Angelina Jolie's Magnificent Towers & The Fear of Death

A few days ago I came across a short piece at Acculturated by Ashley E. McGuire applauding Angelina Jolie for her recent decision to cut off both her breasts in a preemptive mastectomy. Ms. McGuire praised Angelina Jolie for having the strength to embrace life, citing the celebrity's desire to live long and well with her children and grandchildren. Ms. Jolie's mother died of cancer at age 56; in interviews Ms. Jolie has said that regret that her children cannot know their own grandmother is an important factor in her decision.

I can't know enough about Angelina Jolie's family dynamics to flat-out tell her she was wrong to do away with her breasts. On the other hand, I think it's a bit wicked to praise her from the rooftops. At the least we should maintain a tactful silence about her decision.

First I want to talk about the teleology of breasts (dare I say the teleology of teats? I love a little alliteration). The purpose and place of sweet delightful breasts in life will tell us why we oughtn't to be praising her quite so loudly. Then I want to mention Ms. Jolie's own self-destructive history, which means I won't be maintaining a tactful silence. I might not have thought a lot about her breasts before this week, but now I do, and I grieve for them.

Just to be clear, I understand that she hasn't been left flat-chested. She hasn't simply hacked off her breasts. Reconstructive surgery has been done. It was a "nipple-sparing surgery" that left "small scars and implants in otherwise intact breasts" (please note that the phrasing suggests small implants, but doesn't say so). So the important news in this article is that the procedure will not reduce her sex appeal.
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If I say that life is to be lived, you probably don't think of simple survival. Living as survival is a sub-human way to be; we should want better for people, and we grieve for people whose poverty debases them to that level. The image of God in us recognizes that life isn't simply to be survived or lived through, it is to be creative. Life is to be generative. That is, in fact, how we recognize life in its simplest form: by the ability to procreate. Humans live an even greater life than germs and trees and frogs because we can be creative in so many things, from speech to space rockets. All of that is life. But what is more fundamental to human creativity than human procreation, actually making new people?

We live to create. If we do not, we are only surviving.

Our society prides itself on its higher creative functions, on its arts and sciences. But if the most basic, fundamental forms of human creativity are despised, those higher arts are already dead on the vine.

We don't honor baby-making. And I mean the whole thing, the whole complex. We don't honor sex, we don't honor pregnancy, we don't honor birth, we don't honor mothering, we don't honor child-rearing. All these things, which are the most fundamental affirmations and practices of life, we despise. Sex is porn and mutual masturbation, pregnancy is stretch marks and obesity, birth is not a trial overcome but a trap avoided, mothering is a burden and a curse, and child-rearing a fearful mess. A society that thinks that way will be afraid of death, not full of life.

It is fear of death that is really the issue here. Angelina Jolie got to enjoy a life-span with her mother. So did I. My mother died of breast cancer at age 53. I was 29, a man, not very young, with two small children. My oldest daughter has one memory of my mother, and it is at the hospital where she died. That grieves me. I miss my mother constantly, and I wish she could be here with my children.

If a double mastectomy would have saved her life, we would have done it.

But to do it preemptively, before any sign of cancer, is mere survival, not life.

Sections from the Acculturated piece:

A strong current running through her Times piece was motherhood. She talks about losing her own mother and wishing her children could know their grandmother. She talks about finding strength and comfort in knowing her decision basically ensures that her children will not have to live in fear of losing their mother to the same death.

Her decision also shows us how children can challenge us to be better people. Her children give her something to live for, a source of strength in making a decision that would easily be paralyzing. Their mere existence helped her see past a vapid world that values a woman’s breasts as a part of her beauty or lust-worthiness.

So thank you Angelina, for reminding the world that breasts are disposable, but life is not.

But...breasts aren't disposable. And a woman's breasts are part of her beauty. And why did her children have to live in fear? The only way children would live in fear of losing a parent who wasn't even sick would be in a house that was already full of the fear of death.

The Acculturated piece makes the point that women who can't have children are no less women for that. That is true. But we shouldn't pretend that having children or being childless is a disinterested fact. People were made for, among other things, making new people.

The beauty of useful things is largely to be found in their utility. Although modern man seems to have forgotten it (unless we're feeling particularly Freudian), men love breasts because they're made for feeding people. Proverbs 5 urges husbands to "let her breasts fill you at all times". That sounds pretty sexy. Also sounds pretty alimentary. Breasts are beautiful because they feed our babies.

