The Wild Tears Fall

For the wisdom of the flesh is death; but the wisdom of the spirit is life and peace. Because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh, cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead, because of sin; but the spirit liveth, because of justification. (Romans VIII:6-10)


I woke this morning to find a lovely gift in my inbox. It was a Russian folk song about death, sung in the worn voice--all the more poignant for its quavering tones--of an old woman. The words were very simple, as such words should be on so universal a thing as the end of life. It echoed the sentiments of Tolstoy in his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in which a man dying of terminal illness is tormented most by his family and friends in their refusal to accept the fact that he is dying, nay, that he is even ill! 

It is because they perceive death in such a terrified manner that they try to spare themselves of its horror by refusing to see it in Ilyich, clinging to the health of their bodies and refusing to contemplate the failure of his flesh. Only the stocky, healthy peasant boy, Gerasim, offers the man any comfort. He does so through physical assistance, and by speaking frankly to him of his condition. 'You're a sick man. Why shouldn't I help you?' When Ivan does at last die, one of the many acquaintances that failed to console the man makes the typical, Western, post-Christian observation to Gerasim:


'Well, friend Gerasim,' said Peter Ivanovich, so as to say something. 'It's a sad affair, isn't it?'
'It's God's will. We shall all come to it some day,' said Gerasim. (The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Chapter I)


So we shall. 

Father Walter Ciszek, as he first repined in prisonment and then laboured in the Lubyanka prison, came to the conclusion that the flesh, after our soul quitted it, would in fact--not as a trite, pious euphemism--receive a well deserved rest until the day of the General Resurrection. For he came to love his body, as he discovered its magnificent power of endurance, to hold together, not as the 'glorified body of the athlete' but as his own simple flesh, persevering under comfortless, impossible conditions. As he observes this in his work, He Leadeth Me, he also remarks what a shame it is the way most Churchmen (orthodox ones) so immediately dismiss the body as a dumb brute that deserves nothing more than a good beating to keep it in line. Even the simple Russian song, which I am enjoying at this moment has to cast such a light on the flesh:


They will raise the sinful body and carry it to the church....


Poor body! As if it ever had any volition of its own! As if my hand ever of its own accord wrestled with a sister, or my tongue articulated an unkind word without the prompting of my mind, or my eyes ever rolled back in their sockets because of an involuntary instinct.


Yet, very often has my saucy spirit lectured it: 'I am willing, but you are weak. If you never ached, I would never be irascible! All your stupid hungers, desires, and needs! If I did not have to take care of you, look after you, I would be like unto an angel, and you hold me back with your rebellious corruptibility!'


Ungrateful soul! How would you even exist without this material form? You weren't before your body was, and you will not be whole after death until reunited with your poor flesh. Father Malachy summed up the absolute necessity of the flesh for man's being quite well when explaining the subsistence of angels to Bernard Janzen:


'How do we know there are two people in this room? We count two bodies. Angels do not have bodies. How then do we individuate angels? By their functions...'


In this fact, we see an instance where man is more fittingly made in the image of God than even the angelic choirs, and it has all to do with that corruptible mass of loosely bonded atoms. For as St. Thomas Aquinas observes:


We may speak of God's image in two ways. First, we may consider in it that in which the image chiefly consists, that is, the intellectual nature. Thus the image of God is more perfect in the angels than in man, because their intellectual nature is more perfect, as is clear from what has been said (58, 3; 79, 8).(Summa Theologica: Prima Pars, Question 93, Article III)


So when God said, 'Let Us make man to Our image', He referred to the intellectual aspect of man only in so far as man was above the beasts and elements just created. When compared with the angels's resemblance to the Divine though, man's likeness to God does not wane, for in one aspect it is even more vivid:


Secondly, we may consider the image of God in man as regards its accidental qualities, so far as to observe in man a certain imitation of God, consisting in the fact that man proceeds from man, as God from God; and also in the fact that the whole human soul is in the whole body, as God from God; and also in the fact that the whole human soul is in the whole body, and again, in every part, as God is in regard to the whole world. In these and the like things the image of God is more perfect in man than it is in the angels. (ibid.)


