Addendum I: Vocabulary for Frank

Frank asked me what the phrase “gift of self” might mean, with the disclaimer that as my “token non-christian reader” he didn’t know.  First of all, I want to give a shout-out to the other non-Christians who read this blog – I know that at least one other of my loyal 3.5 readers shies away from any religious persuasion.  Secondly, I want to give a shout-out to those Christians/Catholics who might read this and think, “Well, I don’t exactly know what ‘gift of self’ means either.”

It’s a hallmark John Paul II phrase, lifted especially from his Theology of the Body, so there is no way I will do justice to it in one post.  If you really want to understand the phrase, read Man and Woman He Created Them, JPII’s audiences on the theology of the body compiled into one book.  And read it with a competent moral theologian by your side.  (Ooh-ooh-pick-me-pick-me!  I’m looking for a job!)  I’ll do my best, however.

Gift of self, or self-gift, describes how persons relate to each other.  It means giving of oneself in a full and free manner, an openness towards the other that says, “I am yours,” and does not hold back.  It is a self-offering that is love.  For JPII, the preeminent example is the Trinity: the Father pours Himself out to the Son, the Son reciprocates this love to the Father, and the love bursts forth to be the Spirit. 

For my non-Christian readers, or the Christians who haven’t pondered the Trinity in this manner, the primary earthly example is marital love.  Husband and wife give themselves to the other in a love that encompasses all aspects of their being.  In the words of Scott Hahn, “this love is so tangible that nine months later you have to give it a name.”  It is total (hence, no divorce) and life-giving (hence, babies) and consists of an orientation of oneself to the other and a strong will for the good of the other. 

I feel like I’ve been talking around it for long enough now that hopefully this sheds some life on self-gift.  If not, question away, and I will revisit the topic – possibly while studying for my Theology of the Body exam!

What I Have Taught My Feminism, Part III

(Go do your catch-up reading if you've missed Part II!)

The discomfort of my feminism as I write that who I am as a woman makes no sense except in relation to man (and again as I type it, and again as I post it) is palpable.  I have, for years, been on a quest to find the true meaning of femininity.  As a good feminist, I set out to find the definition of woman without reference to man.  I found two extremes: defining woman by a certain cultural/historical set of behaviors and values or collapsing gender differences to create a false equivalency.  I was unsatisfied wherever I turned.  If we can define man without reference to woman, shouldn’t we be able to do the opposite?

When I read the beginning of JPII’s Theology of the Body, it hit me.  I’d been getting it backwards.  Man was defined in isolation, woman with reference to man.  I knew woman was misdefined, so surely the approach to defining her was wrong; I needed to imitate the definition of man.

But what if the definition of man was wrong too?  What if man only makes sense in reference to woman?  This is the claim I make: masculinity and femininity are mutually referential and only make sense in relationship with each other.  Bodily, this makes sense.  Our physical bodies anticipate the opposite as complement.  I propose, once more following JPII, that our physical bodies give exterior shape to our interior selves.

In this case, it does woman no wrong to explain who she is with reference to (and in contrast to) man; it does man no wrong to explain who he is with reference to (and in contrast to) woman.  Indeed, any attempt at an isolated definition will do an injustice to femininity or masculinity,  It cannot but be a reductive view.

Does this mean that I have reached a perfect understanding of femininity, which I can now fully explicate for you?  Alas, no.  That is still a work in progress (though I hope to continue talking around the question here for a while yet).  A lot more work and research are necessary before I get there.  I am, however, making progress in developing the proper framework for asking the question, which is necessary for finding the answer.  

What I Have Taught My Feminism, Part II

Housekeeping Notes:

1. Read Part I first, if you have not already done so.
2. If you read Frank's comment (or if you are Frank!), do not fear!  I am writing an answer to his question... It will come at the end of Part III.

The necessity of vulnerability does not mean we must be completely open and vulnerable with everyone we encounter to be fully human.  Prudence allows us to respond to human sin.  Our relationships with other require a balance of prudence with openness, always guided by caritas.  It does mean that vulnerability is bad, is not something to be avoided.  It is a beautiful expression of our humanity.  And, because of the inherent risk, it requires a certain courage, a certain strength to live it out.

Now, you may have noticed an implication in this discussion of vulnerability, which leads to the next lesson I taught my feminism. 