If we honored that, we would honor breasts. We would find them beautiful, instead of treating them as objects of lust. Ms. McGuire's conflation of beauty and "lust-worthiness" is unfortunate, but consistent with a world-view indifferent to children.

For three months Angelina Jolie fed two human beings from the bounty of her breasts. That, though it happens every day, is something to be honored.

If I had a tremendously high predisposition toward testicular cancer, I would certainly look at many preventative measures, but I would have to know for sure that I had cancer before I elected to be rid of them. And that would be true even after my wife was past childbearing age. That's because, good people of Earth, my balls are an important part of who I am. Am I still me without my balls? Yes. But God gave them to me and blessed them. I wouldn't want my children to see in me a spirit of ingratitude and fear by dishonoring the testes from which they sprang.


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So that's the part where Angelina Jolie is part of a Hollywood and an America that despises life. The other part of the story is Angelina Jolie in a world that fears but worships death. This is a darker side.

Having been growed up since about the mid-90s, I can't help but have picked up a few things about the wife of Brad Pitt.

She has said she was "sexual in kindergarten", taking off her clothes and making out with boys. She became sexually active at a young age, quickly combining blades and cutting with sex. She became a cutter, regularly cutting her arm with a razor whenever she "felt trapped". (Cutting is a self-mutilation behavior that is reaching epidemic proportions among teenage girls.)

Might it not be that this preemptive mastectomy is a deep expression of self-hate? Of fear, of pain, of the worship of death? I am afraid of Death, so I will offer him my living breasts. I will kill them and give them to him. And I will no longer be a woman, a life-giver. I will be simply a being, hoping to keep being for as long as possible.

Angelina Jolie is a woman who seems to have been abused, has an inability to honor herself, appears to hate her body, and is worshiped by many because she is "lust-worthy", not beautiful.

I think her act of self-mutilation is to be pitied and mourned. One could perhaps elect simply to leave it as her and her family's business, and nobody else's. It certainly should not be celebrated.

By the way, she's having her ovaries removed next.


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The idea that our bodies are not ourselves is a bizarre but an ancient one. There seems to be a feminist twist in this story, thanks to Angelina Jolie entitling her op-ed in the New York Times "My Medical Choice". Ms. McGuire says she is "the kind of feminist I can respect". Jolie is overcoming nature itself, something all Paglian feminists find admirable. So wonderfully pagan and stoic.

The weird flippy-flip here is that Jolie, while removing her breasts and her ovaries, is preserving her outward appearance. It seems that she is not concerned with the light and passing things of this world, like making kids or affirming the importance of the body. The apparent spiritual depth of being able to forsake the body loops all the way around into a vanity of the body. But death stalks the big top.

Happily, we need not fear death, nor be enslaved by Creation. We can live in it, create in it, and die in it with grace. The promise of the Resurrection, with Christ the first fruits, means that we can look forward to new life and new creation. But it also means that we can honor our bodies to their fullest now, since they will be made whole again, and forever.

We mustn't fear death. Help us, O God.

On a closing note, and to be saved for another post, this: believing in the Resurrection makes for a deeper eroticism than life-haters are capable of. Just thinking of my own buxom broad's big bountiful breasts makes me want to make more beautiful bouncing babies with that winsome wife of my youth. And even when we're past the time of having "useful" equipment, I'll still delight in her breasts. They've got history. They've fed five babies. And if God forbid we ever have to cut them off, I'll mourn with her.

I will never tell her they were "disposable".

With The Right Lawyers, I Can Copyright ANYTHING!

If I can trademark this little brown spiral on my cookies, then the world is my oyster. Nothing will be off-limits to me, and everything will be off-limits to you!

Also, I will own all the bees in the world.

Get Rid of Field Goals?

Perhaps you've heard that Bill Belichick, legendary coach of the New England Patriots, wants to get rid of the kick for an extra point after a touchdown. I think it's a great idea, at least given the way it's taken from the middle of the field, only three yards out from the goal line. It's a relic from an older football rule book, out of date for a hundred years now.

Well, it's a great idea to get rid of them if we have to keep them as they are. The problem is the way the kicks are taken.

Rugby conversions are kicked from wherever the scorer crossed the goal line. You're allowed to back up as far as you'd like to create a better angle, but of course, the farther back you go the harder you have to kick. So a conversion can look like this.

