SIMCHA FISHER

Usually, in my interviews with Catholic artists, I let the artist and his work speak for themselves; but since one of Matthew Lomanno’s photo essays documents my own family, I can’t resist pointing out that his work is gorgeously textured and evocative, and it presents the good, bad, and weird of life with depth, humor, and pathos.

[img attachment=”88905″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 1″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

Matthew Lomanno, 38, hasn’t always been a photographer. He and his wife, Jessica, met while singing in the choir in high school. They married soon after college graduation, and headed to Texas where Matthew started a master’s degree in philosophy and Jessica joined Teach for America, with a short, intensive training in Houston (where the dorm’s “honeymoon suite” included a romantic set of bunk beds).

The couple lived in Houston for five years before heading back to New England, all the while teaching, writing, and continuing their own studies while growing their family. Lomanno was a Liberal Studies in the Great Books major and Ancient Greek minor at Saint Anselm College, and is an ABD Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He also continues to pursue an interest in the philosophy of art.

In his 20’s, he used some birthday money to buy a simple camera, photographing cooperative subjects like his sleeping baby and a vase of flowers. He stayed up late experimenting with the camera, working part time jobs, gradually upgrading his equipment and improving his editing skills. He bolstered his income as a youth sports  photographer, and did some work shadowing professional photographers. But, he says, he “kind of backed into” the idea of working full time as a photographer, and was still finding his feet when was first hired by Parable, the magazine of the Diocese of NH.

[img attachment=”88941″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 26″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

In 2011, he went with students from St. Anselm College to work with disabled orphans in Jamaica. (The other faculty member revealed, when they got there, that she was pregnant. Lomanno says he got some photos of her sleeping in the shade.) Blessed Assurance was the first black and white photo essay he had published.

[img attachment=”88907″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 3″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

Here is our interview from October of 2015:

You use mainly film cameras, not digital. What’s the difference?

With digital, there is no frame limit, only what my memory card can hold; whereas with film, I have 36 frames per roll, and there’s a process to change rolls. Each frame costs money. Being a born and bred New Englander, there’s a certain amount of thrift.

[img attachment=”88908″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 5″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

So why use film?

It provides an artistic limit. In the digital world, there are endless possibilities of what we can do with an image. Choose after-the-fact color, manipulate any part we want. Film — specifically black-and-white film — limits me in a particular way. I have to be really committed to making this image. It allows me to focus my mind on what’s happening with the image, and composing the frame.

[img attachment=”88909″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 6″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

I use fixed focal lengths; there is no zoom. I might have different lenses on me, but I don’t have that infinite range of zooming possibilities. I have to make a frame with this lens and this film. By giving myself these limits, I can accomplish a lot more.

Tell me more about what it means to use black-and-white film.

The aesthetics are completely unique. It focuses the eye on the form of things. You see what’s going on in a special way, without distractions, that you don’t see with color. Aesthetically, you’re only viewing it in terms of grey tonality. You see the variance of highlights and arcs and midrange tones much more clearly, and it really allows you to see how the picture is composed.

[img attachment=”88910″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 7″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

It’s so outside our everyday experience of the world.

Is that what you’re trying to do as an artist:  trying to take us out of our everyday experience of the world?

Yes and no. One of my favorite photographers says that any time you take a picture of a thing, the resulting photograph is a lie. He’s trying to get away from the idea that there’s some kind of [objective] truth element involved in the artistic act.

The object [that you’re capturing] is two-dimensional: this is what it looks like to the camera. The photographic process, the documentary process, is figuring out how to frame the content in such a way as to make a good picture. I have to make this photograph more interesting than the reality.

[img attachment=”88911″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 8″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

How do you do that?

Say I’m at the March for Life, surrounded by thousands and thousands of like-minded people. If I had a digital camera, I could hold down the shutter and walk around, and that should show what it looked like it some fashion – but it wouldn’t be intentionally made.

I wanted to show the interactions.

[img attachment=”88912″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 9″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

There were maybe a dozen pro-abortion protestors. It’s fun for me, as a Catholic, to show the kind of signs that the pro-abortionists had, versus the anti-abortionists. One group was rather hateful, the other group is not. That’s not the narrative you’ll hear from other sources. It’s always editorialized.

So do you have a particular responsibility to show the world in a certain way, as a Catholic photographer, or as a Catholic artist in general? Do you have a duty to editorialize, or can you even help it?

Any fine artist should have a commitment primarily to form, to making beautiful objects. How do I do this, as a Catholic with a somewhat informed intellectual and cultural training?

[img attachment=”88931″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 22″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

Where do I train my camera? Where do I put that work?

[img attachment=”88915″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 10″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

The documentary world, going all around the world, following famines, wars . . . I can’t do that work right now. What am I going to do now? What’s in New Hampshire?

[img attachment=”88917″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 12″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

It took me a long time to figure out that I don’t have to do just the bad stuff that’s happening.  If you look at my work broadly, the Jamaica story or the North Country Priest or the March for Life, these kinds of projects have all been about good things that are happening, good people doing good work. That’s how I’ve allowed my intellectual and faith-filled life to inform my work in terms of content, in terms of where I’m going to train my camera.

[img attachment=”88916″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 11″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

Once I figured that out, I could generate a lot of ideas, like, “How do I photograph the pro-life movement in a clear way?” So much of it is office work, working in the legal system. So I went to the March for Life, to get a glimpse of the energy and excitement, at least for that day.

[img attachment=”88918″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 13″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

There was a sign [at the March for Life that] I didn’t photograph. It was off to the side, but it was huge: “If this is the only thing that you do as a pro-lifer, there’s something wrong.” Some people will think that’s harsh, but I understand that point.