If self-gift is essential to humanity, then no human being can truly exist in isolation.  We can only fully realize our selves as persons if we do so in relation to other persons.  What a blow to my ideal of self-sufficiency!  I like to imagine myself capable of complete independence.  Alas, JPII tells me otherwise. And it gets worse.  The ultimate self-gift – the opening of self and reception of other – happens in marital love.  Not only do I as a person not make sense except in relation to another person, but I as a woman do not makes sense except in relation to man.

What I Have Taught My Feminism, Part I

Now that you have done your assigned reading, it is time for the next chapter of Beth's feminist musings, "What I Have Taught My Feminism."

[Read the first series here.]

Now that I have begun, I might as well continue to develop a few more thoughts on vulnerability and gender. Again, I want to put these musings into a wider context; this time, “What I Have Taught My Feminism.” My feminism has taught me valuable lessons, but on occasion, I have had to instruct it, especially when I try to make it play nicely with my Church. There are two lessons in particular that I want to focus on, because of how crucial they are for correcting misunderstandings between my feminism and my Church.

First: Vulnerability is not a bad thing. The opposite assumption comes not just from my feminism, but from our society as a whole. And I am, as a stubbornly independent woman, perhaps particularly susceptible to it. As a basic, working definition I give, “the potentiality to be hurt.” It need not imply an actual being hurt: a newborn child, with the wisest, most doting parents, is extremely vulnerable. We don’t like vulnerability: it implies helplessness, weakness, and passivity. What about that sounds good?

The helplessness, I suppose, is part of the definition of vulnerability, but I mean to contend that the other two are not, or need not be. Vulnerability can be accompanied by an active strength, because it is can be primarily a factor of opennesss.

Or, to use the words of everyone’s favorite Polish Pope, it is about gift of self. The meaning of our humanity – of being a person – is the ability to make a gift of ourselves and to accept the gift of another. This is a huge starting point for his theology of the body. We are our bodies. In the beginning, this gift was safe because no one would think of harming another. Now, however, the gift involves risk – risk of exploitation or rejection. Thus gift of self = vulnerability. The catch is: gift of self = only true way to be a person. Vulnerability is intrinsic to our personhood and inescapable for our humanity.

Gendered Thoughts, Part IV

Here's the fourth & final part.  I hope you enjoy the ending... There's another series coming soon with more about vulnerability and gender!

I am not yet willing to shift from the world of “is” to the world of “ought.”  I do want to note a scene the vulnerability-dynamic can draw.  A man and a woman stand face to face.  As a female body before a male body, she has a vulnerability that she cannot help and he cannot have.  However, he has just told her that he finds her fun and charming (not to mention pretty) and would love to take her out to dinner.  He has a vulnerability before her that she does not have – he has no idea what she thinks of him.  If she accepts him, both will have made an implicit agreement to accept and guard – at least to a limited extent – the vulnerability of the other.  He is guarding her physical vulnerability and she his emotional vulnerability.  This dynamic, though by no means the only one at play here, sets the stage in an interesting manner for “traditional” gender roles in marriage, where the husband provides materially for the family and the wife acts as emotional caretaker.  Often times, behavior that seems to fall to the other gender is constructed to fit the acting gender’s norm, a tendency that fascinated my sociologist self in undergrad.

Again, I do not wish to move from the realm of “is” to “ought” or to insist that any particular gendered interaction fits this perfectly, especially since it relies on purity of intention.  I also do not mean to imply that a marriage with “traditional” gender roles necessarily follows from the date scenario described before it.  I merely wish to explore these as interesting gender dynamics that are largely ignored, or, when discussed, inextricably conflated with other ideology.  

Thoughts on Gender, Part III

(To make sense of this, be sure to read parts one and two first.)

I’m not sure how to transition here from female vulnerability to male vulnerability.  Part of the trouble is that up till now I have been concerned with physical differences, and now I need to turn to social norms.

Social norms are always difficult to deal with, not the least because they tend to be amorphous and variable.  However, again simply based on my recent life, let me offer two norms in our society: malefold ask out femalefolk; malefolk propose to femalefolk.  I propose merely that this is the way, by and large, that things are done – not the way things have to be done or should be done.

Now I not something interesting: asking another person to go on a date with or to marry you puts you in a position of vulnerability.  (This assertion assumes that the other person is reasonably free to answer in the negative.  If refusal is not a viable option, this, of course, changes the power dynamic.)  In asking a woman out, a man says, “See?  I am an interesting person.  Please consider investing some time in me.”  Rejection can’t help but be personal – it is, in a small way a rejection of his person.  A marriage proposal all the more so.  I heard a young man describe his proposal as offering “everything” of himself and, on one knee, waiting to find out if it was enough. 

