tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46104358260443571272024-03-19T06:05:30.781-04:00Metro HillbillyOuisi Hamilton, Appalachian repatriateOuisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-13664588466899889262020-07-21T09:42:00.001-04:002020-07-21T12:02:41.311-04:00The Story that Murdered Dan AnderlThe internet makes connections where none previously existed. For researchers and activists and entertainers, this is a boon. For the paranoid, it can be damnation.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCzr45kRGAb1BEyUAaaGzQCGnRcMRP7f6rArha11SkRLZJPGrgDn_uiYiFLsXONR_3U_xuIBu2E0WHSFEtZ_zGumAwwG2ojBx7Exl_2xWYC70yo0NwhxvlXr38KtWHJLr9IVJXrXQ1IiSS/s1600/Screenshot+2020-07-21+at+09.34.43.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="321" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCzr45kRGAb1BEyUAaaGzQCGnRcMRP7f6rArha11SkRLZJPGrgDn_uiYiFLsXONR_3U_xuIBu2E0WHSFEtZ_zGumAwwG2ojBx7Exl_2xWYC70yo0NwhxvlXr38KtWHJLr9IVJXrXQ1IiSS/s320/Screenshot+2020-07-21+at+09.34.43.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Judge Esther Salas and her son Dan Anderl</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I recently discovered the existence of an internet subculture called targeted individuals. I saw strange loose interactions, people talking past each other and rambling about their experiences as victims of coordinated, community-wide stalking, led by the government or by atheists, depending on who was talking. A little Googling turned up a Vice piece on the development of a shared delusion that paranoid schizophrenics have crafted, to try to make logical sense of their experience of the world. Together, they've affirmed that <i>yes</i>, the entire world <i>is</i> watching them, judging them, trying to make them feel that they're crazy. <i>Yes</i>, it's really happening--things in their environment are being moved around or changed, and it must be because somebody is sneaking into their homes and workplaces, making the change, and sneaking out again, and all to make the targeted individuals lose the support and trust of their families and friends.<br />
<br />
This shared delusion is--well, it's a little funny, right? In the way we laugh at absurdity. Occam's razor says you just forgot that you set your coffee mug down over there; no team of spies has set up in your neighbor's house for the express purpose of moving your coffee cup. But it's mostly tragic, and I think I can understand the determination to piece together a coherent narrative. It's what all people do, especially all people groups together: we tell stories so that the world makes sense. We have creation myths to tell us what we truly are, what our purpose is, why life is so hard. (We are dust; we are animated by the breath of God; we turned from God and turned on one another in the Garden.) So it makes sense, too, that people whose minds have failed them would need stories to explain what's going on and what it all means. They've just gotten their stories from the most unreliable storyteller possible.<br />
<br />
There are other online communities created by people whose minds and behaviors and traditions have failed them. They go there to reassure themselves that this isn't their fault; that it's somebody else's fault; that there's a secret, unspoken system working against them. They are poor, it turns out, because of the Jews and the Illuminati. They are single, it turns out, because all women are drawn by biological imperative to alpha males. They are sick, it turns out, because of 5G and glutamates.<br />
<br />
I have intimate experience of this in the pre-internet days. My father, a paranoid schizophrenic, had a series of obsessions to explain his malaise and confusion. He was suffering from mercury poisoning, so he made my mother give him purging chelation IVs at home. He was picking up radio signals from the air, so we all had to wear glasses without metal frames. We were <i>looking at him</i>, so he rushed at us, beating me with his belt buckle, screaming puff-faced and bulge-necked that we were <i>aggravating him.</i><br />
<br />
It's true that he was exposed to mercury as a small child, playing with the shiny liquid stuff that his father brought home from work at an Oak Ridge laboratory. But as an adult, he believed the problem was amalgam dental fillings. He bought some device he billed as a mercury vapor breathalyzer, and drove around town with it, stopping strangers in parking lots and making them huff into a straw. He made a banner with dot matrix paper, filling the back window of the van he lived in with the words<br />
<br />
<b>If your dentist uses mercury amalgam, SHOOT HIM!!!</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
All this to make sense of a senseless life. Without easy connections to other delusional paranoiacs, he had to forge his own brand of fearful, raging insanity, using data gleaned from an analog world. Online, he has turned to end-of-days prophecy. He made a video detailing the star signs that indicated a hail of meteors would destroy the West Coast after the 2017 solar eclipse, and it appallingly went viral, unironic comments trailing below the video praising his insight and the truth he was speaking. In the internet age, his delusions are morphing to coordinate with the data that other delusional people are sharing, crowdsourced insanity.<br />
<br />
You don't have to be schizophrenic to take part in a shared delusion, though. We're all vulnerable to getting carried along by a community and its sense-making narrative. We're built to think and act in stories: we join political movements and churches, educational groups and social groups that tell a story about what the world is like, what our place is in it, what everybody else's place is in it. Our economic policies, our child-rearing practices, our buildings and our manufacturing all come from and reinforce those stories: what is the spirit of the American people? What is the shape of God's work in the world? How do people behave under normal circumstances, and how do people behave under abnormal circumstances, and why? What makes us <i>us</i>, and what makes other people different from us? We explore those questions through stories and, the more we tell those stories (about the free market, about Original Sin, about Paleolithic diets and pioneer ingenuity), the more we see the world make sense. The stories that we hold in common with each other explain not only our lives, but all the things that don't fit with our lives, and there's the danger. Those shared narratives tell us why life is so hard, and those shared narratives can make people with ordinary, functional minds turn on their neighbors, from Salem to Jedwabne to Tulsa.<br />
<br />
Jump with me over to Denmark in the late 19th century, where Henrik Ibsen's play <i>A Doll's House </i>has just premiered. It's the wrenching story of Nora, a naive middle-class housewife, groomed for a life of idleness, who is drawn into a con by her husband's trusted buddy. When the husband learns his wife has lost his money, he rages at her, and she stands up and rages back, rages that she has been kept stupid and uneducated so that her father and her husband would have a doll to play with, rages at her wasted years and empty head, and she walks out the door (leaving behind her three children because, in this time, women had no right to custody).<br />
<br />
The play was a hit in Scandinavia. When it moved to Germany, the ending was re-written. Nora is shown her children, and she breaks down and stays, a palatable narrative for a culture that believed Western society would collapse if women were allowed to leave their marriages.<br />
<br />
The real tragedy behind the play is that it was written to redeem the horrific experience that Ibsen's friend Laura had as a Norwegian housewife. When Laura's husband contracted tuberculosis, Laura took out an illegal loan for his treatment and forged a check to pay it off. Her husband responded by having her committed to an asylum. Ibsen recognized that Norway had a narrative of female innocence--a story they told about the fragility and purity of women, and how women needed to be protected from, among other things, financial responsibility and the knowledge of financial matters. This narrative required adult women to be kept ignorant, which of course set them up for error. And when they erred, they were not protected by their innocence. Retribution for failure to live a benign, mild life was brutal.<br />
<br />
Of course, most of us couldn't live benign, mild lives if we tried. Only a few of us are born to roles that allow innocence or ignorance; most of us are born working-class, or born men, or both. But that narrative of natural female ignorance and innocence, of our unsuitability for participation in a man's world, of our culpability in the collapse of Western society--that story is alive, on the internet, and it's morphed through the collective delusion of raging men whose lives are hard for reasons they can't understand. Collectively, this subculture has crafted a narrative that we are all slaves to our sexual orientations and gender roles, and that if we'd accept that we could find some peace, but women have departed from their lane, and that's why things are shot to hell. It's because <i>all </i>women have unfair advantages that <i>these particular</i> men are fired from their jobs over and over again; it's because <i>all </i>women have unfair advantages that <i>these</i> <i>particular </i>men have lost custody of their children (the most-reiterated example that Men's Rights internet trolls bring up). When nobody wants a second date with them, it's because <i>all </i>women are wired to have sex with a different sort of man. Into this metanarrative of wrongful female domination, this subculture can fit all the details of their lives--it's a bigger story that explains away their conflicts, their broken relationships, the way every bar in the world seems too high for them to meet.<br />
<br />
And so together, in Red Pill and Incel and MGTOW forums, they tell this bigger story, over and over, bringing their daily struggles and their ponderings and their malaise, making the myth bigger and bigger. It bubbles up into the mainstream when somebody fires off a Google memo about how the female brain cannot science, but most of the time, most of us are blissfully unaware of this community.<br />
<br />
Until <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8258001&page=1">August 4th, 2009</a>.<br />
<br />
And <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43892189">May 23rd, 2014</a>.<br />
<br />
And <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-van-attack-driver-profile-alek-minassian-1.4632435">April 23rd, 2018</a>.<br />
<br />
And <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/10/31/18039294/scott-beierle-tallahassee-shooting-pittsburgh-gab">November 2nd, 2018.</a><br />
<br />
And <a href="https://time.com/5839395/canada-teen-terrorism-incel-attack/">February 24th, 2020</a>.<br />
<br />
And <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/dead-man-in-ny-may-be-tied-to-killing-of-nj-federal-judges-son-shooting-of-her-husband-sources/2521563/">July 19th, 2020</a>, when self-described <a href="https://6abc.com/suspect-in-shooting-of-judges-family-possibly-linked-to-calif-death/6326949/">Men's Rights activist Roy Den Hollander</a> murdered the 20-year-old son and critically wounded the husband of Esther Salas. First news reports use those phrases that are too familiar: feminazi, the draft, ladies' nights at bars, manosphere. They are part of a story built to make sense of the world by identifying who the villains are (and it's all women who exist in the public eye, and all men who support the dignity of women). They are data points connected into a narrative that is absurd to the rest of us, but which answers the question "Why is this happening to me?" in a way that this community has accepted as patent truth.<br />
<i><br /></i>
I grieve with Judge Salas for the murder of her only child. I grieve with her as her husband fights for his life. For the audacity of sitting as a judge, for the audacity of hearing a case brought by a Men's Rights lawyer, she has suffered an attack that is anything but unprecedented. She is the latest victim of a story that has grown legs. The so-called Men's Rights communities are telling a story about female domination that explains all their woes and then sends them out to homes and yoga studios and city streets with guns in their hands. They are making a sense of the world that turns them on their neighbors. Collectively, as they craft their creation myth, they find their way to the dawn of sin, hissing the first act of cowardice and the first act of cruelty: <i>The woman you gave me; it's her fault.</i>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-39450310513692024732017-03-19T01:02:00.001-04:002017-03-19T01:03:33.590-04:00Maybe it Doesn't Matter if Eden Was a Setup<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>So I fed the troll and responded to an online question asking why we should all suffer because of something Adam and Eve did. Here's my response, expanded and edited:</i></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<div class="qtext_para" style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There are a lot of ways of reading the story of the Fall. It does seem like a setup, right? “Here’s Paradise. Here’s the one thing you’re not allowed to do, and I’m going to put it right smack in the middle of Paradise where you can see it all the time, and I’m not going to explain why you’re not allowed to do it.”</span></div>
<div class="qtext_para" style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So many Christians (and Jews) don't read this as a literal account, partially because any story where God is the bad guy needs a grain of salt, and partially because the epic battle of <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=4723956">The Almighty God vs. John T. Scopes</a> isn't all that troublesome outside of the Bible Belt. <i>The Descent of Man</i> and the Fall of humanity can coexist in most Christian traditions. (Something most Christians do is read heavily into verse 3:15, folding it into the Prophets and the New Testament to interpret victory over the serpent as the advent of a savior and, finally, victory over the Fall.) But regardless of whether they read the story literally and which other Scripture and traditions the readers bring along with them, most people also read the story as being about big, eternal problems that humanity is mired in. Problems like:</span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">We die. What’s up with that?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Sometimes people do terrible things and I want to know who to pin the blame on, but the closer I look the more complicated it gets. I don’t like that. Can you tell me a story that pins the blame on women? I’d feel better if I could pin the blame for everything on all women for all of time. [Theologian’s note: You’re reading the story wrong, you jerk.]</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">We do the very last thing we ought to do. Like, we seem <i>compelled</i>, as a species, to just up and do the worst possible thing in any given situation. What’s up with that?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">We work so hard and still barely have enough to get by. What’s up with that?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Romantic relationships. We feel incomplete without each other, so we hook up and then just destroy each other. What’s up with that?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">God seems so far away. Is that true? Why?<a name='more'></a></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So you can read this story as a play-by-play of an actual event, or you can read this story as an ancient metaphor, but in either case, you need to read it while remembering that it was passed down to tell us something about ourselves. Particularly about ourselves as we relate to God and to each other. We inherit a world that’s broken. We inherit self-defeating impulses and a mean streak and we tell stupid lies to ourselves and to the people who love us and the rent is too damn high and we live with the threat of dying coming ever closer. But we’re good, too. We’re amazing. We’re the culmination of life on Earth, the intersection of dirt and deity. And we’re so bad at it. And we’re not in Paradise, but maybe we were made for it, and maybe we’re headed for it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="qtext_para" style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So when you read the story with that kind of tension*, and if you take a long view of Scripture and tradition, it adds these concepts:</span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Both our greatness and our failings hold us in solidarity with all of humanity through all of time</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It's inevitable that you and I will fail and will make destructive choices</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Things didn’t have to be this way</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">If we remember who we are and who we should be, things don't have to be this way today</span></li>
