The other night one of the brothers came into the recreation room and tried to test us with a "Final Jeopardy" question he had seen. There are two animals who speak in the Old Testament, went the setup. Between the two of them, how many legs did they have?
The answer that was alleged to be correct was four: Balaam's donkey in Numbers 22 had four legs,* and the serpent from Genesis 3 had none. So they had four between the two of them.
Of course I objected immediately, as it is my contention that the question is unanswerable. Consider the curse God imposes on the serpent: "Because you did this, more cursed shall you be than all cattle and all the wild beasts: On your belly you shall crawl and dirt you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; they shall strike at your head, and you shall strike at their heel." (Genesis 3: 14-15, JPS)
Now we are accustomed to moving immediately to the Marian and christological senses of the curse, but we should also notice that the crawling, dirt-eating, and heel-striking are parts of it. Therefore it is my contention that the serpent had legs before being cursed, and God took them away as part of the punishment. If he was crawling about on the ground like a snake before, why should that have been part of the curse?
Therefore, we don't know how many legs there were on the two speaking animals in the Old Testament, because the serpent could have had two, four, six, or a hundred. We just don't know.
*Balaam's poor she-ass raises another curious question; that of the possibility of animals being able to see angels. But that's another topic.
September 30, 2010
September 29, 2010
From My Confessor
A good reminder against distractions in prayer:
Remember that we can sometimes get to the point where we are so accustomed to conversation with God that we can forget what an awesome thing it is. When we remember, in praying the Divine Office for example, that this is a many-layered conversation, that it is our calling out to God but also God's speaking to us, and ultimately the prayer of the Son of God united to our humanity and our human speech praying to the Father in the Holy Spirit, this awareness can help us to stand in awe at the very fact of the prayer God has worked within us, and no distraction can stand up to that.
Remember that we can sometimes get to the point where we are so accustomed to conversation with God that we can forget what an awesome thing it is. When we remember, in praying the Divine Office for example, that this is a many-layered conversation, that it is our calling out to God but also God's speaking to us, and ultimately the prayer of the Son of God united to our humanity and our human speech praying to the Father in the Holy Spirit, this awareness can help us to stand in awe at the very fact of the prayer God has worked within us, and no distraction can stand up to that.
September 28, 2010
Whose Fault?
So this morning everyone will be blogging and tweeting about the study released by the Pew Forum suggesting that atheists and agnostics are better educated on religion than religious people. In particular, the study is reported to suggest that a large proportion of Catholics either don't understand or believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation as a description of what happens in the liturgy of the Eucharist.
But if this is the case, whose fault is it? Is it simply a case of ignorance or faulty catechesis? No. The problem is much deeper. When I joined the Order, we had a couple years of internal classes on various topics. Most of these were very good, but in one of them a priest went to great lengths to teach us the doctrine of transignification, which the magisterium has judged to be inadequate. Never was it said that this wasn't what the Church taught, or that this was an experimental approach that never made it to magisterial approval. It was taught to us, whether we knew better or not, by someone presented to us as an authority.
Even more, the manner in which many priests and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion handle the sacred species reveals a lack of confidence in what the Church teaches about these most sacred things.
So if the clergy will neither teach the Church's doctrine nor behave as if what the Church teaches is the case, perhaps what is really surprising is not that some Catholics don't believe it, but that some still do.
But if this is the case, whose fault is it? Is it simply a case of ignorance or faulty catechesis? No. The problem is much deeper. When I joined the Order, we had a couple years of internal classes on various topics. Most of these were very good, but in one of them a priest went to great lengths to teach us the doctrine of transignification, which the magisterium has judged to be inadequate. Never was it said that this wasn't what the Church taught, or that this was an experimental approach that never made it to magisterial approval. It was taught to us, whether we knew better or not, by someone presented to us as an authority.
Even more, the manner in which many priests and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion handle the sacred species reveals a lack of confidence in what the Church teaches about these most sacred things.
So if the clergy will neither teach the Church's doctrine nor behave as if what the Church teaches is the case, perhaps what is really surprising is not that some Catholics don't believe it, but that some still do.