(Incidentally, this scenario illustrates why I dislike the pre-engagement decision that “we should get engaged.”  It’s like showing someone his Christmas gift and proceeding to wrap it anyway.  You don’t half-give gifts or commitments.  Either you are committed to marrying each other (engaged) or you are discerning (dating).  If you are both done discerning,  you need to be either engaged or broken up.)

This scenario (before my parenthetical aside) assumes that the man is seeking an actual relationship and not just a hook-up.  A relationship says, “I want to give myself to you.”  A hook-up says, “You will be fun for me.”  It is also complicated by the idea of the “waiting woman” – a common complaint that women are trapped sitting around waiting desperately to get asked out.  Doesn’t this change the dynamic?  Only if we assume that women need men to be complete – and I offer as a counterpart men who ask out dozens of women in a short span of time, yet do not find that any of them stick it out beyond a second or third date.  

Likewise You Wives

Sunday evening marked the commencement of a graduate Theology of the Body group.  There, I rediscovered the fact that as a Catholic feminist, I exist sometimes in an odd sort of tension.  After all, my God chose to portray Himself as Father, to become incarnate as Son, to pass on His authority in 12 men, in place of the kings of old.  In a way, this pattern has probably done me some good: keeping me from becoming a man-hating feminist.  After all, how can you had the group to which your Savior belongs?

Some things are harder for me than others.  I've gotten over the male hierarchy thing.  But when it comes to certain parts of the Bible... "Likewise,  you wives, be submissive to your husbands" (1 Peter 3:1).  Similar lines appear in other places in the Epistles.  I live my life most of the time blissfully ignoring these passages.  But I don't exactly get to pick and choose and events like a TOB group bring gender roles to the forefront.  I'm not so good at submission -- if you know me, I hope you are laughing now.  Submission to God -- sure that makes sense.  Submission to a valid and respected authority who has reason to be above me -- I'll do that.  Submission to a potential future husband -- problematic.  

I've heard a few explanations of this passage, most of which either explain why the passage is temporally specific and therefore ignorable now (problem!) or why women should submit (another problem!).  So when I found this article, I expected to be underwhelmed.  Instead, I found the sentiment behind it vaguely attractive and worthy of more thought.  As I learn more about Biblical interpretation, I'm not convinced of this article as sound interpretation.  More prayer and research are needed before I fully ascribe to this way of resolving the difficult passage, but it makes for an interesting start.  

Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla

More of an Idiot: Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla: "Yes, I have been reading for past 7 weeks. At long, long last, I have finished Love and Responsibility, written by our late Pope John Paul II before he became pope. This book lays out the philosophical background for the pope's theology of the body, which he developed more fully during his papacy. I picked up the book because many CCMers have read it or talk about it on a regular basis, and I wanted to have it from the source. I like to know what other people know and be well-informed. So, while I cared about what was written in the book, it was not a topic that resonated with me as much as, say, Irresistibly Revolution.

The book contained dense meditations on the nature of personhood, love, and sexuality, arguing for that order of importance in interpersonal relationships. Wojtyla explains that we have an inherent "sexual urge," which simply means that we are attracted to people of the opposite sex as such. But the way we respond to this urge must recognize other people as persons. He calls this the "personalistic norm." The personalistic norm leads us naturally to love -- a desiring the good for another person. It also keeps us from the sin of utilitarianism, or using other people for our own pleasure, either physical or emotional. Only within the context of love, which keeps us from using the beloved, can we express our sexuality in a full and just way. Wojtyla also explains why the specific context of marriage is the only place where we can act upon the sexual urge without using our partner, and the way birth control stands in the way of the fullness of giving and openness that should exist in the sexual act.

Wojtyla presents a detailed philosophy that rings true with experience, but also describes parts of existence in a new way, which makes for a good read. As I said, however, it is very dense, and the 200-odd pages took me seven-ish weeks to get through, often because I had to force myself to pick up the book, knowing the intellectual task ahead of me... compared to Narnia, which I was reading on the side. However, the ideas should be spread, because our world lacks an understanding of love, and this philosophy helps clear up some confusions that we have."

Story Time

Once upon a time, a little girl lived with her father. She had a string of plastic pearls which she loved very much. They were beautiful pearls and she wore them all the time. Every night, her daddy would come to put her to bed, and she would fall asleep wearing those plastic pearls. Every night, however, as he was tucking her in, her father would say,

"Honey, you know I love you?"