</ul>
<div class="qtext_para" style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">And the promise:</span></div>
<div class="qtext_para" style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Someday, it won't be this way.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">*Theologian’s second note: Once you start reading sacred texts this way (setting aside the literal vs. figurative battle and looking for why the text was preserved in the first place), it’s easier to have conversations with fundamentalists, progressives, and atheists that end in smiles and hugs instead of ulcers<span style="color: #333333;">.</span></span></span></div>
Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-9931816300543388582016-11-09T07:56:00.002-05:002016-11-09T08:00:19.845-05:00The Greatest of These is Charity<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Put your money where your vote is, and you'll become a bigger deal than the president in the lives you reach.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">November 9th: Days For Girls, so that women in poverty can continue schooling and work even when there's blood coming out of their wherever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.daysforgirls.org/">http://www.daysforgirls.org/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-14301620739467782262016-11-07T09:04:00.000-05:002016-11-07T12:02:36.993-05:00<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So, this year I'm not voting. Bring on
the hate!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Maybe your first feeling is contempt, or relief because you
know I would have voted against your candidate. You may be copy-and-pasting URLs to FunnyOrDie celebrity videos so that I'll be shamed by Adam Scott into voting. To you I say: You may
have drunk the Kool-Aid.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">We've all drunk some form of it. Very
few of us will change our minds about politics because of a rational
argument. I didn't vote for George W. Bush in my first election because of reason; I voted because of religion. Ditto Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries and Ralph Nader in the 2008 general election and Jill Stein in 2012. So I'll start by saying that you aren't going to be able to
show me the error of my ways here, and I'm not going to be able to
convince you to do an about turn, either. What I'd like to do is gain a
little of your respect. Please understand that your position—the
patriotic position, the position of the responsible citizen who uses the tools given them, the
position of the people who vote their conscience—is already
broadcast on every channel, streaming on every network, posted on
every religious forum, communicated to every child in school. So the
nonvoters are probably not just in need of a little education;
they've heard the message. Your voice has already been heard, is
being heard, and will be heard as long as human government exists. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Most arguments against nonvoting come
from an assumption that the nonvoter is acting alone and is using flawed
logic to deny the tenets of our democratic process: “My vote
doesn't matter.” “There's no good choice this year.” A lot of
people aren't aware that there are small but old religious traditions
that abstain from voting for completely different reasons. This year,
I'm finding my Anabaptist roots and examining the election from a
pacifistic, anarchistic perspective. Both of those traditions--pacifism and anarchism--are rooted in Christian practice that comes directly from Scripture. Of course, Scripture and tradition also support opposing positions of just war and hierarchical government or communism. So whatever your beliefs, it's a good thing if you have some doubts. Let's call those doubts your own interior prophetic voice. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But you don't have to form and interpret those doubts alone.There are always Christian traditions
that stand as a prophetic voice outside of mainstream culture—among them, Anabaptists, monastics and Quakers. And there should
always be that voice standing outside, saying, “This thing that
you're all doing? It's not going to save you. In fact, it's the work
of the devil.” (This sounds like name-calling, like comparing Trump to Hitler. Instead of thinking of a personified Satan or Antichrist, today let's think of it as any social movement that works against Christ's own work in the world. That could be a bad health care policy, a bad environmental policy, a bad education or foreign policy--anything that undoes God's work or damages God's children.) The Anabaptist act of nonvoting is an act of civic
defiance, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God can never be synthesized with the Powers and
Principalities; that no political system can
ever be truly blessed by God; that the Church and the State will
always be enemies, and that participating in the State because it's
not so bad to us this year or this century or this civilization (or because we think we can use it as a
tool to get good work done) will just sweep us away from the Church. Anabaptists remember: the State used to drown us, men, women, and children, for doing our own thing. Trusting the State is like returning to an abuser. No man can serve two masters, they say. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Yes, but give to Caesar what is
Caesar's, right? Fortunately, in the U.S., Caesar only asks for my
vote; he doesn't demand it. No tricky questions there, unlike acts of civil disobedience like Thoreau, who went to jail for refusing to use Caesar's capital to support a slaveholding system. You can abstain from voting without drawing Caesar's wrath. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Here's the central Anabaptist argument against voting. You can reject their position, but it's a non-negotiable for pacifistic Christians: <b>The president of the U.S. is the head of a standing
military, so no matter who's sitting in that Oval Office, the
position itself is counter to God's plan for humankind.
</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Yes, but why claim to take the moral
high ground if you're not going to actually try to make a difference?
That's where I think the State has got us domesticated—thinking
that the passivity of casting a vote for some mover and shaker is the
same as doing our own shaking. For instance: the Trump candidacy has
whipped up an antichrist frenzy against immigrants. Christians are
compartmentalizing their faith, using utilitarianism to justify
abusing their neighbor. So shouldn't I vote for Clinton? Lots of my
friends have found enough to like about her that they can vote for
her in good conscience. Some of my other friends are supporting a
third-party candidate, using their voices to say, “Tomorrow can be
better than what this two-party system is promising us.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But I'm not abstaining because of where
the candidates stand on the issues. (Although I have a real problem
with Clinton's history in the Department of State, including the
“enhanced interrogation rooms” present in every US embassy and
consulate, and the drones flown to Yemen out of Djibouti. Those are sins that I actively participated in through my former work as a Department of State subcontractor.) I'm
abstaining in order to remove myself from the upper levels of the U.S. political system. So that leaves me without the right to an opinion,
hm? Or it means that I won't have any impact on the issues that
matter.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Not so. I found a border state-based
charity that provides legal counsel to immigrants, and set up a
monthly donation. Tell me my vote would have made that much
difference. Tell me my vote is good enough. Because it's not. Part of
the tragedy of this issues-based election is that we've lost sight of
the fact that the most impact comes at the local level, where <i>your</i>
dollars and <i>your</i> time
and <i>your </i>voice can
directly connect to the people who <i>need you desperately. </i>Find the people who are already working to bring aid to the folks your candidate promises to help. Instead of waiting for a political messiah, join in the work that already exists.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But why not take local action <i>and</i>
vote? Don't I understand that women and other minorities will
be oppressed—again—and disenfranchised—again—if we don't take
advantage of our recent right to vote? I'm throwing away the power I have instead of turning it to something good. Why would I want to remove my
voice from the conversation about who has worth and who should be
accorded dignity by my society?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The same argument can be made against
those who take a vow of poverty. They remove themselves from an
economic system where they could, potentially, have labored to earn
money that in turn could have been used to help the poor. But in
voluntarily joining the poor, they are declaring the dignity and
worth of the poor, and placing themselves as a bridge between those
who have a voice and those who have none.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Don't forget, also, that God cares for
people as individuals, not just as a collective. The needs of the
many do not always outweigh the needs of the few. Removing one's self
from a system enslaved to Caesar is an act of self-care. Different
people are susceptible to getting swept up in different social sins,
and some people may need to take an apparently anticivic action in
order to save their own souls. I will always be a fundamentalist on the wagon, with the voices of the Moral Majority tumbling around in my head, urging me to use democracy to force my will to be done; telling me that my will is <i>definitely</i> exactly God's will.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So nonvoting is, for me, like voluntary poverty is for others. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Like the woman with the alabaster jar,
their devotion is small, affecting only a few, while the disciples
protest that they could have better used their resources. To
paraphrase, “The polls will always be with you.”</span></div>
Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-51421935848382728652014-03-18T14:28:00.002-04:002014-04-05T09:11:41.427-04:00Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">We used to sing:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">One door, and only
one, and yet its sides are two:</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Inside and outside.
On which side are you?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">One door, and only
one, and yet its sides are two.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">I’m on the inside. On
which side are you?</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">There's no line on the ground that shows the change between <i>then</i>
and <i>now</i>. I can't identify the moment that I shifted from conservative
fundamentalist to progressive Baptist. Or from abuse victim to abuse survivor.
Or the moment I changed my mind about the role of women in the Church, or about
what it is to be saved, or about how good Sunny D tastes (not good at all, as
it turns out). Things changed without my noticing. Some things that were big
changed so much that I don't see how I could have developed from the person I
was twelve years ago. That was a life I couldn't wait to get rid of. At
eighteen, I was off like a shot, five hundred miles away and never going back.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Now I’m going back.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">
</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">When I
was four, my family moved into a ranch house on top of a hill overlooking the
Tennessee River. It had a big yard, brown shag carpeting, avocado and mustard
appliances, and glittery popcorn ceilings. The toilet seat was one of those
squishy ones that makes a soft farting sound when you sit on it. On the first
day, I pushed the lever on the ice maker and ice fell out of the freezer onto
the floor. I burst into panicked tears while the babysitter laughed at my
reaction. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="more"></a><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">It's
funny outside of its context. I burst into panicked tears over a lot of things
as a child. My father was an at-the-time-undiagnosed bipolar paranoid
schizophrenic, and I was terrified of doing anything unexpected or possibly
naughty, since there was no telling what his reaction would be.<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Both
of my parents taught at the local college for a while, until my father got
fired, as he always did, and my mother continued teaching while he bounced
around from job to job. During those first few months we church-hopped until my
parents settled on a congregation.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
Grace looked like an apple barn with dwarfism: a squat ground level with a wide
dome on top. The building had been constructed when the congregation left a
Presbyterian church. Nobody told me why they left, except that it had something
to do with the Presbyterians becoming liberal, so I gathered that the
attributes of liberality were too dark and evil for a five-year-old's
ears. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">I learned a lot at Grace in those last years of the 1980s. I
learned about being a non-denominational evangelical conservative fundamentalist Biblical literalist.
