I’m a Midwesterner well-trained in Midwestern social graces. You’re so nice, my spunky friend Kate, from Portland, likes to say. Kate loves me, but she doesn’t necessarily tell me how nice I am as a compliment. In fact, she recently remarked on the understated fury in my graduate thesis: “You Iowa’d it up.” Meaning I was just a little too nice to characters who deserved such rage. While the jury’s out on that, Kate’s comment holds an inherent criticism of our Midwestern modus operandi: we’re so nice we don’t always say what we feel.
Don’t get me wrong. Iowans are wonderful people. When my friends move to the country’s coastal areas, they complain that the people there aren’t friendly, that they do not say hello or move their shopping carts out of someone’s way at the store. They say they miss Iowa and Iowans. And it’s true that we do have our own charming brand of being in the world—a sort of generic Judeo-Christian kindness, easily identified. Of course, not everyone exudes the Iowa aura, and it’s dangerous to generalize about anything these days because there are a million exceptions and outliers. Still, stereotypes exist, at times, for good reason:
You see, Iowa defers to people in line at the post office and asks, “How are you?” when jogging past another exercise enthusiast on the street. Iowa smiles and coos at the children of strangers; she pets unfamiliar canines and asks after names and pedigrees or lack thereof. When sitting in a doctor’s office, Iowa does not balk at a fellow patient presenting her with photographs of grandchildren or instructions on canning tomatoes. Iowa bakes muffins. She brings meals to the sick and post-partum. She goes to church/synagogue/temple/Habitat for Humanity on Sundays. She volunteers, coordinating grass-roots movements, flood clean-up, feeding children, and subsidizing electric bills for low-income families. If Iowa says she’ll be there, she’ll be there. If Iowa says she’ll do it, she will.**
If one is too forward, out of touch with the rules governing social etiquette—perhaps they ask to borrow Iowa’s chapstick, or they do not tuck away the photos after a moment and return to the magazine on their lap—well, Iowa smiles anyway (if a bit discouragingly) and with grace because, for the most part, Iowa enjoys small talk with strangers, and can muster a sincere response to the picture of a dimply child presented for her admiration.
Yet, I think Iowa hates to be on the asking end of lawnmower borrowing (she wouldn’t mind loaning her own). And as far as cars go, Iowa would really rather not lend hers, but feels it’s the right thing to do when she has a friend in need. She’ll worry, Iowa will, about the friend’s driving record but feel impolite asking after it. Instead, she’ll hold her breath and genuflect, praying the vehicle returns to with four doors and a pristine windshield. In the doctor’s office, Iowa dissuades herself from proffering pictures of her own children to random strangers because, well, why would they care? Wouldn’t that just encroach on the time/space/boundaries of said strangers? And while Iowa works so very hard at taking care of everyone else, she can’t always take care of herself.
You see, sometimes the excess rain ruins a harvest or the company lays her off or her father gets sick with cancer and she needs to take time off work to care for him. Then, it’s hard for Iowa to ask for help, for a meal, for a ride. You see, she thinks she should have it together. She grew up on the Protestant work ethic. You work hard and you are kind to others who are down and out, though the reason others are down and out, well, it might have to do with drugs or sex out of wedlock or just plain laziness; there’s usually someplace they went wrong--you can trace their demises back to one-too-many casino trips, a shady business deal, or what they did after the senior high hayrack ride, behind Farmer Lotz’s barn.
When Iowa struggles to care for herself, she doesn’t want the rest of the world wondering where she went wrong. What went wrong. What moral failure led to her current financial predicament or broken marriage. And she certainly doesn’t want people musing aloud, behind her back, which they certainly will do. So she stays silent as long as she can bear it and chins up and buckles down and still helps the neighbors, the poorer, the postpartum and the sick.
Am I too hard on Iowa? I don’t mean to be. I admire her courage, tenacity, and a generous spirit that affirms humanity in its essence. She is a little too judgmental (of herself and others), a little too gossipy, and she stubbornly clings to this Herculean notion that she must brave the fierce and choppy waters of hardship alone, lay a smooth finish on all the rough-and-tumble. Thing is, she really doesn’t have to. Sometimes I just want to wrap an arm around her shoulders and whisper, There there, you can let it out now. Just say what you really feel.
*An Iowa state slogan
**Lutheran pastor Don Thompson describes a Midwestern work ethic in this way: http://www.worldmag.com/articles/17016
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Party at My . . . [the Real Reason I Love] Facebook!
We’ve all met the socially inappropriate party guest in our travels—you know, the kind who doesn’t know when to stop talking or how to have a back-and-forth (non-monologue-esque) sort of exchange with another human being, but seamlessly moves from one self-related topic to the next without so much as a glance at their audience or a pause for breath. I muse at individuals like this and think of them as boundary-less wanderers-into-social-contexts. Usually, I smile along, nod and uh-huh my way through our encounters, rationalizing that they are lonely, learning , and/or a bit narcissistic.
And the more self-aware I grow as a human being, the more I notice my own loneliness, learning-curve, and narcissism (HEY—look at me! I have a BLOG!). And while I’d loathe the day I find myself the socially inappropriate party guest, a boundary-less, discomfort-causer to people I care about and truly want to know, there’s a piece of me that wants to put myself all out there—my thoughts, obsessions, the contents of daydreams and nightmares, the things my children say that I find oh-so-terribly quaint/funny/ironic, the lack of sleep last night, the Tiny’s first smile, the pictures of bath time and birthday parties. Some days this leads me to worry I have the Michael Scott (see The Office) brand of narcissism. Other days I tell myself that I’m an entertainer/writer/wannabe stand-up comic—and don’t they all need an audience?
I’ll admit with reluctance, sincerity, and risk to my oh-so-carefully constructed social persona that this is one of the reasons I love Facebook. It’s the socially appropriate way to be socially inappropriate (of course, there are limits). The ultimate dinner party, Facebook allows you to invite 549 friends to your house and interject over the dinner conversation seemingly random statements such as “Lawnmower broke. Neighbors unhappy,” or produce a picture of yourself in a headscarf with the caption, “For Phil. The Mennonite Look.” While most of your 549 guests will just ignore you, chances are one or five or twelve are gonna LOL or LIKE or comment that you look great in a kerchief, like you’re 18 again, or they’ll praise the good looks of the fruit of your loins, which really means, on some level, they’re saying you look like a supermodel. –Right?
Narcissism aside, I don’t know how I survived having my first child. There was no Facebook. No smart phone with which to tap away at while breastfeeding. I had to—eek—call a friend or—eek—schedule a playdate if I wanted to network socially. FB, myspace, instant chat, tweeting and text messaging get a bad rap from social critics who say we use them too often and in lieu of face-time. I see their point, and I agree. But something has to be better than nothing, and some days the online social networking is all we’ve got in an increasingly work-from-home/work-at-home/work-in-the-tiny-cell-that-is-your-cubicle kind of world.
Social networking=social affirmation: I updated my status. Therefore, I am.
And the more self-aware I grow as a human being, the more I notice my own loneliness, learning-curve, and narcissism (HEY—look at me! I have a BLOG!). And while I’d loathe the day I find myself the socially inappropriate party guest, a boundary-less, discomfort-causer to people I care about and truly want to know, there’s a piece of me that wants to put myself all out there—my thoughts, obsessions, the contents of daydreams and nightmares, the things my children say that I find oh-so-terribly quaint/funny/ironic, the lack of sleep last night, the Tiny’s first smile, the pictures of bath time and birthday parties. Some days this leads me to worry I have the Michael Scott (see The Office) brand of narcissism. Other days I tell myself that I’m an entertainer/writer/wannabe stand-up comic—and don’t they all need an audience?
I’ll admit with reluctance, sincerity, and risk to my oh-so-carefully constructed social persona that this is one of the reasons I love Facebook. It’s the socially appropriate way to be socially inappropriate (of course, there are limits). The ultimate dinner party, Facebook allows you to invite 549 friends to your house and interject over the dinner conversation seemingly random statements such as “Lawnmower broke. Neighbors unhappy,” or produce a picture of yourself in a headscarf with the caption, “For Phil. The Mennonite Look.” While most of your 549 guests will just ignore you, chances are one or five or twelve are gonna LOL or LIKE or comment that you look great in a kerchief, like you’re 18 again, or they’ll praise the good looks of the fruit of your loins, which really means, on some level, they’re saying you look like a supermodel. –Right?
Narcissism aside, I don’t know how I survived having my first child. There was no Facebook. No smart phone with which to tap away at while breastfeeding. I had to—eek—call a friend or—eek—schedule a playdate if I wanted to network socially. FB, myspace, instant chat, tweeting and text messaging get a bad rap from social critics who say we use them too often and in lieu of face-time. I see their point, and I agree. But something has to be better than nothing, and some days the online social networking is all we’ve got in an increasingly work-from-home/work-at-home/work-in-the-tiny-cell-that-is-your-cubicle kind of world.
Social networking=social affirmation: I updated my status. Therefore, I am.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Previews from the Book Shelf
I have more books to read lined up on my shelf than I know what to do with. I'll be lucky if I get through all of them this year, and the shelf is growing steadily fuller with each passing week it seems. Have you taken a look recently at the titles on your books-to-read pile and thought about what those titles suggest about you, their future reader? Here are a few of my upcoming reads and why they're on my shelf.
Why? Because I am a sucker for subtitles (this book has two!) like "One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible," "24 Hours of Christian Television," "A Year of Food Life" and "One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia." I got this book free from Harper because I told them I wanted to review it on my blog; you'll soon be hearing more about the two former Manhattanites.
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street
Why? Again: subtitle. Also, I'm a sucker for nostalgia and I heard the author on NPR two years ago. Once it arrived, a year and a half ago, I wasn't quite sure if I could take 379 pages, with index, of nostalgia. But now that I"m post-MFA, I'll give it a real go.
Hell and Back: The First Death
This is a fantasy/thriller novel my friend, Steve, from church just published. He's a prolific writer and gets novel ideas in a flash and then spends like two days getting all three hundred pages out of his system (or something like that!) before rewriting and editing. He graciously handed me a free copy on Sunday with the words, "Hey. Try fiction."
The Devil's Child.
This is a book of poetry by my faculty mentor in the MFA program, Fleda Brown. Over lunch this summer, she told me that the poems were written out of wrenching interviews with a woman whose childhood was comprised of Satanic ritual abuse, incest, and other forms of domestic violence. I think this might be Fleda's darkest subject. She did, however, just come out with a lovely book of memoiristic essays this past spring.
The Last Lecture
No subtitles here and I"m worried it'll be too too sad in light of the book's irony: The book is based on the actual last lecture of Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Cargegie Mellon, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer just before he delivered it. I'm worried this book will push down on my psyche, filling me with the wrong sort of worry about how I"m living my life, achieving my childhood dreams, investing in my children's lives and well beings. But the cowriter was Jeffrey Zaslow, who wrote The Girls From Ames, and that seemed to be written at just the right pitch.
Happy reading, y'all.
Why? Because I am a sucker for subtitles (this book has two!) like "One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible," "24 Hours of Christian Television," "A Year of Food Life" and "One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia." I got this book free from Harper because I told them I wanted to review it on my blog; you'll soon be hearing more about the two former Manhattanites.
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street
Why? Again: subtitle. Also, I'm a sucker for nostalgia and I heard the author on NPR two years ago. Once it arrived, a year and a half ago, I wasn't quite sure if I could take 379 pages, with index, of nostalgia. But now that I"m post-MFA, I'll give it a real go.
Hell and Back: The First Death
This is a fantasy/thriller novel my friend, Steve, from church just published. He's a prolific writer and gets novel ideas in a flash and then spends like two days getting all three hundred pages out of his system (or something like that!) before rewriting and editing. He graciously handed me a free copy on Sunday with the words, "Hey. Try fiction."
The Devil's Child.
This is a book of poetry by my faculty mentor in the MFA program, Fleda Brown. Over lunch this summer, she told me that the poems were written out of wrenching interviews with a woman whose childhood was comprised of Satanic ritual abuse, incest, and other forms of domestic violence. I think this might be Fleda's darkest subject. She did, however, just come out with a lovely book of memoiristic essays this past spring.
The Last Lecture
No subtitles here and I"m worried it'll be too too sad in light of the book's irony: The book is based on the actual last lecture of Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Cargegie Mellon, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer just before he delivered it. I'm worried this book will push down on my psyche, filling me with the wrong sort of worry about how I"m living my life, achieving my childhood dreams, investing in my children's lives and well beings. But the cowriter was Jeffrey Zaslow, who wrote The Girls From Ames, and that seemed to be written at just the right pitch.
Happy reading, y'all.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
I'm Just Sayin'
When he glanced up again, he noticed at her side a much older lady, as warty and wrinkled as the ugliest toad that ever lived. A strange pair, Gawain thought: one a wretched old hag with an evil eye, a hairy chin and a warty nose, the other a paragon of beauty with a face like an angel. But I must not let my mind think on her any further. You’re in a chapel, Gawain, and she’s another man’s wife.*
It’s been fifteen years since I read anything about King Arthur and his knights of the round table. Still, I love tales of adventure, of conquest and victory, and so do Oldest and Middle. This week, I found myself reading aloud the above adaptation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and was stunned to note that the only female characters in the entire story were either lovely young seductresses or ugly, evil old ladies. In every other scene was the most repetitious description of these women: “the ancient crone,” “the hideous old hag.” As for the “lovely lady.…Her kiss was so inviting, so tantalizingly tender. ‘Oh, Gawain,’ she breathed, ‘forget you are a knight just this once. Forget your chivalry and your honor.'"
