Article
Comment
Taylor Swift
3 min read

How Travis Kelce upped his game courting Taylor Swift

Certified romantic Tory Baucum is swept off his feet by how the celebrity romance unfolded.

Tory Baucum is the director of the Benedictine Center for Family Life, Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas.

A montage shows Taylor swift leaning and singing into a microphone. And, Travis Kelce in his team's kit.
Swift: Ronald S Woan Wikpedia; Kelce: All Pro Reels, Flickr.

If you live on planet earth, you no doubt have heard of our now famous local love story: Kansas City Chiefs tight end player Travis Kelce is courting pop sensation Taylor Swift. One can read multiple accounts of this special love story on the Internet. (One of my favorites was written by London's The Guardian.) I don’t intend to repeat this well-known narrative. Rather, I wish to add commentary from what my wife calls a certified “Catholic Romantic”, or what my students call me, “a lover of human love.” 

From the outset, please don’t get me wrong. I do not mean to canonize Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce or propose that their relationship is the ideal. I merely want to notice some very healthy things about it. 

I tip my hand in the opening sentence. I describe the relationship as “courtship” not “dating.” Courtship differs from dating in terms of its intention, methods and goal. A man courts a woman whenever he pursues her seriously for a romantic relationship that is opened to the exclusiveness of marriage. The intent (serious) and goal (exclusive) determines the methods. 

They met on common turf with uncommon talent. But she first made him work “for the right to party.”

After Ms. Swift declined Mr. Kelce’s unimaginative “I’m just a good ole boy” friendship bracelet, he decided to up his game – or better – run his own route. He invited Swift to return to Arrowhead Stadium to watch him “light up the stage” just as she had done three months earlier. She accepted this time. They met on common turf with uncommon talent. But she first made him work “for the right to party.” 

Courtship requires work, which brings clarity to the relationship. Ends determine methods. 

Another difference between courtship and dating is that it’s a family affair. Persons are more than individuals; we are social creatures who live, move and have our being in webs of relationships. We cannot know each other truly or deeply apart from those webs that create and sustain us. At the first two Chiefs games Ms. Swift attended, she was seen cheering alongside Mr. Kelce’s mom. After those central relationships have been honored, the widening circle of friends are introduced. And good friends know their role: circle the couples relationship and then face the crowd. 

Kelce’s teammate Patrick Mahomes, as usual, threaded the needle, saying: 

 “She’s good people. Now let’s let them alone.” 

What Kelce recently told reporters was refreshing. “It feels like I was on top of the world after the Super Bowl and right now I’m even more on top of the world,” he said. And when asked about having to navigate so much public interest in his relationship, he said, “You’ve got a lot of people who care about Taylor, and for good reason.” Excellent answer. 

Finally, not all courtships end in marriage. And if this one doesn’t it is not a failure. If the couple loves each other well they will leave the relationship better for having known each other. Courtship is always a growth in self-knowledge by way of self-donation. They will grow as they learn to give of themselves. May they give of themselves and by so doing learn to make their love work. 

As others have already said, this is the best catch of Travis Kelce’s life. And I, for one, hope he never lets her go. 

 

This article was first published as: The Kelce Courtship of Taylor Swift, on the Benedict College web site. 

 

Article
Ambition
Comment
Death & life
Economics
4 min read

Forget the Rich List, wealth needs deeper foundations than money

Your neighbourhood might be cool or gentrified now, but where will you go when you die?

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

A red Ferrari parked on a posh London Street
Parked Ferrari off Belgrave Square, London.
John Cameron on Unsplash.

To drive from Clapham to north of the river in London, you go past a warning sign. It's not an LED flashing one, instead it's painted on a Victorian building in uneven serif lettering:  

'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'  

It implies that the man (or the woman) on the Clapham omnibus, whatever their wealth, ignores it at their peril.  

I recently made that same journey from living in Clapham – a place of relative wealth to one of alleged extreme wealth, in Belgravia. My initial reflections are that people are people, and that wealth doesn't resolve all our problems. There's actually far more poverty, both physical and spiritual, than meets the prejudice. 

But that Victorian sign speaks to our aspirations, for those with a little, and those with a lot. We think that more is more. Cities feed the striver, and in that pursuit of wealth some argue that our cities are losing their souls. While South-West London might not be the most drippingly cool places in London, they have historically been places for those who are in professions that are cool-adjacent. Of those involved in academia or journalism, Josiah Gogarty wrote in the New Statesman:  

'These professions never promised luxury, but they did deliver a respectable middle-class lifestyle for even the moderately successful. But try buying a house in centralish London today off an income that isn’t made in, or by servicing, the City.'  

As it happens, this week I heard one journalist on the radio saying a comfortable amount to have in his bank would be £7 million. How much is enough? 

But for grads in service professions with healthy cashflows and bonuses, you can still rent in ‘centralish’ London. No doubt the affluent who house-share have buoyed Clapham Common Westside into the position of having the highest average household wealth of anywhere in the UK, at over £100k. Gogarty continues:  

'Call it Claphamisation, after the London neighbourhood of choice for graduates with dependable jobs and straightforward tastes. Gentrification took your money, or forced you to care about money more than you would’ve done otherwise. Now Claphamisation is coming for your cool.'  

In other words, gaining the world means losing your soul. 

Both riches and coolness are irrelevant as the casket is lowered into the ground. 

But even those markers of mainstream wealth and its own version of cool are uncertain as the annual Sunday Times Rich List over the weekend reflected. Your heart mightn't bleed for those falling off their perches, with a threshold of £350 million. But economic turbulence also unsteadies the presumed foundations of wealth. 

Wealth needs a deeper foundation than money. And soul needs a warmer foundation than cool. Harvard Professor Dr Arthur Brooks, says that love is 

 'what the human heart really, really wants. And a lot of people are thinking, you know, if I have the money, and I buy the stuff, then I'm going to get more love.'  

Wealth, and I would argue coolness, are intermediaries to this love. 

Tending to our souls means opening ourselves to a love that is far richer than what's on the surface. That's not to say that Christian theology denies the physical, however. It teaches an embodied understanding of our souls. I was all too aware of this standing by a coffin, taking a funeral this week. We are material beings and made of material. But our inner settled-ness in what drives us and what we are devoted to far outweighs the trappings of life. 

I have seen people dazzled by their own wealth and others seriously unimpressed by it. And while most of us would quite like the chance to find out for ourselves that wealth is an imposter, both riches and coolness are irrelevant as the casket is lowered into the ground. 

Those serif letters on that sign on the edge of Clapham are easily ignored. They seem out of place as the cars and Lime bikes zoom past. But the words aren't disembodied: they were spoken by someone. When a rich young man, sure in his own good living and upstandingness, turned his back on Jesus, he was sad, holding onto his wealth. The eyes that looked on him still loved him. 

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