Saturday, December 31, 2005
A Foucault-styled genealogy of social constructions of the maternal body - hard to read, but worth it. "...the maternal body incarnates one human at the beginning of pregnancy and two at the end of it, and it is by no means clear how to tell a coherent story of this passage" (4). The biological realness of fetuses and of women makes extreme social constructionism impossible, but she looks at how technology, in particular ultrasound, shapes our understandings of and our relationships to the fetus. Then, she thinks about the cultural resources available to new mothers as they try to make boundaries between themselves and their children, both before and after birth. "We mothers are neither simply 'at one with' our children, nor simply independent of them; assimilation and abandonment are not our only options...we can and usually do have deep, self-defining, intimate relationships with our children that do not erase the boundaries between us. (231)
The biological realities of reproduction could inform other more extreme social constructionism - like the perspective that "sex" (male/female) is an arbitrary social construction, or that humans are able to create any kind of gender and sexual identity we want to.
I liked the possibilities she opens up - there are more options than "good mother" who is always physically proximate with her children, and "bad mother" who isn't. The difficult cultural work of creating and living those options is, of course, up to us.
#4 The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging (Kate Young Caley)
This was on KP's must-read list, so I did, and I read it very greedily in one day and now it's all gone and there isn't anymore for me. Spiritual memoir that hinges on her family being disfellowshiped from a conservative church when she was young.
One lengthy quote I don't want to lose:
She [my mother] said not everyone is able to look back at their life and uncover all the pieces. She told me to be careful about expecting that of everyong - it just doesn't go that way.
We were having our morning coffee together and she said, "The diference between me and some people is not the amount of pain in our lives. Many people have many kinds of pain. But I have faced mine. I have faced the hardest things, Kate. And I keep going."
She looked at me with strength and satisfaction. Her beautiful eyes were shining.
When I think about the photograph I want to show my daughters, it is my mother's face in that moment. The image of the hardest things that happened blending with joy. Joy she chooses. And teaches me to choose as well." (99)
Friday, December 30, 2005
Knowledge is like babies – it’s nice to have some, but you don’t necessarily want all the details about how it came into the world. Blogging is, in part, a fresh exposure to epistemology. We can see ideas and knowledge come into the world, unfiltered by editorial and publishing processes. This can be disappointing in terms of grammar, polish, and the general ill-informedness of our generation, but exciting because neither the promise of profit nor the standard norms of professionalism screen for acceptability and standardize voices before they are spoken.
I recently received an e-mail from a stranger suggesting that I go to therapy and/or converse with my husband rather than blog about my life and ideas. In particular, my combination of feminism and occasional coarse language alerted this pastor to my need for professional and husband support, because I’m projecting my personal problems into cyberspace. It was a kindly worded message and I don’t resent it. But instead of calling my therapist – quickly and on her personal pager number, which I have for moments like this when someone criticizes me even slightly and I start to hyperventilate and see the crumbling of the little tower of self-worth that totters in my heart – the e-mail got me thinking about epistemology.
I read so much spiritual memoir because I want to learn new ideas and thoughts about God and to see where the notions are grounded. Most spiritual memoir does that, and most theological writing doesn’t. If knowledge is more a web (interconnected) than a building (linear and inductive), then we will still see consensus and even orthodoxy emerge over time and across space, but it won’t emerge as a scientific, evidentiary, narrowly rational project. The authority of real believers seeking God and talking about it carries more weight for me right now than the authority of academically credentialed experts, though I appreciate the screening process for ideas in the academy, and use that filter when studying and teaching many things.
If I say something about, say theodicy, it would be helpful for you to know that I’ve suffered deeply and recently, and that ideas about God, sovereignty, power, and control get filtered through that experience. And I need to be in conversation with those who haven’t suffered deeply and/or recently, to see what God looks like from that perspective. And those from other cultures and times who have suffered differently. I hope people read my words and say, well that’s one person’s perspective, and I can see some of the benefits and the limits of that perspective. Then they should read lots of other ideas with the same awareness of situatedness, and consider their own experiences, and continue forming their own perspectives.
I sometimes listen to Hank Hannegraf, the “Bible Answer Man” on the radio. A guy called in and said, “Hank, I’ve been so disappointed by Christian leaders. They say one thing and then turn out to be wrong and I realize I’ve been led astray. I’m glad I’ve found your show.” Hank said, “Why are you glad to have found my show?” The guy said, “Because you really have the truth. You tell me what the Bible says, and I know I can trust you.”
The Bible Answer Man has earned his nickname, but listening to his show is no substitute for reading the book to which his show refers. Swapping one authority figure for another will always disappoint; the caller will eventually find even the Bible Answer Man to be fallible. The quest for certain knowledge about God is a valiant quest, but will eventually be redirected toward God. And in that quest, no redirection will be needed.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
I read Dance of the Dissident Daughter b/c a few of you recommended it for my Women's Spiritual Experiences course. It's on my list of possible readings - not b/c I agree with Kidd, but b/c it will be challenging for my students, many of whom come from backgrounds similar to hers. Or is it too challenging? I need to continue discerning which women's journeys will most be a blessing for the class.
