During the rash of weddings I attended in my twenties, only one was Episcopalian, and they made the community contribution explicit. We, as the audience, were exhorted to promise to keep that couple together. I don't know if that's a regular feature of that faith or not, but it did stick out in my mind.
Our own wedding was deliberately low-key, bourbon and barbecue at a beach-house rental on Galveston Island. Neither of our families was invited; none of the vacationing guests knew the wedding was happening until they had already arrived on the island. Dress code was Hawaiian shirts. Our child was Best Baby, perched on my arm. We did have a preacher, because we couldn't find a judge to come out. He promised not to mention his God during the ceremony (a promise he broke).
I mention this because community can be either a supportive pressure, holding us up, or the other kind, squeezing the life out of us for the purpose of lubricating the larger machine. Different people can experience the same community differently. I recently saw a movie called TOMATO RED: BLOOD MONEY, that looks at a lot of these same issues of loyalty and belonging and rebellion quickly escalating into revenge and murder. It was harsh, but good; I recommend it.
Though this isn’t the main point of this piece, I do think it’s worth teasing out: loyalty isn’t a virtue in the way that faithfulness is. I could even perhaps argue that loyalty isn't an a virtue at all, and faithfulness is. Or rather that whatever you think of James Comey, the reason his book is titled “A Higher Loyalty” is that his loyalty was (at least in his intention) not to a specific person but to the virtue itself. To principle.
In that way I was pretty careful in the way I phrased that vow portion of this article: “I made a future appointment with myself saying this is the kind of person I want to be when I’m eighty.” It’s not mere loyalty as if kissing the ring is sufficient, like some sort of nepotistic mob. No. It’s a higher loyalty — faithfulness — to the virtue inherent in being a good husband. It’s my integrity that’s on the line as well as the hope of all who have known, know, and will know me — any I meet who feel as if a good man is hard to find. I can only become a good man in this area of my life through a long obedience in the same direction: the ends, the final cause, the purpose of that vow that made. That ends up extending to children and onwards into ten thousand generations. It’s kind of hilarious: only a long kindness offered in service over a long time can make that vow true. No big romantic gesture alone, or big story, or wild sexual encounter. Just time at task being kind and serving my bride. That's it. Tortoise and hare.
In this way, it does matter that the “inner circle” you keep are people who — like in your Episcopal example — so too vow that they will do their part. That they establish mutual vulnerability, accountability, trust. But there’s a big difference in the kinds of inner circles we keep. And that may not be blood relatives if blood relatives, particularly those older than us, have themselves been faithless to principle, knowingly or unknowingly.
Certain closed family systems based on control are not worthy of the same kind of loyalty that open family systems based on trust are worthy of. But that’s precisely because that kind of family system isn’t faithfulness — it isn’t a higher loyalty. Indeed sometimes the families who talk the most about loyalty, you’ll notice, talk about the objects of loyalty as if they are merely individuals of the family, the locus of the closed family system’s control, or even a family business. This is mob behavior at best, anti-social lack of empathy at worst. It’s precisely not faithfulness to the higher virtue.
This is also why the law of general beneficence — love of enemy, stranger, foreigner, neighbor — has always meant to curb the law of special beneficence — kin and country. Short-term loyalties to persons rather than principles can get twisted. What if that person is Al Capone? Does true faithfulness — to truth, beauty, goodness — require us to disobey his evil commands? Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is tell a leader "no." Or tell a closed family system "no, please begin group therapy." These types may make you what is called the identified patient — the scape goat — but that's just indicative of a broken culture within the group and has nothing to do with you living out faithfulness to higher truth, higher goodness, higher loyalty.
In other words, faithfulness to the principle must occur in light of or in spite of the participation of others. My vow is distinct from Tara’s, they both participate Faithfulness per se. One may be faithful and the other faithless and the integrity of the one preserved and the other ruined. Faithfulness to truth, for instance, might mean disloyalty to the family business, disloyalty to nepotism, disloyalty to b-cluster personality disorders who demand control, disloyalty to the very broken power dynamics and economy Gaiman seems to have exploited. That too is faithfulness: faithfulness to the truth that predicated the vow. It would be faithful, for instance, for a wife in a physically abusive situation to expose a faithless man precisely because that may be the only way for that faithless man to learn faithfulness to the goodness that predicates the vow. It would be faithful to the principles of healthy families to tell an unhealthy family they're broken.
In the case of Galveston, we had a similar situation. We had way more of our “spiritual” family there than whomever our biological families wanted there: our spiritual fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles and siblings. These are, in the long run, the family that have helped us be faithful far more than any other dynamics. That happens sometimes.
But in either case, it’s the higher virtue that matters, not the various configurations of it through cultural norms. That’s exactly why we have stories like Beauty and the Beast. You’ll note that Beast merely looked ugly. He was no power mongering sadist worried about the disproportionate economics of their relationship. He was, deep down, a faithful prince.
This was nice. Thank you for writing it.
