faith

Waugh, or Three Things to Love About Brideshead Revisited

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: Four summers ago, I agreed to my friend Jacqui’s challenge to read 15 Classics in 15 Weeks. I continue to press forward, this being number 11 of 15, and at this point 15 Classics in 15 Years seems quite doable…

Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited was the wildcard in my list of 15 classics, replacing Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian on the original list. I was trying to buy all 15 books used, and couldn’t find McCarthy; one previous spring I picked up Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and thought, “What the heck; I’ll read that instead.” — then my friend Fr. Tyler recommended Brideshead. He has proven to be a reliable recommender of books (especially East of Eden), so I added it to the mix.

This is not a book I would’ve chosen without recommendation. An impenetrable title by an author with whom I was not familiar (a man, as it turns out), which, as I flipped through it, skimming pages, seemed another novel about shallow, wealthy people indulging in food, wine, and art and mocking the less sophisticated and the pious. If not for Father Tyler, I might have set it aside, guessing it similar to The Picture of Dorian Gray — which it is not so much. And so…Three Things to Love About Brideshead Revisited:

  • People Change: As in Dorian Gray and The Brothers Karamazov, most of the characters in Brideshead begin as superficial, hedonistic, and not particularly likable, however, through chance and tragedy, as these characters collide and intermingle again and again, they grow deeper and more complex. This is not a story in which the weakness of characters lead them to an inescapable end. These people struggle. They learn from their mistakes (however slowly). They change over time, and emerge different people at the end.
  • The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: One recurring theme in the book is that of a tiny part of a man, pretending to be whole. These upper-crust Brits lead lives of leisure — they have time on their hands and passions and vices they indulge, ignoring transcendental truths, scoffing at faith and virtue and love, and pretending to live. They become artists, politicians, alcoholics, trophy wives, adulterers and mistresses, but can’t figure out to be whole or happy. How many people have we seen like that?
  • All Roads Lead Home: The deeper theme of the book, it seems to me, is that all roads lead to Truth and God — you are never so far away that you cannot get back, and although we may choose to resist, when we do not, He draws us inexorably to Him, with grace and mercy we do not merit. It is, in the end, a very hopeful book.
A side note: I have said numerous time in this journey through 15 classics that it is remarkable how timeless these books are — how the characters are relatable and the themes common to our time. I finished this book yesterday, even as I started a new book for work called Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Out Futures & What We Can Do About It. (Sounds like a page-turner, doesn’t it?) 

Brideshead was published in 1944 and is set between the World Wars; Pinched opens with a 1914 quote from writer and journalist Walter Lippmann: “We are unsettled to the very roots of our being. There isn’t a human relation, whether of parent and child, husband and wife, worker and employer, that doesn’t move in a strange situation….There are no precedents to guide us, no wisdom that wasn’t made for a simpler age. We have changes our environment more quickly that we know how to change ourselves.”
Sound familiar? It is ironic to me that a book published just this year should open with a quote from 1914, claiming there are no precedents to guide us. We’ve been down the path of “unprecedented change” repeatedly* — apparently in 1914, for example. Waugh’s great novel, to me, insists that the wisdom “made for a simpler age” is unchanging, still relevant, and even necessary. We are simply slow to learn.

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*If change wasn’t unprecedented, it wouldn’t really be change, would it?

Amazing Grace of Motherhood

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

“I’m constantly amazed at the sheer power that women hold within their bodies. The power to create, to nurture, to grow. It’s such a mind-blowing thing. And not just once, but over and over again.” —a young female friend currently living in Central America

Something amazing happened last weekend: at long last, I felt our baby move. It’s been a long time coming; apparently, the position of the placenta is such that, even for Jodi, our little one’s movements were nearly imperceptible for most of the last several months. But even in recent days, when Jodi would say, “Jim! The baby’s moving!” her exclamation or the touch of my hand was enough to still whatever stirring had been underway.

I’ve said many times that this is my chief jealousy with regard to the opposite sex — that I’ll never feel the movement of my own child growing within me. Even with four children already born into this world, it’s still a thrill to experience this, even from the outside.

Something else amazing happened this weekend. At the St. Michael Catholic Church Fall Festival, Jodi received abundant congratulations—such is the genuine joy that this community finds in each and every baby, no matter how commonplace a miracle it seems in our little Catholic bubble—and at least twice, two grandfathers asked if they could hug her. One said he feels in awe of pregnant women, and the other, with his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, said, “I always feel about this tall around mothers.”