In DDD, Kidd is describing her spiritual journey as an awakening. She had spent her life as a Baptist being the “Good Christian Woman,” accepting pervasive messages of inferiority. “A young girl learns Bible stories in which vital women are generally absent, in the background, or devoid of power. She learns that men go on quests, encounter God, and change history, while women support and wait for them…And what does a girl, who is forming her identity, do with all the scriptures admonishing women to submission and silence? Having them ‘explained away’ as the product of an ancient time does not entirely erase her unease. She also experiences herself missing from pronouns in scripture, hymns, and prayers. And most of all, as long as God ‘himself’ is exclusively male, she will experience the otherness, the lessness, of herself; all the pious talk in the world about females being equal to male will fail to compute in the deeper places inside her.” (30)
The female soul is limited, suppressed, and wounded by patriarchy – and Christianity is, not in its error but at its core – an instance of patriarchy. Kidd doesn’t see liberatory possibilities in fresh exegetical work or in woman-affirming parts of Christian tradition b/c she sees patriarchy as constitutive of the religion. Her spiritual awakening took her away from Christianity, in order to escape patriarchy, and into the nearly exclusively female world of the Feminine Sacred – a reclamation of Goddess worship that supposedly predates Christianity, which is one instance of the subjugation of the goddess by male-created male deities.
Kidd’s questions are important for Christian women: how has patriarchy in your church wounded you? Is your soul moving toward wholeness? Are you asleep or awake? Is your femininity – your womanness – an integral and valued part of your spiritual journey? Is God someone you can relate to? In light of patriarchal abuses of power - historically and at present – must we conclude that Christianity is rotten to the core?
Asking these questions anew in each generation and in each life will lead to powerful journeys into the spiritual unknown in an attempt to find God and find the self – real journeys of faith. “To reconnect with our souls we need to claim the freedom and power to shed our conditioning, to tear out the stitches from the old fabric, and to define for ourselves who we are as women, what is sacred, and how we relate to sacred experiences…This shedding and defining, this tearing our stitches and reweaving new ones became the essential work of my journey.” (21)
That such journeys will lead many away from orthodoxy and away from Jehovah should not be surprising. It is wrong to minimize such women’s stories, saying they have personal problems and need therapy, or they have theological problems and are going to hell. Patriarchy really is that bad; as women awaken, whether through education or life experience, many leave the church. If in professional life, personal life, or spirit, women experience God’s affirmation of their sex and giftedness, why should they stay part of an organization that negates all of this? Why continue to fight patriarchy and male insecurity when there is such freedom (or at least apparent freedom) in simply leaving?
My religious background is similar to Kidd’s, and I have lived through – and continue to – many of her root questions. When I read Scripture, however, even the tough parts, I still believe it speaks to me, affirms me, and that God is on my side. My sense of rootedness in Christian tradition is broad and includes women and men – from Billy Graham to Phoebe Palmer, from Augustine to Perpetua, from Paul to Hannah. Each of these people, and the Christian tradition as a whole, are flawed, but so am I -- none of us, nor Christanity as an organized religion -- can be mistaken for the God we all seek. My spiritual journey includes relationships with women and men, and perhaps in part because my childhood church was infested with sexual abuse against boys, I see how patriarchy and its associated protection of male power devastates men as well as women. I want the reclamation of spiritual wholeness and inner authority to bless men as well as women.
I don’t agree theologically with Kidd, and I don’t enjoy the style of woman-affirming Secret Life of Bees/Red Tent writing, I respect her experience and her questions and her courage in writing her journey. She’s trying to put words to her experience that will bless others, and has done so at tremendous cost to the professional success she had cultivated as a Good Christian Woman. I’d say that takes balls, but that would be a very poor choice of metaphor.
Here’s an encouragement for us all: “In the end, no matter where you are in the spectrum of women’s spirituality, I invite you to weave new connections to your female soul. For always, always, we are waking up and then waking up some more.” (4)
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
#1 What the Best College Teachers Do (Ken Bains)
The best college teachers focus preeminently on student learning. They are passionate, creative, caring, and expert. There is no simple technique or approach that will succeed - it is a matter of the kind of person you are, more than the techniques you use. "The moments of the class must belong to the student - not the students, but to the very individual student. You don't teach a class. You teach a student." INSPIRING.
#2 The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (Sue Monk Kidd)
I didn't like Secret Life of Bees, and I didn't like this. In my experience, groups of women are more likely to turn on each other than they are to create feminist rituals of awakening. I don't understand the draw of stories about the great collective wisdom that is Woman. I was saddened, and confused, by what seemed to be a quick critique and dismissal of orthodox Christianity. Christian tradition and theology has lots of interesting nooks and crannies of female affirmation, and the church today is very diverse in practices concerning women. She didn't explore this, nor did she describe her actual relationship with God/Jesus, and what happened to it.
I believe in women's empowerment, the reclamation of the body and of inner authority, and in critiques of patriarchy. I do not, however, believe in the Sacred Feminine. I think the Sacred loves men and women equally, and calls each of us to the life of love.
Best quote (unrelated to the theme of the book). "She [the analyst] gave me a long, deliberate look. 'If you write to please others or write for success or stardom or money, you're writing out of your ego. When are you going to write out of your Self?" (123)
4 Comments:
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Years ago I heard Sue Monk Kidd speak at a Spiritual Directors International Conference. Excited to hear her, I found myself terribly disappointed in her emphasis on Jungian psychology. Her beginnings as an evangelical Christian had turned into some kind of strange search for ancient archetypes of an interior world.
Our souls are so precious. I felt sad listening to her.
Despite the wanderings from her Christo-centric roots, she is very gifted writer but I have chosen not to read her books anymore. -
Anthropologically, why do you think it is that so many
Christian women are drawn to Kidd's writings? -
I'll answer Kristin's question. I resonated very deeply with Dance of the Dissident Daughter - not so much with where she ended up, but definitely with the feminine wound part and needing there to be a feminine side to God - and with the anger at the patriarchy of Christianity. My experience of Christianity has been that it is overwhelmingly masculine in its structures,theology, and terminology - so I very much need to explore feminine images of God, and I've given myself permission not to relate to God as Father right now.
