1. A couple of heavy hitters to start off with this week, both of which push the boundaries of Christian forgiveness to its most uncomfortable and challenging (and, I would argue, beautiful) conclusion. 

First up, Elizabeth Bruenig profiles the execution of John Henry Ramirez and the legal case he brought against the state of Texas policy banning clergy from being present at the time of death. Ramirez had murdered a man in a convenience story robbery while high on a number of substances, but found Jesus and a lively faith through a prison ministry. Pastor Dana Moore was the pastor who connected with Ramirez, and Ramirez asked only that the pastor be able to pray aloud and touch him as the deadly drugs in his system took effect. 

Aaron Castro released a statement after Ramirez’s death. He quoted Micah 7:18 — “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy” — and hailed a new era of healing for his family: “Peace and Love and justice for Pablo G. Castro may his name not be forgotten, and may God have mercy in J.H.R. for it is not up to us. He is receiving his true judgment with our Lord and Savior. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end. A Life taken away is not to be celebrated but closure can definitely take place.”

Micah asks a rational question: What should we make of this peculiar God of this peculiar faith, who rushes to forgive offenses and relieve debts, even if it means sending his emissaries out to where the graver stock of sins are stored, in prisons and penal institutions, even execution chambers? I asked Moore how God saw Ramirez.

“God sees John as he created him,” Moore said, not as the sum of all the things he had done. The view of Ramirez from God’s eyes, or from Moore’s, must seem very strange relative to the assessment the state of Texas made of the man on the day he was sentenced, and held until the night he died. May all our enemies be judged by Texas, and we ourselves by God or Dana Moore.

2. When it comes to “sending his emissaries to where the graver stock of sins are stored,” over at Commonweal, Adam DeVille writes soberly about his ministry and work as a psychologist treating sex offenders. DeVille is Roman Catholic, and the basis for his reflection is ongoing coverage of the trial of Theodore McCarrick, the former bishop and cardinal known for his sexual abuse of boys and seminarians. 

Not long ago I saw TV footage of this lonely and loathsome ninety-one-year-old shuffling into a courtroom in Massachusetts. In that moment I briefly felt something approaching sorrow for him. My superego swiftly moved in to forbid further feelings of sorrow or pity, and to insist that I think of him only as a moral monster. […]

The lesson I am learning with him is one that my patients have taught me — for patients always teach us more than any textbook ever will. One can both acknowledge one’s revulsion at McCarrick’s abuses and still see him as one of us, a fellow human being in the eyes of God. That second acknowledgement doesn’t negate the first.

But, admittedly, this is not an easy balance to strike. […]

Why should we want to do anything other than revile people like McCarrick? Perhaps, some might concede, not hating abusers is a professional obligation for clinicians, but the rest of us are entitled to our disgust. It seems to me that Christians are vulnerable here in an acutely difficult way. Is not the petition “forgive us our sins as we forgive others” right there in the prayer Christ taught us? To be clear, I am not suggesting that we should forgive McCarrick merely because, if we don’t, a sadistic God will inflict some punishment on us. Forgiveness can never be demanded; it must be freely given, and not at the behest of a sadistic superego masquerading (as it so often does with Catholics) as the voice of conscience. Above all, forgiveness must be given by victims first and foremost, and on their own timetable.

But when it is finally given, we should celebrate that fact. Forgiveness breaks deathly cycles of destruction and recrimination, at least some of the time and in some ways. And real forgiveness is capacious enough that it does not require uniformity of practice. It does not require that we ever again like or be close to a person who has done evil to us. Nor is it necessarily completed in one discrete action; it may gradually unfold over time. … A forgiving, loving people whom God has set free can grieve for the enormous damage many abusers have inflicted on individual victims and the Church as a whole, while also hoping with real love that, in God’s good time, they might be reconciled to us, and we to them.

3. The Hedgehog Review featured a too-good-to-pass-up re-run from 2018 on the modern divorce between work and meaning. Jonathan Malesic offers a wide ranging reflection, connecting disparate threads from economist Adam Smith, Jamestown’s Captain John Smith, Luther, Calvin, Thoreau, 19th century Thomas Aquinas scholar Josef Pieper, Crow Indians, and Steve Jobs. At the core of Malesic’s thought is that modern America’s crisis of meaning has roots in shifting economic trends, and part of America’s future flourishing will require a social reckoning with “work” righteousness.

The Bible’s first pages are filled with language that lends significance to human work. … in the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin and Martin Luther developed the modern concept of vocation to explain how one’s work as a farmer or merchant was implicated in God’s providential design for human society. Today, the language of “purpose” — or “love,” the fulfillment of desire — signals that work is about more than the mundane need for a paycheck or health insurance. It means that work is about, vaguely, more.

The transformation of work into a spiritual enterprise, the site of our highest aspirations — to transcend ourselves, to encounter a higher reality, to serve others — is the work ethic’s cruelest unfulfilled promise. Like the idea that work earns one dignity and character, belief in work’s higher purpose trains people to accept lower salaries and worse conditions in their jobs, convinced that spiritual satisfaction is a fair substitute. That on its own isn’t inherently cruel. There is, indeed, more to life than money. We should applaud and not weep for the talented attorney who chooses public service over a career in corporate tax law. She’s responding to a noble calling.

But the language of self-fulfillment even appears in rhetoric around low-pay, low-status work. “Vocation” remains a common catchall term for work in Christian circles, sacralizing every position in the business hierarchy.