In the two major codes of rugby conversions are worth two or three points, reflecting the added difficulty. A try (touchdown) and a conversion add up to seven, just as in American football.

Extra points in football are practically superfluous, and there's no need to risk injury on unnecessary plays. Kids playing in the back yard already count by sevens, the NFL and other leagues can as well.

But listen, lads...let's not get too crazy.

On this Super Bowl week ESPN's Skip Bayless suggests getting rid of field goals entirely. His selling point is simple: you wouldn't want something as awesome as the Super Bowl being decided by a couple of lousy kickers, would you?

I think outlawing field goals would warp the game unacceptably (and lead to illogical 21-14 scoreboads that should read like soccer 3-1 scores), turning teams into unbalanced monstrosities that specialized heavily in either running or passing, since they'd have to be built to maximize finishing in the red zone.

Bayless would also get rid of kickoffs, by the way, so that each team would just start at the 25, turning the game into one massive college overtime.


But the impact on gameplay isn't even my biggest objection. I object philosophically. Darn tootin'! Philosophically, I said!

Managing the foot part of football is one of the most elegant aspects of the game. Handling field position, getting in range for kicks, and clock management are all great parts of the game. Football would be a lot less fun if your team were down two with twenty seconds left on their own forty-yard line. A couple of hail marys and that's all she wrote.

Field goals reward balance and consistency. That's why I love 'em. Teams with a good defence and a balanced offense can garner consistent rewards out of field position and field goals. Getting rid of goals would take away a huge part of the team aspect of American football and continue the offense-defense over-specialization that has been going on for decades.

That, by the way, is why we hate kickers. Because they're not football players. They're not part of the team. Instead of getting rid of field goals, how 'bout we make a rule to make sure football players are taking these kicks. It would be a skill you'd have to practice, but if your kicker had to start the first offensive play of the game, or play in at least ten downs barring injury, we'd dislike kickers and kicking less.

I do not want to watch four teams playing (two offenses and two defenses). I'd like to see my boys playing your boys. Two football teams. Is it too much to ask to go back to players playing both ways? Yes, I know it is.

Picture what have athletic kickers could look like! I loved seeing this play, even though it happened against my Gators a couple of years ago. Apparently this kicker is an Australian kid who grew up playing Australian Rules Football.

The solution, I'd suggest, is not to make kicking less a part of the game. It's to make it more a part. Not by having more kicking, but by having it be less specialized.

A lot of the old rules are still on the books, by the way. Remember this? (skip to 1:55)

Or Doug Flutie's made drop kick for the Patriots? Or Drew Brees' attempt at a drop goal in a Pro Bowl? Here's video of a high school kid making one in 1960.

Imagine more pooch kicks or drop goals. Or if you have the rugby knowledge, imagine grubbers or garryowens in American football. Imagine kicking that's more fun. Which it would be, if it were less abstracted from the rest of the game. More and more varied kicking would actually make the game much more exciting. It only sucks because we're already trying to hide it away.

So here's my call: Football kicking for football players! Put the foot back in football!

Just like QB Randall Cunningham did in 1989.

O Christian, Watch Your Tongue

Watch out, boys and girls. The f-word and other bombs might be dropped in the text below. You may give thanks to good God, though, that no blasphemy is engaged in. By me.

O lads and lasses, how I wish you would watch your fucking tongues.

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I work at a corporate coffee shop equipped with a drive-through. The store does nearly a million and a half a year, so it's pretty busy. I had two experiences recently in drive-through, and had a conversation with one of my sons this past Saturday, that has the use of "foul" language at the front of my mind.

The other day a rugby buddy of mine came through drive-through. We don't have a face-cam, so I didn't know who I was talking to. I did the standard greeting, and got a blast back over my headset that all three of the other workers wearing head-sets heard too: "Swait, you fucking asshole, I didn't know they let fucking fuck-ups like you work in this place!" I laughed and insulted him back, albeit using cleaner language. The woman working next to me was absolutely shocked, so I had to tell her, "It's all right, this is one of my rugby buddies." I wasn't offended at all. My only thought was, it didn't occur to this asshole (my friend) that there'd be mixed company listening in on our talk. He figured it out, of course, when he got to the window and my co-worker gave him the old evil eye.