“It was lucky for Gawain that she had reminded him at that moment of his knightly virtues. ‘Dear Lady,’ he said, desperately trying to reign himself in. ‘You have a gentle lord as a husband, who has shown me nothing but the greatest hospitality and friendship. I would not and I will not ever cheat him or dishonor him. We can talk of love all you want, lady, but that is all.’”
First, I was trying not to choke while I read this aloud and second, trying to edit the dialogue on the fly, not wanting to risk the girls catching on to the meaning of Gawain "forgetting himself" while in the embraces of this temptress.
Third, I shouldn't be surprised. The whole evil/ugly/old v. lovely/pretty/young/irresistible female dynamic has been Disney-fied since the middle of the twentieth century. King Arthur after all is just closer to the origin. And speaking of origins, in church on Sunday, our pastor was talking, metaphorically, about taking a good path in life. He mentioned this illustration from Proverbs, in which the writer warns his offspring not to be led astray into a path of destruction, toward which the woman in chapter 7 lures him:
"Come, let's drink deep of love till morning; let's enjoy ourselves with love! My husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey. He took his purse filled with money and will not be home till full moon. With persuasive words she led him astray; she seduced him with her smooth talk."
There it is, a scene written right into Sir Gawain's story.
In case the reasons for my distress are not apparent, let me speak clearly: It's a shame that such timeless ethics (follow a righteous path/don't sleep with other people's wives and husbands) are presented in ways that underscore the stereotype of woman=seductress/tempter/evil/path to destruction, yet I understand that the biblical writer is presenting an ultimate ethic (make good, moral choices; bad things probably will happen when you sleep with someone else's spouse) via example that is nuanced with a cultural-bound world view and aimed at a particular audience of young men.
I get it. I'm just thinking of my girls, who are already trying to insert themselves into the biblical narrative, who already ask, "will women be rewarded too?" in response to the Sunday School memory verse that says God will reward each "man" for his righteousness. These girls will read Proverbs someday, and do a lot of hermeneutical wrangling in order to get at the ultimate ethic, not to mention dismantling the portraiture of their gender so often portrayed in scripture as conniving, immoral, dangerous, and promiscuous.
They're also trying to insert themselves into King Arthur. Into Roman history and battles. We have two Mycenaean shields in the basement, two Roman signums for battle, two double-headed war axes drying and ready to assemble tomorrow. I'm just sayin', I know that somewhere in their copious minds they are reconciling their love of action and adventure and goodness and ethics with the portrait always before them of the dainty/lovely/tempting/dangerous lady, trying to figure out who they are and who they're going to be.
*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as told by Michael Morpurgo
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Adjusting to Now
Almost six years ago I had my second baby. I loved her and my first child immensely, as most parents do, and about as soon as she was six months old I was counting down the days till I could spend a large chunk of the week doing anything other than parenting and cooking/cleaning/laundering, etc, etc. I felt incredibly jealous of the spouse who went to work every day while I stayed home in sweatpants and had no interesting adult conversations. I chose to do that because we held to an ideology that it would be better for our kids if one of their parents were with them most of the time when they are very young. I held to that ideology just a hairsbreadth more than than I did to the belief that in order to stay sane I needed to be doing something with grown-ups or by myself and my computer for a big chunk of time during the week. (And playdates didn't count. Neither did Tot Time. Mercer Park parents, you know what I'm talking about.)
At about the hour I was going to lose my mind with our current set-up, I got accepted into a graduate program and I went back to school (on the side). I spent about 15 hours every week alone with my computer in an office that was all mine. And I joined the staff of a local church as a very part time assistant pastor. What followed was three years of being incredibly productive in and outside my home. And then I got pregnant--all good. Planned. And then I had my third child. And then I went on leave from my staff position. And then I graduated from my program with an MFA.
So right now, at this very moment, I have come full circle, returned to that static place I was in five years ago. I've carved space out of my life to have a third child, carved space out for the weeks and months of nightly wakings and feeding-on-demand and we-don't-know-why-but-she's-just-crying cries. And on top of that, I have carved space out of my life to homeschool Oldest and Middle, as I've been doing the last couple years when I wasn't doing school work.
I have no deadlines hanging over my head. No papers to write. No books I have to read. No thesis to proofread. I have no meetings to attend. No mass emails to write and send to church members. No events to plan and organize. No announcements to give on Sunday mornings.
For about a week this was all astoundingly beautiful.
Then I felt bored and anxious.
The problem being that I have no meetings to attend. No administrative kinks to work out. No looked-forward-to emails from my professors (nor the time or energy to respond if I got them). I should have known that I could not be happy resuming this sort of life indefinitely when my heart started beating harder over a book on biblical hermeneutics yesterday. Just the name (Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis) probably flooded my brain with enough dopamine for a half-day high.
I don't know exactly what the future holds. I think the now that I'm in might last a bit longer--weeks, maybe months. So, I'm trying to live in this limbo with grace. It really doesn't last that long. Meanwhile, I'm walking my children to art classes, baking bread for their lunches, nursing five hours a day, handling tantrums, teaching math, and day dreaming about all the things I want to say and write and read and the people I will be having those conversations with someday soon.
At about the hour I was going to lose my mind with our current set-up, I got accepted into a graduate program and I went back to school (on the side). I spent about 15 hours every week alone with my computer in an office that was all mine. And I joined the staff of a local church as a very part time assistant pastor. What followed was three years of being incredibly productive in and outside my home. And then I got pregnant--all good. Planned. And then I had my third child. And then I went on leave from my staff position. And then I graduated from my program with an MFA.
So right now, at this very moment, I have come full circle, returned to that static place I was in five years ago. I've carved space out of my life to have a third child, carved space out for the weeks and months of nightly wakings and feeding-on-demand and we-don't-know-why-but-she's-just-crying cries. And on top of that, I have carved space out of my life to homeschool Oldest and Middle, as I've been doing the last couple years when I wasn't doing school work.
I have no deadlines hanging over my head. No papers to write. No books I have to read. No thesis to proofread. I have no meetings to attend. No mass emails to write and send to church members. No events to plan and organize. No announcements to give on Sunday mornings.
For about a week this was all astoundingly beautiful.
Then I felt bored and anxious.
The problem being that I have no meetings to attend. No administrative kinks to work out. No looked-forward-to emails from my professors (nor the time or energy to respond if I got them). I should have known that I could not be happy resuming this sort of life indefinitely when my heart started beating harder over a book on biblical hermeneutics yesterday. Just the name (Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis) probably flooded my brain with enough dopamine for a half-day high.
I don't know exactly what the future holds. I think the now that I'm in might last a bit longer--weeks, maybe months. So, I'm trying to live in this limbo with grace. It really doesn't last that long. Meanwhile, I'm walking my children to art classes, baking bread for their lunches, nursing five hours a day, handling tantrums, teaching math, and day dreaming about all the things I want to say and write and read and the people I will be having those conversations with someday soon.
Monday, August 23, 2010
"The Open Road Wasn't Quite Open to All"
This just in the New York times this morning feels particularly relevant after my last post.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Re-reading History (a readerly response to The Help)
I know, I am so late to Kathryn Stockett’s party. The Help, Stockett’s first novel, has been on the New York Times Bestseller’s list for 72 weeks now and I’m just getting to it, after having had it on my reading list for over a year. On top of being late, I’ve also been known to declare that I don’t have a “fiction bone in my body.” Kind of ironic seeing as how I just got an MFA in creative writing (my creative thesis was a non-fiction memoir). But there is fiction that moves me occasionally—and it’s Stockett’s kind.
The Help begins in 1962, Jackson, Mississippi, where “coloreds” and “whites” live on separate sides of towns, shop at separate grocery stores and use separate bathrooms. It’s the era of Jim Crow laws and JFK and the assassination of Medgar Evers and prominent activity of the KKK. In the novel, we encounter race relations on the domestic level, between colored women who work as maids and childcare providers and their white, middle-to-upper class female employers. Through first-person accounts of three different narrators, Stockett enters into what we can imagine is some of the best and worst of racial interactions; she highlights for the reader the paradox of a colored woman so intimately connected to the home of the white woman (an intimacy that can include an almost-maternal bond with the children of the white woman) while, in a million different ways, denigrated by the white racist sensibilities of the time and place.
Over the years, a friend of mine has made reference to an African American domestic worker who would come into her home in the sixties. She lived in the Chicago suburbs, so the racial inequity of the area was not quite the same flavor as Jackson, Mississippi’s (although present nonetheless). Still, as my friend aged, she began to wonder about this woman who left her own family and took a bus or two across town a few days a week to bathe my friend and her siblings, comb their hair, and clean my friend’s house. Stockett, too, had a relationship with an African American domestic worker, and she writes about Demetrie in an epilogue. Here, she draws on a quote from Howell Raines describing the difficulty of describing relationships like these:
There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.
Yet I think Stockett gets the complexity and nuance of this matter across to the reader marvelously, through the accounts of the maids, Aibileen and Minny, as well as Skeeter, a young white college grad who teams up with Aibileen and Minny to push back, at great risk, against the system. Perhaps it is because of Stockett’s success on just this point that her book has been on the best seller list for over a year now.
On a personal note, The Help has caused me to reflect upon the time and place of my birth in our country’s history. I was born in May of 1978, a mere ten years and one month from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. But I was not born in the Deep South, and neither of my parents were, either. I was raised first in California’s bay area and then in Iowa. I didn’t hear of lynching or cross burnings or Jim Crow laws until junior high, at least. Still, I was not oblivious to the attitudes and terminology my elders used for people of color (mild, but racist if you looked close enough), terminology that was so different from what I was learning in a post-civil-rights-movement and politically correct educational system in Iowa. To their credit, my parents’ childhoods occurred against the backdrop of the civil rights movement. Their worlds were just coming into focus as the movement found its voice in a mainstream conversation. My grandparents were in the prime of their adulthood; their language, attitudes, and stances toward people of color were entrenched and influenced by the generation that went before them.
So even though I don’t come from a line of white supremacists, maybe what I've got is a healthy portion of white guilt. I am so painfully aware, after reading Stockett, of my privilege, of the relative ease of my conduct through the world. I know this is nothing to take to the presses; I am not the first to express this sentiment, nor is it the first or last time I ever will. I know the history of racism in our country is an old story. But don't we need to listen to old stories over and over again, let their truths and lessons wash over us, shape who we are and help us re-determine who we want to be?
The Help begins in 1962, Jackson, Mississippi, where “coloreds” and “whites” live on separate sides of towns, shop at separate grocery stores and use separate bathrooms. It’s the era of Jim Crow laws and JFK and the assassination of Medgar Evers and prominent activity of the KKK. In the novel, we encounter race relations on the domestic level, between colored women who work as maids and childcare providers and their white, middle-to-upper class female employers. Through first-person accounts of three different narrators, Stockett enters into what we can imagine is some of the best and worst of racial interactions; she highlights for the reader the paradox of a colored woman so intimately connected to the home of the white woman (an intimacy that can include an almost-maternal bond with the children of the white woman) while, in a million different ways, denigrated by the white racist sensibilities of the time and place.
Over the years, a friend of mine has made reference to an African American domestic worker who would come into her home in the sixties. She lived in the Chicago suburbs, so the racial inequity of the area was not quite the same flavor as Jackson, Mississippi’s (although present nonetheless). Still, as my friend aged, she began to wonder about this woman who left her own family and took a bus or two across town a few days a week to bathe my friend and her siblings, comb their hair, and clean my friend’s house. Stockett, too, had a relationship with an African American domestic worker, and she writes about Demetrie in an epilogue. Here, she draws on a quote from Howell Raines describing the difficulty of describing relationships like these:
There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.
Yet I think Stockett gets the complexity and nuance of this matter across to the reader marvelously, through the accounts of the maids, Aibileen and Minny, as well as Skeeter, a young white college grad who teams up with Aibileen and Minny to push back, at great risk, against the system. Perhaps it is because of Stockett’s success on just this point that her book has been on the best seller list for over a year now.
On a personal note, The Help has caused me to reflect upon the time and place of my birth in our country’s history. I was born in May of 1978, a mere ten years and one month from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. But I was not born in the Deep South, and neither of my parents were, either. I was raised first in California’s bay area and then in Iowa. I didn’t hear of lynching or cross burnings or Jim Crow laws until junior high, at least. Still, I was not oblivious to the attitudes and terminology my elders used for people of color (mild, but racist if you looked close enough), terminology that was so different from what I was learning in a post-civil-rights-movement and politically correct educational system in Iowa. To their credit, my parents’ childhoods occurred against the backdrop of the civil rights movement. Their worlds were just coming into focus as the movement found its voice in a mainstream conversation. My grandparents were in the prime of their adulthood; their language, attitudes, and stances toward people of color were entrenched and influenced by the generation that went before them.
So even though I don’t come from a line of white supremacists, maybe what I've got is a healthy portion of white guilt. I am so painfully aware, after reading Stockett, of my privilege, of the relative ease of my conduct through the world. I know this is nothing to take to the presses; I am not the first to express this sentiment, nor is it the first or last time I ever will. I know the history of racism in our country is an old story. But don't we need to listen to old stories over and over again, let their truths and lessons wash over us, shape who we are and help us re-determine who we want to be?
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Speaking of Paying Attention
I am gearing up for another year of home schooling.
