Only the Concrete is Good

I live in a specific place (Scotland) in a specific time (early 21st century) with a specific man (Benedict Ambrose). I am also a specific person--and an immigrant, albeit one with strong ancestral ties to Edinburgh and other places in Scotland. 

I love to visit the specific buildings in which my ancestors and their families lived. On All Soul's Day I visit the cemetery (wet, untidy, depressing) where my Edinburgh great-great-grandfather lies. His widow was buried in Canada, whence she and their children emigrated. I can't pass their old home without thinking of them all and of my grandma, too. When she was small, her mother took her to Edinburgh for a year or two while sorting out some family business. And when she grew up, my grandmother married into another family from the east coast of Scotland. Various quirks of East Coast culture, some quite passé, were trained into my mother and then into me. And then I married into the remnants of a family from the east coast of Scotland, so here I am, watching the northern morning sunlight light up the trees along the river. 

I love living in Scotland, and I love the Scots although some aspects of contemporary Scottish life were a shock. Having grown up worried that Quebec nationalists would break up Canada, I was stunned to find myself among Scottish nationalists longing to split the United Kingdom. The crude language and nudity permitted on British TV were another surprise, as were the minuscule outfits and skyscraper heels on young ladies on Princes Street, even on cold, rainy winter nights. Homeless Scottish youngsters begging on the street blew my mind. Despite their clothes and their coarse language (which I couldn't understand), they had faces like children from Toronto's top private schools. (Of course this says more about 1980s Toronto than 2000s Edinburgh.) 

I also loved living in the attic of a 17th century house with 18th century additions and going, every Sunday, to a 1900 wooden flat pack church which was meant to be the temporary solution to the Catholics in the area having only enough money to buy the house and the land. The congregation was smaller and more Scottish in 2009 although the university had long provided a steady stream of foreigners. There was a goodly handful of English people, too. 

"Canadians are not foreigners," trumpeted an Englishman. "You're British born somewhere else!"

The Edinburgh TLM community provided me with another set of ancestors: the elderly Scottish ladies who prepared, presided over and cleaned up after the After-Mass Tea and the elderly men (English and Scots) who also connected us to the history of the TLM's survival in Edinburgh. I pray for these four women and two men during every Sunday Mass, so I think of them often, too. As I've written before, I wonder what the tea ladies would think of my changes to the After-Mass Tea and if they are quietly exulting to see how much the community has grown.  

Tradition is not only books but people--specific people. It is not only liturgy but culture, a specific culture. There are immigrants who want to live in Scotland as though there were no Scots, no Scottish culture, no Scots ancestors to pray for, no past to plug into--just opportunities to exploit and riches to plunder. I met that kind of immigrant often enough in Toronto: "I like Canada, but I don't like Canadian people." "Canada didn't have a culture until we got here." I loathe that attitude, and I'd wipe out my foreign accent if I could. 

The Canadian philosopher Father Bernard Lonergan, SJ, was re-expressing St. Thomas Aquinas when he said "Only the concrete is good." What he meant was that there are real, specific things and real, specific people to whom to pay attention. Ideas are just ideas, thoughts just thoughts: an excellent thing for Lonerganians overly excited by the Master's thought-structures to remember. 

It is something the young have to learn, too: that the world--that is, God's Creation--is what it is and not what we imagine about it or what we want it to be or what random strangers say it is. 

It is so sad to see the young imprisoned by their imaginations. They say things like:

"All the boys I know are dumb." 

"All the girls I know are crazy feminists." 

"The world is too horrible to bring children into." 

"Maybe I'm sad because I was born in the wrong body." 

"I fall into sin when I dance, and therefore everybody else does, too." 

"I really like this author, so everything he says is true." 

"Canada/Scotland/England/Australia has no culture of its own." 

"This man frightens me, but if I get off the elevator, somebody will think I'm racist." 

"I read a book about this, so now I know everything I need to know about it."  

These are all lies. These are just fantasies preventing their captives from grasping reality, and as such they are evil. Very evil.

Only the concrete is good. 