In the hospital documentary, the question I was asking myself was, “What makes this hospital Catholic? How am I going to photograph that?  If it’s not more than the crucifix on the wall, then it’s nothing.”

[img attachment=”88919″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 14″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

In your hospital series, almost all the shots have people making eye contact with other people (in or out of the shot). Was that deliberate – a way to convey what kind of hospital it was? The sort of “pro-life”ness, beyond the crucifix on the wall?

I’m primarily committed, as an artist, to creating beautiful photographs. At the hospital, what I could photograph was basically either medical procedures, or human contact, human interactions.

[img attachment=”88932″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 23″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

You can’t get away from human interaction in the hospital. It was one of the main things that was happening.

[img attachment=”88920″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 15″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

You include captions and a lot of text with your documentaries. How do you decide whether to say things in words, or say things with the images?

It’s a hard balance. You just have to be succinct.  There’s always more to say, and you’re always going to taint the images. You want to amplify the content, not change the form. In Humans of New York, the most popular photo project ever, the success is due not to the photography! The photos are good, not great. He has five or six different ways he photographs a person, and the light is always nice and even. But he’s able to get people to say things to him, as a stranger, that we wouldn’t say to our closest friends. It’s amazing.

[img attachment=”88921″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 16″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

What about when you can’t add a caption, like with a portrait or a headshot? How do you control what you are conveying with an image of someone you don’t really know?

The big thing is being open and receptive to whatever they’re going to give me. When I look through the viewfinder, I see them in a way they may not see themselves.

[img attachment=”88923″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 17″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

I try not to direct people too much, just let them give me what they’re going to give me. I don’t introduce a level of artifice into the situation. With your kids, for instance, my task was more making an interesting frame and composition.

[img attachment=”88926″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 18″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

You have to be careful about the question of knowledge in a portrait. It’s only the people we already know, of whom we can say, “This is a true likeness.” If I present photos of your children to someone with different expectations, they might think they’re miserable kids, because none of them are smiling. People bring a lot of their own knowledge when they’re seeing a portrait.

One of the tests, for me, regarding any work of art, is, “Can I come back to it?” Does it still hold my attention?

[img attachment=”88927″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 19″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

You’ve done a lot of teaching. What kind of ideas did current art students bring to the classroom?

I taught two courses at the NH Institute of Art: Ethics, and The Philosophy of Art. It was a very different culture from what I was used to, not teaching liberally trained students, but art students.

I’ve been trying to get them to think about the art they were pursuing, about what makes it, or any fine art, good or bad. I’ve been trying to get them to think about the dichotomy between form and content.

[img attachment=”88928″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 20″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

A lot of our [current] understanding of fine art is reduced to content. It’s ubiquitous.

When you get them to talk about a specific work, they talk about form, but when they talk about art in general, they talk about content. Artists are supposed to find some insight that no one else has seen before, but they’re not taught to put things together well – they’re just supposed to express their ideas or emotions. That idea has been around since the time of Plato, but I don’t think it’s Aristotle’s view.

What is Aristotle’s view about art?

Plato and Aristotle didn’t write a treatise on art, but if you read closely, especially in Aristotle, they both use art as an exemplum for other ideas. For instance, when Aristotle wants to talk about what nature is in the Physics, he talks about an object in art. There are little bits and pieces like that; you have to kind of hunt.

My goal, through academic writing, is to produce some more popular style piece about art in various forms. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle talks about two different kinds of human activity: moral activity, and artistic activity. Moral is doing; artistic is making.

[img attachment=”88929″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 21″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

Some artistic practices we do every day are cooking dinner, or stacking wood. Anything that’s not a moral activity is an artistic activity.

[img attachment=”88934″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 24″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

I have the benefit now, which I didn’t have then [before I became a photographer], of intentionally practicing an art and seeing it from the inside.

What’s next for you?

Last Spring, I didn’t teach for the first time in eleven years. I don’t know what the future holds. I didn’t plan on being 38 and being a full-time photographer, so I’m not making any predictions about the future. God’s grace has been good enough, so I’m going to ride that wave.

[img attachment=”88937″ size=”full” alt=”lomanno 25″ align=”aligncenter” linkto=”custom”]

***

Matthew Lomanno and his wife Jessica, who writes and edits for Texas Right to Life, live with their four photogenic children, aged 6 to 11, in New Hampshire. He founded and operates the Amoskeag Studio for visual and performing arts in 2013. Lomanno’s website is matthewlomanno.com, where you can see many of his photos, including wedding photos, documentaries, and commercial photography. He also frequently posts on Instagram and Twitter @mplomanno and Facebook on Matthew Lomanno Photography. His latest photo essay, “Healing Body and Spirit,” is now on display at St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, NH.

All photos used with kind permission of the artist.

Last week, someone asked me about leftovers, and help from kids:

Simcha, what I would really like to know, besides the menus, is things like, who did what for a given meal? How does the youngest contribute, and how much do the older kids do? How many of what did you have to make? Do you deliberately cultivate leftovers? If so, what do you do with them? I don’t think that I have seen you serve leftovers for dinner once, but I can’t believe everything comes out even every time.

It’s true, I almost never serve leftovers for dinner. We either make exactly as much as we’ll eat (like with hamburgers), or else I make plenty and we eat the leftovers for lunch. I end up throwing away some food at the end of every week, or else feeding it to the dog, and I just don’t sweat it. I try not to waste money, but I often make too much of cheaper foods. It’s not something I can worry about right now.

I’ll talk more about kids helping next week. This week, I’ll note how much food I served.

SATURDAY
CHICKEN BURGERS, CHEESE ADEQUACIES, VEG and DIP

I heated up 27 chicken patties. We ate about 20, and the rest made their way into lunches. I think there’s one stray in the fridge now.
We ate 2 medium bags of cheetos, and I served a small bag (18 oz?) of “baby” carrots, two heads of broccoli, and three sweet peppers, and a small tub of dip. There were a handful of leftover veggies, which I nibbled on throughout the week.