Their tremendous respect for women and motherhood resounds in my own heart—and calls to mind one of the traits that attracted me to my bride from the beginning: the fact that she was the first woman I had met since I started college who did not hesitate to say she wanted to be a wife and mother. Sexuality and fertility, procreation and co-creation, married love and family life are tremendous blessings, which, too often, we devalue or seek to avoid. Thank you, Jodi, for allowing God to work this miracle through you, as my young friend said, “not just once, but over and over again.” You are beautiful, strong, resilient — and we love you.

Related poems and postings:

Burning Love

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Last weekend, to celebrate the end of summer, we had a little campfire in the backyard. I had thrown an old birdhouse onto the fire, which was finally beginning to break down, with flames of blue, and yellow, and orange. It was a beautiful night, and for the first time in ages, we all sat and did nothing but visit with each other: about the coming school year, the dancing flames, the smoke rising to the stars. 


Then Gabe said something curious: “There’s a flaming heart in the fire.”



It was the remains of an old barn-wood board from the birdhouse. Emma saw it, too, and noted that she was, at that very moment, wearing her “Burning Love” t-shirt, featuring a red heart like a torch and St. Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:


Love is patient,
love is kind.
It is not jealous,
is not pompous, it is not inflated,
it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered,
it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.


We were marveling at this coincidence, when Trevor noticed something else. “Look,” he said, “there are three nails in it…just like Jesus.”



Sacred Heart of Jesus, we entrust our family to You. Look down upon us and reveal to us the treasures of love, goodness, and grace in Your Heart. Forgive our sins and fortify our weakness, that we may serve You faithfully as You deserve. These favors we ask for ourselves and for every family in our neighborhood and homeland. Heart of Jesus, pierced by a soldier’s lance on Calvary, be our refuge in life and our gateway to Paradise. Amen.



(Pro) Life, Without Religion, Part 2: A Little … Something

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Inspired by recent ultrasounds of our tiny child resting peacefully in utero, last month I shared my response to a common abortion-rights argument: “It’s my body; it’s my choice.” In that post, I argued that, in no way could an embryo or fetus be considered the mother’s body, or even part of the mother’s body.

The question remains, then: what is it? A few possibilities come to mind: it may be a bit of foreign debris or tissue; it may be a tumor (benign or malignant); it may be nonhuman organism (like a parasite or symbiotic microorganism); or, it may be Homo sapiens – a human organism. I’ll address these possibilities one at a time:

