MENTIONABLES

The Atlantic Bloggers Talk of "Traditional Families," Which Leads Me to Why I Got Married

2009-02-12T17:43:00.013-06:00

Ross Douthat has a very thoughtful post on why marriage the institution is important, and why understanding couples in context of community is the underlying key. Check it out. Ross is a social conservative, and the post is part of a conversation with another Atlantic blogger, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is not so much a social conservative. I could summarize it, but I'm lazy, and you should just read it.

Point being, this conversation at the Atlantic has made me think about marriage and family, and the definitions and defenses thereof. I recall that when I was getting married, I wasn't able to articulate very well why I was getting married....not really. I mean, I could say, "well, I love Joel. Like, for serious." But why not move in together? I struggled to say.

I wanted the proper terms: "husband" and "wife." I wanted Joel and me and our future kids all to have the same last name. I have a hard enough time making up my mind --- I wanted the probationary period to be over, the decision made, the deal done. I need that. I wanted a wedding, not for the dress or the flowers, but so that God and everybody would be our witnesses. It meant a lot to me that people from every era of my life showed up at our wedding to support and celebrate, and I knew that from then on, I could not go back. I could return to no place in my life where they would not know me as a married woman. I wanted our relationship, our love, recorded in the county register, as if it were the equivalent of writing "Bethany {hearts} Joel" in the cement sidewalk outside City Hall.

Photo courtesy of Jackie Huyh

I know there are specifically Christian reasons to get married, too, and those would be enough for me, but they are difficult to explain to people who don't accept the terms. My explanations fell into "divine fiat" territory, and that is rarely of any use in conversation. It's hard to explain the point of marriage; sometimes it's a challenge to give apology for why it exists at all. Which is why I was delighted to read Douthat's argument for the value of marriage to society at large. He says,

Yes, the best relationships shouldn't need institutional hedges against infidelity and/or abandonment. But an awful lot of relationships worth fighting for do end up benefiting from being hedged around with institutional supports - because life is long, people are complicated, and you don't always know when you're starting out what you'll need to reach the end of the road together....

When people don't do the right thing, whether by their partner or more importantly by their kids, it's by definition a problem for the community, because it's the community that's left to pick up the pieces. Which is why it makes sense for your community to ask you for a public commitment when you set out to rear a family, whether you think that you and the mother/father of your child needs such a thing or not. You may be sure that you're in the kind of relationship that won't benefit from an institutional commitment, but the community doesn't know that: It just knows that in the aggregate, public commitments tend to be stronger than private ones - and thus better for parents, for children, and for society writ large. So a community that asks for public commitments isn't disrespecting your potential exceptionalism; it's just asking you to respect the aggregate, and to set an example for the people who might not be as exceptional as you.

So there you go. I do not believe myself to be an exception to the rule; I need institutional supports. And why not take all the help you can get?

Sex from the Pulpit, Take 2

2009-02-10T17:32:00.007-06:00

After Brett McCracken's post on Mark Driscoll, I was pretty upset. Brett describes a recent sermon Mark Driscoll gave as part of his series on Song of Solomon at Mars Hill Church in Seattle:

Before he began his sermon, Driscoll noted that this was “one of the steamiest passages in the entire Bible” and urged all young children to immediately leave. He then proceeded to elaborate in great detail on the Dance of Mahanaim, talking about what each of the sexually suggestive metaphors meant, etc. Eventually he came to his point: that this passage of scripture was a call for wives to be “visually generous” to their husbands. They should keep the lights on in sex. Walk around the house topless. Things like that.

“The body is the greatest gift a wife can give,” said Driscoll.

I was okay reading the first paragraph, but nearly vomited when I got to the wife quote at the end. Immediately, I started to rant, as follows:

Oh come on, that last line is obviously total crap. My body is the greatest gift I can give my husband? Really? Because I could give him my body and deny him nearly everything else. (And I suspect if I did, he would sooner or later grow tired of my body.) Let's think this through. What if gave him my body but I denied him my support? What if I denied him my encouragement? My friendship? My respect? Heck, what if I denied him my cooking and cleaning? How about my words of love? You're telling me none of those gifts compare to the gift of my body? [Hand motion censored.] You can take a hike.

I decided to write about this, denouncing Mark Driscoll. Then, to get more ammunition with which to destroy him, I watched this sermon online.

Bad idea. I got way too much context. I didn't want to Jeremiah Wright the guy. And the problem was, I never did hear that precise sentence come out of his mouth. I heard a lot of similar phrases, but not those exact words.

In conclusion, I don't think Mark Driscoll believes that a wife's body is her most precious gift. Not per se. Let me explain.

He opened this sermon with a treatise on how "men are visual." He said that men keep a "iPod of images" of attractive women, a log of beauty that extends back to grade school. The subtext here is the appeal of pornography. A wife should be "visually generous" so that the snapshots in her husband's head are of her, and she will show her husband that she is "on his team" in his "battle against porn." This is the line of thought that brings us to how "visually generous wives" are a "great gift to their husbands."

Now, I still am not convinced by this argument, but it does not sound completely insane. Men are visually stimulated (as are some women, as Driscoll admits). He advises husbands to be "verbally generous" to their wives, and I appreciate that at least he is suggesting reciprocity. Come to think of it, I am pro-generosity of all kinds.

What does not convince me is the idea that "visual generosity" would be of much help in fighting a porn habit. It wouldn't hurt, probably, but there is much more involved. I reckon Driscoll would agree that the lure of pornography goes far beyond nekkid chicks, given the book he has written on the subject. I would just have liked him to give a disclaimer or two in his speech on visual generosity.

Obviously, porn is visually stimulating. What is also true about porn is that it is easy, cheap, and widely available. With a connection to the Internet, you can summon naked women (and men) in almost infinite variety. They are always delighted to see you. They never refuse. They are understanding of your unique preferences, your need for perfection, your every whim. And you don't ever need to call them or explain, awkwardly, why you forgot. No wife can compete on these terms. No wife should be made to.

I know Mark Driscoll gets that. When asked, "Isn’t looking at porno and masturbating an acceptable alternative to adultery or divorce if sex with my wife is terrible, infrequent, and/or unsatisfying?" He answers no:

If your sex life is not satisfying, then it is your responsibility whether or not it is entirely your fault because you are the head of your wife (Eph. 5:23). Therefore, rather than excusing your sin, you should repent of your sin and the condition of your home and seek counsel from your pastor(s) and/or professional Christian counselor(s) on how to be about redemption, like Jesus, rather than blame-shifting, like Adam.

I liked this response, despite the whole "my husband is my head" thing (see how old-school this guy is? He's a traditional pastor who happens to dress like a hipster and intro his sermons with slick animated graphics). I don't think any of his views on sex are new, like I said in my previous post. He just addresses these traditional views to contemporary concerns. More power to him, I say.

So I have decided not to be mad at him. He's not perfect, but he's not a monster. And he seems like he does really love his wife.

Sex from the Pulpit? I'll take my sex from my husband, thank you.

2009-02-04T12:13:00.015-06:00

My pastor hardly ever talks about sex. Occasionally, he throws “sexual immorality” into a list of sins, but that’s about it. I love the man, but he’s just not keeping up with the cool kids anymore. If he were, he would be telling us to have more sex. Lots of it, in new and daring ways.

It’s surprising but true: preaching about sex is popular among conservative Christian pastors these days. Several pastors have made the news by challenging their married parishioners to have sex every day for seven days, or even a month. Not to be out-done (haha), one Christian couple from North Carolina had sex for 365 days in a row and wrote a book about it.

Before I criticize, I should say here that there is much in this development to praise. First of all, there is truth. A whole book of the Bible, Song of Solomon, is an erotic love story, and it’s only because it was written in the 4th or 3rd century BC that its sexual innuendos fly right over our heads. God is much more “sex-positive” than he has been made out to be. That is true.

On the other hand, it’s also true that pastors have taught on sexuality for years. John Piper has sermons on sex that date back to 1981, and I am sure others wrote sermons on sex before him. A Celebration of Sex, the first major Christian sex manual, was published in 1979. Okay, so most pastors didn’t recite passages from the sex manual on Sunday morning. I’ll grant you that. But what is new is not that pastors are talking about sex in church; it’s the provocative way pastors are talking about it.

I am less than enthused by the way this sex-talk is going. For instance, apparently the church has subscribed to a more = better school of sexology, hence the “sex challenges” to have sex every day for a certain period of time, like the opposite of a fast. I tend to think there is already too much anxiety/emphasis out there over sexual frequency, as if we must be abnormal if we are not having sex x amount of times per week – either we’re unwanted loser-freaks and/or our relationship is sub-par. I do not need this anxiety reinforced. And if I don't need it, I am sure my single and celibate friends don't need it either.

Arguably, there are couples out there who would benefit from making their physical relationship more of a priority. That leads us to another problem --- namely, that there aren't enough allowances made for complexity, for differing circumstances. Appropriate sex advice would vary widely from person to person, couple to couple. I am not saying there aren't biblical guidelines. There just aren't one-size-fits-all "solutions."

And do I really need the church to tell me I should be having an endless amount of great sex? I can get that message by turning on the TV. When pastor's say “sex is great! God designed sex to be great!" I am afraid that people in the pew may hear: "God designed sex to be great; therefore, if my experience of sex is not so great, I must be disappointing Jesus, too. Great."

I think that most people need to hear a different message (and hopefully, most people do --- my pastor has not jumped on this bandwagon so I can only go by the sermons I can find online). I think most of us need to hear that Jesus loves us just as we are, that with Christ, we have nothing left to prove, that because of His great love, we know that our personal worth is not localized in our genitals. We need to know that there is hope in Jesus, and that therefore we can be patient while we continue in our celibacy or while we work through our sexual problems. We need to know that the Holy Spirit is with us, even in bed, and that therefore we can be healed and cleansed, forgiven and unashamed. And in our sex-saturated culture, we need to know that there are more important things than our sexual fulfillment. Whether we are single or married, having sex or not, we would benefit from a truly counter-cultural, Christ-centered message. I have not yet seen that kind of message getting much play in the news.

P.S. Sorry I have not posted anything here for so long. Thanks to Brett McCracken for his intelligent posts on this topic for getting me back in the game.

Real Estate Downfall

2008-11-24T09:30:00.002-06:00

The Best Thing I've Heard from a Conservative Christian This Election: Pastor John Piper's Reflections

2008-10-31T19:22:00.004-05:00

For the record, I disagree with John Piper on several issues (I'll let you guess which ones...not all are mentioned in this video). However, I was incredibly encouraged to listen to his message. If only more conservative Christians sounded like John Piper, rather than like Focus on the Family Action with their "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," which I hesitate to even link to because I know it will only make a lot of people angry. Feel free not to read it. I am not recommending it.

Now, John Piper is not theologically very different from the Focus on the Family people. He believes God designed men and women to fulfill different roles. He believes homosexuality is sinful. But those aren't the only things he believes.

He believes there is hope in Jesus. He believes that God is in control, even of hard-fought democratic elections. He believes that we in the church should be about being Christians -- an astoundingly radical thought in an era when so many church leaders are deeply invested in being pro this or that piece of legislation. He insists that the church's mission is to "spread the gospel." Again, this should not be a radical claim, but somehow, right now, it is.

Christian involvement in politics is a complicated matter. Personally, I subscribe to the "sin boldly" school of Christian political thought (yes, I just made that school up). I believe that since Jesus is not on the ballot, I will be implicated in sin and evil and corruption no matter who I vote for. We are only human, and so are the candidates. Because I am human I must operate on limited information; I cannot predict the future. I will not be able to choose perfectly because there is no perfect option, and it is not altogether certain what even the "okay" option might be. I would have voted for George W. Bush in 2000, and today I would say I would have been wrong. Voting is not easy, and we should not imagine that either side has clean hands.

However, I also happen to believe that it's important to vote. Not to vote would be an abdication of my civic responsibility. And I do believe that important issues and ideas and even lives are at stake here. This election will affect the future of our country, whichever way it goes. It's important.

It's important, but it's not easy. Now, for honesty's sake here, I should clarify what I mean by "easy." I made up my mind in January, and I have not changed it. In fact, you could say I made up my mind sometime in late 2004, when I heard Barack Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention. I liked him then, and I like him now. I believe he will make a good President, and maybe a great one.

So in a real sense, this decision is very easy for me. I say it's not easy, though, because I still have a seed of doubt. I will enthusiastically vote for him, but I'll try to keep both eyes open. Doubtless there would be consequences of an Obama Presidency that would be negative, and it's impossible to tell now how significant those negatives would be. I am hopeful, but not without doubt. Trusting, but not without cynicism.

I think my posture is about as good of one as a Christian could have (um, humbly). Mostly, I hope, because it tempers the self-righteousness that comes with being on the obviously-superior-side (whichever side that is). I hope my seed of doubt leaves me more respectful of people who disagree with me. I know they have their reasons.

I wish we had more arguments about politics in church. I mean honest, respectful arguments, which are hard to have. It's easy to conclude that the people who disagree with you are stupid, crazy, evil, or some combination of the three. It's harder to listen to them and keep in mind the fact that your opponent is yet God's child, your sibling, no matter how different they are. No matter, even, how wrong they are. For Christ's sake, let's remember that our salvation does not hinge on how we vote.

When I remember Christ my Savior, I am less anxious about who to vote for. Sin boldly, said Martin Luther, the reformer who kick-started Protestantism 491 years ago today. Sin boldy because God is merciful, because you know not what you do. Sin bodly, as you cannot help but sin; yet nevertheless, live and love and risk and act and vote in the confidence that Christ lives to offer you forgiveness, to always invite you home.

What I appreciate about John Piper, I think, is that he comes to a similar conclusion. I hear in the background of his thought one theme: Jesus is my hero and defender, not John McCain. Jesus is my hope and reconciler, not Barack Obama. I could not agree more.

I am posting the "long version" of this video because it gives more context, even though in the short version he says fewer controversial things. I don't want to portray him as anybody other than who he is, and my whole excitement over this video depends upon Piper's theological conservatism. I would ask you to watch the whole thing -- but if you can't stand it, skip forward to about 2:44 seconds in. He's worth listening to. I wish more Christians would.

For more on voting from John Piper, read this.

These Kids Are Having Fun

2008-10-28T23:13:00.001-05:00

Telling the Truth Shouldn't Be a Losing Game

2008-09-15T12:49:00.004-05:00

Slate has a new article by Farhad Manjoo suggesting that Barack Obama should maybe try lying more. This paragraph I found particularly depressing:

But it wouldn't be surprising if McCain's lies worked. In my book True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society, published earlier this year, I argued that in the digital world, facts are a stock of faltering value. The phenomenon that scholars call "media fragmentation"—the disintegration of the mass media into the many niches of the Web, cable news, and talk radio—lets us consume news that we like and avoid news that we don't, leading people to perceive reality in a way that conforms to their long-held beliefs. Not everyone agrees with me that our new infosphere will open the floodgates to fiction, but it's clear that the McCain camp is benefiting from some of the forces I described.

What is profoundly disturbing about this paragraph is what I consider its core truth: that it is now possible to cocoon oneself with newsmedia that already agree with you. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the New York Times or FOX News, both have the same affect --- if either one is the only source you believe.

I have recently tried to balance myself out a bit. I'm reading the Wall Street Journal more in an attempt to ensure that my most conservative source of news isn't the Colbert Report. I've tried to read a few conservative blogs. I find that while I usually find the articles interesting and admit some of the editorials make good points, I cannot stand to read any of the comments. People on the internet are mean, plain and simple, and the "facts" hardly matter at all.

I have found FactCheck.org to be an invaluable reminder of Reality. Everything else I read I take with a grain of salt.

I think our democracy is at stake here, and I don't think I'm an alarmist. If we cannot sustain decent, honorable, and truthful political discourse, we will be left to vote more and more on the basis of lies and emotion. The "truth" will become subservient to power, if it isn't already.

Obviously, we will always have differences of opinion, conflicting dreams for what America could be. But we do not have to have a politics of slander. I know we're sinners, all, but come on. We can hold liars accountable. We can be less cynical ("Oh, that's just politics") and more involved. We can quit believing that lies during a campaign will stop after the election; one who lies to get power will lie to retain it.

I think Christians, especially, should demand better. We are commanded to delight in the truth, and we are warned not to give false witness against our neighbor. I think our Christian witness is at stake, lest we leave ourselves open to the accusation that all we're after is power --- in other words, we should demand truthfulness even when lies might advance our agenda, lest we lose all credibility.

Furthermore, each of us should seek after wisdom at all costs, as the Book of Proverbs encourages us. The wise person, Scripture tells us, is not the person who has it all figured out, who knows all the answers already. The wise person is the one who listens to correction, who goes so far as to even love the one who rebukes her. Which is all to say that if we only listen to those who reinforce our own version of reality, we do so at our peril --- and I believe this to be the case whether we're talking about our view of politics or relationships or our own holiness. If we cannot admit when we are wrong, we are without hope.

Lastly, we should try to aim for truth because otherwise we can easily fall into hate. It's easy to demonize your opponents/their supporters if you don't listen to a word they say. And you have to actually listen to them --- not just listen to a report of what they said. We are told to love our enemies. That includes "commie pinko stuck-up fembots" and "racist war-mongering theocrats." Feel free to check my source on that.

For David Foster Wallace, May He Rest In Peace

2008-09-14T23:00:00.007-05:00

This morning my husband woke me up gently with the news that author David Foster Wallace had been found dead in his home on Friday. He was only 46, and he hung himself.

The sad news has left me with several emotions, not all of which will fit on this page. I am sad that more of his books will not be written, sad a talent like his has been lost, so much wasted. I am sad to lose a moral voice in this country -- a moral voice that sometimes filled with sincerity and seriousness rather than irony and cynicism. I wonder why such genius came with such despair.

I pray that the hints of religious faith I found in his works, which did not prove a protection against this life's torments, may nonetheless usher him into that promised final rest.

*

Earlier this year, I read his essay "Up, Simba," about John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. In it Wallace ruminates on the general state of politics. At some points, his commentary seems stunningly dated, at only eight years removed; take, for instance, the fact that one of the points of debate between Bush and McCain in 2000 was how to spend the federal budget surplus. Or that both Republican candidates were critical of Clinton's "photo-op" foreign policy, which was described as weak and "candy-assed."

At other moments, however, I was amazed at how little has changed, and how much McCain in 2000 felt like Obama in 2008, inasmuch as both drew a lot of young voters, campaigned as underdogs, and appealed to a deep need in Americans to believe.

In honor of David Foster Wallace, and in a spirit of fairness to both political candidates, I would like to quote a bit from "Up, Simba." I would like the mud-slinging to end, as much as anybody, even though I get angry enough to fling some myself from time to time. Here's hoping our nation does not self-destruct. Here's hoping for hope itself:

"Why do these crowds from Detroit to Charleston cheer so wildly at a simple promise not to lie?

Well, it's obvious why. When McCain says it, the people are cheering not for him so much as for how good it feels to believe him. They're cheering the loosening of a weird sort of knot in the electoral tummy. McCain's resume and candor, in other words, promise not empathy with voter's pain but relief from it. Because we've been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It's ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. We learn this at like age four ... And we keep learning for years, from hard experience, that getting lied to sucks --- that it diminishes you, denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if experience seems to teach that everything you're supposed to believe in's really just a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it's a good bet you remember "No new taxes" and "Out of the loop" and "No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time" and "Did not inhale" and "Did not have sex with that Ms. Lewinsky" and etc. etc. It's painful to believe that the would-be 'public servants' you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't yawn and turn away, trade apathy and cyncism for the hurt of getting treated with contempt? And who wouldn't fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect? ... Even in AD 2000, who among us is so cynical that he doesn't have some good old corny American hope way down deep in his heart, lying dormant like a spinster's ardor, not dead but just waiting for the right guy to give it to?

...But then look at the photos of McCain's own face that night [when he won the NH primary]. He's the only one not smiling. Why? Can you guess? It's because now he might possibly win. At the start, on PBS and C-SPAN, in his shitty little campaign van with just his wife and a couple aides, he was running about 3 percent in the polls. And it's easy (or at least comparatively easy) to tell the truth when there's nothing to lose. ... The 7 Feb. issues of all three big newsmagazines have good shots of McCain's face right at the moment the NH results are being announced. It's worth looking hard at his eyes in these photos. Now there's something to lose, or to win. ... There are two big questions about McCain now, today, as everyone starts the two-week slog through SC. The easy question, the one all the [journalists] spend their time on, is whether he'll win. The other --- the one posed by those photos' eyes --- is hard to even put into words."

I am blowing any pretense at partiality here.

2008-09-09T12:28:00.002-05:00

Here's Obama responding to another line from Palin's speech.

Happy Tuesday. I promise to post again about non-political topics, but as of right now I am borderline-obsessed.

Gov. Palin, Let Me Define "Community Organizing" For You

2008-09-04T10:07:00.007-05:00

In her debut speech at the Republican National Convention last night, Gov. Sarah Palin mocked Senator Obama's early work as a community organizer, saying, " I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

While I am glad we have a woman on the ticket for Vice President and admit she gave a powerful speech, I could not let this moment slip by without one clarification. Just what exactly is "community organizing" anyway?

Most people have never met a community organizer, or at least didn't know it if they did. It's easy to dismiss it as some "citified" job, something distant and amorphous and out-of-touch with reality. However, if people knew what community organizing was about, they might sing a different tune.

Community organizing is just that: the endeavor to organize a group or groups of people around a common goal, for their own good, to gain a voice in the halls of power. It involves meeting with people, listening to their concerns, helping them to join forces together and advocating for their interests. It's not as foreign as it might seem; anybody who has seen the movie "Norma Rae" could recall the union organizer who inspired Norma Rae to stand up to her bosses at the textile mill. "Norma Rae" was based a on true story, and the courage and persistence of the real Norma Rae is nothing to mock at.

We have a proud history of "community organization" in this country. That's what Dr. Martin Luther King was doing when he organized the members of the black community in Montgomery, Alabama, to walk to work instead of taking the bus. That's what Susan B. Anthony was doing when she organized the suffragettes to rally for woman's right to vote. I daresay that's what the Founding Fathers were doing when they organized the various immigrant groups against the British power that demanded taxes without representation, emboldening people to believe that a new country may be born and out of many people, one.

Gov. Palin, do you mock the work of Dr. King? Do you mock the work of Susan B. Anthony, your foremother, without whom you would not be voting let alone running for office? Do you mock the foundational belief of this nation that we, the people, own our government and therefore have a voice in it?

No, Gov. Palin, I am sure you do not mock any of those proud men and women in our history. But why, then, do you mock Senator Obama for believing in their principles and their dreams?

It's true, Obama did not accomplish anything so grand as racial equality or women's suffrage or founding a new nation. That much is obvious. His two main victories were "the expansion of a city summer-job program for South Side teenagers and the removal of asbestos from one of the area’s oldest housing projects" (and that's according to the National Review). Even so, you're going to knock him for trying?

You can criticize Obama in a lot of ways, several of them legitimate. You can argue against his policy proposals, and I would listen to what you have to say. You can call him a liberal, and I would offer no defense. But mock his work in Chicago as a community organizer and I will publicly denounce you: Either you are ignorant about what community organizing entails, or you are deliberately twisting the truth.

Readers, please take the time to investigate for yourself what exactly community organizing is and what Obama did for those years on the South Side of Chicago. Below are links to more information.

"Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City," chapter by Barack Obama in After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois, published in 1990.
"On the Streets of Chicago, A Candidate Comes of Age," U.S. News & World Report (August 2007)
"How Community Organizing Shaped Obama's Politics," Wall Street Journal (March 2007)
"Obama's Community Roots," The Nation (April 2007)
"The Organizer," National Review (June 2008) - not full article unless you subscribe to the NR

Who Is Creation Waiting For?

