in a certain mood or at a certain hour & if a certain type of song is playing, this little wisp of an idea alights upon my skin like a feather, tickling, and it occurs to me, I start to think: maybe i should try & write That One Book again… the one that i’ve written start-to-finish approx 4x in the last fifteen years, started rewriting at least 25-30x, re-drafted endlessly in my head, endlessly, and furiously, depressedly thrown in the trash approx 500 times… the one that i once printed off a physical copy of and literally buried in the backyard and planted a melon-sized rock on top of its grave, to try & put it to rest once & for all… the one that i keep swearing off, that keeps haunting me (it’s never gonna leave me, is it?) (wtf is it about that one?!), but man, i tell you what, literary agents everywhere can count themselves lucky, LUCKY!!, that i quite literally ain’t got time nor the thickness of skin to deal with all of that right now, who can relate?
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CAUTION: CONTAINS SPOILERS for Ultimate Baking Championship!!
Where to even begin, with this show?! This was a whirwind. I dunno about you guys, but I felt kind of overloaded. Here are my thoughts, and a quick recap:
I’ll start with this: I miss Spring Baking Championship. I wish they’d just done another season of that instead. This show… the set is so sleek. The pastel colors, the contestants’ humble oohing and ahhing, their friendly banter, and Jesse’s corny jokes, are all missing. This is just all business, no frills. It’s not really the kind of baking show I like. But, neither was Next Gen, and that one managed to pleasantly surprise me, so we’ll see where this goes.
Also, starting with sixteen?! And sending home six in a single episode?! Whew! I get being cutthroat, but this was wild, wasn’t it?
The prize money is 50k, not just 25. So this is all professional, high-end stuff. No self-taught home bakers on this show. Food was described as “sexy” not once, but twice. All the desserts are these fancy, elaborate, highly technical little plated numbers with about twenty-seven elements in each – things you’d only find at places I could never afford to go, and honestly wouldn’t care to even if I could. (I’ve been watching these shows since like 2017, and even I have no clue what “pain de gênes” is.) Give me a good hearty slice of cake over any of these, any day. For me, it’s just kinda… blah.
One thing I do like about it though: best believe, no one on this show mispronounces “mascarpone.” Not a single time! (Although, I did catch Chris calling a cylinder a “sphere” one time. I can forgive that, because I too am a scatterbrain, and his blueberry lemon chiffon cake sounded delicoius.)
The other thing I like about this show: the leaderboard. I’ve been saying for some time that these shows really oughtta have a numerical ranking system, to make it a little more technical and less vague. I appreciated this move.
The Curse of Mith’s Favorite strikes again… three times. From the get-go, I was rooting for Steven and Cesar. And Julian, I liked him a lot because his flavor choices in both challenges sounded the most delicious (that campfire swiss roll tho!)! What is it about me?! Why is my support the kiss of death, for these contestants? I’m like the grim reaper disguised as a cheerleader! (Last season of Holiday was an anomaly.) If I had to guess in socionics terms, it’s because of my Ni base function. I have a strong intuition, purportedly, so I think I can kind of subconsciously sense which people are the underdogs, and my heart goes out to them.
And even weirder – both Steven and Cesar went home on eclairs! WTH! NO ONE else on this show better be making any eclairs for the REST OF THE SEASON! Especially my favorites (I’m not gonna say who they are now, lest I curse them too!).
Without naming any favorites: I’m thrilled that Adalberto pulled through after his napoleon fell apart. My little heart was breaking for him. He seems so genuine, and also, his pastry shop back home is the coolest! I’m also glad to see Clement back – he was one of my favs on his season of Spring Baking, and I remember the last time he made that fraisier. (“I didn’t sleep for three years” after not winning that show, he said, lol – but now he’s back, and out for blood!) And Robert – where do I recognize him from?! I know I’ve seen him on one of these shows before.
I did think it was a bit of a cruel dig when Duff referred to Molly’s gateau as “the work of a cold, calculating assassin” – right after sending Cesar, the eponymous Pastry Assassin, home! Come on now! And sending the “Flavor Queen” Lasheeda home on flavor?! And he told Julian that his Swiss roll needed “lube”?! OUCH! Merciless! The judging was harsh! I got a bit of whiplash going straight into this after the soft and gentle Next Gen, didn’t you?! Whew!
Anyway, here’s the recap:
Skills Challenge – four basic tastes, four basic textures; randomly assigned
Sour & Smooth
- Robert: deconstructed key lime pie (“you ain’t sending me home on a key lime pie!”)
- Adalberto: date pudding cake w/ passionfruit curd
Bitter & Toasty
- Clement: chocolate hazelnut tart with coffee mascarpone cream
- Rochelle: chocolate mousse w/ liquid pecan praline center & toasted marshmallow
Salty & Sticky
- Casey: chocolate peanut caramelized tart
- Steven: praline eclair
Sweet & Crunchy
- Florencia: ricotta-pear deconstructed tart
- Sarah: honey mascarpone almond mousse w/ caramel tuile
Salty & Smooth
- Molly: miso caramel namelaka
- Juan: coffee chocolate mousse cake w/ arequipe
Sour & Sticky
- Lasheeda: deconstructed rocky road w/ raspberry
- Chris: lemon almond cake w/ cinnamon-vanilla milk jam & yuzu
Bitter & Crunchy
- Arlety: chocolate orange hazelnut financier w/ kumquat
- Cesar: meyer lemon eclair w/ honeycomb brittle
Sweet & Toasty
- Julian: chocolate toasted hazelnut petit gateau w/ brownie
- Oralia: toasted sesame crème brulee w/ toasted sesame shortbread
Challenge Winners: Molly (18/20), Juan (17/20), Clement (16/20), Adalberto (15/20)
Sent Home: Steven, Sarah, Lasheeda, Cesar
Master Challenge: a dessert that represents a defining event in your life
- Casey: key lime pie w/ honey meringue
- Juan: tropical coconut fruit tart w/ mongo mongo
- Florencia: almond genoise w/ cherries, chocolate mousse, & espresso liqueur
- Clement: his signature fraisier
- Julian: s’mores devil’s food cake swiss roll
- Oralia: caramelized apple charlottte
- Rochelle: bananas foster torte
- Robert: milk chocolate hazelnut bar w/ cherry chantilly
- Molly: white chocolate pistachio gateau w/ raspberry
- Arlety: tropical tart
- Adalberto: guava & coconut napoleon w/ figs
- Chris: blueberry lemon chiffon cake
Challenge Winner: Molly (27/30)
Sent Home: Arlety & Julian
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Episode One Winner: Molly
Superlatives from the judges: 1 (“best group of bakers I have ever seen” – Duff)
Dead family members mentioned: 1 (Florencia’s mom 🙏😔) – very sad, but it’s also kind of a trope that these contestants have a dead family member inspiring them, so I thought I’d keep a tally this season
Duff’s gaping maw spotted: 2 times (have y’all noticed how the camera loves to zoom in on his face when he’s taking a big bite and his eyes are wide open? As someone who hates to be seen eating, I’m always so painfully embarrassed for him, lol – they do this to him all the time, so I thought I’d keep a tally of this this season as well)
The dessert that I would most have liked to eat: there were SO many to choose from, but probably Robert’s from the second challenge: milk chocolate hazelnut “bar” with that “sexy,” “ethereal” cherry chantilly
Mith’s official prediction for the finalists and winner: Clement, Juan, and Robert, with Juan being the champion
What were your thoughts?! Who are your favs? Which desserts did you want to eat?! Leave me your comments! I’m sending this to the internet in hopes of reaching fellow fans. I want to hear from you!