"Yes, Daddy," she would say, "and I love you too."

"Do you trust me, honey?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"May I have your plastic pearls?"

"Oh no, Daddy, not my pearls!" she would answer.

This sequence happened night after night for days, for weeks, for years. Eventually, when the little girl was not so little anymore, the story changed:

"Honey, you know I love you."

"Yes, Daddy. I love you too."

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes, Daddy, of course I do."

"Then, honey, may I have your plastic pearls?"

The little girl may have been older and bigger, but she still loved that strand of plastic pearls. Still, her daddy had asked for them -- had wanted them from her for years. So, with a huge sigh and much reluctance, the girl took them off her neck and handed them to her father.

Her father reached into his pocket and gave her in exchange, a strand of real pearls that he had been carrying for years, waiting to give to her.

Christopher West ended the story by asking : What "plastic pearls" are you clinging to?

It Is No Coincidence That Ephesians 6 Follows Ephesians 5

Can you believe that I am still getting Christopher West summaries on here? (By the way, if you are my Facebook friend, you can see him -- I just posted a picture from the second night on Facebook.)

At this point, having just learned that God loves us with a spousal love, that He desires to marry us, and that we can reach union with Him in the Eucharist, we're pretty pumped. After all, if God wants us that badly, what can stand in the way?

Christopher West told us to write down the next sentence he was going to say. It was the most profound thing he was going to say all three nights. Ready? "It is no coincidence that Ephesians 6... follow Ephesians 5." The whole room giggled, self included, but I still jotted it down. Christopher went on to explain that Ephesians 5 is about marriage, the union between man and woman and the union between Christ and the Church. Ephesians 6? Battle. "Put on the armor of God," St. Paul tells us. When we live in union with God, the enemy does not like it and will use all his power to stop it. If our sexuality can point us so strongly towards heaven, then Satan will attack our sexuality. He creates fracture, rupture -- in allegorical terms, divorce.

When you want someone to trust you, you tell them something that is true. I have to admit, this point hit home for me. If there is one thing my experience of sexuality in this world has confirmed, it is that it is broken, fractured, dysfunctional -- not what it should be. So of course, I started listening very hard, in hopes that the next talk would convince me that this teaching held the answer of what it should be.

"This teaching," Christopher West now explained, focused on two questions that ground the two parts of JPII's teaching : 1) What does it mean to be human? and 2) How do I live my life in a way that brings true happiness? Under each question there are three sections :

1) Meaning of our humanity

-Our origin (Creation)

-Our history (Fall and Redemption)

-Our destiny (Resurrection)

2) Living in true happiness

-Celibacy for the Kingdom

-Marriage as a Sacrament

-The Language of Sexual Love

A disclaimer if you are intensely interested in the 2nd question : Christopher answered that one night three, the night that I could not make it the talk. So when I get to the end of my notes, I might read the workbook he gave us and try to give an overview of those points, but that's a maybe and won't be as detailed as what I actually heard.

To Live Would Be

We are an Easter people. The Pope has said this. My principal says this every time he stands in front of the school. Liz quoted Augustine saying it on her blog. It's true.

If you really pay attention to the Catholic Church, it's obvious that we are. The essential Liturgy of the Church, the Mass, changes for three days at Easter time. We bring out bells, incense, fire, water, lights, darkness, processions, and music like nobody's business. We celebrate Easter in highest form for not one but 8 days -- and then carry on for 42 more days before our season finally comes to an end. Even during penitential seasons, Sundays merit a break -- because every Sunday represents an Easter moment.

That's how we show it. But what does it mean?

It relates to the title of this blog. (Yes, I know it's Peter Pan.) "I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly," Jesus says. Easter isn't a fluffy holiday about jelly beans (yum!) and a bunny and the arrival of spring. It's about the action that made life meaningful. Without Easter, to live won't be "an awfully big adventure." Without Easter, life is just about coasting along until death catches up with us. With Easter, to live is an awfully big adventure. And Peter Pan's words in the movie ("to live would be an awfully big adventure") relate beautifully to his words in the novel : "to die would be an awfully big adventure."

Death was the end of life. The separation of body and spirit, the taking away of what (remember Theology of the Body?) makes us human. The sin of Adam and Eve won that end for us.

Yet priests everywhere sang in the Exultet last night : "Oh happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!" We are an Easter people because we live according to that redemption, rather than according to that death. Body and soul may be separated, but we believe in the Resurrection of Christ and because of that, the resurrection of our own bodies. We also believe in death to an existence rooted in sin and life in Christ in the here and now -- life and death are bound up together. And so our Easter salvation encompasses all that we are : in it we live and move and have our being.