2008-08-13T12:39:00.002-05:00

My friend Kendra has written about our privilege as the children of God to bring good news to all creation - to the trees and sky and oceans. She says this better than I say it here, but I have to point out with pride that she was inspired by a sermon my husband gave - his first one! - just a couple Fridays ago.

Be encouraged.

Hey, everybody, John Campbell is awesome.

2008-08-07T12:46:00.003-05:00

John Campbell, whose Goodbye, Foom comic blog is linked to the left and whose Pictures for Sad Children actually as its own Wikipedia page, and with whom also I still claim friendship, has spread his coolness far and wide enough to catch the attention of The New Yorker.

Here is the interview with The New Yorker's Cartoon Lounge.

Congratulations! Boy are we proud.

P.S. Good luck on the job search, John.

P.P.S. I just realized, maybe you have already found a job? If so, then hopefully it is an okay one!

The Christians We Became Instead

2008-08-06T20:12:00.008-05:00

I have a friend who promised, drunk, that he could never walk away from the faith. But he could be a bad Christian, he said with a smile. He could be a bad Christian for a while.

Probably earlier in my life I would have been more concerned by this pronouncement, back when maybe I was a better Christian myself. I would have written down his name in my prayer journal, and lifted his situation up to the Lord. But now I'm less worried about people like him than I used to be. As my husband said, "He's not searching; he's figuring." I believe my friend will figure out his life with God. I believe him when he says he will not leave.

I have many friends who were raised Christian; in fact, nearly all of my friends were. It makes us funny sometimes. We grew up listening to obscure music that tried to make abstinence cool. We hotly debated whether to court or date, a complete non-issue to the rest of our peers. We were familiar with King James English long before we were assigned Romeo and Juliet in the ninth grade.

Then we turned twenty-one and woke up lost.

When you grow up a good Christian, you don't have to make many decisions for yourself. Most decisions --- down to what music you listen to, what movies you watch, what clothes you wear, and what friends you keep --- are dictated by the standards of your faith community. This fact is supposed to keep you safe. Which it does, sort of, until you get older and are supposed to make decisions for yourself. You have not had practice deciding things. You don't know what you want.

And what is worse, you are burdened with the belief that all your decisions are incredibly meaningful. You believe that each decision could be a life-changer, that one small misstep could lead you down the wrong path...for life. You worry about what your parents think and about what your church friends think and after you've worn those worries out you crash into the scariest question, that is, what does the Almighty think?

I have seen this pressure make people paralyzed. I have seen this pressure make people despair. I have watched as they shake their heads and go on to do everything they have been told they should not do. And why not? It's hard to tell which shoulds to keep and which to throw away. And it only takes one should to break your heart. One day, God asks for one thing too much, and instead of laying it down at His feet, you fling it at Him.

I can hear the good Christians now, defending religion or, at least, defending God. I am not about to debate here what good Christians should or should not do; I am only noting what I have observed. From my limited perspective, I have come to believe that most of the shoulds taught to church kids do more to inculcate self-righteousness and to cover simple fear than to form children who know the One who loves them. It is a paltry Christian upbringing that produces adults who testify to nothing more than the guilt they used to be afraid to feel.

And where do you go after you've hit that place of paralysis, of depair? What do you do then?

Well, you might try lying in bed for a few days. Maybe on the couch. Or try failing a few times: you'll surprise yourself and survive. In addition to those tactics, I also read a lot of intellectual stuff --- nothing without nuance and shades of gray and scores of footnotes. I read dark novels, full of doubts. Then again, I'm a reader. Maybe you would be helped by the open-ended world of Final Fantasy, what do I know? Any way you do it, you begin seeing the world as less unforgiving of trial and error and more amenable to experimentation.

This is not because you have succumbed to a relativistic liberal agenda. This is because you are learning how to live. You don't have to take my word for it, though. You can see for yourself.

At a recent party I overheard a man saying, "I can't say anything true without making mistakes." I felt sure that earlier in time he believed he could make absolute statements: words that fit on the thin edge of a knife, straight and sharp. I noted that he continued on to answer the question that made him pause to give this disclaimer, "I can't say anything true without making mistakes." He seemed to still believe that he could say true things. He had only lost the belief that he could say them perfectly.

I admired him for answering the question, for going ahead and making mistakes. I thought of Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Church and poster boy for the anxiety-ridden cradle Christian. "Sin boldly," Luther said, because God is a God of forgiveness and redemption. Even if you conclude that you can't avoid making mistakes, tell the truth the best you can anyway. Even if you find some failure unavoidable, live according to the truth the best you can anyway.

So after you've really sinned well, after you've long gone too far, see if you have any memories of a merciful God. See if you can think of a time when you were small when Jesus held your hand, or played in the yard with you chasing fireflies, or came into your heart. Try to remember that God, for that God will run to meet you where you are.

We may find we are much different than the younger versions of ourselves. We might have become bad Christians, rather than the people we meant to become. That's okay because when we strove to emulate our idea of who we thought good Christians should be, we about drove ourselves crazy. We had not yet learned that we cannot say anything true without making mistakes. We had forgotten that Jesus chased fireflies with us in the dark, for no good reason.

One Argument for the Existence of God

2008-08-01T17:33:00.002-05:00

by Katrina Vandenberg

I don’t remember what we were fighting about,
only that we were in public — in Hugo’s
on a Friday night — and it was winter, as much as it can be
in Arkansas. In case you haven’t been,
the red door to the cafe is below street level, and
inside, the pipes are red and exposed,
and the lights burn red as well. That night
it was so crowded it was hard to hear, so
we felt free to keep going while we waited
for a table — spiteful, vicious, every punch
below the belt; the kind of fight where after a while
you have no idea what you are saying,
much less believe, only that you are trying
to stay afloat on your little raft of words
and not let the other party wipe you out.
Over the cackle of glasses and forks
we kept having to say, What? Could you
repeat that? Even seated at a round table
too small to hold both our plates and the drinks
we desperately wanted by then, it did not stop.
We sat in the red-checkered, red-lit din and
let that argument swell and thin like an inflating balloon,
our coats knocked off our chairs by people
on their way out, and when we asked
the waitress what we owed, she said,
Nothing; a stranger had paid our bill for us
and told her not to tell us until he had gone.
All the way home in the new snow —
silent now, abashed — we wondered
who he was, what he had heard,
whether he loved or pitied us.

***
P.S. Forgive me for being quiet so long. I'm still around, though, and I'll be back. Until then, have a marvelous summer!

Your Marketing Lesson For The Day

2008-06-10T10:54:00.004-05:00

I am indebted to my friend Evan and to NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" for bringing these pants to my attention:

According to the Kmart website, "These athletic pants boldly proclaim just where she stands by pointing out that 'True Love Waits' in a large screen print on the front and back of these pants." Click here to order a pair for only $9.99! In girl sizes only (don't get me started on that).

A purity ring, while much less perplexing, is sooo last millennium. Now you can draw the boys' attention to your backside and remind them not to lust after you at the same time!

As Evan so astutely asked, "In this case, will the medium become the message?"

A Night for the History Books

2008-06-03T23:10:00.005-05:00

I do not usually post about politics on this blog. Political machinations are not what I want this blog to be about. But tonight, I will make one exception.

Today Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination for president, making him the first African-American to run on a major party ticket in the history of our nation. In 2000, if you had told me a black man would be anywhere close to being our president before I grew old and gray, I would not have believed you. If the United States ever elected anybody other than a white man, I figured it would be decades away.

I was wrong. The time was just a few short years in the future, in 2008.

My grandparents grew up in a time when Jim Crow laws were the status quo. My parents were among the first generations to attend integrated public schools. I have seen the remnants of that racist past in my own life, and I know the knee-jerk fears and prejudices that still lie in my heart. But despite all that, despite the persistence of history and the reality of wounds yet to be healed in both black and white, we are about to witness a person of color vie for the leadership of the free world.

I believe I will tell my children and grandchildren about the year that a black man rose to compete for the highest office in our land. I will tell them how unbelievable it was back in 2008, how remarkable, how controversial. I will tell them how, even if Obama lost in November, he nonetheless won simply by going farther than any person of color before him.

Whatever your political leanings, let us pause for a moment and be proud of ourselves. The year is 2008, and we have come a long way.

A New Job, and More Good Things to Come

2008-05-20T22:45:00.006-05:00

Hi, everyone. I got a new job.

Last week was my first week at my new place of employment, a law firm specializing in real estate and estate planning. It has the most positive work environment I have experienced in quite some time. It's interesting, and the people are kind. AND it's under two miles from my apartment building. I have a new life, and I can't believe how nice it all is yet myself.

So here's to the future: A new job, and with it, new opportunities to do what I love.

Just FYI. God bless.

Whistle While You Wait

2008-04-29T20:50:00.004-05:00

Our neighbors have four kids. This would not be remarkable except for the fact that we live in an apartment building, and the largest apartments in the building have two bedrooms.

We met them at an open house last fall. The parents graduated from my alma mater back in the 90s, and they intended to work overseas. Their heart was for missions, for serving other people in the name of God. They have not lost that dream, but meanwhile, he works at O’Hare Airport while his wife home-schools the four kids.

These neighbors fill me with admiration, respect, and absolute terror. I find waiting very, very hard, especially when it feels like I’m not making any progress toward my goals, and I know I would not handle frustration as quietly as my neighbors. I imagine them practicing their French with flash cards while one of them washes the dishes, and it breaks my heart. At the same time, my pity for them makes me feel privileged, naïve, smug — and a little guilty. What do I know about waiting, after all? And despite the years in a holding pattern, our neighbors seem to have retained their resolve. Even with the four kids and without any money, I have to believe they’ll make it. They have been waiting a long time.

Waiting for your dreams grinds the heart like nothing else; you can only hope it grinds the heart into something useful, like olives into oil. There is always the chance that the wait will grind it into bits, into bitterness, into nothing that could be construed as sweet or worthwhile. In the meantime, while working at O’Hare or washing dishes, how do you hold on? How do you respond so that you become useful rather than bitter?

By no means do I have this waiting thing down, but I do want to share a few things I’ve tried so that all this waiting doesn’t turn me into an angry, bitter person who is no fun to be around.

1) Try being thankful.

This is a tough one, but perhaps you can do it if you concentrate on people who have less than you do. While it’s good to acknowledge that bad things are bad, constant negativity will blind you to your strengths if you let it flow unchecked. Give your self-pity some limits. Remember the custodian who works at that job you hate, or the homeless man you pass on the way — remember the friend that died, if that’s the best you can do. If you are reading this blog, you are alive, your lungs breathing, eyes seeing, and brain processing all as they should. You have been educated enough to read, and you have access to technology such that you know blogs exist. Be thankful.

While you count your blessings, you may discover that you already have resources to improve your situation. You never know. Sometimes we’re looking down at the floor so much we don’t see the door.

2) Try being sad with those who are sad.

Of course, we should also learn to be happy for others when good things happen to them. I only phrase the second suggestion this way because I find the sad side of the coin more difficult. If my friend were to lose her amazing job, it would not get me any closer to landing an amazing job of my own, and it would only make her less happy. That much I can understand. So I can be happy for my friend with the amazing job. I am okay at “rejoicing with those who rejoice” — after all, everybody loves a party. It’s the “mourning with those who mourn” half that I fumble.

Basically, I can’t stand to listen to other people complain. This is not because I am a positive person. It’s because I don’t think they have anything to complain about (only I do). My self-pity curtails my compassion.

For instance, it’s hard for me to listen to people complaining about their jobs, especially people who work at companies who continually reject my applications for employment. For you it might be hard to hear people complain about their spouse, or their kids, or about how impossible it is to find replacement parts for their vintage Jaguar.

Maybe the complainer really is ungrateful, but don’t be too quick to judge. If you have a hard time mustering any compassion, check your own heart. Their ungratefulness does not excuse your envy or self-pity or unforgiveness. I speak from experience.

Remember, things in life are only hard in relation to everything that has come before it. I find cold showers so insufferable that I’ll drive to a friend’s house to use her shower if my water heater is broken. For my friends in Russia, however, broken water heaters do not qualify as emergencies; to them, cold showers just mean it’s morning. Yet every Christian Russian I have met has been kind and merciful to me, the rich and bloated American. If I can remember the mercy offered me, maybe I can listen to the complaints of those I envy and respond with mercy, too.

If you can’t “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn,” at least fake it. Say something kind and generous. You will be a better friend.

3) Try working hard at hope.

Maybe you are a naturally hopeful and positive-thinking person. I am not. I have to work at hope. So I argue with myself when I think despairing thoughts, trying to give myself perspective. I read through the Psalms, that I might learn to express anger and impatience and still somehow circle around to expressing praise. On bad days, I listen to a lot of black Gospel music, which preaches perseverance over and over and over, without minimizing any of the obstacles ahead. I cry and yell, and then I start over. I threaten everybody from here to heaven, and then I wait some more.

Now I don’t know what gets you through the night. But I encourage you to find it, pursue it, and not let it go. Everybody who ever achieved anything did so because they persisted. Talent is not a magic wand. Education will only take you so far. To finish, you have to persist. You might wait a long time, but none of that time need be wasted.

God wastes nothing. The Bible says that we can “rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). I think it’s significant that hope is the last to arrive. First you just keep going. Then you become the kind of person that always keeps going. Then, at last, you have hope. All that time spent suffering or waiting around to be useful, God uses. He uses it to make you hopeful, to make you strong.

From the outside, it doesn’t seem like my neighbors are moving toward their goal. But their goal is not just to go to France; their goal is to minister to people in France. The years spent working a dumb job and running after kids may be just the crucible to make them grateful, compassionate, and hopeful people, people who have something real and tested to offer. Like olives crushed into oil, they may become much more useful after being pressed down.

If I have to wait, I want to wait like my neighbors.

Hear Me Out: How I am learning to listen

2008-04-18T18:41:00.005-05:00

"Being listened to is so close to being loved that
most people cannot tell the difference."

~ David Oxberg

I married a very listening man. He listens well, patiently and often, and he remembers what I say much later, too. In fact, he probably remembers what I say better than I do.

I guess I knew this before I married him, but I don’t remember it among all the reasons in his favor. I thought of him as considerate and respectful and kind, but I don’t think I identified his skills as a listener underpinning those other qualities. It was like he listened to me so well, I didn’t notice. But I got the message listening sends: I felt respected, valued, and loved.

In contrast to my husband, I would rate my listening skills as merely “moderately okay.” This has been made clear to me in my listening group, where three other women and I sit around, listen and share, ask non-leading questions, and silently pray. The power of that group is all in the listening. The first several times we met together I found myself thinking about what I would say during my turn, or what I should have said, or what happened to me at work that day – anything other than listening to what the other women were saying. It was hard to concentrate on someone other than me.

At the same time my own listening-deficiency was becoming clear to me, I was experiencing the power of being listening to. I would tell of what was happening in my life like I had told it countless times to friends, family, and strangers; I would set out to tell it matter-of-factly, expecting a couple laughs, but at listening group I would tear up and cry. It was like I was being allowed to feel what I was saying because someone else was finally hearing me, the me behind my front of words.

Not only would I end up telling my story differently, with tears instead of wisecracks, I would hear myself differently too. Like the main character of C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, Orual, who rages against the gods until she finally hears herself as the jealous, center-of-her-universe she is, I would realize mid-story how selfish I sounded, how false, how afraid. Lewis’s title comes from the central question, “How can we meet the gods face to face till we have faces?” In other words, how can God answer truthfully until you have heard your own question accurately? How can He answer you when you are asking a false question, full of pretense and sin?

We are always full of pretense and sin, and God speaks to us anyway, though this may explain why He often seems to miss the point. For example, I tell God about how horribly this person has treated me and He says something like, “Love her as yourself.” God’s apparent naïve idealism tempts me to respond, “Did you hear what I just said, God? Do I need to repeat the part about what a bitch she is? Because Your response does not make me feel like You have heard me. Love her. Pff.”

This just goes to show that “good communication skills” don’t help much if you don’t want to hear what the other person has to say. I do not want to love my enemy. That’s why I call her my enemy: Because I hate her. And yet God goes on about love, completely ignoring all of my complaints.

And that scenario assumes, maybe, that I have legitimate complaints against my enemy-neighbor (in which case God usually adds something about forgiveness, too). But I know there are times I have railed against Him and others for no good reason at all – for answers to questions that should not be asked, for recompense I do not deserve, for red herrings of all kinds. I have plenty of rants that miss the point, that aren’t really about what they’re about.

It is hard to speak the truth about your situation, about your past, about what you carry inside. I find it hard to communicate what it is I want – partly because I’m not used to being asked. So sometimes, it’s not that the other person is not listening to you; it’s that you are not saying what you really need to say.

For instance, say that I really need to tell someone, “When you did x, you hurt me.” If I actually said that calmly and plainly, I would probably get an apology, assuming I’m speaking to someone who cares. I want an apology, but admitting that I am hurt makes me feel vulnerable and weak, and I would much rather be angry than weak. Plus, I’m not entirely convinced that the other person will care, that they will bother listening to such a soft, teary voice. Yelling is the logical response of those who do not believe that they have been or will be heard.

Once Orual finally hears herself, she quiets down and quits her yelling. Being heard by another, I believe, has the same affect. If you can trust you will be heard, you have no need to yell. If you have been heard, you have reason to hope. Listening communicates love more clearly than words, more assuredly than kisses. We know we are loved by God because He promises to hear our prayers, whether the content of our prayers be true or false. He even answers the questions we aren’t asking: Love her, He says. Receive my healing and forgiveness, He says.

Half the time, I don’t even know what I’m saying, but God is still the one to whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets have been hid. He gave me a listening man before I knew well enough to ask for one. Such is how God does, always. He hears.

What I Really Meant to Pray

2008-04-16T22:55:00.002-05:00

I said, "Lord, teach me to be patient."

I said this because I know I need strength to wait, but I also instantly realized that I would much rather not need this supernaturally-endowed perseverance.

I would much rather pray: Lord, teach me to be humble and gracious toward others despite their obvious inferiority in light of my dazzling, quantifiably-spectacular success. Yes.

Do what you can with me, God. Do whatcha can.

On the 40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King

2008-04-04T12:08:00.001-05:00

Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis. I have been to the Lorraine Motel, where he died on the landing just outside his second-story room, above where a plaque rests now that quotes from the story of Joseph in the Bible, "There goes the dreamer…let us kill him, and we will see what becomes of his dreams."

The Lorraine is now Memphis' Civil Rights Museum. There is a bus you can walk through, sit in, of the kind that Rosa Parks rode. There is a lunch counter where you can watch an old film that teaches how to protest without violence. There is a Bible marked "colored," used when a black witness took the stand, and there are several newspaper articles that call Dr. King a communist.

At the Lorraine Motel, you can also listen to Dr. King give his last speech, on April 3, 1968. He was in Memphis because there was a santitation workers' strike, and in so many ways this was a speech like many others he gave encouraging all the people working for justice not to give up. Except in this speech, as Rev. Abernathy later said, he preached through his fear of death. It's called the "Mountaintop" speech because of a reference to Moses, the leader who took his people all the way out of slavery in Egypt right up to the edge of the Promised Land. On the Mountaintop, Moses saw a glimpse of the future he had worked so hard to reach, and he died there. The Bible says that God Himself buried him, and his people could not find his remains.

I never understood why God took Moses right then, at such a crucial time. But if Moses was anything like his late descendant Martin, we can assume that he died at peace with his life and at peace with his God. And we can trust that this same God will raise up a new generation, like that of Joshua, to serve His purposes and continue the work.

The whole speech can be found here. In honor of Dr. King and his dream, I will quote at length, because it's too good to edit much down:

Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: We know how it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around."

Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn't stop us.

Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there.

Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness…

Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

Don't Settle, But Know What Is Important

2008-04-03T10:36:00.001-05:00

This “Marry Him!” article in the Atlantic has incited a bit of controversy among my circle of friends. The author, a 40-something, never-married single mom, talks about what she wishes she would have done differently in the finding-a-mate department. It’s a sad story, but she’s got such a good sense of humor I nearly laughed out loud.

One caveat: She advises people to settle, and settle young (before the end of your 30s). This may be offensive to some. There are other questionable things, but you might as well just read it yourself if you’re interested.

The Take-away: I would say this woman’s mistake is not that she was too picky, as she describes herself, but that she wasn’t looking for the qualities that are actually important in a spouse. In fact, she only realizes that maybe there are important qualities in a husband that she wasn’t factoring into her search until after the birth of her child (by a sperm-donor, fyi). Factors like, “Would he make a good father?”

Therefore, my translation of this article, which I hope is less offensive, is simply to prioritize -- figure out what you actually need and want for a life-long partner, and find a person with those qualities. E.g. if a guy is intelligent, funny, responsible, affectionate, and would make a great dad, just go ahead and overlook the fact that he’s bald. Or “not curious.” Or “allergic to dogs.”

That said, I doubt many of my readers are that superficial to begin with. Nonetheless.

I remember being told to make a list of everything I wanted in a husband, and using that list as a reminder to (a) pray and (b) not settle. I first made this list circa 1995, and it went on for pages. By the time I actually got married, I had long lost that list, and frankly, that’s probably for the best. I had, by then, narrowed my mental list down to five things. Joel got five stars, and on top of all that, I loved him. (Still do.)

I didn’t get everything that was on my list in 1995, but I wouldn’t say that I settled. I would say that I grew up.

And one last thing: This article was also a good reminder NEVER to become one of those wives who say things like, “Oh [single friend], you’re so lucky, you never have to [deal with a negative side affect of being married].” If I ever say such a thing, just go ahead and slap me. Really. That’s the most obnoxious, ungrateful thing I’ve ever heard.

Good News for the Commute

2008-04-01T08:22:00.001-05:00

Friends, drivers, policemen, lend me your ears! I have repaired my car, not buried it. I now have a functional driver’s side rear-view mirror! And the rear-window will not slip down on its own! And that noise turned out to be nothing! All good things. So now I will drive my Saturn another year, and save more money for my next car….a Toyota Prius, perhaps? Oh yes.

The New York Times Interviews Leaders of Pro-Chastity Clubs, Concludes: College-Student Virgins Exist, May Need Therapy

2008-03-31T19:37:00.011-05:00

According to the above-linked article in the New York Times, students at Ivy-league schools are forming clubs dedicated to sexual abstinence before marriage. I guess smart kids that buy into such mumbo-jumbo fascinate those editors from the Times, as do other intelligent people who do anything that might be construed as religious. Huff.

But these clubs are not religious – or at least, not officially. The students are arguing for sexual abstinence on the basis of philosophy, science, and reason, not on the basis of Bible verses or theology written by popes. I would think that a secular argument for chastity would be harder to defend, but I nonetheless respect their attempt. They want to re-image themselves as rational people who choose to abstain for empowering reasons, and that, my friends, is an ambitious marketing program in a world in which virgins are viewed as sexist, repressed, naïve, judgmental, and/or crazy late-born Victorians. When Harvard’s True Love Revolution [TLR] hosted an ice cream social, the college newspaper ridiculed it with an article entitled, “Not Tonight, Honey, I Have a Brain Freeze.”

I know that virgins are a dying breed, but when every other sexual choice is approved and celebrated on campus, it is particularly hypocritical to denigrate the chaste. I don’t want to derail this post with a side-rant, but hypocrisy of this kind irks me to no end. In my experience, “open-minded, tolerant” people are often only tolerant of the people they deem worthy of tolerance, and their exhortations for the rest of us to be “open-minded” are frequently thinly-veiled demands for us to see the light and agree with their position. In short, I am not surprised that the open-minded, progressive gentlemen and ladies of Harvard have responded to the TLR with belittling jokes and indignation.