I learned that the liberal media was in cahoots with mainstream science to hide
the truth of creationism from the public. I learned about God’s special plan
for women, which meant that God must really hate me, since that plan was so
dreary. (Luckily, I had a Methodist grandmother whose life set a different
example.) They scolded me for asking hard questions. They read from the NIV, because the King James is pretty but a crummy translation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">That big dome at the church was a piece of armor. It kept the
people inside safe from the secular world. We could tell who was inside and who
was outside.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">And
now I'm outside.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">My parents divorced. My mother fought the divorce, because the Bill Gothard faction at Grace told her divorce was wrong. It was better to be abused, better to let your children be abused, then to dissolve a marriage that was deviant from day one. The institution of marriage had to be spared from scandal, which meant victim-blaming and looking the other way when a marriage went terribly wrong. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">The Bill Gothard thing has recently blown up, another institution that brought scandal on itself by making the avoidance of scandal its priority.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Eventually my mother got fed up, but once the divorce was finalized, she got fired by Bryan College, the fundamentalist school affiliated with Grace. Christians, she says, shoot their wounded.</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">I've kept up with the Dayton news. These days, Bryan College is poised to lose at least a quarter of its faculty through a game of chicken, a new addendum to their statement of faith, requiring the professors to sign a profession of faith in a literal Adam and Eve or lose their jobs. Bryan is hard at work filtering itself, identifying those on the inside who ought to be on the outside.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">After the divorce, we kept attending Grace. They were my rock, my certainty, the way I knew I was on the inside, even when the other members told me how sinful my family was and how wrong it was to be the child of divorced parents. When I left town, I worried about finding a real Christian church. After all, there were so many congregations that weren't non-denominational, fundamentalist, conservative Biblical literalists. The first compromise was joining a denomination. I wandered down the road and found a Baptist church. Hey, it may have had a brand, but at least it wasn’t a liberal and shallow one
like the Methodists, right? Maybe they weren't too far off base. My new church had a liturgy identical to the one at Grace.
I settled in and expected things to stay the same.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">But things changed, quietly and beautifully. Memorial took me in,
fed me, gave me rides to work, freaked the first two boyfriends out with
hospitality, and gathered around for my marriage to the third. They snuck
Baptist theology up on me so quietly that I didn’t notice becoming a feminist
or getting gung-ho about the separation of Church and State. When I asked hard questions,
they asked harder ones. While other people scolded me for studying Theology in
school (“It’s supposed to be in your heart, not your head!”), my church family
sent its young women and men to seminary. They read from the NIV, the NRSV, The Message, and a host of other translations, but not the King James, which is pretty but crummy. They pinned their doors open on
Sunday mornings to let the music out and the weather and neighbors in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">For twelve years, I have lived with a big, loud, happy family. And
now I’m going back, taking my Catholic husband into the buckle of the Bible
Belt, scoping out churches in Chattanooga (“Our first article of faith: we
believe that the King James Bible is the literal, inerrant Word of God”). We’re
renting an apartment on top of a hill overlooking the Tennessee River. The appliances are shiny
and black. The floors are sort of like real wood. And there will be more money
to save after the rent is paid, and more time at home after the commute, and
someday a house, and someday a dog, and someday more children.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">And hundreds of miles away, there will be Memorial, with its doors
wide open.</span></div>
</div>
Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-79933831558820696182013-12-06T13:13:00.001-05:002013-12-06T13:19:23.123-05:00NaNoWriMo: I Did That<a href="http://nanowrimo.org/"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">nanowrimo.org</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> is an organization that runs writing workshops for youth. Their title event is the National Novel Writing Month, run every November. You sign up and commit to churning out a 50,000 word first draft of a brand-new, never-before-worked-on novel. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So, I did that. I did it for the reason I put down in my NaNo Author Info page:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<em><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">When I was small, I thought that authors were like gods, generating full-fledged books straight from their minds, like Athena born from the head of Zeus. Then I noticed that some books are very very badly written, and while it shattered my worldview, it meant that authors are human and with hard work and luck, I too could be an author someday.<br /><br />I'm participating this year because I have a fear that hitting 30 without seriously working on a novel will mean that I'm not actually a writer but just an ordinary working stiff. I turn 30 in December. The challenge is on.</span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></em><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">It was not difficult. I created an outline in October, bought a battery-powered word processor for $10 on eBay, and typed like a lunatic during my commute to and from work every day in November. I wrote on the computer while the baby was napping on the weekends. I wrote by hand in the bathtub. And on November 28th, I hit the 50k mark, and paused for a breather.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Emotionally, it's been a little difficult. In the wake of a sudden death in the family, things are strained at home. Revisting many of the lowest points of my childhood for this writing project left me drained, and struggling to keep upbeat and to maintain order in household containing a grieving spouse and tantruming toddler.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">But it's satisfying. This is a creative process that parallels my work as an interior designer, from concept to design development to revision and documentation. The pace and phases are familiar and I'm confident that, writing skills and experience aside, the process itself is something I can go through. And five years as a designer has taught me that nearly all the work is revision, and that it's so, so much better to delete the things you loved last week than to hang onto them when they no longer fit your design purpose.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Writing fiction for anyone else's viewing is terrifying to me. A friend who knew about NaNo demanded an elevator pitch, and I froze in place. It's too embarrassing. Everyone has a very bad novel kicking around in her head. I don't want anyone to know I'm one of the everyones. I come up with concepts, create outlines, start writing, tell no one, and get nowhere. NaNo's community and public accountability swept me up and carried me to the first goal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So I'm putting my synopsis here, because it's time for accountability and concrete commitment, instead of crawling inside of a closet or dresser drawer to write. Don't worry; I won't be posting excerpts here. But I am going to put my goals and progress out for the world to see. The first goal: reach the end of December fully prepped to begin the first revision on January 1st. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Thurber-Carnival-James/dp/0060932872/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y"><img alt="http://www.amazon.com/The-Thurber-Carnival-James/dp/0060932872/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y" border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDGUOLg1FVPrPr0igLpbPGB-KY4xUXxQxJjrSk9UTo3-JFdo5t1JJg3EjmhDQeklpsM6XCM4fxhkYPPhg5SigUwyVbMG8hQH-gHy7t19w2XL0CoWbOpihLR7rsQSy1_2v2InZcKzDka7f/s320/excelsior.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><em>"Corey, Someplace Else" takes place in a re-imagined Appalachia, charting the emergence of the title character from his family's cycle of abuse and his exploration of the beautiful and complex world beyond the gates of his trailer park. This YA novel is in the magical realism genre, with a Southern Gothic sensibility.<br /><br />In the rural town of Culmore Cove, 17-year-old Corey Ellison leaves his mentally ill father and moves in with a pair of austere great-aunts. He explores their century-old farmhouse and finds ghosts and memories inside. When he takes a summer job with a renovation company, Corey puts his second sight to use, identifying properties that carry good memories and those that are haunted by a bad past. He spends his days with a ghost and turns a critical eye on his old friends. As his abilities increasingly disconnect him from the world, Corey reevaluates family roles and the happiness and suffering that are part of living with others. In this hot, lush Tennessee summer, Corey will encounter deadbeat gods, monster catfish, ghosts of the Cherokee, and the night-stalking Wampus cat, and come to terms with the probability that he won't make it to autumn alive.</em></span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-88437269221537222512013-09-24T12:54:00.001-04:002013-09-24T12:55:31.131-04:00Montgomery County Public Schools, Eid, and Religious Expression<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">My grandmother told me how, growing up in Augusta, GA in the '30s and '40s, school was extended to Saturday mornings. She said that it was done to make the Jewish students truant. I don't know the accuracy of this, but it's not implausible motivation for a school system that started each day with a chorus of "Dixie" while saluting the Confederate flag.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Her story was about a system that was created in order to exclude a special population. This week, there's a story making the rounds about a request to change an existing system to accommodate a special population. Parents of Muslim children in Montgomery County Public Schools would like the school system to recognize the holy day of Eid in the same way that the most important Christian and Jewish holy days are recognized: by shutting the schools so that families can perform religious observances together. Read the story here:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><a href="http://montgomeryvillage.patch.com/groups/schools/p/will-you-stay-home-from-school-for-eid-aladha-montgomeryvillage">The Montgomery Village Patch</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><a href="http://wamu.org/news/13/09/23/muslim_leaders_push_for_eid_ul_adha_observance_in_montgomery_county">WAMU coverage</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><a href="http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/09/some-muslims-in-montgomery-county-want-schools-to-observe-muslim-holidays-94387.html">ABC coverage</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">WAMU states that while standardized tests are not administered in Montgomery County schools while Muslim students are home observing Eid, other routine exams and quizzes are given.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><a name='more'></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Muslims are in a bind when they have to choose between meeting God's expectations and meeting the school district's expectations. How can they teach their children to be true to their faith and still offer their children a chance to succeed academically and participate in mainstream culture? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">American Christians are fortunate to inherit special accommodations from our Anglican, Catholic and Puritan ancestors, and free practice from our Baptist ancestors. On the one hand, our holidays and our ways of talking and thinking about faith are built right into the culture; on the other hand, our non-conforming practices are permitted instead of punished. As time wears on, those non-conforming practices become the norm, and we become the standard-setters instead of the radicals. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">When the Baptist way of doing church began to spread in the New World, it was in spite of a system designed to accommodate the religious practices of the colonies. Many generations later, "Baptist" is the largest non-Catholic religious affiliation in the United States. Baptists have held and do hold political power, as individual politicians and as voting bodies. We have become the norm. As new populations immigrate and grow, will Baptists remember that, like these new groups, we once lived in someone else's world? Our founding fathers and mothers, including </span><a href="http://centerforbaptiststudies.org/resources/iniquity.htm"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Thomas Helwys</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.reformedreader.org/rbb/williams/btp.htm"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Roger Williams</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">, were exiled and imprisoned for daring to speak and to live differently. In the 17th century, they demanded freedom of religious expression for Muslims and other minority religions. How much lower the stakes are for Baptists who today stand up to support their neighbors!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">In many countries (France and Germany get a lot of media buzz), public expression of private religious belief is suppressed as being anti-patriotic. In the US, by and large, the intent is to allow free expression without government endorsement. So let's assume that religion should in fact be accommodated in some way by the state. Given that assumption:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1) How do you actually use your religious holidays from work or school? Is there a difference in your way of using holidays vs. non-observant people who also get those days off?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2) What's the tipping point when the school system needs to accommodate a special population in a way that affects the rest of the students? Is it by percentage of the class? Type of population? Do you know anyone who needed a new kind of special accommodation, and how did that work out? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3) For Christians: What kind of built-in accommodations have you experienced in school or in the workplace? How have you been inconvenienced in your practice of faith? And what would change in your life and your practice of faith if those accommodations were removed?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4) Practically, how can we Christians stand for justice as Muslims practice their faith in a culture tailored to meet our needs better than theirs?</span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-22109244691247885492013-09-06T21:53:00.000-04:002013-10-29T21:47:44.086-04:00Writing Exercise Generators<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I'll be a world-famous novelist some day. Got a story kicking around. I'll get it down on paper eventually. It's a million-dollar story, and if it weren't for this writer's block it would be done by now. Going to be the next <i>Harry Potter</i>, I tell you. There just hasn't been enough time to get it written, is all. But one day!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Riiiiight.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Okay, I'm not holding my breath for a movie deal. But I'm knocking the rust off of the cogs in my brain and using the bits of time I do have free to write like a maniac. I spent five minutes staring at a blank page last week, got mad, and made up a list of topics. Then I used a random number generator to select which topics I'd write on. I find I get into the swing of it about forty-five seconds before running out of time.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Update: I've committed to <a href="http://nanowrimo.org/">NaNoWriMo</a> and split the generator into two. The outline/plot generator is to help you tinker with your ideas and look at them from a new direction. The scene generator consists of unspecific prompts that can be interpreted in many different ways, to suit your novel. Keep mashing the button until you come up with relevant prompts, or make up your own list. If you leave a comment with a good suggestion, I'll update the list!</i> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Here is the outline/plot generator list:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1. Outline of the story in 15 lines</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2. Outline of the story in 7 lines</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3. Summary of the story in 3 lines</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4. Summary of the story in 10 words or fewer</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">5. A description of the most critical setting, and why it is critical</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">6. A description of the most significant physical object in the story</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">7. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The (emotional, moral, spiritual, etc.) takeaway</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">8. The method you will use to communicate the (emotional, moral, spiritual, etc.) takeaway</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">9. How you are worried that the (emotional, moral, spiritual, etc.) takeaway might be missed or misinterpreted by the reader, or contradicted by your own writing</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">10. A description of the main character's biggest obstacle to overcome (or be overcome by), in 1 line</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">11. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">A description of the main character's biggest obstacle to overcome (or be overcome by), in 4 lines</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">12. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">A list of five events, characters, or themes that you had planned on putting into the story, but which don't fit seamlessly right now</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">13. Something you know, but which your main character doesn't know</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">14. The most unpleasant thing that happens in the story</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">15. The most pleasant thing that happens in the story</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">16. What the main character wants most at the beginning and at the end of the story</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">17. What someone else wants most for the main character</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">18. Describe the kind of reader who would like this story</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">19. Describe the tone of the story</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">20. How does it all end? Summarize the conclusion in 2 lines</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Here is the scene generator list: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1. The opening paragraph (an alternate opening paragraph if you've already written one)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> The closing paragraph (an alternate closing paragraph if you've already written one)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3. Introduction of a primary character</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4. Introduction of a minor character</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">5. A character finds something funny</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">6. A scene that contains an animal</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">7. Something that happens late at night</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">8. A near miss</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">9. A conversation in which the truth is not being told</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">10. A character's desires are fulfilled</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">11. Something is not as expected</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">12. A character performs a new task</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">13. A character enters a new environment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">14. A character settles into something comfortable</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">15. Something is given up on</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">16. There is a new plan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">17. There is a lost temper</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">18. Something familiar is different</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">19. Something is broken</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">20. Something is found</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="200" longdesc="http://www.random.org/integers/" scrolling="no" src="http://www.random.org/widgets/integers/iframe.php?title=Writing+Exercise+Generator&buttontxt=Pick+me+a+topic&width=400&height=200&border=on&bgcolor=%23FFF8DC&txtcolor=%23000000&altbgcolor=%238B4513&alttxtcolor=%23F0F8FF&defaultmin=1&defaultmax=20&fixed=on" width="400">
The numbers generated by this widget come from RANDOM.ORG's true random number generator.