I wish more evangelicals would explore Jung - not to replace grace and Jesus, but because he really was very insightful about our interior worlds - a place that evangelical Christianity really sucks at navigating as a general rule.
I don't agree with Jung or Kidd on everything - I thought DDD was a bit self-indulgent and narrow at times, and she didn't take the broader faith tradition of Christianity seriously enough - but they are both worth paying attention to. Kidd articulates an important and painful part of the religious experience of many Christian women.
Just my two cents...
ChristyBy
, at 12:30 AM
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katherine K here. I'm actually responding to the food piece from earlier. You're so damn funny I can't even believe it. I miss you and James and the kids so much. Yours, K
By
, at 5:31 PM
Thursday, December 22, 2005
I said I think about food alot...these are some rumbling thoughts that have been replaying like in my head like "Dancing Queen" tends to do.
Three recipe names I don't like:
Seven-Layer Bars. I made them for the first time this week, and while they are good, they do not have seven layers. The butter and graham crackers make up one layer. Butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, coconut, and nuts - each a layer. Sweetened condensed milk is not a layer, sorry. A better name would be Seven-Ingredient Bars, or Five-Layer Bars. I spent some time researching it in all my cookbooks, and there never are seven layers.
Snicker salad,jello salad, and the like. We ought not refer to sweet, cold dishes as "salad." I've told this story before, but one time I invited people over, and someone said they'd bring "salad." So we ate enchiladas and snicker salad (cool whip, snickers, and apples). Just because something is called "salad" doesn't mean it's a substitute for a green leafy vegetable.
Better than sex cake. That's just stupid (regardless of which you prefer). It makes me picture a group of moms sitting around obliquely complaining about how their sex drives have been diminished by the combination of rotten kids, antidepressants, and a pot-bellied, farting man that fill up their houses. Bitching and eating cake, however, will only further diminish your chances of having some good sex.
My favorite recipe name: green shit. That's what we're having for Christmas Eve dessert. It's oreo cookie crust, and green jello/cool whip "fluff" on top of it. Everyone thought it was my dearly departed, pious grandma's "green fluff" until I rifled through her recipe box last year and found she had crossed out the name and replaced it with "green shit." She made it, but apparently she didn't like it.
All right. I feel better now.
6 Comments:
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After all my thoughts about MY current job...I have to say, it has been fun to vicariously observe you embracing the "mom thing" and being at home. I am glad you are loving this year of domestic(sometimes)bliss! I am also glad for your students...that they get to learn from and interact with you again in the not so distant future - they will be better for it!
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This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
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oops...not annabelle posting, but then you knew that!
By
, at 11:37 AM
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Love the 'green shit' story!
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I think I maybe should rename some recipies from my childhood. Stuff that's not good for you shouldn't be called something particularily desirable or yummy. I like the name "green shit". It likely accurately represents the contents of said salad and the nutritional value of green jello. :) Unless of course you made the green jello with Green Machine juice and knox gellitin.
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I wholeheartedly agree about the "salad" business. I experienced that frustration again this year, and I have learned now that when my mother-in-law says salad, all she means is a dish that could not be classified as a meat, potato, or proper dessert. Christmas Day I was told some relatives were bringing a salad, and what we got was a green jello concoction with fruit and stuff..... how many dishes could we accurately describe with the phrase "green shit"?
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
I was raised to be a wife and mother, though my parents encouraged me and my sister to go to college and choose a professional interest, and only to get married and have children if we wanted to. The "choice" to marry and procreate, however, was illusory, because all the women I knew were wives and mothers. Starting at age 6 or 7, I learned to sew, mend, bake, and clean, and understood that these were my marriagable skills.
Instead of using my college years to find a husband, I decided to become an inner-city ministry person, earn a PhD, and become a professor. I assumed I'd fall in love and get married sooner or later, and I was ambivalent about having children. [Subtext: lots of therapy, knowing a precious few Christian female PhDs, and reading of feminist philosophy along the way shaped this vision.]
So, by age 30, I was working as a professor, married to a man who fully supported my career (even moved across the country for my sake), and had no kids. I would still envision a life, however, in which a strong, dominant man financially supported me as I raised his children, cooked his meals, and made piles of crafty shit. Not that this is an entirely positive fantasy, but in my imagination, it's the other side of the coin I'm living.
This year offers opportunities to live the dream. This week, for example, I'm home caring for babies, have sewed some baby clothes, cooked dinners, made James' lunch (I do this so rarely that I almost always point it out on the blog!), and baked pumpkin bars, peanut blossoms, snickerdoodles, seven layer bars, pecan tassies, and toffee bars. Last week I decorated for Christmas and sewed CHristmas stockings for the babies. My mom designated me her personal baker, and I'm baking for three different work and family events that my parents are attending. This is just how my mom was at my age - cheap and thrifty as can be, high energy, food-oriented, and mediocre at dishwashing. And James - he's out there freezing his ass off on a construction site, supporting my trips to JoAnn fabrics and Cub foods.
My sabbatical fell during the babies' first year of life (not by coincidence - it was supposed to have been during the triplets' infancy and I delayed it), and that is what offers me the chance to be the housewife I always thought I would be. It has its moments of enjoyment, but for the most part, domestic work isn't very humanizing. It's just tedious, repetitive, and physical, and much of it just keeps things afloat - not really blessing or transforming anything. I can't imagine living this year without an agenda of reading and writing, and without access to the Internet - these things are my links to the world of ideas and the world outside my house.