Now, back to the original article. I took issue with the two examples of pro-virginity students, although I have no doubt their stories are mostly accurate. The man and woman interviewed from TLR were not atypical virgins; however, I wish there were better examples around. The young man interviewed, Leo Keliher, admitted that his father went to prison for child molestation, and his step-father later left his mother for a woman twenty-years younger. Even the journalist commented that it was not hard to understand his point of view. I’m not against this young man, or the testimony of his faith, but I wish the writer had found a TLR man whose celibacy could not be so easily psychologically explained.

The journalist does some gentle psychological analysis of the female TLR virgin, too. Janie Fredell hails from Colorado Springs (of course, there are no virgins from the urban Northeast). The article contrasts her eating habits (can you get more personal?) with the eating habits of the campus sex blogger. Fredell is tempted by the chocolate dessert, but then she decides against it. The campus sex blogger eats her dessert down to the last crumb. This could be the Rorsharch test of anecdotes: Would you prefer to be the sex blogger, who eats up life's pleasures without fear? Or the leader of the abstience club, who gains "good-girl points" by denying herself the fulfillment of her desires? Bonus question: Which woman does society more reward?

To me, it's a toss up as far as which woman is more rewarded these days. Women are supposed to be self-disciplined when it comes to food and exercise and libertine when it comes to sex, without being toooo libertine. No wonder we're confused: Are we supposed to obey our physical hungers, or not?

I'm not against self-discipline, but I have known enough women with eating disorders to speak up on behalf of God-given hunger --- our physical hungers are good; they remind us to eat, for one example, and we must eat to live. Our sexual desires are good; they reminds us, hopefully, that we need relationships to live, too. We are not only bodies, but we are not only souls, either. All of us seem to fall into one fallacy or the other, disregarding the body or the soul, but all of us are, unfortunately, in agreement that our bodies and souls are discrete units, separate parts. Disconnected. Which is why when Fredell confided that her boyfriend has said "conversations with [her are] more enjoyable than sex would be with anyone else," and she concludes that every woman "should have this 'incredibly moving experience' of being appreciated for who she really is," I hope that Fredell is someday also appreciated for the body she is, and for her hunger that is only hers.

As for the sex blogger, Lena Chen, who claims, "to say that I have to care about every person I have sex with is an unreasonable expectation," I hope that someday she listens to her soul and pursues her soul's hunger with as much boldness as she pursues the desires of her body.

And I hope the NY Times endeavors to give more balanced coverage of issues of sexuality, especially in regards to possibly-religiously-motivated sexual choices. I can always dream.

What the Dead Don't Need

2008-03-23T09:38:00.002-05:00

On Easter, here's a nice poem, "What the Dead Don't Need."

If you read it, remember: We have heard one voice back from the mystery of death, and He brings word of hope. Hallelujah, He is risen indeed!

Good Friday: A Poem by Christina Rossetti

2008-03-21T16:55:00.002-05:00

Good Friday

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon--
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

On Maundy Thursday: What God Can Do For Me

2008-03-20T18:38:00.002-05:00

“Every disciple and every company of disciples begin by wanting to give service. But every disciple and every company of disciples need to learn that their first duty is to let Christ serve them. Our first thought must never be, ‘What can I do for God?’ The answer to that is, ‘Nothing.’ The first thought must always be, ‘What would God do for me?’” — William Temple

My journal from the 10^th grade contains several prayers asking for God to reveal to me my vocation. I re-read bits of that journal recently, now a decade after writing it. I am not much closer to an answer than I was ten years ago. I may, in fact, be further away. It’s hard to tell.

I have prayed, fasted, filled out personality & career-type tests, consulted the experts and long-suffering friends, got a degree and a job and a resume. Still, this “figure out my vocation” process could easily last another ten years. The prayer for “guidance” and “clarity” has become my default prayer request, the presenting problem of many conversations. I wish, I wish, I wish I knew what God wants me to do.

It turns out I might be asking the wrong question. Okay, not the absolutely wrong question – I’m sure it’s not a bad idea to involve God on these sorts of big life decisions. It seems, though, that I’ve got the wrong priorities, that I have forgotten other, still important things. Like praying for someone besides myself, for instance. Or like laying down my questions to worship God.

Tonight I will try to remember what God has done for me, rather than wonder what He wants me to do for him. Appropriately, tonight is the night the church remembers the Last Supper, when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Peter, the disciple of Christ I most identify with in nearly every biblical story, refuses to let Jesus wash his feet in a show of humility and deference. “Oh no, Jesus,” he says. “This kind of thing is beneath you.”

But instead of giving Peter a prize, like we might expect, Jesus rebukes him. Jesus calls his humble bluff. “Peter does not want to be beholden to Jesus, to be in debt to him, to be utterly dependent on him,” writes Kim Fabricius in this excellent sermon. Of course, as creatures we are all dependant upon our Maker, for breath and food and forgiveness, despite our best pretenses to the contrary. Kim says Peter is not about deference and humility here at all; he is about keeping (an illusion of) control. I’ll be damned.

Like I said, I identify a lot with Peter. I admit it, I am also after control, not guidance. If I cannot plan my life, the next best thing would be for God to detail his plan for me year by year. I am also after productivity and usefulness and success; yes, I want recognition. I want God to tell me what I can do for Him. What only I could do for Him.

I remember my father say that he knew a certain television preacher was in trouble when the preacher said he did what he did because who else could do it? “God could raise up a homeless man off the street to do what you’re doing,” my dad retorted. “ Pride goeth before a fall.”

Yes, yes, God has a plan for everybody – I’m not going to stop asking God about my vocation altogether. It’s not that God doesn’t create you unique of all others to praise him – only you can offer God, well, you. It’s that it’s not about what you do. It’s not your cool job, or impressive work. It’s your surrender He wants. Your whole self. That’s the hard part. Performing a random act of kindness per day is easy. Surrender takes years.

Jesus modeled that surrender. He got on his hands and knees, doing a slave’s job, and washed his followers’ feet, dusty from the journey. The next day he surrendered his life to the Roman authorities and carried a cross. God did all that for me and for you. God would give us Himself again today, if only we would ask.

Note on Lack of Posts, Random Aside

2008-03-17T17:12:00.005-05:00

Lately I’ve been deliberating over a big decision. One of those “change the course of my life” decisions. The financially expensive kind. The emotionally huge. The long-awaited. I’m weighing significant opportunity costs.

Point being, I have not been in a mood to wax poetic on anything. I want to keep the deliberation process private, and since this decision consumes most of my mental energy, I don’t have much left to write about.

However, I will say this: It is time for a change. Whatever my hubby and I decide, our lives will be different. I’m ready to take a few more risks, check out the road less traveled, carpe diem, and all that jazz. I have a friend who quit his job to move to Mexico and do his art. He’s crazy, and I admire him for it. We have other friends spending this year in France volunteering on organic farms. I’ll pause while you process that one. … Of course, outdoor manual labor and foreign languages are not part of my personal fantasy, but I do dream of having the courage to make big changes, to be a little irresponsible in search of a bigger prize than security.

Meanwhile, I wonder if I’ll be next to get laid off from work, and I try not to aggravate my last major client. The down economy has not been kind to the direct mail industry.

My generation has been accused of having an entitlement complex. I would probably agree. We feel entitled to more happiness than a regular 9 to 5 offers, so we quit. We feel entitled to more fulfillment, or at least more money, than entry-level jobs ever supplied, so we complain endlessly – even if our entry-level job is actually in our preferred field (unlike mine). We have been told to follow our dreams; we were not told the road to our dreams is long and winding, paved with faithfulness at seemingly-unimportant, tedious, and thankless tasks. We want our lives to be marked by one applauded achievement after the next. Those of us who have entered the working world have suffered an abrupt surprise.

I hope I am not quite so bad as all that – and don’t believe most of my friends are, either. Even so, there is a grain or two of truth in the preceding paragraph’s generalization. I am greedy for meaning, fulfillment, and praise. I can “settle” for the meaning that living a Christian life gives, but I have to fight for that measure of contentment. I can look for fulfillment elsewhere than work, but that’s hard to do when I spend around 50 of my waking hours a week going to, surviving, and driving home from work. I can make do with a positive annual review, but if I never heard a “good job” at all, it would probably be rough.

Some of the Millennial Generation’s characteristics could be good. Our drive to find personal fulfillment might, in theory, make us more inclined to give back to our local communities and to our nation. I think Obama taps into that hunger, for instance, and “change the world” organizations like Teach for America have seen record applicants in recent years. On the other hand, an endless quest for personal fulfillment has also led to heightened consumerism and broken relationships – each friend, lover, or spouse left behind once one no longer feels fulfilled, like last year’s video game.

Whether or not I fit my larger sociological category, and whatever that might mean, it is clear that I need to do something I more enjoy. I’m not asking for my dream job, just one step closer to a career I would stay in for the long haul. It is a cliché to say that God only gives you light to see one step ahead, but, well, I believe that is what’s happening. I have not given up on all my Plans, but I have surrendered one more day, one more year, to God’s wisdom and care.

One day I hope to learn that I am not entitled to very much at all. I hope to trade all my disappointed entitlement for humble gratitude. It’s not a bad trade.

The Books That Made Me

2008-03-11T16:34:00.001-05:00

My friend recently asked a bunch of folks on her email list to give her the names of books they read as kids that impacted their faith. It got me to thinking.

For kicks, here’s a list of five fiction books I read before I turned 18 that impacted me (in semi-chronological order):

1. A Woman Named Damaris, by Janette Oak. I remember reading this in my “secret spot” in our yard when I was eight or nine years old. I devoured it. The plot, if I remember correctly, is about a mail-order wife who comes to Christ (I may be mixing up my Janette Oak novels here). The detail that still gets me is that the main character, Damaris, reads the Bible beginning in Genesis because she learns somewhere that she was named after a woman in the Bible. It takes her all the way into the New Testament before she finds the verse with her name, and all it says about her namesake is that she “also believed.” I was struck by the hunger Damaris had to find herself in God’s word. I could wax theological about that now; back then I was amazed and a little sorry for her that she had to read so much before she found what she was looking for. To think she read Leviticus, scouring the text for her name!

2. The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson. Anne Sullivan’s patience and persistence in teaching Helen Keller was, and is, impressive. I was also pretty horrified by Helen Keller’s childhood behavior. I was a much better-behaved kid. Ahem.

3. The Giver, by Lois Lowry. I read this in the 7th grade, my first dystopia. In my memory, the main character’s newly-experienced sexual desires play a much bigger role in the narrative. ANYWAY, this is a fantastic, chilling book. A young man is chosen to be the next Giver, special career in his society. The Giver carries all the memories from the past – from our world, where there is war and hunger and Christmas and snow. He learns about pain for the first time, but he also learns about love and honor and courage. He prefers our world, with all its mess, to his world, where everything is anesthetized and controlled. After reading his story, I do too.

4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. I started reading this book aloud, the way it was meant to be read, if you ask me, to my sister the summer I turned thirteen. Nothing can beat Huck’s decision to be a “low-down abolitionist” and not turn in his friend, runaway-slave Jim. Huck thinks he’ll go to hell for this decision, and he doesn’t care. I wished, reading it, I could jump into the chapter and reassure Huck that God wasn’t going to send him to hell, that he was making the right decision after all. As the Bible says, we’re so messed up we call good evil and darkness light. Sometimes the right thing is the opposite of what everybody says.

5. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I read this, for the first time, my freshman year of high school. I wanted to marry Atticus, or some combination of Atticus, my dad, and Tom Cruise (this was before he jumped the couch, people). Although I was never a tomboy, I understood Scout’s lack of enthusiasm about growing up and joining the ranks of women – if being a woman means I have to sit through women’s Bible society meetings and swallow whole the racism (or general unchristian-ness) of my “sisters.” No thanks. So my cynicism started early. The book has plenty of idealism, though. I’d read it again tomorrow.

With the possible exception of A Woman Named Damaris (unless you’re headed to the beach), I would recommend you all to pick one of these up. Happy reading. J

Personal Update

2008-02-11T17:38:00.001-06:00

I know, I know: Long time, no post. Here are the highlights from the last month or so:

Christmas at home in Tennessee. It was too short, but at least I got there. Our beloved family friend met my husband for the first time as the family gathered to open gifts at my grandparents’ house, and as the men shook hands he let my new hubby know how much I mean to him: “I probably don’t need to give you this speech,” he said, “but … these people are my family … just so you know … I’ve been to prison. I don’t mind going back.” J
A New Year’s Eve party for the books. If you must know, I talked nice to the past, said my goodbyes, and danced into the morning. I won’t forget you, 2007. God bless you, 2006. No hard feelings, 2005, and 2004, it’s water under the bridge.
I voted in one of the most exciting presidential primaries EVER. I’ve been reading quite a bit of the election coverage, not to mention checking in on Jon Stewart’s perspective, so politics has been consuming a considerable amount of my energy, of late. Much better than apathy, I have to say.
My first attempt at snow-skiing. “Snow-skiing” is how people from less-snowy areas of the country refer to skiing that is not done while being pulled behind a boat. I went cross-country skiing with my in-laws in Wisconsin, and it was actually kinda fun. I was good enough at it that I only fell down once, which is quite something given my paltry athletic skills.
Speaking of my [lack of] physical abilities, I have also taken up running. Ok, I have so far gone running twice, but that is more than I have done is quite some time. Also, my running outfit is super cute. J
Congrats to my former roommate Emily and her handsome fiancé Charles, and also to my cousin Abby and her betrothed, Kevin. Lotsa people getting hitched around here. I’m in support.

Hope ya’ll have had an alright start to 2008. Peace.

He came to bring us Viva, and that more abundantly.*

2007-12-19T11:58:00.001-06:00

Usually, I buy the cheapest paper towels on the shelf, and I feel a little bit like I don’t need to be buying paper towels at all — a voice inside me asks, “Aren’t these just the lazy man’s dish rag? You don’t want to do that much laundry, do you?”

“These paper towels are made from post-consumer recycled paper,” I mumble, in vain attempt to justify myself to myself as I drop the rolls of the off-brand paper towels into my basket. This is how my grocery shopping goes.

I have been trained to buy from the bottom shelf. I grew up believing VO5 shampoo and conditioner qualified to rank in the top tier of hair care products, since my mom’s hair always looked great. It wasn’t until I started buying my own shampoo that I realized I needed to nearly touch my toes to reach the VO5.

Mind you, I was never really poor — I would be misleading, not to mention insulting to those who have had to face the challenges and stunted expectations of true poverty, if I were to say otherwise. I always had clothes and food and a nice home, and I had a very sheltered childhood. The truth is closer to this: My parents started out with very little, but they generally lived within their means. By the time they had more, they had learned how to live well with little, and they spent the surplus pretty wisely. Their goal was never to keep up with the Joneses.

My parents made relatively few decisions on the basis of material wealth. My mother stayed home with us kids until I was ten (my sister was six), and she thereby forfeited untold thousands in salary (and likely lowered her lifetime salary potential as well). She does not regret her decision to stay home. My father quit his day job in 1993 so he could travel to Russia for weeks at a time and teach at makeshift Christian seminaries in an effort to build the church in the former Soviet Union. He worked nights at Service Merchandise and Target for a year or so before my uncle got him a job at an industrial supply company that would let him take that much unpaid time off and return to a job. He did not make much money during those years. He has spoken to me of many things in his life he wished he could do over differently, but the decision to go to Russia is not one of the things he would change.

It was in those first few years after my dad’s career change in 1993 when our family barely squeaked by. My mom returned to work, but her decade-long hiatus did not help her land a high-paying job. My dad worked for a few dollars above minimum wage, when he wasn’t spending money buying plane tickets overseas. My family moved into a two-bedroom apartment, and we stopped going out to eat. My mom bought us new clothes for school, but she wore the same pair of black stirrup pants multiple times a week to work, hating every thread.

Every once in a while, back then, a Christian man would bring us groceries. I don’t know how he met us, and I don’t remember his name. At the time, I didn’t understand what that meant for my family’s financial situation; I thought he was just a really nice guy. Which he was.

I loved the days when he would bring us groceries because we got to eat things we didn’t usually buy. Like, anything brand name. He brought Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and boneless chicken breasts and toothpaste that didn’t taste like glue. To top it all off, he brought Viva paper towels.

My local grocery store right now has a sale on Viva paper towels, $4.98 for a two-pack. I pay about $1 for each roll of the kind I buy, which makes Viva over twice as much. Until this generous man set the paper bags full of groceries on our dining table, I had not known paper towels as soft and thick as Viva existed. To this day, Viva paper towels say “luxury and opulence” to me. They say “underserved gift” and “God’s provision.” They mean a lot.

Despite the positive emotions they evoke, I don’t usually buy them. My life experiences have left me a conservative spender. I do not expect to make much more than I make now, ever. In fact, if anything, I expect to earn less later on, as irrational as that may sound, and I try to spend and save accordingly. My unconscious mind reckons you never know when you might be called to go to Russia, I guess.

Lately, my natural inclination toward frugality has been given a swift kick in the pants. I’ve been studying up on the best practices of personal finance, reading a lot of money blogs, revisiting Your Money or Your Life, and doing all sorts of calculations on how fast we can pay down our debt if we cut spending on x, y, and z. I really enjoy thinking this much about our money— I don’t find analyzing our monthly budget boring (weird, I know). I love how easily my long-term goals translate into concrete action I can accomplish today, and I feel much more motivated to work my job when I have clearly-defined goals I am trying to reach with each paycheck. Goodness knows I could always use more motivation to do my job.

Most of the money advice I have read comes down to a few basic principles: Spend less than you earn, for starters. Open a savings account and put money in it, for another example. The best advice, however, is to spend according to your values and goals. Your Money or Your Life goes on for pages on this point. It recommends writing down every penny you spend, and then asking yourself if you are willing to work x hours (or spend x amount of “life energy” in the book’s terms) for that latte/cd/sweater. It’s a somewhat depressing way of calculating your spending habits, but it’s truthful. The bottom line is that you should live with integrity, and that means you should spend according to your values.

Most of us are not comforted by the news that our bank account says more about our values than our words, best intentions, and heartfelt beliefs. Most of us, myself included, spend a lot of discretionary cash on things we do not highly value. Eating out for lunch does not give me anything I say I value — it offers neither more social interaction nor better quality food. It turns out that I value convenience at the rate of about $7 a day. Lately, I have made an effort to only eat out once a week, with some success. Of course, it’s not like I’m giving all the cash I’m saving to the Salvation Army.

The reality is that the choices we make with money are not always clear to us. Very few of us track every cent, and many of us are doing good just to pay all our bills. It is easy to go about life completely ignorant of where exactly all our money goes and daydreaming about how different our lives would be if only we had more money. Rarely do we see the possibilities we have with our current salary. We confuse our needs and wants and do not often consider the needs and wants of others. Rarely do we see a homeless mother right next to a new dvd, such that our options are obvious. It is easy to put poor people on the bottom shelf, where we don’t see them.

The more I examine my own spending habits, the more amazed I am at the man who brought us groceries. Remembering his gifts, I bought Viva paper towels with a red and green ornament pattern. That’s how I ended up crying at the kitchen sink the other day, thinking of Viva paper towels and Christmas, and how this nameless man gave some needy folks he didn’t know from Adam all the top shelf items. He gave the highest quality goods when he could have done nothing, or given discount items figuring we’d be grateful anyway and wouldn’t know better. I’m not saying it’s not worth giving what you can, even if it isn’t much, but I have not forgotten the man who brought us Viva.

In my memory he has no face — like God the Father, who I cannot see, who invites all the street people, the orphans and widows, the wayfarers, drug dealers and sex workers, the welfare moms, the disabled, who invites everybody in the world to his table to feast. Like God, who gave a needy bunch of folks who didn’t know him from Adam the very best he had. Like God, who gave us Jesus.

Merry Christmas.

*See John 10:10b (KJV), where Jesus says, “I am come that they might have life, and that more abundantly.”

Re: You have a chance to become a real man.

2007-12-12T18:03:00.001-06:00

I am quite relieved this afternoon for in my inbox I found an email from one “Dr. Beau Hopper” promising the answer to all of my hopes and fears.

I am told that I don’t please with my “device size.” I have been worried about all kinds of sizes, like my waist-to-hip ratio and the size of my savings account, so this news comes as no surprise.

“Chicks joke at you.” I assume here he’s referring to my friend Laura, who has a great sense of humor.
“Dont waste time you can solve this problem right now.” A regular Ben Franklin with his advice, this guy.
“Try our instrument en:largement and Chicks will love you sure enough.” Wait, what?
“I have tried! Now it is your turn to change your sexual life.” Oh.

Let me pause the levity here and pose a serious question: Which demon in hell is in charge of these emails?

***

These are called “email blasts” in the industry, by the way. I know because my company provides them, though hopefully not this one in particular. They are, as you could imagine, very, very cheap to send --- the biggest expense for the sender is the cost of the email addresses themselves. Obviously, this sender did not take advantage of the many options available to target their email blast to the appropriate demographic. Regardless, the sender only needs, say, a one percent response rate to make this email blast profitable.

Now that I think of it, these email blasts only differ from a whole-big-large percentage of the advertising we daily imbibe by virtue (or vice) of its directness. It’s nothing new to point out that most ads attempt to sell their product as a solution to a real or perceived deficiency --- and all the more effective if the deficiency is in the area of sexual prowess, which is right up there with wealth in its importance to the American public’s sense of self-worth. It’s like we have believed, deeply and automatically, the simple equation: Sexy = good. We had better perform well --- better than well, fantastically --- or we are deficient, laughable, not even worthy of inclusion in our gender.

Bullshit, I say. And I do not use the word lightly.

***

The other disturbingly-wrong thing about this email is its choice of euphemisms. Since when has any part of my body been accurately called a “device”? A device is something I use, like a tool or a machine; it is not a part of my body, much less part of me in any deeper sense. A secondary definition of “device” is a ploy: “A way of achieving something, especially a clever or dishonest way.” I don’t think either definition portrays a healthy view of our bodies whatsoever. Same deal with “instrument.” It sounds clinical here, not musical.

I realize the sender probably uses odd euphemisms to get past spam filters (it worked in my case), but I think the word choice reflects a larger societal assumption that we can beat our bodies into submission so that our bodies do our bidding, as if we truly are ghosts in machines --- it’s the same message I see in a lot of weight-loss adds. I’m not against self-control (I hope that’s obvious to my regular readers), but this attitude toward our bodies weirds me out. We need to make peace with our bodies, to be reconciled to this mortal coil. I know my body does not encompass all of me --- I do believe in the existence of the soul --- but as long as I am in this body, the only way to contact my soul is through this flesh. Even to speak to me requires my ear to pick up the vibrations of sound and transmit them to my brain. No part of me is separated enough from my soul to be talked about with such alienated, distanced terms as “device” and “instrument.”

Unless you are comparing me somehow to a clarinet. That would be nice.

***

So to that one percent tempted to respond to Dr. Hopper’s offer, I say, stop! Stay your hand! Reach not for your credit card! Click not on the link! Do not succumb to the manipulation of your insecurities and fears! Lies, damn lies, every word. This is not your chance to become a real man, despite what the subject line says. Unless you are a woman, like myself, who received this email in error, you are already a real man. I’ll admit my definition for “real manhood” is a little fuzzy, but I am certain your device size has nothing to do with it. Delete this email blast, and do not look back.

He's got a point there.

2007-12-07T11:26:00.000-06:00

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

A Reflection on One Bit of Pre-Marital Advice

2007-12-05T17:37:00.001-06:00

Take it from the newlywed: I’m sure there are pros and cons to every decision we make, but often when we talk of marriage and family, we seem to put all the cons in the marriage/family column and all the pros in the other.

At some point in life, the scales may shift, and having a family may begin to seem worth the trouble. This point does not generally occur until at least age thirty, or so I would believe if I listened to some people I know. Ahem.

