Shame

BB-RC-026

After all, it was for the greater good. After my parents left, Pat remained with me and took me to the doctor’s office for an X-ray the next morning. My knee was indeed fractured. The only thing the doctor could do for me was to wrap it in an ACE Bandage. I was back at the nursery two days later. My leg hurt so much that my limp caused me to lag behind during our daily strolls along Franklin Avenue. Rather than slow the group down, the teacher would become irritated at me and tell me to hurry up. She seemed to thi…

SSCT-RC-201

The debates with Julian saw Augustine, who had written so eloquently on the “Good of Marriage” against the ascetic elitism of men like Jerome, turn his focus toward the inevitable sinfulness of sexual desire, even within marriage. Augustine continued to maintain his threefold account of the goods of marriage: reproduction, mutual fidelity, and sacred bond. But in his later years he would write more energetically about the impossibility of defeating concupiscence, even within marriage. For Augustine, “concupiscence…

SSJ-RC-229

“She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world—every thing was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention, the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. In short, it ended in a …

BLM-RC-085

And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can’t accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people,” Paul says. “That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.” When the sky got dark Paul and I went back into the attic. We made small talk for an hour before he went downstairs to be with his wife, but I kept thinking about these things. I turned out the light and lay in my bed and thought about the girls I…

EW-RC-144

I had already betrayed them by failing to love them as I should; the least I could do was stay silent. “Marriage is God’s plan,” the bishop said, then he stood. The meeting was over. He asked me to return the following Sunday. I said I would, but knew I wouldn’t. My body felt heavy as I walked to my apartment. All my life I had been taught that marriage was God’s will, that to refuse it was a kind of sin. I was in defiance of God. And yet, I didn’t want to be. I wanted children, my own family, but even as I longed…

BLW-RC-112

Everything was as it should be, the set of my scarf, the alignment of my belt buckle, the angle of my cap, the drape of my two sashes. One was the Order of the Arrow sash, a red arrow on a brilliant white background. The other was my merit-badge sash. It was thick with proofs of competence. At camp that summer, with little else to do, I had worked myself into a delirium of badge-grubbing. I was a Life Scout now, with only one merit badge to go for Eagle. That badge was Citizenship in the Nation. I had already fulf…