For those of you who don’t know, I have three daughters. Oldest and Middle are in 3rd grade and kindergarten, respectively. The Tiny is only 2.5 months old and this fall will probably be learning about rolling over, without any assistance from me. But all the school planning for the big girls is exhilarating and overwhelming at the same time. I’m not sure how I’ll juggle teaching with the presence of the Tiny. (The Tiny does not take regular naps yet and the Tiny has difficulty falling asleep at times.) This summer, with three kiddos in the house all clamoring for my attention at the same time some days, it was tempting to send Oldest and Middle off to entertain themselves. Since the Tiny was born, they’ve been entertaining themselves with lots of video games. Define lots? Often two hours a day. Once, when I was so desperate and sleep-deprived and couldn’t move off my bed, they played for three and a half hours.
Because Spouse was recently diagnosed with ADHD, it’s got me thinking a lot about brain health and the girls’ ability to pay attention to the non-media parts of the world they live in. In July, Iowa State University came out with this study, suggesting that attention problems in the classroom are related to the amount of “screen time” (video games/movies/tv) children have and that in fact, video game playing is a likely factor in the development of ADHD. I was telling Spouse the other day that I think I like our kids better when they aren’t playing video games so often. Ever since they started, Middle seems particularly agitated and has more difficulty sitting still and paying attention at dinner time and other moments during the day. She’s only 5, so this is sort of developmentally normal. Yet, it seems worse than it was before we started letting them play so much. According to this article the brain is “trained” by the sort of stimuli it becomes accustomed to. When stimulated for long periods of time by quick edits, flashy lights and fast, jarring sounds it becomes difficult to pay attention to the quiet, austere print of a book. Dear lord!—maybe this explains why Oldest has claimed disinterest in all the new library books I tossed her way this summer. I don’t believe she’s read a chapter book for three months and this kid used to devour books written at advanced reading levels.
We’ve taken a hard line in the last week, making her read at least the first ten pages of every new book she starts (after that, she’s given them back). But today I took a harder line as I prepped for the coming year’s schooling and wrote her the following letter, which I gave a special place in her home school binder:
Dear [Oldest],
Below is a list of books that I would approve as part of your reading for 3rd grade. Some of these stories you are familiar with, such as Mary Poppins and Peter Pan, but you have not read the books themselves—only seen the movies. Also, most of these books you have already or will come into contact with because they are used for the Writing with Ease books we’ve done together. You expressed interest in many of the excerpts I read aloud to you last year, so I bet you’ll enjoy the books in their entirety. If you are curious to know what a book is about, you can go onto the computer and go to www.amazon.com. This is a book web site. You can type in the particular name of the book in the “search” field and hit “enter.” Then you will see a list of books that might match the book you are searching for. Click on the correct one and you will see a picture of the cover; a paragraph or two will let you know what the book is about. Once you decide you are interested in something, we can either check it out from the library or buy it on Amazon.
I will ask you to read at least one of these books each month and write a very short book report when you are finished.
Happy reading!
Love,
Mom
So that’s my strategy and I’m sticking to it. But I’m curious—did your kids have extra screen time this summer? And do you think the correlation between screen time/attention deficit exists? or not?
For those of you who don’t know, I have three daughters. Oldest and Middle are in 3rd grade and kindergarten, respectively. The Tiny is only 2.5 months old and this fall will probably be learning about rolling over, without any assistance from me. But all the school planning for the big girls is exhilarating and overwhelming at the same time. I’m not sure how I’ll juggle teaching with the presence of the Tiny. (The Tiny does not take regular naps yet and the Tiny has difficulty falling asleep at times.) This summer, with three kiddos in the house all clamoring for my attention at the same time some days, it was tempting to send Oldest and Middle off to entertain themselves. Since the Tiny was born, they’ve been entertaining themselves with lots of video games. Define lots? Often two hours a day. Once, when I was so desperate and sleep-deprived and couldn’t move off my bed, they played for three and a half hours.
Because Spouse was recently diagnosed with ADHD, it’s got me thinking a lot about brain health and the girls’ ability to pay attention to the non-media parts of the world they live in. In July, Iowa State University came out with this study, suggesting that attention problems in the classroom are related to the amount of “screen time” (video games/movies/tv) children have and that in fact, video game playing is a likely factor in the development of ADHD. I was telling Spouse the other day that I think I like our kids better when they aren’t playing video games so often. Ever since they started, Middle seems particularly agitated and has more difficulty sitting still and paying attention at dinner time and other moments during the day. She’s only 5, so this is sort of developmentally normal. Yet, it seems worse than it was before we started letting them play so much. According to this article the brain is “trained” by the sort of stimuli it becomes accustomed to. When stimulated for long periods of time by quick edits, flashy lights and fast, jarring sounds it becomes difficult to pay attention to the quiet, austere print of a book. Dear lord!—maybe this explains why Oldest has claimed disinterest in all the new library books I tossed her way this summer. I don’t believe she’s read a chapter book for three months and this kid used to devour books written at advanced reading levels.
We’ve taken a hard line in the last week, making her read at least the first ten pages of every new book she starts (after that, she’s given them back). But today I took a harder line as I prepped for the coming year’s schooling and wrote her the following letter, which I gave a special place in her home school binder:
Dear [Oldest],
Below is a list of books that I would approve as part of your reading for 3rd grade. Some of these stories you are familiar with, such as Mary Poppins and Peter Pan, but you have not read the books themselves—only seen the movies. Also, most of these books you have already or will come into contact with because they are used for the Writing with Ease books we’ve done together. You expressed interest in many of the excerpts I read aloud to you last year, so I bet you’ll enjoy the books in their entirety. If you are curious to know what a book is about, you can go onto the computer and go to www.amazon.com. This is a book web site. You can type in the particular name of the book in the “search” field and hit “enter.” Then you will see a list of books that might match the book you are searching for. Click on the correct one and you will see a picture of the cover; a paragraph or two will let you know what the book is about. Once you decide you are interested in something, we can either check it out from the library or buy it on Amazon.
I will ask you to read at least one of these books each month and write a very short book report when you are finished.
Happy reading!
Love,
Mom
So that’s my strategy and I’m sticking to it. But I’m curious—did your kids have extra screen time this summer? And do you think the correlation between screen time/attention deficit exists? or not?
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Paying God Attention (thoughts on Soul Revolution)
Dear Reader,
This is a book review. This book changed my life. But first, an aside:
(I confess a predjudice when it comes to mainstream Christian books these days, especially those that appear particularly contemporary. Along with that adjective sometimes comes what feels like an overabundance of branding and marketing that seem to undermine the rather diverse and organic nature of spirituality and relationships within the church. This branding/marketing phenomenon is often identified by such things as pictures of people with tattoos, ripped jeans, piercings, black-rimmed glasses, and (sadly) the absence of women and people of color as well as all people over the age of fifty-five. Now, I like tattoos, piercings and ripped jeans, but they have become cliche as a marketing tool, to the extent that North Point Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia, produced this video--a parody of themselves and other churches engaged in this type of sub-culture marketing--in which they coin the term "contemporvent," a marriage of relevant and contemporary.)
Now for the important part: You can't judge a book by its cover.
While the cover of John Burke's Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended
has the markings of a "contemporvent" book (including a close-up of distressed jeans and inner-arm tattoos), its content is rooted in the centuries-old tradition of practicing the awareness of God's presence in our daily lives in the manner of Brother Lawrence and Leanne Payne. I became enthralled with Burke's description of the "60-60 experiment," a 60-day challenge to check in with God every 60 minutes of the waking day. The experiment presupposes a belief in a God who is all-knowing and everywhere-present and is designed to assist the reader in fostering an ongoing recognition of that abiding force in our lives. By so doing, the theory goes, how we live in the world begins to change and that change is evidenced by our actions, decisions, service and love of God, others, and ourselves.
Burke recommends the reader go so far as to purchase a watch that will beep all day on the hour. If not that, notes up around the house or on the computer would remind one to pause and check in. While I neither bought a watch nor posted notes, I did do my best to emulate Burke's experiment in my own organicky sort of way. I began with moments of reflection in the empty spaces throughout my day, taking stock of what was happening around me in my relationships and duties and consciously reminding myself of God's presence in my life. In particularly good or bad parts of the day, I would wonder what God's "take" on the situation was, and sometimes I would just go ahead and ask him, for the heck of it. I did not hear any audible voices or see any burning bushes in response to my prayers, but often I had the strong impression that God was answering, if not with something concrete, then with something a lot like compassion. I could almost feel him feeling my pain or frustration or longing or joy or delight.
There seemed to be cumulative effects of practicing this sort of awareness. By the end of each day I felt as if I'd had a real, back-and-forth dialogue with God: a prayer uttered in the morning met its consequence in the afternoon. A question at lunch time found its answer by dinner. And by the end of the week, I felt a new comraderie with God--as if we'd been two pals at summer camp trading whispers back and forth from our bunk beds all week. Probably the most profound moment of this experiment came one day as I was on my way to a rather difficult appointment. For weeks, we'd been watching lilies in our front yard climb feet in the air, reaching from the bulbs planted in the ground the summer before. The stems shot up, the buds of the lilies formed yellow and pink, but they were slow to open. Each morning for two weeks I expected to see one of those lilies open and unveiled in full glory, but instead they just shimmered, closed up, ready to explode.
That's how they looked on my way to this appointment, and as I backed out the driveway I felt as if God drew my attention to those flowers. See those? I think he said. See all that potential--how the lilies are on the cusp of bloom? Instantly I knew he wasn't really talking about the lilies but about the difficult situation I was facing, that it was something that had the potential to morph from something desperate to something redemptive and life-affirming. Well, I thought that's what God was saying, anyway, and the impression pierced me so deeply that tears gathered in the corner of my eyes as I backed out my driveway. Yet, I wondered if I was imagining things. Was that really God? Imagine my shock when, on that same steamy July morning, I returned to the house an hour later, after the appointment, to find the largest lily of the bunch had petaled open into glowing pink radiance.
You can call me crazy and maybe you will. But sometimes it's the little things that make us sure the Divine is right within our reach. I think Burke is saying, and I whole-heartedly agree, we'll see God when we pay attention.
This is a book review. This book changed my life. But first, an aside:
(I confess a predjudice when it comes to mainstream Christian books these days, especially those that appear particularly contemporary. Along with that adjective sometimes comes what feels like an overabundance of branding and marketing that seem to undermine the rather diverse and organic nature of spirituality and relationships within the church. This branding/marketing phenomenon is often identified by such things as pictures of people with tattoos, ripped jeans, piercings, black-rimmed glasses, and (sadly) the absence of women and people of color as well as all people over the age of fifty-five. Now, I like tattoos, piercings and ripped jeans, but they have become cliche as a marketing tool, to the extent that North Point Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia, produced this video--a parody of themselves and other churches engaged in this type of sub-culture marketing--in which they coin the term "contemporvent," a marriage of relevant and contemporary.)
Now for the important part: You can't judge a book by its cover.
While the cover of John Burke's Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended
has the markings of a "contemporvent" book (including a close-up of distressed jeans and inner-arm tattoos), its content is rooted in the centuries-old tradition of practicing the awareness of God's presence in our daily lives in the manner of Brother Lawrence and Leanne Payne. I became enthralled with Burke's description of the "60-60 experiment," a 60-day challenge to check in with God every 60 minutes of the waking day. The experiment presupposes a belief in a God who is all-knowing and everywhere-present and is designed to assist the reader in fostering an ongoing recognition of that abiding force in our lives. By so doing, the theory goes, how we live in the world begins to change and that change is evidenced by our actions, decisions, service and love of God, others, and ourselves.Burke recommends the reader go so far as to purchase a watch that will beep all day on the hour. If not that, notes up around the house or on the computer would remind one to pause and check in. While I neither bought a watch nor posted notes, I did do my best to emulate Burke's experiment in my own organicky sort of way. I began with moments of reflection in the empty spaces throughout my day, taking stock of what was happening around me in my relationships and duties and consciously reminding myself of God's presence in my life. In particularly good or bad parts of the day, I would wonder what God's "take" on the situation was, and sometimes I would just go ahead and ask him, for the heck of it. I did not hear any audible voices or see any burning bushes in response to my prayers, but often I had the strong impression that God was answering, if not with something concrete, then with something a lot like compassion. I could almost feel him feeling my pain or frustration or longing or joy or delight.
There seemed to be cumulative effects of practicing this sort of awareness. By the end of each day I felt as if I'd had a real, back-and-forth dialogue with God: a prayer uttered in the morning met its consequence in the afternoon. A question at lunch time found its answer by dinner. And by the end of the week, I felt a new comraderie with God--as if we'd been two pals at summer camp trading whispers back and forth from our bunk beds all week. Probably the most profound moment of this experiment came one day as I was on my way to a rather difficult appointment. For weeks, we'd been watching lilies in our front yard climb feet in the air, reaching from the bulbs planted in the ground the summer before. The stems shot up, the buds of the lilies formed yellow and pink, but they were slow to open. Each morning for two weeks I expected to see one of those lilies open and unveiled in full glory, but instead they just shimmered, closed up, ready to explode.
