~by Sean Paul Kelley

My mother and I got into it yesterday about writing.

Now, I adore my mother: she’s fantastic; most of the time.

Yesterday, however, she took issue with my word usage.

Preface: Mom is Catholic. Went to Catholic high school and university. She knows her St. Thomas Aquinas, Grotius, Pascal, and a good smattering of just war theory. She’s good coming heavy with the ethics when I screw up, Buddhist or not. When she aims, she doesn’t miss.

12 lbs of joy and discovery

So in an email yesterday we were discussing Catholic and Buddhist ethics. Mom wanted to know specifically how Buddhists view the Three Soures of Catholic Morality. I resisted a flashback to Sister Agnes and the 12 inch wood ruler with which she routinely slapped my hand. Transgression, unknown. She was a sadist but I learned my Latin declensions perfectly, especially for pain: dolor, masculine, Third declension”

Dolor, doloris, dolori, dolorem, dolore, dolor

But I digress. . .

“In Catholicism,” my Mom wrote, “for an action to be morally good the object, the intent and the circumstance must all be morally sound or the action is corrupted.”

“Interesting that there are three sources in Catholicism, because in Buddhism ethics are rooted in the Noble Eightfold Path through three main components: right speech, right action, right livelihood,” I replied. “However, to achieve merit and harmony in Buddhism one is not required to act in a supererogatory manner, whereas some Catholic actions imply it.”

She laid into me in the next email. “See, you’re grandstanding–she meant grandiloquent, a vice I am very guilty of–with your words again,” she said. “What does that even mean? It sounds like something out of the Kama Sutra!”

“First, the Kama Sutra is Hindu. Second, what did I say?” I replied.

“You’re a word snob. Supererogatory is what you wrote. What does that even mean?”

“Mom, it’s actually a Catholic concept,” I replied. “It’s something that is morally good, but not required to be done; it is to go above and beyond what is morally or ethically required.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?” She said.

“Why use eleven words when one gets the job done?”

And then I mouthed off to her, like a dumb-ass.

“How hard is it to use a dictionary app on your iPhone?”

“If you weren’t an adult I’d beat you, right now.”

“I know, Mom, but still. I’m a logophile, a verbivore. I can’t help myself.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I love you too.”

Gustave Flaubert believed in the perfect word in the perfect place.

So do I.