Mary Stuart Van Leeuwen argues in Gender and Grace that evangelicals have made an idol of the family. She says God gives each person gifts with which to bless the world, and that no person's gifts can be contained to just a household. We worship our families and our households, instead of worshiping God in his big world, and as a result, women's energy often implodes in the household, and they become manipulative, overcontrolling, and smothering. Indeed, the best stay-at-home moms I know bless the world through volunteering or otherwise contributing to causes beyond the care of their children, and they bring their kids along in learning how to help others.
I'm glad for the life I've chosen, one that will surely be over-full once I go back to work. The balancing of roles and priorities is difficult, but a blessed difficulty to have. I'm also glad to have weeks in which I can be the domestic queen I was raised to be - it's a way of life worth a dip of my toes. But I wouldn't want to swim there.
8 Comments:
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Jenell-
You make me laugh. I felt the same way ... but then when it came time to fly off to my high-paying swanky job I hated myself and missed all the poop and snot. It is a very interesting postion to be in. When do you go back to Bethel? ~Tara Livesay -
Phrases we never thought we'd read on Jenell's blog, but which would make great band names or at least album titles:
Piles of Crafty Shit
Monkey Mind Races
Anad Shlumpy
Corpse Pose
Forgive me, sometimes my brain just does this to me.By
Josh Fuller, at 1:21 PM
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So is it lots of therapy and feminist philosophy that I need (in addition to knowing you)?
Even in my dream job, which is working from home, I have guilt about the path I've chosen. Like you, I was raised in that environment where daycare means you don't love your children and a woman's life is in the home. It's just all I ever saw.
I know that my mind and my soul need more than that, so I choose to write from home, leaving my daughter with a sitter three days a week (albiet just for 2.5 hours a day), and sacrifice housework when I have a deadline. When I interact with other mothers who don't do outside-the-home work at all, I feel guilty by default. I think I'll never get over it, but I'm hoping my small choice will help my daughters move in another direction. Thanks for reminding me that mine are "blessed difficulties."
-Kim VBBy
, at 6:09 PM
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I'm going back to work in Sept 06, when the boys are 14 mos. old. I worry about it everyday, though, and try not to let my worries interfere with enjoying this year.
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Funny, if I'd titled a post "The Life I Thought I'd Have" it would have described my goal to be married, raise children and work "at least part time." I never dreamed (even as a Bethel student!) I'd end up a stay-home mom.
I posted some of that journey here on Sept. 8th. But I guess I'd say that as much as I loved giving of myself and receiving affirmation out there in "the rest of the world," in the past 6 1/2 years as a stay home mom I have (quite surprisingly) let that go.
I now see my life so differently. I am continuously thinking/praying about what I am being called to do now...and now...and now. My world has not gotten smaller it has been enlarged. I can enter into the work God is doing in the world in so many different capacities now. My job, and yes my heart, is to first enter into what He is doing and asking of me with my children. But I cannot stop there. I continue to look beyond my door...to my neighbhors, yes, my church, my community, others who are serving who God has called me to journey with.
I thought I was domestic...I can cook, bake, sew, be crafty. But I find so much of my energy is used up by following all the other things God lays on my heart that I let a lot of domestic things go.
Hmmm, I have a lot of words in response to this post, yet I don't think I'm saying it well. I guess I should sum it up by saying this life of a stay-home mom can be played out so many different ways and I think I've been surprised by what it is for me, and what it isn't. But I know my calling to minister to those "within the flock" and to those "without" hasn't changed one bit by following this path. -
Sorry that url didn't work...cut and paste this if you're interested!http://touton.blogspot.com/2005/09/recognizing-what-he-wants-from-me.html
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Tonya,
I remember when you decided to stop working at Bethel. We expected you to come back in the fall to teach a team-taught class, but you left over the summer when your first girl was born. When Virginia described your decision, it seemed like you had a "moment of clarity", and knew just what you were supposed to do. It was impactful for me to observe, even if from a distance. -
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My Bonus Area, at 12:44 AM
Monday, December 19, 2005
Link thanks to Katie, my friend who I hardly ever see. Katie, I have a whole closet full of Dots over here that need sorting.
My sabbatical is half over. In The Art of Teaching, Jay Parini says he doesn't like sabbaticals. During each of his sabbaticals, he becomes lonely and depressed and doesn't write very much -- he writes prolifically in the midst of busy semesters. I met a professor, in his late 60s, who had only taken one sabbatical in decades of teaching. He said, "What else would I want to do but what I already do every year?" His one sabbatical involved going to a different college to teach undergraduates.
Saying it's hard to be on sabbatical is like saying it's really hard to have so much money, or hard to decide what to pack for my month-long cruise. Would that everyone's life could be so difficult. My year-long sabbatical was preceded by a semester of disability leave (the middle 15 weeks of my horrible pregnancy, during which I was too sick to do anything interesting or productive beyond vomit and lay in the la-z-boy. Oh, and gestate two boys, which I suppose was quite productive). It really is reaching the point where I wonder if it's legitimate to tell people I'm a professor - if one doen't profess for 18 months, is one still a professor? The key to my office still works, and I still have my doctoral diploma somewhere in the attic, so I guess I still am.
My fantasy sabbatical plans involved traveling across Canada on a grant, teaching in Lithuania or Kenya, reading everything queer published since I left grad school, and studying deeply in a new subject. Instead, my intellectual life has been like my social, spiritual, and relational life -- subjected to the needs of Oliver and Wesley. In all parts of life, that has meant getting things done in little bits of time, and disciplining myself to accept interruptions, false starts, and grand omissions and absences. Learning that discipline - arranging my life around care for vulnerable others - has potential to shape my service to the world, if I learn it deeply enough. I'm still at the muscle-stretching, not-sure-I-can-do it stage. My selfishness still longs to write, speak, and teach about vulnerable others (racial, sexual, economic, etc.) in ways that don't involve actually being slowed down by such people.