  • Foreign debris or foreign tissue. If an embryo were nothing more than a bit of foreign matter that had somehow found its within the woman, it makes sense that her body would respond accordingly, targeting the embryo in the same way it might a sliver or a piece of shrapnel, either to eliminate it from the body or encapsulate and neutralize it. Of course, an embryo consists of living cells, so the body does not react to it as thought it were a simply a foreign object. If an embryo were living, foreign tissue, it makes sense that the woman’s immune system might react negatively to it, in the same way that it might reject a donor organ. In fact, in the vast majority of cases, the woman’s body does the opposite, suppressing it’s own immune system and laboring to provide a protective, nurturing environment and nutrients to encourage growth and development of the embryo. It is true that in certain cases (e.g., an Rh-negative mother carrying an Rh-positive fetus), the woman’s immune system may react to presence of Rh-factor in the fetus’s blood, sometimes leading to death of the fetus – however, most of the population (approximately 85 percent, I believe) is Rh-positive, so such a reaction is certainly not the norm. Nor does it change the fact that the woman’s body continues to try to accomodate the fetus even as antibodies in her blood attack the fetus’s red blood cells.
  • Benign or malignant tumor. I’ve heard it more than once “It’s just a ball of cells.” Actually, I did a little reading for this post to help ensure I’m using the right terminology, and learned that tumors are more commonly defined as a neoplasm that has formed a “lump” – and a neoplasm is a new and abnormal growth or proliferation of cells not coordinated with the body’s healthy tissue. Is an embryo a neoplasm? It is certainly a new proliferation of cells, but typically (left to its own devices), its growth is in clockwork coordination with the healthy tissue around it; in fact, the surrounding, healthy tissues of the woman’s body (left to their own devices) change to become more accommodating to the new growth – again, encouraging growth and development. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop: “It’s not a tumah!“
  • Parasite or other nonhuman organism. An embryo or fetus certainly derives nutrients and protection, and at some cost the woman in whose body it resides – but is it a parasite (like a tapeworm) or some other symbiotic nonhuman organism (like our gut flora and other bacteria that exist on or in our body and are beneficial or neutral to our health and well-being)? First, consider that non-human organisms (parasitic or otherwise) are not native to us nor do they spontaneously generate within us. Instead, they are acquired. Even our gut flora are acquired at birth and rapidly afterward, from our mothers and the environment. An embryo, on the other hand, is not something caught from another person or acquired from the environment which then colonizes the uterus. And while it takes the introduction of a male gamete to fertilize an egg and ultimately form an embryo, even sperm cells cannot be considered parasites or symbiotic organisms – they have a short-life span and cannot reproduce themselves or “colonize” the woman on their own; those that do not fertilize an egg ultimately die off and are eliminated.
  • Human organism. To review, start where you like: a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus. Clearly these are not non-living things; they are living cells that use nutrients and multiply. If it were merely foreign tissue or an infection, the woman’s body would work to destroy it – no abortion necessary. If it were a parasite or symbiotic organism, it would be acquired externally, not formed internally from two cells whose sole function is reproduction. Now, consider that when a sperm and egg unite and form a zygote, the result is genetically identifiable as human – 23 pairs of chromosomes is the norm, but even some variation in this number (as in the case of Down Syndrome), when permitted to develop, can result in a viable independent organism that we would recognize as human. Some will argue that a skin cell, or an eyelash, or a cancer cell might be alive and genetically human, but we kill those all the time; certainly that isn’t murder, is it?  Of course not. But as we’ve already established, an embryo clearly is not any part of the woman’s body (it’s not even a genetic match) nor is it a tumor (it is developing in coordination with the woman’s body and the result will be a viable, independent human organism). Without a doubt, an embryo is a living, human organism.
Even some abortion supporters make it this far. At this point, the arguments become much more philosophical: abortion supporters claim is that this human organism is not a human being – it is a genetically human living thing, but only a potential human being. This raises a fundamental question: What makes a human organism a human being? I’ll share how my pre-religious mind tackled that question in my next post on this topic.

The Second Third, Week 38: Being Cross Versus Bearing Cross

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

I’ve had a number of conversations in recent months about the delicate ethics and art of downsizing one’s list of Facebook friends. Some are aghast that I would ever do such a thing; others wonder why I would accept the Facebook friendship of someone I might later “unfriend” in the first place. I try to assure them that, in most cases, it isn’t personal. I generally accept friend requests from anyone I am acquainted with; if, after the initial reconnect, we appear to no longer have anything to say over a period of several months, I may unfriend them. “Unfriend” is an unnecessarily harsh term – as I see it, we are just as close as we were before Facebook; we just don’t have to wade through extra content not meant for, or meaningful to, us.

In a few rare instances, however, I have unfriended folks on Facebook because being around is just too difficult. Perhaps our views are so different that I find myself constantly biting my tongue to not start a fight. Perhaps they expect too much interaction, when I don’t feel as connected or close. And truth be told, this happens in the real world, too. The older I get, the more disinclined I am to spend time around people who inspire tension or unease in my life.

I struggle a bit with this. Occasionally, I’ll feel an “unfriendly” impulse, only to, upon further reflection, realize that I am simply being impatient or selfish, and that I must take a deep breath and respond to this person as all people deserve..with love. But it’s a fine line between bearing a cross and loving my neighbor or my enemy, and simply being cross – enduring the company of a person who, without reservation or apology, pushes all my buttons and brings out the worst in me, to the chagrin or detriment of those for whom I care.

The other day I left my office and walked to rest room, passing, in the process, a person who had long been a thorn in the side of my colleagues and I during a previous job. With welcome relief, I noted that my blood pressure didn’t rise when I saw our former adversary; in my new role, these past conflicts were no longer relevant, and so the person was just a person, and I was free to have no opinion.

That, to me, is what I hope to better embrace in my Second Third: who to embrace, who to avoid, and when to gracefully bow out and feel free to have no opinion. I hope the latter option because increasingly prevalent, because each of the former two is exhausting in its own right.