[img attachment=”88660″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog chicken burgers” /]

I like buying store-brand versions of foods, especially the ones the gas station sells: ShurFine brand. I guess they meant it like, “Yessiree, it surely is fine food!” but it comes across as, “Sure, fine, whatever, put this in your face.” The ShurFine cheetos mascot is a weasel with band aids on his elbows from a rollerblading mishap, and he’s feebly hollering, “They’rrrrrrrrre . . . adequate.”

SUNDAY
PU PU PLATTER FOR 12!
And a pot of rice (I used 5 cups of raw rice); Chocolate pudding with whipped cream

We usually order this meal on Christmas day from the excellent restaurant that is 3/10 of a mile down the road from us, but this year, we were visiting family on Christmas. So we had the Chinese food on Sunday, to take the sting out of the day we de-Christmasified the house. Back in the box, Tom Servo tree topper:

[img attachment=”88648″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog deChristmastifying” /]

And we discovered that there were two decorative gourds still lurking behind the stable. Turns out they’re not as well-preserved as they look when you buy them in September:

[img attachment=”88649″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog decorative gourd season no more” /]

Anyway, it was an enormous amount of food: egg rolls, chicken fingers, batter fried shrimp, crab rangoon, barbecued chicken wings, that red pork stuff, and beef on a stick.  Chinese American meat, and tons of it:

[img attachment=”88650″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog chinese food” /]

We ate the leftovers in the next day or two. For dessert, I made 5 boxes of instant pudding, and there were a few cups left over, which got eaten the next day by a ghost.

MONDAY
PASTA PUTTANESCA
3 lbs pasta, three jars of olives, one can of anchovies, two onions, 24 oz. of grape tomatoes, and I forget what else.

We had Monday off for Civil Rights Day (we like a day off in NH, but can’t quite bring ourselves to say “Martin Luther King, Jr.”), so I was able to cook an actual meal. We also went sledding. We survived exactly half an hour on Horse Hill before the frigid wind triumphed. Gorgeous day, though

[img attachment=”88652″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog horse hill” /]

Gosh, I love New Hampshire. And we had an excuse to make another gallon of hot chocolate.

For dinner, I used Pioneer Woman’s recipe, which was supposed to take 16 minutes to prepare. It did not. This recipe involved anchovies, several kinds of olives, red onions, garlic, wine, and assorted other of my favorites. Fun to make:

[img attachment=”88653″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog chopped olives” /]

The final flavor was kind of harsh, though. Pretty, though!

[img attachment=”88654″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog spaghetti puttanesca” /]

TUESDAY
TACO TUESDAY!
3.33lbs of meat, 2 envelopes of taco spice, 3 bags of tortilla chips, half a large jar of salsa, half a head of iceburg lettuce, six Roma tomatoes, and 16 oz. sour cream. I have no idea how many tortillas we ate. We have a rotating supply of 450 tortillas in the house. Every once in a while, I get mad and throw them all away, and then buy another 30 next week.

It’s a little embarrassing that it makes such a difference to be able to say that. I was thinking, “I guess we’ll have tacos today, bluhh. What day is it? Oh, Tuesday, bah bah bahhh. Wait. . . tacos . . . on a Tuesday . . . why, that means it’s TACO TUESDAY!!!!!” I didn’t actually do a Mexican Hat Dance, but almost. I guess I’m the ideal consumer. Good thing I don’t have any actual money to spend.

No picture from Tuesday, so here is one that just speaks for what really goes on here every day, one way or another:

[img attachment=”88661″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog corrie spaghettios” /]

Speaking of money, I made the tacos with 2.33 lbs of ground beef and 1 pound of ground sausage, which I bought for . . . ten cents. Now, most people would decide not to buy ten-cent sausage, on the grounds that meat does not cost ten cents; but I am not most people. ¡Olé!

WEDNESDAY
EGGS; SAUSAGES; OVEN ROASTED POTATOES
50 frozen sausages, 30-40 eggs, maybe 8 lbs of potatoes and 2 large onions
There was probably 3 cups of leftover potatoes and sausages, which the baby and the dog ate for snacks.

[img attachment=”88656″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog ketchup eggs” /]

Yep, I put ketchup on my scrambled eggs. Because it tastes good, and you know it.

THURSDAY
PEPPERONI CHICKEN on SPINACH FETTUCCINE; SALAD
I bought about 4 lbs. of chicken, and it was just barely enough. Probably 65 slices of peperoni, maybe a pound of mozzarella cheese, and 2 24-oz jars of pasta sauce. Salad was one head of frisee lettuce, three small heads of Romaine, and half a package of baby spinach. We ate about half, and will eat the rest today.

For this dish, which was another 16-minute (ha) Pioneer Woman recipe, I bought a package of pasta nests, which were on sale. I don’t know how you’re supposed to cook them so they stay in nest form!

[img attachment=”88659″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog pepperoni chicken” /]

I had to cook the chicken in the morning and then reheat it in the sauce at dinner time. It definitely would have been better if everything had been fresh and hot and prepared together, but it was still a tasty dish, and would make a yummy sandwich. Adding to the list.

FRIDAY
CHEESE PIZZA; SALAD

If the kitchen ever warms up enough to allow the dough to defrost, I’ll be making 4 XL pizzas today. I use four 18-oz balls of frozen dough, 1 24-oz jar of tomato sauce, and usually about 2.5 lbs of mozzarella cheese (plus a sprinkling of garlic powder, oregano, and Parmesan).