This subsistence in the flesh to be undertaken by God Himself is what some mystics (e.g. Venerable Mary of Agreda) say sealed Lucifer's rebellious course. He could not bear the fact of God in man--man who eats, sweats, defecates, and dies. He would not serve the God-man, and he would certainly not confess the superiority of the Virgin over any angel in creation, much less himself.


Furthermore, there is a blessed gift accorded to flesh that angels may never have. Saint Faustina wrote in her diary:


If the angels were capable of envy, they would envy us for two things; one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering. (Diary, 1804)


Indeed, can the resignation of an angel hold a candle to that of Our Lady's? Can an angel claim as much credit for its unwavering focus on the Lord, when it has never had a stomach which growled for feeding nor knees that ached from being long in a prayerful posture? And can they ever receive Christ so intimately as we do in that neglected miracle offered at every Mass?


The flesh was created by God, so it is good. As Christ taught us, we are not to blame our spiritual baseness on the less noble aspect of our being:


And He saith to them: So are you also without knowledge? understand you not that every thing from without, entering into a man cannot defile him: Because it entereth not into his heart, but goeth into the belly, and goeth out into the privy, purging all meats? But he said that the things which come out from a man, they defile a man. For from within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and defile a man. (Mark VII:18-23)


Why then have the holy Apostles, Fathers, and Doctors of the Church so often lashed the flesh in such unequivocal terms, often praising the spirit for no other reason that it is spiritual? What of all the heresies and blasphemies that have arisen due to hatred of the flesh and the undue exaltation of the soul? And since as Our Lord says that evil arises from man's spirit, why does the flesh shoulder so much blame?

There are at least two possibilities for these invectives against the body. The first is that the preachers of the Church were speaking so that the masses could understand them. If a man has struck another and he repents, he may irrationally hate the hand that did the deed. When one behaves like a glutton and repents, one is disgusted with one's bodily appetites and not the spirit that would not curb the flesh. Our bodies subject us constantly to urges to which our mind objects, so it is easy to overlook our volition's responsibility and blame that physical mass for what we have done. 

When a teacher addresses a class, he will at least begin by speaking in their language and employing terms they understand. If the class is too large or too thick, he will not press them beyond their abilities with fine distinctions. So if a Father of the Church sees that his flock associates their sins with their bodies, he will tell them, 'Stop listening to your body!' 

Since ordering the flesh is not a pleasant thing, he will not describe asceticism in such terms as perfecting the harmony of flesh and spirit, but with analogies of violent subjugation. The disciplined athlete may come to see his exercises as an act of properly loving his body, but a coach just beginning to whip his team into shape will speak on the necessity of pain and competition with one's fleshly self to achieve perfection.

The second reason: as it is subsistence in a body which makes an individual man to be himself, it is also the indispensable centre of his ego. Spiritual people too often forget this, picturing their soul as its own individual entity (whether they see it as a spark or a ghost). Yet, one's body forms one's unique self, and it is how one knows he is not the person sitting beside him on a bus or the child playing on the grass outside his window. If ever solipsism afflicted me in my youthful contemplations, I escaped it not by thinking (Descartes's error), but by cradling myself with arms of flesh and bone while staring at two beams of wood crossed together, on which was mounted the metallic likeness of a crucified man.

Thus far there is no sin. However, attachment to one's self is hardly ever present in man at a moderate degree. We either love ourselves excessively, or we hate ourselves melodramatically. Only the saint stands a tip-toe on that slender thread of gossamer where he loves himself as a creature of God and is perfectly subordinated to the Creator. The infinite shades of sinful self-love or self-hate that lie on either side of that Golden Mean still boil down to one ugly fault: selfishness. Our souls were not, until knitted into our flesh, so that complex, simultaneous union makes the self. As matter itself is complex, it is even more natural for the self to identify more with its bodily aspect than its soul. This is rendered easier still by the material world surrounding us, so much so that when we speak of 'reality' we too often mean the laws of the material world, rather than absolutes which exist outside time and space.


If the flesh then is the means by which man turns away from Sum Qui Sum and into is qui non est, then the laws which his reason builds up from the flesh must be overturned, for their foundation is less than sand. Those hard grains do not corrupt and the body most certainly will.


