Loomings

I just called my wife now and heard the little beep at the end of each ring, which tells me she is on the other line. When she clicked over she told me she had been speaking with her mother. There is no one she talks to more than her mother, who is in many ways her best friend. My wife is an only child, and so the thing that worries me the most about my stance on IVF is the effect it will have on her, not just now, but in the future.

My wife essentially has three people in this world who are hers: her parents and her husband. Her relatives live far away, her friends are simply friends. When her parents die, most especially her mother, she will have lost a great deal that I alone, however good a husband I may be, will not be able to replace. She will have lost a link to her blood family, a link that has not been recreated or echoed in a new member of that family.

Love for one's child is a different kind of love, but a more analagous kind of love to love for one's parent, I would think, than love for one's spouse. A child is someone to whom one can pass on memories of grandparents and culture and tradition. The child can share the same kind of identification with those things that the parent can, and the child can carry those things on beyond the parent's death, beyond even his own death, by handing them down to yet another generation. The spouse can do neither, and so is less of a consolation in such times. And should I die before her, she will be alone indeed.

This vision of coming pain, and, self-centeredly, coming blame, haunts me the most. I hate to think of her in bitter loneliness, and I hate to think that, in the grave, I might be the subject of a deep resentment for leaving her so alone in the world.

Computers our Saviors

I can't wait until the time when all my student work comes to me via computer, and the moment it's graded is the moment it's entered into the gradebook and returned to the student. As an English teacher, however, I'm going to require the ability to write easily on a screen, for there is nothing at all smooth or naturalistic about the few editing systems I have tried. This observation is occasioned by my effort right now to enter a few hundred papers into the grade book, in a completely haphazard and disorganized manner. The "Final Grade" column looks like the scene of a massacre right now, with victims either dead or holding their bowels in. It'll clean up eventually, though, as I get through the sadly disordered pile. The good students' work will be in there, and will be recorded accordingly, and the poor students' work will be generally missing, with a few exceptions, and grades will come out to be what we thought they'd be all along, with, again, a few exceptions.

Of course, when it comes, if it comes, this technology will not save me. A long-ago graphic from Time Magazine survives in my brain, of a soldier laden with modern weaponry. Bullets and guns are certainly more powerful and apparently much lighter than the old wood and iron monsters of ages past, but this has not decreased the soldier's load, for now that each newer and lighter bullet does the work of however many heavier and older projectiles, his superiors simply multiply the number of bullets (and other improved items) he is expected to carry, bringing him just up to the point of collapsing under the weight, where all his predecessors marched before him. In the same way, the faster I am able to dispose of my duties, whatever they may be, the faster the expectations will be loaded on my back, and on I will trudge as before.

First Thoughts on IVF, Part II

Here is the next section of the letter, a series of individual responses to individual points, marked by socio-historico-theological speculation of dubious quality:

At least for now, rather than organizing this on its own terms, I’m going to follow your letter, responding to those things you say that I think require response. Then I may organize this more organically.

I too think the teaching on Mortal Sin makes sense. But I would also argue that one can separate oneself from God without knowing one is doing so. Imagine that the Nazi Joseph Goebbels had not murdered his family when he committed suicide, and that his son grew to adulthood, perhaps in a foreign country. It is conceivable that he would have grown up with an inveterate hatred for Jews and for the principles of those countries that had won the war and thus caused his father to commit suicide. Were he to take the same bus ride as the protagonist of C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, and find himself invited into heaven at the behest of a sister or friend who had died previously, it is possible that he would have treated the offer in the same way as many of Lewis’s characters – perhaps he would have asked whether his father was there, or whether any Jews lived in heaven, or whether Franklin Roosevelt or Churchill or any of the dirty Russians or Poles were there. And if he heard that his father was not, or that any of the others were, perhaps he would have rejected God and chosen to take the bus back to the gray town. A lifetime full of venial sins is hardly a recipe for salvation.

