I would hear Mary’s voice if I stayed and listen long enough. We had the paths to ourselves, with only orange breasted birds for company.

The paths eventually lead us into the village of Aljustrel, where the children had lived. We found another site of an angelic apparition, where the Angel of Portugal warned the children that they were going to suffer greatly, and the houses where they grew up -- tiny, simple buildings that made them somehow more real as children than anything I had seen or read thus far.

By the time, other pilgrims had started to appear. As the world finished waking up, we reluctantly left the corner of the world where, once, the sun danced.