Was that helpful and/or interesting, to know the amounts of food I use? I can easily add that information every week if it’s something that people want to know.

What’s cooking at your house? And who has recipes for food that tastes normal but is not horribly fattening? My clothes all shrunk over Christmas, is why I’m asking.

It’s finally truly cold here, which means that a week ago, I bit the bullet and ordered new waterproof gloves for everyone; and that means that today, I finally found that missing bag of mittens and gloves that I washed, sorted, and packed away last year. They were under the bed. I did look under the bed. I don’t know.

We have very little storage space (no room for anything hanging overhead, or in a closet, or free-standing on the floor), so this is how we keep a million mittens and gloves sorted and accessible: with a couple of tiered skirt hangers with clips, like this:

[img attachment=”88531″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”skirt hanger” /]

I hung them flat against the wall with a screw, one below the other. It’s cheap, and I can easily take it down when mitten season is over.

Like every organizational system, it doesn’t work by itself. It only works if I nag the kids incessantly to hang up their mittens when they get home. Even then, they only do it about half the time. But it’s better than what we had before, which was a horrible plastic tub full of moldering mittens, wet math homework, cheese sticks, single soccer cleats, thumb tacks, broken Sculpey cats, and some more moldering mittens, but not ones that match the first mittens.

Next time: how to figure out which cheese sticks spark joy and which do not.

So here it is, a January Wednesday morning in the middle of ordinary time. My feet are cold, my brain is tired, I’m behind on everything, and all I can think of is all the things I messed up one more time, and how unlikely it is that the future will be different. Doesn’t feel like there’s a wedding party anywhere in the near future, let me tell you. So what’s my plan?

Read the rest at the Register.

Are you going to the March for Life, either in DC or in your state?  If so, are you planning to display graphic photos or videos of aborted babies?

If you are, I’m begging you to reconsider.  Fr. Pavone famously said, “America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion.”  Most pro-lifers understand that many Americans are still tragically ignorant about what abortion really is — what it really does to real babies.  Many of us remember seeing those bloody images for the first time, and can recall being shaken out of a vague, fuzzy support for the pro-life cause into the realization that this is a life-and-death struggle — real life, and real death.

These images have their uses.

But a public place is not the place to use these images — ever, I’m convinced.  These images are like a terrible weapon which should be used with fear and trembling, and only as a last resort.  Why?

There will be children at the march.  Do you let your kids watch gruesome war movies or slasher films?  No?  Well, those movies show actors with fake blood, pretending to be tortured and killed.  Why would you let them see the real thing?  The pro-life cause is about protecting innocent life, and that includes protecting the innocence of young children.  Studies show that violent images stay with us for a lifetime, and damage us.

There will be post-abortive women at the march.  Imagine their courage in being there at all.  Then imagine what it does to them to see, once again, the dark thing that keeps them from sleeping at night — the thing that often keeps them in decades-long cycles of self-loathing and despair.  We don’t ask victims of rape to look at videos of rape in progress.  We don’t ask holocaust victims to look at huge banners showing the piles of emaciated bodies.  As pro-lifers, we must remember that every abortion has two victims:  the child and the mother.  We must never be on the side that hurts mothers.  Never.

Mothers will be there.  Thousands of the women at the March are mothers — mothers who have already given birth, mothers who are pregnant as they march, and mothers who have miscarried, delivered dead babies.  For many of them, the grief over a miscarriage never goes away entirely.  Many women stay away from any public march for fear of being subjected to these images so similar to the thing that caused them so much pain.  Motherhood makes a woman’s heart tender.  The pro-life movement should be a shelter that protects that tenderness — because the world needs it desperately.

Those are real babies.  Christians are almost alone in affirming the dignity of the human person.  Catholics, especially, understand that the human body is mortal, but still worthy of respect.  When we use pictures of real babies as a tactic or a tool, we are in danger of forgetting that these are children with an immortal soul, and who have a name that only their Heavenly Father knows.  They have already been killed.  Let us treat their poor bodies with respect.

Public image matters.  Some people’s only contact with obvious pro-lifers is with people who shout and condemn and terrify.  It’s just basic psychology:  if you want people to listen to you and have sympathy for your cause, don’t come across as a lunatic.  You’re not a lunatic — but to people who don’t already agree with you, you sure look that way.  Yes, your cause is worthy.  No, you’re not helping it.

They sometimes push women into abortion.  Do these images change hearts sometimes?  They sure do.  I’ve heard pro-life activists tell stories of women who saw these horrible images for the first time and decided on the spot that no way could they be any part of that.  They kept their babies.

And I’ve heard pro-life activists tell stories of women who were pregnant, scared, and undecided — and when they were confronted with bloody images, they freaked out and rushed into the clinic as fast as they could, to get away from those maniacs with the signs. Read these comments from Abby Johnson, who remembers how much she and her fellow abortion workers used to love it when protesters showed up with graphic posters.

So, yes, sometimes they save lives.  And sometimes they cause lives to be lost.  We don’t do things just because they work sometimes.

Desensitization is a real danger — even among pro-lifers.  It’s just how humans are made:  see something too often, and you stop really seeing it.  I thank and bless those who work so tirelessly for the pro-life cause, including those who had to spend time up close with the heart-rending remains of babies, rescuing them from dumpsters and photographing them.

But to those who use these images routinely everywhere, indiscriminately, I beg that they to stop and consider that, like policemen or like soldiers, they are human, and are in danger of becoming hardened out of self-preservation. People who have become hardened must never be the public face of the pro-life cause.  If you, as a pro-life activist, see a bloody image and you don’t flinch, then it’s time to take a break — move into a different segment of the ministry, one that emphasizes prayer and reparation.