On Brides, Prostitutes, and Chapel Veils

Recap : God wants to marry each of us! It is the command He gave to Hosea in the book that bears the prophet's name : to go marry the prostitute. We are prostitutes when we give ourselves to lovers other than God, to people, things, idols that will not bring us fulfillment. According to Hosea, God is a wild lover. We sin when we give ourselves to less wild lovers than our God.

The Song of Songs too shows the ardor with which God longs for us. Christopher West called the Annunciation the "New Song of Songs." It is "God's marriage proposal to humanity." It resulted in a "yes," from Mary and new life -- just as human marriage does. I love the implication this image has for the Rosary. Not only does it repeat an angel's words, honor Mary, and meditate on the Mysteries, but it repeats the manner and method of our salvation. It repeats God's proposal to us, His willingness to become man to marry us. We are like children, telling again and again the story of how our parents met, loving their love.

The Apostles experienced the same kind of union at Pentecost when they too were "overshadowed" by the Holy Spirit. We experience the marriage at the Eucharist.

Which means, incidentally, that we approach the altar for communion as a bride, prepared to conceive eternal life. As a bride! I don't want to spend too much blog space on the topic of women veiling themselves at church, but I love the relationship here. We come forward as brides... we are the bride of Christ. In modern times, the main place I find veils in Christianity is the head of a bride. In this way, wearing a veil can be a sign of my offering myself (as a layperson) as the spouse of Christ.

"Open Your Mouth and I Will Fill It"

As I continue with Christopher West's Theology of the Body talks (yeah, I know it's been a while), here's a summary of what I've written so far:

1) The human person is the inseparable union (marriage) of body and spirit.
2) The modern world teaches false focus on our sexuality, but agents of the Catholic Church often offer a false negative message about our sexuality.
3) The body has a sacramental meaning : it images the invisible God.

From here Christopher West offered this question and answer : What does this image of God upon our bodies mean? It shows the "innermost secret of God: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange."

Our hearts long, ache, pine for love. Modern culture and our own experiences speak to this truth. Chick-flicks, love songs, college hook-ups, online dating services, the omnipresence of romance -- all these demonstrate our human longing for love. This longing comes from the fact that we were made for and from God's infinite love.

We have three ways in which we can respond to this longing:
1) Become an addict. We indulge in every way to fill this hole inside us, using the venues the world offers us, venues that will never quite satisfy us, but which we cannot let go.
2) Become a stoic. We ignore the longings, squash them, try to pretend there is no hole, because it is so hard to fill.
3) Become a mystic. We seek God to fill this hole. We know that it will never be completely filled in this life, but we wed ourselves as closely as possible to our Lord, because He is the only thing that can fill it.

Most of the time, we respond in a combination of these three ways at various points in our life. Sin enters in following path 1 or path 2, when we go to something finite to try to fill a desire for the infinite. We can be seeking something good when we sin; the sin comes from choosing something good over something holy.

When we choose the road of the mystic, we enter into relationship with God. And through Scripture, we can discover the shape of this relationship. God reveals His mystery to us through a spousal analogy -- through His marriage to each of us. The analogy of marriage is the most common analogy in the Bible, according to Christopher. Importantly, marriage bookends the Bible. "In the beginning," God created Adam and Eve, the first, archetypal marriage. In Revelation, He shows to John a new marriage, one of Christ and the Church. The new Adam and the New Eve. Because we are all part of the Church which is the Body of Christ, through the Cross and (for Catholics) through the Eucharist, we are all "called to nuptial union with God."

In other words, God wants to marry each of us. The Old Testament describes this longing -- have you ever read Hosea or the Song of Solomon? If not, please do. Both unfold God's urgent longing, his unceasing desire for each of us. And then, in the New Testament, God fulfills the Old Testament -- He fulfills His desire for us, but taking on flesh and coming to the world as a bridegroom in pursuit of His bride.

Ultimately, He gave Himself in every way possible to His bride, His Church, in the Eucharist and in the Cross. Christopher West gave an exegesis of the passage from Ephesians 5 :

'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This is a great mystery and I mean in reference to Christ and the church.

In reference to Christ and the Church, Christ (man) left first his Father (in heaven, during the incarnation) and his mother (Mary, on earth, first at his death, then at his Ascension) and was joined to his wife (the Church) and the two became one flesh (the Eucharist). Wow!