</iframe>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-14068063706517129292013-09-06T20:22:00.003-04:002013-09-06T20:22:39.407-04:00The Way of Light Wreath<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">We just received our Way of Light Wreath. This is a spiral candle holder that holds 24 candles, one for each day of Advent. There is a figurine of Mary on a donkey that winds to the center of the wreath as each day is marked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhMeyXgT0mUiVmruF0fiHeWgUxQHaiDIVSL8U8jiiveTwOsKx92cTjXRZiX6KHrFZyoI6PR-HQ1kmVJ29wZpsV50wHj0jxAjtJuOUttLQ0jIlVipMbcDy9I9ugYwI6XsdwgLPHNhxM8y7Q/s1600/wreath4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhMeyXgT0mUiVmruF0fiHeWgUxQHaiDIVSL8U8jiiveTwOsKx92cTjXRZiX6KHrFZyoI6PR-HQ1kmVJ29wZpsV50wHj0jxAjtJuOUttLQ0jIlVipMbcDy9I9ugYwI6XsdwgLPHNhxM8y7Q/s1600/wreath4.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">There are two extension pieces that transform the spiral into a holder for 40 candles. There is a figurine of Jesus to mark the journey from the beginning of Lent to the cross. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfYq7XtCcIPO8ADoffurbyP9lXAT-0OIDtywdAPJLS6yEd3ULUI29gqy5h7TevRpMbcmkQhXscjTfQX06-_4gLsYDja7JbNqiozRXIoJSSi6ZK3x-9mcAbovwVLYp1zwcBUTwnHyFJFrIr/s1600/wreath2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfYq7XtCcIPO8ADoffurbyP9lXAT-0OIDtywdAPJLS6yEd3ULUI29gqy5h7TevRpMbcmkQhXscjTfQX06-_4gLsYDja7JbNqiozRXIoJSSi6ZK3x-9mcAbovwVLYp1zwcBUTwnHyFJFrIr/s1600/wreath2.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The wreathes are handmade in Canada by a young man named Caleb Voskamp. His mother blogs <a href="http://www.aholyexperience.com/ann-voskamp/">here.</a> And the wreath can be ordered <a href="http://www.joywares.com/#!wreath/cph5">here. </a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The wood is beautiful and aromatic. The piece is warm and organic, made with care by human hands.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This is Sophia's second Christmas, but the first one she'll be really aware of. We are looking forward to introducing our daughter for the first time to the cycle of the Church: Anticipation, longing, waiting, following Christ as he moves to the center of our lives.</span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-53152347219334778602013-06-24T22:59:00.001-04:002013-06-24T22:59:27.791-04:00Madonna and Child and Me: Breastfeeding in Church<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It was a lovely sanctuary, golden and glittering, and Sophia charmed the people sitting
around us by bouncing up and down in the pew to get a view of the altar. She gabbled during the Creed and crowed during the Alleluia. At the Passing of the Peace, all the little old ladies smiled and told us she was sweet. We kept the hymnal out of reach, but the family in front of us wasn't as quick, and their little one removed #631 and tried to eat it before they could pry the book from her hands. When Mass ended, a middle-aged man
came up from where he'd been sitting far behind us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Are you new
here?" he asked. Ah! How familiar. At Memorial, this is the point where
we would be asked if we had just moved to town, and did we have a
church, and would we like to grab lunch somewhere, and just say the word
if we need anything, anything at all.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"We're from out of town," my mother-in-law said. "We're visiting."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"I
have to tell you I was shocked by what I saw today," the man said.
"Just shocked. You know, there are women's rooms for that kind of thing." He breathed
heavily, huffing and puffing with rage. After a moment of silent confusion, we all realized that he was talking about how, during the homily, when Sophia started to cry, I took out a giant wrap and fed her beneath it. </span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I stammered something about a
right to breastfeed, and he repeated himself: "It was shocking. I have never been this shocked. I was
prevented from worshiping by what was going on. There are women's rooms
for that kind of thing," and marched away. As we left, I saw him
angrily talking to the deacon and turning to stare at me. Tattling.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The self-righteous part of me (and it's the big part)
wishes that I'd said, "I'm sorry; what 'kind of thing' are you referring to? BREASTFEEDING? Is
there something about my BREASTS that you'd like to talk about? Because
we can talk about BREASTS if you'd like to hear about the benefits of
BREASTFEEDING, which is feeding a child with the milk that comes from BREASTS. BREAST BREAST
BREAST."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Or, "Section Three of Pennsylvania's Freedom
to Breastfeed Act states that 'a mother shall be permitted to breastfeed
her child in any location,
public or private, where the mother and child are otherwise authorized
to be present, irrespective of whether or not the mother’s breast is
covered during or incidental to the breastfeeding.' Unfortunately, your
right to make me ashamed of feeding my baby is not recognized by the
state of Pennsylvania."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Or
mostly, "I'm sorry; I thought I was in a CATHOLIC church. Which way to
Saint Anne's?" Because I have sat through homily after homily after
homily against birth control, and no Catholic gets to tell me off for
lactating, anywhere, any time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And no good Catholic would. There's a specific
form of iconography that portrays the Virgin Mary with her breast
exposed as she holds the infant Jesus. The point of this is to proclaim
the human nature of the Christ. When Christian artists created images to
tell us about the incarnation, to show God as part of his
own good creation, they did it by showing him suckling at his mother's breast. Fully divine and
fully breastfeeding.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Brooklyn_Museum_-_Madonna_Nursing_the_Christ_Child_-_Master_of_Magdalen_Legend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Brooklyn_Museum_-_Madonna_Nursing_the_Christ_Child_-_Master_of_Magdalen_Legend.jpg" height="320" width="248" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Brooklyn_Museum_-_Madonna_Nursing_the_Christ_Child_-_Master_of_Magdalen_Legend.jpg"><br /></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">We were traveling through Pennsylvania back to Northern Virginia when we stopped at the church. The priest, a family friend, hugged us and took us to the rectory and fed us and rolled his eyes when I warned him that the deacon might pass along a complaint. I'm pretty sure that, did that man live down here, he would know not to voice his opinion on breastfeeding. NoVa is a progressive region. What are we progressing towards? Anything, as long as it's shiny and new and you can name a cocktail after it. Helicopter parents are very in. Attachment parenting, enrichment classes for toddlers, splash parks on every corner, upscale children's boutiques to ensure your child is clad in the hottest designer duds. Moms gather at the coffee shop up the road to sit on the patio, bounce their babies on their knees, and sip wine. Arlington has a privately-run mom support group that I'm no longer
eligible for, since we moved to one of the undesirable zip codes. I looked out the lobby of my office building one day to see a woman pushing a Ferrari pram (list price: $900; age limit, 3 months) along the faux-historic brick sidewalk. Of course, to become a parent you've got to acquire a baby, but don't worry: turn on any radio station and you'll hear the Shady Grove Fertility Clinic advertise "over 30,000 babies born," which for some reason makes me crave McDonald's.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">What I'm saying is, this place is parenting central. So now that I have an infant and notice that kind of thing, I see breastfeeding moms everywhere. Breastfeeding moms in designer multi-layered nursing tops, breastfeeding moms with designer nursing covers, breastfeeding moms who unbutton their blouses or hike up their t-shirts and go bare. It looks so simple. But it means a lot when people see me feeding my child and come over to praise me. Because it isn't simple, and I know I'm one of the lucky ones.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I know more than one person whose postpartum complications required medication, so she had to quit breastfeeding and switch to formula. I know women whose bodies simply wouldn't provide enough milk for their children. When we first started out breastfeeding, I had a series of problems that culminated in outpatient surgery, an incision into my body that I had to keep open for weeks. I would sit on the bathroom floor and cry with pain and feelings of vulnerability, looking at my disfigured breast in the mirror, summoning the courage to touch the injury and re-pack the dressing. There is a permanent scar, a reminder each morning when I dress that being a mother has hurt me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And this is the easy part. This is the part where all my child needs is food, a clean backside, a safe place to sleep, and lots of smiles and hugs. But the world is flawed, and my body doesn't work like the
medical textbooks say it should, and I will never be exactly the mother that my child deserves. I worry that even now, during the easy part, my everything isn't enough. I go to church and I'm told that God will add grace and it will be enough. I go and I sit and understand why it's called sanctuary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />So shame on the man who was outraged by the knowledge that I'm a nursing mother, who said that when I fed my child it came between him and God. Shame on anyone who offers less grace and praise to a mother in his own church than the State offers her. Shame on condemnation where hospitality is due. And praise to the god who chose a small and vulnerable and dead-set determined young woman to be born to, a woman whose breasts are proudly displayed by the Church, a woman who suffered more than I can understand, a woman whose image is displayed to tell us that it was never going to be easy, and that with God's grace, there will be enough.</span><br />
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Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-51780868239519074122013-06-15T09:53:00.003-04:002013-06-15T09:56:57.920-04:00I Can't Blame the Schools<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Czech minister had <a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/23/czech-republic-forced-to-remind-the-internet-that-chechnya-is-a-different-country-after-boston-bombing/">to explain that Czechs and Chechens are not the same people.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Boy, whatta buncha maroons, I thought, and chalked it up to public education. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a Border Patrol agent who I may or may not be related to, and who may or may not have received the same education from the same person that I did. Here's a rough recreation of that conversation:</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“Most of the people who cross the border are coming up from Mexico
or from countries south of Mexico, but we get people from all over the world
who cross here because it’s the least-secure border. Last month we had to
process a Roma, and that was really hard because none of us speak Romanian.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“Ha ha!”</span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“. . .”</span></span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“Uh. Ha ha? Wait, you
do know that Roma and Romanians are two completely different peoples, right?”</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“Huh?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“</span>You’re kidding. Dude,
the Roma are gypsies. The Romanians are people from Romania.”</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“So how is that different?”<o:p></o:p></span>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“It’s. . . how is that
the same?!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“Roma are Romanians. Got it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“No! They have the