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*TW – pregnancy loss*
At first I felt a lot of guilt. What if it was something I did?, what was wrong with my body?, etc. I got over that in time; I no longer feel like it was my fault. It just happens. 1 in 4 pregnancies, in fact.
But now, five years and eight months on, I still have guilt, just of a different kind. Two different kinds, really:
I’m no longer sad about it on the day-to-day. So I feel guilty for not feeling sadder. And also, I feel guilty for feeling sad at all: for grieving the baby that I lost – because if that baby had survived, I wouldn’t have my living daughter.
Three long, agonizing months after the miscarriage, three months of grieving inconsolably and waiting impatiently, I finally became pregnant again, this time with a baby that stuck. That “rainbow baby” went on to be born in June: three months after what would have been the lost baby’s due date.
March 14, 2021 was their due date, in fact (pi day baby). So if they’d lived, they’d be turning five right about now. – But as it is, I have my bean, my beautiful, funny, mischievous 4.5 year old bean who will turn five in June, and I wouldn’t trade her for anything.
There’s no possible universe in which they both exist.
So like how do I do this? I can’t be sad that pi died, because that implies wishing that pi had lived, which implies wishing that bean had never existed. Which I do not and could never.
But – do those implications really necessarily follow? It seems so to me, logically… but maybe not all things are subject to this kind of logic. Things can be both bad and good. It can be hard to see things that way, especially tragedies; but this whole miscarriage conundrum really shows me how true it is: our little labels of “good” and “bad,” which we are so quick to slap onto our perceptions of events and occurrences – the stories we make up to make sense of things – are really so inadequate, so futile. Maybe in the grand scheme they’re actually even kinda meaningless.
The tragedy of a thing doesn’t make the joy that it made space for any less joyful. Nor does the joy really alleviate the sadness. They don’t cancel each other out. They coexist. Both are true at once. It’s weird. Human brains aren’t really capable of seeing things from God’s perspective, but situations like this kind of give us a hint, I think. In the mind of God, there are none of our human limitations. Both can exist there, both siblings side by side, equally, eternally alive.
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How’re ya feeling, fellow moms? This rant is for you. I’ve noticed a trend in the online pregnancy world recently of moms complaining about being asked, while visibly pregnant: “how are you feeling?”
And I’m here to tell those moms: really?! Come on now. I know we’re hormonal and tired, and sometimes we genuinely cannot control our emotional outbursts, — I get it. But that’s no excuse to throw basic courtesy and rationality to the winds. Let’s get over ourselves, shall we, and try to be decent humans.
Women are complaining that they’re tired of being asked this question, over and over and over, by complete strangers even, because isn’t it obvious that they’re not feeling great?!, and it isn’t anyone’s business anyway! Such a lame, tired question! And why are total strangers asking me how I’m feeling?! Just leave me alone!
Now, if you read this blog, you know I’m all for being left alone. I’m hardly a fan of random unsolicited comments from strangers, and I also can’t stand it when people treat pregnant moms like they’re some exhibit in a zoo. As an ILI with AVPD and an ED that makes me hypersensitive about my body image, I’m not big on small talk, being greeted by strangers in public, or being perceived in general. So please keep in mind that this rant is not coming from some shameless, tactless, chatty social butterfly who loves discussing personal details with strangers. I’m actually intensely private and very reserved about conversation.
Nor am I ignorant of the struggles of being pregnant. I’ve been pregnant five times and given birth four, one of which was a complicated pregnancy that resulted in an emergent c-section and a NICU stay. So I get it. Pregnancy is not all sunshiney small-talk material.
But pregnancy is also really, really cool. It’s possibly one of the coolest things, if not the coolest thing, about the human species. When people see a pregnant lady, it elicits a reaction. That’s just natural.
When people ask you “how are you feeling?”, it’s not really about how you’re feeling. They’re not your doctor. Knowing how you’re feeling physically in that moment is not that important to them. What they really mean with this question is: “wow! I see that you are pregnant. That is cool! I am acknowledging how cool this is. Would you like to discuss it?” — I’m hardly socially savvy, but I feel like it’s pretty obvious that this is the motive behind the question.
It’s just common sense. It’s common courtesy.
It’s not an invasion of privacy. Since when does “how are you” actually mean “tell me how you are doing”? Everyone knows that it’s just a simple greeting. As the saying goes: Don’t talk about your indigestion, “how are you”‘s a greeting, not a question!
A person who’s asking you how you’re feeling is not asking you to reveal that you are constipated, nauseated, leaking, hormonal, gassy, or any of that gross stuff. Guess what! Being asked does not obligate you to divulge that information! You can simply say “alright,” or “not great,” or “tired,” or whatever simple reply you want! You don’t have to be gross, but you also don’t have to lie. A simple “not great” is all you need. It’s polite and honest without being gross. You don’t need to be rude.
Because sometimes this question is meant very sincerely. Sometimes the asker of this question (especially if it is a woman, or a friend/family member) is trying to offer you a space to vent and complain a bit, if you want to. Yes, it’s obvious that you’re not feeling great; your belly is the size of a house; they can see that, they’re not dumb. What they are really saying is, “I see that you’re not feeling great! I’m sure it’s exhausting being out and about trying to accomplish your tasks while feeling this way. I’m happy to offer a listening ear if you’d like to be real about it for a moment.” It’s a simple kindness. You don’t have to engage at length if you’re not in the mood, but don’t be pissy and get mad at them.
Sometimes they are trying to start a conversation (again, usually this is if it’s a woman). Women who’ve been pregnant before typically tend to be interested in talking about pregnancy. So maybe they’re hoping that you’ll respond with “actually, I feel like shit, I puked three time this morning,” so that they can then respond with “oh I get it, I had HG during both of my pregnancies, it was rough!” or something like that. It’s just human nature to want to find common experiences in conversation. Again, not saying that you have to have a conversation if you don’t feel like it. But you should recognize the question for what it is, and return kindness with kindness.
I totally get not wanting invasive questions. When I was forty weeks with my first, a customer at work asked me if I was dilated yet. Um, excuse me? Who are you and why are you asking about my cervix? At that point I agree with you, that’s a weird and uncomfortable thing to be asked. But “how are you feeling” is as neutral, lightweight, generic, and open-ended as can be. If that question offends you, then your social sensibilities need some adjustment.