I also believe that the Church can be infallible, and the fact that the declaration of infallibility is rarely used. I don’t think the teaching of the Church on divorce can or will change, however, as the logic of annulment is rooted in the very words of Christ. Citing Genesis, he says, “‘Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate’” (Matthew 19.6). The fact that more annulments are given out today has no bearing on this revelation or on the teaching of the Church. Perhaps it is a practical response to deeper understandings of how human nature works (i.e., the concept of addiction, which was once thought to be a matter of will, and is now seen to be a matter of genetic predisposition that may make one unfit for undertaking a commitment such as marriage, at least before a serious recognition by the addict of his or her situation and proclivities). Perhaps it is a mistake inspired by the general trend in First World countries towards belief in the inherent goodness of “niceness.” Examples may include the unwillingness of European nations to use war to solve almost any problem, the disbelief in corporal punishment in school or the home, the approval of welfare as a method of solving poverty, the growing intolerance of “judging,” the laissez-faire attitude toward drug use, and the celebration of homosexuality, intentional single motherhood, and meaningless sex. My point is not that any of these is right or wrong, but that the general trend of Western society since the end of the First World War has said that life should be easier, and that people stuck in situations they don’t like should have no moral qualms about extracting themselves by means that were previously disallowed or disapproved of. The actions of the Church obviously depend on people influenced by the society around them. But just because some little Polish ladies get dangerously close to worshipping statues does not mean the Church condones idol worship. And just because the understanding of what constitutes a true marriage has changed, or because the tenor of society in which members of the Church live has affected the way those members think and act, does not change the eternal teaching of the Church that divorce followed by remarriage is wrong. The abortionist may have very pure intentions of helping the pregnant 14-year-old out of a very difficult situation, but that doesn’t automatically transmute his sin into goodness, although it may mitigate the consequences to his soul. (Again, I am not comparing the gravity of any of the sins I use in my analogies to the use of IVF or to divorce and remarriage.)

At one point you say, “I think that ultimately we, as Catholics, must follow our conscience and honestly follow our own moral judgments.” That is fine, but my conscience is not something that was handed to me fully formed. I had to be taught how to be honest and how to treat my sisters, among many other things. And my conscience isn’t something that comes out of my childhood exclusively. You and Mother were and are important models for me in various ways, but I’ve also parted from both of you on certain issues – and in some ways you have both parted from me, in that things you once taught me you have decided you no longer believe are important. My conscience also comes from the teaching of our Church, from my prayer, from Scripture, from my experiences and my conversations. Sometimes it’s confused or undecided (for instance, about the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction from the Cold War). Our conscience is something that we are supposed to follow, but if my conscience includes the idea that my Church has the power to “loose and bind” on earth and in heaven, then it may not matter what I think of the actual teaching, especially if my thoughts on it are at neutral – i.e. if I am about where I am, in terms of having a sympathy for but not a fully-formed understanding of the teaching I am trying to uphold.

The next section of the letter discusses change in the Church, and may be the weakest portion yet of the letter, as my education in theology and Church history is poor.

First Thoughts on IVF

I probably have not made this entirely clear in my postings so far, but in order to be sure: the biggest question in my life right now is whether or not to use in-vitro fertilization to get pregnant. My wife and I are at odds over this, as, while we both desperately want to have children, she is willing to use IVF and I am not. Most of the substantive communication we have done on this so far has been through writing, and little of it has happened recently, for two reasons: one, we are incredibly busy with school. Two, I am an avoider by nature. I avoid that which will be troublesome. It is probably my greatest flaw and my greatest sin, for I do not make use of my given talents nearly as often as I should.

I am in the midst at the moment of writing my third missive on this issue, this one in response to part of a book by Fr. Genovesi, S.J. For now, I will contribute to this blog with part of my first letter, one that reached to fifteen pages, and is in many ways flawed. It is a response to my father's first letter, and so you as readers will have to deal with the ambiguities of listening to a monologue when a dialogue would be so much clearer. You will also have to deal with a slightly more impersonal tone than that in which it actually was written, for I will not be disclosing the names of my family members, and so instead of something like "Joe," you'll get, "my brother."

What follows is the first section of my letter, in which I try to mitigate the harm of anything painful I might say in the spirit of honesty, in which I try to show my father that I am trying to act out of love, and in which I address his first point that the consequences of an act should have an effect on how we think of the morality of the act.