Before I got married, I was told to consider what this commitment would cost me. I’m not saying this was unwise advice. I admit that keeping my marriage will cost me a lot, probably.

Unfortunately, since time-travel technology has not yet become viable for the consumer market, I have no way of knowing the future; therefore, I have no means of conducting a cost-benefit analysis that factors all the variables. There are many things I do not know.

But the problem with the future is that it is no more accessible to single people. I didn’t know what remaining single would have cost me, either.

I’m no good at driving the DeLorean, but I have messed up enough to know better than to pass up a good man who I love, who loves me.

Just a thought.

A Meta-Blog Post, Feedback Welcome

2007-12-03T17:13:00.000-06:00

I started this blog almost two years ago. It wasn’t even my idea — my boyfriend at the time talked me into it. It took me a few months to find my voice and even longer to figure out what kinds of things to post. It has evolved for the better, and I have learned along the way. All of this is to say that I’ve been thinking about making some changes.

For instance, I am brainstorming for a new title. “Mentionables” is not descriptive enough, and it never was all that clever. I’ve been having a time coming up with a title that expresses what this blog has come to be about — my life and my faith, mostly. I also feel I need new copy for the subhead explanation of this blog. I might, maybe, change the “about me” section, too — except that I have such a sentimental attachment to the college friend who called me The Pledge, I may not.

At some point I started blogging more and more about Jesus. It seems I can’t get away from Him. I enjoy writing the faith-themed posts, since my faith is, after all, the central facet of my life. Hence quite unintentionally, I have stumbled upon a theme. This is more an observation, a statement of fact, than an example of a change in content (at least, not a recent change).

This observation has precipitated a change in how I view my blogging hobby, however. See, when I first started out, I blogged to keep in touch with people. I blogged out of my loneliness, out of my need to have someone to talk to. Now, many of my closest friends and relations do not read my blog, and I have handful of new readers that I have never met. I write blog posts now because I love writing and can’t help myself. I am more interested now in encouraging others in their faith (hopefully in Christ J) than I am in letting my long-distance friends know I bought a new couch (or whatever).

I have found writing on this blog to be one of my most satisfying “extracurricular” activities. Though I have outgrown some aspects of this site, I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Therefore, you will probably start seeing some new things here in the near-ish future.

SO: Any feedback you, dear reader, may have on what you like, don’t like, or how I might improve this blog, including suggestions for a more-descriptive title, would be appreciated.

Thank you. Thank you.

2007-11-22T13:05:00.000-06:00

I talk a lot on this blog about my anger, about the difficulty of trusting God and of believing all the stuff we Christians are supposed to believe. I try, in those kinds of posts, to bring it back around to hope. I must admit, however, that I have not found hope all alone. With that admission, I thought I should take this Thanksgiving to honor, in brief, a few people who have reminded me of God's love, encouraged me to keep the faith, and helped me along.

So I would like to thank the Vineyard pastor, who put his hand on my shoulder and interrupted his prayer to say, "On behalf of all ministers, I'm sorry."

Thanks also to Sallie and Karen, who model for me faithful women, full of the Holy Spirit, who do not fit anybody's mold, but who have grown up enough in Christ not to care.

Thank you, Father Reed, for acknowledging the craziness of God's words, and encouraging me to read the Bible anyway. Thanks for always urging your listeners to give the Word, meaning both the holy words and Jesus himself, another honest look.

Many, many thanks to the Russian Christians, to Roman and Natasha, Alexai and Zenya, to all those precious brothers and sisters, whose Jesus I have not been able to forget.

And thanks, of course, to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so holy and high and yet nearer to me than I am to myself.

There are many other people to thank; too many to list. I have all the usual people, like my family, always there, and my friends, so forgiving. I am thankful for my new family, my husband and his kinfolk, with whom I am spending this holiday. Later, I will eat lots of turkey, and I'll be thankful for that, too.

God bless you, dear readers. I'm thankful for you taking the time to stop by and read a bit. You are always welcome.

It's a good day.

Plans Smans: I have learned that being lost may be God's mercy.

2007-11-18T01:30:00.000-06:00

Tonight I am having one of those long talks with Jesus. I say a few things, straight as an arrow, and I wait. Some of my words fall to the ground, some come back to me like a boomerang. I listen some more, and when I get real, real quiet, I know He is there.

My friend described a decade-long spiritual wilderness, a span of years when she did not hear God speak to her but once. She said she heard Jesus, in her inner ear, explain that He could not turn His face to her. For if He did, she could not bear His love.

I am not exactly in a spiritual wilderness of that kind, but it did come to mind. I have been wandering, that's for sure, for a few years --- whether this place I am in is a wilderness, well, you can judge. I have gotten the feeling, more than once, that I am going in circles, going nowhere...that I will never find the place I belong. I am like the ancient Israelites, doubting their Deliverer at every turn, complaining of His provision of bird and bread.

In theory, the Israelites did know where they were going, even if it did take them forty years to get there. I can't even claim that. I have no destination that I know of (other than heaven, I should say). I'm just going, hoping that along the way I'll figure out why I keep putting one foot in front of the other. One day, I figure, I'll find the end of this path.

This going is actually a sign of improvement --- it means somewhere I have learned a small bit of patience. Somewhere, I have picked up hope. I am going, at least. There is that.

Being lost isn't all bad. Let me elaborate. A few years ago, I was much more sure of where I was going. But just because I was sure about it doesn't make it the right place for me to go. More and more, I am glad I was waylaid. So while I have lost certainty, I have not, necessarily, gone off course. Had I done everything I had planned ... God help me.

Surely, God has protected me from my own plans.

The same friend who endured the ten-year near-silence of God asked me recently, "What does God want from us?" After a couple Sunday-school surface-y answers, I said, "He wants us to be whoever He created us to be." Then she asked, "Who did God create you to be?" And I didn't know.

I said I didn't know. The truth is closer to I was afraid to say. All of my answers seemed dumb or insensible. I was full of self-correction and rejection, halting my tongue from proclaiming myself to be what I should know full well I can't ever be, what I will inevitably fail at being, what I should not even attempt to become. I said I didn't know because my first internal reaction was to deem all of my answers wrong.

Forgive me if this is getting abstract and hard to follow. The point here is that not knowing all the answers is better than knowing the wrong answers, and that the upshot of complete uncertainty is that it offers the opportunity to ask important questions again, and listen this time.

Maybe not all my answers are idiotic. I am still investigating. So far in my investigation, I have discovered (remembered) that Jesus loves her. He loves the me that I think absolutely stupid and pitiful; He loves the me I hide, the self only He knows. Sure, God loves the me I parade to the world, too. But the mind-altering truth, the crazy talk truth, is that Jesus --- He loves her. He created her, even her, from the beginning, and He has loved her ever since.

God save me from the false answers. God protect me from my own plans.

In college, I remember saying, "I didn't know who I was, but God did, and He sent me here." When I get where I'm going, I hope to be able to say that again.

Lessons I Have Learned From Dumb Jobs

2007-10-29T13:06:00.001-05:00

My company recently underwent a major re-structuring. To my surprise, the company hogs very kindly created a new position for an older worker whose prior position had been moved to a sister company some distance away. I talked to this man, our new daytime custodian, and he seems to enjoy his new job. He has much more freedom to order his daily tasks as he pleases, he reports to a good boss, and he even has a cubicle with his name on it, probably for the first time in his life. I am grateful for his sake; he surely deserves it. He rides the bus two hours every morning to empty my trash, and then he rides two hours home to his wife. He said, “I’m just happy to be working.” Only a few years ago, he bought his own home. Knowing him troubles my pride and discontent.

I hope I have learned a few things from my time at Imaginative Mechanization (name changed to protect my job status), so if I may, I’d like to share a few lessons.

Lesson #1: Be Grateful

I have hitherto been sheltered and blessed far beyond my recognition. My luxurious college education of engaging intellectual activity and voluminous free time is not a life experience most people of the world share. For that matter, the life I live now, the job I complain about, all this isn’t so bad, not in the big scheme of things. My cubicle prison cell with my name on the wall nonetheless affords me ample money to meet my needs. If my husband and I were certain we would stay in this area, we could start looking to buy a house. My neighborhood is safe, my financial situation is secure, my closet and cupboards are full, and my bed is warm.

Lesson #2: Just Work The Job

Any job. Any job at all. The first three jobs I worked after graduation paid me $10/hour or less. I worked part-time at a tutoring center, part-time at JC Penney, part-time at Trader Joe’s. Eleven months after I earned my bachelor’s degree, I landed a job that paid the bills (all by itself!). I got to the point where I would take almost any job that would pay me money. I could not afford to be too proud to work (and probably, neither can you). I have learned, somewhat painfully, that I have been taught, in all my emotional and economic privilege, to expect unrealistic levels of fulfillment from employment. My friend Stephanie is right to call this thirst for fulfillment a kind of greed. So I would say to others in similar positions: Pace yourself. Just work the job, any job. Start small. Learn now, while you’re a cashier, that your job does not define you, and find fulfillment elsewhere. I have a wonderful husband. I enjoy my friends. I volunteer at church.

Lesson #3: Patience Is Your Secret Weapon

Most importantly, never, ever-ever give up. Discouragement wreaks havoc on your work performance (trust me), and it contributes to more and more expenditures on stuff you don’t need as a “reward” for all your drudgery. Don’t give up. Patience is hope in daily doses. Keep applying to other jobs. Save your money. Get it into your head that eventually, somewhere, a better job will hire you. Or, eventually, you will have saved enough money to live off your investments. Point being, other options will reveal themselves. Time is on your side. So is God.

Anyone else have some wisdom to add to this list?

NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month 2007

2007-10-23T17:42:00.001-05:00

I’m doing it. I don’t know that I’ll finish, but I’m doing it. It is NaNoWriMo, a challenge to write 50,000 words of fiction in one month. It’s not a contest to see whose babble is most readable. It’s all about output, and the only tangible prize is some kind of certificate. So this November, with little to gain and nothing to lose, I shall cast off my perfectionism, forsake the delete key, and write…like, one-thousand-six-hundred-and-sixty-six words per day. We’ll see how it goes.

I admit this here for that added little bit of accountability, and perhaps, some fellow November novelists. (Cindy, you should totally check this out.)

"To His Coy Mistress" Makes For Better Reading, But Hey...

2007-10-23T14:59:00.000-05:00

This is old news, but I post on it by special request. According to this article from the New York Times, some researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have created a list of 237 reasons, culled from nearly 2,000 students, of why they had had sex. There was quite a wide range of responses. The findings were published in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, and it was touted as the most thorough taxonomy of human sexual motivations, EVER. Already, they’ve added 40 more.

So why do people have sex? You may be surprised. A few outliers claimed to have been trying to conceive a child. Others said, curiously, that they “wanted to end the relationship.” (Taking notes from Rachel on Friends who said sex was a good way to say goodbye, perhaps?) Some downplayed their own volition: “It just happened,” “My hormones were out of control,” “It is my genetic imperative,” and “I was drunk.”

I felt sorry for some of the respondents, purely on the basis of the pitiful honesty of their answers, like those who said, “I wanted to be popular.” Or, “I wanted my partner to notice me.”

I wondered how many people got what they wanted from sex. Did it make their partner stick around? Did they feel closer to God? Did they get over their ex? Get the raise? Fall asleep? It’s probably too simple, I would think, to boil down anyone’s motivation to a single reason. There could be layers. For that matter, there may be as many different reasons as there are people.

(Note: This has led to a follow-up quest for all the reasons people say no.)

Anyway, I was struck at how rarely anyone said she had sex because she wanted her partner. A sad amount of the respondents seemed to use the other person as a means to an end --- or inadvertently confessed to being used. My instincts do not question the findings, mind you, but I don’t like the conclusions.

I’m not saying that it’s not okay to have sex sometimes like scratching an itch, but --- well, this is why I’m married. Marriage makes sex safer (not just in the way your health teacher was talking about). I’m trying to say that it’s different if I had sex with my husband because I was horny than if I had sex with some casual friend because I was horny. My husband would probably not feel used, or confused by my mixed messages, or hopeful I was falling for him, or afraid I was getting too close. It wouldn’t be about the other guy that just dumped me, or the woman he wished I was. My husband would just be happy, and neither one of us would regret anything a week later.

This is the way marriage makes sex less meaningful, and wonderfully so. The future of our relationship isn’t riding on the success or failure of any encounter. It’s not a test of our compatibility. It doesn’t prove he really loves me; it doesn’t mean he’ll stick around. All that has already been said. All that has already been decided.

I recognize that all marriages aren’t that good, and that my experience may not resonate with all married people. I know my marriage will go through stages, changes, and cycles, some for the better and some for the worse, and I will not always feel the same. I trust that if the meanings shift, and if my feelings wander, those changes will not all end up for the worse; I trust that the better bits will always be on the way. For my trust has been given and taken, a matter of public record, on God’s watch, and it is He who protects me.

So there you have it: My first post-wedding post on sexuality.

Earnest: Not to be confused with Ernest, the idiot from the movies.*

2007-10-14T21:57:00.000-05:00

As I can't resist any article with "writer," "sex," or "abstinence" in the title, let alone all three, I found myself distracted from cleaning by this piece from the NY Times. The reason I am posting now, however, is because of this description of evangelical Christian Mr. Burtt, director of an abstinence education program, by the featured author Mr. Perrotta:

As he prepared to drive back to his mother’s house, Mr. Perrotta said he was struck by how courteous and nonconfrontational Mr. Burtt had been. Over all, he said, evangelical Christian culture seems mostly polite, as well as extremely un-ironic. In response, “a certain kind of collegiate irony is like a reflex,” Mr. Perrotta said. “And it’s a reflex of superiority and condescension. It just wells up. But when I write, I try to quiet it down.”

I agree that one of the earmarks of evangelical culture is its relentless earnestness. We Christian people are very sincere, and I believe when we are we are at our most faithful. Maybe belief in God does that to you, though why it does would depend on your point of view.

Mr. Perrotta comes from a non-religious point of view, and he candidly calls irony a "reflex of superiority and condescension." He's right, and this irony reveals his knee-jerk assessment of the source of Mr. Burtt's earnestness: a naive simpleness, a gullibility like that of a child, an ignorance of the facts, or a willful blindness.

On the other hand, I find it interesting and vaguely encouraging that Mr. Perrotta seems so taken aback by this Christian's un-ironic presence. He seems unnerved, regretful of his reflex reaction, but uncomfortable with responding in kind.

Mr. Perrotta responds with irony, I think, also because irony is both shield and weapon. It protects him from engaging seriously with this Christian's beliefs and person. It allows Mr. Perrotta not to take any strong stand for or against Mr. Burtt's program, and in this way may be as close as he could get to politeness. Irony does not believe, and it doesn't offer its opponent the dignity of open disagreement, either. It's a useful weapon precisely because it's hard to argue with. It's not an argument as much as a joke.

Though this example contrasts a Christian believer versus a non-believer, I don't think irony is simply a non-religious thing. I think it's second nature to a certain breed of intellectual, to people educated above the silly little beliefs and debates of the tv-watching, fast food-eating, Bush-voting masses. These are people who know better. Irony takes a level of refinement, of subtlety. It's an inside joke among those who perceive themselves to be in enlightened agreement.

I'll be frank: I hate irony. I get tired of it after about three minutes. I would rather have an honest discussion, but the ironic person can be hard to pin down. It's hard to know what she believes, if anything at all. Underneath irony is a heap of nihilism, if you ask me. Everything is funny because nothing is for real.

Christians are not nihilists. We are serious about life, and we're not prone to irony. It's not that we don't have any sense of humor. It's that every week we stand in a room with a bunch of other human beings and confess aloud what we believe.

True, our earnestness does have it's downsides. It does make us more gullible, more vulnerable to manipulation, and in certain cases, more dogmatic. These liabilities, however, would not be solved by more irony in our ranks. And at the end of the day, I would rather be earnest, with all its possible problems, than ironic. What can I say? I believe.

*I think Ernest serves as a pretty okay example of how some people would characterize earnest people. The character first appeared in tv commercials, used to increase someone else's bottom line. He was always in a denim vest and baseball cap, marks of his backwoods, working class status. He had good intentions, but he was dumb and rather annoying. His catch-phrase was, "Know whut I mean?"

As All Fridays Are Good...

2007-10-05T00:03:00.000-05:00

We celebrate with a poem by Denise Levertov, "Suspended":

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.

Book Review: "Confessions of a Good Christian Girl"

2007-10-03T16:47:00.000-05:00

I am a pastor’s daughter. To some people, this means I must be a good Christian girl. I must be innocent and naïve, sweet and soft. I must be fragile given the way some people have touched me with white gloves --- apologizing for their speech, for every harsh word. They expect me to be happy, serene, generous…dull, in a most holy way. Such delicate treatment does not mean they like me, which took me some time to figure out and probably took you no time at all.

As a child there were times I would not ask for prayer because a pastor’s daughter was not supposed to need any, or so I thought. I was supposed to have it all together. At some point, I reversed this habit, thank God, and spent a couple years asking for prayer every Sunday, whether I had a pressing need or not. Looking back, it seems like the moment I gave up on being a “good Christian girl,” I became one.

To this day, I chafe under pressure to be some sparkling image of a “biblical woman” (not Delilah, I assume?) rather than simply being the female Christ-follower I am. Preachers opining on the “Proverbs 31 woman” make me tempted to disembowel myself with a knitting needle. It’s too easy to hear “you’re not good enough” rather than anything resembling the Gospel.

Listening to the Church sometimes, I would doubt my gender. I don't cook that well, I don't sew at all, I don't have much experience with children, and I only know about two ways to do my hair. Also I probably have too many opinions. And those are just the superficial mars on my Christian womanhood. Let alone the deeper troubles that make me fall short of the Christian Feminine Ideal, like my anger. I don’t have it all together, despite years of trying. I don't feel like I fit the mold.

The mold doesn't fit many people, pastor’s daughter or not. In fact, I have come to believe that most images of The Christian Woman are about as close to reality as the images of The Beautiful Woman I see on billboards around town. Knowing this does not always make it easier, not when the images I see question my identity, my inner truth: If I do not fit the definition of Christian Woman, what kind of freak of nature am I?

Like I said, I have a history of trying to keep my freakiness under wraps, but I'm reading a book that sets out to expose me. It's called Confessions of a Good Christian Girl, by Tammy Maltby (Thomas Nelson), and it's subtitled, "The secrets women keep and the grace that saves them." I was first introduced to the book when I caught a bit of the author's interview on Moody Bible Radio --- I was ordering my lunch from the drive-thru at Wendy’s (yes, I listen to Midday Connection on WMBI). Ms. Maltby was fantastic. She managed to be very evangelical and very loving toward people (and other freaks of nature) whom the church often does little but alienate and condemn. She pushed the church’s limits of compassion. I nearly cried, and that was just a few minutes time on my lunch break.

So, I bought the book on our honeymoon (we spent one full afternoon at the local Barnes and Noble). Every chapter she explores a different problem that plagues "good Christian girls," including chapters on depression and suicide, sexual brokenness, divorce, addiction, mental illness, and perfectionism. She tells story after story of women in pain, failure, confusion, and fear, and somehow she ends up being amazingly encouraging. She is empathetic, transparent, down-to-earth, and emphatic that in Christ there is hope.

Despite the heavy topics, a lot of the book is fluffy, and I have skimmed whole passages (she closes each chapter with the story of a female biblical character she ties in to the chapter’s theme, which is OK, but tries my patience). Many of my favorite parts are sidebar quotes she collected from other writers.* Nonetheless, the parts I actually read bring me to tears.

I commend Ms. Maltby chiefly for her two basic assumptions: (1) The sinning and suffering women she describes are still Christians; Christ has not left them, and neither should we. (2) Pat answers and Christian clichés do not have the power to heal; the healing of some wounds takes years, some are the thorn in our side for the rest of our lives. But still there, in the thick of our problems, we have Jesus. She calls him our "moment-to-moment God."

The great thing about being real --- pretending less, admitting weaknesses more, accepting yourself as a sinner saved by grace --- is that it allows the truth of God to enter your life. This plunge into authenticity (what might have originally been meant by “confession”) means that Jesus can finally reckon with who you actually are. He did not come to find good Christian girls. He came for us.

*Example of cool sidebar quote: “As one who society and the church have always invited to the table, I hope those of you who at best have only received the crumbs will not wait for people like me to include or welcome you to the table. Take a chair. You are already there. Those who would deny you do not have the authority to exclude. It’s not their table. Your uninvited presence points out the obvious. God reigns. You are the Gospel. Be cheeky. Live it with authority. We’ll get used to it.” ~ Clay Nelson

My Religion Down In the Polls, Jesus Holding Steady

2007-10-03T12:52:00.001-05:00

Christianity should fire its pr manager and start over. This is widely known. Recently, the Barna Research Group has confirmed it: Jesus and the Bible aren’t so bad, but contemporary Christianity should really try to calm itself down, or so goes popular opinion. Says Time Magazine,

Nine out of ten outsiders found Christians too "anti-homosexual," and nearly as many perceived it as "hypocritical" and "judgmental." Seventy-five percent found it “too involved in politics.”

According to Barna, the number of people with a “bad impression” of Christianity has increased since a similar poll was conducted in 1996. Frankly, I am surprised the Church’s numbers were so good in 1996 – it’s not like any of our problems are that new. The wheat and the chaff have been mixed together since the beginning, and we won’t be straightened out till the end of time. Why so much bad press now?

Those searching for an explanation have many to blame. The Bush Administration has not helped. Christian television may do more harm than good. The recent spat of pedophile priests and wayward mega-church pastors has not built confidence in current church leadership. The Anglicans are divorcing each other. And those are only the people who make the news.

When I think of “Christianity,” I don’t feel warm fuzzies either. I don’t even like church most of the time. I have some bad associations. But when I leave politics and abstractions, old betrayals and bitterness behind, when I try to count the blessings of my life, I remember my old Sunday School teachers Pam and Dwight and Bonnie. I remember youth workers like Steve and Pam and Peggy. I remember the prison chaplain named Marty who took my family fishing and the missionary Donna who made cookies in our kitchen. The number of friends and family who have prayed for me are beyond my recollection --- and some have prayed for me for years. I cannot forget the steadfast faith of my family, and I can still hear my grandfather saying, “Well, if God can put up with them, I guess I can too.”

As you can tell, I have been in the church for a long time. Raised in it, a pastor’s daughter, a third-generation Pentecostal, educated at a Christian college --- in short, I am no stranger to the cruelty of Christian people. But I do know One that sticks closer than a brother, and He is love. Jesus does better in the polls than his followers, and it’s easy to understand why.

Lord, forgive me for all the ways I fail to remind others of your love. Deliver me from self-righteousness, from my persistent pride, from my haughty need to act as teacher to others from whom I should instead be taught. Forgive me, and make me the kind of follower that may be used to draw others toward You, rather than the kind of follower others apologize for, an embarrassment to your Name. May I spread hope instead of cynicism, desire for Your Spirit instead of disillusionment, healing instead of disease. Free me from my slavery to public opinion, that I may serve you whole-heartedly, without hesitation and without shame. In the name of Your Son, the only perfect human in history, Amen.

Looking on the bright side, wearing sunglasses

2007-10-02T18:11:00.001-05:00

Looking on the bright side makes my eyes squinty.

To be honest, overly-optimistic people tend to irk me. They elicit my bitterness and my distrust: What sheltered existence could possibly support such insipid cheeriness? Has your life been so easy? Are you playing me for a fool? I have been called a pessimist. I protest that I’m realistic.

I get upset in the presence of such happy faces partly because I have had to fight to feel all my emotions, to tell my personal truth, and being with people to whom everything is hunky-dory does not help me. My personal truth ain’t always that great.