Friars of the Primitive Observance
Since I've been back here in Boston I have begun to meet some of the brothers of the Franciscans of the Primitive Observance. The student friars among them attend St. John's Seminary, which shares a campus and a library with the Boston College School of Theology & Ministry which I am supposed to be attending. On my first visit to the school back in the spring I ran into one of them on the train and we had a delightful conversation about Franciscan and Capuchin topics. I call them our 'grandchildren;' the Primitive Observance is a reform that emerged out of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (the CFR), who themselves came to exist when some friars broke away from my province of the Capuchins just over twenty years ago.
Meeting these brothers makes me reflect on some of the basic dynamics of the Franciscan charism. Apart from their somewhat more rugged appearance and untrimmed beads ("manly, austere...and despised" as the Capuchin Constitutions of 1536 puts it), I realize that these friars are not so different from me, even though their religious lives are two reforms removed from mine. The Franciscan Rule almost seems to make such reforms and divisions inevitable; it seems sometimes to contain within itself the seeds of Franciscan fractiousness. It is not a moderate rule, as is said of that of St. Benedict, nor endlessly applicable, as is sometimes said of that of St. Augustine. Our Rule is stark and demanding, on the one hand leaving little room to interpret things away, but on the other hand imbued with a power to catch hearts and minds on fire with a desire to live it. No money. It may not even be touched. No property, neither individually or corporately. Two or three extended fasts a year. It's a radical imitation of the poverty of God himself in Christ, and it attracts radical hearts.
But as we have known from even the first years of the Franciscan movement, it is a hard Rule to put into practice 'without gloss' as Francis himself asked of us in his Testament, with anything but a very small group of brothers or sisters. And so comes the fractiousness of the Franciscan movement. There have always been brothers and sisters who break away from larger and more routinized communities out of a desire to follow the Rule more purely and strictly, attracted by the radical life the Rule describes and a desire to fulfill what seems like the command of Francis himself that we live it "without gloss." Some of these breaks turn into the great reform movements of the Order, like the Observants and the Capuchins. Most, like Mia Wallace's pilot for Fox Force Five, "become nothing."
Though this seems to be one of the creative drives of the Franciscan movement through history, it doesn't make such reforms and schisms any easier or any less personal for those who go through them. Communities and friendships get wounded. Generations go missing from provincial families. Nevertheless, though it is painful and wounding, in some sense to be Franciscan has to include an affirmation of the thrust toward creative reform that has served to renew the movement through its history.
Meeting these brothers makes me reflect on some of the basic dynamics of the Franciscan charism. Apart from their somewhat more rugged appearance and untrimmed beads ("manly, austere...and despised" as the Capuchin Constitutions of 1536 puts it), I realize that these friars are not so different from me, even though their religious lives are two reforms removed from mine. The Franciscan Rule almost seems to make such reforms and divisions inevitable; it seems sometimes to contain within itself the seeds of Franciscan fractiousness. It is not a moderate rule, as is said of that of St. Benedict, nor endlessly applicable, as is sometimes said of that of St. Augustine. Our Rule is stark and demanding, on the one hand leaving little room to interpret things away, but on the other hand imbued with a power to catch hearts and minds on fire with a desire to live it. No money. It may not even be touched. No property, neither individually or corporately. Two or three extended fasts a year. It's a radical imitation of the poverty of God himself in Christ, and it attracts radical hearts.
But as we have known from even the first years of the Franciscan movement, it is a hard Rule to put into practice 'without gloss' as Francis himself asked of us in his Testament, with anything but a very small group of brothers or sisters. And so comes the fractiousness of the Franciscan movement. There have always been brothers and sisters who break away from larger and more routinized communities out of a desire to follow the Rule more purely and strictly, attracted by the radical life the Rule describes and a desire to fulfill what seems like the command of Francis himself that we live it "without gloss." Some of these breaks turn into the great reform movements of the Order, like the Observants and the Capuchins. Most, like Mia Wallace's pilot for Fox Force Five, "become nothing."
Though this seems to be one of the creative drives of the Franciscan movement through history, it doesn't make such reforms and schisms any easier or any less personal for those who go through them. Communities and friendships get wounded. Generations go missing from provincial families. Nevertheless, though it is painful and wounding, in some sense to be Franciscan has to include an affirmation of the thrust toward creative reform that has served to renew the movement through its history.
September 27, 2010
Irreligious Life
Many of us who have come to religious life, myself included, have struggled with the impression that the life we have found doesn't seem very religious. We are bothered that our communities do not seem to be prayerful places, that we ourselves to do not feel as devout as we used to, and that our conversations about the pressures and problems upon us do not often turn to God.