Dad,

These are some thoughts regarding your letter. They are not necessarily my final thoughts on the subject. Some of them, responding as they do to illustrations you have made from your own life, will be critical of choices you have made. These views will probably not be entirely a surprise to you, but I don’t know that I have ever stated them outright. Please do not think that I am trying to set myself up in judgment over you, or that what I say means I love or respect you any less than I do. In many ways you were and are a model for me and the way I live my life. I love and respect you immensely, and only write what I do to think through this conundrum and your points as honestly and fully as I can.

Regarding your first point, that I may be endangering my marriage, I agree that is a possibility. My wife has already said somewhat vaguely that she does not know what sort of reaction will come about from her or her parents as a result of this. She has also said that she doesn’t want to emotionally blackmail me, and she realizes that she also fears what reactions may come from me if I decide to do something that I believe to be wrong for the sake of pleasing her and others. I don’t want to downplay the consequences of my decision, because my whole course of thought and feeling on this issue has been full of foreboding about what people will think, how they’ll be hurt, and how they’ll react, people such as my wife, first of all, her parents, who have only one child to give them grandchildren, my parents, who would love to see me have children, my grandparents, who feel the same, my friends, who may be critical of my choice, even if it doesn’t concern them, and any number of relatives who may have any number of things to say about it. That said, I don’t think anyone would bring up this issue if they believed the action to be truly wrong. Perhaps you could have appeased Mother’s angst about not living a more posh lifestyle by becoming a dishonest businessman. But no one, even one who was under the impression that that was the sole cause of the downfall of your marriage, would ever dare accuse you of doing wrong by being honest, because they admire you for your honesty and there is no true dispute about whether you should or should not be honest.

A few paragraphs later you say, “Here's my gut advice to you. A successful, loving marriage for you is much more important than any Catholic teaching on this particular matter.” Again, I don’t think you would say that if you agreed with the Catholic teaching. It’s like a sermon I heard from the head pastor at my wife’s Presbyterian church. He spoke about how Jesus was tolerant, and therefore we should be tolerant in the same way, and erect no barrier to letting active homosexuals become ordained ministers in the Presbyterian Church. I felt that argument was seriously flawed because it totally ignored the morality of the teaching in question – had we been discussing the advisability of putting known, current, and unrepentant wife-beaters in the ministry, tolerance never would have come up as an issue. On a side-note, and addressing a comment you make somewhere else in the letter, wife-beating and use of IVF within marriage are obviously not analogous in their levels of iniquity – I’m not making that argument. But even if the use of IVF within marriage is a venial sin, I think “sin” is the operative word here. I don’t buy the argument that the label “venial” makes something ok.

Finally, the success of my marriage does not rest on my shoulders alone. My wife has vows that she has to respect, vows that require her to avoid as much as possible the paths of thought and ways of acting that cultivate resentment. And my decisions are not made without thought or without love. There is a poem by Richard Lovelace, a British Cavalier during the English Civil War, called, “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars,” that basically encapsulates my thoughts on this issue:

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

He essentially tells Lucasta, his wife or lover, that he loves something else more than her: war, or more specifically, the reasons for going to war: honor. Now I don’t know whether he means the earthly honor of reputation, or the more spiritual honor of doing right no matter what others think of him, but the point remains: true love consists in doing what is right, even if one’s beloved does not agree with that action. Hence young adults marrying despite the unjust prejudices of parents; hence young men going off to just wars despite the sorrow of their mothers and wives. I don’t think my stance so far is selfishness (I sure don’t feel like I’ve done myself a favor with it, in part because I have looked forward to raising children since I was in college). I think it’s the proper action of putting what is all-important – God and his will – before what is immensely, but not quite, as important – my own and others’ preferences, desires, or possibly even needs. I do love my wife, far more than I can explain, and she loves me too. When we’ve discussed the issue of resentments lingering after these decisions are made, she has said that she has no intention of leaving me and reiterated how much she loves me. And when I asked her whether she was sorry she married “a crazy Catholic,” she said, “No, because that is what makes you the good person you are.”

I don’t think you disagree in essence with what I’m saying. The real disagreement obviously lies in two things: the authority of the Church and the morality of IVF.

The next section of my letter is a series of piecemeal responses to claims my dad makes.

Trying To Be Franklin, or Ignatius

So have I followed my plan? Let's see, for Step A, I was to

Drop off yesterday's tardy sheet to office,
Read e-mails from parents,
Listen to voice-mail messages,
Respond to all messages.

