Tuesday, May 13, 2008
A final cackling: a crone's misgivings
In reference to this long series of posts, a woman said to me about her experiences with Christianity and sexism, "Sometimes I just have to let it go." Another, my feminist mother-in-law, said, "I just laugh at them because they're silly. Those men don't have power over me." This isn't the laughter or release born of apathy, but of maturity. Might there be a place of compassion, humor, and peace from which we engage sexism and women's repression? Or, more pointedly, might there be a place of compassion, humor, and peace from which _I_ can engage these things?
I watched my son Wesley agitate his brother this morning. Wesley knows how to push Ollie's buttons, but Ollie doesn't know how to control his emotions (they're only 2). Giving in to Wesley's teasing, Oliver suffers emotional and vocal distress while Wesley watches, amused and otherwise unaffected. To make a disrespectful analogy, it's like religious sexism is Wesley and I am Ollie. In my career, in motherhood, and in church, I'm appreciating anew how entrenched sexism is. It makes me angry to see it affecting a younger generation of scholars and church leaders, and the new generation of my own family. It's vulnerable to be a working mother with an at-home husband and still claim to be a decent Christian, and it makes me angry that my religious community doesn't have a more solid set of pro-family social norms that would help stabilize this experience. There's plenty to be angry about, but there must be a way to act compassionately -- right action -- that is totally loving, patient, and other-centered, even when the other is White Traditionalist Evangelical Guy. In anthropology, evangelicals are sometimes referred to as the 'culturally repugnant other' -- anthropologists discuss how to do good fieldwork among and ethnographic representation of people whom the anthropologist does not like. It's a deeper ethic still for us Christians, to love beyond the circle of those who love us. And to love in a way that doesn't leave injustice unnamed or structural redemption undone.
I certainly mean everything I said, but I'm second-guessing my ascent to cronehood. The princess - crone dualism is surely a false one, anyway. I don't want to be a self-appointed finger-wagger or an unlikeable academic kook. Besides, I'm only 35 -- I can hang out with the crones, but I really can't go their speed yet. Maybe just being human suits me best; living in the now, responding with such compassion that even judgments about repugnance start to give way to sheer being. If I could find a way to do that, I might even agree with what Jesus said about his Way -- that the soul feels rested and the burden has become light.
In reference to this long series of posts, a woman said to me about her experiences with Christianity and sexism, "Sometimes I just have to let it go." Another, my feminist mother-in-law, said, "I just laugh at them because they're silly. Those men don't have power over me." This isn't the laughter or release born of apathy, but of maturity. Might there be a place of compassion, humor, and peace from which we engage sexism and women's repression? Or, more pointedly, might there be a place of compassion, humor, and peace from which _I_ can engage these things?
I watched my son Wesley agitate his brother this morning. Wesley knows how to push Ollie's buttons, but Ollie doesn't know how to control his emotions (they're only 2). Giving in to Wesley's teasing, Oliver suffers emotional and vocal distress while Wesley watches, amused and otherwise unaffected. To make a disrespectful analogy, it's like religious sexism is Wesley and I am Ollie. In my career, in motherhood, and in church, I'm appreciating anew how entrenched sexism is. It makes me angry to see it affecting a younger generation of scholars and church leaders, and the new generation of my own family. It's vulnerable to be a working mother with an at-home husband and still claim to be a decent Christian, and it makes me angry that my religious community doesn't have a more solid set of pro-family social norms that would help stabilize this experience. There's plenty to be angry about, but there must be a way to act compassionately -- right action -- that is totally loving, patient, and other-centered, even when the other is White Traditionalist Evangelical Guy. In anthropology, evangelicals are sometimes referred to as the 'culturally repugnant other' -- anthropologists discuss how to do good fieldwork among and ethnographic representation of people whom the anthropologist does not like. It's a deeper ethic still for us Christians, to love beyond the circle of those who love us. And to love in a way that doesn't leave injustice unnamed or structural redemption undone.
I certainly mean everything I said, but I'm second-guessing my ascent to cronehood. The princess - crone dualism is surely a false one, anyway. I don't want to be a self-appointed finger-wagger or an unlikeable academic kook. Besides, I'm only 35 -- I can hang out with the crones, but I really can't go their speed yet. Maybe just being human suits me best; living in the now, responding with such compassion that even judgments about repugnance start to give way to sheer being. If I could find a way to do that, I might even agree with what Jesus said about his Way -- that the soul feels rested and the burden has become light.
2 Comments:
I think there's an important space in the middle even if I can't think of a good archetype for middle age, between princess and crone, in other words, in our prime. Maybe queen. But that has a lot of other connotations that don't really work here. But let me try.
We are in a phase where we see the difficulties without achieving the detachment - this is a very active phase, a period of efficacious engagement, where we exercise our powers of discernment, our highly developed skills, and make the changes in the world we want to see. We also start learning to deal with our inability to change everything that needs work - but we're not ready to give up yet.
In our middle age, we now have power, as (post-pregnancy/nursing-insanity) mothers raising the next generation, as workers with some authority in the hierarchy of the workplace, as ministers in the broadest sense, as women in the full flower of our abilities, to change the way things have always been.
I think these years, 35-65, are more often recognized as men's peak years of competence and influence. But I'm claiming them as my own prime too. Maybe I need to write my own post about this.
By
Robin M., at 12:23 PM
I was just at a gathering hosted by the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation that brought together leaders from various communities, some who had been active in the civil rights movement or protesting the Vietnam War, others who are longtime activists in community development, urban ministry, racial reconciliation and the like. Folks in their sixties and seventies on one end, and twentysomething div school students at the other. In between were a few of us thirtysomethings, who are not quite newbies anymore but not yet veterans. We're in this in-between space of being mentored by those who have gone before but also charting our own course and mentoring those who are emerging on the scene. It's an interesting place to be.
By
Al Hsu, at 9:59 AM
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