Over almost twelve years of religious life (!) I have spent a good deal of thought and discernment on this question as a matter of the survival of my own Christianity. Guessing that there are others who may have similar experience, I offer any wisdom that God may have put into my own reflections on the question.
First, we must trust ourselves and our instincts. I failed to do this in my own early experiences of religious life and did myself a lot of harm. I arrived young and much more innocent than I thought I was, and much of what I found in my first try at religious life was confusing and scandalizing. When I expressed my concerns to my directors and superiors I was told to 'get over myself' or was given unfortunate labels: 'neo-con,' 'traddy,' someone who wants to 'go back' to the bad old days.
Such a response to me was unfair. Even if it were true, such treatment is a failure in charity and pastoral care. It's taken me a long time to admit this, to realize that it wasn't about my being right or wrong, but about not being given the pastoral care called for by my confusion and my innocence.
So, do not listen to those who tell you 'get over yourself' or dismiss you with labels. Trust your instincts. Religious life in our time--and here I can only speak to my own geographic and cultural context--is afflicted with various forms of decadence, moral confusion, and theological error. I thank God that he has led me, by the circuitous paths of grace, to a pretty solid community, but that doesn't mean we are exempt from the problems and errors of our time. We who are younger religious must trust our instincts and always be a little suspicious. When someone tells you the Church or your community or Vatican II teaches something and it doesn't sound right, look it up yourself. Be empowered.
In other words, when something doesn't seem right and they tell you the problem isn't the something amiss in the community but your own attitude or ignorance, don't be so quick to believe it.
On the other hand, there are caveats that need to be made and mitigating reflections that need to go into our prayer and discernment of such things. First, though on one hand we must trust ourselves to know what is right and wrong, what the Church teaches and what it doesn't, on the other hand we must always examine the interior motives of any righteous indignation we feel. We are all too good at tricking ourselves into displacing the blame for our own unhappiness. Often those things that we disdain in others are the same things we hate in ourselves. Many times we are tempted to blame our own failures in prayer and devotion on the community. 'I can't pray in this environment of irreverence,' 'I don't feel supported in my commitment to prayer,' etc. Such complaints may be true to one degree or another, but as spiritual approaches they are useless and dangerous. Some of the greatest pray-ers in the tradition of religious life lived their religious lives totally rejected by their confreres. John of the Cross was imprisoned by his brothers. The martyrs prayed through their imprisonments and tortures. So we must always regard as a temptation the inspiration to blame the deficiences of our religious lives on each other or on some alleged culture of our community. Our spiritual condition is our own responsibility. Because it is a life contra mundum, there is no place in this world in which the spiritual life is not a challenge. Any good that comes in our spiritual life is the grace of God we have been able to accept by our meager and half-hearted consent, and any failure in our spiritual life is our own distraction and sin and nobody else's. If we find ourselves in a community that seems irreligious, unrecollected, or even sacrilegious, the proper reflection for me is to blame myself for my own contribution to these things, and not to blame anyone else.
Second, in the spiritual life we must always be a little suspicious of feelings. It's true, I no longer feel as devout or religious as I did in those days when I was a solitary and anonymous catechumen seeking the newly discovered but oddly familiar Mystery of God in the dark churches I still love so much. I don't feel like I have the fervor or zeal that I used to have for observance or the things I decided, in my vanity, would be penances. If we want to judge how our spiritual life is progressing, we must look at our freedom and our behavior rather than how devout or even how recollected we think we feel. Am I more free from distraction and the overwhelmingness of temptations? Am I more free for prayer, charity, and generosity? If I can answer yes to these questions, God is drawing me in. If I don't feel religious or devout about it, it's probably because I have been given the grace of having been invited to move beyond having to be motivated by little consolations and spiritual warm and fuzzies. We must not pine for these things, wanting to give up the starkness of pure faith for the more comfy world of sensible consolation. We are grownups, and we no longer want to each jelly beans for supper. If religious life robs us of certain of the consolations we thought were spiritual, and which served to reinforce us as beginners in the spiritual life, religious life has done us a favor.
Forgive me that this has turned into a ramble, but it's a post I've been incubating for a while. To sum up: if anyone reading this is like me in the sense that the religious life you have found doesn't seem very religious, and is even downright scandalizing and confusing, trust your intelligence and your reasoned judgment, but be suspicious of your feelings and your temptations to blame.