For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. (Romans VIII:13)

A final reflection: having just completed the above citation, I stopped to blow into my hands. I have left the door to the balcony open all night, and the autumnal chill is nibbling at my fingers. I find the cold in the morning is good for this body. When it is inclined to indulge in the warmth of the bed, a quick swipe of the arm ripping off the blanket is more effective when the air is chill. Then this mortal flesh leaps off the mattress with hasty alacrity to prepare coffee and oatmeal. Alas, now it is cramped with sitting and pines for exercise. 

O dear body, whom I unduly love or despise in my fickle ways, may I bless you when you make me suffer, and may your variable needs teach my spirit moderation in all activities. Be a worthy ambassador between my soul and those of others; work with me to show my fellow man how I love him. Dear flesh, when you and I are parted, I hope you are not disturbed, but allowed to rest until that day when the trumpet blasts. My most earnest prayer is that I have entered God's benediction, and my soul and you will reunite in beatitude, as God had ordained before the Fall.

The place: a deep, unknown region of an omnipresent sea lapping before a hoary cliff that reaches from the east of the horizon to the west, flooding into two great caverns. The vessel of woman wishes to navigate to through the passage, but alas! Atop the left portal is a great harpy. She bares her teeth and screeches against the dainty vessel, hanging by the talons of her hairy legs she stretches out long chipped nails, clotted with black blood, waiting for the wayfarers.

Atop the right, stands a gaunt giant. A cyclops--by the act of gauging out one of his own eyes--he heaves a might hammer above his round head, muttering words of blame and condemnation, ready to smash the bright barque floating on the doldrums.

Confronted with this ultimatum, the females on the ship begin debating, some wishing to placate the giant, others hoping to side with the harpy, and many who wish to said away and drown the ridiculous hope of reaching noble Ithaca, content to sail without direction on the wine dark sea, so long as they are free to move with the wind. Many of these three parties, sick of disputation, put out in dingies to pursue those foreboding inclinations, while the less decisive stare at the fourth party, which is contemplating the wall of granite before them. Happy with none of the propositions they stare and wait.

'What are you waiting for?' one of the wavering girls asks.

'For a third gate to open in the stone,' is the decisive answer.


A man once bought a still in an town where distilling alcohol was held not only illegal, but ungodly. Drinking spirits, wine, or beer was something for Catholics, 'Whiskeypalians,' and other miscellaneous heathens. Having had a good laugh over the idea of brewing his own moonshine, he simply used it for the innocuous purpose of covering a well. Still, any passerby would naturally suppose that some more iniquitous work was afoot.

One of the man's daughters was mortified and wanted her mother and grandmother to intervene. The grandmother, a woman possessing all the natural lore of a Native American and all the simple godliness of an apolitical Puritan, responded by painting the still and then planting flowers around it. Her rationale? It was Proverbs 15: 1, A soft answer turneth away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

She knew, as the modern Western woman does not know, how to live peacefully with men and with the world in general. What many philosophers have come to know rationally ('What is wrong with the world is me') she knew intuitively. Her task: to improve only what God had given to be in her grasp. Her strategy: the typical feminine mixture of beauty and pragmatism. If a thing could not be used to beautify or to improve life, then out it should go. If it didn't go? Well, one must do one's best to hide or decorate it. These two rules brought her through a life of hard work to, I believe, everlasting benediction.

In defense of the first rule's seeming passivity, a woman cannot combat qua woman. It is that simple. Direct combat means taking up the weapons of men and laying aside her own femininity. However adept a woman may be with the arms of men, they are still the arms of men. As the brilliant Molly Gustin (the only credible Platonic rationalist I have ever met) often said, women win by subterfuge, not brute force. One need only ask Delilah if scissors are as effective as swords.

Should a woman however prefer the sword and win an argument in that 'liberated', forceful manner she has been taught to embrace from the 1960's on, she causes resentment in the man she argued with. If this man is someone whose love or fellowship she desires, then she has lost, for if he concedes the point, he may come to see her as a colleague, not a companion. Or he may concede resentfully, closing off his tenderness from her.

Then again, he may concede, but this still does not prompt him to act on his concession (e.g., yes, he agrees that he should clean up the dirt he tracked into the room...but it lays there still). Then again, he may concede, act on the concession, but grumbling all the time before he retreats into a sulky mood. Or worst of all, she may have succeeded in breaking him. She has demolished the ego which drives him to accomplish things and turned him into a compromiser that just wants some peace and quiet, even if he must become a slave to get it. Surely, even the most strident feminist would not want her great achievement to be a hen-pecked cockerel. After all, that would make her a hen.

