The M word

Oh dear. The temperatures are warming up.  It is the time of year that I start to see a renewed effort at making the world a bit more proper and respectable by writing and sharing a plethora of sermons on the importance of modesty.  So this year, I am joining in on the fun or lack thereof.

So...Gentlemen...here is a list of things I never need to witness from ya'all ever again.

1-Hitting the pause button on a movie that has a certain actress in it and groaning at it as if you were having an orgasm right then and there...in front of ladies and gentlemen.

2-Watching and sharing music videos of people sharing filthy/ misogynist/ chauvinist jokes, or dancing or dressing provocatively...and groaning and or cat-calling together as a group.

3-Street harassment. Catcalling, honking your car horn at, or calling out at women who are complete strangers to you and then driving away before you can face the consequences.

4-Commenting on a celebrities/ models/ "friends" body parts disrespectfully to communicate either disdainful scorn or disgust or objectifying, lustful, arrogant approval.

5-Verbally and socially objectifying the human person and the human body by looking at photos of your "friends" on Facebook and people you "follow" on Twitter and appraising them solely on terms of sexual attractiveness to you, and then sharing your opinion with everybody.

6-Announcing a particular fetish or sexual preference of yours to people. Especially if they did not ask. Especially since it is none of their business. I certainly never asked. What makes you think the world has an interest in your sexual preferences? Yeah, you definitely are never getting a second date...and if my girlfriends ask me how the date went I am going to pass your announcement on to them so they will never date you either and tell all their pretty friends not to date you...who will tell all their friends and relatives...yeah you better move to another parish...or else clean up your act. Which brings me to # 7.

7- Assuming that other women or men have a duty to conform to or care about whatever your particular fetish or sexual preference happens to be, no matter how racist/ unrealistic/ unattainable/ shallow/ demeaning/ filthy/disrespectful/ ageist /unhealthy/ sexist it is.

8- Telling blonde jokes/ fat jokes/ old lady jokes/ fat lady jokes/ fat old lady jokes/ fat old blonde lady jokes/ Hillary Clinton jokes/ pretty much any joke that suggests falsely that only a certain type of woman is a daughter of God whose body is a temple of the Holy Spirit but that any female who ages, looks a certain way, disagrees with your views, or acts in a way that you disapprove...is not.

9-Ever asking or answering the question, "Would you do her?"

10- Ever asking or answering the question, "Hot or Not?"

11-Ever asking or answering the question, "On a scale of one to ten, how do you rank her?" Because I have never heard it used for work performance...or for ranking mind or personality.

12- Okay, I take it back. I did hear this gem once, "I give her face a 5, her body a 4, her brain a 4 and her personality a 2." Um...that is demeaning, and objectifying. I will see you in the line for confession.

13-Saying that ladies do not curse, and then proceeding to curse in front of ladies.

14-Making obscene gestures at people, particularly at ladies, particularly because you know that they will not return the gesture because they are ladies.  That makes you cowardly as well as immodest and disrespectful.

15- Going to the beach, ogling a girl in a bikini until you are drooling with lust. Laughing at an older woman whose cover-up can't hide all of her baby-weight, varicose veins and cellulite. Teasing or touching inappropriately your date in the one piece that cost her 85 bucks plus shipping. Then proceeding to go on a rant as to why Christian girls don't cover up enough at the beach.

16-Calling women who do not dress or act in a way that you approve "sluts".

17-Calling men who do not dress or act in a way that you approve "fags".

18-Dating and heatedly making out with someone with no promise of or intention of marriage.

19-Running in public without a shirt on and then getting shocked and surprised when girls sharply avert their eyes from you and blush. Then proceeding to act shocked and surprised when you are visually assailed by a woman in running shorts and a sports bra.  But not averting your eyes. Again, hypocrisy alert.

20-Looking at a woman lustfully, getting caught at it by someone, and then blaming the girl for what she was wearing.

