Lenten Negations

Alright, you can call me a coward. Or wishy-washy. But I'm a lot happier WITH tea in my life than without. Lent has not even begun yet, and I'm losing my resolve to renounce tea. And this, at a time when I need tea the most.

If I am going to become any kind of aristocrat, which is one of my lifelong desires, and leave my family and my future generations a little better off than I found them, I need a real job right now. And I need to go to grad school. My period as a disillusioned youth is over. If I am to move my family up in the world, I need to get started right now. And this means putting in applications. And putting in applications means researching jobs and graduate programs. And that means a need for energy. And that means tea.

(Oh, how I hate the word "job"—it sounds so sordid. And so like to the fellow who suffered so much in the Old Testament: Job. But since I don't know how to trade stocks and don't have enough money to buy a house, let alone flip one, my starting place for now will have to be to get the best job and save up enough funds and do something intelligent with it later.)

Maybe I'm not making the biggest sacrifice I could for Lent. Maybe I'm giving in to Nietzsche's influence and turning Lent from a world-negation into a life-affirmation. Maybe I'm letting my tea addiction take hold. Maybe I'm going against my Italian heritage by advocating tea over coffee. But tea is healthier and cleaner. And the Buddhist monks used it to keep vigilant in their own spiritual struggles. And that is what I am doing.

So, once and for all, I'm not going to give up tea for Lent. At least, not this year. I'm going to give up coffee. I don't think I've gone more than a week without my daily espresso since college, so that will be a sacrifice. In fact, it will be such a sacrifice that I'm going to go stock up on some right now. I have SO much respect for people who renounce seriously.

Lent

Well, everybody, guess what I'm doing for Lent.  I'm giving up TEA!!!!  Don't think I can do it?  Stay with me, and find out! 

Of course, I might rely on the Sundays-don't-count rule.  And why not?  Lent is a fast of 40 days and 40 nights.  If you count up the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, they actually exceed 40 unless you omit Sundays. 

Since Ash Wednesday is next week, I've been cutting down on tea but feeling a need to slightly increase my coffee intake.  I've now been starting the day with a cup of espresso in addition to my afternoon espresso ritual.  And honestly, espresso is delightful.  Usually.  If it's not too strong.  I achieved the art of near perfection at espresso years ago and enjoyed many fine afternoons in my early college days with a cup of Medaglia d'Oro and some Nabucco. 

But tea is something else entirely.  Tea is cleaner.  Tea is energizing.  One whole cup of Green Mountain Coffee from a Keurig machine, delicious as it is, and I find that it's sticking to my esophagus--I can taste it for hours afterward.  But one cup of Stash's Black Chai or my favorite loose leaf Prince of Wales tea only leaves me wanting another.  And another.  And another.  I love this drink so much I've actually considered growing my own tea plants one day when I have property so I can use my own tea leaves for tea.  And tea also has the enormous benefit of antioxidants and weight loss properties.  This is one reason I want to cut back:  I lost 8 lbs. in the last year.  And for a naturally slim person like me coming from a long line of high metabolism, 8 lbs. is a lot!  Tea is just about the only thing right now that would really be a sacrifice for me to give up. 

But, why am I suddenly observing Lent, you might ask?  As a "lapsed" Catholic, I haven't been to Mass, for myself at least, since the day John Paul II died almost seven years ago.  I've made a few obligatory exceptions for family gatherings such as weddings, funerals, a confirmation, and the Easter I spent with my very religious grandmother in her very religious town in Italy in 2008.  Why start now? 

This may be difficult to explain.  Part of the reason is that I have a friend who's Muslim.  Over the summer, when he was fasting during daylight hours for the whole month of Ramadan, I found it really inspiring.  He said he didn't really mind fasting: he enjoyed it.  Much like I enjoyed giving up Rigoletto for Lent in the eighth grade.  And he also felt a spiritual benefit as a result of his fasting.  Not unlike the Hindu concept of tapas, the divine heat that comes from meditation.  It really made me feel good to see what my friend was engaged in and so deeply motivated by.  So learning about another religion really made me appreciate the one I was raised with, and I want to recover just a little piece of it.

I reached a point a long time ago when I felt I could no longer turn to the religion I grew up with for answers to the big questions:  Why am I here?  What do I want out of life?  Why do the good die young?  What if there is no God or no afterlife?  What if there is no bliss?  I found that Catholicism just couldn't answer those questions for me anymore, nor could Christianity or Judaism.  Nevertheless, in the wake of that religion I found a huge void.  Functioning without that religion has been an incredibly thorny path.  Perhaps a shaky path is a better metaphor because it has meant learning to stand and to walk without a means of support.  A complete and all-sustaining means of support, by the way.  But just because a child learns to walk by himself does not mean that he walks away from his father and mother forever.  He still has a need for and a bond to what nurtured him. 

While I find that I cannot truly practice Christianity or any other religion that I've come across, certain rituals, images, and moments within Catholicism have nevertheless left a very profound impression on me.  While my own worldview is generally closer to that of Norse and even Greek mythology than to Judeo-Christian ethics, nothing has ever spoken to me so deeply as the Crucifixion does.  Not Wagner's Wotan, not Odysseus, not even Bilbo or Frodo Baggins.  I instantly identify with the silhouette of three crosses on Golgotha. 