So what to do then in an imperfect world that one does want to better? After all, God has given us free will, and He has not drawn a map of what is in our power to change: Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

A girl must listen to her kinswomen. She must regard the teachings of wise philosophers, and of course, she must cultivate her own common sense and heed the voice of her intuition over that of her lower passions. For as much as the Left may argue otherwise, much of the feminist credo is merely the tripe of our base instincts. To nag, to be shrill, to let the victim have it, and not to be docile, pleasing, or content with 'superficial' solutions--this is not courageous! This is self-indulgent. Outside the anomalous homes inhabited by male tyrants who actually employ their fists, the line feminists advise women to take is depressingly banal and--in the sense of both age and precedence--conservative.

In a search to validate the cream of tradition, as opposed to the dregs, I stipulate first, that one must recognize that the dichotomy between men and women is only one dichotomy. Perhaps it is the most important one, but it is still only one. As E. M. Forster observes in Howard's End (albeit through an unsympathetic character) that 'equality' between men and women is no feasible social solution, because men never even had equality amongst themselves (for those who have not read the book, I am interpreting 'equality', as used here, to imply not only the equal possessions of wealth and power, but of talents and abilities as well).

As exciting as the Left would make it out to be (i.e. that human discord is always a desperate struggle between groups for the supremacy of black and white ideals) one must remember that life is more often a dispute between individuals. The lady berating me for leaving my bicycle in the corridor (where it disturbs no one) would not likely be moved by appeal to an argument of universal sisterhood.

Introducing the second point: however hard and unfeeling Henry Wilcox, the character cited above, may have been, he at least understood that happiness is a primary thing, and one that we all desire as the fruit of our deeds. He would not have subordinated the clear notion of happiness to the vague idea of 'progress.'

So in this argument, noble tradition succeeds by default if the individual takes G. K. C.'s advice and dismisses secondary notions (e.g., progress) in favour of the primary ones (e.g., happiness), for who should want the first without the second, and who will not gladly take the second without the first? Is one a troglodyte for this? Well, the Left says we are animals, so we may as well follow our natural destinies and enjoy the simple, attainable things over ideals so abstract we do not even know what they look like. One can fill one's house with strife over the hideous piece of technology one's husband has bought, or smile and put up one's hair. What would your cat do?


There is now a general outline of the realm of what is possible. First, it concerns how women deal both with men and other women, so we females should not take particular umbridge. Second, the proper course of action will also cultivate the soil to produce the fruit of happiness. However, where men and women part ways, is in the shape of their motions.

A man wishes to project, to take his skill, his specialty, and see what path it might take from the valley to the peak. A woman moves in circles, seeking to improve her environment as a whole. A modernist may be tempted to sneer at this, but they should recall that such circles can be quite large. A woman's family and environs might consist of a single household or of a vast empire. What matters is that she continues to operate as a lady.

Take the situation with several women living in the same house. It usually ends that only one of them takes it upon herself to clean the bathroom. It's not fair, but she has already tried talking with her roommates gently and reasonably, and they still do not do their share of housework. What can the conscientious one do? Nag? Well, this may or may not work, and it will sow discord. Let the bathroom get filthy? She will quickly discover that the filth tortures her far more than the people she is attempting to punish. Or she can clean it herself, accepting this duty as her lot. This acceptance will lead to contentment and, therefore, a greater chance of happiness.

The fictional Captain Jack Sparrow once observed, 'The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do.' It may be a truism and a painfully obvious one, but human beings often cloud logic with ill-recalled experience and reality with muddled ideals, rather than using the former ones to judge the latter. This makes for a befuddled head. Occasionally, one needs to dig up Aristotelian syllogisms to think straight, which is why Aristotle is a giant, and Bertrand Russell is a dwarf on a ladder. Before the complex, always state the simple.

The bathroom cleaning roommate eventually achieved peace of mind by realizing what she could and couldn't do. She couldn't change other people, but she could alter the course of her own feelings. One may argue that her relationship with her cohabitants will never be close because of this, but that is not so. In altering her reactions, she has accepted them as they are. They may not be friends, but they are at least congenial. She may be doing a little extra, unpleasant work, but her living quarters are all the more pleasant for it.