Meanwhile, people whose work has undeniable social value — nurses, physicians, teachers — burn out at alarming rates. Their love turns to hatred. Their pursuit of purpose leads to spiritual barrenness. In a tragic irony, they go beyond themselves, but they end up feeling useless and unfulfilled.

4. Of course, the good folks at Hard Times agree with Malesic: “Your Self-Worth Shouldn’t Come From a Carreer, It Should Come from Social Media“:

There are also incredible downsides to getting any inch of self-worth from a career. Like, what if you get a promotion or a raise? You could easily fall into the “worth trap” and constantly seek more and more approval at work. That never happens online.

Not to mention, you can’t get that ultimate esteem-boosting blue checkmark if you live your life through the scope of a career

For more humor this week, see also “Tote Bags Unpack Their Emotional Baggage,” “Inspiring Competition Show Backstory Ends With Person Getting on Competition Show,” and “Aging Punk Slaps Another Band Sticker on Sleep Apnea Machine.”

5. ICYMI, my family welcomed our second baby into the world last August. She’s coming up on 12 weeks, and she’s a joy and a drain, a giver of life and a colicky taker of sleep. Add in a moody two year old to the mix, and we’re a family that’s loaded with love and exhaustion and caffeine. So of course, we are frequently reminded “Don’t blink; cherish every second; it will be gone in a flash.” My initial reaction to advice like this is to smile and nod, put the binky back into my infant’s mouth for the twenty-seventh time, and swallow whatever obscenity my fallen mind has created. And yet, if Stephanie Murray is right, these hard times may also be the best times. Over at the Atlantic, she explores “Why We Long For the Most Difficult Days of Parenthood.”

It is a small comfort that I am not alone in struggling to relish this phase of parenthood. Research on parenting and happiness is mixed, but much of it suggests that child-rearing isn’t particularly enjoyable. In the United States (and in some but not all other advanced industrialized nations), becoming a parent takes a toll on well-being, which doesn’t recover until the kids leave the house. Nevertheless, if my elders are any indication, many people come to recall the chaotic early years of parenting very fondly. There is even some data to back this up: In a study published last year, researchers asked people over the age of 50 in several European countries to retrospectively assess when they were happiest. Respondents consistently pointed to their early 30s—a finding partially explained, for those who had kids, by the fact that those years lined up with when their kids were born. […]

One of the reasons parenting gradually gets less demanding is that parents become less central to a child’s happiness. School and friends, and eventually partners and work, take precedence, and parents shift into the child’s periphery. Although the utter physical dependency of a small child on their parents can be overwhelming, it comes with an intimacy that is impossible to preserve as the child matures. “I have a great relationship with my daughter now,” Marie Graham, a mother of one from Salford, England, who runs a wellness company, told me. “But the intensity of the relationship you have with your young child, you’re never going to re-create.” Regardless of how close my daughter and I remain, there will come a time when she no longer seeks comfort by crawling into my lap. Whatever liberation comes with that transition will be bittersweet.

Intimacy, dependence, love, suffering — they’re all wrapped up together in this bundle of parent-child love. The gospel implications here write themselves.

6. The last word this week goes to a pair of new music drops. Mockingbird is responsible for introducing me to the joys of Carly Rae Jepsen from a monthly playlist from back in 2015. No, seriously. The “Call Me Maybe” singer has quietly developed a cult following since hitting the top 40 in 2012, especially when she dropped a B-Side to her 2016 album Emotion. Don’t sleep on Carly J — that girl is a bubblegum pop genius, trading in pop fandom for indie street cred. The Atlantic profiled her for the release of her new album The Loneliest Time, and Jepson shared how the pandemic, family deaths, therapy, and vulnerability played key roles in her new music.

Describing that therapy session to me, Jepsen imitated the mind-blown emoji to demonstrate how the “soften up” advice hit her. Over the years, she said, she had baked herself into a “tough little cookie” who appeared “happy all the time”: “Not just for my career, but also for my family, I very much felt that pressure to be like ‘Everything’s good; I’ve got it.’” “Surrender My Heart” signals a shift, calling for vulnerability not from a lover, as her music typically does, but from herself. The synth-pop arrangement is unsurprisingly anthemic — but Jepsen sings with a trembling tenderness that feels new. “It was almost a prayer,” she said of the track. “I want to be open.” […]

At another point in the show, Jepsen threw her blazer on the ground and acted mad about the fact that The Loneliest Time would come out on the same day as Taylor Swift’s new album. Fans cackled at the subtext. Jepsen, firmly a cult figure these days, has never reached the level of enduring fame that Swift enjoys. But Jepsen was only pretending to be resentful. “She’s a lovely artist; it’s not like throwing any shade,” she told me of Swift. She added that after “Call Me Maybe,” she felt pressure to compete with other singers, as if they were rivals for a throne. But “it’s not that way,” she said. Pop, she has learned, is “like love. It’s limitless.”

Both Carly Rae and Taylor Swift have fantastic new music dropping today, including this gem from Swift’s new song Anti-Hero (see above): “It’s me. Hi! I’m the problem it’s me. … I’ll stare directly into the sun, but never in the mirror. It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.” It seems like both musical heroines have been wrestling with mental health and a failure to live up to our own expectations. The home office has been jamming all morning, and probably will be all weekend. Here’s hoping your weekend is filled with limitless love too!

Strays:

• A stirring reflection on body image and Fernando Botero’s “The Head of Christ.”
• The Virtue of Noticing: Refusing numbness and recovering wonder.
• What to make of the Joan Didion documentaries.

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