My intellectual work has included reading, writing articles and chapters, drafting and brainstorming ideas, and working on course prep for fall. We're taking two trips for speaking engagements in the spring. I'm barreling through some work I've longed to do, and it's fun and going very well - just not the fantasies I'd hoped for (the lack of a plan or a plane ticket to Lithuania also slowed down that possibility...). Sabbatical is isolating, but I'm not depressed about it like Parini describes. I'm just seeing and valuing how much I am a social intellectual creature - my best ideas spring forth during other peoples' lectures or sermons, or in dialogue with students or colleagues. I like to hole up and work, but for hours at a time, not months. (I estimate I've been in my house at least 80% of the time over the last twelve months - half of that mostly alone, and half with babies).
I also miss the classroom in the way you miss your high-school sport during the off-season. You itch to play again. You dream about it. You make awesome plays in your imagination. And that's just how it ought to be.
Everyone should have a sabbatical (a break from work during which you get paid all or part of your pay). It changes the quality of one's work every year, knowing that a break is coming after six years. I think of my career in seven-year chunks, not an endless parade of five-day weeks stretching out until retirement. And, setting aside my intellectual agenda, I recognize that the meaning of the word is 'rest.' I'm doing that, too, on a meta-scale that prepares me to work well and cheerfully next fall.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Within a week or so of when my triplets died, I went to yoga class. I went to a back corner and faced a different direction than the rest of the class so I could look at myself in a mirror. I stretched, but less than everyone else. During sun salutes, I sat in child’s pose and cried -- I didn’t have the arm strength to lift or support my own weight. During the corpse pose (lying flat on the floor), I instead sat cross-legged because my lower back wouldn’t let me lie on the floor. In my mind, I rehearsed explanations I could offer the class. “I just gave birth…” “Normally I’m much better at yoga…” “You should have seen me before I got pregnant…” In truth, people were more focused on their own workouts than on me. My self-consciousness was a distraction from living in the present and experiencing yoga’s peace.
There were moments when I really felt a stretch, and noticed the pang in my neck, the circles under my eyes, the puffiness of my lips, and the familiar shape of my calf muscle and shoulders returning. During relaxation time at the end of class, Joel the instructor said, “Go inside and you will find peace. You will wake up to find yourself renewed, refreshed, and rejuvenated.” I went inside and found a mire of panic, despair, and chaos (here I part ways with secular yoga-ists who believe the answers are all within. I sort of agree, but only because the Holy Spirit lives within). There was about one second of peace in which I truly relaxed, glad to experience the Comforter's peace in my heart, if only briefly. Otherwise, I cried and cried. After class, Joel came over to my mat, kissed me on the head, and said, “You showed up. You began.”
In a conversation unrelated to yoga, Rachel reminded me to live in community and tradition, but be centered in my own heart. I meditated for five minutes yesterday - just mindful breathing. My breath felt like an old friend - here I've been breathing all along, but hadn't paid attention for at least six months. Monkey mind races. Every day I think mostly about food. Food for me and James - grocery shopping, recalling what is in the frig or pantry, what time dinner will be, what I should have for lunch. Food for the babies - did I take vitamins and flaxseed oil to improve my milk, what time will they eat next, how to stagger feedings to optimize bedtime.
I'm losing track of my self. Parenting is new work for me, and it's overwhelmingly physical, material work - lifting, carrying, comforting, cleaning, feeding, organizing. I've read enough monastic writings to know that physical work is holy when done mindfully, but I rarely pursue mindfulness. Five minutes of meditation yesterday and about three minutes today (then I fell asleep!) remind me that a universe resides within each of us. So much to know and to explore, partly for the sheer joy of conscious existence and partly to be grounded in service to others.
Sometimes not praying seems like such a deficit pit that it's impossible to start trying again. But in the present moment, there is no pit, no past, and no future. Just show up. Just begin.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Having listened to the bad CD five times today, I've realized this: bad Amy Grant is better than no Amy Grant.
Kim, from my Spirit Garage days, commented on the babyness of Jesus at Christmastime. Christmas has been hard for me in recent years. We would go to my parents' house along with my sister and her family. It seemed that my sister's kids were kids and my sister was a grown-up, but I was still my parent's kid because I didn't have kids. Then, after our triplets died, we just skipped the holidays and went to Florida to not observe Christmas. Last year was better - I was pregnant. I was very fearful of loss and death, but pregnant nonetheless.
When a person is feeling jealous and sad, anyone becomes a target. Infertile people chart their cycles and have sex on the clock, and then there goes Mary - pregnant without even trying. In church, Advent is full of pregnancy metaphors - the waiting of Advent, the journey of Mary and Joseph, the birth of a baby. It's like Mother's Day, but stretched out over five weeks. In the culture, Christmas is all about toys and kids and cookies and families. If you're lacking any of those things and feeling bad about it, December only makes it worse.
For four Christmases, I just coped. Friends involved in church planning let me know when the Advent conception/incarnation stuff was going to begin, and I gave myself permission to skip. I came home from family Christmas and cried.