same sound! That’s all! Romanians are from the country called </span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Romania! Roma
live all throughout Europe!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“But they’re from Romania.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“Well—yeah, some
Roma live in Romania, but that’s coincidence! Most of them aren't from Romania. Was THIS guy from Romania?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> "Yeah, I told you. He was Roma."</span></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“So was the guy a Romanian Roma, or just Romanian, or just Roma?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“You just said they were all the same thing, right? You're making my brain hurt.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><o:p>I'm a little worried about where that person got deported to, given that this is the same country that <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-usa-colombia-deportation-idUSTRE8051OS20120106">deported a non-Hispanic, non-Spanish-speaking 14-year-old US citizen to Colombia</a> because she made up a fake identity when arrested for shoplifting.<i> </i>So good luck to all those migrants out there, and if you've got family in Atlanta, then for God's sake don't tell the Border Patrol that you're trying to reach your sister in Georgia. Who knows where you'll end up.</o:p></span><br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Statue-Augustus.jpg">Roman</a> <a href="http://www.joakimeskildsen.com/default.asp?Action=Menu&Item=100"> Romani </a> <a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/goeasteurope/1/0/O/N/-/-/Bucovina-Romania-Costumes.jpg">Romanian</a><br />
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Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-15362892391826929822013-06-14T09:56:00.000-04:002013-06-14T12:11:16.468-04:00The Voyage of the SBC Galley<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">All the Baptists were bobbing along in rickety little rowboats, paddling toward Heaven. The folks in some of the rowboats looked around and said,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"We could get to Heaven more efficiently if we got together in a bigger, stronger boat."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So they built a galley ship and called it the <em>Southern Baptist Convention.</em> The leaders of the new group fitted out a first-class section where they held meetings and planned the course of their voyage. For a while, women and slaves sat in chains below and rowed, but then a Union ship overtook the <em>SBC</em>, fought a bloody battle with the crew, and set the slaves loose. The women kept rowing and the ship made good time, until it passed by the Isle of Secular Society during an election year and got caught in a swirling eddy. Round and round the <em>SBC</em> went in a great slow circle, and more and more of the women rowing the boat got fed up with sitting in bilge water and jumped ship.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Just when the crew of the <em>SBC </em>had gotten used to the eddy, the eddy got sick of them and spat them back into the open seas. So they looked out over the rails and watched the other boats, some big and some small, some sailing alone and some in fleets, some taking on water and some zipping ahead. "We'll make better time if we hoist our sails and catch the wind," the crew said, so they pulled out the rigging and untangled it. But they had tossed the Boy Scouts overboard, and no one who remained could tie a knot. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">And the ship rowed slowly on</span>.Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-12227696822908506652013-06-11T20:58:00.001-04:002013-06-11T22:33:42.406-04:00The Mute Button<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The minister of music was waiting impatiently and he let me know it. He wondered how long it would take for God to send him his wife, his helpmate, the woman who would support him for the rest of his life. This is the kind of small talk young people engage in at church mixers. I was at a reception following a crummy lecture on Gnosticism and Dan Brown, a lecture preceded by fifteen minutes of slick, percussion-heavy praise and worship before the presenter came out, adjusted his casual button-down shirt, and opened with the line "Leonardo da Vinci was this guy who lived about a thousand years ago."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I was here because I was working on Sundays, feeling underchurched, and had taken two buses and walked fifteen minutes to an advertised weeknight young adult service. Federal Work Study required that Marymount University offer me a job, but students without need-based financial aid got first pick and the student employment officer had nastily told me that either I took the job that started at 3am or I turned down Work Study. I spent the wee hours sitting at the reception desk of the men's dorm, chanting "Please swipe your ID. Please swipe your ID" at teenagers waddling in with cases of Bud Lite tucked into their clothing. Usually the first words I heard on a Sunday morning were a variation of "Go fuck yourself, bitch."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">So here I was in the basement of a strange church, juggling a drafting tube, lemonade, and a plate of cheese while the music minister complained about the single women of our culture and said that he was having trouble being patient while he waited for God to give him a family to be the head of. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Well, I stepped right into that. A couple of minutes later, he was explaining to me why it's a heavier burden on the husband to lay down his life for his family than it is for the wife to stay in a submissive role, and <b>how blessed by God women are to be created to follow instead of lead</b>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"But not all women should be living as a support to men," I said, and began to tell him about my grandmother and about my mother, and their skills and their ministries and the lives they blessed. He cut me off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Women lead when men aren't fulfilling their role as Christlike leaders," he said. "It's not their fault that they take on men's roles; it's the fault of the men. It sounds like you didn't have strong men in your life. Did your father let your family down?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My father was a schizophrenic bipolar pedophile, a compulsive liar and a compulsive spender and a compulsive thief, a strict believer in his male headship over my family. The past slammed into the present, and I stood like an idiot with my mouth agape, unable to inhale, blood spreading up my face. After a few moments, I whispered:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"That was a low blow."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"You're right," the minister said, "I shouldn't have asked that. I'm
sorry." I excused myself and went outside to exhale the anger and grief
and frustration and all the pent-up stories. The tears spilled out and I knew I'd lost any right to talk to that man. I'd proven his point. My family was flawed, and so my stories about female leaders weren't valid. I couldn't point to a sinless example.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Sometimes church leaders hit the mute button on women. When it happens to me, I'm blindsided and dumbfounded. My story is not allowed. My story is foolish. I am listening to a man who says he speaks with Bible authority about God's will for all women. If my story doesn't fit his single model then my story isn't relevant; it's anecdotal; I'm interpreting my experiences incorrectly because of my sinful nature. It's happened in churches, in theology classes, in my living room, in the basement of a cathedral. It's about women pastors and women businesspeople, about engendered souls and vocation and pregnancy and sexual assault and <i>I have something to say about these things, I have lived some of these things, they are not abstract philosophical exercises or remote theological principles, they are in my veins and bones and breath. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Of course, that minister was wrong. My father wasn't so important as to explain away my experience as a woman. I had a complex childhood in a complex family. I review my womanhood differently over time, reading it through new commentary: Baptist commentary on egalitarianism, feminist and gay commentary on the nature and purpose of family, Catholic commentary on the holiness of labor. I listen to stories that are unlike my own, and I sometimes change my mind and read my own story in a new way. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But when it comes to being a woman in the Church, my unfolding story is not always welcome. My voice doesn't always chant in unison with the voice of self-proclaimed authority. Sometimes my story collides with the belief that there is only one truth about being a woman, only one correct teaching (although every denomination has a different one correct teaching). <b>Where that belief exists, the desire for knowledge isn't "tell me something that I don't know about God," but "tell me more about why I'm right about God."</b> So my life isn't helpful for that exploration. All I bring is a challenge, and not a good one: a story, a single person's experience, only an anecdote.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But then, that's exactly what our Gospels are: at the heart of Scripture is an anecdote, a story, four parallel tales of one life. It's teased out in epistles and creeds and doctrines, and these are all ways of unpacking the story that we begin and end with. My life, my stories, my experiences, are one of the ways that the Gospels are still being teased out. If a religious leader is going to discard my story because it doesn't fit the model he requires, if he has to explain my life away by saying I can't see the beauty of the life God intends for me-- if my story is misread through his commentary, then how can I trust the story of Christ he reads through that same commentary?</span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-48886322998072056292013-05-12T09:54:00.000-04:002013-05-12T13:37:06.321-04:00Our Mother Understands Children<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>A joint post by Ouisi & Dave</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>Ouisi:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Hey. You didn't respond to my text.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dave:</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You sent a text? Hang on. . . oh crap. "Send response by noon." Well, that didn't happen.</span><br />
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Ouisi:</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Help me out here. I'm going to write about some of the things that makes Mom such a great parent.</span><br />
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dave:</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Um, panic. My brain just went completely blank.<i> </i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Ouisi:</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Okay, I'll start. One thing our home was defined by was a lack of electronic clutter. I grew up without constant TV and radio and other entertainment. Patrick grew up with that: all the time, at least two things turned up
loud, and with nobody really paying attention to it. The multimedia was
background noise. We both wanted to create a quiet home for our family
where it's easy to focus and feel peaceful.</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Dave:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">It
was the same thing with me and Liz. That's why we decided not to have cable
or satellite. When I was little I didn't understand how much I
benefited from not having it. As an adult, I realize how many things are
more valuable than watching TV. There's an idea in our culture that TV is how we
entertain ourselves, and so when there's nothing on we flip through the
channels and even watch infomercials, just to have something to watch. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So Liz and I wanted to do the same thing Mom did, in our home.