The Crucifixion symbolizes everything:  the death of God, the universal suffering and sorrow of life, the destruction and rebirth of all life, all matter, all energy.  It contains the message:  "You must die to yourself to be reborn."  Whatever it is you have that is you and only you:  destroy it.  Surrender your ego.  Leave aside the "I" for the "All."  You must sacrifice the thing you most care about and be reborn.  If you don't give it willingly, it will be taken from you and perish anyway.  It is the theme expressed in the Bonfire Song in Kurosawa's film Hidden Fortress.  It is the recurring message of Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.  It is the message of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.  It is a story told in all times and in all places and in all languages in a variety of images, be it Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, Huitzilopochtli, and myriads more.  In my particular case, this story was told to me in the form of the Passion and Death of Christ.  It is a form which I recognize in my own life. 

And isn't this the message of Lent?  I know I've had to give up many of the people I've cared about over the years.  And I had to give up the main structure of my life a few years ago.  But in the end, mine was a story of renewal.  And what I've sacrificed has led to my own rebirth.  I can look at sacrifice and change with gratitude and humility.  My entire view of life has changed.  I can say with Nietzsche: "Yea and amen!" to everything. 

So I'm observing at least one little portion of Lent this year.  Because my life is in accord with its mystery.  Because all life is the Via Dolorosa.  Because my life is the Via Dolorosa.  Because all life is the springtime born from the ashes of the dead.  And I can still see it, even without a church. 

So let's give up the tea!  And let's welcome our own spiritual birth.  Yea and amen!

"The Hills Are Alive..."

When I was staying with my grandmother in Abruzzo, I used to go for walks outside the village.

One of the many reasons why Nietzsche loved the mountains.

One of my favorite routes was along the main road that passes through town.  This road terraces its way up the mountain through a series of curves and straightaways.  For most of the way above town, the side of the road is dotted with trees and brush, small slopes, hermit-like shrines, farmhouses, and even parks.  The air is crisp and clean, there are beautiful flowers, and in the distance, you can see the snow-capped peaks of La Maiella, where countless hermits retreated during the Middle Ages to commune with God.  The whole scenery is reminiscent of The Sound of Music or of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.  

Whenever I saw this flower, I found myself humming "Edelweiss."

I often met another passionate walker on these afternoons.  She was a native of Pittsburgh who married an Italian and has been living in Italy for thirty years.  It was from her that I learned a few pieces of local lore, such as which snakes to particularly avoid—the little green ones.  She showed me where to find delicious drinking water from a fast-running, icy stream.  She also told me a tragic story that happened to a young couple in these mountains some decades ago. 

High up, there is a certain point where the face of the mountain has a cleft.  The road hugs the mountain all the way around this cleft, so that there is a sharp turn in and a sharp turn out.  The road has two lanes, no shoulder, and an almost vertical drop on one side—with no trees close enough for cover or shelter.  It was an intimidating location.  As a native of New Jersey and one not very widely traveled, I have never been afraid of terrain while driving.  However, when I approached this place, I was afraid to even do so on foot—not least because you cannot see around the bend until you get there, which cuts reaction times dangerously short if another car happens to be approaching from the opposite direction.

You can sort of see it in the middle of this picture.  The cleft in the road is the curve.

It was here that the young couple met their sad fate.  One night, they were returning from their engagement party to our town, where the girl lived.  Her fiancé, however, was not from the area and was unfamiliar with this difficult curve in the road.  In the darkness, he missed the turn, and since there was no guardrail, the car plummeted down onto the mountain.  The young man was able to free himself and get help.  Sadly, however, the young woman died.  Immediately after that was when the guardrail was built.  But ever since, this part of the road has been called la curva della morte:  "the curve of the death." 

It was a sad story, but I am grateful to my friend for telling it to me.  In doing so, she shared with me a little piece of my own heritage.  

Looking back on this reminds me of Book VIII of The Aeneid.  This is the chapter where the old king Evander introduces Aeneas to the local groves and rock formations of his Tiber community and steeps Aeneas in the numinous history behind his new and ancestral country—Italy.  My own journey in Italy was such a personal quest, and I learned much about my grandparents, my heritage, and myself along the way.  I am grateful to everyone I met—even to the ones I didn't see eye to eye with.  This journey has truly changed my life, and if I could live it all over again, I would not change a single thing. 

Pro-Life and the Übermensch

To say that all life is sacred. To say that a child with Down syndrome is sacred. To say that even the child born of such an unholy thing as rape is sacred. To be able to say, "The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." To be able to say thank you for all the things that have been poured into my life, for the bad as well as the good. Not everyone is able to do this. But this is what it means to affirm life.

In my case, to affirm life means to be able to say, "Thank you, Osama bin Laden, for killing my uncle. Thank you for teaching me to value life with a passion I might never have known otherwise. Thank you for teaching me the wisdom of suffering. Thank you for teaching me to understand the sufferings of others. Thank you for giving me the desire to use my skills and experiences to make a difference in someone else's life."

Somewhere Nietzsche wrote: "Do not do your enemy good when he has done you wrong, for that would put him to shame. Rather, thank him and tell him how he made you stronger."

To be grateful means to say "yes" to everything that comes into your life, whether it is good or bad. It means to stand your ground and face the music even when times are hard. It means to not take the easy way out. This is what the pro-lifers are asking. They are not asking to call a mistake good; they are not asking to call rape or incest good. They are asking for the weight and gravity of life to truly be understood, at its ugliest as much as at its most beautiful. Pro-life is not merely anti-abortion. Pro-life is really a form of life affirmation, at least it is for one pro-life friend of mine. And it's a very big and difficult step to look at all the events of life with gratitude, even the ugly ones, even the ones that have hurt me. Not everyone can do it. It is such a big step that I don't think I could ask anyone else to do it, much less require it of anyone. But it is a way to a higher perspective and a deeper understanding, for those willing and daring to take it.