THE WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAID: People seemed to be into my first report from the St Matthew’s Cathedral seminars on the theology of the body; so here are very brief reports from weeks three and four. (The next one is tomorrow! 10 AM, weird conference room you get to by walking down the driveway toward the parking lot, be there or be square!) …As before, all notes are highly speculative, and I welcome comment on any of this.

SEARCHING FOR MR RIGHT/WAITING UP HALF THE NIGHT: One of the recurring themes in these seminars is anxiety about the single life. And not in the way I might have expected (“How do I get married?”), but a much stranger and–in my opinion–less Catholic way, a desire to justify single life almost as a “vocation” in its own right, on a par with marriage and vowed religious life. I (…obviously?) understand the problem: How do we understand Flannery O’Connor? might be one way to put it. And of course I wouldn’t say that the only possible models for good Catholic living are marriage or religious life.

But I was a bit tripped out to hear the (very orthodox and awesome) priest who leads the seminars speak as if we shouldn’t assume a vocation to marriage and family as the default, but should sort of introspect and see if we have some kind of deep longing for it. That seems to me a) to require way too much self-knowledge, and b) to diminish the eschatological witness of vowed celibacy.

That first point is especially powerful to me because it is one problem I have with the language of “finding one’s soulmate.” You don’t know who your soulmate is–you barely know who you are! (“I myself comprehend not all the thing that I am.”) By marrying, sticking it out, cleaving to your spouse, your soul becomes shaped to accommodate your spouse. Love and care and time work to change the landscape of your soul, wearing away some places like water against rock, building up others like stalactites growing in a cave.

RECONSTRUCTION SITE: A very quick note from the fourth week: In Genesis 3, God promises that He will restore us–a promise of Christ.

‘CAUSE THE DEVIL DON’T BLINK: When the serpent tempts Eve, she doesn’t turn to God. She doesn’t even run! She thinks she can face down the Devil by herself, by the power of her reason and will. And so she fails. Don’t ever get in a staring contest with the Devil.

The priest also pointed out that Adam never came to protect Eve, support her, or draw her away from the serpent. When she falls, he has failed too. “Sure, go talk to the huge, scary snake, honey. What could go wrong?” He protects neither the Garden (which is his job!) nor his wife.

More: Everyone but me has noticed this already, but I was struck when the priest pointed out that Jesus also faced temptation in a Garden, in his role as second Adam. And His disciples fall asleep, which seems to me to parallel Adam’s failure to support Eve. (…And yes, I know that second sentence parallels Jesus with Eve rather than with Adam, so make of that what you will.)

Anyway, this whole discussion made me think hard about places where I’ve been Adam-like: where I’ve failed to protect friends who were tempted. Obviously, it’s prideful and generally useless to think that you can judge and “change” someone. But we are called to look out for one another, even if that means risking rejection or humiliation. I think in the past few years I’ve become more humble about thinking I know what’s going through a person’s mind (or heart, or soul), which is something I desperately needed; but there’s an opposite danger of relativism, retreating from my duty to protect and help my friends. I don’t think there’s “an answer” to this, or a guide to how to do it. Pray and ask for help.