This is my humblebrag
Virtue
This, to me, is a deeply odd word to choose for Lent. When I think of "virtue", I think back to college, when I first read Macchiavelli's The Prince, and how the translator left the Italian virtu untranslated (also, our college mail server domain was virtu.sar.usf.edu, but that is neither here nor there). That the classically-derived idea of "virtue" could sit so comfortably with an ethos of it being wiser as a ruler to be feared than loved was an early education for me in how different philosophies could draw radically different notions of correct behavior.
Virtue comes to us from the Latin words for "man" or "foot-soldier", and builds from the admirable qualities of strength, fortitude, courage, and the like. In modern English usage, it can refer to many disparate ideas, but the basic idea of it being a descriptor of inherent worth or value remains. You have virtue; you are virtuous. I always visualized it in terms of purity and wholeness. In medieval times, there were lists of virtues and vices (chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness & humility, against lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy & pride), and I think that this is where the group who published this list of words for Lenten reflection got the idea.
However, Lent, I think, has little to do with assessing where on the various sliding scales from chastity to lust, or patience to wrath, we fall.
This photo is of my hands. You can see the callouses that have formed from lifting weights and doing pull-ups at Dalton's Crossfit. I woke up this morning at 4am, and at 5am, I was jumping rope. After some stretching, we started with cleans, for strength, in 5 sets of 2. Cleans are difficult for me. Getting the coordination of the movements down, getting myself under the weight, rather than trying to pull the weight up, has always been hard. I did my heaviest weight yet for it, 105lbs. After we had done that, we went on to the main workout: 3 rounds, the first time through of 30 repetitions, the second time of 20, and then the third time of 10, of back squats, pull-ups, then hollow-rocks. I am really good at back-squats and pretty good with hollow-rocks, but terrible at pull-ups. While among the people in my class this morning I had one of the heaviest weights for the back-squats, I was the next-to-last to finish, just because of the pull-ups. As a finisher, we were supposed to do ring-dips, but I couldn't figure out how to do it right, so I just did push-ups.
After getting home, and showering, I took Remy with me on the train into the city for the work-day. I was reasonably kind, reasonably patient, diligent... I can make a case for a good chunk of the seven virtues for myself today. I can turn around and lay most of that against pride, and perhaps envy. I do not see virtue as a safe harbor to shelter in. There is no virtue that does not look like a vice from some different vantage. The most important thing I see in my hands in this photo isn't that they bear the signs of my diligence, but that they are open. I aspire not to be virtuous, but to be open to receive grace.
This, to me, is a deeply odd word to choose for Lent. When I think of "virtue", I think back to college, when I first read Macchiavelli's The Prince, and how the translator left the Italian virtu untranslated (also, our college mail server domain was virtu.sar.usf.edu, but that is neither here nor there). That the classically-derived idea of "virtue" could sit so comfortably with an ethos of it being wiser as a ruler to be feared than loved was an early education for me in how different philosophies could draw radically different notions of correct behavior.
Virtue comes to us from the Latin words for "man" or "foot-soldier", and builds from the admirable qualities of strength, fortitude, courage, and the like. In modern English usage, it can refer to many disparate ideas, but the basic idea of it being a descriptor of inherent worth or value remains. You have virtue; you are virtuous. I always visualized it in terms of purity and wholeness. In medieval times, there were lists of virtues and vices (chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness & humility, against lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy & pride), and I think that this is where the group who published this list of words for Lenten reflection got the idea.
However, Lent, I think, has little to do with assessing where on the various sliding scales from chastity to lust, or patience to wrath, we fall.
This photo is of my hands. You can see the callouses that have formed from lifting weights and doing pull-ups at Dalton's Crossfit. I woke up this morning at 4am, and at 5am, I was jumping rope. After some stretching, we started with cleans, for strength, in 5 sets of 2. Cleans are difficult for me. Getting the coordination of the movements down, getting myself under the weight, rather than trying to pull the weight up, has always been hard. I did my heaviest weight yet for it, 105lbs. After we had done that, we went on to the main workout: 3 rounds, the first time through of 30 repetitions, the second time of 20, and then the third time of 10, of back squats, pull-ups, then hollow-rocks. I am really good at back-squats and pretty good with hollow-rocks, but terrible at pull-ups. While among the people in my class this morning I had one of the heaviest weights for the back-squats, I was the next-to-last to finish, just because of the pull-ups. As a finisher, we were supposed to do ring-dips, but I couldn't figure out how to do it right, so I just did push-ups.
After getting home, and showering, I took Remy with me on the train into the city for the work-day. I was reasonably kind, reasonably patient, diligent... I can make a case for a good chunk of the seven virtues for myself today. I can turn around and lay most of that against pride, and perhaps envy. I do not see virtue as a safe harbor to shelter in. There is no virtue that does not look like a vice from some different vantage. The most important thing I see in my hands in this photo isn't that they bear the signs of my diligence, but that they are open. I aspire not to be virtuous, but to be open to receive grace.