“No really, my job sucks. It’s horrible,” I want to say. Or, “Actually, he was completely insane.” Instead, I bite my tongue, nodding my head to something about a silver lining.

Ok, I admit: I enjoy the wallowing. The energy of my anger! The creativity of my angst! Sometimes I don’t really want to be consoled. Silver lining be damned.

I do have a point, though, bigger than my self-pity (granted that has to be pretty big). My point is that my Christianity does not preclude me from pain --- from feeling grief, disappointment, anger, loneliness and loss. I believe I should be allowed to express those feelings --- as negative and uncomfortable as they may be.

Good Christian people get nervous, sometimes, about the sad and brutal truths because we don’t have an explanation for how the loving God we know fits with that sad, brutal reality. Some of us are quick to respond to those in dark and narrow places with nothing but a match and a scripture verse, and though usually unhelpful, this response is so very sincere. They speak too soon. They mean to be encouraging, but I think they are more often afraid, and they’re simply seeking a way to lighten the mood as quickly as they can. Too much sadness might overturn their faith. Too much darkness might snuff out the light.

Our fear that God will be overwhelmed by the darkness in and around us feeds our attempts to bypass tough emotional work in favor of miracle fixes (or complete and utter denial). We try to stay in the light, happy places, on the bright side, where we think Jesus is, instead of pushing our way through the night. My friend Sallie gives retreats all over the country for sexual-abuse survivors, and she begins many of her retreats by passing out kitschy Jesus band-aids. “That’s what you came for,” she says, cheekily. The lesson is not that Jesus does not heal, but that His healing power is more like that of chemotherapy than that of a band-aid. The healing of deep wounds, the wounds that would rob you of your life, takes deep commitment, perseverance, bravery and often professional help. Any quick solution would be merely superficial. As a wise old preacher once said, “The only way out is through.”

I should not fear my God will get weak in the knees walking with me on my journey through the night. My God is Jesus, and he has been to hell and back, and he can handle all the evil, all darkness in me, all the bad in the world. I don’t like “looking on the bright side” --- It feels too much like pretending, like faking an orgasm. It seems counter-productive. I do promise to keep my eye on the Light, my Jesus. Though I go through the valley of the shadow of death, where there is no light, I will fear no evil: He is with me.

He is with us, friends, even when we cannot see him, even when we cannot make out a dim outline of his face. We may not be able to feel his touch, or the breath of his spirit brushing by us. The darkness may be too much for us. It is never too much for God.

T-Rex, I am here for YOU.

2007-09-26T22:35:00.000-05:00

(Click to enlarge.)

As All Fridays Are Good, We Celebrate with a Word from Martin Luther:

2007-09-14T17:12:00.001-05:00

"I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess."

My Client Calls a Few Things into Question

2007-09-06T19:54:00.000-05:00

Today I told my boss, "I know I'm known as this laid-back, calm person, and I am calm, but that just means I'm a ticking time bomb. I'm just calm until I am no longer calm. And if this client keeps talking to me like this, I'm going to have to start hanging up the phone."

It was one of those days.

Tonight I would like to write about a lot of things. I would like to rant about work, about the evil that comes when the customer is always right, about how I'd like to defend my dignity, about the way my stomach falls when the phone rings and it's her. I would like to reference the articles analyzing our generation as whiny people difficult to motivate, job-hoppers who demand constant positive affirmation. I don't want to be the stereotype of my peers; I want to work as a matter of personal pride and integrity. I criticize others who apparently consider themselves too good or too proud to work, and I try to remember some of my coworkers, like Lee, who takes the bus two hours to empty my trash and says he is glad to have a job. But all I want from my clients is a little credit, a little respect, a little trust and appreciation. An A-plus, for instance. A thank you.

I would also like to write about my new Listening Growth Group, which is some kind of Christian prayer thing. Exactly one month from today, on the first Thursday of October, four other women and I will sit around, listen to each other, and pray. We will do this for two hours on the first Thursday of every month through June. This could help me, I think. Just being listened to can be miracle enough. And to direct our words and rants to Jesus -- oh Lord, forgive the days I give you the silent treatment. You hear even my silence. You hear the prayer I don't say. You know it before the sentences form in my mouth. Thank you.

I wondered, on my way home from work, how my client talks to God, because I remember she took a couple days off for a church retreat. Does she speak to God with the same rudeness when things don't go as she planned? Does she talk to Him like an incompetent ant when He does not answer her questions, when He does not tell her what she wants to hear?

I don't have to tell you that half or more of what you say is in the way you say it. The tone is everything. I hope, when I address God, I remember this. But I realize now, oh God, I am not mindful. My words and my tone sound painfully familiar.

Like my client, at the slightest provocation, the smallest worry, I begin to assail you, Jesus, with a long list of complaints new and old, interrogating you about how exactly you are going to do what you promised, refusing to let you work and get back to me regarding all my concerns. "Have you read all my instructions?" I ask. "You need to meet with the Father and the Spirit and determine who will be responsible to read my emails," I say. In a panic I ask, "Are you aware of the schedule?" On those days, you might have preferred my silence. And yet somehow you have not hung up on me.

Jesus, forgive me. Forgive me. You deserve no little amount of credit. You deserve a lot of respect, a lot of trust, loads of appreciation. You are doing a good job, and it has nothing to do with me --- you do good work as a matter of your personal pride and integrity, simply because of who you are. Not because I make it easy for you. And though I may act like one, you have a point that I'm not actually your client. I'm not your customer, and I am not always right. I am your child. And whether I berate you or ignore you, you keep working on my behalf. You have a plan, a way of making everything happen right on time, and I can calm myself with that assurance.

I joined the Listening Group so I would have people to whom I can talk about myself, my problems, my questions and fears and dreams. Probably I should learn to listen to You. That may be miracle enough.

The One* Thing We Did On Our Honeymoon

2007-08-27T21:19:00.000-05:00

A week ago Friday my husband and I toured Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. It’s a swanky place, to the say the least, and the majestic home sits on a hill surrounded by picturesque mountains and gorgeous gardens. We parked at the bottom of the hill and jumped on a shuttle to the top — a ride that took visitors to Jefferson in the early days of our nation an hour and a half.

The longer the driveway, my friends, the bigger the estate. Needless to say, Mr. Jefferson had started out with some hefty financial resources. He seemed to have inherited most of it — at least, he inherited most of his slaves. Around two-hundred of them.

He also had a library of upwards of seven-thousand books, including volumes in English, French, and Latin. He taught himself Spanish reading Don Quixote. He was no dim bulb of a man. The first 6,400 books he donated to what became the Library of Congress. At his death, he had accumulated fifteen-hundred more.

Perhaps even more astonishing for his time was his collection of maps and globes. Not to mention his clock that keeps seconds, minutes, hours, and days (when most people told time by the sun). He had a “polygraph,” an early copy machine of sorts, and he had the 18th century’s version of automatic doors — two close when you pull one shut. He obviously enjoyed learning, and he had the money to indulge in his every interest and eccentricity. He abhorred the inefficient use of space, so he built his bed into the wall — a bed exactly half an inch longer than his body. He liked octagons, so for fun he built one bedroom with eight sides.

In sum, it was an interesting tour. But most interesting, to me, was how Thomas Jefferson was portrayed for the public imagination. The image of Jefferson was nearly spotless — patriot, genius, statesman, writer of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the University of Virginia. The obvious question was raised only to be put to one side, “follow me to the next stop on the tour, please”: How could such a man own slaves? Let alone father children by a slave woman in a relationship with such an imbalance of power that suggestions of “mutual consent” are rendered untenable.

When Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings and the paternity of her six children came up on the tour, the tour guide admitted that it was “highly possible” that at least Heming’s youngest son was fathered by Jefferson, and it was possible some or all of her older children were Jefferson’s as well. The tour guide was quick, however, to say that the “real question” was not paternity but how a man who wrote that “all men are created equal” and called slavery an “abominable crime” could own slaves himself. He was a man of great contradictions, of inner conflict. A man who did not live up to his own high ideals.

Jefferson embodies many American ideals, and he reflects how we like to see ourselves. It’s not that the glorious image of Jefferson is false; he was brilliant and brave. It’s that this lofty image contains a sad truth. We would like to think someone so brilliant and so brave would also be good; we would like to believe that he would not fail us in one of the most tragic matters of American history, that he would do something to stop the suffering of generations of American citizens. Hence, we talk a lot about the contradictions; we try to explain that really he was well-intentioned, just misguided and human. At base he was innocent. It’s a mystery, apparently, why he would own slaves, when all of his dearest beliefs would seem to argue for abolition.

The literature at Monticello called the tour down Mulberry Row, where many of the slave quarters originally stood, the “Plantation Community Tour.” A nice euphemism if there ever was one. A sign in front of what once was the home of no telling how many slaves said that generations of African-American families lived there, which is true right until those families were broken up and sold to pay his debts. Yes, see, Jefferson died with the bill collectors calling…perhaps a clue to why he freed only a handful of slaves.

The existence of slavery calls on the carpet the entire American enterprise; it makes a joke of the colonists’ campaigns for freedom; it unsettles our American self-image; it complicates our claim to a righteous cause. It hinders our ability to believe in earnest the ideals on which our nation’s foundation is said to have been laid.

For Jefferson to get up in arms over “taxation without representation” remains as horribly ironic today as it was then: He taxed the life out of his slaves, and he did not vote in their best interest, nor allow the slaves themselves to do so. It makes one wonder if the “all men are created equal” stuff was just a handy bit of rhetoric. It’s possible, I’m saying, that Jefferson was not that conflicted, that when he wrote “all men are created equal” he meant simply all “men,” not including his human property, or it’s possible that he simply did not mean it much at all. Looking back over two-hundred years, we may see contradictions Jefferson did not.

I am glad he wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” I find it inspiring and moving, and I mean that sincerely. It was still a bold move, a radical claim for the 1770s, whatever it was that Jefferson meant. God bless Jefferson — his words gave later abolitionists and civil rights workers useful ammunition in that other fight for freedom and equality, a fight that has proven much harder to win. I do not want to capitulate to complete cynicism — but neither do I want to allow my own conscience the soothing reassurance that, at base, I am innocent. Inner conflict does not earn exoneration.

We were not simply dumb-but-well-intentioned when we allowed one person to own another: We were greedy, and we were wrong. We were not idealistic innocents void of self-interested motivations. Jefferson had slaves because his lifestyle required slavery, and he was in debt up to his ears. There is not much mystery to why his actions do not appear to have matched his words. He had slaves for the same kinds of reasons we do things that our great-grandchildren are liable to judge us for doing — like valuing efficiency and profit over human dignity and wholeness, consuming grotesque amounts of world resources, or tolerating embarrassing levels of inequality in a nation that still has not lived up to its promise.

We look to Jefferson, our Founding Father, to help tell us who we are, to flesh out what it means to be an American. We have much to be proud of, but we are not innocent. Our cause is still not patently righteous, nor our motives entirely pure. Thomas Jefferson, I will grant, has much to teach us by his example. But not all of what he would teach us would we want to learn. It is easier, and far more comfortable, to reassure ourselves that in all situations we have nothing but the best of intentions, the best and most humane ideals, and the cause of freedom at hand. Harder to believe that Thomas Jefferson, of all people, owned a lot of other people, and that, perhaps, he thought it his right to take one of his female slaves for his pleasure. Harder still to swallow is the lesson that we too might be capable of such contradictions.

Jefferson denied sexual relations with his slaves in his own day, not because it could be construed as sexual harassment, but because the “amalgamation of whites with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent.” And here, finally, Jefferson's last contradiction: Despite his condemnation of miscegenation, he had at least one biracial son.

*I hold the truth of this disclaimer to be self-evident.

The Worst Example of Direct Mail I've Seen Yet

2007-08-27T13:22:00.001-05:00

Ted Haggard is asking for money. Can this get any worse?

He (a) is not hurting for funds, last anybody knew, (b) is telling people to send checks to a dubious charity headed up by a man who is reportedly a registered sex offender, and (c) is still apparently planning on being in position to minister to other “broken people,” which whom he can “identify.” For all three of these reasons and a few more, I feel sick.

You can read his fundraising letter here.

A Note On My Absence

2007-08-06T22:24:00.000-05:00

As I told my friends at work, I'd say I miss you, but I probably won't. I will be gone for the next couple weeks for my wedding and honeymoon. !!! Plus, we haven't got the Internet set up in our new apartment yet. Note: "our" new apartment. :) It's nothing personal, but I won't be around for a while. God bless you all. (I mean that, I'm given to overflowing with good wishes lately.) We'll talk later, I promise.

Hmm.

2007-08-01T15:20:00.001-05:00

I dreamed a deaf autistic man was in my apartment, causing havoc, and his family calmed him down in my living room. Joel and I took a shower with our clothes on, the water rising to our shoulders. The sister of the deaf autistic man held him in her arms on my coffee table and made a sign I took to mean, “Are we all alright now?” She said, “Are we all coasting along toward death?”

“Well, I am going to work,” I said.

All The Things You Deserve: Thoughts on Bridal Showers, Prosperity Preachers, and Boxes of Books

2007-07-30T11:04:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I was honored by my fourth and final bridal shower. For the fourth time, close friends, relatives, and near-strangers overwhelmed me with gifts. For the fourth time, I have not had a place to put all of my new possessions.

I feel a certain awkwardness about this. I felt relieved during the third shower when the guests did not pay as much attention to me. I am not used to being the center of attention, and it exhausts me. Furthermore, people I don’t know from Adam --- my future mother-in-law’s bible study group, my mother’s boss, my father’s bank teller --- all have given me gifts. I don’t deserve any of them.

I feel awkward because (1) some people I know are not married, and why are they not celebrated? (2) some married people I know did not have showers: why should I have it easier than they did? (3) This is too much money for others to spend; I don’t need any of this; you mean I get to pick out whatever I want? My mind short-circuits at this permission, this demand that I constantly tell others precisely, in detail, what I desire. My mind is even more baffled that they give it to me. By the carload.

Now, don’t think that I am a super-humble person because of all this --- I have as big a sense of entitlement as the next liberal arts college grad, and most of the time my sense of entitlement stays sorely pissed off. I battle envy quite often, and I admit I sort of, well, hate some people who have things I wish I had. It’s not that I don’t believe I deserve anything --- or maybe it is…or maybe that’s my fear. At any rate, the part of me who wants more for myself remains pretty angry at the part of me who doesn’t think I should want more, the part that chastises myself for being unrealistic, ungrateful…not to mention whiny and demanding. Both sides of me make a strong case, seems to me.

At one point during the wedding planning business, my future sister-in-law asked me what I wanted, and the question confused me. “What do I want?” was not, to me, a useful question. “What can I afford?” made much more sense. “What can I reasonably expect to receive?” seemed the best. That which I do not believe I will receive I have taught myself rigorously not to want. I call this contentment, even though it’s based on a lie. In truth, I do want a lot of things, but those desires seem illicit and scary, too much to ask.

Something about this makes me very sympathetic to the African churches that preach a prosperity gospel, a development that made the cover of both Christianity Today and Christian Century. I don’t buy the prosperity gospel wholesale, and I don’t endorse any attempt to manipulate God, to force Him to answer your prayer the way you want it answered on your time schedule. Much of the criticisms of this “name it and claim it” theology are absolutely legitimate. But my sympathy they have.

Unless I am taught that God wants to bless me, that indeed he has already blessed me, that he will provide for me and answer my prayers, I would not ask him for much. Unless I am convinced that Jesus has already paid the price, I would say I can’t afford it.

We Americans are sold every light bulb and stick of gum on the basis of our entitlement; credit card ads tell us to buy all the things we deserve; hair care products hook us with the slogan, “Because you’re worth it.” If you don’t have all these things, you may conclude, you must not deserve them. To be poor is to reign in the horizon of your life. You call a lot of things “good enough” because you know you are not going to get what you want, and you wouldn’t deserve it if you did.

So then God comes along and says, “Yes, you do deserve all these things, for you are my child. Or maybe you don’t, no one deserves anything whatsoever, but my son, Jesus, has already paid for all this. My son, he has made you worthy.” I’m saying I understand the appeal. The power.

There is much wisdom in lively simply, in scaling back. There is something to be said for contentment. There is also good, however, in the permission to dream, to want and hope. Our God commands us to ask, seek and knock. He does not mean for us to ask for material prosperity only, of course, nor should wealth be a sign of our righteousness ---- that, after all, would mean we deserve it. But surely it is alright and good to desire. Besides, many of our African brothers and sisters are praying for a car, a college education, a home without dirt for a floor. Do we really want to tell them it’s wrong to want those things? We, who have those things and more?

I can’t decide, myself, whether we all deserve everything or whether none of us deserves anything. Then again, it’s not about what we deserve. It is about the generosity of others and the great mercy of God. Like the prosperity preacher says, God does give us more than we expect, more than we can imagine. He redraws the horizons of our lives. He wants to give us life, and life more abundantly. He loves us more than we can comprehend. All these things are true.

I did not expect to marry a man I love this much. I would not have dreamed it for myself, but my God is better than I believe.

When I was home for the shower, I brought back with me my last boxes of books. I packed these books two years ago, to move to a place I never got, and the boxes sat untouched above my parent’s garage until now. I thought about this as I unloaded these books into our new apartment, and I thought, “This is restoration. The final piece.” Theses boxes had been a reminder of my failure: books not important enough, not wanted enough, not good enough to be used. Set aside, waiting where they would not be read. Two years later, after I have forgotten I owed half of them, I finally move them into the place they are supposed to be. For a bibliophile like me, to have all my books together --- this is what I have wanted. One more good gift, praise God.

Ok, so the common thread here is that we should protect the futures of our children

2007-07-23T16:41:00.001-05:00

Since my last post ranted against one kind of sex offender, I thought I should make mention of another New York Times article that describes the situation of a different kind of sex offender: children who have been adjudicated for a sex crime against another child. In the case of child pornography offenders, I objected to nearly any consideration of the rights of the offender, but now I would like to take up the other side.

In the case of child offenders, well, let us not give them a life sentence for bad childhood behavior. The article talks a lot about the sex offender registries, the lists of the names, addresses, and photographs of offenders that the public has the freedom to access and peruse. The list is not a bad idea in the case of adult sex offenders, and in certain cases, (say, among minors with multiple offenses) I would still support the sex offender registry. In the case of a 10-year-old, one-time offender, however, I do not.

The problem is that the list gives the offender very little motivation to behave correctly and very little hope of moving past the offense. I would think children, malleable as they are, would be most amenable to rehabilitation. Like we do for other crimes, we should let children sexual-transgressors grow up before we hold their crimes against them forever. And if parents realize that their child would be marked for the rest of her life with her name on such a list, the parents may be less likely to report it.

As for my last post: I remain angry at the “freedom of speech” that the pornography industry claims as its right. I find it ludicrous to defend exploitation, objectification, and plain-old smut as a constitutional right, upon which our freedoms of the press and public dissent depend. I do not buy the slippery slope argument that censoring child pornography somehow = the Patriot Act. I believe pornography of any kind, even the more “tastful” genres, has a damaging effect on our relationships, our self-understanding, and our sexual functioning. I wish we would treat it like the danger it is.

That said, putting a kid on a sex offender’s list for life because of an egregious lack of sexual boundaries does seem to do more harm than good. Not all of these kids, not even most of them, will ever commit a sexual crime again. If there does not seem to be a threat of a repeat offense, we don’t need to know his or her name.

*Stepping down off of soap box*

What does it mean, "for liberty and justice for all"?

2007-07-20T11:43:00.001-05:00

The New York Times published an article on a new, controversial study of child pornography offenders. The study was of inmates who were convicted of possessing or distributing child pornography and who were in residential treatment. The inmates were asked to write their sexual histories every six months as part of the 18-month treatment, and they were told to be honest and complete. The histories are anonymous. And surprising.

Past studies had estimated that 30 to 40 percent of those convicted on child pornography charges had also molested children. According to the latest study from the sexual histories of the 155 men who volunteered to be a part: “85 percent had committed acts of sexual abuse against minors, from inappropriate touching to rape.”

Such dramatic results have caused quite a stir, and the study was accepted and then pulled from The Journal of Family Violence, a peer-reviewed, academic journal in the field. The Bureau of Prisons requested it not be published.

You can read the article yourself here. What I found most disturbing, in a very disturbing article, was this quote:

“The results could have tremendous implications for community safety and for individual liberties,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic. “If people we thought were not dangerous are more so, then we need to know that and we should treat them that way. But if we’re wrong, then their liberties aren’t going to be fairly addressed.”

In cases like these, I would go ahead and risk being wrong. Why would I care about the individual liberties of a person who enjoys child pornography? (Does he mean freedom for a fair trial or what?) Would we not rather have people with such preferences less free, regardless of whether or not the link between viewing child pornography and molesting children is absolutely proven, in the hope that some children might grow up free of sexual abuse?

I can already hear the opposing arguments coming --- but if the link between child porn and child molestation is real, like I personally suspect, then we should by all means crack down on child pornography possession and distribution. We should make those sentences stiff. Think of it like tax law --- like how we couldn’t pin Al Capone for murder, extortion, or any number of crimes, but we could bring charges of tax fraud. We can’t prove many of these people committed sexual abuse, with the victims long lost to time and to the silence brought upon them by shouldering someone else’s guilt and shame. We can put these people in prison anyway.

“The psychologists compared these confessions with the men’s criminal sexual histories at the time of sentencing. More than 85 percent admitted to abusing at least one child, they found, compared with 26 percent who were known to have committed any “hands on” offenses at sentencing. The researchers also counted many more total victims: 1,777, a more than 20-fold increase from the 75 identified when the men were sentenced.”

A spin on the Confession Meme:

2007-07-16T16:23:00.001-05:00

A theological-confession meme has been circulating around the blogs of those more learned in the theological ways than I, but I found it an interesting meme nonetheless. (A meme, by the way, rhymes with “beam” and is any sort of cultural artifact that replicates quickly from person to person.) Anyway, the idea was to write a list of confessions, a catalogue of your perhaps-unpopular or lesser-known opinions. I decided to make it political. So here goes….

I confess that I am pro-life, and if I could take all the money put toward overturning Roe vs. Wade and spend it helping single moms, I would.
I confess that universal healthcare doesn’t sound too bad … but that I have also seriously looked into opening a Health Savings Account.
I confess that I am not nearly as well-read or politically aware as I think I should be, and that I have arrived at most of my opinions not through intense research but by asking a few simple questions: What would this legislation mean for ordinary people? Where do I hear money talking in this debate? Would this policy treat a poor man with dignity? Would a pregnant woman agree?
I confess that I support the DREAM Act and have a soft spot for undocumented workers in general. I believe that part of the solution should be helping Mexico and Latin American countries develop a better life for their own people, for if their citizens had hope of reaching their dreams at home, they would not risk so much to come here.
I confess that I do not care at all if the Pledge of Allegiance calls our nation “under God” or not. If God is pushed out of his lip-service position in the vague, civil religion that would never name him Jesus anyway, we have not lost much. As Justo Gonzalez might say, “Let the dead gods bury the dead.”
I confess that you will have to corner me at a dinner party to hear more of my opinions.

Driving in Traffic

2007-07-12T17:40:00.001-05:00

On my way to see Joel, I stopped to pick up a bottle of dish soap. I had had a stupid day at work, like most days at work, and I wanted to see him as quickly as I could. It was rush hour, though, and traffic was bad, and I looked at the long line of cars waiting to get back onto the highway, and I said, “Screw it, I can find a faster way.” So I turned right instead of left, and weaved my way through side streets in what I thought was the direction of Joel’s apartment. Of course, none of the streets I found seemed to run parallel to the main road, and soon I couldn’t tell which way it was I needed to go. “At least I’m going over ten miles an hour,” I thought, never mind if it was in the wrong direction. I wandered my way through three suburbs, growing more frustrated as I went. “This is what I get for being impatient,” I thought, my hands gripping the steering wheel yet tighter: “Lost.”