People see what they want to see.  When the apostles begged the Lord to send the dead to persuade people to repent, He said that if they didn’t listen to the prophets, then they wouldn’t be impressed by the dead coming back to life, either.  Many pro-choicers speak as if everyone knows that pro-lifers use photoshopped images — that the tiny, mutilated feet and hands and heads are a hoax that’s been thoroughly debunked.  It’s a lie, of course.  But people believe it all the same, because they want to (and pro-lifers don’t help their cause by being sloppy about things like identifying gestational age on photos).

*****

These are all arguments against using graphic images indiscriminately, in a public place. Does this mean they should never be used? Absolutely not.  Bloody and shocking images have their place.  Pro-life activists are right when they say abortion depends on silence and darkness, and that truth must be exposed.  Too many people who are pro-choice because they somehow still don’t know what fetuses actually look like, or what happens to them when they are aborted– or because they’ve simply slipped into a comfortable shelter of euphemisms.  These lies, this comfort must be stripped away.

So when should you use graphic images?  When a teenager shrugs and says, “My health teacher says it’s not a person until 25 weeks.”  When someone who works at a clinic says she’s doing a gentle, compassionate work of mercy.  When your boyfriend wants you to get rid of “it” before it becomes a real baby.  When a college girl likens unborn babies to tumors or parasites.  Then you can respond to the actual situation, to the actual person.  Then you can take out the picture and say, “Is this what you’re talking about?” And let the poor, dead child speak for you.

I believe that everyone should see an image of an aborted baby once in their lifetime.  And I believe that, like any traumatic image, it will stay with you.  Once or twice in a lifetime is enough.

Abortion is violent.  Abortion is cruel.  Abortion inflicts trauma and pain.  As pro-lifers, we should have no part in any of that.  Let us save the graphic images for a weapon of last resort.

***
Photo used with kind permission of the photographer, Matthew Lomanno, from his photo documentary of the March for Life 2014.

A version of this post originally ran at the National Catholic Register in 2013.

Last night, we watched one of my favorite movies, Unbreakable (2000). It’s Shyamalan’s best film (with Signs as a close second), with the most on its mind. Like his other movies, it’s nail-bitingly intense, and it does have a twist at the end; but it’s also about how we come to know ourselves. Audaciously, it asks the question, “What does it mean to be a good man?”

This post has no end of spoilers! It’s intended to encourage people to re-watch this movie, which doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.

The entire movie plays with the idea of good vs. evil, and asks us to consider how they really relate to each other. Do they depend on each other for their existence? It shows us a comic book world and tells a comic book story, and teases us with the idea that comic books give us an accurate, black-and-white picture of the world; but ultimately, it tells us that good and evil are not equal and opposite. It tells us that good is true and powerful, while evil is deranged and deluded.

The movie often puts true words into the mouth of evil: As Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) says, “Real life doesn’t fit into little boxes that were drawn for it.” He says this, but he doesn’t act on it. Elijah Price is the perfect modern villain who sees everything, considers everything, and constantly seeks meaning — but he draws all the wrong conclusions. He displays Egyptian pictograms, Christian icons, and prehistoric cave paintings on his walls, alongside the line drawings from comic books from the 40’s) — but he doesn’t make any distinctions between what meaning they may convey. In his world, everything he encounters tells him one thing. He says that the world doesn’t fit into neat boxes, but he certainly behaves as if it does.

But let’s step back for a moment. The first two times we see Elijah Price, it’s in a reflection: first in the mirror of the dressing room where he was born, and then in the TV screen of his childhood apartment. When he opens his first comic book, the camera trickily rotates so that the comic book stays still and the entire world turns around to accommodate it. This is where the skewing begins. Elijah later says that he’s waited his whole life to meet David Dunn (Bruce Willis), because the villain only knows who he is when he meets his exact opposite.

He’s swallowed whole the idea that comic books tell us the truth about the world. He acknowledges that the traits of the hero and villain are exaggerated, but he believes they portray something not only true, but dead serious (refusing, for instance, to squander a comic book work of art on a child in his gallery).

You may think, “Ah, then this is a comic book movie, pitting against each other the equal, opposite, mirror image forces of good and evil.”  And this is certainly what Elijah believes is happening. He tells David:

Your bones don’t break, mine do. That’s clear. Your cells react to bacteria and viruses differently than mine. You don’t get sick, I do. That’s also clear. But for some reason, you and I react the exact same way to water. We swallow it too fast, we choke. We get some in our lungs, we drown. However unreal it may seem, we are connected, you and I. We’re on the same curve, just on opposite ends.

and then later:

Now that we know who you are, I know who I am. I’m not a mistake! It all makes sense! In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain’s going to be? He’s the exact opposite of the hero.

He believes that he will find meaning in his life — his purpose for being, the proof that he is not a “mistake” — by being the opposite of Dunn. They are both (like the name of his store) “limited editions”: extraordinary people, and they do seem to be mirror images of each other, black and white.

But notice what actually happens in the movie: David’s powers, and his potential goodness, turn out to be objectively real, and efficacious; whereas Elijah’s identity as evil is one he has chosen. He has always been “Mr. Glass,” the name given to him because of his undeniable, innate fragility, but where he goes wrong is to become a mere “glass” reflection, an inversion, of what he encounters. David, on the other hand, is already doing some good, as a security guard, keeping people safe; but he hasn’t come into his own, letting his true greatness out.

It seems, at first, that the movie wants us to see that good needs evil to exist — that we exist only as reflections of each other. And David Dunn does need Elijah to make him become himself, to see his power and his goodness. It was because of the evil catastrophes that Elijah engineered, and the questions Elijah asks, that makes Dunn realize for the first time that he is a “limited edition” who is “unbreakable.”  If it hadn’t been for the train wreck, David would never have come into his own as someone who truly provides security (emblazoned on the uniform that he didn’t even recognize as his superhero suit) in a dangerous world. If it hadn’t been for Elijah’s evil, he would not have known his own power as a hero.