O Apple Tree, Thou Art Sick

I'm afraid this post is going to sound like the stereotypical country song. In short, the apple tree is sick and most apples that appeared rotted on the branches. The roses are gone as they have been replaced by a wooden fence. Benedict Ambrose still needs wheelchairs. Yesterday a cute little dog suddenly bit me as I was striding past her to accompany some young friends to swing dancing class. (In this context I can write, "What a nasty little bitch.")  

The waiting time to speak to someone at the NHS hotline was 90 minutes, and this morning I am told by our local surgery that they can't see me and I must call someone at the NHS hotline. Happily I am not as frantic as I was yesterday evening, for it eventually dawned on me that my husband kept banging on about tetanus shots because there's almost no rabies in the UK. 

In happier news, I now have my very own website. Here it is. Long-time readers will want to bookmark it, for blogging here on Blogger, my online home since 2006, will be but sporadic. You will also be interested in the blogpost I took down to send elsewhere and has now been published here by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. I'm delighted that the great Dr. K. wrote an introduction and that his son Julian included his own defence of dancing underneath. 

It's a long read, and it has enflamed the wrath of a small but vociferous group attached to the idea that social dancing is immoral. They say they have saints on their side, the Kwasniewskis and I and our backers in the comments boxes have other saints (and Scripture) on our side--it's all a jolly bunfight. It certainly proves our point against those commentators who initially scoffed and said, "No Catholic has problems with ballroom dancing! What are you even talking about?" Now commentators are wailing, "Oh why are you dividing the community with this Highly Controversial Topic?"

Or they were wailing. Dr. K has turned off the comments, as he was too busy or sleeping to moderate further. (Goodness, that makes me wonder which comments I haven't seen.)

While the battle raged online--principally over Facebook--I sat at the very back of an Edinburgh bus cleaning my dog bitten leg with an antiseptic wipe and then went to swing-dance class where men and women stood at a chaste distance from each other in a circle and learned the basic steps to the 8-count Lindy Hop. Afterwards I practised with one young friend while two other young friends danced up a storm with classmates or the Advanced People. It was great fun and my rage against stupid and irresponsible dog owners ("She's only a puppy!") dissipated as I danced. 

Here's something no-one has mentioned in the Catholic/Jansenist bunfight: the virtue of dancing in dispelling such very serious sins as wrath, sloth and pride. Everyone bangs on about lust, but as Julian K argues, social dances are too complicated for lust to take hold. Therefore, I would argue (as does Julian) that ballroom dancing might even prevent lust. It's 1-2-3 or 1-2-3-&-4 for three minutes, tops, and then onto the next person. Nobody swaying in a bear hug, as was common in my youth, to "Stairway to Heaven."

Of course, there may be people who are such slaves to concupiscence that merely clasping the hand, arm or shoulder blade of a random member of the opposite sex sends them into paroxysms of lust and longing. In that case, no, that person shouldn't dance. In fact, he or she should probably have a word with a good priest or a sympathetic psychiatrist. (Dr. Freud loathed Christianity, and we Christians really do have to pick our therapists with care.) All I ask is that they not tell everyone else they may not dance either. 

Anyway, with that happy thought, I will invite you to my wonderful new website, which is still under construction, so it will flourish and grow under your eyes. I hope it will encourage readers to discover, learn and practise the riches of social life that are our western Christian birthright. 

The Crab Walk

A hearty welcome to readers of Dr. Peter Kwasniewski's "Tradition & Sanity" substack (once the link is published). I was delighted when Dr. K invited me to send him my (refurbed) blog arguments that Catholics should dance because I am a great fan of his work, especially his Good Music, Sacred Music, And Silence.

Dr. K mentions in our collaborative piece Matt Platt's "A Different Drummer," which I recommend to everyone's prayerful reflection. It certainly strengthened my belief that good dances for Catholics should not be watered down with "discos"--that is, the use of contemporary recorded Top 40 music and the return to the usual flailing about once the waltz or reel is learned. However, if you are a huge fan of popular music recorded after 1955, be wary of grinding your teeth as you read. 