I was pregnant last Christmas, but was still more immersed in grief than in new life. My Christmas letter was a meditation on genocide. Jesus' birth is occasion for celebration, but at the time, the Bethlehem women who lost their infants and toddlers wouldn't have celebrated. The Incarnation was in a context of joy and sorrow, life and death. My letter focused mostly on death, and it went over like a lead balloon. The only person who liked it had recently lost a family member to suicide, and her bitter grief was nourished by mine.
This year, I hold together the joy and the sorrow, one in each hand (would that they could integrate and indwell my heart). On the floor is a pile of presents for my living boys, and on the wall are three ornaments that honor the dead. I'm celebrating by baking cookies, wrapping presents, and listening to Christmas music. I'm remembering by contributing infant remembrance clothing to Missing Grace, an organization that helps parents of reproductive loss. Grace was the stillborn daughter of Steve and Candy McVicar (Candy founded Missing Grace). She uses GRACE as an acronym: grieve, restore, arise, commemorate, and educate. If you're somewhere in that acronym, may you experience the holidays in whatever place you're in. If coping is all you can do, then cope. And if you need to run to Florida and pretend it isn't Christmas at all, may I recommend the bird sanctuary in the Keys. It was lovely.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Awakened by Ollie’s crying in the middle of the night, I laid in bed willing him to shut up and go back to sleep (it worked, by the way). A word came to mind: restoration. Finally, I feel my health being restored.
Earlier in the evening, I went to an eye appointment. After wearing contacts for sixteen years, I’ve been wearing glasses all the time for three years. The contacts I had a few years back didn’t allow me to read properly, so I gave up, but the real reason was that I didn’t care. I look better with contacts, but why look better? And besides, my profession allows for glasses, no make-up, anad shlumpy clothes. Professors can look however they please in the name of academic eccentricity.
Last night, the doctor did some troubleshooting about my discomfort with reading while wearing contacts, and gave me a new type of lens with a new prescription. I’ve felt this sensation with each new pair of glasses or contacts (at least ten so far in my life): edges are clearer, the world is shinier, and I imagine perhaps there’s even a new way to live in this bright world I’m able to see.
Without the obstruction of glasses, I can see my face better in the mirror. My youth is gone – my eyes have wrinkles, my face has lost its youthful plumpness, and my body still looks postpartum. I was pretty sure that the death of my babies stripped me of youth, and it has. But my eyes still sparkle when I smile, and I can let people see that. I’m getting stronger, feeling familiar muscles reappear in my legs. And my mind and spirit feel sturdy again. I can picture any part of my past, even the labor, delivery, brief lives, and deaths of my sons, and face it full on. I can imagine lots of good futures. I can wonder about God and why He didn’t help me, and I don’t fear losing my faith. I can explore the nooks and crannies of my intellect again, without fearing that I’m losing my mind. I am not afraid of breaking.
Though I've often been less than willing, I've received God’s discipline. “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons…No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” (Heb. 12:7, 11-13).
Life is difficult, but God teaches me how to live it. I don’t believe my difficulties are punishment, or that God’s discipline is retributive. I’ve been made lame, but God teaches me – disciplines me -- in how to strengthen my arms and knees, and to make my own level path. As I walk it, he heals me.
Today someone sent me an encouragement from Psalm 90:15, knowing that my last four years have been difficult. She wrote, “May you receive a thousand times more joy than you have seen sorrow.” I have, indeed, seen sorrow. May my corrected vision allow me to see a thousand times more joy.
2 Comments:
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I met you many years ago at a book group with Spirit Garage discussing "The Poisonwood Bible". I just wanted to let you know that I really like reading your blog. I learned this week of a couple (whom I do not know) who lost another baby (1st time miscarrage, this time stillborn) and it brought me back to when I experienced my miscarriage almost 2 years ago. I wondered how this couple would make it through Christmas with all the talk of BABY Jesus. I wondered what kind of things others would say to console them (because there really are no words). I grieved for them and also grieved the loss of my own. I wondered if I would be able to emotionally make it through the adoption process. I think suffering makes us more human and helps us to feel much more deeply the pain of others. But it also helps me to see clearly how blessed I am.
By
, at 2:26 PM
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hi jenell, this is a completely off topic comment, but I wanted to let you know that I just posted a couple pictures of Brooke and my organic farming trip to Ireland. I thought you might be interested (though they're only pictures of me; I don't have permission from Brooke to exploit her across the internet yet) I keep up on your blog. It's so good to read.
-kate nordbye
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
In the spirit of American Christmas, I’ve raised my expectations regarding the worth and meaning of material goods. Surely this will be the year in which shopping, owning, and consuming will fill that hole in my soul. So far, mostly disappointment.
*A new Advent calendar. Most are secular, and I insisted on a Christian one, which my mom found. It’s a felt dealie, and in addition to the usual manger scene characters, it has two elephants, two beagles, and two stars of the East. I’m sure it was made by oppressed Chinese workers who don’t know or care whether Snoopy was at the birth of Christ. It feels sort of wrong to own it, but also wrong to just get rid of it. I’m going to use it for a few years until the felt is worn, and then design and make my own.
*A coffeemaker. Poor design – no need to go into it.
*The new Amy Grant CD. If loving Amy Grant is wrong (that is, not postmodern), then I don’t want to be right. But she phoned it in on this one, after her first CD of hymns was super wonderful. You just can’t make “I Surrender All” an up-beat pop song, nor should your husband speak the lyrics to “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” in way that makes you want to prevent your children from accepting candy from him.
*Our family Christmas pictures from snapfish. All heavily digitized with red eye reduction ink in Ollie’s nose. Redid them at target.com and they’re great. If anyone wants a heavily digitized image of my family with ink in Ollie’s nose, just let me know – I’ve got 50 of them.