Over almost twelve years of religious life (!) I have spent a good deal of thought and discernment on this question as a matter of the survival of my own Christianity. Guessing that there are others who may have similar experience, I offer any wisdom that God may have put into my own reflections on the question.
First, we must trust ourselves and our instincts. I failed to do this in my own early experiences of religious life and did myself a lot of harm. I arrived young and much more innocent than I thought I was, and much of what I found in my first try at religious life was confusing and scandalizing. When I expressed my concerns to my directors and superiors I was told to 'get over myself' or was given unfortunate labels: 'neo-con,' 'traddy,' someone who wants to 'go back' to the bad old days.
Such a response to me was unfair. Even if it were true, such treatment is a failure in charity and pastoral care. It's taken me a long time to admit this, to realize that it wasn't about my being right or wrong, but about not being given the pastoral care called for by my confusion and my innocence.
So, do not listen to those who tell you 'get over yourself' or dismiss you with labels. Trust your instincts. Religious life in our time--and here I can only speak to my own geographic and cultural context--is afflicted with various forms of decadence, moral confusion, and theological error. I thank God that he has led me, by the circuitous paths of grace, to a pretty solid community, but that doesn't mean we are exempt from the problems and errors of our time. We who are younger religious must trust our instincts and always be a little suspicious. When someone tells you the Church or your community or Vatican II teaches something and it doesn't sound right, look it up yourself. Be empowered.
In other words, when something doesn't seem right and they tell you the problem isn't the something amiss in the community but your own attitude or ignorance, don't be so quick to believe it.
On the other hand, there are caveats that need to be made and mitigating reflections that need to go into our prayer and discernment of such things. First, though on one hand we must trust ourselves to know what is right and wrong, what the Church teaches and what it doesn't, on the other hand we must always examine the interior motives of any righteous indignation we feel. We are all too good at tricking ourselves into displacing the blame for our own unhappiness. Often those things that we disdain in others are the same things we hate in ourselves. Many times we are tempted to blame our own failures in prayer and devotion on the community. 'I can't pray in this environment of irreverence,' 'I don't feel supported in my commitment to prayer,' etc. Such complaints may be true to one degree or another, but as spiritual approaches they are useless and dangerous. Some of the greatest pray-ers in the tradition of religious life lived their religious lives totally rejected by their confreres. John of the Cross was imprisoned by his brothers. The martyrs prayed through their imprisonments and tortures. So we must always regard as a temptation the inspiration to blame the deficiences of our religious lives on each other or on some alleged culture of our community. Our spiritual condition is our own responsibility. Because it is a life contra mundum, there is no place in this world in which the spiritual life is not a challenge. Any good that comes in our spiritual life is the grace of God we have been able to accept by our meager and half-hearted consent, and any failure in our spiritual life is our own distraction and sin and nobody else's. If we find ourselves in a community that seems irreligious, unrecollected, or even sacrilegious, the proper reflection for me is to blame myself for my own contribution to these things, and not to blame anyone else.
Second, in the spiritual life we must always be a little suspicious of feelings. It's true, I no longer feel as devout or religious as I did in those days when I was a solitary and anonymous catechumen seeking the newly discovered but oddly familiar Mystery of God in the dark churches I still love so much. I don't feel like I have the fervor or zeal that I used to have for observance or the things I decided, in my vanity, would be penances. If we want to judge how our spiritual life is progressing, we must look at our freedom and our behavior rather than how devout or even how recollected we think we feel. Am I more free from distraction and the overwhelmingness of temptations? Am I more free for prayer, charity, and generosity? If I can answer yes to these questions, God is drawing me in. If I don't feel religious or devout about it, it's probably because I have been given the grace of having been invited to move beyond having to be motivated by little consolations and spiritual warm and fuzzies. We must not pine for these things, wanting to give up the starkness of pure faith for the more comfy world of sensible consolation. We are grownups, and we no longer want to each jelly beans for supper. If religious life robs us of certain of the consolations we thought were spiritual, and which served to reinforce us as beginners in the spiritual life, religious life has done us a favor.
Forgive me that this has turned into a ramble, but it's a post I've been incubating for a while. To sum up: if anyone reading this is like me in the sense that the religious life you have found doesn't seem very religious, and is even downright scandalizing and confusing, trust your intelligence and your reasoned judgment, but be suspicious of your feelings and your temptations to blame.
