Godwin's Writing Assignment

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/nyregion/albany-teacher-gives-pro-nazi-writing-assignment.html?_r=0

Ouisi: Okay, I think what's happening here is that this is a college-style thought assignment. In college people learn how to think. But this assignment was given to high school students in a public school, where people are used to the teachers telling them what 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.

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.

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.

Patrick: It's too close. Nazi Germany is too recent. The teacher should have picked something from further back in time--

My Child, the Existential Philosopher

Mommy: What are we going to wear for our play date with Mr. Elias, Sophia?

Sophia: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."

Mommy: How about this polka dotty pant and bodysuit set?

Sophia: "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit."

Mommy: 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--

Sophia: "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."

Mommy: It does fit! Ruffled tights. . . and a cotton Janie & Jack shirt with gathered cuffs. . . Look at you! You are so cute!

Sophia: Hrrrrrrrrrrrng.

Mommy: Oh, look. You just shot poop right out the back of your diaper and four inches up your back.

Sophia: "The best laid schemes of mice and men/ Go often awry,/ And leave us nothing but grief and pain,/ For promised joy!"

The Rowan County Defense of Religion Act

On Tuesday, April 2nd, Carl Ford and Harry Warren, North Carolina representatives for Rowan County, put forth House Joint Resolution 494, the "Rowan County Defense of Religion Act." Here is the pertinant portion of the resolution:

SECTION 1. 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.

SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

Cue the hysterics. National news agencies report this as an attempt to establish a state religion, but according to Charlotte news site WCNC.com, 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.

Enemy Lines

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.

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."

I think that fundamentalists don't understand how words work.

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.

Saturday Living, Part III

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.

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 it's about to get better. 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. 

The story of how Christ chose the rough and loudmouthed and greedy to spread his way of gentleness and meekness and contentment.

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. 

The story of how Christ looked at things they way they are, and it made him cry.

The story of how Christ loved us so much that he became one of us. And how it didn't work out.

Just like it doesn't work out for us. 

And it had a sad ending.

Just like our stories do.


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.

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.

Someday, Saturday tips over into Sunday and we never go back.

Saturday Living, Part II

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.

From the National Gallery website

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.

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. Great, I thought, 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.

Sure, I said; I can take you to one of these restaurants for lunch.

We need money for food, she repeated. We're hungry.

Saturday Living, Part I

This past April, Patrick was out of town during Holy Week for his cousins' Confirmation, and I was in town working on a deadline. Most years, Triduum (the stretch from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday) is a rush of different services as we try to make observances with both of our churches.

But this year was quiet, slow, deliberate. On Holy Saturday, I had nowhere to be. So I went to the National Mall, to the National Gallery of Art, to look at Crucifixion images.

I had moved into the second trimester of my pregnancy. Now was the settling-in, trying to get used to the sudden and dramatic changes to my body, looking ahead to the changes to my life. Asking, "Is that all-- is my life somebody else's story now? Did I never get around to telling my own story?"

A Letter to my Future Pastor

Hello. I'm Ouisi. I've been part of this church for about ten years now--ten years in which this church took me from hard-core nondenominational fundamentalist to gung-ho Baptist. This church has nourished me through its community of friendship, its encouragement of learning, and a lot of Wednesday night dinners. I learned here that it was okay to be female, okay to ask questions, okay to have doubts, and okay to fall a little more on the "head" side of the head/heart axis. Most of the people here are from the wealthier and more educated part of the local population, just like at Grace where I grew up, but they don't ignore the poor, or insist that everyone interpret Scripture through a sacred litany of pop theologians.

When I brought Patrick here, people welcomed him and didn't try to convert him or make him feel like he needed to work at fitting in. They like to ask him questions-- how do the Catholics read this passage of Scripture? How does your parish celebrate this holy day? When Patrick and I got married, it was at the altar of this church. We were blessed and our hands were united by the pastor of this church, and by Patrick's family priest.


Now I'm working on increasing the size of this congregation by one. I don't want my kid to grow up with the same bad expectations of God and of Christians that I once had. So I have some things I want to ask you to do.

Living in Sin

When I was in high school, I remember a Sunday School teacher telling us about life as a Christian.

“It’s simple,” he said, “but it’s not easy.”

Turns out that Christianity is not simple. Turns out that right thinking and right living in a complex world is not simple. Turns out that, coming after two millennia of Christian history, a simple doctrine that fits onto a 3-inch tract can only exist by ignoring the majority of Christian thought and experience.

Early Morning Alarms

So, at three o'clock this morning, my mother's phone rang. It was the hospital. A doctor needed to speak with her, she was told.

My mother fumbled for paper and pen, and sat silently in bed, waiting to hear that something had happened to my brother. After a few minutes, the woman came back on the line. The doctor was checking the charts, she said, and would be on the line shortly. More silence. My mother tried to remember which hospital the woman had said she was calling from. She couldn't remember.

The third time the woman came back, she said,

"Is this Maria Kirkwood?"

No, my mother said, this is Pamela.

"Oh. This is the wrong person." Click.

So then my mother called my brother. It was only one o'clock in the morning where he is, stationed on the border in Arizona. He assured her that he was fine, and then the two of them wondered-- could it be Ouisi? She might have been so badly injured that her brain was damaged and when she tried to say "Mela Kirkwood" it came out something like Maria. Ouisi could be lying alone in an ICU somewhere with a lethal brain injury. So my brothercalled my phone, and when I picked up he said, in his steady, it's-all-under-control-but-still-darned-serious voice,

"Ouisi, nothing is wrong here, but we got a call from a hospital that didn't make sense and wanted to check and see if you were okay."

Well, actually, what he said was, "Ouisi, nothing is--" and I said,

"ARRRGHWHATAREYOUDOINGIT'STHREEO'CLOCKINTHEMORNING! WHATISWRONGWITHYOUARRRRGH."

So we all went back to sleep. And nobody was dead, and I did a web search today, and there are no Maria Kirkwoods within five hundred miles of my mother. And the next time that somebody calls me at three o'clock in the morning, I'll try to remember that there are good reasons to call people at that hour, and to not open the conversation with a gutteral cry of rage.