*The great exception: grapefruit. I’ve bought three bad ones, but persistence has paid off. The fourth one, which I enjoyed for breakfast this morning, was wonderful.
Things we’ve made or done, however, have borne greater reward (you may assume traditional gender roles when thinking of who did each thing).
*Christmas stockings for the babies. Made of felt with lots of appliqué and sequins. Do I realize they’re gaudy? Yes. Do I like them that way? Yes.
*A new latch on the front door.
*New wiring in the kitchen and bathroom.
*Peanut blossom cookies, pumpkin bread, and blueberry muffins.
*The compliment James gave me, crafted to encourage me to wear my contacts instead of glasses.
*The movie we’re making of Ollie and Wesley’s half-birthday, which is today. Happy .5 birthday!
Lessons learned? Don’t try to get life from owning nice kitchen appliances or from getting good produce in Minnesota during the winter. These will be either grave disappointments or fleeting pleasures. Get off your ass and do something, make something, give something, or receive something from someone who loves you. Whatever it is, I guarantee it will make you feel better than I did after wasting $6.99 on a bad CD.
2 Comments:
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I've been having really good luck with the grapefruit I buy in 5-pound bags at Rainbow.
And happy semi-birthday, boys! :) -
I actually clicked on the grapefruit link. It's interesting just to know that someone, somewhere, cared enough to write that much about grapefruits.
Cared enough, or was paid enough, I suppose.By
Josh Fuller, at 1:35 PM
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Is glee a virtue? I have an abundance of it right now. James and the babies went to the health club, leaving me ALONE IN MY OWN HOUSE for about the second time in six months. (I do escape sometimes, but it always requires me to leave the house). I have a temptation to straighten and clean, but I vowed to draft an essay by the end of the weekend. I'm going to sit here and write. Here I go.
2 Comments:
Thursday, December 08, 2005
I need to rent a minivan for the first week of February - does anyone have a coupon I can have?
It seems that every time I go with the cheapest company (Dollar, Alamo), something bad happens. I end up with a stinky car that wasn't the one I reserved, and the rental place is in a back alley twenty miles from the airport. So I'm thinking Avis or Budget. Top (Enterprise) to bottom (Dollar) is a difference of $100.
Thoughts, opinions, or coupons?
We also need to buy a minivan, which is a more serious undertaking. Opinions (or offers on your used van) are welcome.
7 Comments:
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get a Honda. You will regret any other choice every time you get in someone else's Honda.
By
, at 10:08 PM
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If you you go the rental way try hotwire.com. You don't end up knowing what company it will be, but it's one of the big ones. It saved me a good amount in DC and I ended up with Hertz.
By
, at 10:13 AM
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I just rented from Budget and it went pretty smooth and the car was nice, price was also reasonable.
By
, at 11:08 AM
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Honda Odyssey, hands down.
DanaBy
, at 10:39 PM
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Honda. Everyone else is right. But get on it now, cause from what I've heard, there is a waiting list cause they almost never have any on the showroom floor you could have cause they are that good.
I have some Happenings coupons for rentals, but I think they expire at the end of the year. Maybe they would let you use them if you booked before the coupon expired? I'll try to remember them next weekend for church. -
Thank you! I booked on hotwire, despite not knowing who "njdt" is. It was the right thing - saved nearly 30%. (So Jen, I can't use your coupon).
Honda Odyssey...I'm going to get on it. Hondas seem quite more expensive than the other minivans, but you all seem to think that's worth it. What would be worth it to me would be to just pay one of you to buy a minivan for me - I hate the research and decision-making. -
After a lot of research and comparing of the Honda and Toyota minivans, we decided on the '05 Honda Odyssey. My main reason was that Honda offers safety features like side curtain airbags in their '05 model standard, where with Toyota you have to pay extra and then the van itself costs more. A car company who puts safety features like that standard gets my vote. Yes, the Honda is more expensive, but it's something that you won't regret. If you could consider a car an investment, the Odyssey would be a great one. From a Mommy perspective, I chose the Honda because I felt it was the safest choice for my family.
Hugo promises to blog about pastoral scandals, and I'm sure whatever he says will be more prosaic and thoughtful than this. (And I'm not just saying that, Hugo, because I'm a woman who has been socialized to defer to men and to apologize before speaking.)
I think there are many reasons why pastors wind up in scandalous situations. The enneagram would say that people are motivated by different wounds - a One, for instance, may focus on being perfect and appearing perfect. "Trapdoor Ones" allow themselves a space -- while on conferences, traveling, or somewhere secret -- to indulge themselves, arguing that they deserve it because they're perfect the rest of the time. Other enneagram types would be different.
Additionally, while the ten scandals I referred to are all about sex, they are quite different. My pastor who was a pedophile was abused by a deacon as a child, and became a pastor in part to repeat the same abuse he received. (He said the abuse he received was the only "love" he experienced as a child, and he wanted to love others the way he had been loved.) The male and female pastors mentioned in the comments section chose to fall in love and leave their spouses for each other. That's a quite different motivation. Gradually succumbing to pornography addiction is a different process, as well.
This week's The Christian Century has a book review of Pastors in Transition: Why Clergy Leave Local Church Ministry. The book says pastors leave ministry most often because of conflict, a preference for specialzied ministry, and burnout/discouragement/stress/overwork. Sexual misconduct and divorce/marital problems are two other reasons, and 75% of those who left ministry for sexual misconduct said they were lonely, isolated, drained, and bored.
In most of the situations I've observed first-hand, pastors simply walked away from the churches they had pastored for 10, 20, 30 years. For the most part, congregants moved on fairly easily - not from the fallout of the scandal - but from the pastor himself. I wish pastors could embed their lives in their churches such that they could do personal work and healing even in the community where they minister.
