Where does badness come from

by Andrea Elizabeth

“Bad people aren’t born, they’re made.”

“A broken heart can make you do unspeakable things.”

- Once Upon a Time, last night’s episode.

Once your broken heart has somewhat left you alone, then you can start to think about the other people’s hearts you have broken – the children you have let down. Lord have mercy. I think of this in a top down way. Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ hearts, and I don’t think women are responsible for men’s hearts. That doesn’t mean women can’t break men’s hearts and children can’t break their parents’. But the responsibility isn’t theirs. Seems to me parents and men need to look deeper at why it happened backwards like that. Did they do something to cause it?  Was there too much unrealistic expectation in the first place? This is also not to say that men and parents shouldn’t expect anything from their wives and children. Nor that if they don’t get from them what is proper that it is always their own fault. I just think it’s safer to assume that it is. Even if it isn’t, if you love your children or your wife, you don’t want them shouldered with the blame.

by Andrea Elizabeth

I was thinking during the Archbishop’s police escorted burial procession that it was fitting that Dallas’ citizens should have their busy day interrupted to mark his passing. Even involuntarily.

Bleak House

by Andrea Elizabeth

During the drive to the S. Tx borderland we listened to some of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. I’m mostly enjoying the parts about Lady Dedlock as they seem realistically cause and effect. Esther is a little too perfect, as most of Dickens’ heroines are. At least he talks about her not having “real” reactions to things, since she’s not really been allowed to. But the scathing critiques of the missionary mothers and the deportment father are painful for me to hear. He goes on and on about how completely ridiculous, harsh, or neglectful of their kids they are, and how their kids either secretly hate them or stupidly believe in them. I don’t doubt in the least that such relationships exist, but the descriptions are too one-sided, the cause is not explained, and are too angry and intent on embarrassment. To present the other side, it seems that Dickens himself suffered under an irresponsible parent, and I wonder if his father escaped blame by being overbearingly charming and irresponsibly generous. One way to deal with the anger in such a relationship is to make them look bad in public through fictionalized accounts. If this is wrong to do, I think the merciful thing would be to quote the Scripture about fathers provoking their children to anger and woe to them that make children stumble. Lord have mercy.

Dreams, Imagination, and Fatherhood

by Andrea Elizabeth

I just now got around to watching the 1998 Robin Williams movie, What Dreams May Come, which borrows loosely from Dante’s Divine Comedy. I liked how it wasn’t afraid to deal with death, depression and despair despite the obvious problems with reincarnation, imagination, and the premise of “I think, therefore I am”. Creation is presented as an illusion and heaven takes the form of an individual’s dreams as that is how the person can relate to reality. But dreams are not reality itself, which always remains hidden. The artwork and especially the use of color is stunningly decadent, and just before the eye candy starts inducing a sugar coma, the journey leads to hell, which is thankfully more understated than heaven was.

Robin Williams comes off as a good guy, but there are cracks that I’m not sure were intentionally presented as such. The relationship with his wife is fleshed out pretty well with the good and bad, but his relationship flaws with his children is more opaque. The viewer seems more informed than Williams is. The resolution with them seems self-serving.

In our romantic fulfilment society, children are presented as an afterthought and their happiness comes way further down the list than an individual’s. And the good times with children are seen as a consolation prize to be enjoyed between the star attractiveness of the husband and wife. There are plenty of stories from a child’s point of view, but even that is the author’s point of view of a time before he found romantic fulfillment. There are some parent-child oriented stories from the parent’s point of view, but these are usually single-parents who were forced into it through abandonment by the other spouse and the inability to attain their first choice.

At least What Dreams May Come wasn’t forced to deal with the parent child relationship in that way. Perhaps the reason these stories are so oriented is that children require self-sacrifice and are not usually patterned after dreams, but harsh, fallen reality, even though God made them incredibly cute. But even in heaven, Robin Williams’ children become what he can relate to instead of who they really are. I don’t think God is that accommodating. We are the ones who have to change to accommodate reality, not the other way around, but who wants to hear that? Robin Williams does make this accommodation for his wife though, but conveniently his children didn’t need it. In reality, our spouse and our children all need it.

Before I vilify dreams too much, this morning I came across this letter from Fr. Seraphim Rose to one of his spiritual children,

D. is right – don’t be too taken up by “fantasies.” But don’t entirely squash them, either – without dreams, we can’t live! May God grant your Reuben the grace to be baptized and find his place to be a fruitful Orthodox Christian…

May God grant you to continue with such freshness towards Orthodoxy as you felt with reading St. Symeon’s Homilies! Be aware, however, that this will be possible only with sufferings; everything you need to deepen your faith will come with suffering – if you accept it with humility and submission to God’s will. (Father Seraphim Rose, His Life and Works, p. 798)

He then goes on to say a lot about accepting suffering with joy. Sorry to switch back to a movie, but What Dreams May Come probably does present a balanced view of this in Williams’ willingness to go to hell for his wife. His eye is on the prize, even when she’s at her worst, and he endures with love and joy. And I think children are glad when their father sacrifices himself for his wife. Women are typically more tuned in to the kids than men are, but I think we are confused and not entirely satisfied by this arrangement. What Dreams May Come at least considers this, but it is not the driving force of the movie. Fatherhood and father figures are more peripheral and almost expendable. Perhaps we have given up too much on this dream.

