"It was not because you are more numerous than all the peoples that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you; for you are really the smallest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and because of his fidelity..." -Deuteronomy 7:7-8
I'm not going to lie... I really, really do not like donating blood. They can never find my vein right away and the needle is so thick and scary (why does the doctor's office use a butterfly needle on me, but the Red Cross uses the gigundo one??). Plus, the last time I was there, I fainted. I woke up to a fan blowing on my face and a nurse saying, "Katherine, Katherine?" This confused an already confusing situation - if you've ever fainted, you understand the disorientation that takes place when you wake up - because no one ever calls me by my full name.
It could have been worse. Apparently if you faint while giving blood, the needle can come out and spurt blood everywhere, and/or you can pee your pants... at least neither of those happened!
But every so often, I feel obligated to do this simple thing to help out humanity. So yesterday, I dutifully kept my appointment (sometimes I "forget").
It was a long, long wait. But as I finally lay in the chair/stretcher type thing, I looked across at my arm. And all I could see in my mind was this:
Suddenly, the needle in my vein seemed tiny, compared to the thick nail in his wrist.
The whole process I went through was sterilized, safe and ordinary; when he fell carrying the cross, dirt and rocks got in his cuts.
When I looked down at my arm, I saw that yellowish color from the iodine; when he looked down his arm, he saw the cuts in his flesh from the scourging.
I didn't feel anything except a little pain when they put the needle in and pulled it out at the end; he agonized on the cross for three hours.
I sipped Sprite with my free hand to keep myself from feeling dizzy. He said, "I thirst," and they gave him vinegar.
I came out with a bandage wrapped around my arm and went on with my day; he was wrapped in cloth and placed in a tomb.
My blood potentially saved three lives. His saved the world.
Gotta love a good Papa Benny quote! But I started thinking... gosh, that's a lot to ask! It's like saying, be happy... but not so much that you're obnoxious! Do your homework... but don't mess up! I'd like an order of french fries... but only the long ones, no little stubby ones please!
And so I wonder, how the heck am I supposed to do that without sticking my fingers in the hot grease and getting burned, hmm? (It's a metaphor, just go with it.)
At any rate, even though I was slightly confused about how to apply this to my life, I was highly inspired. Then I remembered of one of my favorite quotes from St. Paul:
"Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew to win over Jews; to those under the law I became like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win over those under the law. To those outside the law I became like one outside the law—though I am not outside God’s law but within the law of Christ—to win over those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it" -1 Corinthians 9:19-23
This happens to be one of my life goals - as a youth minister, of course, but also as a Catholic woman trying to participate daily in the New Evangelization.
It has boggled my mind before... how am I supposed to be "all things to all"? Certainly, I don't want to become a teenager. I like being a young adult! I'm a whole lot more confident, a whole lot less angsty, and God has done a lot of work with me since I was in my teens. I don't actually want to be a teen.
And in terms of the temperaments, I really don't want to be choleric, either. I admire their leadership and their drive, but I also know they are prone to walk all over people if they're not careful. Yeah, that's just not me...
Likewise, I don't want to be a man. I don't feel like I have to elaborate on this... I like being a woman perfectly fine, thank you, and the very idea of not being feminine is just weird.
So what does "all things to all" really mean, then?
Because I really want the lost to get found, kinda like this...
...and I think that St. Paul is on to something (I mean, it's in the Bible, so he must be).
As I mulled over this, I went back to the Pope Benedict quote in the meme above, particularly the last line: "Enter into dialogue with everyone, but remain yourselves."
Ohhhhhhhh.
The classic Catholic "both-and." Which happens to be related to Aristotle's "golden mean," I think. Basically, don't go to one extreme or the other. That's how heresies start... e.g., Jesus is BOTH God AND man. If you get rid of one or the other: oops. Heresy!
So anyway, youth ministry as an example. We love teens where they're at, walk with them, step inside their world, try to bring the Gospel to them through inculturation, etc., but we don't act like them or go back to being a teenager ourselves. We are a much better witness if we don't pretend to be someone else... but we can't stay in our own little worlds, either. If I avoided teens like the plague, I'd be an awful youth minister.
Both-and. Golden mean.
In Blessed Mother Teresa's case, she and her sisters embraced the poverty of those around them. They kept being amazing, authentic Catholic religious (they didn't venture into Hinduism to "relate"), but they weren't afraid to walk side by side with those around them. Both-and. Not snubbing people, but not compromising their faith either: golden mean.
Both balanced and radical. Bam.
(Has anyone else noticed that if you say "bam," after a statement, it just gives it that extra oomph?)
So basically, I'm allowed to be a phlegmatic, feminine youth minister and young adult. And you are also allowed to be who God created you to be (gosh, it took me a lot of words to get to this simple conclusion, didn't it?).
Yet we also have to "enter into dialogue with everyone" and be "all things to all." I still don't have this all figured out. But I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited to see all of us learn how to live this tension, win the world for Christ, and become saints!
My aunt and uncle recently took my family to see a theatrical production of "Beauty and the Beast" in Cleveland. I love theater, especially musical theater; I also love my family, so I had a ball! My family used to call me "Belle" all the time, due to my tendency to walk around the house with a book. I never did run into anything, like my parents thought I would...
Like the typical movie-turned-musical, or vice-versa, the musical theater version of "Beauty and the Beast" has songs that are not in the movie. For instance, this little gem popped up on my iPod today:
As I munched on my breakfast, I pondered this song, and the musical as a whole. When I saw it a few weeks ago, I flippantly asked my sister, "Why does the Beast have to be loved in return? Not fair, that's not his fault if she doesn't!" But today, it dawned on me: I'm looking at this as a cold, scientific equation. Beast loves Belle + Belle loves Beast = happy day for Beast and servants! (This is odd, because I am not the scientific/mathematical type... but anyway.)