I could have tried to make my way back to the main road, but by that point my pride would not allow me. I spoke angrily to the driver ahead of me who stopped to let another car back out (“What are you, running for mayor?”). I swerved around a car slowing down to turn. I drove too fast through residential streets. And as the minutes ticked by, the truth caught up with me, churning my stomach like the sight and sounds of the lights and sirens of a cop car: “You would have been closer to your destination if you would have stayed where you were.”

And so at a stoplight somewhere in the western suburbs of Chicago, I was found out. I am impatient. In every area of my life, impatient. Impatient to the point that I prefer going anywhere, even in the wrong direction, to standing still. I hate sitting in idle. I hate being stuck.

I have done a lot of things, good, bad and indifferent, just to feel like I’m going somewhere. And nothing is so sure to send me into angst-y despair and raving anger than an admonition to wait, particularly if I feel the advice-giver has had things handed to him. I once turned down a second interview because in the first the boss told me I may need to “delay gratification.” What does a man that earned $100,000 in annual salary one year out of college, allowing his wife to stay home with their little child, all by his own testimony --- what does a man like that know about delayed gratification? You tell me. The words I had for him aren’t fit to print.

There was a time in my life when I felt my future was a wall, with no door, I could not see over. The road I was on ran right into the wall. I did what I could do.

But sitting at the stoplight, waiting, waiting, I thought maybe God was trying to speak to me. Maybe this impatience of mine is itself getting in the way; maybe it’s leading me to some bland suburban dead end. Maybe this is sin – maybe my incessant demand that I progress is selfish, somehow. I can barely believe this, to be honest, but the thought was hard to shake. Is it really selfish to want to feel like I’m going somewhere?

But I guess I would agree, if pressed, that God just isn’t all about my progress, at least not in the way I understand my progress. He has other people in mind besides me, other priorities, other concerns. I suppose I should trust him, despite everything I can tell from my map and my speedometer. I should trust him to take me where he wants me to go.

If I were to never move from my apartment, never get a new job, never go back to school … if I were to never get married and never have kids … if I were never even so much as to buy one new thing, I would still be on my way to heaven. If I were to go to my grave wearing these shoes, I would still be going somewhere. When everything I have is old and worn out, second-hand and stale, still I can know: I am headed for a new life. Soon enough, I will have a sparkling new wardrobe, a new home, and I will be held back by nothing. Narrow and straight, I am told, is the road.

Heaven is a more important doctrine than I have supposed. I have liked to talk of resurrection more than heaven, for various reasons. But now I understand part of heaven’s popular appeal: It’s a place. It’s easy for the human imagination to understand that we are going to a place. Resurrection is a concept, an event. Resurrection doesn’t make its way as easily into a song.

In the world I grew up in, we sang a lot of songs about heaven, and most of the songwriters sounded depressingly ready to go there. “Just a few more weary days and then…I’ll fly away,” to quote one example. Not many songs in that hymnal would be wedding-appropriate, and believe me, I’ve checked. A marriage gives you too many reasons (or one beloved reason) to want to stay around. No, dear worship leader, frankly, I don’t “feel like travelin’ on.” At least, not from this life. Not now.

When I’m on the road tonight, however, driving home, I will feel like traveling on. I will wish I could teleport home, instantly, like in a science fiction movie. I will listen to the traffic report, hoping for news that might lead me to the most efficient route. I’ll depend on the radio voice to be my guide, to warn me of upcoming obstacles I cannot see. I will try very hard to be patient.

Psalm 18: “God will light my lamp; the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. By my God I can run against a troop; by my God I can leap over a wall.”

Wait, you have got to be kidding me.

2007-06-28T10:13:00.001-05:00

I don’t watch tv. At all. Unless it’s a big event, like the Oscars or the Superbowl, and I make the effort to go over to someone else’s house. This admission is to explain why I am only just now shocked, appalled, and bewildered that Paris Hilton was found worthy of an hour-long interview with Larry King. And I find this out because the New York Times “had” to report on the interview. As did Time.

Is this a conspiracy? Really. Is this a plot to keep the American public distracted by blather? Is there not a war going on somewhere?

Sigh.

I bet Larry King’s ratings went through the roof.

Liberals, Conservatives, Jesus and Me

2007-06-27T16:10:00.001-05:00

If I am a liberal, it’s because I was raised a conservative – and I mean this in a more positive way than you think. I don’t mean to say I am the way I am and believe the way I believe because of a reactive rejection of all I was taught. I mean I came to most of my “liberal” beliefs by way of my “conservative” ones.*

You see, the conservatives gave me Jesus. So whatever else I may now disagree with them about, I can’t dismiss them out of hand. I know that in their best intentions they are trying to obey the same God I seek to serve; I know that they are trying to love Jesus and love others for His sake. They may be failing to love in many ways, but they are still the ones who taught me that love is right. I was taught that mercy triumphs over judgment, that it is the Lord’s kindness that leads us to turn away from the evil within and without us, that God regards the poor as he does the wealthy, affords the obscure the same attention as the celebrity, and longs for the ugly with no less fervor than the beautiful. I was taught that Jesus gives gifts by which to serve him to everyone – women and children, smart and slow, so everyone has something valuable, even necessary, to contribute to the common good. I was taught to honor all people as uniquely made and desired by God and to welcome strangers as possible angels in disguise.

Given the “conservative indoctrination” of my youth, is it any wonder I grew to care for those on the margins of society, for the poor, the foreigner, the uneducated and the excluded? My feminism arose from my conviction that God would have women speak up on his behalf --- that he would not have half his workers hushed, hindered, or demeaned. My (admittedly lazy) environmentalism comes from my acknowledgement of the Creator God. To summarize my stance on the war, I’ll quote the biblical injunction to “seek peace, and pursue it,” and to the blindly nationalistic, I’ll respond that my true citizenship is in heaven. I believe in equal treatment for everyone not because it’s our right but because Jesus died for us all. If Jesus, the one righteous judge, has made us all accessible to the same grace, let us respond by making our legal and economic systems as fair and equitable as we can. If the Holy God has made us reconciled by the death and life of Jesus, well then, let us testify to his work by reconciling with each other, by forgiving our debtors, and forsaking the rhetoric and weapons of war.

If I am a liberal, then, I hope it is because I am a Christian. And if I am a conservative, I hope that is also because I am a Christian. I really hope I’m not a conservative because I am misogynistic, selfish, or regressive. Because when I think of abortion, I hear Jesus saying, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” and again, I remember the care we are to give to orphans, for the Lord is our Father, and like a Mother Hen, he longs to gather us up under his wings. Because when I think of divorce, I think of the faithfulness of God toward a people who continually hurt him, a people God may well be better off without. And when I am told to be tolerant, I remember to what a higher standard Christ has called us: To love our neighbor as ourselves.

As a child, I loved a song called “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb,” which references Jesus as the metaphorical lamb led silently to the slaughter as a sacrifice for our sins. It’s a song marketed straight to the conservative Christian subculture, and it’s not musically spectacular or lyrically advanced. It’s music most people don’t even know exists. To close this post, however, I would like to credit this song, in its small way, for teaching me that my loyalties lay not with a political party or nation or ideology but with Jesus, and Jesus alone: “I pledge allegiance to the Lamb / with all my strength, with all I am / I will seek to honor His commands / I pledge allegiance to the Lamb.”

*Note: I hate these labels, and find them by turns meaningless and dangerous. I use them because these are the terms our society has for these sorts of things.

When you are going nowhere but the grave: A reading from First Kings

2007-06-26T17:40:00.001-05:00

For months she had watched her resources run dry: The level of oil in her last jar steadily dropping toward the floor, the sack of flour day by day deflating. She had marked the day on the calendar when she knew she would have nothing more. Despite her best attempts to ration and conserve, it was no use: She could not reduce her needs to zero. And worse, she had her son to care for. What would she tell him when it was all gone? How would she explain?

On the day she had circled on her calendar, she went out to gather wood for the stove, even though she had no real reason to do so. Dry wood was one of the few things she could easily find in this drought, and the week before she had took an ax to her barn, most of which still lay in a pile in the back. She had no reason to do much of anything at all, but her son was playing inside, and though she did not wish to alarm him, she couldn’t bear to look at him without tears. So she left restless to look for wood, and as she wandered, a man walked up and asked for a favor.

“Would you give me a drink of water, please?” He asked. She raised her eyes. He seemed run ragged and depressed, like everyone else. It didn’t matter any more, so she turned, wordlessly, to get him some water. But as soon as he saw she was going to give him a hand, he asked for her arm.

“And while you’re at it, would you bring me a piece of bread too?”

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “I didn’t bake any bread. I have one handful of flour and a swallow of oil, and that’s for me and my son. I’m gathering wood. I have to make something for myself and my son so we can eat today, and then we’re going to die.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Go home, and do what you plan on doing, but first make a small loaf and bring it to me. Then make something for yourself and your son.”

She didn’t move, or speak. Or take her eyes off him.

“This is what the Lord says: Until the Lord sends rain again, your sack of flour will never be empty and your jar of oil will never run dry.”

For a few moments, she didn’t move, her feet trying to find the ground again, her arms trying to steady herself in the air. She left the wood on the ground and turned toward the kitchen to bake this man some bread.

One month after that day, the three of them had a party, toasting water to the Lord. Five months later she began to rebuild the barn, and seven months later, she began to believe it.

(1 Kings 17:8-16)

My Kind of Haiku, For You

2007-06-22T15:44:00.000-05:00

“Working hard” at three,

I would gaze with love at trees

but I am inside.

I should put nature

into these poems. But I’m

inside, like I said.

You are thinking that

that’s not the only reason

these are not so good.

You’re probably right.

I promise, if I could go

swing in the sunlight,

I would not write “poems.”

For the man who called me The Pledge

2007-06-22T14:41:00.001-05:00

Three years ago this month my friend James died. It was the summer before our senior year of college, and he was working in Israel with Samaritan’s Purse. The day I found out he had died, I sat numbly down to watch the evening news, thinking perhaps somehow his death would at least make the running news ticker on the bottom of the screen. “American killed in Israel, Mourned by Family and Friends.” Then I remembered he died in a car wreak, not a terrorist attack, that really could have happened on any road anywhere. Then I remembered he was Canadian.

Here’s to James, my friend, who would get a real kick out of that story. I miss you.

Lists: My "To Do" List, Of Sorts

2007-06-20T11:58:00.000-05:00

Stare at computer screen.
Eat banana.
Walk to building next door to pick up spoiled pieces of mail for re-printing.
Email friend and host, Jason, about “marriage party” on September 8th, for loved ones in Chicago.
Print application for new job.
Talk to friend who quits today --- going to another job for $20,000 more. Be both envious and inspired.
Bill direct mail project.
Open Excel to enter sequence numbers of spoiled mail pieces.
Write this list.
Lunch.

My, am I thankful: A comic from John Campbell

2007-06-14T01:16:00.000-05:00

P.S. Buy a personalized comic from John and help send him to Mexico to write yet more comics. It's for a good cause, and heck, how often do you get to star in your own comic?

The prompt for this masterpiece: "Write one about how better my life is turning out, actually, than I thought it would. Despite the hours laboring over projects of direct mail."

Book Review: "Unprotected" and the Ideology of Medical Science on College Campuses

2007-06-13T17:22:00.001-05:00

I only visited my alma mater’s health center once. I had fainted in self-defense class, and the nurse suspected that I had an eating disorder. I didn’t, but I had not had breakfast nor much dinner the night before, and I am naturally thin, leaving me without a large fat-store of energy reserves. She made me eat crackers and drink orange juice, watching me closely, and quizzed me about my eating habits. I felt that there was no way I could make her believe that my fainting spell had not been caused by anorexia. All of my denials just seemed to her like…denial. Later I received three (three!) follow-up calls. I was moderately impressed with the quality of health care I received, even though they assumed wrongly. The college was religious, conservative, and fairly elite — and probably one-fourth of the female population struggled with an eating disorder or obsessive dieting. It was a reasonable guess.

If I had gone to different university, the nurse might have given me a pregnancy test, but like I said, my college was religious and conservative. Those kinds of things — unwed pregnancy, pre-martial sex — just “didn’t happen” there. The health center did not offer free contraception or seminars on sexual health. They were ideologically opposed. I heard that a few female students every year snuck off to the abortion clinic, but all that happened under the radar. If they did not have an abortion, they would have probably been sent home.

Now, I wasn’t pregnant; I really did just need to eat more. I bought some instant oatmeal and made sure to have some every morning. I was reminded of this incident, my one run-in with a college health center, when reading Unprotected, by “Anonymous, M.D.” Unprotected argues that college health centers are failing students, giving inadequate care and misleading information, because the medical professionals on campus have succumbed to ideological blindness. Their (liberal, anti-religious, “sexual freedom”) ideology had gotten in the way of the patient’s best interest. In fact, her profession has so much ideological prejudice, the author felt it would be professional suicide to use her real name (which is either a publicity stunt or true).

My college’s health center knew the student population, which made it more effective, helping to identify a woman with a possible eating disorder and set in motion a proactive response. At the same time, the health center acted according to their ideology, which made it less effective — mostly I’m referring to the lack of questions about my sexual health. If I had been pregnant, when would they have discovered it? It’s hard to find what you’re not looking for. I think they would have acted with love and concern toward a pregnant student. If they saw her.

The college health centers that “Anonymous M.D.” criticizes have the opposite problem, caused by an opposing ideology. The author notes the dearth of information available to students about fertility, for instance. The only “reproductive health” issues are about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, which are vital but which miss one of the saddest reproductive problems of our generation — the growing number of older women who find themselves unable to conceive. It would be advantageous for college-age women to know that many cases of infertility are caused by earlier cases of HPV, for example. Even basic information about when a woman’s body is best suited to conceive and deliver a healthy child is hard to come by; there are too many counter-examples in the media of 64-year-old women giving birth or celebrities having their first child at forty by the miracle of fertility treatments. It’s too political to tell a woman that she should have children in her twenties or early thirties. It may be too controversial to assume she wants children at all. To give her the knowledge she needs to preserve her fertility before it’s too late seems, at least to many of the contemporaries of Anonymous, too close to defining womanhood as the blissful, submissive existence of the barefoot and pregnant. It’s ironic that the ideology that fights for a woman’s right to choose would hesitate to give her the care she needs to choose motherhood. What good is the right to do what I want with my body if my body will not do what I want, that is, conceive a child?

Behind all Anonymous’s complaints is a crack in our cultural foundation: Science is supposed to be “objective,” “unbiased,” and “authoritative.” We call upon Science to resolve irresolvable disputes, like people long ago called upon Solomon. Our Western, rational world is built on the belief that Science is not opinion, not ethics. Science contains no morality; it’s neutral all the way down.

Anonymous obviously doesn’t think so. The science she practices is highly opinionated, laden with ideological baggage. Her complaint should not be taken as a call to return to “pure” science, per se; she just wants her particular ideology to get more play.

And so do I. I am all for true diversity, but I find most “tolerance” initiatives absurd. To whom is the secular university tolerant, exactly? Followers of mainstream religions? No. People committed to sex only in marriage? Hahaha, no. “Tolerance,” in my limited experience, is mostly a big load of baloney. Like science, tolerance masquerades as a neutral, equal-opportunity kind of thing, but hidden in science is ideology, and hidden in tolerance is another grasp for preferential power.

Excuse me, I called this post a book review. Overall, Unprotected is not bad. It’s a quick read, and I learned a lot. The author does not parade her religion, though she does subscribe to one; instead she argues with scientific fact — which proves the point about how authoritative scientific facts are in our society. The best chapter, in my opinion, was about HIV/AIDS testing on campus. I won’t go into all the details here (you can read that chapter for yourself in the bookstore aisle), but I finished the chapter with the notion that our current policies regarding HIV testing are woefully selling short the gay population among us. Let me tell you, it is wonderful thing to read a book from a decidedly conservative source and conclude that we should be doing more to protect the health of homosexuals. I would like to double-check her facts, but even so, that’s quite an accomplishment. Bravo.

There were times when I wanted Anonymous to push her argument further, to say more, but she’s a medical doctor, not a philosopher. She’s barely a social critic. Her one consistent concern is for her patient’s health, which is precisely what you would want in a doctor. She comes from a particular religious perspective, but I don’t believe she would have written the book unless she believed lives were at stake. It’s fine by Anonymous if her colleagues have different values; it’s disaster when those values interfere with a patient’s best possible care.

But that’s the problem with ideologies, isn’t it? They just don’t all sound as good when you’re standing on the ground.

Be Angry and Do Not Sin: An Anatomy of Anger

2007-06-08T19:01:00.001-05:00

“Don’t reproach yourself for your anger — some days it’s the only thing that keeps you alive,” or so says my friend Mike.

I have to admit, I’m pretty sympathetic with this attitude, though with some qualification (and he would agree there, too). Anger is energy. It’s a self-defense move, a response to threat, to fear. In that way anger assists survival, though, yes, it can also eat you alive. They say depression is anger-based, which I’m sure is true, but during my own depression, I think my anger helped me make changes in my life that eventually led to health. Anger made me feel stronger. It seemed preferable, at the time, to scream and yell until my throat hurt than to languish in despair, weeping like a child.

Anger and despair are related, but they are more like cousins than twins. Anger rails against the world as it is because it believes the world should be different, better, more just, more secure. Anger still believes in something; it has not completely lost all faith. You can be quite furious at God and believe very strongly in Him. In fact, the more you believe God is good, the angrier you may be. This is one of the dangers of being religious.

St. Augustine said, “Hope has two daughters: Anger and Courage.” So Anger, being born of Hope, may be enlisted to fight despair. This is why I would rather be angry than cynical, though the two are easily confused. Cynicism marks the one who has lost faith — I say lost, because I believe it happens more often that the truly cynical people are those that at one time believed deeply. They are believers who have succumbed to disillusionment and despair. Like I said, I would rather be angry than cynical. Cynicism at its height despises what it perceives as saccharine emotion or mindless faith, foolishness. Anger still yet loves the good, however misdirected or wounded that love may be. Perhaps this is why John Gottman, scientist of marriage, concludes that anger is not the death knell to a relationship: Contempt is. To feel contempt for someone is to despise them, to put them on a lower plane than yourself with pharisaical confidence. Anger does not necessarily exclude love, but self-righteousness excludes love every time. This is what Jesus was on about, even as he cleared out the temple in a rage (John 2:13-17).

I understand that my own anger hurts people, that at times I snap at others with sharp impatience and show little mercy. I know that I have within me a dangerous kind of anger, the kind that never, never-ever forgives. The kind of anger that screams in the face of a sinning world but refuses to look in the mirror.

It takes a good deal of courage to look in the mirror. To face your own complicity in the injustice, selfishness, and cruelty around you, all that evil that makes you so enraged — it’s no small thing. I find it interesting that Augustine would link anger and courage to hope. Hope means not just indignation at the wrongness of the way things are; it means the courage to face that difficult reality, to really see this life as it is, and to see yourself as you are. This all requires a hope for change and redemption, without which we would justifiably despair. Who would want to confront their own self if they had no hope whatsoever to change? By confessing, “Hi, my name is Bethany, and I am a liar,” I take the first step toward truth.

I am told that Augustine believes we are at our most honest when we are doing one of two things: Praising God and confessing our sins. I am told that he thinks that, really, we are all lying all the rest of the time, and there is no justification. Actually, I have personally been amazed at how much I lie even when I confess — calling my sin by nicer names, speaking of it in the past tense, pretending to repent while my heart locks its door. Perhaps the biggest lie: I repent to God only, never getting around to asking for forgiveness from anyone else.

On Monday I lost my temper with one of my coworkers, and I waited until Tuesday afternoon to apologize. The anger itself could be forgiven, I thought, but not this pride. Pride, I think, is the secret weapon of despair. Because pride refuses to change, refuses to admit even that it needs to change, and so it lays vulnerable to despair whispering, “You are going nowhere. There is nothing to be done.” With a little religious education, pride may say, “I am too great of a sinner to be forgiven.” And despair is right by its side.

One of my favorite movies is The Upside of Anger. It’s about a family hemorrhaging in anger after the father leaves one morning and never returns. The upside of anger, according to the film, is the person you become. One day you may wake up and find that you are no longer afraid of the journey of your life, what has come before, what will come after. You wake up one day and realize you have survived, and so, maybe, you can stop fighting. Anger will always be there for you, it says, but love isn’t — which is precisely why you should love every chance you can.

Some days you may walk in anger in order to protect yourself from a sundry of perceived threats, and on those days you may be thankful to have a little fight in you. Just know, the ways you take to survive are no way to live.

Dear friends at work,

2007-05-30T12:33:00.001-05:00

This job is so much worse without you.

At Length: Why I Decided to Order an Overpriced T-Shirt That Reads "My Husband Is the Sexiest Man I Know"

2007-05-29T16:04:00.001-05:00

I have been a faithful reader of Boundless (www.boundless.org) for over five years. Every Thursday I eagerly check the website for the next three articles, and every Monday I read their advice column. Despite my consistent enthusiasm, I haven’t included it on my links list because, well, I’m a bit embarrassed. See, Boundless is a publication of Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian organization led by Dr. James Dobson that instantly connotes right-wing politics and what may be termed “compassionate fundamentalism.” I do not agree or endorse everything FOF stands for --- they are historically anti-feminism, for one, throwing out the baby with the bath water, if you ask me, and they sometimes annoy me simply by sticking to their mission statement --- or rather, by taking their focus on families into the political arena. This amounts to spotlighting the political causes concentrated around issues of sexuality and gender --- for thousands of Christian voters --- when I would rather we the Church expand our list of causes to include issues like environmental stewardship and poverty and peace, to name a few.

But like I said, I keep reading. Sometimes disagreeing with the columnists is the best part, granted, but that’s not the entire appeal --- Boundless is on to something. Okay, maybe it’s the Gospel.

I’m writing about this because I recently downloaded their writer’s guidelines (investigating the possibility of freelancing for them), and I was mildly shocked to discover how family-focused they are. Apparently, their primary purpose, second only to glorifying God and understood as a subset of that first calling, is to prepare 20- and 30-something singles for marriage and children. Hm.

I took a quick stock of my own life: Getting married in August, thinking more and more about having kids. Is it possible I have succumbed to some subtle brainwashing without me noticing? Or, heaven forbid, are they somehow, someway right about the “nature” of women? Eek.

I have three comments:

1. Okay, so, the closer I come to getting hitched myself, the more I realize how anti-marriage our culture is. Thus legitimizing Focus on the Family’s existence.

Marriage is repeatedly portrayed in the media as a trap, a miserable, sexless existence to be pitied. On one episode of Sex and the City, the fabulous four visit an old friend who is now married and pregnant. This old friend is so desperate, her marriage apparently the obliteration of all of her hopes and dreams, that it prompts the character Miranda to summarize, “Marriage plus baby equals death.” This is an extreme example, and Miranda actually goes on to get pregnant and married herself. Nonetheless, we’re not talking about the Huxtables here. The compromises of marriage are so great that they are always about to tip the scale, judging marriage not worth the trouble. Think of the opportunity cost.

Speaking of costs, the skyrocketing cost of the average wedding confirms the devaluing of marriage in my mind, although I’m not sure how. Weddings are nice, it seems --- they offer the chance to be a celebrity for a day --- but marriage itself, not so much. Weddings mean decadence and glamour. Marriage means boredom to the nth degree.

I was wasting time online, recently (much like you are, now) when I ran across a bunch of entertaining t-shirts with witty sayings on them, you know the type. Anyway, on more than one website, there were a few t-shirts plastered with pro-boyfriend phrases (“I love my boyfriend” read one shirt, clear and concise). None had positive things to say about one’s spouse. Complaining about one’s spouse is much funnier.

