Showing posts with label attraction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attraction. Show all posts

September 9, 2016

Two Rivers, the Mystic Union

"There are two rivers that encircle the whole of life; the two touch and renew each other, without ever co-mingling or confusing..." D.H. Lawrence, A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover

When Will I See You Again
by Babyface

When can my heart beat again
When does the pain ever end
When do the tears stop from running over
When does you'll get over it begin
I hear what you're saying
But I swear that it's not making sense
So when can I see you

When can I see you again
When can my heart beat again
When can I see you again
When can I breathe once again

The great 20th century English wordsmith and thinker,   
D.H. Lawrence, had many things to bring forth to his readers. Some conveniently have reduced him to the word, sex. However the writer, in his own words, shows that he is more thoughtful and more searching than any facile pre-determination borne by others.

In his little book, an essay of 63 pages, Lawrence writes in 1931, two years after his Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in Europe, at a time when bootleg copies began to appear elsewhere, that he was aware there was a storm prompted by its appearance; many places banned the story as obscene.
Here the Author, Lawrence checks in:
"As David was mad for Bathsheba [in the Bible]... But when a woman's sex has lost its dynamic call, and in a sense is dead or static, then the woman wants to attract men... she exposes her flesh more and more... men are repelled by her, but socially thrilled... a chic declaration of independence, it is modern, free, popular because it is strictly a-sexual or anti-sexual... They want the counterfeit, mental substitution... The very men who encourage women to be the most daring, complain most bitterly of the sexlessness of women... Man is often willing to be deceived-- for a time-- even by nothingness...
The point is when women are alive, quivering, helplessly attractive, they will cover themselves, drape themselves with clothes gracefully... While sex is a power in itself, women try all disguises and men flaunt... 
The Catholic Church, especially in the south [southern Europe], is neither anti-sexual, like the northern churches, nor a-sexual like Mr. Bernard Shaw and such social thinkers. The Catholic Church recognizes sex, and makes it marriage, a sacrament based on the sexual communion... The man is a potential creator, law-giver, father and husband... lives full and satisfied...
The Catholic Church does not spend its time reminding people that there is no marrying nor giving in heaven. So that sexual lure is not deadly to the Church. Much more deadly is the flippancy, "freedom," cynicism, irreverence... in the dangerous, vulgar form of atheism. Naturally the Church is against it. The Chief Priest of Europe knows more about sex... because he knows more about the essential nature of the human being..."
-- A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover

January 8, 2016

Liking and Knowing

Vision of Love
1990-- by Mariah Carey

Treated me kind, sweet destiny
Carried me through desperation to the one
that was waiting for me
You took so long, still I believed
Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually
Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually
I had a vision of love and it was all that you've given to me

I had a vision of love
And it was all that you've given to me
Prayed through the nights, felt so alone
Suffered from alienation, carried the weight on my own
Had to be strong, so I believed
And now I know I've succeeded in finding
the place I conceived
I've realized a dream
And I visualized the love that came to be
Feel so alive, I'm so thankful that I've received
The answer that heaven has sent down to me
You treated me kind, sweet destiny
And I'll be eternally grateful, holding you so close to me
Prayed through the nights, so faithfully
Knowing the one that I needed
would find me eventually...

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good."  --Karol Wojtyla, later John Paul II

Liking a person is very closely connected with knowledge, "who you turned out to be...," records the lyrics. The base of attraction is an impression, a disposition to regard the other as a value; it is the developed commitment to think of that person as a certain good. Such commitment can only be enacted by the will.
 'I want,' is implicit in 'I like.' Thus the will is committed by attraction, and attraction commits the will. This may be difficult to grasp intellectually; yet the song Vision of Love  makes this point emotionally, poignantly.

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good," writes theologian Wojtyla. "Man and woman alike are by nature bodily and spiritual beings; they are such a being, seen by one another; in this way, each attracts the other.
All the potential goods or values that a given person may respond to derive from the object of this attraction. Each, then, attracts the other. For example, in y's attraction to x, the value most strongly in evidence is one which y finds in x, and to which y reacts most strongly."This one could say is the visioning, the imaging that the lyrics here speak to.

Also there's fact that y is particularly sensitive to it, particularly quick to perceive and respond to it. The mind, the thinking process, therefore plays a part in attraction, combined together with the emotions, such that a potent guide emerges in the mix as an important feature, strikingly evident in attraction.
"But this fact creates a certain internal difficulty in the sexual lives of persons. This difficulty is inherent in the relationship of experience to truth." Feelings often arise spontaneously. Where feelings are functioning naturally, they are unconcerned about truth. This is lust.
Truth for a man is a task of both his experience and his reason. This is why in any attraction, especially one of a sexual nature, the question of the truth about the person towards whom attraction is felt for, is so important.

Often people "generally believe that love can largely be reduced to a question of genuineness of feelings; although this is impossible to completely deny, we must still insist, if we are concerned about the quality of the attraction and the love of which it is part, that the truth about the person who is its object, play a part at least as important as the truth of the sentiment.'

"These two truths, properly integrated, give to an attraction [wholeness], the elements of a genuinely good, and genuinely cultivated love. Thus the object of attraction is seen whole, as a good, as a thing of beauty.
A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being." Love is a commitment to the good of each other. "For power is made perfect in weakness."
--2 Corinthians12:9-10