I truly just don’t understand why any mom would be offended that someone cares enough to ask how she’s feeling. To offer a simple expression of benevolent interest. The person who asks “how are you feeling” is not demanding intimate details. They’re simply acknowledging, politely, harmlessly, that you are in an extraordinary state. Why is that so bad?
Maybe this is a Gen-Z thing. I know gen-Zs, who probably constitute the majority of the worldwide pregnant population currently, are notorious for hating common courtesy and returning every simple nicety with a dead-eyed glare. So maybe that’s what this is about. As a millennial woman who was brought up to always be polite and kind to a fault, I can’t relate.
Regardless of generation though, this just seems to me like a no-brainer. If “how’re you feeling” offends you, you may as well be offended by “hi” and “nice weather we’re having,” too. What a waste of energy. I think I’m pretty thin-skinned, but dang! Getting offended by “how are you feeling” is next-level ridiculous.
And here’s the really annoying thing! by complaining about it online for anyone to read, you’re making people afraid to say anything to a pregnant lady at all! You’re making us all look insufferably oversensitive. People love to accuse women of doing nothing but bitch and moan about everything, and when you go online and whine about simply being asked “how are you feeling,” you’re not helping us beat those allegations.
I for one like to be asked how I’m feeling while pregnant. Why? Because, as I explained, it’s a simple acknowledgement that I am pregnant and that is cool. That’s all it is. By responding succinctly and politely, what you’re really saying is: “yes, I am indeed pregnant, thank you for acknowledging how cool that is.” That’s all.
As someone who spent many years longing to be pregnant, but had to wait until I was 29, I am grateful when someone acknowledges the reality of a pregnancy. Yes, it is cool, isn’t it? I don’t love being looked at, though, and don’t love small-talky conversations, so I’ll offer some canned response like “fine, thanks” even if it’s not true. I’ll also smile, to show that I am grateful (not saying that you should necessarily do that, though, unless you are actually happy; in 2026, we don’t tell women to smile!). Even I, a painfully awkward person with diagnosed AVPD, am capable of this. I’m trying to show you how easy it is to practice basic courtesy.
We all have different baggage. Maybe you didn’t want to be pregnant. Maybe you wanted to hide your pregnancy for whatever reason. Fair enough. But if you are a sane person, you have to admit that you, not the asker of this completely benign question, are the one acting weird, because of your baggage. It’s okay to be weird, I’m not saying it’s not — if you’re seriously triggered by an innocuous question, I am sorry, you must have a lot going on. But it’s still not okay to be rude. And it’s not okay to blame others when the issue is your own.
In conclusion: coming from an admittedly oversensitive person, “how are you feeling” is not, in any way, a rude or stupid question. From one mom to another: let’s chill out. Let’s get over ourselves. Let’s put on our big girl pants and practice common courtesy, even when we’re not in the mood. We’re not exempt.
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was my four-year-old’s straight-faced, matter-of-fact reply this afternoon when I begged her to explain to me why, why, why she was still whining and angry and tantruming even after all of her requests had been fulfilled (a bandaid for a tiny boo-boo that wasn’t even bleeding, quesadillas made with cheddar only (because last time i had the audacity to make them with a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella, in an attempt to use up the giant bag of mozzarella shreds in our cheese drawer) (she ate 1/4 of these btw), and her cup of water brought to her on the couch. Why was she still mad? Sometimes, when they’re in this mood and I’m overstimulated, I’ll start loudly singing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to lighten the mood a bit (it really helps, you should try it!), but today, I just pleaded with her to explain to me why. As an ILI in socionics I have creative Te which means I want actions to serve some purpose — why?, what for?, what is this accomplishing??! I can’t deal with pointlessness — and also vulnerable Fe, which means I struggle with loud and histrionic displays of emotion. “Why are you mad?!” is probably a dumb question to ask a whining four-year-old. I’m aware of this. But sometimes it slips out. Being an ILI mom of littles has its unique challenges.
But now that I’ve been informed that, apparently, my four-year-old simply has this intentional, regularly-scheduled Scream Time written into her little daily agenda, I guess I can understand it a little better. “There always has to be a part of the day where I’m screaming.” I guess it serves a purpose for her. She’s a clever bean; maybe she’s on to something. Maybe we should all schedule some daily scream time. Maybe that’d be good for us. As someone with vulnerable Fe, though, I think I’ll stick to just rambling on this stupid little blog. This right here is my scream time.
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This post, like so many others, was meant to be a comment on someone else’s Instagram post, but ended up here instead because I just really hate Instagram comment sections, and hate to post there, and besides there’s not enough room for a full rant there anyway. So if you don’t care about social media, you can move right along. I’m just heated and have to get this off my chest, and what else is this stupid blog for if not getting dumb shit off my chest.
What happened is, this Instagrammer that I’m a fan of posted yet another hilarious reel the other day: in it, he’s making fun of those people who love to tell you, with visible pleasure, how they “haven’t eaten anything today,” “I’m so lightheaded,” “I’ve just been so busy,” etc. etc., and it’s painfully, cringily obvious that they’re just begging for you to be amazed by how skinny they are and how little they care about food. Wow! Should we call Bella Hadid?! is among this Instagrammer’s hilariously sarcastic responses to this person, whom we’ve all known at some point.
After clicking “like” and “save”, as I always do on these reels of his, because it’s always been a major pet peeve of mine when people do this and I love how he calls it out, I sauntered on over to the comments, and what did I find there but a bunch of butthurt whining and self-pity.
If you’re butthurt by this joke (which probably means that you’re the person he’s making fun of in this video), then you are part of the problem.
“But I’m actually really struggling with an ED, and you’re making me feel like I can’t reach out for help for fear of being judged! 🥺”
One: “lol I haven’t eaten anything today” to a random coworker — who may or may not be struggling with an ED themselves, you don’t know — does not equal “reaching out for help,” and you know it. You’re just being selfish; you’d rather get a little bit of attention than consider someone else’s feelings/triggers; you really think you’re that important? If you really want to “reach out for help,” then why are you acting cutesy with some random coworker who has their own shit going on and can’t really do anything to help you anyway? What, you want them to drop what they’re doing and offer to spoon-feed you a yogurt cup? Do you want them to help you wipe your butt after you go potty too? No fr. If you need help with an eating issue, you have the internet; you can find some actual help.
Two: I’ve known plenty of people with real, serious EDs, and none of them were ever the type to whine to randos about how they “haven’t eaten anything today!”. On the contrary, they keep this information to themselves. They are secretive about it. They don’t want to call attention to it. They’re not likely to volunteer information about what they have or haven’t eaten. They are ashamed. That’s what real EDs look like.
I’ve also known plenty of people who do this — “omygosh, I haven’t eaten anything today, I keep forgetting!” — and what do you know: none of those people had EDs. Not one of them. This is exclusively something said by people who do not have EDs, but who kind of glamorize EDs and in a sick way wish they had one. They’re just so eager for people to be concerned about them.