All this is anecdotal, I admit, but the cultural message seems clear enough to me: Men who want marriage and children are sissy wimps. Women who want marriage and children are desperate and lame. And if you respect and honor your spouse, especially to the point of sacrificing your preferences, goals, or (dare I say) happiness for their sake…yeah, that’s just stupid. Life is too short to be unhappy. And since marriage obviously doesn’t bring you happiness, well, you can do the math.

(I recommend Unhooked Generation by Lillian Strauss for a non-Christian, pop analysis of the current anti-marriage clime. Go to: www.unhookedgeneration.com/home.php for an overview.)

2. Despite my growing recognition that the folks at Boundless may serve a necessary purpose, namely, the re-education of their readership to value family, honor the opposite sex, and prepare for marriage as a legitimate, worthwhile life goal, I still chafed when I read over their purpose in their writer’s guidelines. I worry that we obscure the Gospel by focusing too much on family. My life story is not “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Bethany with a baby carriage.” My life’s story is shaped and re-shaped by Christ; my story is about my sin, his forgiveness, and his service. The Marriage Story is not incompatible with the Gospel story, and I very much believe that my fiancé is a gift from God, that he is part of God’s plan for my life, an instrument of God’s grace, but I do not believe that the Marriage Story is the same as the Gospel Story. The feminists were right to argue that women should not be defined exclusively by their roles as wives and mothers. They were wrong to miss our true definition as daughters of God.

3. I think my prayers align with the ethos of Boundless, more or less, and here’s why. I do desire that my marriage be a testimony to the hope, joy, and love that comes because of Jesus Christ. I want my marriage to be about God’s faithfulness and reconciliation, about the power of the Holy Spirit to heal hearts. I want to be a fool, not for a man, but for Jesus. Jesus tips the scale, every time, in favor of fidelity, perseverance, forgiveness and love.

This weekend I was visiting my family in Tennessee, making wedding plans. My fiancé and I were at my grandparent’s house, and my grandmother was talking about an incident that happened earlier that day. A friend from down the street stopped by to return something borrowed, and during their chitchat the neighbor made a disparaging comment or two about men. “That’s a man for you,” she sighed, and made a tsk sound with her tongue. My grandmother didn’t want to be rude, she said, but she’d been married to a man for fifty-something years now, and he’s pretty good, so she didn’t reckon they were all bad. Realize, I have heard many women complain about men, criticize their mates in public, and roll their eyes over general male imbecility. So when I heard my grandmother tell this story, I filled with respect. My grandma would not even allow the male gender to be maligned for the sake of her husband. How rare.

My grandmother was married and pregnant at eighteen, she stayed at home with all four children, and she is the closest example I have to the model of woman Boundless praises. I have chosen a different life, one that I hope eventually leads to an enjoyable career, but I don’t want to discard my grandmother’s example altogether. She loves and respects her husband, and he loves and respects his wife.

My life outside the blog

2007-05-19T19:10:00.001-05:00

Hello, friends.

I have been busy of late. My mom visited, my fiance graduated graduate school, and one of my roommates moved home to Texas. Plus wedding planning, applying for other jobs, continuing to work my current job, joining Facebook (ahem), and starting on the five new books I just bought from Amazon.

I'm doing well, though. Hope you are too.

My Thoughts at 11:34 This Morning

2007-05-11T11:35:00.001-05:00

Do you know how much happier casual Friday makes me? I'm not sure I could explain it in mere words.

I like casual Fridays, and I like friends at work. Actually I like friends anywhere. I am sad when saying goodbye to them.

I do not like change. Even, sometimes, if it's for the better. My cousin Thomas once described our extended family as "inert but in a good way" — so I feel that I can blame them for my preference for constancy.

In recent years I have often felt a little bit lost, a little bit out of my element, a little bit somewhere else. It's getting easier. I'm adjusting to the change and flux. But I don't like it.

If not what you are, what else?

2007-05-10T17:05:00.000-05:00

Here’s a fun game: If you were not your religion, what other religion would you be?

If I were not a Christian, I would like to be a secular Jew — not so Jewish I keep kosher but enough to celebrate Hanukah and Passover and Yom Kippur. Orthodox Judaism is cooler, admittedly, but too much work, and I doubt the conservative rabbis would take kindly to my albeit-moderate feminism. But I am drawn to the Hebrew stories, to Abraham, Ruth, and Job, not to mention robust Yiddish slang. Most of all, I find very compelling the Judaic insistence that we both remember suffering and embrace life; I think there is a lot of truth in that. It appeals to my melancholic side and to my lust for joy — today may be your wedding day and for that we will dance, but don’t forget we were slaves in Egypt — Remember the Holocaust! Now, drink to life! L’CHAIM!

Buddhism is a nice system, and I am in favor of peace, but all that “desire is the root of suffering” stuff just isn’t for me. Hinduism might be okay; maybe if I knew more about it I would find it more appealing — it seems exotic and delightfully sensual but uh, complicated. Islam’s theology, as I understand it, is too fatalistic — and I’m back with the problem that I’m a 21st century, American woman (though ok, yes, true, the same complaint could be made of Christianity). I’m too cynical to be communist and too mystical to be atheist. Judaism, though, I sure do like.

Disclaimer: I mean no disrespect to the religions I have mentioned here. It’s a light-hearted question, asked on a purely hypothetical basis. I realize this is not the way to actually choose a religion, and I apologize in advance for treating a weighty subject with such blithe humor. But hey, it made me think. How would you answer?

Casinos, Mothers, Absence and Orphans

2007-04-27T16:37:00.001-05:00

I’m copy editing direct mail for a chain of casinos and listening to This American Life. This episode is called “The Missing Parent’s Bureau,” and it includes stories about a single mom who writes letters to the absent father, even though she has no address to which to send them, and about other women who are choosing sperm donors, detailing the heart-logic of their choice of donor and the “mysterious connection” they sometimes feel to their donors after the child is born.

I am not a single mother nor was I raised by a single mother. Barring, God forbid, the early death of my fiancé, I will never be a single mother. But as a woman, or just as a human being, these stories reached out to me, making me laugh and nearly cry while checking the spelling and punctuation of coupons with such literary content as “Free Patriotic T-Shirts with 100 points on slots or tables,” which is perhaps not so hard, now that I think of it. Reading gambling ads, particularly marketing for Father’s Day Brunches at the casino, probably only makes me more vulnerable to the pathos of others. But I digress.

These are stories about loss and absence but also about the incredible fullness of the love these women have for their children. Their longing for the fathers, not just for the child’s sake, but so they would have someone with whom to share their joy, moved me. Longing is powerful stuff when you sit with it, when you let it be the longing that it is, and refrain, for instance, from cashing it in for more tokens to play the slots, longing for that big win that will mean what, exactly? It occurs to me that there are at least two kinds of longing: The longing for what you know you will not have, and the longing for what you may still hope for. These are easily confused, and hope is always preferable. Tonight might be your lucky night.

These are the things I am thinking about:

My two girlfriends from high school who are now expecting their first children, and the soaring excitement and joy of which both of them testify. One of them had been trying for a long time and has collected toys, maternity wear, and onesies from clearance racks and garage sales, hoping and waiting, wanting so much for a child that she tried hard not to expect to have one, to believe that it might not happen and that that would be OK. It’s the kind of defense mechanism I recognize from two states away because it’s one I am proficient at myself, like how I tell myself that the junk mail business may not so bad. The other one found herself pregnant on accident, without trying for a child at all, too soon and at an inconvenient time, but to talk to her now she is no less happy than the one who had prayed for a kid for years. I marvel at this.

I want a child. There, I said it. I realize that it is not the time and that it may be something of a passing phase, like when all my friends were getting braces and I wanted to see the orthodontist too, but nonetheless. I hear myself making oohing and ahhing noises in situations I never used to make oohing or ahhing noises before, and whenever my fiancé mentions building a family with me, which in his mind is far, far off into the future, I either get teary or butterflies in my stomach or both. I admit that this longing is new, faint, financially idiotic and potentially professionally ruinous, but it’s there. Like the slot machine siren song that promises hundreds of dollars payout and mentions nothing of the hundreds more it requires from your pocket before it gives anything in return. If we focused on how much it would cost us to get what we want, we would never play. Our brains are wired like this, and I’m sure for good reasons. It’s biological.

I had my first bridal shower the other day. The first one for me, the bride. It was perfect, and I had a wonderful time, and I felt very grateful and loved. It was so good, in fact, I was sad afterwards. I missed all the people who weren’t there. I missed my friends who helped make me the kind of person I am today, whose names popped up in stories other people shared about me. The people whose speech patterns and pet phrases have snuck into my own way of talking, so that my vocabulary is full of homage to old friends and references to inside jokes that no one around me knows. And honestly, I don’t care if I am not always understood.

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but I tend to think that’s a big load of crap. I think distance gives the heart a dull ache. My dad was gone a lot, traveling overseas, when I was young. Before text messages and email, my sister and I faxed him drawings we had made and looked forward to three-minute, twelve-dollar phone calls. It would hit me when my mom would tell me to set the table, and I would get out one too many plates. I feel the need to say that I love my dad, and we are close, and we trust each other, and I owe him a lot, and all these good things that mean that, even though it was hard, I’m okay and I don’t want to complain about it, but that longing I remember. Our lives were organized around an absence and everything felt on hold until it was filled. I don’t mean to say I know anything about what it would be like not to have your dad around at all or to never have met him, because I don’t. I don’t know many people who know the kind of longing and absence I know, besides my sister. Army brats, maybe. Kids of long-distance truckers.

The last story on This American Life is about an open adoption, and though the details are not at all the same, this story reminds me of my cousin, who was also adopted. That was an open adoption, too, so that her parents met the biological mother and still send her bio mom photographs and letters about my cousin’s progress through life, about how good she swims and about her B+ in social studies. I wonder if my cousin ever longs for her biological mother or her half-siblings; I wonder if she ever feels their absence, though mostly I doubt it. She has no lack of family. But still, I have to think that maybe sometimes she itches for information, any scrap of a story to explain how she got where she is. I look at her sometimes, and I realize that she, too, is referencing other people with her language and mannerisms, except she doesn’t know those people and may never meet them. Most of all, I wonder if she realizes how much her bio mom longs for her, how much she feels her daughter’s absence. I hope she knows that she was not rejected, no matter what it seems. She was loved.

My great-grandfather was adopted, too. Never officially -- he kept the Pledge name of his birth -- but he and his brother were orphans sent to live with another family. His adopted dad was a farmer or doctor, I don’t remember. My family didn’t know much about it, until just a few years ago when my grandparents got a phone call from a distant relative on a genealogy kick who had found their names in the phone book.

Here’s the story: My great-great-grandfather was a wealthy man in Memphis. His first wife, whom I imagine as a classic debutant Southern belle, bore him three sons and died young. He remarried a full-blooded Cherokee woman, much to the embarrassment of his family, and had two more sons. He died before his two youngest sons were grown, and all of the inheritance went to the white sons. The half-Cherokee boys ended up with a family in Dyersburg, Tennessee, an hour or so north of Memphis, and were more or less lost to the rest of their biological family until three generations later.

When I heard this story, I felt it was so true, it had to be true. It made a lot of sense to me in a way that’s hard to pin down. It amazes me how much our lives are shaped by stories we have not heard, people we have not known and will never meet. Our lives are organized around an absence.

We’re not big gamblers in my family. My aunt and uncle vacationed in Vegas once and spent all of three dollars at the slot machines. We know that longing like that, it’s reckless.

Our lives are also organized around the fullness of our love for each other. None of my near relatives has won the jackpot, nor am I in line to inherit a big monetary fortune. But I have the great blessing of having a lot of people to miss when they are far away from me. My inheritance is rich in other things.

There are no words, my friends.

2007-04-18T16:11:00.001-05:00

On April 20, 1999, in the morning, I sat quietly in the library of my high school, researching the consequences of drunk driving for class. That was in Tennessee. In Colorado, in a suburb of Denver we would all come to know by name, two of my peers were opening fire on their classmates. I would not hear about the massacre until later, and then I would cry.

I remember the fear, the mental tracking of any kid in the hall wearing a trench coat, like the Columbine killers wore; the fear that motivated my friends not to wear their letterman’s jackets, since Harris and Klebold went after jocks; the horror and embarrassment I felt when I saw the shooters’ faces on the cover of Time --- if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought they were cute. They did not look evil. How are we ever to know? Eight years later, I remember both their names.

A year earlier, only three hours north of my hometown, another boy walked into a high school in West Paducah, Kentucky, and shot at a room of students gathering early to study the Bible and pray. That did not make as many headlines, but it seemed like a lot at the time. Only three students died. “Only.” The shooter, Michael Carneal, unlike many of those after him, did not commit suicide, and he will be in jail for a very long time. He will be an old man before he returns to the outside, and I am not sure if I feel sorry for him or safer.

When asked, “What would you have told the Columbine shooters?” Marilyn Manson once answered that he would not have told them anything, he would have listened (Kendra, do you remember which Michael Moore movie that was?). At the time, I thought this listening strategy was deep, one of Marilyn Manson’s finest moments. Now I am not so sure. Listening may be worse. You can only empathize and validate so much before you’re silently nodding your head to plans of mass murder. I don’t know.

Now the violence has graduated and gone to college. Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui has out killed the others I’ve mentioned, combined. I hate that any coverage of his sins will increase his fame, and fame is fame in America. I hate that this has happened again, that we don’t know how to prevent these deaths, that there may not be a way. I hate that when I was fourteen and fifteen, the killers were in their teens too, and now that I am twenty-three, I am the same age as Cho. We have not grown out of it.

According to CNN.com, a professor who had Cho removed from her class commented, “I know we're talking about a troubled youngster and crap like that, but troubled youngsters get drunk and jump off buildings; troubled youngsters drink and drive. I've taught troubled youngsters. I've taught crazy people. It was the meanness that bothered me.” At some point, people pass “dysfunctional” and move on to “sinful.” At some point, we are hard pressed not to believe in evil, in sin, even if we deny the devil existence, deny perhaps even God. Evil is so much easier to believe.

I know that school shootings happen all the time in the cities, in poor neighborhoods, and that it’s unfair not to mourn the loss of those lives like the nation mourns the loss of white, middle-class kids. But I don’t think the media coverage of these school shootings is racist and class-ist, at least not only racist and class-ist. Violence in the ghetto is explainable. For people to turn to violence when the place they live is unsafe, when they lack hope for their future and a sense of control over their lives --- the turn to violence follows a certain logic. It can be understood.

Paducah, Columbine, and Virginia Tech are much less explainable. These events horrify us not simply for the bloodiness, the loss of young and innocent life, but because these events seem to contradict so many things we know. Suburbs and small towns are safe. Smart kids are nice. White people (and Asian immigrants) are successful; they have too much to live for. Our technology will prevent these problems; somebody will catch these killers before they do so much damage. Our wealth will protect us. We are exempt from life’s dangers. It won’t happen to us.

I don’t exactly know how to believe I am not exempt, that it could happen to me, and still manage to leave my apartment. But I know that part of my fascination with these atrocities is their ability to boggle my mind: How? Why? There is nothing so terrifying as the enemy with whom we cannot reason. The enemy whose reasoning we wish to condemn, if we only knew what it was.

Tomorrow is the eighth anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School. Michael Carneal is working on the first of three life sentences. The wounds at Virginia Tech are still fresh, still bleeding. May we pray for those left shocked, bereft, and mourning in Virginia, and for those haunted by losses suffered in the past. May we sit quietly in God’s presence and know there is no where else, ever, for us to go. May we find yet a bit of God’s presence to sit in, wordlessly, if nothing else.

There are no words, my friends, no words at all for me to say. No way to summarize. No conclusion we would want.

a note about the abundance of recent posts

2007-04-17T10:08:00.001-05:00

I have learned how to post via email, a dangerous knowledge.

A Moment of Silence

2007-04-16T14:42:00.001-05:00

Oh God, dear God.

It's Raining Babies!

2007-04-16T14:11:00.001-05:00

Congratulations to Amanda and Summer, my two best friends from high school who are both pregnant! (Yes, I now have close friends my age who are WITH CHILD.) I am very happy for both of you and for your children, who will be blessed to have you and your husbands for loving parents. Who’s next?

I had adjusted to the friends-getting-married thing, but babies! This is a whole new life stage. Boy howdy.

Or girl howdy. Either would be great. J

As I write this, I’m drinking coffee from my Feminists for Life mug (www.feministsforlife.org). FOL is a pro-life organization that advocates for legislative change so that women would receive more support during and after pregnancy, making it easier for her to choose to keep the child. It’s just the kind of pro-life effort I love --- the kind that could just as easily be described as pro-choice. Let me explain.

If I were to get pregnant now (pretending for a moment that I’m not engaged to be married), it would not be the end of my life. I’m twenty-three. I have a college degree and a good-enough job. I have health insurance and a savings account. I could take maternity leave, come back, and still have a paycheck. I could move back to Tennessee to be near my family, find another job, and probably be able to support myself and the child. It would not be easy, but it would be doable.

If I had gotten pregnant four years ago, I would have still been in college and not near graduation. There is no “parental housing” on campus. I would have had no degree, no prospects for a job that would pay me anything, no place to live but back with my parents. I would have lost any scholarships by taking even one semester off, and I could only stay on my parents’ health insurance plan if I remained a full-time student. If I took a semester off, I would not be able to afford to return. These realities mean that an abortion would be covered by insurance but not post-natal care. I would be forced to pit my education, my financial security, and my dreams against my child. That’s not much of a choice.

A friend of mine provocatively claims that many more evangelical parents are pro-choice than admit it; if it were their daughter, they may sing a different song. Of course, there is always adoption, but let us not underestimate the heartbreak and sacrifice that is for the mother --- speaking very practically here, it is much easier to destroy the fetus, when it does not yet look like a child, than give away a baby you have carried to full term, a baby you may have seen and held in your arms.

I am pro-adoption, but I believe that if we are serious about reducing the number of abortions in this country, we also have to be pro-single moms. A full third of my generation was never born. Certainly a good number of my peers may have lived if their mothers had more choices, more support. If pregnant women did not feel that their life would end if they carried their baby to full term, if they had a vision of how they could make it. We’re talking about hope.

Not all abortions are the same, any more than the women who have them are the same. Yes, some women are motivated primarily by selfishness; rather than “not valuing life enough,” these women seem to value their own life too much, so much they would not change it for their child. But there are other women, too, motivated by desperation, fear, and despair. I would like to see the church offer these women hope. Rather than declaring war on abortion, why don’t we fight on behalf of the mothers?

I lift my coffee mug in honor of all mothers, under any circumstances, that have been blessed with the opportunity to carry a life. As Mother’s Day approaches, I pray that God will bless you and provide for you, give you a hope and a future. And if you have already chosen not to be a mother, I pray that you would find forgiveness and healing in the safety of your heavenly parent’s arms. Even now, after all that has happened and not happened, there is hope in Jesus.

going against the grain

2007-04-13T15:00:00.000-05:00

Marriage is such an odd thing, conceptually.

I am marrying a wonderful man in 120 days. It is so unlike me. Here I am, debating menu items and bridesmaid dress colors, wearing a diamond ring and making plans, and I can hardly believe that I will be one of those women with a husband. I will say, “This is my husband.” And he will say, “Have you met my wife?” Getting proposed to was like witnessing the Resurrection: I always believed this would happen someday, just not really to me.

When I was a small child, I believed I would marry my friend Jason. We played Monopoly together, and he passed me notes in our second grade class. I thought he hung the moon; in fact, I thought he threw the stars into the sky, and I knew he did it all for me. And when you are a small child in a mostly happy home, you do not have many defenses. You do not know yet what time can do. You don’t know that you will not marry the boy sharing his crackers with you, the boy you think of as a man. And when he kisses you in his parents’ basement the year you both turn nine years old, you record each detail because this love, this love will last, and you will want to remember.

I am still young but quite a bit older than nine. Already I have absorbed into the marrow of my bones the truth about life: that life is unpredictable, tenuous, not to be trusted. Any day of the week you could be diagnosed with some chronic illness or laid off from work or at the funeral of someone you love. Your friend could betray you on Tuesday, your son rob you on Wednesday, your daughter self-destruct on Thursday afternoon. One morning you may go to pour yourself a glass of water and find all your utilities have been shut off. Bankruptcy is imminent, always. You cannot tell one day from another whether you will find yourself at the end of a series of events that has left you alone on the edge of your bed with no one to call.

Life doesn’t make you any promises, see, so I don’t know how you can promise anything to anybody but in marriage you do. You promise all kinds of things. You promise to love, honor, and cherish, even, as long as you both shall live. It’s completely irrational. Hands-down absolutely insane.

Of course, most people do not get married because it’s the rational, reasonable thing to do, per se. People get married because they’re in love, because they have this need and desire. Because of the heart, and what the heart knows, and the blood pumping through their veins. Now the heart is crazy, and there is no talking to it; it will not be convinced by philosophical argument, and it remains obstinate against all empirical evidence, but it’s the heart that propels us to make promises. We move to the beat of the throbbing inside.

How can I make any promises in an uncertain world? How can I even say, “Sure, I’ll meet you for lunch at noon?”

My heart knows, though I would not always say so out loud, that the only way to live is by faith. I am no more in control of my life as a single person than I will be after I’m married. People do not always know this; the unmarried may have more free time and financial resources, more options and so-called freedom, but freedom is not the same as control. A single person is no safer from being waylaid from her carefully-constructed plans than anyone else. It has been my single years that have taught me this dim view of life, after all, yet somehow I still suspect that marriage will double my chances of pain. It certainly skyrockets my chances of getting divorced.

I am about to commit to a person I cannot control in a world I cannot control, and I am not altogether sure I am in complete control of myself. This is scary. Imprudent. Still there is a voice that says I must become like a little child. A little child with the faith of a child and the heart of a child, a child playful and secure because someone else is taking care of things. Dinner will miraculously appear on the table without fail; new shoes will arrive every fall in time for school; band-aids and rubber balls and water, whatever you need, will never run out. The heart of a child knows these things.

I know very few things, and those mostly about how to work my alarm clock and wash my hair, but I know well enough that I would be a fool to refuse my fiancé. I will say, yes, I do, and make all kinds of promises I have no idea how I will be sure to keep. I will say yes, I do, because my adult knowledge recedes just enough that I know I would only run from the altar clinging to a sense of control that is simply dishonest, an ungrateful and rigid illusion. To refuse would be, also, maybe, to make a shelter of my despair. I know that on those days when I sat on the edge of my bed and willed myself to put on shoes, I found despair no refuge. Despair is only a sturdy enough shelter in the spring, round about Easter, when the days are growing longer, the weather warmer, and your marriage is coming up soon.

God had a few tricks up his sleeve yet...

2007-03-17T17:44:00.000-05:00

This is too much to say on a blog, maybe too much for words at all. But I am peaceful and happy, hopeful and clear, teary-eyed on the way to a job I hate for gratefulness, deeply surprised. Oh, I've got ahead of myself ---

I'm getting married!!!!!

Me & Jesus: The Abridged Version

2007-02-12T22:41:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Cindy Green for challenging her readers to post the story of their relationship with God in 100 words or less. I got it down to exactly 100. It leaves a lot out -- names, places, dates, details. But I found something very true writing it. Without any more prelude, see below.

I never doubted God’s existence. I just sometimes wished he’d leave me the hell alone. Most of my pain has been because of God, one way or another – He was always asking for too much. But my missionary father would return full of stories of Russians, Chinese, who have given much more than I have. The best gift we got was a worn, pink washcloth, a modern widow’s mite. When I was very small, my mother would lift my hands with hers as she worshipped. I have the legacy of raising open empty hands to Jesus. His presence is enough.