That's how they looked on my way to this appointment, and as I backed out the driveway I felt as if God drew my attention to those flowers. See those? I think he said. See all that potential--how the lilies are on the cusp of bloom? Instantly I knew he wasn't really talking about the lilies but about the difficult situation I was facing, that it was something that had the potential to morph from something desperate to something redemptive and life-affirming. Well, I thought that's what God was saying, anyway, and the impression pierced me so deeply that tears gathered in the corner of my eyes as I backed out my driveway. Yet, I wondered if I was imagining things. Was that really God? Imagine my shock when, on that same steamy July morning, I returned to the house an hour later, after the appointment, to find the largest lily of the bunch had petaled open into glowing pink radiance.
You can call me crazy and maybe you will. But sometimes it's the little things that make us sure the Divine is right within our reach. I think Burke is saying, and I whole-heartedly agree, we'll see God when we pay attention.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
This Is Just to Say
I haven't been around for a while. It's been a busy year. Or two. On Sunday I'll graduate from an MFA program in creative writing and it occurs to me, that after writing my thesis, I now have nothing big to work on, no obsessions to turn into a 200-page project. Also, I had a baby two months ago. It may be fair to say that she's my big obsession at the moment. My other thoughts are short and small these days, but they are there nonetheless, scratching at the door of my mind and asking me to open language to them. So, this blog post is just to say that I'm planning to do just that.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
To Evvy, on her 5th Birthday
I love you more than I can stand sometimes! At five, you bring a smile to my face almost every hour. You are silly, spunky, and fierce in all your beliefs about the world. You're a petitioner, eloquent, persistent. "I need to say something!" you cry, impatient that your point has not been heard: "Wait! Listen!" You love to cuddle, still, and in the mornings ask to climb in bed with me or sit on the couch with me while you drink a cup of milk. At five, you are whizzing through your "letter books"--learning all the sounds--and your math books. You have a growing tolerance for books with little or no pictures. Against your own judgment you are glued to the couch, sucked into the story in spite of your frustration that there is no picture of Alice in the little hallway of doors. You love computer games of any kind and "shows" (oh how you beg for those even when I hold out on you most of the time). You love friends, guests, visitors--anyone who comes to our house. You want to talk with them, befriend, entertain. You love your big sister, too. "We're best friends," you say proudly and sometimes refer to her as "Sissy," giving her a little pat on the back. Sometimes the two of you argue. Sometimes you heave her off a chair onto the floor, but later you are contrite and you come apologizing with tears in your eyes. When wronged, you're quick to forgive and you never hold a grudge. At five, you try to avoid going to sleep at night, sneaking books or other toys onto your bed hoping you won't be found out (you almost always are). When that happens, you smile mischeviously. "The book was already on my bed!" you insist, knowing I know you know this is not the truth, that fact so apparent in your face it doesn't actually seem like you are lying, but rather trying on words for the occasion, examining their effects like a new outfit in the mirror. Speaking of the mirror, you take care with your appearance, meticulous in observing your everchanging aesthetic--six barrettes one day, a ponytail and long silk sash haphazardly tied twice around your head the next. You hate socks, jackets, coats, shoes, gloves and half of the underwear you own. You are just starting to wear pants without complaining. You love to wear adult-sized t-shirts for pajamas. In some moments you believe you are capable of everything. In others, you insist you are cabaple of nothing, hoping for my intervention, which I more often than not am happy to give.
Here's to growing up, little Ev!
Happy Birthday!
Love,
Mama
Here's to growing up, little Ev!
Happy Birthday!
Love,
Mama
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Thankful Again
I'm the last one up in our quiet house this Christmas Eve, reflecting again on all the things I'm thankful for.
This Christmas, I am overwhelmingly thankful for the family I have; that we get a few glorious days to spend together.
I am thankful for the growing stages of my eldest girl, that she lost her first top tooth today, Christmas Eve, and was left with the most endearing gummy gap. I'd always feared the inevitable toothlessness of my children, but she is exquisite in every way. And really, a tooth pushed out of its place by another tooth? It's miraculous. Or biology. Or both.
A.A. Milne is a genius. Hilarious. Will the REAL Winnie the Pooh please step up? Who knew these stories were so brilliant and ironic and funny? All I ever knew until this week was the Disney-fied, plasticized, watered-down versions of Pooh characters. I am thankful for the 8-dollar set of full color books I bought at a second-hand store, and for the giggles of my girls as we read.
I'm thankful for the blessing of giving. I am more excited to give gifts to my children than I think they will ultimately be about receiving them, but I don't care. I put lots of time and effort into it, lots of heart and soul in what I made, and I'm excited, darn it! and can't wait to see their faces.
I'm thankful for blankets and slippers in the winter time.
I'm thankful for our snowblower, even if it is electric and I have to drag around a power cord after me like someone from the 1960s mowing their lawn. It's okay--that saved us 200 dollars.
I love gravy.
I'm thankful that somehow I know all these culinary things about making turkeys and such--things I learned by osmosis watching my mother cook when I was a kid. Those lessons had more impact on me than all the hours and hours of holiday Food Network programming I've done as an adult.
I'm thankful for creativity and how every year I get this creative bug ripping through me at Christmas time--I want to make something pretty for the whole world. Who knows if I succeed, but I sure love trying.
This Christmas, I am overwhelmingly thankful for the family I have; that we get a few glorious days to spend together.
I am thankful for the growing stages of my eldest girl, that she lost her first top tooth today, Christmas Eve, and was left with the most endearing gummy gap. I'd always feared the inevitable toothlessness of my children, but she is exquisite in every way. And really, a tooth pushed out of its place by another tooth? It's miraculous. Or biology. Or both.
A.A. Milne is a genius. Hilarious. Will the REAL Winnie the Pooh please step up? Who knew these stories were so brilliant and ironic and funny? All I ever knew until this week was the Disney-fied, plasticized, watered-down versions of Pooh characters. I am thankful for the 8-dollar set of full color books I bought at a second-hand store, and for the giggles of my girls as we read.
I'm thankful for the blessing of giving. I am more excited to give gifts to my children than I think they will ultimately be about receiving them, but I don't care. I put lots of time and effort into it, lots of heart and soul in what I made, and I'm excited, darn it! and can't wait to see their faces.
I'm thankful for blankets and slippers in the winter time.
I'm thankful for our snowblower, even if it is electric and I have to drag around a power cord after me like someone from the 1960s mowing their lawn. It's okay--that saved us 200 dollars.
I love gravy.
I'm thankful that somehow I know all these culinary things about making turkeys and such--things I learned by osmosis watching my mother cook when I was a kid. Those lessons had more impact on me than all the hours and hours of holiday Food Network programming I've done as an adult.
I'm thankful for creativity and how every year I get this creative bug ripping through me at Christmas time--I want to make something pretty for the whole world. Who knows if I succeed, but I sure love trying.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Thankful
I've been reading lots of blogs entries devoted to gratitude lately. I thought I would chime in ...
Today, I'm thankful for the beautiful photograph of my six-year old in her red "I wish I was snowboarding" t-shirt and striped pink pom pom hat. She peers out from the hat with a delighted and wise smile, knowing her Uncle Josh (snowboarding lover) will grin when he gets the photo on his phone.
I'm thankful for that grin, her Uncle Josh, and the phone in question.
I'm thankful God provided so abundantly for us this month so that we could pass on the extra to someone else.
I'm thankful for C.S. Lewis. O SO THANKFUL for him, the man whose stories make me weep and laugh and draw near to the true King of Kings. I am thankful for the silver chair, symbol of all that binds us, and the powerful sword that destroyed the chair. I"m grateful for a fictional character like Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, who in a fit of bravery stamped out an enchanting fire with his bare, webbed feet. I'm grateful for inspiring acts of boldness, bravery, and fortitude.
I am thankful the husband and the girls enjoy these stories, that I can live in them for an hour a day.
I am thankful for snow and Christmas lights and black-bottom banana bread (made by my dad--Mr. Martha Stewart).
Today, I'm thankful for the beautiful photograph of my six-year old in her red "I wish I was snowboarding" t-shirt and striped pink pom pom hat. She peers out from the hat with a delighted and wise smile, knowing her Uncle Josh (snowboarding lover) will grin when he gets the photo on his phone.
I'm thankful for that grin, her Uncle Josh, and the phone in question.
I'm thankful God provided so abundantly for us this month so that we could pass on the extra to someone else.
I'm thankful for C.S. Lewis. O SO THANKFUL for him, the man whose stories make me weep and laugh and draw near to the true King of Kings. I am thankful for the silver chair, symbol of all that binds us, and the powerful sword that destroyed the chair. I"m grateful for a fictional character like Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, who in a fit of bravery stamped out an enchanting fire with his bare, webbed feet. I'm grateful for inspiring acts of boldness, bravery, and fortitude.
I am thankful the husband and the girls enjoy these stories, that I can live in them for an hour a day.
I am thankful for snow and Christmas lights and black-bottom banana bread (made by my dad--Mr. Martha Stewart).
Saturday, October 25, 2008
I'm in Love
with the three year old these days. Sometimes I say she was the best thing that could have happened to me, my husband and the six-year old. The husband and six-year-old are introverted, and I hedge on that side of the line, too. The three-year-old, however, serves as a vision caster of what we all might be at our friendliest, out-going-est, other-focused-est. She's the one who shouts at acquaintances in Hy-Vee, or turns to me, palms against her cheeks and mouth wide open, "MOM!! It's our friends!!!" (The "friends" she met for the first time five minutes ago on aisle 4). When we see them again in the check-out line, this is confirmation of the prominence they should take in our lives. She squeals. Points them out again. Asks to "go say hi!"
While the six-year-old is fully acquainted with the language of feeling like the odd-one out, the three year old has no concept of exclusion. She takes it upon herself to include everyone, to chase after every little four year old in her dance class lobby, ask them their names, ask them to dance while waiting for class to start. She squeals over and over as each child enters the building. "Mom!! It's another friend!!!" She doesn't know their names or where they live or who their siblings are. THe mothers direct their attention to her and laugh at the three-year-old's hearty welcome. The other preschoolers are sometimes ambivalent, withdrawn, curious. None of them welcome her in kind, but check her out from the safety of their mother's knees.
But the three year old just keeps on inviting. Us introverts would get tired after the first greeting, the first invitation or two--but not her. She pushes herself out into the middle of the room, dances and flings her body in all directions, eager and earnest in her vigil for others to join her.
The cool thing is that her vigilance is climate-changing. Take a room of tired out parents and tired-out kids. Put them with this three year old for five minutes, and people smile and giggle, if only at her enthusiasm and boldness. I am energized watching her. She's my hero.
While the six-year-old is fully acquainted with the language of feeling like the odd-one out, the three year old has no concept of exclusion. She takes it upon herself to include everyone, to chase after every little four year old in her dance class lobby, ask them their names, ask them to dance while waiting for class to start. She squeals over and over as each child enters the building. "Mom!! It's another friend!!!" She doesn't know their names or where they live or who their siblings are. THe mothers direct their attention to her and laugh at the three-year-old's hearty welcome. The other preschoolers are sometimes ambivalent, withdrawn, curious. None of them welcome her in kind, but check her out from the safety of their mother's knees.
But the three year old just keeps on inviting. Us introverts would get tired after the first greeting, the first invitation or two--but not her. She pushes herself out into the middle of the room, dances and flings her body in all directions, eager and earnest in her vigil for others to join her.
The cool thing is that her vigilance is climate-changing. Take a room of tired out parents and tired-out kids. Put them with this three year old for five minutes, and people smile and giggle, if only at her enthusiasm and boldness. I am energized watching her. She's my hero.
On Finding Out Her Sister Was Getting a Princess Barbie for Her Birthday
the six-year old began sobbing. Why didn't she get a Barbie for her birthday? It was so unfair. All she got was bead sets!
That's an accurate description. Because the kid likes art projects, she got about 8 bead sets and a makeup kit that put her in the emergency room.
"I don't know if you've noticed," the six year old went on to say, through tears, "but I mostly play with my puppies and Barbies. I'm not really an artistic person anymore."
True as this may have felt in the moment, the six year old is one of the most artistic people I know. But I could see the desire for a Barbie drowned out her ability to accurately reflect on the big picture. It's like how when our girls open up a gift they've never even imagined receiving, and exclaim with passionate conviction: "It's just what I always wanted!!!"
Really? Dora Candyland is just what you always wanted?
Really. Your not an artistic person?
That's an accurate description. Because the kid likes art projects, she got about 8 bead sets and a makeup kit that put her in the emergency room.
"I don't know if you've noticed," the six year old went on to say, through tears, "but I mostly play with my puppies and Barbies. I'm not really an artistic person anymore."
True as this may have felt in the moment, the six year old is one of the most artistic people I know. But I could see the desire for a Barbie drowned out her ability to accurately reflect on the big picture. It's like how when our girls open up a gift they've never even imagined receiving, and exclaim with passionate conviction: "It's just what I always wanted!!!"
Really? Dora Candyland is just what you always wanted?
Really. Your not an artistic person?
Friday, October 03, 2008
Comfort in Constellations
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:3-5
Two brothers have died this week. Not mine. But still.
One man was the brother of a friend. The other a brother of the father of a friend’s child.
I hate hearing the stories: Cancer. Car accidents. I hate knowing that somebody I know or love is at all feeling anything like what I’ve been feeling. That they have possibly just entered one of the most f$%@#-up twilight zones of existence one could enter. But death is nothing new, I tell myself, aghast at my former state of naiveté. Death is everywhere! People are dying all the time—as often as people are being born. If you don’t want a baby, you may not notice the rate at which they happen. And if nobody you love dies, you may not notice how many people disappear.