Oh, you were expecting this list to be directed at women? Perhaps you were expecting another sermon dictating a certain dress code as if it were gospel truth and deviation from it were heresy. Nope. I have heard dozens and dozens of sermons about modesty in my life. Before I hit puberty...all during my High School years...all throughout college I have heard them.  In fact, and let me really stress this part-I have heard more admonitions and sermonizing about the virtue of modesty than I have heard of ANY OTHER VIRTUE IN MY LIFE.

Because I was a young woman, the one thing that I was singled out for to get regularly reminded of the importance of was not courage, diligence, charity or wisdom.  Not even in college. And I went to two "Good Catholic Colleges".  No, the mandatory talks were about Modesty. Most of them were unsatisfying, because they talked so little about Modesty.  They talked about sleeve length. They talked about skirt length. They talked about necklines. They talked about rape. They talked about better attracting the "right kind of man". They talked about speaking and dancing and sitting and acting "like a lady".  Did the men get the mandatory monthly talks about the importance of modesty? No. Oh, if I am lucky, occasionally I will get a blog post or an article reminding men to avert their eyes. Sometimes they will even say that Modesty is not merely about a dress code. Sometimes they will actually give the definition of the Holy virtue from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Tonight I was pleasantly surprised by reading one that called out the people who are treating modesty as if it were a feminine virtue and not a universal one. It was rare when I was growing up to find a sermon about modesty that did not place 95% of the responsibility for it upon women.  I remember once reading a "book of virtues for young women" as a teenager and when I got to "Purity" it read, "Purity is the most important virtue for women, along with Modesty, her handmaiden."

Purity and modesty were and still are, two of my most beloved, treasured and esteemed virtues. But I remember reading that and saying to myself "What?!" And then going down and showing my mother and my sister and my girlfriends and saying, "What about Charity? Isn't Charity the Queen of all virtues? Besides Purity IS Charity! It is seeing with God's eyes. But he does not say that anywhere? What about Humility, the mother of all virtues? What about Courage? What about Wisdom? Is what we heard before wrong? Why is he saying that?"

Then I read further and all that was left in the sermon were admonitions that if we "lost our virtue" we "lost what made us precious". Then it had cautionary tales about how we should avoid flatterers and mistrust men in general because they were probably trying to seduce us. Then it had more cautionary tales about how we should not ever be vain about ourselves because it would make us susceptible to seduction and immodesty. Adjurations to abstain from anything that could lead to fornication. Cautionary tales about girls who were raped by their uncles. Then blaming the girls for trusting their uncles.  It was a very eye-opening read for a fourteen year old girl and I never forgot it.  I will never forget how sick I felt afterwards. I felt sick like that many many times as I made that transition from girlhood into womanhood. I still see things every day that make me feel sick.  The behaviors I listed above are the things that most offend my modesty. They also offend my sense of the sacred, my respect for people, my respect for men, women, children, the elderly. They also offend my sense of justice.  They offend my sense of propriety. And the worst offenders I have seen are men.  Not women. Yes, I have seen immodest women on the internet, in movies, in TV...all sponsored by men, directed by men, watched by men, participated in by men. I have even witnessed some things from women that I knew that I thought unworthy of their dignity. But most of the offenders that I have met were men.  And yet it is women who get the majority of the sermons during the warm weather months. It is women who get told to respect themselves and act like ladies.

Fine, bring them on, I will keep listening to your complaints about strapless or sleeveless dresses, plunging necklines, bikinis, cut-offs, yoga pants, leggings worn as pants...fine.  But do it for the right reasons, and do not pretend that you are talking about modesty when you sermonize.  If all you talk about is rape prevention, that men are beasts (they are not! And I am sick of hearing it said! I love men!), that if we get treated like excrement it is because of how we dress, our demeanor or the way we talk or how much makeup we wear...do not pretend you are encouraging virtue.  "Do not advertise what is not for sale"? What does that even mean? NONE OF ME IS FOR SALE! Did you just compare my body with a commodity? I guess your hands are for sale then, because you are not wearing gloves.  "Don't show anything you would not want him to touch"? Oh is that why he keeps playing with my hair? Because I am not wearing a veil? And my body is up for grabs if I am not wearing a burka? You are not encouraging modesty with that kind of talk. You are enabling and justifying immodesty.