“Well how do you know those people didn’t have EDs, Mith?! Maybe they just mask their symptoms and keep it to themselves.” When you have an ED, you have symptoms. Symptoms that are visible to anyone who knows what to notice. I’m not necessarily talking about weight changes. I’m well aware that someone can be suffering and not be underweight. (They might even be overweight. I once knew someone whose anorexia had over time morphed into binge eating disorder, and she had become quite heavy; and I daresay she was actually suffering more than anyone else in that support group.) It’s a certain hypersensitivity around food. The people who love to loudly complain about how little they’ve eaten today are, in my experience, the same people who will e.g. go get McDonalds or Starbucks on a whim with their friends, are generally relaxed or even lazy in their approach to nourishing themselves, and happily enjoy food in all kinds of social situations. Zero neuroses.
“Well don’t assume, Mith! Maybe they’re just faking it!” Um, so, they’re so good at masking their symptoms that they have no symptoms whatsoever? An eating disorder is just that, an eating disorder: it involves the way you relate to food. If your relationship to food is virtually unaffected, then you don’t have one, sorry. At this point, the label “ED” has perhaps become a bit too inclusive, like the “autism spectrum” diagnosis. It means so many things now that it means nothing anymore — and flaunting that label when you’re basically a normie with a few little quirks, kind of does an injustice to those people who are really seriously afflicted.
If you think that noisily LOLing about how little you’ve eaten today to random people in social settings is “reaching out for help,” then you are lying to yourself.
In all seriousness, I’m sorry you are having a hard time with food. I know some people actually do struggle to eat enough, even if they don’t have a classic ED. Issues with food are not limited to folks with EDs. Like one of my friends suffers from chronic hypophagia due to underlying health issues, and genuinely struggles to keep her weight up, and I feel for her. But she also doesn’t go around loudly complaining to everyone she meets about “oh look at poor little me, I’m just too busy to eat!” No, she is able to talk about it openly but also deals with it in a mature way. It’s possible to deal with such conditions without announcing it loudly to the whole world and begging for attention.
Because did you ever think that by loudly complaining you may actually be triggering someone in your vicinity who is actually trying to recover from a real ED? This is why this Instagrammer is making fun of you. You’re being self-centered. And you’re glamorizing diet culture by flaunting your failure to take care of yourself like it’s a blue ribbon.
“No I’m not! I literally said it was bad that I haven’t eaten today” — nope, we heard your tone loud and clear. If you really thought it was bad, if you really knew the first thing about EDs, you’d keep your mouth shut about it, or at least you wouldn’t joke about it in such a cavalier way.
So spare us the pity party. If you need help, get help. But stop lying to yourself. If you’re butthurt by this joke then you’re part of what’s wrong with the world.
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Well, this is it: this is THE Question That Keeps Me Up At Night. After this one, I may as well just shut this whole column down. It’s the question to literally end all questions. How many of us will actually make it to Heaven?
In case you’re new here, I’m a Catholic — certainly not an exemplary one though. I’ve been Catholic going on twelve years, and about a year and a half ago I became Traditionalist.
The fewness of the saved is something I never heard about before becoming Trad. It’s not really talked about in the modern Church. You can see why they don’t want to talk about it. It’s a scary thought, the scariest thought that there is. Human language cannot accurately describe how scary of a thought it is. I don’t even like to talk about it — in fact, as I write this, I have to keep pausing to write other things to keep my focus divided, because I simply can’t get too immersed in this topic. So it’s probably gonna take a while to finish. Which is why I’m only just now getting around to writing this post, even though it’s my #1 Question That Keeps Me Up At Night, and I’ve been writing these stupid little QTKMUANs for over a year now.
So why now, you ask? Why am I writing about this now? For the simple reason that YouTube randomly brought it up with me again. I.e., the channel Sensus Fidelium, which I subscribe to and you should too, just posted a sermon on this topic within the last day or so. So it popped up on my feed, and all it took was me seeing the title on my screen for that horrible sinking feeling to come over me once again. Threatening to pull me under.
Luckily, I think I’ve figured out how to cope.
The first time though, it really dealt me a blow. The first time I learned about the fewness of the saved was around the time that I became Trad. I’d heard that this was something Trads believed in, so I looked it up. And I found, lo and behold, a sermon on YouTube.
I can’t find the exact video again, but there are a ton of similar ones on YouTube (topic: fewness of the saved, sermon by St. Leonard of Port Maurice; listen at your own risk). The one that I watched, it literally opened with “beware, do not listen to the following if you’re already really worried about hell” — so, I shoulda just turned it off then and there, but I was curious. And then, after listening, for like two and a half days, I lost the ability to really function. I just kinda sat there staring into space. No point weeping. No point doing anything.
Because here’s the tl;dr: we all already know that few are saved — the narrow gate, and all — but apparently, it’s way fewer than you even thought! According to some saints, less than one percent of practicing Catholics will make it to Heaven. Way less. (Not to mention 100% of all non-Catholics, which in this scenario just goes without saying.) This sermon cited saints’ visions of like a hundred thousand souls all going before the Judgment Seat, and out of all these, only five even make it into purgatory. All the rest are damned. This information may not be an approved dogma of the Church, but it was taught by canonized saints and Doctors of the Church, and it’s certainly not disapproved.
Hearing this, I was like: well, F. Because let’s face it. I’m far from one of the best Catholics I know. I ran the math: my hometown has a population of 79,000. If only five in 100,000 even have a shot at salvation, then that means maybe only three people in my whole city will be saved. But wait, I thought, my heartbeat starting to race. I have a husband and four kids. And I can easily name many people in my city who are holier than me and my family. I know way more than three people in my area who are sincere and devout and say their rosary every day.
It felt hopeless. It felt very convincing and very hopeless. If my chances are that slim, I thought, then why even bother? At this point I may as well give up. Just quit trying to be better, just eat drink and be merry while I still can, because after this nothing but suffering for all eternity awaits me. I.e.: it led me to despair.
But wait. Isn’t despairing of God’s mercy a sin against the First Commandment? I wrote about this a bit in a recent post. Hope is a virtue. We need to have hope. So maybe watching this video even though I knew it might lead me to despair was actually me failing to avoid a near occasion of sin. Maybe I should stop dwelling on it and go to confession. Maybe I should abandon this post.
But… is it true though? Most members of my religious community seem to think so. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus — yes, I do believe that: outside of the Church, there is no salvation. I accepted that a long time ago.
However I also believe (and keep in mind here, I am not an expert nor a theologian, and these opinions are my own) that this doesn’t necessarily mean that no non-Catholics ever go to Heaven. All salvation comes through the Catholic Church; maybe that means that, sometimes, through the prayers and sacrifices of faithful Catholics, even some non-Catholics have a chance. And obviously if they are in Heaven they are Catholic now. I don’t know; this is just what I like to think.
Because I obviously believe that God continues to purify our souls after death. Our journey does not just abruptly end when we die. Knowing that to be true, then wouldn’t it make sense for Purgatory to be a very crowded place? I can’t help but feel like that must be where most of us end up after we die. I’d personally feel much more satisfied, and find it much more believable, if it were phrased to me this way: that, out of 100,000 practicing Catholics, only five walk straight into Heaven, and the other 999,995 have at least a decent shot at getting into Purgatory. That seems fair to me.