I did numbers 1, 2, and as much of 4 as possible without doing 3. For Step B, I was to

Grade as much as possible,
Eat lunch.

I did number 2, but not number 1, in part because I have to sub on Wednesdays and hoped to do a bit of preparation for period 6. (Preparation? Are we supposed to do that?) For Step C, I was to

Grade as much as possible.

Instead, I have read my e-mail, surfed superficially through Blogger (via the [Next Blog] button), and written this. I have some 19 minutes left in which to grade as much as possible. For D, I am required to

Finish responding to parent e-mails.

I have already done that, so I'll try to get myself grading. Tonight are scheduled two things: dinner with my wife and a friend before they go to see Robyn Hitchcock, an entertainer I find less than entertaining, and a few hours at our local pancake house chain, where I will grade all the tests that have yet to be graded. Then it is on to the papers, which may be fairly entertaining, as they are short stories.

I got a tiny bit of my required reading done last night, but after getting home from school we decided to go vote (thereby cancelling each other out) and have a bite to eat. Once back at home, with a few necessary tasks done, and a bit of ephemera read out of Rolling Stone (they think Borat is funny, and a telling critique of us warmongering rubes), I started reading. But I made the mistake of reading in bed, and that led to sleep. Perhaps tonight. 10 minutes left.

Practicing What I've Praught

As a teacher, of course, I have to preach the virtues of organization and discipline. I should also model it, by getting student work back on a reasonably quick basis. That has, unfortunately, always been my greatest flaw, and I don't do a great job of modeling. I don't judge that it is hypocrisy, however, that I enforce consequences on those who are not organized and disciplined, for it is my job to form young adults to be effective in the next few years. Parents do not pay me (through the school) to replicate myself, with all my flaws intact, in my students. They pay me to reinforce the virtues they hope their children will grow up to possess. In fact, if I were not, in the name of not being hypocritical, to enforce upon them the requirements of the wider society, even those I have trouble following myself, I would be negligent, for I know how difficult life is when one is disorganized as I am.

Why am I writing this? Because I'm still blogging, instead of writing parents back, grading papers, organizing papers, or reading that book. But I do have a purpose (excuse?) here: I have 3 periods off per diem and I monitor detention, and I am going to make myself a little schedule:

A. Drop off yesterday's tardy sheet to office,
Read e-mails from parents,
Listen to voice-mail messages,
Respond to all messages,
B. Grade as much as possible,
Eat lunch,
C. Grade as much as possible,
D. Finish responding to parent e-mails.

I'm going to do the last one now. Let's see if I actually follow this schedule.

More Wastage

I own a variant on a Toyota Corolla, the Chevy Prizm, and like the car quite a bit except for one flaw: it guzzles oil. In fact, I think it does more than that with it - what, I'm not sure. I changed the oil somewhere around 50,000 miles and expected to be able to change it somewhere around 53,000, only to have it grumbling and grinding around 51.5. So I checked the oil, and there seemed to be enough - only problem was that I forgot to wipe the dip stick clean before I checked it. I thought of this a few days later after more grumbling, and checked it again. No oil. So I added some one cold morning when I was late to work, and it worked, for a few days. The grumbling picked up again over the next few days, so I checked it again. It was low, and what was there was black. I threw up my hands and brought it in to Jiffy Lube for a change.

The oil change, plus the transmission fluid cleaning and change, plus some other procedure they said I needed (backed up by a nifty graphic generated by my account), sucked away an hour and a half of my life - actually more, depending on how many hours of my life $199.00 represents. I could've been grading, but who wants to grade in a Jiffy Lube, with all those Sports Illustrateds one never gets to read sitting around?

So then I went home to a knackwurst, pickles (not just cucumber: zucchini and garlic are essential to any good pickle stash) (which reminds me to bleg: if you know where to get Runoland brand garlic pickled in red pepper sauce anywhere in the Midwest, let me know in the comments section - we used to pick it up at a local Polish deli that no longer sells that brand, and most of the others are simply inferior, either in flavor or consistency (should be crisp)), pretzels, and beer. It was the beer that did me in. One beer, when one is sitting alone, or when one ought to be grading, is enough to stimulate a nap. A nap, when one has come home at 7 and eaten by 8:30, is usually enough to end one's night. It was last night, and so I did none of the things I planned to avoid: homework and reading about subjects controversial in my life.