John Medaille, writing for The Remnant, noted the similarity between the words cosmetics and cosmos in one of the most chivlarous essays I have ever read about women (the title is 'Women, Cosmetics, and the Cosmos'). The article's idea is essentially: woman cannot better the entire cosmos, but she can better her immediate surroundings; if she does so, she will receive a certain measure of consolation. When a feminist and human rights activist was attempting to help unjustly imprisoned women in a country torn by upheaval, she was astonished that they asked her for trivial things like makeup. It was not until her own imprisonment, that the modern visitor understood why the unfortunate ladies had so dearly wanted lipstick.

Like altering her abode (be it home, room, cubicle, or desk), putting on her face can do much in helping a woman to encounter whatever situation God sends her. I could not write this essay peaceably before making my bed, and I cannot count the number of times another woman has asked me if I had a little lipstick in my purse. 'I'm just having a bad day. Maybe it will perk me up.'

In condemning these inclinations passed down by our foremothers, the Left, alas, is not alone. Some of the Church's saints (and some of her great disappointments) have had very harsh things to say about women and their desire to decorate themselves and their surroundings.

Similarly, too, do even the servants [122] of those barbarians cause the glory to fade from the colours of our garments (by wearing the like); nay, even their party-walls use slightingly, to supply the place of painting, the Tyrian and the violet-coloured and the grand royal hangings, which you laboriously undo and metamorphose. Purple with them is more paltry than red ochre; (and justly, ) for what legitimate honour can garments derive from adulteration with illegitimate colours? That which He Himself has not produced is not pleasing to God, unless He was unable to order sheep to be born with purple and sky-blue fleeces! _Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women

Well, at least he ended as a heretic, so there's no need for ladies to feel guilty about any purple scarves they may own, but St. Jerome also reproaches women:

No; you should choose for your companions staid and serious women, particularly widows and virgins, persons of approved conversation, of few words, and of a holy modesty. Shun gay and thoughtless girls, who deck their heads and wear their hair in fringes, who use cosmetics to improve their skins and affect tight sleeves, dresses without a crease, and dainty buskins; and by pretending to be virgins more easily sell themselves into destruction. _St. Jerome, Letter 130

Ouch. However, this excerpt is not as clear as the first. A woman might fringe her hair without 'affecting tight sleeves' or she may employ cosmetics tastefully and do so without exposing her bosom. The godly man has made the mistake of branding everything a ditzy or shameless girl does as wrong. Goodness! is brushing one's hair even allowed?

St. Augustine, et al. hold the same dismal views. Such writings as these can drive a contemplative woman to depression, an unconvinced woman to indifference, and an irreverent one to flippancy. Yet, I am convinced these reactions would probably surprise the aforementioned men. As unkind as their words are, I am sure they would have been abashed on beholding the tears of a girl they had just berated for wearing flowers in her hair. Very likely, many of them thought women would feel liberated if they did not have to care about their looks. Alas, being a saint does not in itself qualify a man to grasp feminine psychology.

As men with better understanding have discovered, a woman does not primarily dress to allure. She dresses for herself (and for other women). Why else would men hate so many popular fashion trends and hairstyles? Because they were not conceived with the fancies of men in mind! Men have written as much themselves here (see fact number 18). Such a revelation would have shocked the male saints who thought adornment had its roots in concupiscence (forgive me, ye pious men, but none of you could speak infallibly on such an issue).

For a woman, the idea of making her person more lovely has an objective charm. It helps to beautify the world for her. Thus, when a woman is in love, she will attempt to enchant the man as well as enhance her own environment. Such making-over as this has been defended by the greatest Doctor of the Church:

Nevertheless a woman may use means to please her husband, lest through despising her he fall into adultery. Hence it is written (1 Cor. 7:34) that the woman "that is married thinketh on the things of the world, how she may please her husband." Wherefore if a married woman adorn herself in order to please her husband she can do this without sin.

And concerning cosmetics for their own sake?

However, such painting does not always involve a mortal sin, but only when it is done for the sake of sensuous pleasure or in contempt of God...