But maybe that’s just wishful thinking. It’s not about what Mith thinks is fair, after all. I’m not the judge.
And of course, we don’t want to presume God’s mercy. That’s a sin as well. “Oh, it’s okay, I don’t have to work on myself now, I’ll just do some extra time in Purgatory for it lol” — no, we mustn’t think like this. If we don’t do our best, then sure, we do deserve hell. Are most of us doing our best? — who’s to really say? We might have convinced ourselves that we are doing our best — but we’re not the judge. God knows us and our motivations and intentions better than we do.
So I really can’t “disprove” the extreme fewness of the saved, and I’m not here to do that, however badly I wish I could. I can’t argue against it, and I won’t do that, because whenever I see folks online doing that, it just strikes me as desperate, pitiful attempts to cope. Stamping their little feet going “no! it’s not fair!”, like toddlers. Oh believe me, I get it. I understand needing to cope, because this knowledge is literally impossible to live with. But burying our heads in the sand is probably not the best way to do that.
“But I just don’t believe it, Mith. I just don’t feel that it’s true, that most people burn in hell. That just doesn’t line up with my perception of a loving God.” Are you really gonna gamble your eternal soul on what you “feel like”? Do you really trust your own little perceptions that much? We’re so small. We’re all products of our time and environment, and this concept of a warm-and-fuzzy, lovey-dovey God who just wants you to be a good person, is a pretty recent trend. I’m not willing to risk it all for a trend. God’s perspective is very different from ours. We tend to think He sees things our way. Reading the Old Testament is a real eye opener in that regard.
I can’t argue with Saint Leonard of Port Maurice or any of the great saints who professed the fewness of the saved (there were many, even St. Thomas Aquinas himself). So, what can I do?
How do we cope??
I could complain about it — although that’s probably sinful, to resent God’s justice.
I guess the only thing I can do, is the very thing I was just talking about last week: hope.
I can hope that more than 5/100,000 go to heaven. I can hope that it’s much more than that. And that the non-Catholics that I love have a chance. To get a bit more crazy and extreme with it, I can even go so far as to hope that my sorry little pathetic self has a chance! Hope, radical hope, is a virtue, after all.
But hoping doesn’t mean ignoring the strong likelihood that only extremely few really are saved.
What I’ve figured out for myself is, you have to master the art of living with this information in your peripheral, but not looking squarely at it, at least not for too long. You have to do your absolute best to live as if it is true, but hope against hope that it’s not.
And, you have to be devoted to the Blessed Mother. I’ve heard of personal accounts from people who had near-death experiences, telling how they came before the Judgment Seat and just knew that they deserved hell — that, in light of God’s unfathomable goodness, it was only fair, really; they didn’t even argue. But who should come and intercede on their behalf but our beautiful, gentle Mother. She always has mercy, and Jesus loves her so much that He will do what she asks of Him. She can save even the most hardened sinners. And never was it known that anyone who fled to her protection was left unaided!
I was reading a book recently in which the author reminded us that, each time we pray the rosary, we ask Mary to pray for us at the hour of our death 53 times. If we pray it daily, that’s 19,345 times a year. I’m 36; let’s say I live another 30 years. If I don’t miss a day, that’s 580,350 times — not counting all the rosaries I’ve already prayed up to this day! Surely my loving Mother cannot ignore that, right? Isn’t that some slightly reassuring math?
But… don’t so many Catholics say their rosary every day? Pretty much all of us? How do we reconcile that with how few of us allegedly go to heaven?
Maybe we think we’re praying with sincerity, but like I said we don’t really know ourselves as well as God does, do we?
I guess the last coping mechanism I’ve landed on and that I’ll share with you here is, we must keep in mind that God is good. His will is perfectly good. If He lets us go to hell, then that is for the best. If I end up in hell, I guess I’ll at least know, while I’m burning, that it’s because God is good and all is as it should be. That all is right with the world. I don’t guess that would console me at all, since there is no consolation in hell. But, it’s something. It allows me to persist.
And of course, the goodness of God also inspires hope.
So in conclusion, hope not only serves as an antidote to despair, but also allows us to cheerfully go about our business here on earth, doing our little jobs and raising our little families and posting on our stupid little blogs, even while knowing that all but like 1/20,000 of us are most likely going to burn in hell for all eternity.
So, let’s hope, readers! If you’re reading this, I’ve said a Hail Mary for you; maybe you can say one for me as well.
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, but I do have one perhaps-slightly-redeeming quirk, when it comes to housekeeping.
Thing is, I’m neither tidy nor organized nor much of a clean freak, and left to my own devices I’ll neglect a mess until it can be neglected no more. I don’t have adhd (that i know of) but i do have a plethora of “doom boxes” incl. doom baskets, doom corners, doom kitchen drawers, & doom piles in every room. The whole basement? One big doom box. Tbh I’m just lazy. What am I even doing, I sometimes wonder.
Also I suck at cooking. This one is partly nature, partly nurture. I never really cared about cooking, and my family of origin never really ate meals together or had much in the way of family tradition around food; then in my early teens I developed an ED that stuck around, so food and I just never really got along. Zero joy in that relationship. Can’t cook, can’t clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring: my husband, he has weird taste. What do I do well? I’m such a scatterbrain my preschooler and toddler are constantly reminding me of things I forgot to do. Why did I come into this room? What am I doing here?
My one thing, the one small streak of neat-freak-ism, my little pet organizational neurosis, is: the dishwasher.
The dishwasher has got to be loaded a certain way. Specifically, the silverware. The silverware container has separate compartments. You must put spoons in one, butter knives in two, forks in three, baby utensils in four, and so on. Why would you not do this. Why would anyone not do this. I don’t understand people who just shove any utensil in any compartment haphazardly, jumbling them all up. It makes more work for you later.
If I open the dishwasher in the morning to unload it, and I see that someone else finished loading it last night, and the spoons and forks and knives are all jumbled up, I am hit with a palpable wave of horror and disgust. “Eugh!”, I’ll inadvertently exclaim, recoiling, my nose wrinkling as if something smells. The sheer overwhelm. Hands wiggling at my sides like they don’t know what to do. Because where do you even begin?! When the spoons are all in one hole, you can just grab a fistful of spoons and go. Then a fistful of forks. If they’re all mixed together, what do you do?! I have to sort them into the correct compartments before taking them out of the dishwasher. Is it just me?
But I’d never harass my sweet husband about loading the utensils the “correct” way, because that’d be anal and naggy, and I’m honestly just grateful to have a husband who helps with the dishes. Because really, the silverware is such a miniscule matter. Twenty seconds saved, maybe less. Really, if I think about it, this is not even really a “redeeming quirk” at all. So like what am I doing here.