Today I was going to work out a daily schedule, but look: I'm blogging! I know when I am doing wrong, but far too often I ignore that knowledge and just keep on keepin' on.

Wildly Inconsequential Political Speculation

I wrote the below post the other day, and didn't post it, because it makes me nervous writing about the motivations of people I don't know and haven't studied enough to even make a real claim to knowing in that sense (insofar as one can know another without knowing him personally). But I'll post this rather critical guess at a politician's thoughts with the caveat that there's a very good chance that I don't know what I'm talking about. It will probably tell you more about me than about Kerry:

Perhaps I shouldn't step into the political blogging game, as I don't do enough reading to really keep up with it all, but there's an AP article on the Boston Globesite (hat tip: Taranto's "Best of the Web Today") that summarizes Kerry's answers to a peace group questionnaire thusly:

John Kerry said he opposed a volunteer Army because it would be dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to "the perpetuation of war crimes."

He is quoted directly in these words:

"I am convinced a volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown," Kerry wrote. "We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities
present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the
perpetuation of war crimes as simply 'doing its job.'"

It is unclear from the Globe's article whether the words "Kerry wrote" come in the place of his own pause or whether there is an reportorial ellipsis. But looking at the words we have, does it not seem that, whether he knows it or not, he is assuming "the poor and the black and the brown" are more likely to view "the perpetuation of war crimes as simply 'doing its job'"?

It is probably fair to say that Kerry views these as two different claims: 1. Volunteer armies not formed during times of great stress, or during long wars, are made up of those more in need of the job and more willing to take the risks of a military position. 2. Professional armies are inherently more likely to do whatever it takes to win. But there is a third claim, the one he's made recently: the stupid students end up in Iraq. Does he think there's an inherent connection between stupid students and black, brown, or poor people?

The Luddite

It is definitely time to get out of here. I should probably stick around and get grading done, but I have no desire to be here. I'm going to go home and make sure some of it gets done. The other thing I have to focus on is the reading I've promised my wife. Talking about our dispute is so difficult that I have put it off constantly. I should revise what I've said, however - it is not the talking to her that is difficult. Our arguments are not vicious, and there is a part of me that is thrilled by intellectual debate, but I shy away from it generally. And when it gets personal, when it actually acquires meaning to the life of the other person or myself, as it has, then I fear it. I fear changing the other person - hurting them, I think, by proving them wrong - and I fear changing myself, or finding myself in a position where I might have to change what I think.

I am not sure to this point what my fear is, beyond simply the stress of the whole argument, the knowledge that we are on different sides and that so much is at stake. Until the time that the pressure builds up and my wife becomes more upset and more saddened by my evasion, I find it easier to avoid the question (this is not to say I am defending myself, or that I think so clearly at every moment about why I am doing what I am doing, or not doing).

There is a strong streak of the primitivist in me, the Luddite, that thinks it would all be so much better if it were just simpler, if we didn't have to think so damn much about such complicated questions. If we didn't have the option of IVF, we wouldn't have the question of whether to use it. My wife says, hey, at least we have the option to try for children, despite her endometriosis. I want the children, deeply I do, but I don't want to do what it seems is our only option if we want to have them. If I didn't have the option, my position would not be any different, except that I wouldn't feel to blame for our predicament, and my wife wouldn't have to struggle against resenting me. My marriage wouldn't be in danger. (Which is not to say that it is - but this is just the sort of divisive situation that could tear at our convictions and beliefs and love if we let it.) All I have to hold on to that is positive is faith that there is a plan - to be more precise, faith that God has a plan, or at least that he can give a consolation that is greater than the pain. I believe that prayers can be answered, but I know they sometimes are not, I do not know what the consolation is, and He has not given it to me to carry it to the others and reassure them.