Since my brother died, I learned that many people I know have lost a brother. In my church there are a handful I know of. When we gather, I map them out like a constellation in the room. In the presence of one of these stars, I might cry without warning.
I went to one brother’s visitation today and talked to my friend. I did not know his brother, but while I was there I learned the brother was an Obama fan. He worked at the Co-op that I frequent. I might have joked with him while he bagged my groceries. There are pictures of him on his bicycle, loaded down with backpacks and road tripping gear. He’s got big shaggy chops and chin length hair. He looks like a righteous hippie. I like my friend’s brother instantly, even though he’s dead.
The weight of a life lost slams against me. I try to keep the tears just in my eyes and not rolling down my face while I’m actually talking to my friend. I leave the funeral home, shoulders shaking in the parking lot, knowing full well I’m projecting. In a year, you won’t respond like this, I self-talk. (People tell me, wait a year, like July 15, 2009 is magical. On that day, my last few droplets of grief will trickle away.) And then I talk at my brother, or the memory of him. Darn it. This feels like losing you all over again.
Sometimes when I cry, I indict Jesus. I put him on trial. Did you not say that those who mourn would be comforted? It’s really the best indictment I can give these days. I’m past the Mary and Martha lines (Well, Jesus, if you’d been here, my brother'd still be alive). My brother’s dead. He’s not coming back. So, Jesus, what can you do for the living? I arch my eyebrows at him. I beckon and gesture for him to get with the program. One order of comfort, please. Oh, dear, I’m mixing theater and restaurant metaphors. But you get the idea.
The thing is that once in a while, even when I arch my eyebrows at him in a not-so-friendly way, I feel this transcendent warm feeling creep all over me. And then, all my snarkiness turns into plain old miserable, can’t-escape-from-it sorrow. But it feels like somebody’s there to keep me company and say there, there.
It’s sort of like that with the constellation of brotherless people I was talking about. Sometimes their very presence is a there, there of sorts, although mostly I like to talk to them and hear their stories. I like to think it was a brilliant moment for Paul when he identified this link between human grief, God's comfort, and community. I want to believe he’s right on, that it's one of the few redemptive things about the process: Sometimes we're the receipient of a small, sweet cup of lemonade. Other times, we're serving it up.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
A Great Week for Books
I am so darned happy. People these days are writing about my favorite subjects in smart, quirky ways. I remember a year or more ago when Nadia Bolz-Weber announced on her blog that she'd gotten a book deal to watch and write about 24 straight hours of Christian television. I have to admit it was a project I wish I'd dreamed up just because it seems like so much fun.* Anyway, Bolz-Weber does a fabulous job of it. She even mentions the advertisements for the Holy Family Faberge-Style Egg!
Bolz-Weber is a self proclaimed "heavily tattooed Christian progressive from a liturgical denomination" (she's Lutheran--a "mission developer" at her church). So she proves to be a fascinating lens through which to view 24 straight hours of evangelical TV. To spice up the experiment she invites friends and strangers of all faiths, professions, and persuasions to join her. Bolz-Weber is not purely interested in TBN bashing; her TV hours do cause her occasion to turn the lens on her own tradition's weak spots. Yet, she does take a powerful anthopological approach to each show by giving us the "Round Up" at the end of the hour. In the round up, she lists # of OT passages cited; # of NT passages cited; Costs of products offered; Running total of products offered since she began her experiment (after 4 hours: $943.94); impression of God given during the show ("Sets up lots of tests and trials for you so that you can see who he is and earn a spiritual promotion"); and impressions of Jesus ("No mention (except in the ad to get people to sow a $70 seed)").
My husband and I have valued reading books aloud to one another since we got married 11 years go. This is the first book in YEARS that both of us wanted to read more than a few chapters in one sitting. We made it from Paula White Today (5:30 a.m.) all the way to Best of Praise the Lord (9:30 a.m.) in three hours of our date-night evening. It was hard to stop.
One other mention: This book is plugged by the author of another of my recent favorites: On the cover, AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically, writes, "Turn off your TV and read this book. It's enlightening and entertaining and it doesn't emit any radiation whatsoever."
*in a gleefully ironic sort of way
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Princesses to the Rescue?
As my daughters were sitting on the couch this morning, one girl picked up my copy of Gifted to Lead: The Art of Leading as a Woman in the Church, and proceeded to become engrossed in the cover and pages. It was endearing until I overheard the conversation being had between both girls as said book was being perused. Said Girl no. 2: "Only princes can rescue princesses. Princesses can't rescue anyone."
I gave them the requisite admonishment, and wondered when my broken-record self would have to stop talking about princesses and beauty, strength and courage to these two little girls who cry over not having fancy enough clothes and warn me that when they "are fifteen, I'm going to take all my money and go to Target and by TONS of makeup."
Then I took Girl no. 2's picture (I'm sure that was confusing.)
If anyone is interested in the book, Nancy Beach does not really say there is a "womanly art" to leading. Rather, she addresses the sorts of issues women in all levels of leadership may encounter in church culture that is more male dominated. Beach would totally disagree with Girl no. 2: Princesses make great rescuers.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Grief
Many people ask how I'm doing these days in the wake of my brother's untimely and traumatic passing. I appreciate the inquiries and the prayers thrown my way. I need them. The answer to the question of how grief is going is: not so great. I had this idea that I'd go away to school for two weeks in August and when I got back I'd have made peace.
Not so much.
I hear the surreal quality of life after a loved one dies can last up to a month if the death is anticipated, expected. After that "you just feel sad," my friend A told me. But that's with a "straightforward" loss. When it's complicated, when there's "unfinished business" in the relationship, says the grief web sites, that process can take much much longer and you can feel so many things. Here's the difference with me these days: I cry about a thousand times more often than I did before. You just mention a dead cat and I'll cry. You mention words like "grief," "sadness," "car accidents," my heart races and I'll cry. My muscles ache. I can't sleep, or I'm tired at the wrong time. I've been having daily stomach aches. And a panicky, fight-or-flight feeling when my daughters spill nail polish or raise their voices or make a mess.
Today I made one daughter cry after the spilled nail polish. It was not one of my finest moments. I said words in front of her that I never say in front of her. "I'm sorry, Mom!" she said about twelve times and then I told her emphatically that none of it was her fault. I wasn't mad at her. "So you're mad at the nail polish?" she asked, curiously. "I"m mad at the nail polish," I said. "And mad at myself for not doing a good enough job supervising." Inside my anxiety was swirling through my veins, my heart was pounding. I told myself to get a grip.
And that's what grief's been like. Not having a grip most of the time. And trying to get one in the moments when it really matters whether I'm successful at it--like when my daughter spills nail polish, or when someone wants a bedtime song, or dinner needs to be made, or a conversation needs to be had.
I've been reading Exodus 16 a lot this week, where God decides to send some bread from heaven to those fearful, gripey, hungry Israelites. Aaron has just gotten done giving them instructions for collecting their bread and then they "turned to face the wilderness. And there it was: the Glory of God visible in the cloud."
I resonate with the wilderness metaphor in relation to grief. It feels godforsaken. But I was moved at the idea of turning to face the wilderness-- in all its barrenness, desolation, desperation, and hoplessness--and seeing the glory of God above it all. That weighty splendor of his presence. And now, I've been asking to see it. I'm open for the first time since I got here--to the desert--to seeing his glory, to open myself to his presence. And not only am I open to it. I don't know how, like the Israelites, I could survive without it.
Not so much.
I hear the surreal quality of life after a loved one dies can last up to a month if the death is anticipated, expected. After that "you just feel sad," my friend A told me. But that's with a "straightforward" loss. When it's complicated, when there's "unfinished business" in the relationship, says the grief web sites, that process can take much much longer and you can feel so many things. Here's the difference with me these days: I cry about a thousand times more often than I did before. You just mention a dead cat and I'll cry. You mention words like "grief," "sadness," "car accidents," my heart races and I'll cry. My muscles ache. I can't sleep, or I'm tired at the wrong time. I've been having daily stomach aches. And a panicky, fight-or-flight feeling when my daughters spill nail polish or raise their voices or make a mess.
Today I made one daughter cry after the spilled nail polish. It was not one of my finest moments. I said words in front of her that I never say in front of her. "I'm sorry, Mom!" she said about twelve times and then I told her emphatically that none of it was her fault. I wasn't mad at her. "So you're mad at the nail polish?" she asked, curiously. "I"m mad at the nail polish," I said. "And mad at myself for not doing a good enough job supervising." Inside my anxiety was swirling through my veins, my heart was pounding. I told myself to get a grip.
And that's what grief's been like. Not having a grip most of the time. And trying to get one in the moments when it really matters whether I'm successful at it--like when my daughter spills nail polish, or when someone wants a bedtime song, or dinner needs to be made, or a conversation needs to be had.
I've been reading Exodus 16 a lot this week, where God decides to send some bread from heaven to those fearful, gripey, hungry Israelites. Aaron has just gotten done giving them instructions for collecting their bread and then they "turned to face the wilderness. And there it was: the Glory of God visible in the cloud."
I resonate with the wilderness metaphor in relation to grief. It feels godforsaken. But I was moved at the idea of turning to face the wilderness-- in all its barrenness, desolation, desperation, and hoplessness--and seeing the glory of God above it all. That weighty splendor of his presence. And now, I've been asking to see it. I'm open for the first time since I got here--to the desert--to seeing his glory, to open myself to his presence. And not only am I open to it. I don't know how, like the Israelites, I could survive without it.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
"GOP Loyalty Not a Given for Young Evangelicals"
A classmate of mine brought this Washington Post article to my attention. It was nice to see the "gray" areas covered when it comes to religion and politics. My only quibble with the journalist is that she called the Emerging Church "youth-driven."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081403446.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081403446.html
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Why Sydney Bristow is my Friend
The night after wedges open--and tears.
I think of Salinger: His Franny, and her prayer:
Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I never asked for mercy before.
Me.
Mercy.
(2001)
An earlier draft of this poem, written 7 years ago, began with these lines: "Until I can sliver them out, until / I can face them / wholly, these shards must work their way out / on their own."
I remember how grief seemed fractured and fragmented, dispersed through my body and soul like a thousand splinters from a rough-cut plank. Each fragment, sharp. Each location of entry--a memory or a killed hope--was swollen, infected. The extraction of grief (if grief could be extracted?) was time consuming; extraction was painful. The successful removal of one sliver indicated no promise for all the others, nor did it instantly cure the infection.
It was the last time I felt the way I do now, in grief. I wrote, "these shards must work their way out / on their own" because I remember then not being able to look at grief head-on, the way I don't look at it head-on very often right now--except when it overtakes me and forces me down on my bed. In the grappling, it pushes tears out my eyes, and sounds from my larynx. It swells my sinuses until my head pounds.
But most of the time right now, the way I let the shards work their way out on their own is by watching Alias reruns, sometimes until 1 in the morning, until my mind is so full of Sydney Bristow and her crazy FBI, double-agent life, that I can go to bed and not see my brother's gravel-skidded face, his blood that stained the ground on that country road, the stitches like treadmarks across his ear and skull, his body bloated by formaldehyde the day before the visitation. My mind will be so full of secret missions and bonfire-red wigs that I won't be able to miss seeing his living, ink-slung body cradling his seven-month-old baby girl. And I won't get lost--or caught--wondering what would have happened if I'd been at the hospital as he lay dying, if only a phone line had rung into my bedroom in the middle of the night, how I would have said goodbye or prayed for a miracle, how this might all feel different if I had.
If I wrap my mind around Agent Sydney Bristow, who lost her best friend to murder, and her other best friend to witness protection, and if I cry along with her when she tells Vaughn:" You wanna know how I am? I'm horrible. I am ripped apart,"--well, when I cry with her there, it feels like maybe one of those splinters dislodges just little bit, without my having to poke at it.
I have three seasons left to buy me more time.
Death and Skateboards
I told my friends last night that the grief I feel over my brother's death has exploded much of my theology about the afterlife*. Maybe "exploded" is the wrong word. Maybe what I mean is that what I've thought about the afterlife is in many ways horribly incomplete, but I never knew it until I desperately wanted to see a bigger picture. Oh how my head butts up against that invisible barrier between heaven and earth, between the sphere of earthly bodies and those of heavenly ones. I want to be a fly on the wall in that other realm, want to know the mind and wisdom of the creator of the universe, the creator of this whole system. And I want to reach across the boundary and grab my brother's hand (except he doesn't have one), pull him back here, speak to him one more time.
I simply don't have a way to answer the questions that currently run through my head:
1) What was his experience as he lay dying, while still on life support, when his brain was showing no signs of life? Where was his spirit?
2) Was he in some earth/heaven limbo for those 7.5 hours?
3) Did he see a bright light/Jesus/God? I feel so Oprah for phrasing it this way.
4) In heaven, will Jesus let Henry know how much I love(/d) him? Will he be reminded how much we all loved him (because the death of one we love compels us to wonder such things)?
5) Or would this knowledge stay hidden in the shadows of whatever marvelous things happen in heaven? In other words, is it only the living who ask such questions?
5) Will my brother see us grieving here on earth? Will Jesus let him hear and watch his funeral service, the letter I read for him (because if he never hears it, what good does it do--after all, it was addressed to him)?
6) Why are these my questions?
6) Where are the wedding pictures of his I took two years ago on my digital camera? My husband and I cannot find them, despite tearful searching. (ok-so theology can't tackle that one.)
7) The last question is from my three-year old: Did his skateboard die, too?