I use coarser language than most American Christians believe is permissible, because I believe that many of our conventions are prudish and precious, and not actually righteous. I can't stand the evangelical "crap" instead of "shit", for example. I would not speak the way my friend did, but I was not at all offended. I've tended bar, I've been around the rugby lads. A sentence like "fuck the fucking fuckers" fazes me not at all. I'd tell someone to shut up if he were talking like that in mixed company, or in any company if he claimed to be a Christian. But I'm not going to get my panties all in a twist.

You know what does get my panties all in a twist? What I heard through the drive-through a couple of days ago. "Hey, do you have the caramel---OH MY GOD!---I don't even know what I want. I'll have the frapp---OH MY GOD!---what should I have?---OH MY GOD!------OH MY GOD!---I don't even know. What's good?---OH MY GOD!---I can't even decide! My God...---OH MY GOD!---Okay, okay, OH MY GOD, I got it, I'll have the..."

I mean it when I say, that shit fucking pisses me off.

I know I'm not the only person out there who cringes every time God's name is taken in vain like that. And it's Christians' fault. For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written. If you talk like the woman above did (and you know, I don't have to tell you, that it was a woman), I know you're not a Christian. You wouldn't be that careless. Your mom and your Sunday school teacher and your friends wouldn't let you. But you will let one little "Oh my God" slip when you learn that your order is coming in late, or there's a sweet sweater sale, or whatever other little bit of news there might be.

You know what that does?

That tells the pagans out there that it's okay to take the Lord's name in vain. And it's not. And dare I say it, not only for God's sake. For mine and others as well. I have a physical reaction of disgust every time I hear a careless "Oh my God". And I thank God and my parents for that. My mom went to a British school abroad through 11th grade. She could never stand the word "bloody". It made her cringe every time she heard it. I never understood it, but I knew it was real.

O Christian, there are still a bunch of us medievally non-mall-going Christians out there who cringe every time you call on God without calling on him.

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Yesterday my six-year-old wanted to know why Iron Man used dirty language. I was a little surprised, because I often let them watch PG and PG-13 hero cartoons, but those rating are usually due to what happens when Wolverine's claws meet flesh. There wasn't, as far as I could recall, any real foul language.

Turns out he was thinking of the Avenger's movie, which I had watched with them. I couldn't think of what he meant off-hand. When Iron Man wakes up after being blasted in the final epic fight, his first words are "What the hell? What just happened?"

So we talked about it. I said that Tony Stark was, like a lot of rich men, immoral and given to vice. I also said he was brilliant and hard-working. I told him that a person like him in real life would probably use bad language, that he wasn't written as a Christian.

But I also told him that in times of duress men will often use foul language. Including good Christian men. The important thing is to never use language carelessly. Iron Man had just been fighting a wicked god; maybe "what the hell" was accurate.

I told him what was worse than "what the hell". "What the heck". Saying that is worse.

Why, my father?

Because you're pretending not to curse, but you are. That's why you never say "jeez" or "gosh".

Also, as Swaits, you believe that words like "shit" aren't always bad. You guys are just too little to know when to use strong language, so for a few years you'll avoid it all.


"Oh my God, there's a sale at the Gap!" I'm sorry, miss, were you talking to God? Because he's listening. The Goblin King. Redrum redrum redrum. Do we really imagine that in a world made by Word we may use words carelessly? If nothing else it will impoverish your own soul. It will rip away your creative spark.

I have said elsewhere that I want to bring God in to my daily speech more. I don't say "God willing" or "thank God" often enough. If I heard a tornado were bearing down on us, I think "Oh my God" would be a fitting response. Even if the news were simply that a big storm was coming, "Oh my God" could be shorthand for "God be with us". But that's not how we use that phrase.

"For, as it is written, 'The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.'" You know what precedes that verse? "You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law." That's why God is blasphemed in our presence. You gave them permission. You who preach against adultery and stealing, do you commit adultery? do you steal?

I know you blaspheme. And you do it like it's no big deal. 

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We live, O Christians, in midgard. A world full of skubalon. A world under heaven and over hell. A world with a God and a devil and witches and bitches. And we can't forget it. We may not speak of these things carelessly, calling upon God or the devil to see to our promises or attach their names of our venial desires. Nor may we, and this is our chief vice, act like they are not there. Like saying their names is simply emptying our lungs. Names are magical and powerful, and your soul will coming rushing right out of your insides, following your careless words close behind.

If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

If you speak vainly, your life will be vanity. And your entire life will follow where your tongue leads. Will you not be careful?