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Daily writing promptDescribe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
Let’s start with an indisputable truth. Public education — at least in the US, I can’t speak for other countries — is bad. A public school is a bad place; it’s a cesspool. The whole idea of compulsory public education is just a terrible concept, a failed experiment, and needs to be overhauled or abolished, and that’s a fact, but that’s a rant for another day.
Myself, I had the misfortune of attending public school all thirteen formative years, K thru 12, and those thirteen years messed me up in irreparable ways. That’s what public school does: it messes kids up. It robs them of their precious innocence far too early.
I remember as early as fourth grade — maybe even sooner, but that was just when I started to become aware of it — all of my classmates seemed to be in a hurry to become teenagers. Kids of eight, nine, and ten listening to the risqué pop and hip-hop on Hot 101.9 and adopting the lingo. Little boys and girls pretending to “go out” with each other. “Where are they ‘going out’?!” I used to ask. “It’s not like they can drive! Why do they think they’re teenagers?!” And all the girls in a hurry to be wearing a bra, and letting everyone know that they were wearing a bra, because, ahem, see, they needed one, and all the boys in a hurry to be snapping all the straps of all these new bras.
Even back then, I was like: what is the hurry? Why are all my peers in such a rush to grow up?
I guess you could say it’s the parents’ fault, not the school’s. If the kids weren’t exposed to mature stuff at home, then they wouldn’t bring it to school, right? Not necessarily. Kids are sponges. They just pick up on stuff. And then they share it. I remember exactly where I was when I learned what a middle finger meant: in my kindergarten classroom, coloring with markers at the table with my little friend. Kids absorb stuff and then, if they’re in school, they go and share it with all the other kids. Like a virus. If not for the filthy swampy hotbed environment that is public school, the sour information a kid picks up wouldn’t spread around all excitedly and multiply the way that it does. School is the problem.
Besides: I don’t like to blame parents (unless they truly did something heinous and unforgivable). Parents already get enough blame as it is.
Even more now than they were back in the late ’90s, kids are losing their innocence too early.
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“Well Mith, maybe you’re just slow. Maybe you’re just childish.” Maybe you’re right. I guess by the current standards I was what they call a “late bloomer,” although I’m pretty sure that for human females it’s actually normal to not menstruate until 13. (As for the “needing a bra” milestone, I can’t really speak on that, as I still don’t really need one now, in my mid-thirties; #IBTC for life.) These days many kids are overweight, which is lowering the age of the onset of puberty. And media is trashier, more explicit, and more readily-available than ever, which if I had to guess is probably lowering the age of “psychological” puberty as well.
Psychologically, as well, I was a “late bloomer.” Academically, I was ahead of the curve, but when it came to fitting in socially, being aware of mature things, and doing things the other kids were doing, I lagged behind. Sure I had crushes all throughout my elementary days, but they were all very childlike, playful, innocent. A boy had nice hair the color of semisweet chocolate, and/or he was smart and funny or could draw really well, and so I was fascinated by him, stared at him across the classroom, thought about him and his nice hair while listening to “U Drive Me Crazy” by Britney Spears on my older sister’s walkman, and that was that.
I was always secretive about these crushes, not understanding why the popular kids kept talking about their crushes during recess like it was hot gossip, why they kept sharing this information with each other, with devious smiles and this weird sort of pride, that they “liked” so-and-so; wasn’t that an embarrassingly vulnerable thing to share? That you felt mushy inside about someone and pictured them in your head while listening to Britney Spears? Why did they think this was such a cool thing to talk about? I’m not trying to say that I was wiser or anything, I was just incredibly naïve. I didn’t know anything about anything. I didn’t get it: and I still don’t: why did people want to grow up?
It wasn’t until eighth grade, age 13-14, when I had my first actual mature crush, the kind that makes you go: oh!, okay, I get it now, why people desire physical contact with other people. (Predictably, this crush was on a rather plain-looking boy, a good six inches shorter than me, named Tyler; all American millennial girls really had the same life, didn’t we?) But even then, it was childlike. There was nothing really adult about it. My BFF and I had a code name for him and would draw little cartoons of him in our notebooks. We actually had this stupid game where, whenever we saw a cute guy walking down the hall, we looked at each other and softly went: wee-oo, wee-oo, sounding the hottie alarm. We were dorks. Being misfits who didn’t really participate in the social scene, we were relatively sheltered from what was hot and trendy. We were nothing like the thirteen-year-olds you see on TV these days, who are so fashionable and sleek and aware and over-sexualized. Who barely had time to just be kids. It’s not their fault.
I blame public schools.
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Why the hurry to grow up? Maybe I’m just a loser who peaked in fifth grade. I’m not beating those allegations. Fifth grade was my best year. It felt like I knew who I was then; it wasn’t that complicated. 2000-2001; I had just turned ten. I had three close friends — we called ourselves the Diamonds. That was the last time I really had a “friend group,” per se. We laughed and had fun and had sleepovers. We had innocent crushes and innocent drama. Cute boys and toy horse collections. Those clear backpacks from Old Navy. CDs and Lunchables and computer games after school in the family’s computer room. Chips by the pool, with no thought whatsoever of diet or exercise. It all felt very important. It was like living in a middle grade novel.
I liked that year, and was in no particular hurry to switch from my familiar elementary school to the scary, unfamiliar middle school, where I’d have six or seven teachers instead of just one, and I’d have to memorize my class schedule and my way around the building, and the combination to a locker where I’d have to store my stuff. The only thing I looked forward to about middle school was the playground. The place had a really wicked playground outside, a big wooden structure they called The Hive (because the school’s mascot was the hornet), which had a big rope net for climbing and was just way cooler than the metal-and-plastic playground at my old school. That was the exciting part, for me.
I wasn’t ready for middle school. Heck, I still don’t feel ready for a place like that.
In elementary, all those mature themes like bodies and crushes were whispered-about, giggled-about, mentioned sneakily, rippling beneath the surface of the class like something latent, growing. But in middle school, it had all just burst open. It was a free-for-all. Kids that age know too much for their maturity level. Kids that age are animals. Maybe in isolation they’re lovely, but in large groups they’re heathens — they can’t help it, it’s a biological phase. But they shouldn’t be in large groups unsupervised like that. (Because one overworked, underpaid adult per twenty-plus adolescent savages does not count as “supervision.”) Public school is a recipe for disaster.
I did not do well with the transition. Even harder would be the transition from middle to high school, three years later — but middle school, that was where it started. Public elementary school made kids grow up too fast. Made them victims. Public middle school took those victims and pitted them against each other Roman gladiator-style, shamelessly. Public high school seals the deal, drying the cement on their damaged souls. If you had a great time in public school, I’m glad for you, but I also wonder if you’re doing okay, really. Imo homeschooling is not a luxury. Doesn’t matter how little money we have to live on. I’ll resort to begging on the street before I send my children to public school.