Almost universally, when I am trying to figure out a difficult problem
from a parental perspective, thinking about how I want to raise my
children in this aspect or that aspect, I think: how did Mom deal with
this? What would she do if she needed to deal with it now? Because it's
something I want to emulate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>Ouisi:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">When I was in my senior year in college, I did research on Montessori early education for my senior Interior Design studio. That was when I realized how much work Mom had put into creating a child-focused environment in our home. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
house was filled with books. There was never any sense that somebody
was forcing me to read and learn. The lowest shelves were filled with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monet-Getting-Worlds-Greatest-Artists/dp/0516422766/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1368361128&sr=8-2&keywords=getting+to+know+the+world%27s+greatest+artists">children's art history</a>, World
Book color encyclopedias, and other brightly-illustrated educational
books. I remember sitting in front of the bookcases, pulling out a stack
of books, and spending the afternoon reading them for fun.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO6-pMt3X3nnYYE99mL8YJCmqXmryKuSVu3FktXBsVORWbMCoymNs1EpAThneytGKzhSK2UdUhvWIlbYw94n8sYUvnvZ5KUm-dMic8QT5_WArW3U1l80x-gBnUgZm0WmBfHjWDI7YFP5jF/s1600/DSC03123.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO6-pMt3X3nnYYE99mL8YJCmqXmryKuSVu3FktXBsVORWbMCoymNs1EpAThneytGKzhSK2UdUhvWIlbYw94n8sYUvnvZ5KUm-dMic8QT5_WArW3U1l80x-gBnUgZm0WmBfHjWDI7YFP5jF/s1600/DSC03123.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That's something that we're trying to pass on to Sophia now. We've set her room up with a floor mattress and low shelves with a few bright toys, and she's free to roam around and pick things up and play with them. Often in the morning we find she's scooted off her bed and is carefully pulling her board books out of their crates. She grabs one and shakes it and squeals until we come in and read to her.</span><br />
<br />
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dave:</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">When I was a kid, Mom drove me an hour to Chattanooga so I could volunteer at the zoo. I wanted to work with animals and she sacrificed several entire days every month to support my dream. She would pack up all her paperwork and do her class prep in a McDonald's instead of at home so I could be at the zoo.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I learned a lot of working skills that I still use. I learned how to take orders in a working environment, and to try and go above and beyond what the orders were. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I remember taking the lunch that Mom would bring me, and I would take it into this one indoor windowed exhibit. It was Hank the chimpanzee. He was a circus rescue, and he was so humanized that they had to keep him separate from the rest of the chimpanzees. I would sit there on the other side of the glass, and I would eat my food, and he would have a snack or just watch, and we would interact. He recognized me. I had this necklace with a big cross pendant that I showed him one day and he was fascinated by it. The next week I had the same necklace on but it was covered by my shirt, and Hank motioned that he wanted to see it. That interaction was very precious to me. </span><br />
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<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Ouisi:</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">We took Sophia to the zoo for the first time yesterday. Instead of rushing through trying to get our time and money's worth, we found a few exhibits that she enjoyed spending a long time at. She was squealing with excitement at the meerkats as they bounced around, and she wanted to take the goat home. That was something I learned from Mom: let the child set the pace.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Mom understands children. She did a lot of study into early childhood education when she was homeschooling us, but beyond that she has a crazy ability to see things from the perspective of a child and to act appropriately for that child. Like when she couldn't find the car keys and realized you must've put them inside the typewriter. That was a Sherlock Homesian chain of inference. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Dave:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Thanks for bringing that up. Really.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Ouisi:</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">One of my last memories of Dayton was of shopping at the We Care thrift store. Val came in with her latest baby in a stroller. Mom hunkered down and started talking seriously and gently to the baby, who didn't understand a word of it but was fascinated by her. Here was a stranger coming down level and speaking <i>right to the baby</i>, using words and cadence that adults use with each other instead of using baby talk. That was her method. I grew up with a large vocabulary and a good handle of how to speak to people, with an interest in science and fine art and literature and history, and it's because Mom didn't dumb things down for us or fling age-inappropriate material at us, but instead met us at our level and presented a challenge for the developmental stage we were in.</span><br />
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<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dave: </i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">She puts so much thought into the most minor things when it comes to children. Everything is about the child. She would plan these elaborate trips to the butterfly museum and all sorts of other school trips, and trips that weren't for school but were just someplace she wanted us to get to go to. She would do all this research and plan the perfect stuff for every event. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">From a child's perspective you don't really get how much she dedicated to the planning, but what the child does understand is "This is somebody who really cares about me." The work that goes into the event isn't understood until a later age, but what's apparent to the child is that "this person cares about me and loves me."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Ouisi:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">And that dedication and love of discovery is what our kids are going to get to experience with her. I remember the dress-up trunk and the craft closet, and the silly thrift store costumes we created, and the historic events we'd reenact for school, like turning the loveseat into a Conestoga wagon<i> </i>or crossing the Delaware in the bathtub. We put together Halloween costumes out of that trunk, and just goofed around and probably confused the neighbors any day of the year. Dress-up was a way of exploring other people's stories, real and imagined, past and future, whether it was American history class or career day or I-found-a-strange-hat-day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Mom is in a new apartment in a new city, and she has a dress-up corner waiting for our girls, newly stocked with costumes. I'm excited to see how history repeats itself in the new generation of our family.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">One thing I wish didn't repeat itself, though, is the mushy-gushy stuff I've been saying ever since Sophia was born. You know the worst part of my day as a child? When Mom would come in and wake me up the morning. I <i>hate</i> waking up. She would come in and sing,</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Good morning to you</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Good morning to you</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Good morning, precious children</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Good morning to you</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">And we would wail, "Go away, Mom! We hate you!" But now I have a baby who screams when she's woken up and when she's going to sleep, and when I go into her room I sometimes start to sing that horrible song without thinking about it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">When Sophia was a few weeks old I realized that I'd started calling her "Sweet Precious." That must be something that Mom used to call me and I picked up on without realizing it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Patrick:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">That's what she calls the cat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Dave & Ouisi:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">We love you, Mom, and we are so grateful that we got to grow up with you as our parent.<i> </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">P.S.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br /></span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-68930847209899886502013-05-06T12:32:00.000-04:002017-07-21T10:47:16.881-04:00I'm Not Listening to You<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I know I get on your nerves. From where you're sitting, I'm an inexperienced, impractical, unbiblical bleeding-heart liberal, yes? I reckon I know just how I look to you, because twelve years and 600 miles ago that chair you're sitting in was mine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">You are brave. I'll give you that. Or maybe "brash" is a better term. You know that your opinions are unpopular around here and you keep sharing them with pride. Not me. I sit and keep my mouth shut, for "Christian unity" and for that feeling of enlightened superiority I get when I just smile and cock my head at you. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Each of us thinks that the other is concerned with the wrong thing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I wonder how many times this not-conversation has repeated through time, with a now-irrelevant contentious issue, a different table, a different city. I wonder if any souls got lost or saved. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Last week you complained that this congregation doesn't take a stand on the truth. One of the particulars of your meaning was: we haven't had any sermons against gay marriage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A disagreement on homosexuality is only a tiny bit less painful to me than a bikini waxing. That's why I redirect and I roll my eyes in a way that, from the inside, looks jaded and knowing and from the outside makes me look like a jerk. That's also why I come home and blog about it, where I can cool down and roll the words around in my head to take the sharp edges off. I don't like speaking forcefully. I did it once in a town hall meeting, and when the pastor handed me the mic and asked me to repeat myself, I stammered and rephrased and took off the sharp edges that I should have left on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Here's something I'm sure of: my opinion isn't worth much. I used to think that my opinion could get me into heaven. My opinion on the mechanism of salvation (penal substitutionary atonement or ransom theory?), my opinion of the president (Democrats are servants of evil), my opinion of women pastors. But in terms of eternal destiny, really, how many of my opinions are worth jack? How many of yours are? Is the value of my soul judged by the accumulated mass of my correct or incorrect opinions? Does speaking the truth mean saying a catchphrase aloud, saying it louder, shouting it so that nobody else gets heard? Is God going to look down from the seat of judgment and say, with sorrow, "You got the gun control thing right but you thought that gay people could have holy marriages, so I knew you not; depart from me"? Is my "Like" on the right Facebook post going to tip me from damnation into salvation?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Also: I always pictured the casting-out-to-Gehenna part involving a pull cord and a trapdoor, like so:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">What I'm saying is, in this room and between the two of us, this argument is very low stakes. How easy and comfortable for two people in straight marriages to discuss God's intent for gay Christians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But we still get angry. Oh, I get so angry. I smile and talk more softly and I tease and bait, just to show that you're the one with the problem. I think of all the reasons I have for disagreeing with you, but I assume you'd cut me off and shut me down and so I never even try to tell you about the journey, about the fears and the grace, and about what it was like to go back to pull my old convictions out from where I'd squirreled them away, only to discover that some had changed shape and some had crumbled away entirely. I suspect you'd have a ready answer that I'm weak and talking circles around the truth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I'm afraid to show you
my mind because it's so closely connected to my heart, and I think you wouldn't like my heart. Now I realize that
I've always wanted you to keep your own heart hidden away so I wouldn't have
to look at it. I'd like to yell my opinions over yours, always have the last word, make sure everybody thinks of me instead of you when they try to puzzle out the truth.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The objective truth. A truth that isn't relative and doesn't change. But if the truth is complex and relevant, then it shouldn't surprise us that it relates to us differently, in our so-different lives and so-different minds. Our lives and our minds change, and we relate to each other better at some times than others. We go through life finding new and beautiful and precious facets of the truth, and I can't see what you see until I let you show me. How good can we be at seeing the real truth if we don't want to really see each other?</span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-76200750729527490592013-04-27T17:16:00.000-04:002013-04-27T22:44:38.037-04:00Warhammer 40K Blood Angels Birthday Cake<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">This is a chocolate cheesecake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Now this is a battlefield! <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKRlITASrrGul1D3_pgVVbeDTzhUFIjIAWjV4EGjB8bWRWNvFTrpDdEmopo_RXU8pl5LHnzaGMGF3mTKBiLuRKqmBl3Gz_0w4rnEb7b7TeSJ3PRBK01PaPDaQgeiXONZJOipMrYK1pKaff/s1600/cake4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKRlITASrrGul1D3_pgVVbeDTzhUFIjIAWjV4EGjB8bWRWNvFTrpDdEmopo_RXU8pl5LHnzaGMGF3mTKBiLuRKqmBl3Gz_0w4rnEb7b7TeSJ3PRBK01PaPDaQgeiXONZJOipMrYK1pKaff/s640/cake4.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The Sanguinary Guard lead the 2nd Company Assault Marines into battle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Two Razorbacks, a Baal Predator Tank, and a Dreadnought complete the tableau.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">This is mostly dry brush technique. Paints used: Red Gore and then Mechrite Red when we ran out of Gore; Bleached Bone and Skull White; Boltgun Metal; Burnished Gold; accents of Wazdakka Red; Chaos Black and various complementary colors for shading. The bridge is Loacker Quadratini bite size dark chocolate wafer cookies. The river, which is a much less sickly color in reality, is butterscotch caramel sauce.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Happy Birthday to Patrick from your friends & family. </span></div>
Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-84938913327094994832013-04-26T22:29:00.000-04:002013-04-26T22:31:44.847-04:00Stuck at the Kids' Table<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We are planning a family vacation to Virginia Beach. Patrick and I have gone twice before as a couple, and once on the Marymount Campus Ministry retreat. I remember two big houses up on stilts, the men in one with the priests, the women in the other: a giggling house full of unsupervised undergrads piled up on couches and spilling across the floor, doing each other's nails and yelling about sand in the bathtub.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The ministry leaders scheduled a full weekend of discussion. The sexes were split up so that they would have a safe
forum-- so that they would feel like they could speak freely. The men's discussions were led by priests and the women's discussions were led by students. The women’s group
talked about how hard it was not to gossip, and the men’s group talked about
how hard it was not to masturbate. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I didn't like being separated from my friends and being told that this topic was of deep concern to women. It wasn't of deep concern to me, so did that make me not so much a woman, or a woman who didn't understand herself? And why couldn't the men and women discuss important things together? Why did I have to miss out on the insights and experiences of my male friends, and why were my male friends okay with missing out on what I had to say?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As the Campus Ministry leadership changed from year to year, CMA became a Catholics-only group and I was pushed further and further out. At the same time, I was finding my home at Memorial. The Baptists embraced me literally; one of my boyfriends refused to go to church with me because, he said, "They keep hugging me!" They invited me to their homes for holidays when I had nowhere to go and nobody to celebrate with. The pastor picked me up from the side of the road one snowy morning when I missed the message that church had been cancelled; he brought me to his home and his wife fed me oatmeal. The Baptists challenged me to read the Scripture and to read it better than I had been, to ask questions, to not be afraid of being wrong but instead to be afraid of always believing that I'm right. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was shocked that my deacon was a woman, and I didn't know how to reconcile the fact that she was female with the fact that she was clearly cut out to be a deacon. Then I learned that Baptist tradition requires that everyone be free to follow God's calling, regardless of gender. I worried that if I hung around these people long enough, their influence would make me agree with their liberal views. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That is totally what happened. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So this is my church family. And then there is my birth family. Grandaddy just sent a check to celebrate the successful