Missing trains and climbing trees

2007-02-03T12:30:00.000-06:00

"I've changed the way I think about the will of God," he said.

We were eating lunch, quite some time ago, before anything had happened.

"I used to think the will of God was a train, and if I missed it or got on the wrong one, there was no way to get right again. Now I see the will of God growing like the branches of a tree."

Even then, this seemed to me choice wisdom, and I kept it with me. Since then many things have happened, some good things and some bad, some things for which I am grateful and others I still regret. When I think of this conversation and this friend, I try to remember that all the branches of the tree reach for the light.

I have been thinking more about the will of God lately, as I've come to another time of decision in my life. I am standing on the platform, waiting for the train, all worried that I will take the wrong one, or that the one I want has already left. I am not filled with expectation but dread. When I dream of this railway platform, there are no trains coming or going. I can't even see the lights of a train miles down the tracks. I'm just there, waiting, my bags packed full of all my possessions.

But if God wants me to arrive at a certain destination, surely he would give me a boarding pass.

And maybe there are no trains because that isn't the way to see my situation altogether. Instead, I am climbing a tree, and right now I am in the lower branches. Each branch I choose to lean on leads me to the next branch. Right about now, it's scary to look up and it's scary to look down. The branch I cling to is sturdy, though. If there were too many trains, the commotion would confuse me; but the many branches may reassure me that I have plenty of places to stand and many arms to catch me if I fall.

"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper." Psalm 1:1-3

The joy of the Lord is my what now?

2007-01-12T21:28:00.000-06:00

When I think of where I was just a year or more ago, I often cry. Not just because I remember the things that made me sad, but because I remember the things that God has done for me, how he sustained me and protected me, how he has rebuilt my life. I cry because everything so happy and good seems like a surprise.

When the Jews returned from exile to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem, they were rebuilding their life, too. Whether from their own sin or from another's sin, they had suffered for a long time. In fact they had almost got used to living away from home. But now they were back where they came from, the place itself and their memories of it both ravaged by life and time. Little by little, they join together to rebuild their city; everyone has to pitch in to get it done. Home but not out of the woods yet, they work with a trowel in one hand and a knife in the other. Some men don't work on the wall at all, to stand guard against attackers.

They are told to remember the God that fights for them, their Defender, the Lord of Hosts. To sacrifice, risk, to trust God even still.

Then they finish. The wall is complete, and Jerusalem begins to look something like the picture they have carried in their minds, a refuge. A man named Ezra gets up in front of all the people, and he begins to read from the book of the Law.

The people stand in the square, surrounded by the walls they struggled to build, amazed. I am not surprised to read that they worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground, that they wept when they heard the words of the Law. They weep for their sins, and they weep for the years lived as an alien, an outsider. They weep because they know the courage it took to leave that life and go to that city they had only been told was home. They weep because they have seen the restoration of God with their own eyes, and who would have believed it? They are eager to hear the Law and understand it. They have not heard it before.

What I understand less is the command of Ezra, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

After so much weeping, the Lord has commanded a feast. That much makes sense: a kind of reward, a small recompense for all they've suffered. The thing that makes no sense is the rationale, "for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

Now, how would joy be my strength, exactly? When I examine myself, it seems that my anxiety is my strength --- even when working, I'm never without a weapon. My anger is my strength, keeping me full of fight and ready to attack if provoked. My cynicism is my strength because it protects me from being fooled. And my strict budget is my strength, a shield against poverty and ruin.

Yet after all the Jews had endured, the Lord tells them to be happy. As if it were easy. It's not that I don't like joy, mind you, I just don't get it. I don't know how to make myself happy, to conjure positive feelings out of the dust.

Perhaps that is not the point. Maybe it's just that the habits that help you survive during tragedy become deadly when the tragedy has passed. "Do not be grieved," says the Lord: the wall has been rebuilt and the enemy is finally outside it. You can now use your knife to carve the turkey. Go ahead and enjoy the wine --- you can afford to be slightly less than sober. Allow yourself some relaxation, a little dulling of the reflexes. Give a drumstick or two to the people who have none --- your rationing days are over. You may want to take a nap. Or dance. You see, it's safe to let joy in again. The Lord stands watch over the wall.

Someone has to be the first drop of rain.

2006-12-20T00:01:00.000-06:00

A Pakistani woman named Mukhtar Mai has become internationally renowned for her activism on behalf of the victimized and the oppressed (Glamour named her 2005 Woman of the Year, and Time called her one of this year's 100 Most Influential People). She did not exactly decide this path for herself --- she was gang raped four years ago in retaliation from a competing tribe, and she asked her mother for poison that she could die. Her father and brother did not want her to prosecute, fearing more retaliation, but her mother supported her fight, saying, "It is your right....Someone has to be the first drop of rain."

She went to court, testified, and received $8,300 in compensation. Instead of spending the money on herself, she used it to open the first girls' school in her area. She had to convince many parents to send their girls to learn -- all they need to know is how to cook and clean, I suppose -- but Mukhtar Mai never gave up, and now the school serves 300 students. Mai later enrolled in the school herself, to learn to read.

This year she opened a crisis center for sexually assaulted, abused, and battered women, an acheivement that should not be underestimated in a nation that until this December required a women to produce four male witnesses to her rape in order to escape accusations of adultery or fornication.

Sexual abuse of children in sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise, with gender inequality one of the primary suspects. Justice remains elusive. The laws are not in the favor of the abused. Little girls in Madagascar, for instance, are required to confront their attackers face to face. Many families do not press charges; some because they cannot afford to spend the money.

The problem is not all far away, in foreign countries and on distant continents. Sexual abuse victims are people you know, they are your neighbors, they shop at your grocery store, they work in the cubicle behind you, they worship to your left and to your right. They are your family members, your friends. One in six women are sexually assaulted in the United States, and that figure may be low.

My friend Sallie, whose blog can be found through the link on the left, heads up a non-profit organization to offer spiritual tools for recovery to men and women who have been sexually abused. She is one of the hippest Christians I know, and she does honest work. If you're interested in learning more, please see her website and consider donating to her ministry this Christmas. You just might be the first drop of rain.

"The Lord is making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43:19

Sick. Still thankful, though.

2006-11-25T01:08:00.000-06:00

This is the first time I have not spent Thanksgiving with my family. I meant to, but I contracted a severe case of the flu on the Tuesday before. Instead of driving to Tennessee after work on Wednesday, I went home early and went straight to bed. I didn't leave the apartment again until four o'clock today. I feel better, and I have gained back much of my strength.

I had been horribly lethargic, sleeping most of the holiday away. Oh well. My roommate's family, the Zimbricks, were kind enough to welcome me to their table. Jennifer made a mean sweet-potato casserole, and my mother called several times. In the history of Thanksgivings, it has been far worse.

Today I cleaned my room. I found old photographs: snapshots of my sister with my grandfather, now deceased, on his farm at least five years ago; candids of my high school Academic Decathlon team, state champions of 2001; group pictures of Kaljon and Goula, friends from Gusev, Russia, on their visit to Abingdon, Illinois, of all places; one of my dad and me, when I was very small, helping him do yardwork; and several polaroids of myself in various hairstyles and poses, taken approximately 1997 through 1999.

I found a sermon I wrote when I was probably eight years old, my favorite parts of which are: "Jesus made it easier to be a Christian. Now you don't have to kill your prize sheep or pig or whatever." And, "Confess your sins to God. Which isn't such a big secret anyway since you already know nobody's perfect. !Have Faith!"

If you have read this far, you are truly my friend. Or very patient or very bored. In any case, I will end this personal post by saying how thankful I am right now for my life. On this national holiday, I think we're supposed to remember something about pilgrims & winter & Native Americans helping the white people survive, but I'll give all my thanks for a story the veracity of which I much more believe: That the Jesus I knew when I was eight years old has walked with me all my life, through adolescent successes and failures, through my grandpa's funeral,
through college and graduation and sick days off from stupid jobs. Even through the embarrassing haircut of 1998. Thanks be to God.

I'm reading Thomas a Kempis, again.

2006-11-25T00:43:00.000-06:00

I first read this passage about a year ago, when I was overwhelmed by trouble and failure. It always made me laugh. I post it here now as a reminder to myself to never despair, as a benchmark for how much God has restored in a year, and hopefully as an encouragement to you, reader-friends. The following is from The Inner Life, with added gender-inclusiveness, thanks to me.

CHRIST: My sons and daughters, patience and humility in adversity are more pleasing to Me than great devotion and comfort in times of ease. Why are you so distressed when you are criticized in some small matter? Had it been a far more serious matter, that is no reason for your being distrubed. Let it pass. It is not your first mistake, nor anything new; nor, if you live long, will it be your last. You are brave enough when you meet with no opposition. You can give good advice and encouragement to others, but when trouble knocks unexpectedly at your own door, your strength and judgement fail you. Remember the great weakness you often experience in small troubles; yet these things happen for your own good.

Banish discouragement from your heart as best you can, and if trouble comes, never let it depress or hinder you for long. At the least, bear it bravely, if you cannot bear it cheerfully. Even if you are reluctant to bear it, and feel indignant, yet control yourself, and let no rash words escape you that may harm Christ's little ones. The violence of your feeling will soon subside, and grace return to heal your inner pain. 'I live,' says the Lord, 'ready to help and comfort you more than ever, if you will trust Me and call on Me with devotion.'

Be of good heart, and steel yourself to endure greater trials. All is not lost, however often you feel tempted or sorely troubled. You are a mortal, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in a contstant state of virtue, when this was not possible even for an angel of Heaven, nor for the first man in the Garden? I am He who grants healing and comfort to those in distress, and I raise up to My Divinity those who acknowledge their weakness.

The Movie Meme

2006-11-16T22:23:00.000-06:00

Thank Emily Barney for this lovely addition.

1. Popcorn or candy?
Popcorn. Hands down.

2. Name a movie you've been meaning to see forever.
Hotel Rwanda

3. You are given the power to recall one Oscar: Who loses theirs and to whom?
Titanic loses to Good Will Hunting

4. Steal one costume from a movie for your wardrobe. Which will it be?
Anything Diane Keaton wore in Annie Hall

5. Your favorite film franchise is:
Back to the Future

6. Invite five movie people over for dinner. Who are they? Why'd you invite them? What do you feed them?
Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, and Jake Gyllenhaal. Because they are cute. Pizza?

7. What is the appropriate punishment for people who answer cell phones in the movie theater?
Instant vaporization, unless it's me.

8. Choose a female bodyguard: Ripley from Aliens. Mystique from X-Men. Sarah Connor from Terminator 2. The
Bride from Kill Bill. Mace from Strange Days.
Mystique from X-Men.

9. What's the scariest thing you've ever seen in a movie?
That alien baby thing come out of that guy's chest. Gross, too.

10. Your favorite genre (excluding comedy and drama) is?
Isn't everything either comedy or drama? How about "artsy"?

11. You are given the power to greenlight movies at a major studio for one year. How do you wield this power?
Do what everyone else would do: Make one sure-fire blockbuster to earn the bucks and then spend the rest of my time greenlighting movies to tell stories that would not otherwise be told.

12. Bonnie or Clyde?
Clyde....oh Clyde....

13. Who are you tagging to answer this survey?
Um, Amanda.

Caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender

2006-11-16T22:06:00.000-06:00

Reminded that some people actually read this blog, I decided it was high time I posted again. Since my last entry, I have continued to show up at my job and, if I have not accomplished much else, I have learned the joys of cube-hopping (short for cubicle-hopping, by the way). Friends at work certainly add meaning to the drudgery. And I am beginning to care about these people --- the one whose cancer just came back, the other with continual romantic crises, the man too responsible and loyal to take another job, even when he should.

I am sometimes amazed at the resiliency and resignation I find here.

My young punk friends and I, all somewhere in the middle of our twenties, like to sit around and complain about our jobs. Our jobs bore us and leave us unchallenged. They offer little in the way of meaning or fulfillment. They take too much and pay too little. So much dissatisfaction --- and most of us have jobs at least remotely related to our desired field (myself being one of the few glaring exceptions).

In all reality, we are most fortunate. Occasionally, mid-rant, we admit this. We acknowledge that, yes, the fact that we even have the luxury of these complaints, that we could reasonably expect better later on in life --- this very dissatisfaction is somehow a privilege. To believe that one should find one’s vocation, one’s life calling, that one should do that which fulfills you and involves all your talents and gifts --- to believe that marks one as undeniably bourgeois. Garbage men do not expect as much out of their employment.

What we can expect (and what most of the world still lacks) is to earn fair wages for the work done, to be treated with respect, to work reasonable hours, and to be allowed sufficient time off without penalty to live the rest of our lives --- to tend to children, to care for dying parents, to attend weddings and funerals of loved ones, and to receive proper medical attention as needed.

I will not always work in the direct mail industry. I plan on going back to school, earning a master’s degree, and finding a job that aligns more closely with my values. But I have to give it to the people who continue to show up at their jobs, every day, for years running. I am sure, or at least I hope, that all my friends and I might one day look back and agree with the poet, writing of his father, who got up early on Sundays, too: “What did I know, what did I know, of love’s austere and lonely offices?"

Thor v. The Giants of Chicago

2006-10-29T16:08:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, a large storm passed over our city. Our power was out for five hours, so I navigated by candlelight and cell phone light to an early sleep. About eight miles due east, my friend in his fifth-floor condo on the west loop took this video in the dark.

Cool.

Books I Am In The Middle of Reading Right Now

2006-10-29T15:18:00.000-06:00

1. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen

2. The Way of Ignorance , by Wendell Berry

3. Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness, by Dr. Frank Tallis

4. Boundaries, by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend

5. Good Poems for Hard Times, edited by Garrison Keillor

6. The Inner Life, by Thomas a Kempis

7. Dreams from My Father, by Barak Obama

A Perfect Quote

2006-10-14T23:36:00.000-05:00

"The pursuit of perfection has become a major addiction of our time. Fortunately, perfectionism is learned. No one is born a perfectionist, which is why it is possible to recover. I am a recovering perfectionist. Before I began recovering, I experienced that I and everyone else was always falling short, that who we were and what we did was never quite good enough. I sat in judgment on life itself. Perfectionism is the belief that life is broken.

Few perfectionists can tell the difference between love and approval. Perfectionism is so widespread in this culture that we actually have had to invent another word for love. 'Unconditional love,' we say. Yet, all love is unconditional. Anything else is just approval."

--- from Kitchen Table Wisdom, by Rachel Naomi Remen

Sexual Desire Turns Out To Be Important. Huh.

2006-09-06T18:25:00.000-05:00

Everyone (that is, conservative Christians) appears to agree that we should all marry as young as we can. A few have even infuriatingly called "delaying marriage," also known as mid-twenties singleness, a selfish, tragic choice. One reason why we should marry right now lately put forth, however, has caught me off guard.

In a recent TrueU column, Gary Thomas argued,

"Few people today would question the motivation of a young couple who proclaimed, 'We want to get married because we are head over heels in love,' even though what they are experiencing is an emotional release of pheromones that neurologists tell us will not and cannot last longer than 18 to 48 months. Sexual need and desire, however, will be a constant for at least the next three decades, if not more."

So we should marry young, virile and supple? Not an argument I expect from an affliate of Focus on the Family, but okay. Now, it's no surprise that many Christians get married to have sex, but this is usually considered a bad idea. Maybe not, agrees Lauren Winner, who has joined her voice to the conservative Christian chorus singing, "Git 'er done!" . . . that is, um, "Get married!"

In her book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, Winner's list of lies about sexuality includes "You Shouldn't Marry for Sex" (#2, even). She says desire is "profoundly important." "Important enough to reorder your life around," in fact. I wish she would go on about that, but she uses these statements to conclude.

I guess the best thing about all this marry-for-sex buzz is how seriously it takes sexual desire (think of the next three decades). And also how good it takes desire. On Beliefnet, Winner talks about the Scandal of the Evangelical Body --- the scandal being that we have one. Actually, we have lots of bodies, which our theology tends to ignore. Yet here we have all these Christians telling us that our bodies' desires are important, that we should pay attention to our physical desires, that we should, in an albiet narrow sense, obey them.

Huh.

Why Wheaton Students Grow Cynical: One Suggestion

2006-09-06T17:40:00.000-05:00

Check out this Christianity Today column by David P. Gushee, who incidentally lives and teaches in my hometown. It's about honesty and God-talk and the circumlocutions Christians use because we believe we are supposed to be nice. Mind you, nice receives no mention among the fruits of the Spirit --- but that's another rant. Read on.

Clergywomen Serve Small Congregations, A Statistic Irrelevant to Their Level of Success

2006-08-28T19:24:00.000-05:00

Although women now number over half of divinity students, women preachers remain rare. Perhaps there are more ordained women than we realize because, according to the above-linked New York Times article, most clergywomen find it hard to get hired by large congregations.

The stained-glass ceiling exists even among denominations that have ordained women for some time. Many congregations view women pastors as a sign of their own demise, apparently settling for a woman only when all the good men wouldn't condescend to be their pastor. Most churches want a young married man with children to shepherd them --- a preference against both women and single men (cf. the frantic bride-search at seminaries). Why people have such a preference, I can't imagine, but then again, I'm the daughter of two ordained ministers. Count 'em, two.

At this point I should lay out all my cards. The Times article disheartened me because I know women in ministry and women entering the ministry, and because my senior year of college, I applied to divinity school myself (I counted this bit of news Reason Number 176 Why I Don't Want To Be Ordained, much to God's humor, I'm sure). The article shocked me at how unwelcome women are in the pulpit, in contrast to the female-friendly pentecostal bubble of my childhood. Then I thought, it figures. The church wants nothing more than a figurehead with status, a trophy reverend to reflect their own success.

And I half wanted to admonish the clergywomen as well: So you're stuck making $40,000 a year at a church that lacks its own recording studio. Did you think, when you responded to the Lord's call, that you were headed for success?

I believe that God hides some of his best servants in obscure and lonely places. I have seen these nameless servants sacrifice years for the sake of ten converts, or rise from prostrate prayer again and again to deliver sermons in hope of encouraging a few tired, ungrateful people, or give silently, faithfully, without asking for praise. Remember, this is the God of the widow, the orphan, and the prisoner, the forgotten and the poor. He does not judge our value as the world does; he does not calculate our success in numbers.

The Times quotes female ministers lamenting their shortage of influence, but I am not as quick to dismiss the contribution of women pastors as they are themselves. We cannot measure the blessing these women may be to the small towns and poor parishes they serve. I am all for women in every rank of ministry, and I would never limit women to lesser leadership roles. I would not have us, however, make the mistake that fuels pastoral insecurity, competition, and politiking and believe that our degree of earthly power equals our degree of Christian usefulness.

God has chosen the weak and foolish things to shame the wise and the strong: Clergywomen, he has chosen us. Let us praise him.

The One-Book Meme, On Which I Cheat

2006-08-14T20:44:00.000-05:00

My props to David for introducing me to this list. Thanks for tagging me, Rich, but I beat you to it.

1. One book that changed my life:
Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin and
The Art of the Common Place, Wendell Berry (dead tie)

2. One book I have read more than once:
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

3. One book I would want on a desert island:
The Bible (hey, it's true.)

4. One book that made me laugh:
Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace

5. One book that made me cry:
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

5b. One book that made me laugh and cry:
Jumpers, Tom Stoppard

6. One book I wish had written:
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

7. One book I wish had never been written:
I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris

8. One book I'm currently reading:
Female Chauvinist Pigs, Ariel Levy

9. One book I've been meaning to read:
After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre (over half way through for over a year)

Thoughts Toward Forgiveness

2006-08-14T20:33:00.000-05:00

At night, when my unconscious mind has the freedom to hate as purely as it pleases, I have been known to push a Christian brother of mine up against the wall and spit in his face. I yell at his wife, and I turn to interrogate his children, "How could you?"

I am working on forgiveness. But forgiveness is quiet and slow, like recovery from grief.

Raised in the church, I am no stranger to the cruelty of Christian people. I am all too familiar with the damage that can be done by small people to whom religion is nothing more than a confirmation that they are right. People hungry for power find the church like a horny man finds the lonely single bridesmaids at a wedding. And the church lets everyone in, even those obviously out for their own ends. Our gospel compels us to open our doors to all comers: the manipulators, the liars, the schemers, shmoozers, and judgmental fools.

"There is no response that can easily undo harm done in the name of religion by those for whom religion is such a tool," writes Real Live Preacher Gordon Atkinson in The Christian Century. "There is no protection we can seek that will not destroy us by removing our vulnerability, which is, after all, our greatest power and most precious inheritance."

The easy response is to deny the Christianity of anyone who has offended me. This serves two purposes: (1) It absolves me in the eyes of my secular peers by distancing myself from those giving my religion a bad wrap, and (2) it lets my God off the hook.

I want to protest, "That's not Christianity --- he's insane. Judge Jesus by my faith, not his. Look at me." But I should know myself better than that, and be more honest. With my small little portion of power and influence, I use God. I use him to sidestep tough questions, to grasp by any means the objects of my desire, and in all ways to boost my own self-esteem. Oh how convenient a cover for my will to power --- the will of God.

No, don't judge Jesus by my faith. No, don't look at me at all.

If, however, I must admit the salvation of my enemies and humbly confess my commonality with my accusers, there is no one else to blame but the God who has failed me.

See, I was taught to believe that God is safe, that if I give him my heart it will never be broken. I trust him with my life, and I have extended that trust to the church --- my true family, my sanctuary from the dangers of the world. I was told, "Marry a Christian man and he will not leave you, marry a Christian man and he will not cheat, insulate yourself and your family within the small circle of the church and your children will be successful, your friends loyal, your acquaintances respectful, your finances secure." But I have seen all these promises undone: God-loving people divorce, Christ-seeking children fail, Christian friends betray you, church members gossip, faithful tithers fall into debt.

Don't get me wrong. I have seen good things too. I have seen God bless and prosper. I have met men and women who had cancer and who should have died but who remain alive by the mercy of Jesus and his healing power. I have watched God provide jobs, food, clothing, and shelter. What do I do with his goodness? In the midst of corruption and pain, how do I reckon with his grace?

I would leave this God that has caused me so much trouble --- except I know that I would be leaving my only source of good. Leaving Jesus would not erase my pain, or solve my problems; it would leave me less prepared to suffer well.

When I come to church, I often cry. It seems that I cannot access that part me that connects to Christ without accessing my pain. I can feel Jesus and cry, or I can feel nothing at all.

"That God offers us security, not gilt-edged but solid gold, I well believe," said C.S. Lewis, "but not security from sorrow. His love too may break the heart. A broken and a contrite heart awaits most surely those who follow that road most faithfully. For Christ himself that road leads to 'Why hast thou forsaken me?'"

There is Christ on the cross, betrayed by one of his own, accused by his fellow Jews, dying an unjust death a poor man. And he cried out in his country dialect, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" That I may know, because he cried, too, that when I interrogate my Father, "How could you?" even then, Christ is with me.

Like I said, I am working on forgiveness. For Christ also cried, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He forgave his executioners, and he did not remain under the power of their violence. He was not finally and conclusively defined by the acts against him. On the third day, he rose from the grave. Christ still carries the scars on his body, but he is not dead.

"Forgiveness judges the offense by denying its power and its future,” said friend and divinity student David Congdon. I do not want to allow self-righteous or ungodly Christians to define the course of my life or my relationship with Jesus. I do not want anymore to give my brother the power to haunt me in my sleep. I want to forgive him, and all his friends and family, that I may at last rest and wake up to do good work again. Then, though I may still carry the scars on my body, I will not be dead.

And I will forgive God. Because the only alternative to vulnerability is death. Because I would rather be in hell with Jesus than anywhere else without him. Because yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for he is with me. Because nothing, nothing, nothing, not even my anger, can separate me from his love. He has already forgiven me.