The Bullion Cube of Theology of the Body

Once establishing that the human body and spirit together make up a human being, Christopher West explain why we have bodies. God created the human person with a body in order to "make visible His invisible love." As a reflection or manifestation of the invisible God, our bodies are "sacraments." Christopher dubbed this point the "bullion cube" of Theology of the Body :

"The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible : the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it" (Theology of the Body, JPII, 19:4)

In conclusion at the first session, Christopher asked for a "thick-skinned, male volunteer." The feminist inside me wondered why male. I'll let you hear what happened, and I'll be interested in comments if the volunteer could have been female.

Guy stood up. Christopher summoned him to the front and instructed us to, "Look at Guy's body." The audience giggled. Of course, he called us out on it. Why, he asked, is it okay to say, "Look at Guy," but not "Look at Guy's body"? He said that Guy was beautiful; he imaged God. The shy, older man smiled a tiny, beautiful smile at this affirmation.

Christopher ended with the challenge : Why are we uncomfortable with our bodies? Our bodies are us.

What the Twisted Mystics Got Right

Sex is like fast food. This analogy was the main stream running through Christopher West's talks, that bound everything together. It cropped up in the middle of important points, alongside funny jokes, and within the first five minutes. It floated slowly alongside us until we forgot about it and then *bam!* he'd be talking about chicken nuggets.

Christopher explained that our world is hungry -- hungry for love. You hear this theme all over the place. You especially find it in the media. Consider how many songs there are about love. This point resonated with me; I'm occasionally annoyed because I would like some music other than love songs. Yet he called rock and roll artists the "twisted mystics" of our day. They know what our hearts seek. They just don't know where to look for it.

You see, all around us, we have a culture offering us a fast-food diet of sex. And the Catholic Church has had the "right words, [but the] wrong music." If you listen to the Catholic Church's message about sex, it seems to be "DON'T DO IT." As a part of the fast-food analogy, it seems to offer a message of starvation. "And I don't know about you," Christopher said, "but if the other choice is starvation, I'm going for the greasy nuggets!"

Here's the thing though (and the whole Theology of the Body is meant to demonstrate this) : The Catholic Church doesn't offer starvation. It offers a feast. We just haven't been saying that. We haven't been saying it to Catholics who grow up around the Church, let alone the world at large. No wonder our world is so confused.

This point came from the beginning of his talk, Sunday night. He spent the next three nights explaining this feast. Unfortunately, I will only be able to offer you two nights of the vision, but over the next few posts, I'll do my best to explain this feast of the Church.

"And You, By the Way, Are a Heretic!"

Christopher West spoke just outside of St. Louis earlier this week, and I am incapable of summarizing in a word, a sentence, or a post. So my three loyal readers and their compatriots will either have to put up with at least a few posts on the talks, or else ignore them pleasantly and wait until I get to other parts of life.

For those who don't know, Christopher West talks on Theology of the Body. He calls it a "revolutionary" teaching of John Paul II, but it really finds its base in the Catholic theology of centuries. (JPII presented it in 129 lectures during the beginning of his pontificate.) It presents a theology (or religious philosophy) about the meaning, purpose, and experience of our bodies and often focuses on sexuality, though the scope of Theology of the Body is much larger than sex.

I want to start with the idea that fascinates me the most. Christopher West spent the first night convincing us of the embodiedness of the human person. You see, human beings are not spiritual beings in temporary physical bodies, or physical beings with a spiritual nature. We are physical and spiritual intertwined. The two together make up what it means to be human. He gave the example of a swirly ice cream cone : it is not chocolate, it is not vanilla, it is both together, and they cannot be separated if it will remain a swirly cone.

We call the separation of the two death. Christopher pointed out that in the Creed we state, "We believe in the... resurrection of the body..." Death, the severed state of body and soul, won't last forever. Heaven exists in a physical state as well as a spiritual one. Why else do we have the shining example of Christ's glorified body after the Resurrection?

His presentation of Theology of the Body hinges on this truth. If we are body and spirit, we live out our calling by living with both the body and the spirit. The Church, and Christians in general, can focus too much on the spiritual and forget that we live out our divine calling by living as embodied persons, men and women who are created in the image and likeness of God.

Christopher also explained that our existence as embodied spirits distinguishes us from the angels. "Next time someone calls you an angel," he said, "say, 'I am not! I am an embodied spirit, and you, by the way, are a heretic!'"