Because what is this hurry to grow up? I had such a hard time saying goodbye to my childhood. I fought tooth and nail to cling to it. The extreme dieting that began in middle school, in my case it wasn’t because of a mature desire to be slim and sexy; not in those early days. I think it really started as a desire to stay small, to avoid responsibility, to avoid the sheer horror of living in an adult female body. Please just keep taking care of me. Don’t make me do this, this ‘life’ thing. I didn’t understand the other kids’ rush to act like they were older than they were. We’re still so young, I wanted to shout at them. We’re still so young! What are you doing!
And I kept right on feeling like that all through high school, and through my twenties, no, I’m not an adult yet!, and now suddenly I am 36 and I feel like I missed a boat somewhere. A healthy sense of growing up, of being at the right stage at the right time, was never there. Childhood was just ripped away. I know it’s my own fault I’m a weirdo and I take full responsibility for my own shortcomings. However, I also blame public school.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to fifth grade. I remember at my fifth grade graduation our music teacher had us sing “Time Of Your Life” by Green Day. I remember the sweltering school gymnasium full of folding chairs and the teal-blue flowery dress I wore, without really worrying about what my body looked like in it. For years I’d wish I could get back that freedom, that degree of unself-consciousness. But it was already being pulled away. When I look back at the photos of that awkward girl with the poofy hair and her hands gripping that fifth grade diploma, I can see it slipping away, her innocence and freedom already being pulled away.
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Sure kids will grow up, whether they go to public or private school or school at home. Sure they grow up too fast regardless. That’s a brutal fact of life. But we don’t have to make it worse. Innocence is a treasure. The powers that be ought to concern themselves with protecting and preserving it. But where’s the money in that, I guess. Yes, it’s partly just the tragedy of being human, but it’s also public school.
“But Mith, your kids are going to be so sheltered” — damn right they are! The world is a terrible place and I’m going to shelter them as hard as I can, to let their precious minds form and develop in a safe and nurturing environment, so that when they inevitably have to enter this terrible world, they do so with a healthier, less-damaged sense of themselves, and with a better perspective on the world, and with their purity.
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Ever since I first stumbled upon the story of the nineteenth-century Chinese martyr Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang, a month or so ago, I’ve been unable to get him off my mind.
Not only because he’s the patron saint of addicts & those in recovery, so a patron of mine automatically, and because his feast day, July 9, happens to be a very personally significant day for me (some sources say his feast day is July 7, but it’s officially July 9; he died on the 7th, but is celebrated in the new Roman liturgical calendar with his fellow Martyrs of China on the 9th), which is of course just a coincidence and nothing particularly meaningful in and of itself, but still grabs my attention… but also, because his life story, which is unlike that of any other saint I’m familiar with, shines some real light on a nagging Question That Keeps Me Up At Night (and has done so for years).
You can read about his life story here, but the tl;dr is: St. Mark was an opium addict who was never able to quit. He struggled for 30 years to get clean, and at the time of his death was still actively addicted. Because he was unable to stop, even while fighting valiantly against it by frequenting Mass and Confession, his priest denied him absolution and Communion, seeing as how he didn’t seem to have a firm purpose of amendment. So St. Mark lived without the Sacraments for 30 years. But he didn’t give up his faith. He died a martyr during the Boxer Rebellion, executed for refusing to apostasize.
And he’s a saint. Canonized by Pope St. John Paul II the Great in the year 2000. A canonized saint who died actively addicted, and hadn’t even been able to receive the sacraments!
Reading this kinda flipped my whole understanding of everything on its head.
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“But for the Grace of God” & “One Day at a Time”
How does any addict get and stay clean/sober? I’m almost seven years sober myself. I don’t go to meetings anymore, but early on I went to a ton of them, and became quite fluent in AA. And one thing that I always heard at their meetings was the slogan: “but for the Grace of God, there go I”, meaning: when we see someone relapse, we must know that we too are vulnerable; no one is ever safe from slipping. We mustn’t trust in our own strength.
Only the Grace of God keeps us sober — only one day at a time. I heard that over and over and over, and tbh it always annoyed me a bit and I never understood it.
Because what do you mean it’s God keeping me sober? If that were true, wouldn’t it be easy — wouldn’t it feel like the work was being done for me? Instead of me working so hard to do it myself? Avoiding booze was hugely difficult, early on. It was strenuous. It would have been nice to feel like Someone Else was taking care of it for me, but it didn’t feel like that.
Only one day at a time: I kind of understood this then. Early on, it makes more sense to focus on twenty-four hours (or even the next hour, or half-hour, or five minutes…). If you try and think about staying sober forever, it’s way too daunting. But the next five minutes, I can do. The next twenty-four hours, maybe I can do.
But “one day at a time” begins to mean more than that, almost seven years in. Around the 3-5 year mark, I felt pretty invulnerable: “I’ve got this! I’ve figured it out. Welcome to the big numbers! I’m free! I really don’t need alcohol any more.” — But then, sometimes, I realize how easy it would be. I think about going back, and I know I’m still the same person, or even worse. A slight inconvenience and I’m thinking how nice it would be, all the sensations of the old routine. What’s stopping me? It’s like the feeling of standing on a very tall building looking over the edge. You could just do it. Nothing’s stopping you.
But for the Grace of God.
I think I begin to understand now, how it’s only grace that keeps us sober. People in AA talk about willingness — it’s another one of their keywords, along with humility, service, surrender, etc. Willingness is, obviously, crucial. You have to be willing to not pick up the drink. (Easier said than done.)
And from where do we get this magical thing, this Willingness? How do we find it? Some of us never do.
The thing is, I think only God can give you willingness. Not just to stay sober, but to do anything at all. People always applaud themselves for accomplishing hard things, for their motivation and drive and energy; but where did they get those attributes from? Everything that we think we worked for, is really a gift. That doesn’t make doing the work easy. It just makes it possible.
This is something I’ve only begun to get my head around in the last year and a half or so. Everything that we have really is from God. As with those other slogans, like “but for the Grace of God,” I used to hear this said, and frown, and not really understand it. Why do you say I can’t do anything without God? Like, sure, my life is a gift from Him, and my health is a gift from Him, but what I do with those are all me, right? I get out of bed in the morning and do my work. That’s no miracle. Because even if I don’t pray or ask God to help me accomplish my tasks, the tasks still get accomplished. Isn’t that me? Didn’t I do that?
I see now how silly it was of me to think that I was anything at all, that I could do anything at all, without God! That’d be like a single blood cell — nay, a single atom — a single subatomic particle! — thinking that it had any capability of accomplishing any real task on its own, independently of the human body.
All of our capabilities and dispositions, everything that makes up our soul and our consciousness (with the exception of sin, which God allows to exist even though He doesn’t like it) — all of this is from God. “God comes to you disguised as your life,” someone quoted. So, if we have the willingness to not drink: that is from God.
And when someone who is addicted to alcohol or some other substance, who is entrenched in that sin, is, through no merit of their own, granted the willingness to not commit that sin anymore — well of course that’s miraculous.
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“It works if you work it” & God’s mercy
Which brings me back to St. Mark Ji Tianxiang.