But it's not about an equation - it's about the transformational power of love. Bam.
Although I'm sure I knew this on some level, it was kind of a revelation to me. The Beast truly is beastly, inside and out, because he does not know how to love and be loved. As he learns to love Belle, and as she loves him back, something amazing happens in his heart, which is then reflected in his exterior appearance as the spell is finally broken (as I contemplate it now, it's kind of sacramental. But I won't get into that now... anyway...).
Shocker: Blessed John Paul II totally breaks this down. Something like this:
"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it." (Redemptor Hominis 10)
The Beast is so beastly because he is lacking the main thing that humanizes us, the image of God Himself: love. And this appears to be a two-way street. Like JPII says, there's something about having love "revealed" to us, about the "encounter," that we need if we are to be truly human. Otherwise, he is "a being that is incomprehensible for himself" - a beast. But notice that JPII describes love in reciprocal terms. You can't reveal something to yourself, or encounter your own love - you need a person who loves you.
Of course the Beast cannot force Belle to love him. But how can he "participate intimately" in love, unless there is someone to participate with?
And if there isn't, he will remain forever [cue dramatic voice]... a Beast. A being whose "life is senseless"... until Belle comes along and gives him the opportunity for a total transformation of heart! Ahhhhhhhhhh, I'm getting goosebumps!
Caveats on this whole thing (I'm a catechist, so I have to throw these out there): of course as Catholics, we don't believe that we need to find human romance in order to fill the void in our hearts - we can only be fully satisfied by God. Yet, we are made for communion with each other, and self-sacrificial love. But we also believe in priestly and religious vocations, which incorporate this need in a different way! Also, neither I or JPII are nixing "love your enemies" - we love people who don't love us back, but we do have a real human need to be loved back by someone.
At any rate, I'm really enjoying reflecting on this - it's all still a little foggy in my head, though, so I'd love to hear your ideas, too! Why does Belle have to love the Beast in return... do you have a deeper insight (or any other thoughts about "Beauty and the Beast," or fairy tales, or the transformational power of love)? Am I looking too deeply into this? Somehow, I don't think G.K. Chesterton would think so, according to this essay he wrote (I love it, particularly about the "arbitrary" fairy tale rules... and I think he may have some insights for my questions, what do you think?): http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/introduction/gkchesterton.html
"No pain could be deeper No life could be cheaper No point anymore, if I can't love her No spirit could win me No hope left within me Hope I could have loved her and that she'd set me free But it's not to be If I can't love her Let the world be done with me."
And oh, side note: in the musical version, the servants-turned-household-items discuss why it was indeed fair for them to be changed from into non-humans as well. They decide that they were partially responsible for allowing their Master to be such a selfish brat, essentially enabling him. I was intrigued - I had never thought about that before!
This one time, my brother and I had a conversation that went like this:
Mike: What are we going to do tonight?
Me: I don't know.
Mike: We can't do EVERYTHING!
This phrase has become a legendary joke in my family, but there's some truth in it. Yes, I'll submit that I can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and most recently, Instagram. But I refuse to Google+, Foursquare or Snapchat. I can't do EVERYTHING.
Even so, I've decided to blog. I've dabbled in it before, in a group effort to protect our country's religious freedom (you can check out our work at theamericanremnant.com). I've never written my own personal blog, but here we go!
Soooooo, let's talk about my strange, potentially-cheesy-because-it's-alliterated title. To me, "phlegmatic" sounds like I've got a disease, like I'm coughing up phlegm. The medical revelations I have from my nursing major friend are definitely a topic for another time. But actually, phlegmatic is one of the four classical temperaments. I refer you to this handy resource, which explains the bizzare names (it turns out phlegmatic does have something to do with phlegm after all!), and I encourage you to discover your own temperament: http://www.catholicmatch.com/blog/temperaments/
At any rate, I am phlegmatic: the chillaxed one. The "go-with-the-flow" type. When I say "I don't care, you decide," I (almost always) mean it. I tend to procrastinate, but on the plus side, I'm easy-going and good at keeping the peace. That's my temperament - "an individual’s tendency to react in a certain way throughout their life, forming an identifiable pattern," as the previously cited website states. Apparently I'm also about 10% sanguine (i.e., the happy people person), but that means I'm still 90% easy-going slowpoke.
On the other hand, I'm in good company: Blessed Pope John XXIII was also a phlegmatic! In his Journal of a Soul, he wrote: “Above all I am grateful to the Lord for the temperament he has given
me, which preserves me from anxieties and tiresome perplexities… I have
noticed that this disposition, in great things and in small, gives me,
unworthy as I am, a strength of daring simplicity…”
Hmm... the Vatican II catalyst was a phlegmatic. I'm liking this!
Perhaps this also helps me to reconcile the fact that, although I'm phlegmatic, I'm intensely passionate about Catholicism, particularly about pro-life issues. I also have a dream of helping to reform youth ministry to make it more effective... partly due to pride, I've recently learned (ouch), but partly due to being captivated by the movement of the Holy Spirit in the Church. As a friend told me recently, wherever God is moving, that's where I want to be!
I guess it all boils down to this: as long as we get to hang out together, I don't care what we do or where we go out to eat. But I will fight 'til the death to protect religious freedom, the dignity of every human person, and for all people to know Jesus Christ.
**Edit: I would love to hear about your temperament/secondary temperament, if you've discovered it, and what kinds of realizations you've come to about yourself through this process!
