Good, evil, ascetism and creativity

When I was thinking about this last night I kept thinking of these words from the hymn "Crown Him With Many Crowns":

"No angel in the sky
can fully bear that sight,
but downward bends his burning eye
at mysteries so bright."

The verse refers to Christ's wounds which are still visible in His glorified Body in Heaven; it made me think of the fact mentioned in the article that relatives at her mother and brother's funeral covered little Lindsay's neck with a white scarf, hiding her wound. We can't bear to look at the sacrificial cost of love--a wound so bravely borne because at some level this child's love for her tiny sister outweighed her terror and her pain.

Considering the quote
Stupid asceticism also helps sometimes, at least to win a temporary victory. Try to eat just a little piece of bread and water for a week and you'll see the effect. I came across one man, obviously not poor and not ugly- a magnet for pretty girls, he can't resist temptation without medical help. In order to fight with demons he fetched a special drug 'death to everything alive' which makes him impotent. Demons are especially angry at Lent they say, so when Lent comes he pops that drug and all women magically turn into sisters. In battle with demons all means are good, according to him and besides he likes to see women in new light.
But i don't think that solution is very clever, after all it spoils health, and our bodies are temples, they say. To my mind it's better to chopp wood, and search for inspiration.

She is a beautiful girl.

News flash: they're ALL beautiful. All of the millions of little girls born into troubled circumstances. All of them are beautiful. All of them try so hard to be brave. But unless their troubles get into the news, like Lindsay, very few people give two shakes of a rat's tail what happens to them. Wake up, Rod. She's just another little girl. Destined to grow up into just another "female," to use Karth's oh-so-respectful term.

At her mother's funeral, Lindsay was called a "prophetess" by the preacher. Like the prophets of the Bible, she spoke through signs as well as words. The sign she gave us was this: with her blood and breath, and the effort of her young arms in extremity, she said, louder than words could have, "I am my little sister's keeper." How many here are willing to step up and own that sign we've been given? How many are willing to say, "yes, I am my little sister's keeper"? How many believe that every little girl deserves our protection, our kindness, our assistance--before her throat is cut? Are you going to listen to the sign of the prophet, or are you going to kick her to the curb along with all the other females who are deemed of such little worth? Are you going to be like the rich young ruler who had the privilege of hearing Jesus speak directly to him, but walked away?

Don't waste your time wishing you were more like her. BE like her. It's not beyond anyone's capacity to take compassionate action now.

I'm not sure which comment you were responding to, rombald, but hey, if joining the Boy Scouts is the most compassionate action to protect children that you can come up with, go for it. I would guess that you're a bit old to be a Scout, but maybe you could volunteer as a leader and try to set a good example so other boys wouldn't grow up to be killers. You seem to have a rather good mind, so it seems to me you could probably come up with a better plan after a few moments of thought.

Joining a quasi-military organization might not be the best way to socialize boys, though. As evidenced by news reports that Dominique Smith had served in the Army and was currently in training as a correctional officer at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola. Ted Bundy was a Boy Scout, too, and it apparently didn't help very much in making him a better person.

In addition to being beautiful beyond the "we are all beautiful" nowadays sense, she looks as if she were very, very bright, highly intelligent. Maybe her saving her sister and herself too was operating on instinct. But the intelligence in that face suggests to me that she operated with "age of reason" reasoning. Maybe a chimpanzee would have saved the baby and itself by instinct, but only a reasoning human could have grasped the choice between saving one, herself, or trying to save both. And making the right choice. Lindsay not only did good; she rejected evil.

I hope no family social services separate her and her sister.

But first I was struck by the Berdyaev quotation at the beginning of Rod's post. Particulary by how unwestern and uncatholic it sounded. At least to me. And then I got to the source. Is boredom, not pride as in the western interpretation, ultimately the cause of sin? Is creative struggle, not self abasement, the antidote? Much to think about and I Iook forward to the day when orthodox spirituality restimulates that of the dying (bored out) west. Got to get out Geary St. soon again to visit St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco!

So, a question: if I submit an alternative explanation for Lindsay's actions and behavior, citing mundane things like cognitive development and basic logic processes in a child that age, will I be vilified? Will those seeing a "miracle" in this girl metaphorically strike me down for failing to get on the she's-a-prophet bandwagon?

Lindsay, I expect, will grow into a person of whom anyone would want to call friend. I also expect, should things go that way, that she'll be very confused for a few years while her guardians and sundry hold her up as a paragon for things projected at her from an adult POV.

Sig, in my experience, good kids get bad treatment from otherwise well-meaning adults. The more intense the situation, the worse the consequences for the child.

I'm much more worried about Lindsay's future than I am about what anyone might learn from her recent actions. I am sorry, and I don't mean to dispute that there is value in this "lesson"... but our culture is addicted to celebrity, and it doesn't care who gets hurt in its pursuit of a fix.

You hit the nubbin on the head, Sig.