Addiction is a bottomless pit, a fast track to hell. It’s a black hole. That’s how powerful it is. And whether we as addicts have the willingness to stop indulging is, basically, outside of our control. If we have the willingness, we can nurture it and try to make it fruitful. If we don’t have willingness yet, we can try, in different ways, to acquire it: by making ourselves open to grace. Maybe that’s by prayer or the Sacraments or going to meetings or meditation or whatever it is that you do. We should certainly keep doing all of that, persistently. And if you don’t even try, then that’s your fault. But whether God chooses to grant willingness is entirely up to Him. We can’t understand why He grants it to some and not to others — why some have to suffer so much or even die, and why others make it out relatively unscathed. Sometimes it seems unfair. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
During his life, St. Mark did the right things. He fought courageously against the addiction. God didn’t set him free from it, not while he was alive. But he never gave up.
And now he’s a canonized saint. I’m still trying to get my head around this.
Because in AA, if you keep relapsing, that’s on you. Oh don’t get me wrong, no one’s going to banish you from meetings, no matter how many times you relapse. Even if you never successfully dry up, as long as you have a desire to stop drinking, you’re welcome and eligible for membership (that’s the Third Tradition). (Notice that “desire” is different from “willingness.”) You’re still welcome, you’re still a member — but if you’re messing up, that’s on you, as any sponsor will tell you. And if you keep relapsing, your sponsor will probably even fire you because you’re “not doing the work.” Or they might say something like “I must not be the right sponsor for you.” This is basically what St. Mark Ji’s confessor told him: try harder. As the slogan goes,“it works if you work it.”
But wasn’t St. Mark “working it”? He was devout and sincere. He may not have had a literal 12 Step group around him (which some die-hard AA/NAs will probably say was the problem, the missing piece of the puzzle, for him) — but, imo, as someone who no longer goes to meetings, St. Mark was doing all the right things. The Twelve Steps are really just a secularized, simplified version of the Sacraments, after all.
“But maybe if he’d had the fellowship of other addicts…” yeah, fellowship is another of those AA keywords. I dunno, in my experience you can be drowning in Fellowship and still not have Willingness. But maybe that’s just me. I have AVPD so fellowship doesn’t really do much for me; it doesn’t penetrate my shell, but just kind of rolls off of me like water off of a painfully awkward duck. So, I dunno, I’m not really a believer in the absolute necessity of fellowship, when it comes to sobriety at least. I still think St. Mark could have stayed clean without it, if God had allowed him to.
But so why is it that in AA I was taught that, if I couldn’t stop drinking, it’s because I was doing something wrong — I wasn’t working hard enough? Doesn’t St. Mark’s story tell us the opposite?
Or does it?
We don’t have the details. All the stories say “he fought bravely,” “he kept coming to Mass,” “he prayed diligently,” et cetera… but maybe he wasn’t doing all that he could have. We don’t know! Maybe the lesson here isn’t just that we addicts are completely powerless, but that saints are not necessarily perfect people who get everything right. Sure a lot of them are. Look at St. Thérèse, who never committed a mortal sin in her life. I admit that the first time I read Story of a Soul, I had a hard time relating to her. (Thankfully I’ve grown since then.) But the life of St. Mark Ji paints a very different picture of sainthood. Maybe he could have tried harder. He was human, and a sinner. Maybe some saints really are sinners who never gave up.
Or maybe the big takeaway here is about God’s mercy. God can make anyone a saint — even an addict who couldn’t stay clean.
St. Mark’s story reminded me a lot of another story I’d heard. My late friend “J” (may he rest in peace) knew a lot about Eastern Orthodoxy, and had considered converting — and anyway, he told me about an Orthodox “saint” by the name of Paisios of Mount Athos (1924-1994). Even though he was Orthodox, and as such held some really problematic beliefs, he was a very holy man, and said a lot of amazing and inspiring things.
There’s this story about Paisios and an alcoholic monk who lived at the monastery and couldn’t stop drinking. Apparently, when the drunk monk finally died, all the other monks were like “thank God he’s gone, right?! What a nuisance! What a loser!” but Paisios defended the deceased one, telling the other monks about how he (the dead drunk) had developed an addiction because of his traumatic past, and had worked hard over the years to reduce his consumption just a little, and had been fighting a heroic battle that no one else knew anything about; and how, at his death, Paisios saw a whole battalion of angels come to collect his soul.
I like to think that this story is true.
We hear all the time how no one can enter Heaven with any scraps of worldliness still clinging to them. How you must be free of all attachment to even venial sin. Which at a glance seems contradictory to the story of this drunk monk, and of St. Mark Ji. It’s true that addiction reduces culpability, when it comes to sin. But still — that someone could pass straight from active addiction through the gates of Heaven — that’s wild to me. I have confused/complicated feelings about the whole Divine Mercy devotion, but dang: God’s mercy really must be as ridiculously huge and expansive as St. Faustina told us. It really gives you hope.
The virtue of hope
That’s the the other thing that St. Mark Ji’s story sheds light on for me: hope.
Apparently, as he was being led to his execution, alongside his family members, one of them asked him: where are we going? To which St. Mark replied, happily: We’re going home.
Imagine the confidence! To be so sure that, after living as an addict unable to even receive the Sacraments, you were going to walk right into Heaven.
I never understood before. Faith, hope, and charity, the three theological virtues. Secretly, I always thought to myself: yes, charity is clearly very important, and I can see that faith is too; but what’s the big deal with hope? Why is it such a sin to despair of God’s mercy? Isn’t that just being realistic?, I thought, considering how many people go to hell and how miserable of a sinner I am. I’m naturally a pessimist, and prefer to set my expectations low, so that I’m always either correct or pleasantly surprised. But apparently that’s not the right attitude to have when it comes to our religion. And tbh I never really understood why not.
St. Mark Ji shows us just how necessary it is to have hope in God. Hope was what kept him going for three decades without access to the sacraments. Even when he didn’t have those, which are the very foundation of our faith life, he still had hope. Hope against all odds — what a cool thing! And joy! To go to his martyrdom with joy and hope after a life that any worldly person would call “hopeless.” St. Mark shows us that hope is actually essential to sanctity. Somehow, no one before him has ever been able to get this through my thick little pessimistic skull.
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In conclusion
So after all, I’m not sure if the life of St. Mark Ji Tianxiang contradicts anything that I was taught in AA; on the contrary, I think it supplements those teachings — it teaches us things that a secular (because make no mistake, AA is secular, even though they make you accept a “Higher Power” your HP doesn’t have to be the One True God, it can literally be a doorknob if you’re so inclined), human-founded organization cannot: about the actual hugeness of God’s power and mercy, and the importance of hope in Him.
Which is why, imo, it’s best to have both. You should at least be a practicing Catholic, but if you’re really in the trenches with addictive behavior, a 12 step group sure can’t hurt either, as long as you don’t get too caught up in the secularism, and keep your eyes on the real Higher Power, as St. Mark did. What a cool saint, what an awesome witness, what a story.
St. Mark Ji Tianxiang, ora pro nobis.
MiTHology (4.0) 