And will you please stop giving my co-workers and customers an excuse to blaspheme?

Press A Button & Be Done

I need coffee before coitus. It's true. I perform terribly without my morning dose of caffeine, and that's when wifey is most likely to put me to work.

I will drink coffee at home prepared in a variety of ways. I'll drink it turkish. I'll do a press. I'll do a pour-over. I'll do a plain old drip machine. I avoid the last, for reasons that will be made clear below.

So wifey pours me a press this morning.

"I hate doing the press."

"I know, baby. Think of preparing a press as making love."

"I just want to press a button and be done."

"I know, baby, that's how we make love."

Zing. Daddy wins, even if he'll be made to pay for it later.

Speaking of preparing coffee as if it were like making love, what does this delightful little poster say to us?

 

Olasky's Hallelujah: A Cold & Broken Anti-Poetic Monstrosity

Well, I pretty much wrote this post when I wrote the title. Goodness gracious me. I shouldn't take this so personally. Unleash the rantin'.

About a month ago Marvin Olasky wrote a post at World Magazine about Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah, the one made famous by Jeff Buckley and since covered by oh so many artists great and small. Olasky declares the lyrics blasphemous/irreverent, writes new lyrics for the tune, and asks Christians to upload their performances of his new and improved lyrics to YouTube.

Today a friend of mine posted one such video on his facebook wall, and here I am reacting to it. But I first read about Olasky's effort a few days ago, at Curator Magazine. There Nathan Chang ably defended the song from a Christian perspective, particularly Jeff Buckley's version (this is valid because Buckley made the song famous, not Cohen; no one thinks of Cohen's version first).

With all due respect to Dr. Olasky, when I read the article at Curator I read it more for the enjoyment of reading about Buckley's Hallelujah. I figured that the only reason this crazy idea to write new "Christian" lyrics to the song had gotten any press was that Dr. Olasky, a nationally prominent Christian thinker, had suggested it. I didn't even bother clicking through to his post, because I was sure no one would actually take it seriously.

I'd forgotten how dry the poetic souls of evangelical hipsters are. Videos have been uploaded.

Let's be clear on the level commitment to bowdlerization we're talking about here, in the name of "taking captive every thought [song]" for Christ. Dr. Olasky was a member of the Communist Party in the 70s, before becoming a Christian. He loves the tune to the Soviet national anthem. So he rewrote the letters to the doxology and Great Is Thy Faithfulness, then slapped them onto the U.S.S.R.'s premier piece of 20th-century musical bombast. As to the artistic merits of that glorious mash-up, I will say nothing, but will ask the reader to note how such a thing must inform the taste.

Over ten years ago, if NRO archives are to be believed, Dr. Olasky criticized politicians and their hangers-on for being too much like Zeus, and not enough like Jesus. That is, too devoted to honor, strength, duty, and purity. Instead of love and charity and sweetness and other Jesus-like qualities.

The hard and unkind orientation Dr. Olasky criticized is, inevitably, the direction the song and poetry of Hallelujah take when he lays Bowdler's ax upon it.

His biggest problem with the song seems to be its melancholic connection of sex and divinity.

[The words] are sometimes sacrilegious. Cohen penned a variety of versions, but the central stanzas offer a union of sex and salvation: Jeff Buckley called the version he used “the hallelujah of an orgasm.” Even apart from that, the lyrics form a brooding, angst-filled, lonely ode to failure, “a cold and broken hallelujah.” But that’s not the biblical hallelujah evident in the last of the Psalms, 150, which rightly starts and ends, “Praise the Lord!” 

The song is certainly spiritually discomfiting, but, I think, spiritually brilliant. It makes one to think of David and Bath-Sheba, and of one's self. Even if, however, we decide that the song is blasphemous, why must we kill it dead and then raise it as a nationalistic-christian-purity-frankenstein's?

This is the virtue of the Buddhist, agnostic, atheistic, irritatingly confused Cohen's lyrics: that they are agnostic, atheistic, and confused. The one real virtue of the pagans was their willingness to go out and die well when they knew they must die badly, as pawns of the gods or victims of the empty darkness. In Cohen's song we hear the hunger for a good god in a world like that, a failed search for exaltation in the arms of a woman and the breath of a spirit.