Or would he? Notice that when he comes home after the wreck, he still intends to leave his family for some nebulous new start in New York. Notice that he has not yet escaped what the movie presents as his root trouble, that sadness in the morning — which Elijah correctly identifies as not knowing why you’re here in the world. He is still, as he tells the woman on the train in the very first scene, “alone,” and without identity, because he hasn’t fully chosen to be himself yet.

Who really rescues him from this trap? Not Elijah, but his son (Spencer Treat Clark), who believes with all his heart that his father is good and strong and a hero (and who turns out to be right!). As they walk out of the train station after the wreck, the son puts his parents’ hands together; and his son puts extra weight (“All of it!”) on his barbell, revealing to David what he is capable of. Finally, his son turns up the pressure with a gun, which shows David once and for all that no one can endure the pressure and misery of not knowing who he really is. The adults in the room think that the worst thing that could happen is that David will be shot; but the son only puts the gun down when he’s threatened with the thing which is actually worse: that David will leave, disconnect, deny his family, continue to be let life make choices for him.

What really makes the difference is when David chooses. He has already drifted, as Elijah points out, into the role of protector. Elijah says,

You could have been a tax accountant. You could have owned your own gym. You could have opened a chain of restaurants. You could’ve done of ten thousand things, but in the end, you chose to protect people. You made that decision, and I find that very, very interesting.

But David doesn’t yet choose things consciously, with full knowledge of what he is choosing, until his son forces him to answer the question: Is he great, or is he not? Is he invincible or is he not? Is he a good man, or is he not? He has to choose — and it’s then that he recommits to his family, integrating all the parts of his life, not just his physical strength.

It’s not enough to be the strong man who can see danger and who can save the world from mere ugly “maintenance.” That’s not the whole of who he is supposed to be. Maintenance is the real villain he has to struggle against (in the person of the killer in the orange suit, but also as an existential condition): maintaining things, keeping things as they are, letting them be. He has to choose deliberately as a whole man. He did this once when he chose Audrey (Robin Wright) over football; and he does it again, when he chooses both Audrey and his son, and his role as a hero.

When he quit football so that he could be with Audrey, he thought he had to stop being great for the sake of love; but later, he finds a way to choose both (although I will admit I’m disturbed that he plans to keep his power a secret from her!). He tells her that he knew something was wrong when he had a bad dream and didn’t turn to her for comfort (because she, as a physical therapist, is the one who heals and puts things back on track). She is not a “limited edition,” but he, David, needs her, and her love, and the love of their son, in order to come into who he really is. He needs not only invincibility, but healing. He cannot be who he was meant to be merely by defining himself against killers; he has to also choose love.

Anyway, that’s how I see it!

Please note that you can watch this movie as a tense, thrilling action movie, and enjoy the heck out of it. You don’t have to think about love or redemption or existential identities if you don’t want to. But if you do, you’ll hear this amazing movie telling us that while we can learn to become who we are through our relationship to other people, good does not need evil to be good. Evil is meaningless and insane; and good is powerful and real, but you can’t just let it happen — you have to choose it.

On Saturday, I realized that we could do part of the shopping, get to confession very easily, then finish shopping and get home before dinner.

The horror! There is nothing I resist more than going to confession. As soon as the idea pops into my head, eleven different excuses push their way forward, shouting and complaining. There’s no way! I have raw chicken in the car, and it’ll spoil! It would be inconsiderate to everyone else, because I left the baby at home! Probably Fr. Dan’s back hurts, and the last thing he wants is more people in line! I’m not even sure what time confession is!  I’ve only been a member of this parish for nine years; how am I supposed to know when confession is? And anyway, I haven’t had time to prepare properly! It would be an insult to God to show up and blurt out a few things and skip all the really important stuff. It would be better to wait until I can do a really thorough job of it. Confession is really important, so let’s do it right. Let’s do it some other time.

This panic is so familiar to me, I don’t even listen to it anymore. I just let it play out, and then think, “Are we done now? All right, then let’s go to confession.” And so I went, still pathetically clinging to the idea that maybe, just maybe, it’s at 2:00 after all, and if we show up at 2:30, and we’ll be too late. The church won’t even be there anymore, that’s how late we’ll be. Maybe?

Well, the church was still there, and we were not late. The horror!

I had been struggling with some confusion over a spiritual matter, which had been causing much misery. As I knelt down, my heart bleated out,

Listen, Lord. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job. I guess you love me. Personally, I think you should make things really clear right now, because, come on. But here is my heart, and I’m trying to open it. If you tell me something I need to hear, I will try to hear it eventually, and I don’t know what else to say. Give me strength or whatever. Okay, thanks. See ya there.

And what do you know? The pastor (JESUS) told me something really clear, and obvious, and helpful, and enlightening, and liberating. It was way more illuminating than I even dared to hope for, and I floated out of the confessional grinning like an idiot. And crying. And grinning, while my nose ran and my heart sang.

That was a good one. I love it when that happens.

But! Even when it’s just regular old confession, where I trot out my stupid old worn out raggy old sins one more time, and the regular old priest just regular old absolves me, no special insight, no grand turning points . . . I still feel the same way.  I still feel like Ebeneezer Scrooge, after he’s repented and is going around making amends: Oh, I don’t deserve to be so happy. But I can’t help it. I just can’t help it!

It hasn’t always been this way. I’ve always had the resistance to going to confession, but it used to be that it didn’t let up, either during or after the actual sacrament. As I was in the confessional, I’d be sick and nervous, feeling like a phony and a liar.  I’d step out and think, “Oh, but wait, I forgot the main point! I don’t think I really explained what was really happening. And what about that thing eleven years ago? Have I ever really confessed that? Should I just get back into line? What is even the point of this, if I’m going to do such a bad job?”