In-service

Just got out a little while ago from a faculty in-service. I had to give a small presentation on the topic of the seminar I went to a week or so ago on teaching the writing process. The colleague with whom I went spoke first, in his rambling jumbled way, and I followed. I wasn't particularly inspiring (I didn't have a powerpoint or overhead presentation like the math and science guys who preceded us), and made merely a few points: one, that the woman teaching the seminar stressed the idea of writing being connected to the subject matter; two, that rubrics were stressed, but nothing much new was said; three, that teachers were asked to model the kinds of writing the students were doing, a thing I had only just started doing myself, at the prompting of our Assistant Headmaster; and four, that the previous recommendation seems like a throwback to the old style of teaching classics: read the masters, do your best to write like them, and then, once you have mastered the basics, give free reign to your creativity. That seems to me to be wisest.

I teach a class, a workshop for writers, that fairly enrages me. Rage is a bit of an overstatement, but it certainly annoys me and tires me out. The cause of the aggravation is, I think, more systematic than student-based, but the students are hardly blameless. It's just that the current systems within which this class is organized do not protect against typical vices of adolescent scholars: laziness, silliness, lack of forethought, and, sometimes, put-on cynicism.

One of the elements of problem is that this is a wholly new kind of class: two years ago the school had a long lunch period, when students could do as they pleased. Last year students had a class during the second half of that lunch period, but it was not graded and attendance was apparently semi-optional. This year, non-seniors have the same classes, but graded. They are having trouble adjusting to the knowledge that these classes affect their GPA's (they are rather grade conscious - but not enough, as we shall see). Another issue is that the class only takes place three days a week (probably the same as last year), which means that twice a week they are totally free. Inserting themselves into study on an intermittent basis is, I think, difficult for them.

More problematic than the evolution from a different kind of class, which can't be helped if the change is worth making, is that lunch period is often used to find time for other tasks. The most problematic of these is the college speakers. Rather than having a college fair, when all the speakers come on one day and set up their booths, my school invites them piecemeal, and asks in the Juniors (whom I teach in this class) and Seniors to listen to those that interest them. This is fine, but it provides an excuse for students to be late to class. I cannot mark them tardy to encourage them, and so they show up when they are done. It is hard to keep tabs on exactly when "when they are done" becomes "when they feel like it," because college speakers are notoriously late, and sometimes do not show up until the beginning of the class I teach.

Hot lunches, a special event that occurs once or twice a week, are also problems, as they do not always run on time either, depending on exactly when the Taco Bell or pizza is ready. Sometimes the younger students get fed first, sometimes the older, so one never knows whether one's class is legitimately late or not. As they trickle in, either from college speakers or hot lunches, it is hard to get them sitting down and working, as much of the work they do requires trading papers with people who are not yet there.

There are more problems, something of my own making, but I'll save those for later.

I very love Grammar

I suffered from quite a blindspot in class today, when I was trying to teach my students that "very" is not an adverb, but is instead an intensifier. They kept coming back at me with the notion that it is an adverb. One of them pulled out his Korean friend's electronic translator and said, "Mr. Hawking, this pocket dictionary says that 'very' is an adverb."

My argument, cribbed from my linguist friend who taught me much of what I know in grammar (in terms of terminology, not use), is that "very," is an intensifier because it is an essentially empty word, that is, it doesn't have meaning it doesn't borrow from the word it modifies. They argued from function, saying it does everything an adverb does, therefore it should be one. A few of the possibly more sensible ones asked, "who cares?" which I supported in a sense by tactically retreating , in a rather cowardly way (cowardlily?), into the claim that the traditional definition of "very" is as an adverb, that there are always debates in matters scholarly, that the academic consensus of today holds "very" to be other than adjective or adverb, and that some intelligent people disagree on this matter.

My blind spot, of course, if you have not already discerned it, came in accepting their claim that "very" does all things an adverb does. It does modify adjectives: "Hoth was very cold." It does modify adverbs: "Atalanta ran very quickly." It does not, however, and I could kick myself with the shoes of Col. Kleb to realize this after class is over, it does not modify verbs: "Thor very thundered at the evil Loki." "I very am who am." "MacArthur very wanted to return." I think this is how I make my point: the extra-credit question on their vocab quiz tomorrow will be to write one correct sentence in which "very" modifies a verb.

Last night I began reading the chapter on contraception that my wife has asked me to read. It's giving me an education in the history of my Church's theology, and forcing me to think more deeply than I have. Whether or not it will change my mind is another story.

I have the common things, at last ("marriage, and a creed"), but they are endangered by what I do not hold in common with them. I hope to make them common, and what I write here is meant to help me work those things out.