*Thank you Ali for saying this is an appropriate response to grief.
I simply don't have a way to answer the questions that currently run through my head:
1) What was his experience as he lay dying, while still on life support, when his brain was showing no signs of life? Where was his spirit?
2) Was he in some earth/heaven limbo for those 7.5 hours?
3) Did he see a bright light/Jesus/God? I feel so Oprah for phrasing it this way.
4) In heaven, will Jesus let Henry know how much I love(/d) him? Will he be reminded how much we all loved him (because the death of one we love compels us to wonder such things)?
5) Or would this knowledge stay hidden in the shadows of whatever marvelous things happen in heaven? In other words, is it only the living who ask such questions?
5) Will my brother see us grieving here on earth? Will Jesus let him hear and watch his funeral service, the letter I read for him (because if he never hears it, what good does it do--after all, it was addressed to him)?
6) Why are these my questions?
6) Where are the wedding pictures of his I took two years ago on my digital camera? My husband and I cannot find them, despite tearful searching. (ok-so theology can't tackle that one.)
7) The last question is from my three-year old: Did his skateboard die, too?
*Thank you Ali for saying this is an appropriate response to grief.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Henry "Hank" Bertka
My brother Henry died this week after a car accident. He was no small celebrity in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City community because of his talents as a tattoo artist and business owner. Here's the letter I wrote for him and read today at his funeral.
Dear Henry,
So, this is a little embarrassing, but you were my first crush—I guess in the way only a big brother could be to a little girl. Even if you did throw me around and upside-down a few times, I have to admit to loving you hard enough I snuck into your room, that wonder-world of your creations, just so I could breathe in the smells of a teenage boy mixed with baseball mitts and skateboards, markers, paints and glues. There on the desk were your drawings, the wood bowls you made in shop class. There on the floor by the closet was the fake electric guitar you’d cut out of plywood and wrapped in grey duct tape and black electrical tape—what you used to air-jam to Stryper, that bunch of hair-sprayed musicians in their yellow-and-black ensembles: puffed sleeves, flight jackets, yellow spandex with zebra stripes. Those boys with the teased and sprayed manes and made-up cheekbones were in the poster on your bathroom door. They watched you and I watched you fiddle around on your imaginary strings on your made-up guitar. Then you handed the guitar to me, and smiled at me, when I felt the weight of the plywood heavy in my arms before I air-jammed to the hard beat coming out of the speakers on your floor. I wanted to play guitar if you played guitar—or fake guitar if you faked it—just to be like you. This is why I wanted your BMX bike so bad, why it was no small miracle when you passed it on to me. It’s why I coveted your skateboard, and your shoes, and the very ground you walked on, because it touched you and it was where you were.
I want to say thanks for doing things first, so I could watch and learn. Thanks, too, for the skateboarding lessons, although I couldn’t keep my balance on a board to save my life. Thanks for every mix tape, every birthday card, every ride, every secret you ever told me, every smile directed my way, each an occasion that caused my heart to leap.
If I could rewind time for a little while, the thing I might most want to do right now is find the room that belonged to you, first boy I ever loved, and sit and sit and breathe you in and pretend that you’ll be here in a few minutes, you’re just riding your moped home from the late shift at Taco Bell.
But since I can’t rewind, I guess I hope that in heaven you can do the equivalent of motorcycling down freeways in the middle of rolling fields and mountain passes. I hope there are endless warehouses full of art and building supplies (maybe ones you’ve never seen before), with which you can continue the art you began here on earth. When I get there, I hope you’ll show me your room and everything you’ve made.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Breaking the Good Mom Myth Part 2
In case anyone was wondering after my previous post on parenting, the whole let-your-six-and-three-year-old-work-out-their-problems-for-themselves-even-if-they're-using-violence tactic did not work. The six year old, who has been pristinely trained not to hit, refused to hit. Even when the three year old socked her in the stomach, scratched her in the arm, kicked her in the leg and called her stupid. The six year old cried and left the scene. The three year old for the most part got what she want. The six year old became very unhappy and unsettled, asking Mom and Dad why we did nothing. The three year old grinned from ear to ear. It did not take a genius to figure out what was wrong with this picture. As my dear friend Kate pointed out (the obvious), three year olds do not have a set of conflict management instructions they can easily consult. Therefore they hit, bite, scratch, and scream if they feel pushed hard enough.
We're now making up for Mom and Dad's lack of intervention. We're having lots of time outs. Lots of mediation. Of course, there times we let the girls figure small things out on their own, but as soon as violence and name-calling enter the scene, so do we.
Everyone is much happier.
We're now making up for Mom and Dad's lack of intervention. We're having lots of time outs. Lots of mediation. Of course, there times we let the girls figure small things out on their own, but as soon as violence and name-calling enter the scene, so do we.
Everyone is much happier.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Iowa City Flooding
Please pray for Iowa City and the surrounding communities, some of which have been hit extremely hard by flooding from the Iowa River. Iowa City isn't expected to see our river crest until sometime next week but already homes and businesses and University buildings have flooded and are being evacuated. Please pray for the displaced residents and employees, also that power and water supplies would remain in tact for the rest of the city.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
"You're not a great cook."
"You're not a great cook, you know? You don't always know what to make. Rachael Ray always knows what to make. Ina [Garten, from Barefoot Contessa] always knows what to make."
(My children watch cooking shows with a passion).
This was from my almost-six year old as we pulled into our driveway on the last day of school. I'd just informed her we weren't having sweet corn for dinner (her request), but lentil soup and corn tortillas. I'd probably throw some salad in there too, but didn't tell her.
She'd jsut spent the last forty-five minutes sobbing in the car on the last day of school. "Do you know I"m mad for three reasons?" she asked. 1) she'll "never see" her kindergarten teacher again; 2) she didn't get to have a cupcake with the rest of her class (blame food allergies); 3) Mom won't commit to letting her go to first grade next year (we're considering home school).
I was totally empathetic to her feelings of missing her teacher, and the treats and the idea of not going to first grade next year, but the last accusation sort of got on my nerves. Hello? Rachael Ray knows what to make cuz she's got a staff of a bazillion people who iron her clothes and grocery shop and prewash her veggies while she experiements in the kitchen. Rachael Ray does not have young children to look after and if she did, I bet they would hate her freaking tortoni sundaes.
I wonder if this is just the first in a line of random and unfounded accusations my kids may throw my way as they grow and watch the rest of the world. They'll make conclusions out of context: Everyone else's mother is letting them go to the sleepover. Everyone else's mom knows what to make for dinner. What a bumpy ride. I'm buckling my seatbelt.
(My children watch cooking shows with a passion).
This was from my almost-six year old as we pulled into our driveway on the last day of school. I'd just informed her we weren't having sweet corn for dinner (her request), but lentil soup and corn tortillas. I'd probably throw some salad in there too, but didn't tell her.
She'd jsut spent the last forty-five minutes sobbing in the car on the last day of school. "Do you know I"m mad for three reasons?" she asked. 1) she'll "never see" her kindergarten teacher again; 2) she didn't get to have a cupcake with the rest of her class (blame food allergies); 3) Mom won't commit to letting her go to first grade next year (we're considering home school).
I was totally empathetic to her feelings of missing her teacher, and the treats and the idea of not going to first grade next year, but the last accusation sort of got on my nerves. Hello? Rachael Ray knows what to make cuz she's got a staff of a bazillion people who iron her clothes and grocery shop and prewash her veggies while she experiements in the kitchen. Rachael Ray does not have young children to look after and if she did, I bet they would hate her freaking tortoni sundaes.
I wonder if this is just the first in a line of random and unfounded accusations my kids may throw my way as they grow and watch the rest of the world. They'll make conclusions out of context: Everyone else's mother is letting them go to the sleepover. Everyone else's mom knows what to make for dinner. What a bumpy ride. I'm buckling my seatbelt.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Gift of Wrath
I found myself engaged in uncensored honest discussion this week. The friend I spoke to queried me about my thoughts lately on women and the bible, women and the church, women in ministry. Frankly, I confessed, it's rather difficult for me to think too much on these subjects. Out tumbled my next secret: I get so angry as to get sidelined. Too much investigation into the workings of misogynistic thought will, I fear, prove debilitating to me. I can easily comprehend what tragedy it would be to avoid the questions that ignite such anger, but how do I walk the line between outrage and constructive response?
The assumption hidden in my logic: Anger is not constructive.
Is anger constructive?
As a strategy (mostly subconscious), I've worked terribly hard in most areas of my life at converting anger into meaningful, constructive conversations, devoid of emotional stickiness. I point out injustice and flaws in logic. I knit words and ideas together to form my (non-emotional) argument, appeal to mutually respected authorities on the subject. I know how to avoid words that indicate frustration and anger, certainly wrath or rage. Except in a few relationships, I rarely let on that a raw center exists, that my feelings, like anyone else's, can tumble about like nerves wired to an electrical outlet. This is in part due to an underlying belief that the expression of anger brings distance, while something less emotionally charged can bring about more positive change.
However, when it comes to the issue of misogyny and ministry, I have to face the fact that principle is not the only thing driving me to suppress my anger. I've been raised with the cultural pronouncement that "women are emotional." (I hear this as a slur most of the time). I've also been raised with the pronouncement that "women can't be leaders" because they are "so emotional." This understood, I've worked extra hard at pretending to not be emotional, so I won't fall into any stereotypes, and so I won't be discounted as a leader...or so my thinking goes. Obviously I see the pifalls in line of reasoning. I realize that practicing the suppression of the truth, even of one's feelings, is a surefire way to exhibit a false self to the world. Not only that, my suppression implies cooperation and agreement with the very system of thinking I find so destructive: that emotion is weakness, that those who feel cannot be strong leaders. It's unhealthy and dishonest, yet so darned easy to bow to.
If we could put matters of fear, honesty, and integrity aside for just a moment, I'd like to ask when and how anger in its raw form is constructive? Is it an uncalculated expresson of anger we witness in the accounts of Jesus flipping over the money-changers' tables in the temple? When is a shout, a flip of a table, an appropriate gesture? When should it be channeled toward other ends? And when should anger inspire us to be as creative and brilliant and wise as we can be in working out injustice, as we see Jesus--wise and brilliant--challenging the social and religious systems of his day?
The assumption hidden in my logic: Anger is not constructive.
Is anger constructive?
As a strategy (mostly subconscious), I've worked terribly hard in most areas of my life at converting anger into meaningful, constructive conversations, devoid of emotional stickiness. I point out injustice and flaws in logic. I knit words and ideas together to form my (non-emotional) argument, appeal to mutually respected authorities on the subject. I know how to avoid words that indicate frustration and anger, certainly wrath or rage. Except in a few relationships, I rarely let on that a raw center exists, that my feelings, like anyone else's, can tumble about like nerves wired to an electrical outlet. This is in part due to an underlying belief that the expression of anger brings distance, while something less emotionally charged can bring about more positive change.
However, when it comes to the issue of misogyny and ministry, I have to face the fact that principle is not the only thing driving me to suppress my anger. I've been raised with the cultural pronouncement that "women are emotional." (I hear this as a slur most of the time). I've also been raised with the pronouncement that "women can't be leaders" because they are "so emotional." This understood, I've worked extra hard at pretending to not be emotional, so I won't fall into any stereotypes, and so I won't be discounted as a leader...or so my thinking goes. Obviously I see the pifalls in line of reasoning. I realize that practicing the suppression of the truth, even of one's feelings, is a surefire way to exhibit a false self to the world. Not only that, my suppression implies cooperation and agreement with the very system of thinking I find so destructive: that emotion is weakness, that those who feel cannot be strong leaders. It's unhealthy and dishonest, yet so darned easy to bow to.
If we could put matters of fear, honesty, and integrity aside for just a moment, I'd like to ask when and how anger in its raw form is constructive? Is it an uncalculated expresson of anger we witness in the accounts of Jesus flipping over the money-changers' tables in the temple? When is a shout, a flip of a table, an appropriate gesture? When should it be channeled toward other ends? And when should anger inspire us to be as creative and brilliant and wise as we can be in working out injustice, as we see Jesus--wise and brilliant--challenging the social and religious systems of his day?
Breaking the Good Mom (and Pastor) Myth?
(Here is a post full of questions and musings. I've arrived at absolutely no answers.)
I'm reading a book on motherhood (although it could be addressed to parents in general) this week. Here's one of its claims. "Myth: Good Mothers Manage Sibling Conflict.... The good mother ideal insists we manage our children's relationships, ensuring they do in fact love and care for one another....The current societal myth dictates that the good mother is responsible for managing this situation. She must jump in and break up kids' fights, discipline the batterer, and console the wounded. After all, good mothers run the family. It's their domain, and they gotta make sure it's all running smoothly, interpersonal relationships included."
Schafer's ideas run counter to the way things go in our family. Mark and I indeed try to manage, discipline, talk down every situation. We make ourselves judge and jury the second there's an outcry from a child. And we do it because we want to see justice and fairness in the relationships between the girls. We want the perpretrator of crime to contemplate and reflect on the inappropriateness of her actions. We want the victim to be comforted, to know justice. We wrack our brains to come up with "appropriate" consequences. It's exhausting. But I struggle with how much of Schafer's ideas to embrace. Her advice: dont' get involved. Make the kids work it out themselves. This is SOO hard to do with an irrational three-year-old, who claims with passion that her invisible owies are gushing with blood just so she can score a band-aid. Non-engagement is SOO hard to do with an almost six-year old who has an overly heightened sense of injustice and looks to mom and dad to settle the score every other minute. We've taught her well in regard to her role (she's a good student): no hitting, no screaming, no yanking. We've said, come to mom and dad when there's a dispute. When peaceful overtures at conflict resolution have failed her, we've told her: give up, get Mom and Dad on your team. We'll handle it. For the most part, she does. (Now, I give myself enough credit to think that eventually we'd start to hand the reigns over to her and her younger sister to settle conflicts, assuming younger sister continues to develop a certain degree of reasonableness.)