sale of his house. In 2011 we spent Thanksgiving in Atlanta moving him into a condo, where
he can live on one level. The Cochran cousins came, and we packed up boxes,
decided which furniture he needed, tried to recreate in his new home the
arrangement of decorative objects just as my grandmother had
left them when she died seven years earlier. I sat on an antique sofa in the
bare living room of the house I loved best, remembering how, 25 years earlier, two dozen relatives arranged themselves around this sofa in their Christmas finest for a photo. The children sat on the
floor in front. I wore white tights and shiny black shoes and a deep red velvet dress, a dress that is now hanging in my daughter's closet. My
cousin Chris was grinning with big new adult teeth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Cochran cousins were born after that photo was taken,
and they grew up in that house. On Thanksgiving and Christmas the relatives
would flood in, and the long dark dining table would be covered in lace and
silver, crystal, fine porcelain, and dried flower bouquets. In the living room, I would sit at a
card table with my little brother and our younger cousins. I was in charge of
making sure that nobody got too wild and disturbed the grown-ups. How jealous I
was! I saw the smiles and heard the laughter at the big table, and wondered
when I would be judged old enough to join them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then came the year I moved up, and discovered that what the
grown-ups were talking about was boring. They were swapping stories about
relatives who had died before I was born. How could anybody want to waste an
entire afternoon on that when cartoons were on?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now, of course, I treasure the few quiet days I get to spend
with the cousins, each story sparking another, all of us comparing memories and
trying to reconstruct our shared past. It's the same feeling I get when my church family gets together and starts talking about God, each of us bringing our religious backgrounds, our societal histories, snippets of sermons and books that we remember, trying to piece together who God is and who we are as God's people.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And now there's the church family that I married into. The priest is well-educated and enthused and loves to spark theology debates. But the young adult group at the cathedral is being split into two: a men's group and a women's group. At the last scheduled meeting, the women were instructed to go upstairs to the sanctuary and pray the rosary. The priest took the men out to a brewery. I went home. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here was that old feeling of jealousy, winding itself through my belly again. Now the boys would go out and play, and the girls would
stay in and be dutiful. The men would go and talk theology, tossing around
ideas and shaping them and shining them up, and the women would stay in and
repeat words that had been written for them. Here was complementarian theology
lived out, and it looked like ditching half the group in order to go bar
hopping. And here was the message that being a woman in the Church is much like
being a child, doing busy work while the big people talk about things I
wouldn’t be interested in. But this time, it is a kids’ table that I won’t ever
grow out of.</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-28737359179723926812013-04-25T21:09:00.002-04:002013-04-25T22:04:43.099-04:00Annoying Song of the Week: fun. "Some Nights"<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Okay, new feature: we share our most hated earworms with you, because malice is more fun than misery.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/qQkBeOisNM0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The band: fun. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The song: "Some Nights" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The part that is currently playing in an endless loop in our brains:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"Oh-oh! Oh oh whoa-oh! </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Oh oh whoa-oh oh-oh!"</span> </span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Why Ouisi hates this band: The band name makes up for its lack of capitalization with unnecessary punctuation. That's unforgivable right there. And the lead singer's face and voice illicit a gut feeling of rage within me, which is strange because they aren't that bad and I don't like feeling angry at anybody, especially somebody as innocuous as this twerp.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Why Patrick hates this band: This band looks and sounds like something that the 1980s rejected for being too annoying. Also, the lead singer looks like an emaciated Mark Wahlberg.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Why Ouisi hates this song: </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I get a bad vibe from this song, like it was created specifically to bother me. </span>When it comes on the radio, I instinctively wrench my earbuds out, and I'm afraid I'm going to rupture an ear canal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Why Patrick hates this song: When I hear this song, I feel like I'm stuck in a bar full of drunk white people who won't stop singing.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Every time this song comes on the radio, Ouisi wishes it would be replaced by:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gEVaniPOmU">Of Monsters and Men, "Mountain Sound"</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Every time this song comes on the radio, Patrick wishes it would be replaced by:</span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY75dw64sqI"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Commentary:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">You know what bands are doing now, is that they add in and layer on everything they can possibly include. It's a reaction against the horrible alt rock of the late '90s and the early aughts, which tried to sound minimalist and stripped down and <a href="http://youtu.be/P6yMGW-CFIk">DEEP AND MANLY</a> but sensitive at the same time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Now the bands are experimenting with lots of instrumentation and harmonizing multiple singers, and trying to sound grandiose.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">But this guy has a voice built for easy listening. My dentist put on Whitney Houston while she was cleaning my teeth last week, and I can imagine this guy warbling on the lite rock stations in ten years. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">What? The video is of the Civil War? This is. . . this is disrespectful. And the drum beat is completely wrong for marching! And you have to go through a full minute of Union/Confederate romance to get to the song.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The lyrics aren't great. Not bad. It's a song about a discontented guy, but it's being sung by the most chipper-sounding band since Smash Mouth. That doesn't come across as ironic or subversive; it's just a mismatch.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So that's "Some Nights." We are releasing our earworm to you, and may you never have a day's luck with it. </span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-55450675123023717292013-04-15T12:36:00.001-04:002013-04-15T12:37:10.593-04:00The Egg and He<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">For six years I worked as a sales associate at <a href="http://agapebears.com/">Agape Bears</a>, a small business owned by my good friend Betty. She curated a wonderful collection of stuffed toys and artist bears, and now that the storefront is closed, she continues to sell down the inventory from her website and plans on spending more time working on her own bears.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">This is a story about a strange encounter that I had when Patrick and I had just moved into an apartment at Ballston, a few
blocks from the bear store. I never did adjust to the new commute to work; I would
think "it’s only six blocks" and then dawdle at home, instead of thinking "I have to walk six blocks
instead of getting dropped off at the mall by the bus."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">It got worse a couple of years later, when I didn’t adjust
to the extra time needed when I was pregnant, and couldn’t walk quickly because
of the ligament pain in my sides. But this morning I told myself "it’s only six
blocks," and stayed home long enough to boil a couple of eggs instead of
grabbing my usual packet of instant oatmeal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I had just discovered soft-boiled eggs. My mother’s cooking
method is to put something on the stove, wander away, and come back when the
smoke alarm goes off, so I didn’t have an egg that had boiled less than fifteen
minutes until I was in my twenties. This morning I soft-boiled two eggs, ate
one, and considered the other for a moment before wrapping it in a paper towel,
stowing it in my backpack, and trotting down the road.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><a name='more'></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">There was a homeless man under the awning at the mall
entrance. "Hey miss," he said, "can I have a dollar for some breakfast?"</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"I can take you inside for
something," I said. "What would you like?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">He stepped out from the wall he’d been leaning against and
we walked into the mall.</span><o:p><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"I think MacDonald’s," he said. "They have breakfast that’s
pretty good. Pancakes and biscuits. Syrup and gravy. They have breakfast for a dollar. It's pretty good. Do you think
they have a soft-boiled egg?"</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"I’m pretty sure they don’t," I said, unstrapping my backpack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"That's too bad," he said, "they have eggs but you think they don't have them soft-boiled?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"I think their eggs come out of a jug already mixed up," I said, "but here’s a soft-boiled egg. And it's still hot."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Afterward, I went over the morning in my head and tried to figure out how I was carrying exactly the food that guy asked for. I wasn't on the phone or talking aloud about the egg. . . and you can't smell an uncracked egg through a backpack. I'm at a loss.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">According to the prologue of <em>This American Life’s</em>
<a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/489/no-coincidence-no-story">coincidence edition</a>, we take notice of the coincidences that happen to us but think
that other people’s coincidences are unremarkable. But on the morning of the
soft-boiled egg, it wasn't my coincidence; I was the agent of somebody else’s coincidence, and it stuck
with me. How many people are carrying around a soft-boiled egg at any given
point in time? What’s the likelihood that a hungry guy would have a hankering
for a soft-boiled egg and find one couriered to him, just like that?</span><o:p><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">An egg isn’t a big deal to somebody like me. I can buy any
breakfast I want, cook it myself in my own kitchen, and eat it in
climate-controlled comfort. But to somebody who doesn’t have the dignity of
choosing his meals, who has nowhere to prepare his favorite dishes, who relies
on cash from strangers and the dollar menu at MacDonalds—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><o:p><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> </span></o:p><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">A coincidence as small as an egg suddenly becomes large.
That morning, he and I both felt like a soft-boiled egg for breakfast, and we were both lucky
enough to get one.</span></div>
Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-78379376595888315642013-04-13T09:30:00.003-04:002013-04-13T10:12:26.757-04:00Godwin's Writing Assignment<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A high school teacher in Albany, NY gave 10th grade students the assignment to write an argument paper, using Nazi propaganda, describing why Jews were evil and to blame for German social problems. Here's the conversation my husband and I had about the assignment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/nyregion/albany-teacher-gives-pro-nazi-writing-assignment.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/nyregion/albany-teacher-gives-pro-nazi-writing-assignment.html?_r=0</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Ouisi: Okay, I think what's happening here is that this is a college-style thought assignment. In college people learn <i>how</i> to think. But this assignment was given to high school students in a public school, where people are used to the teachers telling them <i>what </i>to think. They aren't expecting to have to think critically and examine deep moral problems. Maybe it's the right assignment and the wrong group of people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Patrick: This is an English class. It would make more sense in a History class, but this may be part of the teacher's attempt to draw connections between the different disciplines. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ouisi: If we don't examine things like German nationalism closely, we can keep evil far away from us, foreign and alien, and not learn to recognize it in our own culture and in ourselves. So it is a good assignment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Patrick: It's too close. Nazi Germany is too recent. The teacher should have picked something from further back in time--</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ouisi: --Like witch hunts. That's far enough removed from Western culture.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Patrick: Salem would have been a good assignment.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>Nick Brino, a 10th grader, said he had heard about the assignment from a
classmate. “I thought it was wrong,” he said. “But she was flipping
out, saying if anyone was going to do it, she wasn’t going to be their
friend.” </i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ouisi: How clueless! Okay, this is the wrong group of people, which means that somebody really does need to get them thinking in the way that this teacher tried to. Maybe the actual attempt was ham-handed, not because of instructions for the assignment, which look great, but because the students weren't prepared enough to follow the thought process: "I am going to pretend to be a bad person, and see how easy it is to convince other people that 1) I really believe this stuff, and 2) This stuff is true."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Patrick: Is the boogeyman here that we are afraid of thinking the way that the Nazis did? Just by proximity to it. If we examine it, we'll catch Nazism, as if it's a virus. We're afraid of ending up thinking the way that they thought, so we don't even try to examine the historical and cultural context and the thought process of the people inside that context. We end up looking at a caricature of the Nazis, instead of talking about the real Nazis, how different factors impacted German culture and how the Nazis ultimately ended up controlling Germany.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ouisi: So we end up with a timeline of history instead of an understanding of the human social reality of history.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Patrick: Take out the words "human" and "social" and just leave "the reality of history."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ouisi: But you've studied history and so you have an understanding of that word that I don't have. As far as the public schools are concerned, "history" really is just a timeline.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Patrick: A sequence of events. But the discipline of history is trying to know the truth of what happened in the past.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ouisi: The truth, as in more than just a list of the things that were done?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Patrick: Yeah, it's bigger than just a list of who/what/when/where/how. The most elusive and important questions that historians try to answer is "why."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ouisi: And that "why" is the point of the writing assignment. But was there a better way to get that group of children asking those kinds of "why" questions of history? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>What do you think? Was the assignment misguided? How should history be taught in public schools? How should morality and ethical thinking be taught?</i> </span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-5280489955024240182013-04-06T10:28:00.001-04:002013-04-06T10:28:44.251-04:00My Child, the Existential Philosopher<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Mommy:</i> What are we going to wear for our play date with Mr. Elias, Sophia?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Sophia: </i>"</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Mommy:</i> How about this polka dotty pant and bodysuit set?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Sophia</i>: "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Mommy:</i> Hey, what's this? It's the Ralph Lauren romper we found at the thrift store for five dollars! It's classic! It's adorable! Does it still fit? Hang on--</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Sophia</i>: </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">"Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Mommy:</i> It <i>does </i>fit! Ruffled tights. . . and a cotton Janie & Jack shirt with gathered cuffs. . . Look at you! You are so cute!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Sophia</i>: Hrrrrrrrrrrrng.