And when I heard about other people floating out in an ecstasy of joy and relief, that further cemented the idea that I was doing it all wrong.

So what has changed?

I finally realized I was putting too much emphasis on myself doing it right. I finally realized that there was no way I could do it right enough to earn absolution. It was never about that. The fact that I’m uncertain and imperfect and sloppy and forgetful and let myself off the hook is kind of the point. It’s why we need confession in the first place. I put myself in that little box, and Jesus squints at me in the dim light and says, “Ohh, boy. Look, I’ll just take care of . . . all of this, okay? I’ll take care of you.”

That’s the point. That’s the whole point. That’s why He died: because there was never any question of us doing anything right. All we have to do is get in there, and He will take care of us.

That’s what it means, that Jesus died for us. We still suffer and we still struggle, we still feel pain and sorrow, guilt and grief. But we don’t have to worry about making sure we do it right. We’re not efficacious. We’re just not. What Jesus wants is for us to open ourselves up to Him and see very clearly that we’re helpless. That’s what He’s waiting for. That’s what He wants, more than He wants an impeccably thorough list of sins. He wants us to think less about ourselves and our failings — even our failings to confess properly! — and more about Him and His unimaginable mercy.

Obviously, we have to make our best effort to fulfill our obligations as well and thoroughly as we can. That’s why the Church tells us what to say and what to do; and yes, we do have to say and do those things. But even as we try our best, we remember that even our very, very best isn’t going to be good enough.

So I just kind of . . . relax into that.

In the confessional, our job is to admit defeat and turn things over to Him. That’s what He wants. And when I do that, I float out of that confessional with the dopey grin on my face, and my nose runs, and my heart sings. Thanks be to God! Oh, thanks be to God.

Last week, I was working on stepping up my game a little bit. I feel a little bit like Andy Sipowicz in season 1 of NYPD Blue, making an effort:

“Please, I understand my situation. I spent a long time being sauced. I need to win back my colleagues’ trust. I’ve got to exhibit a continuous positive approach, even with this dim bulb here.”

[at Liquor store over on James Street]

Guy: “You guys wanna give me a hand?”
Andy: “Yeah, sure.”
Guy: “Gimme.”
Andy: “Our pleasure.”
[later]
Andy: “That was positive, wasn’t it? ‘Our pleasure.'”
Partner: “Fair.”
Andy: “What should I have said? ‘Our pleasure, rooty-toot-toot’?”

Next week: aiming higher than immediately-post-rock bottom-Andy Sipowicz. Meantime, here’s how I did:

SATURDAY
GRILLED HAM AND PEPPER JACK in PITA POCKETS

I forgot how nice grilled pita pockets are — halfway between grilled cheese sandwiches and quesadillas. Perfect for a quick meal on a windy, wet, miserable day. I think we must have had chips or something. I forgot to buy dessert, so I reluctantly brought out the bag of Christmas candy I bought for 50% off in hopes of saving it for the next birthday party. So close!

SUNDAY
CHICKEN ENCHILADAS; GUACAMOLE and CHIPS; BROWNIE ICE CREAM SUNDAES

This meal was the crown jewel of the week, even if only for these magnificent caramelized onions.

[img attachment=”87839″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog sauteed onions” /]

I use Pioneer Woman’s chicken enchilada recipe, where you cook the seasoned chicken in a pan, then take the chicken out and cook the onions in that same pan, then take the onions out and heat the enchilada sauce in that same pan. That is one freaking lucky pan.

[img attachment=”87837″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog chicken enchiladas and guac” /]

The enchiladas didn’t even turn out that great, to be honest, but even not-so-great enchiladas are still homemade enchiladas, and I made 35 of them.

Oh, and Aldi has stopped using artificial coloring in some of its products, including its maraschino cherries. I reckon this is healthier, but those cherries were not very attractive. I thought they may actually have gone off (when I was about five, I got pretty drunk on a fermented strawberry sundae), but I served them to the kids anyway. They didn’t sleep any better than they usually do.

MONDAY
HOT DOGS; PASTA SALAD

I’ve had this jar of chopped Giardiniera on the shelf for a million years, so I finally opened it up and dumped it into a pot of farfalle. I ate as much as I could manage, because someone had to. Gonna throw away the rest today.

I did make my husband some lovely fried eggs before he left for work. I struggled, sorrowing, through many years of not really being sure how to fry an egg properly, until I discovered this method. In case you’re in the same fix, here’s how I do it:

Heat the pan and drop in a TON of butter, like 3 Tbs or more. Then carefully crack the eggs into the pan and fry them on a medium heat, constantly spooning the hot, melted butter over the yolk. This way, the top of the egg gets cooked, but you don’t have to flip the egg over. It gives the top of the eggs an exuberant fluffiness, and the edges get crisp and lacy.

[img attachment=”87835″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog fried eggs” /]

Ain’t they pretty? I’m a good wife, eggwise.

TUESDAY
TUNA SANDWICHES; RAW VEG and ONION DIP

Email to my husband from Tuesday:

WEDNESDAY
HAMBURGERS, CHIPS

I defrosted the hamburger meat.

THURSDAY
ONE PAN HONEY CHICKEN, RED POTATOES, BROCCOLI

Annd I bought broccoli and honey. Irene has been begging and begging for this dish, which I made once and which was so underwhelming that no one else even remembers eating it. I finally made it again, and once again, it tasted fine, and looks nice enough:

[img attachment=”87841″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog chicken broccoli potatoes” /]

I will say that you can put it together really quickly in the morning and throw it in the oven half an hour before dinner, no fuss. I even used frozen broccoli instead of fresh, and it was still good (although the moisture from the broccoli diluted the sauce). I also substituted chicken thighs for chicken breasts, because they were on sale. Breasts would have been better – the crisp, sweet skin is super – but the thighs were acceptable. And I did get Irene off my back for a few weeks!