Thanks, Benjamin. Always appreciate your readership.
During the rash of weddings I attended in my twenties, only one was Episcopalian, and they made the community contribution explicit. We, as the audience, were exhorted to promise to keep that couple together. I don't know if that's a regular feature of that faith or not, but it did stick out in my mind.
Our own wedding was deliberately low-key, bourbon and barbecue at a beach-house rental on Galveston Island. Neither of our families was invited; none of the vacationing guests knew the wedding was happening until they had already arrived on the island. Dress code was Hawaiian shirts. Our child was Best Baby, perched on my arm. We did have a preacher, because we couldn't find a judge to come out. He promised not to mention his God during the ceremony (a promise he broke).
I mention this because community can be either a supportive pressure, holding us up, or the other kind, squeezing the life out of us for the purpose of lubricating the larger machine. Different people can experience the same community differently. I recently saw a movie called TOMATO RED: BLOOD MONEY, that looks at a lot of these same issues of loyalty and belonging and rebellion quickly escalating into revenge and murder. It was harsh, but good; I recommend it.
Though this isn’t the main point of this piece, I do think it’s worth teasing out: loyalty isn’t a virtue in the way that faithfulness is. I could even perhaps argue that loyalty isn't an a virtue at all, and faithfulness is. Or rather that whatever you think of James Comey, the reason his book is titled “A Higher Loyalty” is that his loyalty was (at least in his intention) not to a specific person but to the virtue itself. To principle.
In that way I was pretty careful in the way I phrased that vow portion of this article: “I made a future appointment with myself saying this is the kind of person I want to be when I’m eighty.” It’s not mere loyalty as if kissing the ring is sufficient, like some sort of nepotistic mob. No. It’s a higher loyalty — faithfulness — to the virtue inherent in being a good husband. It’s my integrity that’s on the line as well as the hope of all who have known, know, and will know me — any I meet who feel as if a good man is hard to find. I can only become a good man in this area of my life through a long obedience in the same direction: the ends, the final cause, the purpose of that vow that made. That ends up extending to children and onwards into ten thousand generations. It’s kind of hilarious: only a long kindness offered in service over a long time can make that vow true. No big romantic gesture alone, or big story, or wild sexual encounter. Just time at task being kind and serving my bride. That's it. Tortoise and hare.
In this way, it does matter that the “inner circle” you keep are people who — like in your Episcopal example — so too vow that they will do their part. That they establish mutual vulnerability, accountability, trust. But there’s a big difference in the kinds of inner circles we keep. And that may not be blood relatives if blood relatives, particularly those older than us, have themselves been faithless to principle, knowingly or unknowingly.
Certain closed family systems based on control are not worthy of the same kind of loyalty that open family systems based on trust are worthy of. But that’s precisely because that kind of family system isn’t faithfulness — it isn’t a higher loyalty. Indeed sometimes the families who talk the most about loyalty, you’ll notice, talk about the objects of loyalty as if they are merely individuals of the family, the locus of the closed family system’s control, or even a family business. This is mob behavior at best, anti-social lack of empathy at worst. It’s precisely not faithfulness to the higher virtue.
This is also why the law of general beneficence — love of enemy, stranger, foreigner, neighbor — has always meant to curb the law of special beneficence — kin and country. Short-term loyalties to persons rather than principles can get twisted. What if that person is Al Capone? Does true faithfulness — to truth, beauty, goodness — require us to disobey his evil commands? Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is tell a leader "no." Or tell a closed family system "no, please begin group therapy." These types may make you what is called the identified patient — the scape goat — but that's just indicative of a broken culture within the group and has nothing to do with you living out faithfulness to higher truth, higher goodness, higher loyalty.
In other words, faithfulness to the principle must occur in light of or in spite of the participation of others. My vow is distinct from Tara’s, they both participate Faithfulness per se. One may be faithful and the other faithless and the integrity of the one preserved and the other ruined. Faithfulness to truth, for instance, might mean disloyalty to the family business, disloyalty to nepotism, disloyalty to b-cluster personality disorders who demand control, disloyalty to the very broken power dynamics and economy Gaiman seems to have exploited. That too is faithfulness: faithfulness to the truth that predicated the vow. It would be faithful, for instance, for a wife in a physically abusive situation to expose a faithless man precisely because that may be the only way for that faithless man to learn faithfulness to the goodness that predicates the vow. It would be faithful to the principles of healthy families to tell an unhealthy family they're broken.
In the case of Galveston, we had a similar situation. We had way more of our “spiritual” family there than whomever our biological families wanted there: our spiritual fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles and siblings. These are, in the long run, the family that have helped us be faithful far more than any other dynamics. That happens sometimes.
But in either case, it’s the higher virtue that matters, not the various configurations of it through cultural norms. That’s exactly why we have stories like Beauty and the Beast. You’ll note that Beast merely looked ugly. He was no power mongering sadist worried about the disproportionate economics of their relationship. He was, deep down, a faithful prince.