I know this is old ground for pastor-types, and therapeutically-minded pastors discuss these things in more informed ways than I can. And I don't even know everything about the ten situations I mentioned. But my sense is that the pedophile pastor was an exception - a profoundly messed-up, criminally motivated man. The others were bored, lonely, restless...just trying to get life from another woman, a young adult, an image. They pursued life in isolation from their communities, and when such pursuits went awry, they and their communities were too easily parted.
Anyone who knows me knows I talk about this subject alot, but it's on my mind this week again.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
I was going to blog yesterday as a warm-up to writing other thngs, but did neither. This chapter I promised to write is making me cranky. I'll be excited once i start writing, but the blank screen is bullying me.
I'm also despondent about pastoral scandals (having learned of a few more recently). [and note: I'm not talking about my current church or implying identifying information anywhere]. I've been part of seven churches in my life, and there have been ten pastoral scandals within the orbits of those churches (some at sister churches or related groups). Is that normal? There's pedophilia, affairs, boundary-crossings, pornography...all are somehow related to sex. In only one situation did the pastor stick around to reconcile with the congregation and to pursue healing and personal restoration in their midst. That was an amazing experience - when he was restored to the pulpit, he began preaching about the "shadow side" of humanity, using his experience as an example. In all other cases, the pastors disappeared without speaking to the congregation ever again.
First, I thought it was because they're all evangelical - so uncomfortable with the body that sexuality is hidden and comes out inappropriately. Then, I wondered about maleness. Sexual inappropriateness is rampant among American men, but for the most part, pastors are one of the only professions in the bar is set fairly high for sexual sins are job-threatening offenses (affairs and emotional entanglements wouldn't normally get you fired) and in which people expect greater morality from men. In one institution where I worked, a pastor's scandal was made public, but another office worker (whose offenses were 'worse') was disappeared privately. So is it maleness? If women were given similar power, we'd abuse it too - perhaps in different ways, but blaming gender isn't the answer. My final and most depressing suggestion is that something (the pastorate? the American church? Christianity as we know it?) is just rotten to the core.
Honestly, when a student tells me he's thinking about becoming a pastor (and I've never heard such an aspiration from a woman student), I wonder what's wrong with him. I want to ask, "What kind of personal sickness are you trying to feed by holding spiritual power over people?" "Why do you want a job with so little accountability?" "Why can't you just serve God in a normal job?" I also worry about the young man's tender hopes being bruised and broken in some sick church where he carries his heart's aspirations.
There's something wrong with our culture when it comes to things sexual. And there's something wrong with how church is organized in that it gives unilateral power where power ought to be shared, allows secret where truth should be told, and protects the powerful at the expense of their victims. Missionaries give thought to contextualization in other nations, but perhaps we need to consider organizational contextualization in a culture where organizations are structured for personal, group, and monetary gain - not care, kindness, restoration, and love.
5 Comments:
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Sadly, it's not just for men. I personally know of a church plant that was started by a Male Pastor and a Female Pastor (both married to other people, and she was a friend of mine). If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it was. They had an affair, both marriages were destroyed, and the church plant eventually died. She went on to pastor as an associate at another church in another state under a senior female pastor, who later had an affair with a staff member and left her church.
Male Pastor and Female Pastor, no longer employed by their denomination or married to their spouses, eventually married each other. They are now planting a church in a large urban area.
To this day, I struggle with what should have been the church's response to their situation. I struggle most of all with my own response. Female Pastor and her (first) husband were dear people to me. Her second husband is a distant relative by marriage, and their marriage wasn't a winning move any more than was their affair. I can't even bring myself to send a Christmas card. WWJD? Hell if I know.
My first husband was/is a pastor and had a problem with pornography. My second husband is a pastor, and he just has different sins. Perhaps it's a reminder that pastors are human. The standards may be higher (and they should be), but they're still human. -
Len Hjalmarson at NextReformation.com is one of my favorite writers. He recently posted on the six issues the NAmerican church is going to have to deal with. Your story would in inform at least five of them:
1) What is the Gospel? 2) What do leadership and authority mean? 3) What is the text and context of the conversation (where have we come from and where are we now)? 4) What about Incarnation and the Community of God? 5) What about Discipleship/Spiritual Formation? 6) How do we cope with/address/function in a society of religious pluralism? (This is the one that might be more tangential.)
This is the kind of stuff that makes ordinary folks quit "church" altogether.
DanaBy
, at 4:42 PM
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I've got sort of a theory, and I'll blog it tomorrow. It's got a lot about shame and overcompensation in it, but I'll just have to sit down and write to see what comes out. Thanks for this, Jenell; the chinchilla in my head is running on its wheel.
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Interesting. I've been thinking a lot this week about the evangelical view of the body and how that's affected me. Blogged a bit about it tonight, after you inspired me to start putting thoughts into writing.
I think the current Christian culture doesn't give us any helpful way to deal with our bodies and understand that spirit and flesh can both be valued. -
I wonder to what degree sexual shame plays a significant role in the spiritual lives of a lot of men. I know it was a big part of my conversion.
In fact, this male Christian thought he wanted to be a pastor in part to help other people struggle against their sinful natures. I think it gave a sense of hope to those inner battles: if you can spend your life helping others, surely you can help yourself?
In other words, I wonder if the office of pastor, by its very nature, has some particular allure to people who are struggling with shame. The true freedom of the gospel is replaced with bondage to a life of penance for secret shame.By
, at 4:18 AM
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