It's good poetry. If the song is blasphemous, throw it out. Slay it, and let it die well. If it is not blasphemous, save it. Humans that are saved will still always be human, they are not only spirit, but human. Songs that are saved shouldn't have their lyrics ripped off of them as if they were the filthy body covering over the clean spirit of the tune.

Ancient is the tradition of taking popular songs (reportedly even tavern tunes) and using the music for hymns. There has been debate throughout history about the good of this practice, but what is done in that situation is not what Dr. Olasky has done. Hallelujah is intensely personal, and the replacement lyrics too similar and bizarre in their echoes of the original. It would be one thing to put the lyrics of the Canadian national anthem of the tune of Hallelujah, or something else completely unrelated, but what has been done instead is to keep the refrain, and even key phrases of poetry. It's about hallelujah. Dr. Olasky is theologizing it, but it's already theological. He's editing and correcting without making it sufficiently other; he's bowdlerizing.

"Cold and broken hallelujah", a lyric that alternately makes me think of aloneness and loveless orgasm, is retained in this version...in the middle of verse that is choppy, militant, and relentlessly "redemptive" (read, "pure"). Listen, Christians, it's okay for one work of art to be sad or tragic or lonely or suicidal. God's Big Story is not.

Besides, can we not honor pagan art that is true? May we not mourn with our friend who is going off to die in the darkness because of his pride and hate? Are we that much better than him? The story of the Sons of Light in intertwined for a long time with the story of the Sons of Darkness, and we are brothers. Pour one out for your homies, O Christian. The singer of Hallelujah has no God. Shed a tear. Be beautiful and be sad.

Remember when I mentioned the Soviet anthem, and hard and unkind directions? Please read the lyrics (again, here), and tell me they don't sound like a good fascist purity hymn. This is not to say that Dr. Olasky is such a thing, but to say that being unkind to poetry results in ugly and crude propagandist verse.

Create in me a new, clean heart.
Give me now a strong, fresh start, 
So every breath I draw is Hallelujah.

You don’t delight in sacrifice.
You don’t excuse our secret vice.
You want from us a broken spirit, do you?
You’ve shown me what I did was wrong.
I’ll stand before You, Lord of song...

And if it's not propagandistic, it's clumsy.

Sin goes like this: The fourth, the fifth,
Adam’s fall, the major rift,
The baffled king neglecting Hallelujah. 

I would love to hear your comments on this. Decide for yourself. Below is the video my friend posted, and below that is Buckley's version. Which one actually sounds like a cry out to God?

 

6 Reasons You Should Wax Your Mustache

Men, I'm sure you agree, ought to look manly. But that does not mean they can't primp just a little bit. It has been said by one of the poets that a woman's hair is her glory. A man's mustache can be glorious. No, should be glorious.

Here are a few reasons you, good sir, ought to wax your mustache.


1. It's Preparation For Your Day

An act of grooming to start your day can be a physical accompaniment to spiritual preparation, like kneeling when praying. And by "act of grooming", I mean something besides the necessary shit-shower-n-shave.

For many of us mustache waxers, this is our only act of manly primping and pampering. It's not time-consuming, but does require regular maintenance, and can therefore easily be made a part of your daily ablutions.

A friend of mine shaves his face with excruciating precision every morning, then runs Brylcreem through his hair and combs it with an exactness. Some men have long morning grooming routines that they thoroughly enjoy. I am not such a man. I am in my grooming as I am in my loving: I like to be efficient, but still leave everyone satisfied. Waxing the mustache tells the world you care about your appearance, but is easily done with no wasted time.

A flourish, a primp, a tuck, and you're ready to face the day.

As a friend said on the ol' Giant facebook page,

The act is relaxing, and the only manly pampering I perform, the preparation, the scent, the wife's reaction on seeing my stiff upper lip! But I suppose the 'chief joy' is having the honour of wearing the finished product with a certain element of pride; it's satisfying in a calmly masculine way.

2. You'll Walk The Line

Remember how your grandpa used to keep a comb in his back pocket? Yeah, that was bad-ass. I keep a tin of wax in mine.

Wouldn't want to look like this guy.

When it comes to my appearance through the day, I am a walking twilight of the gods. The forces of entropy grab hold of me as soon as I step out the door, and, I believe, lay their hands more heavily upon me than most. In no time at all my shirt is untucked, my hair mussed, and my belt below my belly.

If I am not careful my mustache will betray me as well. One tip might maintain its graceful upward sweep while its partner turns wickedly toward niflheim.