But what would happen if right now, we let them go? Maybe someone would hit. (In fact, someone already has, although it was interesting to note how that hitting was provoked by the other child). This afternoon I tried out some new words with the girls: "I'm going to let you two work this out on your own. I'm sorry this is hard for you. By the way, if you continue to argue (I don't want to listen to it), I'm just goign to make this toy off limits to both of you. You'll have to figure out how to share." After a few minutes of absolute indignation and frustration, both girls rose to the occasion, self-regulating their "turns," verbalizing their process ("okay, i"m done. It's your turn!") and handing back said toy almost like a baton in a relay race.
I had to do very little, other than hold my ground. But the question looms: at what point would we intervene if a conflict heightened in intensity. What about violence that could ensue and escalate? The author of the book seems to think a little physical fighting and wrestling is perfectly fine, although she says if we're worried about anyone getting seriously hurt we should enroll in family counseling. So, say I'm gonna overlook a "hit". What message is that sending to the kid? Will she resort to worse violence the next time?
Obviously I haven't had enough experience to know how this will play out in my family, but these questions have been dovetailing with a meditation on the role of pastors in resolving congregational conflict between individuals. I recently heard a teaching a pastor gave on codependency, how sometimes as leaders we need to be brave enough to let people suffer the consequences of their own actions, to let things play out in situations, withhold from micromanaging, and correcting and speaking on behalf of every party there is a conflict with. When it comes to handling conflict in congregant relationships, however, does it in some ways mirror what Schafer is saying about children? Don't get involved? Don't work it out for them? The tension hidden in that answer is similiar to the one found in the mother-child situation: What about power dynamics? What if one party is bigger and stronger? In this case I"m not referring to physical abuse--but the potential tyranny of power in any social set up where one person is one-up on another. A bible study leader and a class participant. A Sunday School worker and the Sunday school director. At what point do you use your pastoral position to guide the discuss, to bring correction, rebuke, and discipline when the apparent "victim" lacks in power?
The model Jesus gave us for confronting offenses is a one-on-one chat.* But if and when the one-on-one doesn't go so well, we involve others. And in contemporary life, pastors seem to get involved the most. But what position is a pastor to take? Sometimes the crime is easy to identify. Sometimes the sin issues are ambiguous, hidden in murky water, beyond the grasp of language's identification--no different than a scene I may stumble upon in the aftermath of a squabble. Who took whose toys? Whose motives are pure, whose dark? Each pair of eyes looks up at me pleadingly, feigning innocence, broadcasting indignation.
Is this how King Solomon felt when the two women came to him, each claiming motherhood of an infant? How courageous (foolish? crazy?) to risk the life of the second infant in order to discern the truth of the situation. 1 Kings says the people saw Solomon had "wisdom from God to administer justice." The wisdom, in this case, did not involve him making a decision upon hearing the case. He introduced a new element, put both women in the same boat, so to speak. They would both lose if one of them didn't acquiesce to the other. He watched and he waited, and then the answer came.
* Alyson Schafer, Breaking the Good Mom Myth
*Matt 18:15
I'm reading a book on motherhood (although it could be addressed to parents in general) this week. Here's one of its claims. "Myth: Good Mothers Manage Sibling Conflict.... The good mother ideal insists we manage our children's relationships, ensuring they do in fact love and care for one another....The current societal myth dictates that the good mother is responsible for managing this situation. She must jump in and break up kids' fights, discipline the batterer, and console the wounded. After all, good mothers run the family. It's their domain, and they gotta make sure it's all running smoothly, interpersonal relationships included."
Schafer's ideas run counter to the way things go in our family. Mark and I indeed try to manage, discipline, talk down every situation. We make ourselves judge and jury the second there's an outcry from a child. And we do it because we want to see justice and fairness in the relationships between the girls. We want the perpretrator of crime to contemplate and reflect on the inappropriateness of her actions. We want the victim to be comforted, to know justice. We wrack our brains to come up with "appropriate" consequences. It's exhausting. But I struggle with how much of Schafer's ideas to embrace. Her advice: dont' get involved. Make the kids work it out themselves. This is SOO hard to do with an irrational three-year-old, who claims with passion that her invisible owies are gushing with blood just so she can score a band-aid. Non-engagement is SOO hard to do with an almost six-year old who has an overly heightened sense of injustice and looks to mom and dad to settle the score every other minute. We've taught her well in regard to her role (she's a good student): no hitting, no screaming, no yanking. We've said, come to mom and dad when there's a dispute. When peaceful overtures at conflict resolution have failed her, we've told her: give up, get Mom and Dad on your team. We'll handle it. For the most part, she does. (Now, I give myself enough credit to think that eventually we'd start to hand the reigns over to her and her younger sister to settle conflicts, assuming younger sister continues to develop a certain degree of reasonableness.)
But what would happen if right now, we let them go? Maybe someone would hit. (In fact, someone already has, although it was interesting to note how that hitting was provoked by the other child). This afternoon I tried out some new words with the girls: "I'm going to let you two work this out on your own. I'm sorry this is hard for you. By the way, if you continue to argue (I don't want to listen to it), I'm just goign to make this toy off limits to both of you. You'll have to figure out how to share." After a few minutes of absolute indignation and frustration, both girls rose to the occasion, self-regulating their "turns," verbalizing their process ("okay, i"m done. It's your turn!") and handing back said toy almost like a baton in a relay race.
I had to do very little, other than hold my ground. But the question looms: at what point would we intervene if a conflict heightened in intensity. What about violence that could ensue and escalate? The author of the book seems to think a little physical fighting and wrestling is perfectly fine, although she says if we're worried about anyone getting seriously hurt we should enroll in family counseling. So, say I'm gonna overlook a "hit". What message is that sending to the kid? Will she resort to worse violence the next time?
Obviously I haven't had enough experience to know how this will play out in my family, but these questions have been dovetailing with a meditation on the role of pastors in resolving congregational conflict between individuals. I recently heard a teaching a pastor gave on codependency, how sometimes as leaders we need to be brave enough to let people suffer the consequences of their own actions, to let things play out in situations, withhold from micromanaging, and correcting and speaking on behalf of every party there is a conflict with. When it comes to handling conflict in congregant relationships, however, does it in some ways mirror what Schafer is saying about children? Don't get involved? Don't work it out for them? The tension hidden in that answer is similiar to the one found in the mother-child situation: What about power dynamics? What if one party is bigger and stronger? In this case I"m not referring to physical abuse--but the potential tyranny of power in any social set up where one person is one-up on another. A bible study leader and a class participant. A Sunday School worker and the Sunday school director. At what point do you use your pastoral position to guide the discuss, to bring correction, rebuke, and discipline when the apparent "victim" lacks in power?
The model Jesus gave us for confronting offenses is a one-on-one chat.* But if and when the one-on-one doesn't go so well, we involve others. And in contemporary life, pastors seem to get involved the most. But what position is a pastor to take? Sometimes the crime is easy to identify. Sometimes the sin issues are ambiguous, hidden in murky water, beyond the grasp of language's identification--no different than a scene I may stumble upon in the aftermath of a squabble. Who took whose toys? Whose motives are pure, whose dark? Each pair of eyes looks up at me pleadingly, feigning innocence, broadcasting indignation.
Is this how King Solomon felt when the two women came to him, each claiming motherhood of an infant? How courageous (foolish? crazy?) to risk the life of the second infant in order to discern the truth of the situation. 1 Kings says the people saw Solomon had "wisdom from God to administer justice." The wisdom, in this case, did not involve him making a decision upon hearing the case. He introduced a new element, put both women in the same boat, so to speak. They would both lose if one of them didn't acquiesce to the other. He watched and he waited, and then the answer came.
* Alyson Schafer, Breaking the Good Mom Myth
*Matt 18:15
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The Twelve (?) Disciples
I get emotional when people start listing the names of Jesus' "12" disciples. Last year our church did a series about being a disciple of Christ. For the series trailer, my friend C donned his sunglasses for the camera and affected his voice to sound tough and cool as he listed Christ's notorious 12--the ones Jesus called "apostles" but whom Christians commonly refers to as "disciples." Simon (Peter). Andrew. James, son of Zebedee. John. Phillip. Bartholomew. Matthew. Thomas. James, son of Alphaeus. Simon. Jude Thaddaeus. Judas Iscariot. By the end of this long list, I was was fighting off the hysteria that can accompany rejection. Why weren't there any women in that list? Why wasn't I represented in that list? It wasn't anything personal, right? Because everyone knew Jesus called the twelve. The twelve men.
The twelve men were singled out by Jesus in Luke 6 as "apostles", but why are they the focus in our Christian education? Why are they the only ones commonly refered to as disciples? Why did I not grow up hearing about Mary Magdalene as a disciple of Christ (rather than the emphasis of her supposed former life of prostitution)? Why did I not hear of the disciples Joanna and Susanna and "many others" who accompanied Christ and the "twelve" (Luke 8:2-3) and supported them with their own money? Why do I know nothing of Mary, the mother of James? Nothing of Salome (not Herod's wife) at the crucifixion and tomb? Nothing of Mary, the wife of Cleopas? These women rarely speak in the biblical narratives, much like the concubine from Bethlehem in the Judges story (see previous post). While the concubine was unnamed, the female disciples might well remain unnumbered (were they included in the 70 Jesus sent out?), and church history has done all but obscure them from the canon.
I do not find fault with the makers of the trailer I mentioned above. What they did was perfectly ordinary, perfectly acceptable in the realm of conventional thought. We were talking about following Christ, being good Christians. Throughout the ages, the church has looked mostly to men as our guides.
On another note, I find it terribly inconvenient that most ideas that fall into the "realm of conventional thought" are absolutely distressing to me. I would rather not be distressed. I would rather bury my head in the sand than ask, "Why Jesus? Why did you not make any women your 'apostles'? Why has it been so easy for women to be marginalized and dismissed throughout the ages, within your church? Was it you? Could you have done better? Provided better stories for the writers for the books? Or was it them? Did they see through their own misogynistic lense? Through the lense of patriarchy, where women are property, unclean objects, gatekeepers of all evil to be found in the natural world? Was it in fact a massive victory for women that their names were recorded at all? That the story of the first female evangelist* is recorded in the bible? Was it in fact a massive victory that you appeared to women first after your resurrection, even though their stories were met with skepticism?"
In answer to the latter questions, my intellect, research and gut tell me that the answer is yes: What to me seem like small triumphs for women are massive in light of the cultural paradigm of Jesus' time. I know it. I get it. But it hurts that those triumphs failed to shape the present day in more radical ways. It hurts to the core.
*I like the fictionalized account of John 4:1-42, the Samaritan woman at the well, that is found in Saving Women from the Church: How Jesus Mends a Divide, by Susan McLeod-Harrison.
The twelve men were singled out by Jesus in Luke 6 as "apostles", but why are they the focus in our Christian education? Why are they the only ones commonly refered to as disciples? Why did I not grow up hearing about Mary Magdalene as a disciple of Christ (rather than the emphasis of her supposed former life of prostitution)? Why did I not hear of the disciples Joanna and Susanna and "many others" who accompanied Christ and the "twelve" (Luke 8:2-3) and supported them with their own money? Why do I know nothing of Mary, the mother of James? Nothing of Salome (not Herod's wife) at the crucifixion and tomb? Nothing of Mary, the wife of Cleopas? These women rarely speak in the biblical narratives, much like the concubine from Bethlehem in the Judges story (see previous post). While the concubine was unnamed, the female disciples might well remain unnumbered (were they included in the 70 Jesus sent out?), and church history has done all but obscure them from the canon.
I do not find fault with the makers of the trailer I mentioned above. What they did was perfectly ordinary, perfectly acceptable in the realm of conventional thought. We were talking about following Christ, being good Christians. Throughout the ages, the church has looked mostly to men as our guides.
On another note, I find it terribly inconvenient that most ideas that fall into the "realm of conventional thought" are absolutely distressing to me. I would rather not be distressed. I would rather bury my head in the sand than ask, "Why Jesus? Why did you not make any women your 'apostles'? Why has it been so easy for women to be marginalized and dismissed throughout the ages, within your church? Was it you? Could you have done better? Provided better stories for the writers for the books? Or was it them? Did they see through their own misogynistic lense? Through the lense of patriarchy, where women are property, unclean objects, gatekeepers of all evil to be found in the natural world? Was it in fact a massive victory for women that their names were recorded at all? That the story of the first female evangelist* is recorded in the bible? Was it in fact a massive victory that you appeared to women first after your resurrection, even though their stories were met with skepticism?"
In answer to the latter questions, my intellect, research and gut tell me that the answer is yes: What to me seem like small triumphs for women are massive in light of the cultural paradigm of Jesus' time. I know it. I get it. But it hurts that those triumphs failed to shape the present day in more radical ways. It hurts to the core.
*I like the fictionalized account of John 4:1-42, the Samaritan woman at the well, that is found in Saving Women from the Church: How Jesus Mends a Divide, by Susan McLeod-Harrison.