September 26, 2010
Sapientia Multiformis
As I've settled down to celebrating Sunday Mass in Spanish, I've begun to appreciate some of the differences between the English and Spanish sacramentaries. Different languages have particular gifts as they express the mysteries their speakers hope to approach through human speech. Within this one also notices the choices of translators.
Today I prayed the eighth preface for Sundays in Ordinary Time, which is one of my favorites:
En verdad es justo y necesario, es nuestro deber y salvación, darte gracias siempre y en todo lugar, Señor, Padre Santo, Dios todopoderoso y eterno. Porque has querido reunir de nuevo, por la sangre de tu Hijo y la fuerza del Espíritu, a tus hijos dispersos por el pecado; de este modo tu Iglesia, unificada por virtud y a imagen de la Trinidad, aparece ante el mundo como cuerpo de Cristo y templo del Espíritu, para alabanza de tu infinita sabiduría. Por eso, unidos a los coros angélicos, te aclamamos llenos de alegría...
I am intrigued by the sense of the Church being formed into the image of the Trinity, so that it may appear to the world as the Body of Christ and temple of the Spirit. I'm not exactly sure how this makes theological sense, but perhaps that's why it draws me in. I also like the image of the children of God dispersos, 'scattered' or 'dispersed' by sin. I enjoy how that has an exterior and interior dimension.
Here's the soon-to-be-replaced English translation to which I have been previously accustomed:
When Your children sinned and wandered far from Your friendship, You reunited them with Yourself through the blood of Your Son and the power of the Holy Spirit. You gather them into Your church, to be one as You, Father, are one with Your Son and the Holy Spirit. You call them to be Your people, to praise Your wisdom in all Your works. You make them the body of Christ and the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit. Now, with the saints and all the angels we praise You for ever...
The differences are subtle, but real. In the English version the Church is called to imitate the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit, a somewhat more pointed assertion that the simple image of being united toward becoming an image of the Trinity as it says in the Spanish. I definitely prefer how the Spanish uses the word 'Trinity.' On the other hand, I like the idea of wandering from the friendship of God. Sin is an erring, a missing of the mark, a departure from the path.
Of course, as a good WDTPRSer, I had to check the Latin...
Vere dignum et iustum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere: Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus: Quia filios, quos longe peccati crimen abstulerat, per sanguinem Filii tui Spiritusque virtute, in unum ad te denuo congregare voluisti: ut plebs, de unitate Trinitatis adunata, in tuae laudem sapientiae multiformis Christi corpus templumque Spiritus nosceretur Ecclesia. Et ideo, choris angelicis sociati, te laudamus in gaudio confitentes...
So there's the Trinity. In the English we are 'gathered' into an imitation of the oneness of Father, Son, and Spirit rather than of the Trinity. What's the difference, you say? I am teasing, I know, but see the end of the post. So let's hope for an improvement when we first have a chance to hear the new version of this preface in the winter of 2012, should the general judgment not come first.
Behind some of this are the daydreams I've begun to have about the dissertation proposal I will be expected to produce within the next couple of years. One of the half serious and half bemused inspirations I have had is something called, "The Use and Abuse of the Social Trinity: A Proposal for Disciplining Our Speech and Imagination."
Today I prayed the eighth preface for Sundays in Ordinary Time, which is one of my favorites:
En verdad es justo y necesario, es nuestro deber y salvación, darte gracias siempre y en todo lugar, Señor, Padre Santo, Dios todopoderoso y eterno. Porque has querido reunir de nuevo, por la sangre de tu Hijo y la fuerza del Espíritu, a tus hijos dispersos por el pecado; de este modo tu Iglesia, unificada por virtud y a imagen de la Trinidad, aparece ante el mundo como cuerpo de Cristo y templo del Espíritu, para alabanza de tu infinita sabiduría. Por eso, unidos a los coros angélicos, te aclamamos llenos de alegría...
I am intrigued by the sense of the Church being formed into the image of the Trinity, so that it may appear to the world as the Body of Christ and temple of the Spirit. I'm not exactly sure how this makes theological sense, but perhaps that's why it draws me in. I also like the image of the children of God dispersos, 'scattered' or 'dispersed' by sin. I enjoy how that has an exterior and interior dimension.
