Post 132. jmj
Love as a verb, is the fundamental mystery of Christian metaphysics—loving is the source of all that exists, material and immaterial, and why we experience life as time. We love people in time. Sometimes it's love at first sight, in that moment it takes our eyes to communicate an image to our brains. If we're lucky, love grows over years and decades, such as in marriage. God is Love (1 John 4:8) is the reason Christians emphasize the importance of relationships. To love requires a lover, a beloved, and loving itself—the Trinity. One loves, one receives the gift of love, and one is the loving in action. Christian love involves dwelling within the other. This can be seen as comparable to the popular expression to walk a mile in another’s shoes. This dwelling, however, is deeper. It is compassion (compassio), a serious and thoughtful sorrow and sensitivity for another’s suffering[i]—“I will betroth you to me ... with loyalty and with compassion” (Hosea 2:19 NABRE). Because loving imitates, for the Christian, the loving of God, love is self-sacrificing. Trinity above and below. Loving is selfless, but it also gives us oft-unexpected pleasure. Teaching is this way too—we give ourselves for the sake of each student’s joy, welfare, and learning, and unexpectedly and ineffably we receive. What, then, is this indescribable pleasure we obtain?
Pleasure—the manifestation of pleasant joy and delight—can be identified at the heart of loving relationships. Lewis makes a distinction between two types of pleasure, which he called “Need-pleasures” and “Pleasure of Appreciation.”[i] He uses drinking water to characterize pleasures that arise from desire. When people need water, we feel thirst, and then drinking water becomes pleasurable. When we are extremely thirsty, our need and pleasure are deeper; more intense. When our thirst is quenched, we cease to experience pleasure in drinking more water. We stop. In contrast, gifted pleasures, such as if we are given a glass of wine when we are thirsty, occur unsolicited. We welcome this pleasure, the delightful taste, and enjoyable feelings. However, many people become addicted to pleasures of appreciation, and addiction transmutes gifted pleasures into need-pleasures. The second type of pleasure is changed into the first. To use musicking to exemplify, we may hear a new genre at a coffee house or be introduced to a new singer by a friend. What a gift! Liking something which is at this point ineffable about this new music, we listen to it ardently over the next few days. With time, we gradually make sense of the indefinable elements of this new music, and it becomes familiar—like teaching yourself to understanding Rioja when you had previously only imbibed Chianti. We might spend many hours submerged in our earphones, and even become drunk in this new music, injuring relationships in our single-minded determination to appreciate this new music. We find ways to incorporate this new music into our morning routine, our drive to work, our daily jog, and evening rest. Eventually, we find we can’t enjoy eating breakfast, the sunrise on our morning drive, moving our bodies in exercise, or even reclining after our day’s labor without this music. It has transformed from appreciation to need.
When Mary was told she would give birth to the messiah, she couldn't have known what it would mean to hold the infant, to feed him, to teach him. When responding yes to the dream sent by God, Joseph couldn't have known what it would mean to take his young family into hiding in Egypt, and to return to an unknown rural town, Nazareth, to care for his family. To teach the child a trade, even knowing his calling was to be the messiah; that the learned trade would only be temporary. There is sacrifice and pleasure in loving relationships. If music teaching is a loving relationship, a pedagogy of love, then there is sacrifice and pleasure.
DS
[i] Link: https://www.etymonline.com/word/compassion
[i] C.S. Lewis. The four loves (New York: HarperCollins, 1960), 15.
Link to image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pierced_heart_using_sword.jpg
Love as a verb, is the fundamental mystery of Christian metaphysics—loving is the source of all that exists, material and immaterial, and why we experience life as time. We love people in time. Sometimes it's love at first sight, in that moment it takes our eyes to communicate an image to our brains. If we're lucky, love grows over years and decades, such as in marriage. God is Love (1 John 4:8) is the reason Christians emphasize the importance of relationships. To love requires a lover, a beloved, and loving itself—the Trinity. One loves, one receives the gift of love, and one is the loving in action. Christian love involves dwelling within the other. This can be seen as comparable to the popular expression to walk a mile in another’s shoes. This dwelling, however, is deeper. It is compassion (compassio), a serious and thoughtful sorrow and sensitivity for another’s suffering[i]—“I will betroth you to me ... with loyalty and with compassion” (Hosea 2:19 NABRE). Because loving imitates, for the Christian, the loving of God, love is self-sacrificing. Trinity above and below. Loving is selfless, but it also gives us oft-unexpected pleasure. Teaching is this way too—we give ourselves for the sake of each student’s joy, welfare, and learning, and unexpectedly and ineffably we receive. What, then, is this indescribable pleasure we obtain?
Pleasure—the manifestation of pleasant joy and delight—can be identified at the heart of loving relationships. Lewis makes a distinction between two types of pleasure, which he called “Need-pleasures” and “Pleasure of Appreciation.”[i] He uses drinking water to characterize pleasures that arise from desire. When people need water, we feel thirst, and then drinking water becomes pleasurable. When we are extremely thirsty, our need and pleasure are deeper; more intense. When our thirst is quenched, we cease to experience pleasure in drinking more water. We stop. In contrast, gifted pleasures, such as if we are given a glass of wine when we are thirsty, occur unsolicited. We welcome this pleasure, the delightful taste, and enjoyable feelings. However, many people become addicted to pleasures of appreciation, and addiction transmutes gifted pleasures into need-pleasures. The second type of pleasure is changed into the first. To use musicking to exemplify, we may hear a new genre at a coffee house or be introduced to a new singer by a friend. What a gift! Liking something which is at this point ineffable about this new music, we listen to it ardently over the next few days. With time, we gradually make sense of the indefinable elements of this new music, and it becomes familiar—like teaching yourself to understanding Rioja when you had previously only imbibed Chianti. We might spend many hours submerged in our earphones, and even become drunk in this new music, injuring relationships in our single-minded determination to appreciate this new music. We find ways to incorporate this new music into our morning routine, our drive to work, our daily jog, and evening rest. Eventually, we find we can’t enjoy eating breakfast, the sunrise on our morning drive, moving our bodies in exercise, or even reclining after our day’s labor without this music. It has transformed from appreciation to need.
When Mary was told she would give birth to the messiah, she couldn't have known what it would mean to hold the infant, to feed him, to teach him. When responding yes to the dream sent by God, Joseph couldn't have known what it would mean to take his young family into hiding in Egypt, and to return to an unknown rural town, Nazareth, to care for his family. To teach the child a trade, even knowing his calling was to be the messiah; that the learned trade would only be temporary. There is sacrifice and pleasure in loving relationships. If music teaching is a loving relationship, a pedagogy of love, then there is sacrifice and pleasure.
DS
[i] Link: https://www.etymonline.com/word/compassion
[i] C.S. Lewis. The four loves (New York: HarperCollins, 1960), 15.
Link to image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pierced_heart_using_sword.jpg
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