I want us to win this culture war, but we are not going to win it if people do not even know what Modesty is. We won't win it if any effort they make at encouraging or fostering lady-like behavior is only nurturing a sick false "purity culture".  We won't win it if we enable a culture that makes "purity" the only thing that makes a woman "worth it" and real purity is rejected by men as only for saints or would-be priests.  For that matter we are not going to win if sanctity or the priesthood are rejected as unattainable by the vast majority of our men.

My Wedding Day Part 2

I did not process down the aisle because there was no music and no crowd.  I just genuflected, strode up to the kneeler beside Ian and waited for our Mass to begin. Ian was being his stubborn, superstitious self and would not look directly at me until Mass had begun.  He made me smile and roll my eyes at the same time. That was my Ian. Father set up and then Mass began. I chanted as fervently as I ever had in my life.  Then the moment came.  We faced each other to offer each other our vows in the sight of God and the Church. Now he was looking directly at me. And suddenly everything was silent and still. The moment before our eyes and hands met, I was struck with a holy fear. It was like the fear and love I had felt every time I had held a new baby brother or sister for the first time. Or the fear I had felt the instant before the Sacred Host touched my tongue at my First Holy Communion.

God, Dear God...I have loved you all of my life and you have loved me all of my life. Help me to love him and love you as I should. Please sustain and strengthen my love every day. Help us to love you and to love each other more and more all of our lives and then forever in heaven. 

I looked into his eyes and saw his love for me. Those dear eyes, brimming with joyful tears, dark as midnight and often red from insomnia. Now they were clearer and brighter than the diamond on my engagement ring. They positively twinkled behind his glasses. Half the fun of getting married is seeing how happy it makes the man you love.  Today his shoulders were not heavy with the weight of a weary, wandering world.  Every familiar and adorable feature on his face was yearning for me. For us. I saw that he was taking his life and heart into his own hands and holding it out to me in offering. And I heard him speak the words.  That he would love me forever. That I had been chosen to be cherished by him for always. That he would "accept our children lovingly from God" whether they were boys or girls, healthy or handicapped, smart or slow, whether the world thought they were beautiful or ugly or whether they were "good" or "bad" or "easy" or "difficult".  That all of him wanted all of me.

And as I answered his vows with the old, familiar and beloved words "to have and to hold, from this day forward, to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part" he knew the truth of my heart offered to him and to God. He heard it in my voice, he saw it in my eyes, he felt it in the touch of my hands.  And he smiled at me.

To be truthful, I hardly remember the rest. I was so dizzy with happiness and gratitude. I know we brought up the gifts. The miracle of consecration and transubstantiation happened in a trice. God himself came down on that inadequate altar to become food for us. He gave us His strength to empower our weakness, His life to save us from spiritual death. Ian said afterwards, "That was like a powerful three way hug...Being joined to you in marriage before God, then being united with God, He in Me and I in Him and also joined with you in Him."  And I recognized again, the joy of an orphan who has a Father in God, a Mother in Our Lady, a home in Mother Church, a place in the Mystical Body of Christ, a Lover and Savior and Lord in Christ, a Comforter in the Holy Spirit, and an angel as a guardian. And now Ian and I were a family, a domestic church. Now we were one. Now we were married.

And suddenly we were invited by the priest to kiss and we forgot how to.

Seriously, our first gesture of love as husband and wife and we both went white and froze for a second. We were so nervous as we leaned toward each other. (Are we doing this right? It has something to do with the lips, right?) We found each other of course and then we forgot to be nervous and self conscious in front of that massive crowd of four people. And everyone went "AWWWWWWWWW!" Which was exactly how we felt so we laughed against each other.