Chesterton’s View of Women

by Andrea Elizabeth

The first thing I underlined in The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton was in the opening discussion between the two orators regarding the merits of chaos vs. order. I thought he did a pretty good job of dispelling the attractiveness of unpredictability and in promoting the magical quality of consistency. A person can magically make Victoria Station appear just by getting on the train slated for that destination. It’s a miracle. An argument for liturgy instead of spontaneous worship could also probably be made.

The second thing I underlined was, “She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave and open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning responsibility which is at the bottom of the most frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old as the world.” (Of course as was brought out two posts ago, Chesterton may not actually believe this, but then I would feel like he’s playing games.) I have a very mixed reaction to this. The stereotypical words, ‘unreasoning and frivolous’, make me quite defensive. If this is a broadly true characterization, it makes me wonder if some imposed as well as self-fulfilling prophecies are at work. ‘Maternal responsibility’ may be a more intrinsic characterization. Much has been said about the need of mothers to let go of their children at a certain age and capability. The need for this advice implies that women are loathe to do so. If I did not have so many kids I may be loather, but I’m tired, so I hope they make their way swiftly and well, and independently. I also feel very keenly the need to do my job well in the 20 or so years per child I have to do it so that they will be equipped to leave the nest.

Much has also been said critically about marriage relationship where the woman mothers the husband, and the phenomenon of immature men in our society. The DVD Demographic Winter talks about this trend of men choosing video games and other playful activities over mature relationships with women. They say this has lead to the ominous population decline. (See also Archbishop Lazars warning that with current fertility rates, the world will soon be taken over by Muslims.) I think women really don’t want to have to mother men and for that reason are increasingly choosing to live alone without husband or children, if Demographic Winter‘s statistics are to be believed. If women are to be defined as predominantly maternal, why aren’t men characterized as predominantly paternal? I think it is believed that men have more compartmentalized lives. They are not as typically absorbed in child-rearing as women are. And patriarchal societies, which have become out of vogue, are seen to be despotic, tyranical and abusive; and the women mindless and childlike.

I think women want more of a partnership. Not to be the boss, though with immature men they will assume this role and become cranky, because we are not meant to bear the burden of responsibility for the family alone. I don’t think men are either.

So is the answer that both men and women can compartmentalize their parental “sides” with their career, entertainment and social sides equally? Taking turns as it were? I don’t think so. I think kids should come first to both parents and all else becomes gravy that may perhaps be squeezed in, God-willing, only after the kids are taken care of, which really doesn’t leave that much time during the child-rearing years. If people will just commit themselves to not having a life for this period of time, then maybe they will be able to rest upon retirement. Otherwise they will end up also raising their grandchildren, or will have no grandchildren at all. We have to make a choice. No one can have it all.

Brothers Karamazov IX; Settling for less than ideal, or is it?

by Andrea Elizabeth

I am enjoying discussing Brothers Karamazov on this blog as it is a way to accompany input with output. Part of my frustration with reading books is that it is such a one-way street. Blogging about it helps it seem more like a conversation. Most bloggers I know have read it already, so I wont write the jarring spoiler alert warning. I’m trying to work on presenting things gently.

Here are Alyosha’s thoughts when he returns to the monastery after a traumatic day at his father’s house.

Why had the elder sent him “into the world”? Here was quiet, here was holiness, and there – confusion, and a darkness in which one immediately got lost and went astray… (p. 157)

I wrote elsewhere of my first extended stay at a monastery. I felt such overwhelming grace there, and I felt completely at home, even with the schedule of services, when usually I am not a morning person. It was very painful for me to leave. I cried all the way home on the airplane and for about a week after. I hurt my husband’s and my little girl’s feelings because I did not hide my tears or why I had them.

On going back into the world,

Lise is worried that Alyosha would not welcome the contents of her message:

“As soon as I read it [her note offering to be his fiancée], I thought at once that that was how everything would be, because as soon as the elder Zosima dies, I must immediately leave the monastery. Then I’ll finish my studies and pass the exam, and when the legal times comes, we’ll get married. I will love you. Though I haven’t had much time to think yet, I don’t think I could find a better wife than you, and the elder told me to get married… ” (p. 184)

Some people have indeed left their spouse and children to become monastics, but I believe this is mostly advised against. I certainly have not been given a blessing to do so either by my husband, Priest, or the Abbess at the monastery. Since that time three years ago, almost exactly, I have grown to appreciate my home and family more and to see that it is God’s will for me to be here, and thus it is best for me personally to be here. I still get impatient and frustrated, but that is because of my disordered passions, not because they aren’t living up to how I think life in a monastery would be. Part of my attraction to the monastery was that I would not be “the parent”, but that I would have one. For that reason I do not think that I would want to be an Abess, even if I were qualified.

May God grant nourishment, energy, peace, patience and rest to all of the Abbots, Abbesses, and parents out there.