FRIDAY
ZITI; SALAD; POSSIBLY ROLLS

I’ve also had this Frisée lettuce lurking in the fridge all week, so today’s the day we find out what Frisée lettuce tastes like.

[img attachment=”87840″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog frisee lettuce” /]

I also found this recipe on Facebook from Kimberly’s Country Kitchen:

[img attachment=”87866″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”food blog chicken broccoli potatoes” /]

We’ll see if I can rope one of my teenagers into trying it. They’re not going to look like that picture, though.

Well, how do you fry eggs, if you’re so smart?

In my essay about how to help kids learn to behave during Mass, I said:

The Mass is not a private time. It’s a time to worship God with other people. We feel that kids belong at Mass, both for their benefit and for the benefit of the congregation.  We gradually increase our expectations of our kids until they eventually participate as fully in the Mass as any adult.

A few commenters objected to the idea that Mass is not private time. The most vociferous response was this:

Where did you get  YOUR Catholic education??? The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass most assuredly IS a private time for me to enter into a private union with Christ in the Holy Eucharist.  It is a time for me to “life up my spirit” and my quiet time away from the noise and materialism of the world to enter into that sacred prayer of union.  It IS most assuredly a private time, between God and soul.  That you do not understand this, and view the church as your “community” time, explains your rudeness in allowing your children to disrupt the Holy Mass.

Well, my essay listed seventeen ways to avoid letting your children to disrupt the Holy Mass, so I’m not sure which rudeness he means. Also, I wonder what Ignatius of Antioch, pictured above, would say about the distractions and disruptions that one may be forced to endure when one is trying to spend a little quiet time with God. Grr!

The main point, though, is that the commenter flat out wrong that the Mass is private time and not community time. Here is what the Catechism says (emphasis mine):

Liturgical services are not private functions but are celebrations of the Church which is ‘the sacrament of unity,’ namely, the holy people united and organized under the authority of the bishops. Therefore, liturgical services pertain to the whole Body of the Church. They manifest it, and have effects upon it. But they touch individual members of the Church in different ways, depending on their orders, their role in the liturgical services, and their actual participation in them.”7 For this reason, “rites which are meant to be celebrated in common, with the faithful present and actively participating, should as far as possible be celebrated in that way rather than by an individual and quasi-privately.

So it’s possible to celebrate Mass with only the priest present, and it’s possible to have a “private” Mass (say, for a wedding or funeral), but that is not ideal. The ideal Mass is a Mass that includes the community. Like it or not, the community by definition means people who are not you.

Next time you go to Mass, listen closely for all the expressions of this idea that we please God when we come together with other people to worship Him. This is what the Communion of Saints is all about: we join together with those in Purgatory and Heaven, and with the other faithful here on earth, to worship God. This is how He wants us to do it. With “so great a cloud of witnesses.” Not at our personal, private latitude and longitude, but “from East to West.” Heck, when Jesus taught us to pray, He instructed us to say “our Father,” not “my Father.”

It’s not all about us. We remember this every time we hear a reading or a sermon that doesn’t apply to us, and doesn’t seem tailored to our particular needs or concerns. That’s not a sign that someone is doing the Mass wrong; it’s a sign that this is how God wants us to do it: together with other people. That is what all the apostles did, on Jesus’ command: they went out and started drawing in as many other people as they could. The Prophet Jonah wanted to hog God and His salvation all to Himself, but God took away his sheltering shade and insisted that he go out and be with people. Noisy people. Undeserving people. People who distracted Jonah from spending his lovely, private, sacred communion with God.

Why? Why does He want us to do it this way? Wouldn’t it be better if we could just be with God one-on-one, without anyone to distract us?

I don’t know! Okay? I don’t really know. I do know that only a very select, very holy, very scary few — think holy, scary Moses — were able to see God face to face and survive. I do know that I’m not one of these people.

And I do know that when I turn away from other people, those are the times when I’m also furthest from God. In retrospect, I can see clearly that when I seclude myself, hide from other people, refuse to help them and refuse to ask for help, I am also driving God away, hiding from Him, fearful of Him, resentful, afraid, closed off, bitter, and unwilling to hear the invitations and demands of love. When I am most open to other people, and when I work the hardest to put up with their noise and mess and fuss and otherness — and when I work the hardest to allow them to put up with me — then those are the times when it’s easiest to hear God.

Heck, that was the point of the Incarnation. Right? We’re not alone. We’re not orphans. We’re not down here alone, looking up at a faraway God. We have a Brother, and we have to learn how to live with Him, and all of His other belovedmbrothers and sisters, too.

Weird, right? But that’s how it works. The Communion of Saints is a real thing, and I can’t be a part of it if I’m always trying to figure out who needs to shut up and get away from me.

So, other people. I hate ’em. They drive me crazy. They don’t do right, and I wish they would shape up and stop bothering me, especially when I’m trying to pray.  But other people is where God is. That’s all there is to it. I don’t like it, but I can no longer pretend that it’s any other way. So, bring on the cloud of witnesses! If I want Jesus, it’s a package deal.

I’ve spent enough time among academics to understand that there is a fine, almost invisible line between “coming full circle” and “disappearing up one’s own area of expertise.”

The reason I’m bringing this up (other than that I thought you might enjoy an evil cackle as well) is that Schuman is clearly struggling with something that a lot of Catholics struggle with, too, in a different context.

Read the rest at the Register.