We were embraced and congratulated and we thanked everyone and embraced everyone. It felt like an instant and age and then Ian and I were alone together and tucking ourselves into what was now our car to go home. HOME. OUR home.

"I know you told me not to get my hopes up about how you would look," Ian said, "And that this was not the dress that you had hoped for your wedding day...But if you could only see yourself right now. You are radiant. You are so, so beautiful!"

Any trace of nervousness I had felt at my own insufficiency was now forgotten. All I knew was joy and peace and him.  "My husband," I pronounced with all my happy heart.
"Let's go home, my dear wife."

And there are so many other little details about that day that I hope I remember forever. I hope I remember skyping with Ian's brother Z, and his "best man toast" speech to us. I hope I remember the chocolate cake we ate at the lovely steakhouse when we blew out the candle and made our wish for our future happiness, holiness and prosperity. (I do remember it, and my mouth is watering. Velvety, moist, decadent, chocolate love...The champagne! The steak! The spiked mocha latte topped with whipped cream and chocolate curls in the sugar-rimmed giant glass! Wow!) Most of all, I hope that I will remember every smile on his face as clearly as I do now, as if it were yesterday. And I know that I will.  Because he smiles at me like that every day with the same love and longing, gratitude and wonder. But now with more comfort, ease and familiarity. That smile is a shadow of heaven.

My Wedding Day Part 1

My wedding day dawned with dove gray skies. I remember that I wore galoshes to the Navy Chapel because it rained so much prior. After all this time of waiting, I was finally going to marry Ian. I would have my own unbroken, stable, loving family and know that joy. Having not slept the night before, I was a messy combination of emotional rawness, jittery nervousness, melancholy and ecstasy.  I wondered which would look worse in the photos, my red eyes or my unbleached teeth or my humidity-frizzed hair.  I tried not to look too closely at the simple ivory dress that I had snagged on clearance from JCPenney.  It was worlds away from the dress I had dreamed, of course. I had to supplement it with an embroidered, lacy shrug of mine, to make it church-appropriate.  Oh well, I thought, It is all I could afford, and now I am out of time to come up with anything better.  Ian is already crazy enough to be wild about my looks. Let's just hope the insanity holds out.
Between finances, relocating and deployment, Ian and I had to get married as soon as we could. We could not have a big celebration with all of our friends. We would not get our High Tridentine Mass. There would be no organ or choir. There would be no reception. I had not even been able to ship my wedding veil to Washington. There would be no reception, no beautiful church, and nobody would be there except Ian's parents and a grandmother that I was still getting to know.
Ian just wore a suit for the ceremony instead of his dress uniform.  The little Navy Chapel still had poinsettias decorating the altar for us. After all, in the old calendar, it was still the Christmas Season. I bought the only other flowers from a grocery store that morning.  I bound together corsages for my grandmother and new mother in law, a button-hole for my new father in law, and one for Ian. Ian was so happy that he got the single red rose I had bought. He made me smile again and again and held me when I needed a hug. My in laws reactions were priceless and touching. I had wanted to give the new additions to my family a peace offering and gesture of filial love. It meant more to them somehow, that I had made them myself that morning.
 I managed to have enough white spray roses afterward to bind up a nosegay for myself. I used an old, celery colored, chiffon scarf to wrap it. As I assembled myself in the bathroom, and mentally prepared, I hoped that I still managed to look bridal. I thought about the wartime brides I had seen in 1940's movies, who wore suits with pencil skirts and covered their day hats with newspapers to shield them from the rain. I smiled. Every bride that I had ever known, said that their wedding day felt surreal. They were right. I was still pinching myself.