Here's the soon-to-be-replaced English translation to which I have been previously accustomed:
When Your children sinned and wandered far from Your friendship, You reunited them with Yourself through the blood of Your Son and the power of the Holy Spirit. You gather them into Your church, to be one as You, Father, are one with Your Son and the Holy Spirit. You call them to be Your people, to praise Your wisdom in all Your works. You make them the body of Christ and the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit. Now, with the saints and all the angels we praise You for ever...
The differences are subtle, but real. In the English version the Church is called to imitate the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit, a somewhat more pointed assertion that the simple image of being united toward becoming an image of the Trinity as it says in the Spanish. I definitely prefer how the Spanish uses the word 'Trinity.' On the other hand, I like the idea of wandering from the friendship of God. Sin is an erring, a missing of the mark, a departure from the path.
Of course, as a good WDTPRSer, I had to check the Latin...
Vere dignum et iustum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere: Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus: Quia filios, quos longe peccati crimen abstulerat, per sanguinem Filii tui Spiritusque virtute, in unum ad te denuo congregare voluisti: ut plebs, de unitate Trinitatis adunata, in tuae laudem sapientiae multiformis Christi corpus templumque Spiritus nosceretur Ecclesia. Et ideo, choris angelicis sociati, te laudamus in gaudio confitentes...
So there's the Trinity. In the English we are 'gathered' into an imitation of the oneness of Father, Son, and Spirit rather than of the Trinity. What's the difference, you say? I am teasing, I know, but see the end of the post. So let's hope for an improvement when we first have a chance to hear the new version of this preface in the winter of 2012, should the general judgment not come first.
Behind some of this are the daydreams I've begun to have about the dissertation proposal I will be expected to produce within the next couple of years. One of the half serious and half bemused inspirations I have had is something called, "The Use and Abuse of the Social Trinity: A Proposal for Disciplining Our Speech and Imagination."
September 23, 2010
Justice, Pencils, and Academic Influence
Just over twenty years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I somehow managed to get invited into this program in which I could take a college course or two. I remember the whole experience very clearly. I got out of school a couple of periods early all week so that on just two days I could walk down to the university and attend Classical Civilization 252b: Plato's Republic. (Why is it that I can remember that course number from twenty years ago, but I can't remember the numbers of the courses I'm in now when I get to the library reserve desk?)
As time has gone by, I have come to realize the intense and abiding influence this course had on me. That I should have been exposed to the middle Plato at age seventeen or eighteen set me up to be a philosophy student in undergraduate, and I thus acquired, quite providentially, the classic preparation for the theology I was called to study later on. For the first time in my life I was taught something like a coherent way to think about a spiritual reality, and so I can't deny that this course formed a significant part of my proximate preparation to assent to Catholic Christianity two years later. (Perhaps Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr would be proud.)
I reflect on all of this sometimes when I notice one of the practical ways in which I was influenced by the course. During one of our first classes, the professor threw this funny little rant about highlighters. They were undignified, he said, and it made him sad to see venerable texts from the great achievements of human civilization all marked up with bright yellow or hot pink. The lowly and understated pencil was the instrument appropriate to the humble student, he explained. Underlining with a check mark or occasional asterisk in the margin was all we should need.
I absorbed the plea completely, both in its tone and its practice. As I start my tenth year of formal schooling since Classical Civilization 252b, I have never marked up a text with anything but a pencil, and with only underlining, check marks, and the occasional asterisk.
As time has gone by, I have come to realize the intense and abiding influence this course had on me. That I should have been exposed to the middle Plato at age seventeen or eighteen set me up to be a philosophy student in undergraduate, and I thus acquired, quite providentially, the classic preparation for the theology I was called to study later on. For the first time in my life I was taught something like a coherent way to think about a spiritual reality, and so I can't deny that this course formed a significant part of my proximate preparation to assent to Catholic Christianity two years later. (Perhaps Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr would be proud.)
I reflect on all of this sometimes when I notice one of the practical ways in which I was influenced by the course. During one of our first classes, the professor threw this funny little rant about highlighters. They were undignified, he said, and it made him sad to see venerable texts from the great achievements of human civilization all marked up with bright yellow or hot pink. The lowly and understated pencil was the instrument appropriate to the humble student, he explained. Underlining with a check mark or occasional asterisk in the margin was all we should need.
I absorbed the plea completely, both in its tone and its practice. As I start my tenth year of formal schooling since Classical Civilization 252b, I have never marked up a text with anything but a pencil, and with only underlining, check marks, and the occasional asterisk.
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