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Mommy:</i> Oh, look. You just shot poop right out the back of your diaper and four inches up your back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><i>Sophia:</i> "</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The best laid schemes of mice and men/ Go often awry,/ And leave us nothing but grief and pain,/ For promised joy!" </span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-38568133959361101952013-04-04T13:25:00.001-04:002013-04-13T12:15:42.561-04:00The Rowan County Defense of Religion Act<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">On Tuesday, April 2nd, <a href="http://votecarlford.com/?p=41">Carl Ford</a> and <a href="http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/members/viewMember.pl?sChamber=House&nUserID=630">Harry Warren</a>, North Carolina representatives for Rowan County, put forth House Joint Resolution 494, the "<a href="http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2013/Bills/House/PDF/H494v1.pdf">Rowan County Defense of Religion Act</a>." Here is the pertinant portion of the resolution:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="color: #660000;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">SECTION 1. </span></b><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><b>SECTION 2. </b>The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Cue the hysterics. National news agencies report this as an attempt to establish a state religion, but according to Charlotte news site <a href="http://www.wcnc.com/news/politics/The-Defense-of-Religion-Act-Whats-fact-whats-fiction-201460571.html">WCNC.com</a>, this bill is a bit of braggadocio, a reaction against an ACLU lawsuit that attempts to bar the Rowan County commissioners from starting their meetings with a prayer to Dear Lord Baby Jesus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">So this is yet another temper-tantrum, another example of neighbors behaving badly and wanting to have their own way all the time. But I wonder if Ford and Warren thought this through enough to see that their interpretation of state's rights is actually attacking their own party and religion here.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">In the best Tea Party tradition, representatives Ford and Warren are <i>attempting</i> to remove a right of jurisdiction from the most remote level (the federal government) and bring it <u>down</u> to the regional level (the state government). But what Ford and Warren's bill <i>actually</i> does is to remove a right of jurisdiction from the most local level (the individual American citizen) and pass it <u>up</u> to the regional level-- the state.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Federal laws prohibiting states from establishing a state religion don't exist to dictate how citizens must live; those laws exist to preserve the basic liberty of conscience that belongs to all people. Once upon a time, colonies had the right to establish a state religion, to transmit that religion in schools, and to define the public and private observance of religion by their citizens. Christians like Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, and Roger Williams had taxes levied against them and were tried, imprisoned, exiled and sometimes executed because they refused to submit to the rule of a state religion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">No, Ford and Warren are not calling for athiests and Muslims to be executed in Rowan County. But they need to brush up on their history, calm down, and not make a stink about their perceived right to pray in public as representative lawmakers who were elected by a Christian majority. Ford and Warren represent a particular chunck of their constituents to the state, and in turn they are the face of the state turned back to their constituents. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Maybe the problem lies in the fact that this is a small-town group of commissioners who see themselves as concerned private citizens who need the law to protect their freedoms from state infringement, instead of seeing themselves as the people who are in power, the people who do the infringing, the people from whom private citizens need to be protected. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">They need to recognize that the collective moral vision of the county commission, the state, or the nation must always respect the religious integrity of the non-represented citizen-- in this case, their non-Christian constituents. And if Ford, Warren, and the Rowan County commission want to begin each day with a prayer to Jesus, they should do it at home, in their cars, with their families, on one of <a href="http://votecarlford.com/?page_id=120">Ford's radio stations</a>, anywhere that they can do it as private citizens.</span><br />
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Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-83821068727678067562013-03-29T13:31:00.000-04:002013-03-29T16:04:46.524-04:00Enemy Lines<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It means a lot that he called. I missed it-- left my cell phone at home, and Patrick picked up, which is a relief. It's not a conversation I was ready to have.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">There wouldn't have been an apology if he was a fundamentalist preacher instead of a Catholic priest, I'm certain. There wouldn't have been an "I used words I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry." There would have been an "I'm sorry you interpreted what I said other than the way I meant it. I'm sorry your feelings were hurt, but I was only speaking the truth."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I think that fundamentalists don't understand how words work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">If I'd been home to answer the phone, I would have gulped and said that it was a poor choice of words, and that I was glad that afterward he thought of us, sitting halfway down the huge sanctuary at the cathedral, and that yes, it did upset me to hear those things said about non-Catholic Christians, and that while I know we'll never agree on the matter, if he wants to sit down informally some time, as a friend and a mentor instead of as the priest at the pulpit, and try to tease the idea apart, maybe we would both learn something that we needed to know.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I wouldn't have said that I broke down in the car afterwards, because I'm tired of homilies that are a bullet list of things that good Catholics don't do, tired of jabs at the evils of mainline Protestantism, tired of homilies that are about how the rest of American culture is going to Hell in a handbasket, tired of the battle lines that the bishops have drawn between themselves and the government, themselves and the medical industry, themselves and everybody who isn't a registered Republican. I'm tired of going to my husband's church and hearing that everyone else is on the other side of the enemy line. I'm tired of the line getting drawn between my husband and myself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Before the bishops rallied against the healthcare mandate, I used to go to Catholic church and hear about Jesus. I liked that. Jesus and I are just starting to get to know each other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But a before these Catholic and Baptist churches in Northern Virginia, I used to go to my parents' church in East Tennessee, where I didn't get to know Jesus but I got to know Paul, or something like Paul. I learned the bullet list of things that good fundamentalists don't do. I listened to jabs at the evils of mainline Protestantism. I learned how the rest of American culture is going to Hell in a handbasket, and I learned to chart the line between myself and the public schools, myself and the scientific disciplines, myself and everybody who wasn't a registered Republican. It was us, and on the other side, everyone else.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The statement the priest made was that the nation is suffering from the Protestant mentality, in which people believe that they can judge for themselves what is right. Once I believed, along with the Catholics, that that individualistic kind of doctrinal formation was the worst sin any so-called Christian could commit. It was to step off the straight and narrow path of submission to authority, and to get lost in the mire beyond. I guess I've become a good Baptist, because now I believe that God didn't give me a conscience just so that I'd learn to mash it until it looks exactly like my pastor's.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">So I won't join the war against contraception. I won't, and not just because it's uniquely Catholic and I'm not Catholic. I won't, because I can't join the war against evolutionism, or the war against family values, or the war against the war against Christmas. I'm too tired and too suspicious to join. I'm suspicious of anything that makes me feel righteous the way that being a young-earth Creationist made me feel. I'm suspicious of anything that lets me off the hook of genuinely loving my neighbors-- the kind of love that listens to their stories and learns something, instead of plugging my ears and saying, "I'm sorry if you think my words hurt, but they're the truth." Now I've been on both sides of the line, and I don't want to go to war.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And when I am dead and gone the war will be about something other than evolution and something other than contraception, and there will be some other reason that everybody else is the enemy. And I wonder how many people will be sick of going to church and not hearing about Jesus.</span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-78968092871180762552013-03-13T21:18:00.001-04:002013-03-13T21:21:46.145-04:00Saturday Living, Part III<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">At the Easter Vigil, people will gather after sunset and stand with candles in the dark. They will sing the Litany of the Saints. They will call the names of the dead and ask them, "Pray for us." It's a call for help: we aren't enough on our own. It's a profession of love: we don't want to be without you. It's a statement of faith: we know that you are not lost. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">There at the tipping point between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, between darkness and light, decay and rebirth, abandonment and adoption, people will gather together in faith that <i>it's about to get better.</i> People will gather in faith that God changes everything. They will read each other the story of how God threw God's own self down from Heaven, took on a messy, breakable human life, and set to work rescuing us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The story of how Christ chose the rough and loudmouthed and greedy to spread his way of gentleness and meekness and contentment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The story of how Christ saw that
our Scripture and Laws needed to be cleaned like an old rug, and he brought
them out into the light and beat the grit and the bugs out of them, and
gave them back to us bright and beautiful and useful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The story of how Christ looked at things they way they are, and it made him cry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The story of how Christ loved us <i>so much</i> that he became one of us. And how it didn't work out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Just like it doesn't work out for us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">And it had a sad ending. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Just like our stories do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">But after the ending, the story kept going. How strange is that? The God who left us showed up and promised that he would never leave. It's not a story with a happy ending-- it's a story that doesn't end.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So every year we loop back around, following the cycle of promise, of birth, of ministry, of betrayal, of death, and of resurrection. Somewhere in there, we believe, the world is getting fixed. Somehow, we believe, our loop of birth and death gets broken and straightened out, and the lost are found, and the hungry are full, and the people who were gone so long before we were born are right next to us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Someday, Saturday tips over into Sunday and we never go back.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NOxMzNLiEEY?rel=0&start=35" width="420"></iframe>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4610435826044357127.post-76314058069155255492013-03-13T11:41:00.004-04:002013-03-13T11:45:05.279-04:00Saturday Living, Part II<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">In the National Gallery of Art, there is a series of five panels by Benvenuto di Giovanni, showing the events of Holy Week. The fourth depicts Christ in Limbo, that extra place where early Christian philosophers felt it necessary to stick the dead who couldn't reach Heaven but didn't deserve Hell. According to Peter, on Holy Saturday Christ was liberating the dead from the underworld. All the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, all the holy pagans and those faithful who died without seeing the fulfillment of God's Kingdom, lay waiting for Christ to come to their rescue, smash down the gates of Hades, and lead them out into the light of Heaven. So here, di Giovanni shows Christ at the opening of a cavern, the waiting dead crowded up at the entrance, eagerly reaching out to touch their savior. The gates of Limbo have been torn down, and, in a nice touch, Christ is standing atop the gate while a squashed demon lies spread-eagle below it, Looney Tunes-style. Christ is carrying a flag, bringing the dominion of God into the unreachable, hopeless places.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nga.gov/image/a00007/a0000771.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://www.nga.gov/image/a00007/a0000771.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=41669&image=6941&c="><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">From the National Gallery website</span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So that's Saturday. Back above ground, the disciples huddle together, abandoned and afraid. Salvation is happening somewhere on Saturday, but it's not yet apparent in the world. On the other side there is rejoicing, the upending of death, the victory of the cross, but for people living in the everyday, death and fear and oppression are still the winners. On Saturday, Caeser still reigns.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I saw this painting on Holy Saturday last year, midway through my pregnancy, confused and lonely. Four blocks from home after leaving the Gallery, I was approached by a women with a preteen daughter. I'm homeless, she said. We need some money for food. <em>Great,</em> I thought, <em>I can buy them lunch, chit-chat, ask them if they've tried to get help through ASPAN, see if there's anyone I can get them in touch with.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Sure, I said; I can take you to one of these restaurants for lunch.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">We need money for food, she repeated. We're hungry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I asked if I could buy them a sandwich at the deli next to us. No, she said; we need money for food. We're going to use it to buy food at Giant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Giant? I asked. That's a mile down the road. Can I take you to the grocery store around the corner? And the woman stepped back and said, fine, you won't give us money for food, and before I could say anything else she had pushed her daughter off the curb and was towing her across the street, dodging cars. I stood watching them as the traffic closed in between us and wondered, does that girl go to school and get a meal at the cafeteria, or does nobody know that she exists? I looked at the girl's stocky, stiff back as she was rushed up the other sidewalk, remembering her blank expression, the way she didn't meet my eyes, and I wondered where she slept and who was hurting her and if anybody was ever going to rescue her. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I thought, <i>I was supposed to do something more than that. I was supposed to help tear down the door and crush the demons.</i> I thought, <i>What happened to Easter? Hell is alive and well.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Now it's another Lenten season. Now there's a new little girl, and I carried her up to the altar, and the priest smeared ashes on her forehead and said,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">"You are dust, and to dust you shall return."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">And I swear I was this close to body-checking that dignified, gracious man, just slamming him into the marble floor and hollering "Maybe all the rest of us are, but NOT MY BABY!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">I wanted to scrub the ashes off of her face and make it so that she would never get sick, never be injured, never be betrayed or abused, never ever die. I wanted to change the world so that <em>this child</em> would live forever in perfect joy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Now there's such urgency. God, may your kingdom come, and may your will be done on Earth <em>now</em>, before this little girl is out of time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Sometimes life is an endless Holy Saturday. Sometimes nobody is coming to the rescue. Sometimes I'm the nobody; I'm the one who fails to come to the rescue. It's hard to look back before Saturday, and see the work that Christ has done, and believe it made any difference. It's hard to look ahead and believe that when the day ends it's going to be Easter. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">And sometimes there's an anger inside that tells me, yes, something is going to break. Yes, we matter. We matter enough that God would break the cycle of birth and death, and upend the world in order to rescue us.</span>Ouisihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057354098747007167noreply@blogger.com0