I thought about each of my friends with gratitude and regard. I tried not to be sad that they could not be there. Many brides have not had the luxury of being reunited with old friends when they wed.  I told myself again.  I thought about my father. My poor, beloved, abusive, estranged father. I said a prayer for him and thanked God for the gift of my life. And I was so relieved and grateful that he was far away and could never hurt me again.  I had said goodbye to him years ago. At my graduation, my relatives had played at a charade of us not being estranged from each other and that he was not an unrepentant, abusive predator. After enduring their antics and his with more grace than I should have, I promised myself that I would never again let them spoil a major event of my life with such a disgusting farce. Between his charade and my mothers antics it was almost more than I could bear.  He was not here, and my abusive, mentally ill mother was not here either. The relatives that had turned a blind eye to my pain who did not really know me were not there.  And I felt tremendous relief.  Now I could cry if I wanted  to. Now I did not have to make an apology for my tears or broken heart to anyone.  Now I could be happy and laugh without them. And there was nobody around to demand apology for that either. God and Ian both knew and loved my heart and they were the only ones there.
I thought of James, Margaret and Charlie, John, Thomas, Andrew, Elizabeth, Teresa, Elena, Peter and Catherine. My brothers and sisters. After growing up giving so much of myself to them, I had left for college. We had all missed so much of each other's lives. I was the first of the children to go to college and graduate. I was the first to truly break free from the domestic violence, emotional abuse, co-dependency and denial that was our lives before and after the divorce. Now I would be the first of our broken, dysfunctional family to get married.  A cold hand gripped at my heart. Everything in me ached for them. For all of us. We were eleven beautiful, bright, gifted children who were born to a psychotic father and a neurotic mother. Our parents were bitterly divorced and could not stand each other. We loved our parents, we loved each other, and we loved our Catholic faith. And now we had to pick up our cross and follow Christ. We had to find our path to follow Christ according to our vocations, not in imitation of our parents' example.  I was the eldest of them and the least of them.  I wished they could have been there and we could have been happy together. But it was impossible. And that was what heaven was for.   I prayed in my heart and spoke to them:  I love all of you so much. I wish you could all be here. But if we all make it to heaven, we will have all eternity to be together and be happy. 

During our marriage prep the priest had said to me and my prospective spouse "You know you are 50% more likely to divorce because her parents are divorced?" Haha. "Yes, father" we replied. "But we are not going to get divorced," Ian stated. "And of course I know that father",  I added. "Every child whose parents are divorced gets that statistic read to them. It is one of the hallmark joys of being a child of a broken home that you sometimes get treated like an unsafe bet, or damaged goods."

I wanted to tell my brothers and sisters that we had a choice. And a chance.  We could be loving, loyal, only slightly insane, semi-well adjusted people. We could be good and faithful Christians. And we could have happy, loving, lifelong marriages.

I fastened the string of pearls that Ian had bought me from Thailand as a Christmas present.  The words of another priest, a dear, very old, jokester and toughie of a retired Marine Irish priest came back to me. "You take good care of her! You, Mr. Scottish, Navy man, you! This girl right here! She is like a pearl of great price! A man sells everything that he has to have her!" I had laughed and blushed and Ian had turned to me and said, "He is right. You are my pearl. You are priceless."
Now I fastened the earrings that matched the necklace and admired them again. Somehow, now that I saw how gorgeous and expensive real pearls were, it made the memory of that pretty speech more loving. I hummed the tune to the chant I would sing for the responsorial psalm and thought of Ian.

Dear Ian. He was my hero and my comrade at arms. Brave Ian. Clever Ian. Wise Ian. Kind Ian. Crazy Ian. Silly Ian. Serious Ian. Melancholy Ian. Peaceful Ian. Quiet Ian. Noisy Ian. Loyal Ian. Steadfast Ian. Every beautiful gesture, gift and love-speech he had ever made me, every hug and kiss, every loving glance and gaze came rushing at my memory and overwhelmed me. I was too overwhelmed with emotion to weep joyful tears or talk coherently to my grandmother when she tumbled into the bathroom. I loved him so much and now I was finally going to be his life's companion forever.

"Stern as Death is love. Relentless as the Netherworld. Many waters cannot drown love."  I thought to myself.  I squeezed my bouquet, looked at myself in the mirror one last time, took a deep breath and walked to down the hall to the chapel to marry Ian.