Growing up as the son of a Baptist minister I confess that my attitude toward alcohol was, at one time, less than positive. Drink was associated in my mind with drunkenness. Like most late-Gen X/early-Millennial evangelicals, my attitude changed. In fact, even my parents now enjoy a glass of wine on occasion.
What I regret most about this upbringing is not the absence of adult beverages. Having an aversion to these things as a teenager may well have saved me a host of troubles. What I regret is not having been initiated in a positive manner into the enjoyment of fine drink by older and wiser men, for the culture and community in which we learn to drink affects us well into the future. I had to stumble around, so to speak, and find my own way.
But I did find mentors, I suppose—mostly Catholic ones. I learned from Chesterton that there are radically different motivations for imbibing. His advice? “Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.” Just as we must not grieve as those who have no hope, I learned, neither must we drink like them.
–Logan Paul Gage, “It’s Vespers Somewhere”
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