My mustache inspires me to periodically check my appearance. All it ever requires is a gentle sweep of a finger 'neath the 'stache, or at most a little twist of a tip. But that is all it takes to keep me on my toes. My mustache will not suffer my genial spirit to decay.


3. It's Refreshing

Waxing is, believe it or not, refreshing and invigorating.

Besides the natural pep one picks up from being well-groomed, the product itself is one that can refresh. One wouldn't necessarily think that of wax, since sticky and thick aren't normally descriptors of products that refresh one's soul and burnishes the glint in one's eye.

One wouldn't necessarily think that, until one ran into waxes olorating of cinnamon, mint, rose, or gin and tonic.


4. It's Playful

Joyful, even. Your mustache, sir, is smiling at the world. It can't help it, because your entire countenance reflects your joy at being alive, and your soul's song shines out through your nostrils, causing your mustache to curl up and smile.

You showed the world you take it seriously by showing up in it well-groomed. Now you show the world that you don't take yourself seriously because you just showed up looking ridiculous.

What?! I thought you were defending the waxing of mustaches.

I am. And I know that it looks a little like two commas are kissing under my nose.

Do I lack dignity? No, sir. But I am wise enough to play the fool, and to do that well requires a bit of wax.


5. You Can Grow It Out

Not only is waxing your mustache a reason to grow your mustache out, it can help you keep growing it.

Perhaps you'd like to experience owning a soup-strainer that a walrus who served as a colonel with the Coldstream Guards would be proud of. Such a thing can be cumbersome and get in the way, not only when eating soup, but when kissing the wife.

Of course, your wife will not want to kiss a crusty over-waxed mustache. But a deft and experienced waxer is able to keep his mustache out of his teeth while maintaining a full and natural look and feel. Therefore let your freak flag fly.

On a personal level I can tell you that I've enjoyed my wife's adjustments to my 'stache, even if she would rather I keep my mustache trimmed above my lip (that, my dear, is not an option). Her kissing technique has evolved to sneak the puckered lips just under the 'stache, resulting in plumper, juicier kisses.


6. It's Manly!

Remember when we said the mustache was the glory of man? We were being silly, of course.

The beard is the glory of man. And a mustache is part of that. Relish your beard. Rejoice in your 'stache. Revel in your God-given badges of manliness.

Your mustache, like you and your beard, is full of potential, both creative and destructive. Men and beards and mustaches should be strong, but should allow themselves to be domesticated. To build houses and cut down trees and raise children. Therefore go out, and do as Brett Keisel says:

"It's magic. You just have to pet it, take care of it. You trim the mustache so it doesn't hang on your lip. Then you just make sure you stroke it and keep it nice."

Still "Relevant": Why -- Damn It -- It's Medieval

Relevant magazine. The name says it all.

Some kid just wrote a little piece about C. S. Lewis, asking "who will fill his shoes for a new generation?" And of course it's some kid, his byline says that since he graduated from college, "he's not really sure what he thinks anymore". Which gives him the right kind of credibility for this crowd.

C. S. Lewis is outdated. I mean, sure, his stuff was worthwhile for several generations after his death. Dudes who went to college in the '90s, for example, those guys love his stuff.

Sigh. According to this kid we don't need a new C. S. Lewis because Christendom can always profit, and God always glory, from rich Christian thinkers. Nope. We need a new C. S. Lewis because the old one is broken. Doesn't work these days.

You might be outraged by this. But there's one point you can't refute.

Lewis was an exceptional leader in Christian thought. But he was born in 1898. That’s the decade after the setting of Back to the Future III.

I mean, there were still cowboys around when Lewis was born.

For a response to this jackass, read this.

Otherwise, enjoy this bit from Lewis' Surprised by Joy.

I was hideously shocked. Everything I had labored so hard to expel from my own life seemed to have flared up and met me in my best friends. Not only my best friends but those whom I would have thought safest; the one so immovable, the other brought up in a free-thinking family and so immune from all "superstition" that he had hardly heard of Christianity itself until he went to school. (The gospel first broke on Barfield in the form of a dictated list of Parables Peculiar to St. Matthew.) Not only in my seeming-safest friends but at a moment when we all had most need to stand together. And as I came to learn (so far as I ever have learned) what Steiner thought, my horror turned into disgust and resentment. For here, apparently, were all the abominations; none more abominable than those which had once attracted me. Here were gods, spirits, afterlife and pre-existence, initiates, occult knowledge, meditation. "Why–damn it–it's medieval," I exclaimed; for I still had all the chronological snobbery of my period and used the names of the earlier periods as terms of abuse.

Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed forever two elements in my own thought. In the first place he made short work of what I have called my "chronological snobbery," the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.

Don't Dip That Bread In My Grape Juice!

For the past month my family and I have been attending a Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation in Greenville, South Carolina. I was a member at a PCA church through high school, college, and a little beyond, but for the past eight years have been at a CRE church.

The CRE and its ministers are overwhelmingly settled on a view of the Lord's Supper that caused a lot of controversy within the PCA. The CRE takes a more "small-c" catholic approach to the sacrament, opening it to all baptized Christians. Since the CRE is a Reformed and covenantal denomination, they open the table to all baptized children. That is my family's view of the Lord's Supper: that it is God feeding us. We are not to prove ourselves deserving in any way, but simply to receive his blessing and nourishment. (The injunction against eating and drinking unworthily I understand to be specifically a warning prohibiting not sharing food with other Christians in your church whom you despise; it is not a command to "understand" what is happening in the sacrament.)

So I spent almost a decade out of the PCA, listening to the wars and hearing rumors of wars over covenant and communion in that denomination over those years, then hearing that those wars had been been settled for at least a while.

So imagine my surprise when I met with a PCA pastor recently and heard that intinction, the practice of dipping bread (or a cracker or wafer) in wine, was being practiced and debated over in his denomination. Today Rick Phillips, the nationally prominent pastor of Greenville's 2nd Presbyterian Church, has written a brief but very interesting critique of those in the PCA who are defending the practice of intinction. You can find the article over at The Aquila Report.

In it pastor Phillips argues that those Presbyterians who defend the practice of intinction were the "least concerned to be biblical about the Lord's Supper". He is unsettled by a lack of biblical backbone shown by these men in their laissez-faire attitude toward biblical example. That is to say, if the Bible says that Jesus took the bread, broke it, and served it, then took the wine and served it, then we should do likewise. Communion is not simply a ritual to be gotten through, but a rich and positive thing in which we can do no better than to emulate Christ.

From what little I've picked up, I think there's some justice in what pastor Phillips is saying. The small exposure I've had to this debate does seem to have the proponents of intinction saying that since it's not prohibited, and is way more convenient to administer, the practice should be permitted.

That sort of lazy lack of positivity is indeed dangerous. And that is one several reasons I'm against the practice.

But that's not what I want to point out here.

If the positive emulation of Christ and the biblical model is what we're after, how on earth is this debate being had in a denomination where the overwhelming practice is to serve grape juice instead of wine?

The PCA church we're attending/visiting right now serves communion weekly. They serve bread and wine, just as the Scriptures command. I know that at least some of the men are pro-intinction, or at least, not anti-intinction. But they are showing enough reverence and positivity to want to celebrate the Supper weekly, and to do it with wine. How many of the churches and pastors passionately arguing against the practice of intinction don't blink at their complete failure to serve one of the two elements of the Supper?

One of the biggest objections I have to the practice of intinction is that it goes in the Roman Catholic direction of saying that "since Christ is sacramentally present under each of the species, communion under the species of bread alone makes it possible to receive all the fruit of Eucharistic grace." (Catechism of the Catholic Church) Intinction tends toward moving the Supper away from being a meal, and toward being a simple presentation of magical elements.

Well, guess what? That's already what happens in so many churches around the country. These churches are only serving one of the elements. Bread and grape juice? That is not what our Lord commanded. If the mere symbolism of the rite is all that matters, then the use of grape juice is fine. But then, so would the practice of intinction be. How is that any less of a memorial? But according to the very doctrines of the PCA, communion is more than a memorial.

The lack of positive obedience in the "intinction camp" is nothing compared to what we Protestants have been doing for centuries now. Instead of focusing on prohibition, perhaps we ought to be focusing on building up a joyful and positive celebration of the Feast. The Feast is only for Christians, and for the sake of God, his church, and unbelievers, it ought to be fenced and protected. But within those boundaries, are we feasting or meditating? Are we celebrating or prohibiting? Teaching and practicing positively is always better than hunting for errors in others. There is a place for both, but our Protestant house is too messy right now to go hunting trouble.