Aligning with Patriarchy
Recently, a female pastor I much admire made the following statement about her role in the denomination she plays a part: "By aligning myself with X (denomination) I am aligning myself with patriarchy." Immediately I thought of my own role, in my own patriarchally structured denomination and I took a sharp breath. It's not that inroads are not being made for women. It's not that female pastors are no longer allowed. But the fact is it is a system shaped, for the most part, by white men. There are not women in the highest of leadership ranks in the denominational structure. Therefore, any change a woman might bring to these denominations requires first aligning oneself with a system that was against the full expression of our gifts and callings from the get-go, and still has not embraced them fully. Eek.
My pastor friend went on to muse on narrative theology: We believe scripture is divinely inspired, but what does it mean that most of scripture is written through the lense of patriarchy, through a lense that makes the males the central figures, the figures of our attention and compassion even when they so wrongly deserve it?
A case in point. The story of the unnamed concubine from Bethlehem was highlighted for me this week*. A master and his concubine are the main characters*. Either the concubine "played the harlot" or "she became angry with" the master (depends on the translation) and she left him and returned to her father's house. The master goes after her to "speak to her heart, to bring her back." But when he gets there he speaks not to the concubine, but instead hangs with his "father in law" and drinks and eats for days and generally has a party. Then he saddles up, with concubine (who has been given no more speech in the story thus far, and whose heart has not been spoken to) and prepares to go against the father's warning that is not safe to travel at night.
On the journey, the master, his servant, and teh concubine find themselves invited to the home of an old man to stay for the night. At the house, the travelers "are enjoying themselves to their heart". In the middle of the party the men of Gibeah pound on the door and demand to "know" the male guest (the master) who is staying at the old man's house. The old man refuses the men, telling them not to act wickedly, and then says, "Look now, my daughter the virgin and his concubine. Let me bring them out. Ravish them, and do to them the good in your eyes."
Without any other action, the master (same man who followed her to her father's house with plans to speak to her heart) seizes his concubine and shoves her out of the house. She is raped repeatedly and tortured all night until morning. In the morning, her master leaves the house to be on his journey and is confronted with the victim. She has crawled to the doorway of the house and has her hand upon the threshhold. "Arise and let us be going," he tells her. "But there was no answer." Was she dead? The Greek Bible says she was. The Hebrew text is silent, leaving that open for interpretation. At any rate, the master puts her on his donkey and takes her home. When he gets home he "took the knife and he seized his concubine. He cut her, limb from limb, into twelve pieces and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel." It's unclear whether the master has actually murdered her, but he sends her body parts throughout Israel asking the peopel to take note of what the Benjaminite men did to her. Israel convenes. The master gives account of his story, failing to mention he pushed her out of the house to be raped and tortured. The tribes of Israel demand Benjaminites give up the wicked men who did this to the concubine. They refuse. The other tribes attack Benjamin. 25,000 Benjaminites die in a day. Not a single woman, child or beast survives. Only 600 men escape to the wilderness. However, the rest of the tribes cannot handle the idea of "there [being] one tribe lacking in Israel." Those men need to procreate! But they are not going to give their own women to the Benjaminites. So, the attack another town that wasn't part of the battle, murding all of its inhabitants except 400 young virgins, whom they give to Benjaminites. Well, that isnt' enough women for 600 Benjaminites so the men of Israel decide its okay to abduct 200 virgin daughters who dance in the festival of YHWH.
As Phyllis Trible says in her book Texts of Terrors, "In total the rape of one has become the rape of six hundred....the story of the concubine justifies the expansion of violence against women. What these men claim to abhor, they have reenacted with vengeance. They have captured, betrayed, raped, and scattered 400 virgins of Jabesh-gilead and two hundred daughters of Shiloh. Furthermore, they have tortured and murdered all the women of Benjamin and all the married women of Jabesh-gilead. Israelites males have dimembered the corporate body of Israelite females."
What this story underscores for me is that women were property. The outrage of the master and the tribes of Israel is not at the human rights violation of the concubine. It is rather, at the desecration of property. And an eye for an eye, right? or an eye for thousands of eyes? The men go out and seek their vengeance, committing human rights violation upon human rights violations.
Could we read this story a million times, "through the lense of patriarchy," as my friend asked, and never get it? In other words, could our attention be so focused on the actions, the battles, the "victories" of "God's elect" that we do not see the woman whose body, as Trible suggests, "was broken and given to many"?
*through reading Phyllis Trible's Text of Terrors
*the following story comes from Judges 19-21
My pastor friend went on to muse on narrative theology: We believe scripture is divinely inspired, but what does it mean that most of scripture is written through the lense of patriarchy, through a lense that makes the males the central figures, the figures of our attention and compassion even when they so wrongly deserve it?
A case in point. The story of the unnamed concubine from Bethlehem was highlighted for me this week*. A master and his concubine are the main characters*. Either the concubine "played the harlot" or "she became angry with" the master (depends on the translation) and she left him and returned to her father's house. The master goes after her to "speak to her heart, to bring her back." But when he gets there he speaks not to the concubine, but instead hangs with his "father in law" and drinks and eats for days and generally has a party. Then he saddles up, with concubine (who has been given no more speech in the story thus far, and whose heart has not been spoken to) and prepares to go against the father's warning that is not safe to travel at night.
On the journey, the master, his servant, and teh concubine find themselves invited to the home of an old man to stay for the night. At the house, the travelers "are enjoying themselves to their heart". In the middle of the party the men of Gibeah pound on the door and demand to "know" the male guest (the master) who is staying at the old man's house. The old man refuses the men, telling them not to act wickedly, and then says, "Look now, my daughter the virgin and his concubine. Let me bring them out. Ravish them, and do to them the good in your eyes."
Without any other action, the master (same man who followed her to her father's house with plans to speak to her heart) seizes his concubine and shoves her out of the house. She is raped repeatedly and tortured all night until morning. In the morning, her master leaves the house to be on his journey and is confronted with the victim. She has crawled to the doorway of the house and has her hand upon the threshhold. "Arise and let us be going," he tells her. "But there was no answer." Was she dead? The Greek Bible says she was. The Hebrew text is silent, leaving that open for interpretation. At any rate, the master puts her on his donkey and takes her home. When he gets home he "took the knife and he seized his concubine. He cut her, limb from limb, into twelve pieces and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel." It's unclear whether the master has actually murdered her, but he sends her body parts throughout Israel asking the peopel to take note of what the Benjaminite men did to her. Israel convenes. The master gives account of his story, failing to mention he pushed her out of the house to be raped and tortured. The tribes of Israel demand Benjaminites give up the wicked men who did this to the concubine. They refuse. The other tribes attack Benjamin. 25,000 Benjaminites die in a day. Not a single woman, child or beast survives. Only 600 men escape to the wilderness. However, the rest of the tribes cannot handle the idea of "there [being] one tribe lacking in Israel." Those men need to procreate! But they are not going to give their own women to the Benjaminites. So, the attack another town that wasn't part of the battle, murding all of its inhabitants except 400 young virgins, whom they give to Benjaminites. Well, that isnt' enough women for 600 Benjaminites so the men of Israel decide its okay to abduct 200 virgin daughters who dance in the festival of YHWH.
As Phyllis Trible says in her book Texts of Terrors, "In total the rape of one has become the rape of six hundred....the story of the concubine justifies the expansion of violence against women. What these men claim to abhor, they have reenacted with vengeance. They have captured, betrayed, raped, and scattered 400 virgins of Jabesh-gilead and two hundred daughters of Shiloh. Furthermore, they have tortured and murdered all the women of Benjamin and all the married women of Jabesh-gilead. Israelites males have dimembered the corporate body of Israelite females."
What this story underscores for me is that women were property. The outrage of the master and the tribes of Israel is not at the human rights violation of the concubine. It is rather, at the desecration of property. And an eye for an eye, right? or an eye for thousands of eyes? The men go out and seek their vengeance, committing human rights violation upon human rights violations.
Could we read this story a million times, "through the lense of patriarchy," as my friend asked, and never get it? In other words, could our attention be so focused on the actions, the battles, the "victories" of "God's elect" that we do not see the woman whose body, as Trible suggests, "was broken and given to many"?
*through reading Phyllis Trible's Text of Terrors
*the following story comes from Judges 19-21
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
1943 Guide to Hiring Women
This was reprinted in Savvy and Sage's September/October 2007 issue. Originally published in Transportation magazine, 1943, written to "Male supervisors of women in the workforce during World War II."
Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees: There's no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.
Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:
1. Pick young married women. They usually have more sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatisous, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.
2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.
3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls-those who are just a little on the heavy side- are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination-one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.
5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.
6. Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.
7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.
8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for femininte psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.
9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman-it breaks her spirit and cuts of her efficiency.
10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.
11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too much in keeping women happy.
Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees: There's no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.
Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:
1. Pick young married women. They usually have more sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatisous, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.
2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.
3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls-those who are just a little on the heavy side- are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination-one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.
5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.
6. Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.
7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.
8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for femininte psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.
9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman-it breaks her spirit and cuts of her efficiency.
10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.
11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too much in keeping women happy.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
On Aging
I got a toothache five days ago. Unclear, sneaky signals made their ways to my brain as I chewed through chicken and sweet potatoes Friday night at our friends Mike and Karin's house. The next day, the tooth that I'd just gotten a filling in began to feel bumpy and strange when I chewed. By Sunday, a sip of lukewarm water made the nerve inside my tooth feel as if it were throbbing on the end of live jumper cables.
"Is this what happens?" I'd asked my husband, who claims his teeth are "sensitive" where he's gotten fillings. "Does it hurt so bad you don't want to take a drink?"
"Sometimes," he said.
Oh, great. So what I was experiencing was now apparently in the realm of someone else's normal. There is no hope for me, I thought. This is what happens when your mouth falls apart, and even medical science can't make life any easier? Still, I tried to sound as desperate as possible on my dentist's answering machine. I even called his home number, given for "emergencies."
The relatively "good" news (I found out today) is that my filling is not cracked, and I do not have an abscess. Also, my nerve is not dying. However, as I sat in the brightly lit dental chair and looked up at my giant of a dentist as he described nerve death and trauma, my eyes (seriously) began to well up with tears. Even though he was clearly saying I am not experiencing nerve death, the very description, the very personification he employed to describe a nerve getting so traumatized it just curls up and dies, filled me with such a profound sense of grief, loss and insecurity. My nerve could just up and die on me? A little piece of myself--die?
If my husband were here right now I'm sure he'd remind me that by the time I'm my age, my brain cells are dying off right and left. Science has already indicated I've lost most of the digestive enzymes that came with me out of my mother's womb. Last week I found a white-ish gray hair on my head (which I'm still not sure wasn't just paint from a project two months ago...although evidence points to the contrary). And I come from a family of well-aged natural brunettes. What does it all mean?
The dentist said the cause of my pain was that my "bite got off" and he shaved down the filling he put in six weeks ago in hopes that will relieve some of the stress of my bite. And he put me on therapeutic doses of Ibuprofen for two days (that's 2400 mg a day. Ack.) to relieve the inflammation. Apparently, this happens.
Still, my thirtieth birthday is just around the corner. I look to it with celebration mixed with longing that good health will continue with me into middle and then older age. In spite of all the failing health in our country, I find myself compelled to cling to the hope that proper care of our bodies, souls, spirits, relationships, and environment will yield the sort of health that keeps us going longer than the energizer bunny.
"Is this what happens?" I'd asked my husband, who claims his teeth are "sensitive" where he's gotten fillings. "Does it hurt so bad you don't want to take a drink?"
"Sometimes," he said.
Oh, great. So what I was experiencing was now apparently in the realm of someone else's normal. There is no hope for me, I thought. This is what happens when your mouth falls apart, and even medical science can't make life any easier? Still, I tried to sound as desperate as possible on my dentist's answering machine. I even called his home number, given for "emergencies."
The relatively "good" news (I found out today) is that my filling is not cracked, and I do not have an abscess. Also, my nerve is not dying. However, as I sat in the brightly lit dental chair and looked up at my giant of a dentist as he described nerve death and trauma, my eyes (seriously) began to well up with tears. Even though he was clearly saying I am not experiencing nerve death, the very description, the very personification he employed to describe a nerve getting so traumatized it just curls up and dies, filled me with such a profound sense of grief, loss and insecurity. My nerve could just up and die on me? A little piece of myself--die?
If my husband were here right now I'm sure he'd remind me that by the time I'm my age, my brain cells are dying off right and left. Science has already indicated I've lost most of the digestive enzymes that came with me out of my mother's womb. Last week I found a white-ish gray hair on my head (which I'm still not sure wasn't just paint from a project two months ago...although evidence points to the contrary). And I come from a family of well-aged natural brunettes. What does it all mean?
The dentist said the cause of my pain was that my "bite got off" and he shaved down the filling he put in six weeks ago in hopes that will relieve some of the stress of my bite. And he put me on therapeutic doses of Ibuprofen for two days (that's 2400 mg a day. Ack.) to relieve the inflammation. Apparently, this happens.
Still, my thirtieth birthday is just around the corner. I look to it with celebration mixed with longing that good health will continue with me into middle and then older age. In spite of all the failing health in our country, I find myself compelled to cling to the hope that proper care of our bodies, souls, spirits, relationships, and environment will yield the sort of health that keeps us going longer than the energizer bunny.
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