I have at times been disappointed to find that many of our greatest poets, beginning in a clear way in the culture of the renaissance courtier, seem to be competing with one another to discover more and more clever ways to make crude comments about women. Undoubtedly there are entire schools of feminism that make their money complaining about this, but mine is the complaint of a good, old-fashioned, closed-minded prude.
Even in High School, when I had no clear religious or moral beliefs, I found it patronizing when a teacher would assure us Shakespeare was quite the pervert. Not because it was wholly inaccurate, but because of the assumption that young people could find no attraction to noble thoughts or beautiful language if it were not mixed with a good deal of ogling naked bodies. I don’t recall having anyone in my youth — not a parent, teacher, or even a pastor — suggest chastity was something worthwhile beyond the practical concerns of avoiding babies, diseases, and heartbreak, but something in me always recoiled at being told we are all just meat machines built to pursue incoherent hunger and horniness. Even before I had the self-discipline to conceive of living differently or the knowledge to refute it intellectually, in my gut it felt degrading.
More recently, I have found that a number of young Christian men I meet who are interested in poetry are very excited about the possibility of reviving heroic verse, but despair either of attaining chastity themselves or of finding a chaste woman, and dismiss love poetry as “simping.”
I have a very vivid experience of reading Annie Dillard describing the thrill of touching a boy’s hand through her glove at a dance as a young lady, and realizing there was a whole world of subtle, diverse experience that had been denied to me on the grounds of superficial sexual nihilism. By the time I converted I had already married someone I believe I can now say was a sex addict, but I took pleasure in being able to explore themes of chaste love in my two books as well as a handful of shorter poems. I’m sharing one today that compares the commitment to wait for marriage to an untilled Eden, except I must fall short from presenting the Paradise of virginity as entirely without blemish as this image is one our hymnography preserves for the Mother of God, and a fallen person requires penance even if they have attained chastity.
Your heart to me is a private Eden,
a little land kept pure for me.
All the world’s goods seem bound with strife,
and nothing of mine is ever quite mine,
but fades or gives way to another’s claim,
except for you, untilled for me,
bearing fruit from unbroken soil.
Not immaculate, yes, I know.
Not free from every trace of plow.
But made new for me as I for you,
by penance preserved not for yourself:
your heart a Paradise where I may rest.
This theme comes out quite strongly in the 2nd book I am editing as well as in the 3rd book I am just beginning to write, and I’m hoping to explore it more in short poems and reflections in this newsletter in the coming year. It seems very worthwhile to work to make chastity appear not as a list of rules that must be fearfully kept to avoid condemnation, but as a wondrous and attractive gift one wishes to guard as a treasure because it is so valuable in itself.
It makes me think of the apologist Frank Sheed saying how it is essential in our day to exposit what the Church teaches to be true as well as show the import of that truth and its relevance to one's life. He uses the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You can say the BVM is perpetually a virgin, and someone could say, "So what if she is?" Virginity and chastity are compelling; we need to find ways to express them in compelling ways.