As I pour time and treasure into my social dancing project (a dedicated website is in development), I cannot help but be a little sad that my husband can only look on from his wheelchair. As I told him yesterday, he doesn't have cancer scares; he has unpleasant cancer surprises. His current cancer surprise has been beaten back with chemotherapy, but the shrinking tumours are leaving much nerve damage in their wake. 

Fortunately, Benedict Ambrose (as he is called in Webland) in not entirely paralyzed below the waist; he can still stand up and remain standing for short periods if he hangs onto something. If he has a railing on either side he can lurch up and down short flights of stairs, watching his feet to make sure they are doing what he wants them to do. B.A. can also, as we learned on Saturday, inch along a balcony walkway if he has only a single rail to hold. His neuro-physiotherapists call this move "The Crab Walk," which sounds like it could have been a dance popular in 1919.  

This Sunday's journey to and from Mass provided us with many opportunities to reflect that Edinburgh was not built with wheelchairs in mind. Considering the number of Scotsmen who lost limbs during the First World War (let alone the Second), it seems a shame it is only very recently that city planners began to think very seriously about making the kerbs (curbs) of pavements (sidewalks) wheelchair-accessible. 

That said, we had a lovely ramble around a local nature reserve on Saturday afternoon--I in my hiking boots and B.A. in his electric wheelchair--and enjoyed the bright, hot sunshine and the view of the Firth of Forth. It may have been the short Scottish summer's last hoorah; Sunday was windy, chilly, and grey, and today is rather damp. But Saturday was the kind of day you would not want to be anywhere in the world but right here.

After our idyll among the wildflowers, thistles and stoats, consuming croissants from a shop and coffee from a thermos, we went home for a rest and to prepare for a friend's birthday party. We had been extremely pleased to be invited--so much so that it took a while to remember that the friend and her husband live (like us) a the first (second) floor. Well, it took me a while. So belatedly we had to work out how many stairs there would be, and how many railings, and whether I should push B.A. there in a pushchair, or fold and carry his self-propelling wheelchair down our stairs and up theirs, or trot along contentedly behind his electric wheelchair and trust to his ability to crab-walk along the outside walkway. 

B.A. opted for the electric wheelchair, so I got it and its attendant ramp out of their hiding place, and B.A. flapped carefully down our stairs. We encountered friends on their way to the supermarket for more supplies as we rolled/strolled down the street, and our pleasure in the thought of the party increased. (I was even debuting a new pair of high-heeled shoes, for at last I have found a brand that doesn't hurt.) 

However, when we got to our friends' stairway, the real work of the day began. Oh, the stairs, flanked by railings were no problem, and I soon found a place to stash the heavy (and valuable) chair out of the sight of the road. However, the balcony is a long one for the semi-paralyzed, and during every moment of his Crab Walk, I was terrified that B.A. would simply topple over onto the cement paths below. 

It is not the least of the Lord's mercies that B.A.'s spinal troubles began when we were still relatively young and after I had spent two years or so working out in our local gym. Even wearing high heels, I could provide B.A. enough support to get through our friends' door and along their hallway to their sitting-room and, at last, a sofa. The same held true when, some hours later, we made the return journey, this time flanked by a half-dozen friends. Fed up, B.A. told me to stop hanging onto his jacket as he made his perilous-looking Crab Walk, so I left our friends to watch his feet, scurried to his wheelchair and drove it to the bottom of the staircase. 

Our host, looking rather harrowed (if I'm not just projecting) offered to go home with us and help B.A. up our stairs, but I demurred with thanks. The principal cause of B.A.'s mobility problems is a scrambled connection between his brain and his spine, but his brain seems to have worked out and become comfortable with our own staircase. What was new and scary was crab-walking a distance much longer than the ballet bar set up in our hallway, not to mention working out what to grab for balance on the route along our friends' elegant corridor. And, indeed, B.A. had no trouble getting up our stairs, even if, once he reached his self-propelling chair, he made a bee-line for bed.