Thursday, October 4, 2007

The West & Ent Wives

Sadly, in The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard tells us that the Ent Wives (without whom which no entings shall ever come about for obvious reasons of sexual differentiation) have taken a hike. Gone. Vamoosed. Outahere. He can't even recall their appearances, poor fellow.

As Mark Gordon noted, commenting on my post, 600-Pound Gorilla, "A burkha-clad woman driving in Virginia should see the Western man in her windshield as the 600-pound gorilla, but she doesn’t. Why? Because on some level she is intimately involved in the building of a civilization, while the Westerners around her are either actively dismantling theirs or allowing it to crumble into dust."

This is frequently how I feel when I notice a Muslim woman dutifully behind her Muslim husband adorned in hijab with a gaggle of children in tow. Do I long for a spouse captivated by the primitive Sacred, in mortal fear and peril of Honor Killings, per se?

Hardly. What I pine for is a unified West, beginning with the "domestic Church," the family: husband and wife sacramentally committed to lifelong sacrificial self-giving. Islam, albeit a veritable hive of characteristics of the worst of human nature, understands the indelible stamp of our human nature in the importance of the family. (And, of course, there is the demographic theory of war.)

If the West remembers nothing else, may Our Lady of Guadelupe, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (pray for us) intercede and help the West remember this.

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