The 2011 Holiday Letter is shorter this year — I knew exactly what I wanted to say — but even sweeter due to our new little blessing. Hold out for the print version if you must…but if you can’t wait, read it online now! Merry Christmas, friends — we love you!
Above: A Wedding in Cana: my sister Jill and her husband Rusty, married in the Wedding Church at Cana of Galilee, Tuesday, October 18, 2011. Photo courtesy of Stephen Ray, their pilgrimage guide, online at Catholic-Convert.com.
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from (although the servers who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.
My parents, on the other hand, had met Rusty and seemed to like what they saw. That helped, especially because Dad has a knack for gauging people. Still, it was difficult to show up at Easter as the only close family member who hadn’t meant this man — and as the person (quite frankly) who was most inclined to not like him. I had my guard and filters up, but he came through clean: a genuinely nice guy who likes good music, a Catholic convert who enjoys talking about his faith, a veteran of the Navy and other life battles who loves his young son and his aging parents, and a good man who did not hesitate to say that he would gladly spend his life working hard to treat my sister right and to get her to Heaven.
They told us that weekend that they were planning to marry, although they weren’t yet engaged. Then they told us they planned to do it at the church in Cana, in the Holy Land, on a pilgrimage to learn more about their faith. We were amazed. How much more different could this possibly be from her first wedding? How far had my sister journeyed, in such a short time?
“Do whatever he tells you” — these words from Our Blessed Mother from the Gospel account of the miraculous wedding at Cana were a statement of faith in her son, that, although He insisted it was not yet his time, He would not allow a need to go unmet for God’s faithful — that from misfortune he would work wonders in order to manifest God’s love in our lives. He did it again and again during his ministry, and again in the most profound way on the cross on Calvary.
And again yesterday, at another wedding in Cana.
Before she left, Jill told me she was thinking of ways she could have her closest family and friends with her on her wedding day: a family rosary, a lucky coin, that sort of thing. From Jodi and me and our family, she asked that I write a prayer for them to meditate upon.
I was overwhelmed. I had planned to write a letter, but the idea that I could add something substantive to this sacrament when the very location was a homily and blessing seemed like more than I could possibly deliver. I wrote a letter that said as much, then asked that, the night before their wedding or the morning of, they consider doing the following:
Another friend of ours tells a story related to the biblical account of the wedding at Cana, in which we imagine ourselves as the servants, who, on the word of a wedding guest — a poor but faithful mother from Nazareth — and the orders of her son, also a guest in the house, lug six massive crocks to the city well, carrying back, on foot, more than a hundred gallons of water for who knows what purpose. As a result, they got to see Christ’s first miracle…
When I texted Jill later in the day yesterday and told her how I was with her in prayer, she agreed, and closed her reply with, “Thank you, Jim and Jodi, for leading the way…”
Sister, we were just carrying the water.
I have, in the past several months, read more deeply and broadly than I have since college, and perhaps ever. A few weeks back, in my mini-review of Brideshead Revisted, I mentioned that I was reading a new book for work, Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It. I finished it today, and it is a sobering comparison between our current recession, and previous deep downturns at end of the 19th century, in the 1930s, and in the 1970s. The book takes a close look at both the similarities and the differences in order to get a clearer picture of where we are in terms of a recovery (short answer: not very far along) and what we might work to address the short-term, and especially the long-term, effects.
The important issues raised by this book are too numerous to detail, and while I don’t agree with the author on everything, a few insights struck me as particularly compelling, especially on the heels of reading Brideshead and C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.
First, I have never been one to begrudge the wealthy the fruits of their honest effort; however, Pinched shines a bright and terrible light on the fact that not only are America’s most wealthy and privileged few becoming more so, they are also becoming increasingly detached from the problems and concerns of the rest. Many would rather help the poor on the other side of the world than the struggling here at home, because the visibility and ROI (return on investment) is better.
Second, the book shows clearly that in America, as in the Middle East, men with time on their hands are a major problem. Men are feeling the strain of the recession more keenly than women, and this leads to a wide range of economic, social, and psychological problems that are difficult to remedy. Interestingly, the book even touches on traditional gender roles, indicating that, even in instances in which unemployed men take on more responsibility for household chores and childrearing while their wives work — and indeed, even when their wives say they are satisfied with the level of support their husbands are providing on the home front — nevertheless, satisfaction in the relationship and perception of the male’s worth deteriorates, as I understood it, for both parties.
John W. Gardner once said, “America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” Don Peck, the journalist who compiled and wrote this book, includes among his recommendations for addressing the fallout of the current recession, a section called “One Culture,” in which he insists that our social fabric is fraying and that cultural solutions are needed, as well as economic ones. He writes:
“The information age — individualistic, experimental, boundary-breaking — has eroded other once-common virtues, ones that we not associate as strongly with a distinctly American character, but that are nonetheless essential to a cohesive, successful society: from family commitment rooted in marriage, to civic responsibility. The Great Recession has merely cast light on the extent of that erosion. The past is not a hallowed place, and we would not want to return to it even if we could. But we do need to sow those virtues again as we move forward — through education and through our own private actions and expectations.”
The book — and this quote in particular — sparked in me an idea for a non-fiction book of my own, exploring the idea that as we debunk age-old beliefs and fail to replace them with new values of equal weight, we devolve into meaninglessness. Relativism, globalism, scientism, the collapse of religion and ritual that help us understand our place in the world (a la Joseph Conrad’s The Power of Myth), and the redefinition of “value” more and more exclusively in economic terms, have actually made the world less understandable — because it no longer jives with what see with our eyes and know with our hearts.
“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:
This will be my final Second Third post. I had planned 52 – one per week of this 36th year of life – outlining things about myself that I hoped to cultivate or cull, change or discover, in the years between now and age 70, when I enter my third Third: the long glide to age 105, which seems like a good age to wrap things up. However, over the course of the past 40 weeks or so, I’ve noticed something: these posts are adding up to summary of The Jim In My Head (TJIMH) – the best version of me I’ve been able to conceive of, a man happy, convicted, faithful, healthy, and (most importantly) deeply content.
Archangel Stomp 