A Feast for the Soul

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Allow me to give you a piece of marriage advice: things will be easier if only one of you cares about food. Otherwise, planning for dinner parties becomes a battle of wills. Your spouse feels that a double-crusted turkey pot pie would be nice, while you want very badly to make 48 hour short ribs. It is unlikely that you will make two entrees, which means that at least one of you will not get your way. The likelihood of pouting is significant.

Of course, you both mean well. You want to present your guests with good food in a welcoming environment. You are imagining a scene of conviviality, where everyone is comfortable, happy, and nourished. You are driven by hospitality, that noble old human instinct. But is it possible that good conversation, even more than good food, is the heart of hospitality?

Augustine seemed to think so. Once, for his birthday, he invited a group of people to join him for a meal. “I had already provided a little feast for the body,” he said, adding that “it was fitting that I should also provide them a feast for the soul.” Just as he had chosen a meal to fit the occasion, he took it upon himself to prepare a topic of conversation.

Augustine understood that people are embodied souls. Our bodies are important, certainly, and hospitality requires that we consider the comfort of our guests. But we aren’t simply animals, interested only in what we can taste and smell. If we leave the table with famished souls, then we have not really feasted. “There are two kinds of food for the soul just as there are two kinds of food for the body: one, wholesome and helpful, the other, unwholesome and harmful.”

The good host is thoughtful. She considers the occasion, her guests, and her own resources. She knows whether the event is formal or casual. She keeps in mind how many children will be present, or that one of the attendees fancies himself allergic to gluten. Her hospitality is a dialectic between her own creative expression and the situation at hand. These same factors have to be considered in the preparation of a discussion. I should know, because I have suffered the consequences of ignoring them.

I once tried to lead a conversation with a group of friends on a Saturday morning. We were packed into a living room, struggling to hear each other over the din of crying babies. As toddlers stumbled between breakfast plates, I cleared my throat. I was determined to make some point about Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher. This alone should tell you how oblivious I was to the situation at hand. One of the young mothers had her child in a headlock, trying to extract an alien object – perhaps a watch battery or a cyanide capsule – from his stubborn maw. I thought it a good time to ask her for an opinion on Kierkegaard’s concept of the teleological suspension of the ethical. She replied with a glare, the meaning of which is unprintable. I had misunderstood the situation, and my mistake was a failure of hospitality.

I like to think that I have improved over the years. I’ve tried to be a generous host and a gracious guest. I’ve even been known, with great effort, to hold back a bawdy, inappropriate joke. I still want to make those 48 hour short ribs, and maybe I will. But, I suspect I can be a better host when I attend to people’s souls as well as their bellies.

How To Impress a Teenager

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I recently read Paper Towns by John Green. The novel, which focuses on two high school students, was entirely inappropriate, demographically speaking. It departed significantly from the sorts of things that a family man in his late 30s is supposed to read. But I was inspired nonetheless. It challenged me to think about the art of discussion and how our conversations reveal what we care about most.

The book tells the story of Quentin and Margo, two teenagers who are pulled by their longings into adventure. Margo longs for an exciting life and Quentin longs for Margo. There’s a scene in which our protagonists sneak into the top floor of an office building in the middle of the night. They make their way into a dimly lit conference room as the lights of their Florida suburb twinkle outside. Gazing through the large windows, Margo says, “I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”

As Margo sees it, all of the people in her life, young and old alike, are distracted by triviality. They obsess over grades or chores, or distract themselves with gossip. But no one seems to be engaged in that most human of activities: thinking about and discussing things of real importance.

I sympathize with Margo. As a being made in God’s image, it would be a kind of sacrilege to live out my days in diversion. I wouldn’t do justice to God’s image if my sole concerns in life were football scores or home renovations. People like Margo should notice something different about me. In fact, they should be able to say, “I’ve never come across anyone who cares about anything that matters, except for this weird Christian.”

So, what can we do? I propose the radical act of talking to one another, live and in person, about real things. Between bad jokes and embellished stories, we could discuss justice, education, cosmology, and linguistics. We could stay up too late for the sake of real fellowship, and in so doing remind ourselves that we are in this world, but not of it.

Hopefully our conversations will be an encouragement to those around us. But, even if they go unnoticed, they will not have been in vain. Good conversation is valuable in and of itself. It is a humanizing activity and a welcome antidote to our current state of distraction and political polarization.

Look for more thoughts on this in the weeks that follow.

SEX ED.

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I know that I need to talk to my daughter about sex. She’ll be nine, and if I don’t say something soon, someone else will. A health teacher will broach the subject, explaining it all in medical terms. Or a classmate will whisper something confusing. In neither case will they tell her about intimacy proceeding from a vow and leading to life. In neither case will they tell her about consummation.

They aren’t likely to tell her about a wedding day. And why would they? Why would they mention my role in walking her down the aisle; in giving her away? What could be more regressive and old fashioned than suggesting that I had protected her thus far and that her new husband was supposed to protect her now?

The health teacher might talk about consent. He or she might explain that sex should be an agreement, that all parties should be free and willing participants. Or maybe a video will explain it all with crisp editing and upbeat music. But who will tell her that the fullest consent is given in marriage? It would be unusual and unmodern to talk about wedding vows as specific and public consent. To talk about families and friends participating in that consent and promising to buttress it.

A teacher might tell a classroom about intercourse. Friends might talk about screwing. But I doubt either would tell her that the wedding night is an embodied experience of unity, without which the wedding is incomplete. That becoming one flesh is a physical reality as well as a spiritual one.
Who would dare to mention that in this peculiar consummation each participant is consumed and consumes. And in being consumed they are not diminished. They become more, not less. That in this act, and in this act alone, exists the possibility of new life.

That kind of talk is suspect, after all. It sounds suspiciously exclusive. It is impolite to point out that a man and a woman alone together hold the key to life. The facts of biology are in the path of history, and who can stand before such a force?

Weddings are old ceremonies leavened by youth. Individuality is displayed through the common rituals of humanity. The participants have joined a historic liturgy, and in so doing they have not lost their individuality. They display uniqueness and freedom, submission and membership. The dancers are young but the song is ancient.

I want my daughter to know the old and ordered Christian view of sex. I want her younger brothers to know it too. And I worry that, if I can’t find the nerve to bring up the subject, then they will miss out on the Church’s view of humanity. They’ll learn about sex as though men and women could be understood in purely biological terms. They will have a view of themselves and of others that is impoverished. They will be less dignified, less free.