A Terrible Tale

For real, this is how it happened. Yesterday during naptime I walked to my bedroom to lie down and read "Buddhism for Mothers: A Calm Approach to Caring for Yourself and Your Children", which I had in hand. I opened a door to check on a napping boy, and caught him awake and naked, smiling sheepishly. He had used every item of clothing as a paintbrush to smear his own shit on the walls, carpet, bed, sheets, and blankets. He mostly kept it off his hands that way.

I lost my calm, but I didn't lose my temper. I just said, "You need a bath," and bathed him in silence. Then I climbed into the toilet (i.e. his room) and started cleaning.

I was afraid of my anger. I talked him into apologizing (he squeaked,"Sorry poop", with eyes downcast and head buried in my shirt), but felt reconciliation was hopeless. He simply can't understand how his actions made me feel, nor can he explain why he did it. In addition to all the physical cleaning, I have to do at least 80% of the relational clean-up, too, because he isn't mature enough to meet me half-way.

We struggled through the rest of the day, all three boys acting up in response to the turmoil in the air. After bedtime, I called my mother-in-law to process. She said, "Tell me about the shit. What was in it? Was it good for painting?" (She's awesome.) She said the first time one of her kids did that, she remembered doing it herself, in her own early childhood. She also lost her temper at her kid. My first move was to blame myself. I decided my boy is unhappy with me, he has profound unmet needs, and he is crying out for a better mother. Our conversation helped me realize that my interpretation of the situation reveals my tender insecurities, not my boy's motivation. It was just something he did, not something he did to me. I vented my anger on the phone in a grown-up way, instead of the controlled anger I showed in front of the boy -- only as much as I thought he could handle. That diffused it.

In the end, she said, "You will bond with each boy in the way that he needs. You will, because you love them." She said getting down in the shit with your kids is sacred. It creates a bond and a love that wasn't there before. She told a remarkably dramatic and detailed story about cleaning up diarrhea sometime in the late 1960s that shaped her love for a child. I feel wary of the boy today, with awe for his power and autonomy. But my mother-in-law is right; I could say I still love him, but that makes it sound like I love him despite what he did. The truth is that though I loved him fully before, I now love him a little bit more, shit and all.

P.S. To protect his dignity (like he cares about dignity), I haven't named the child. But if you know my twins at all, you might take a guess, and you'd be right.

Quote of the day

"Barack Obama will do for anthropology what Bill Clinton did for oral sex." -James Paris, August 29, 2008

S. Ann Soetoro, Obama's mother, was a cultural anthropologist. Her dissertation was peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia, and her work helped develop microfinance in that country. Perhaps that is part of why I resonate with the way Obama talks about his values, which he connects to his mother: compassion, understanding others, helping the marginalized, crossing cultural boundaries, perceiving culture and how it matters to people. If I understand the story, those values for her were humanistic, not religious (which is how they function in anthropology). And, taking those values into social activism in Chicago, Obama found God in the company of urban African-Americans.

You can be sure this information will appear this fall in ANTH101 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Messiah College. Be there or be square.

A Post Before Bed

I spoke into a grieving man’s life today. In a group e-mail, he wondered, “Will it ever be OK?” Several people wrote back with thoughtful comments about God's presence in suffering. I piped up to say, essentially, “No, it won’t ever be OK. Let’s not pretend it will.”

Someone then asked me whether I am angry. My self-defense was swift and full: of course I have anger, and why not? Isn’t there room for anger in a life? My insistence that his loss, my loss, every single loss, won’t ever be OK was a way (for me in that moment) of getting life from loss, suckling on suffering. I need it to never be OK so I can continue to be, because my very being is based upon the validity of what went wrong. We so easily say we want healing and wholeness, but lots of times we don’t, really. The truth is that, for all I know, maybe it will be OK, or maybe it won’t, or maybe it will just be.

I’ve often referred to my three living sons as “Plan B” or “my second family” (which doesn’t sound any better in person than it looks in print). The births and short lives of my triplets seemed like a whole family trajectory lived in a day, start to finish. There’s no self-evident relationship between them and their brothers; they were born years apart to two different mothers.

Before it was a brand name, “Plan B” was used in my religious vocabulary to refer to grace. We fail at God’s Plan A for our lives, so God gives us Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, etc. Always a new plan because God loves us. But that script casts us as passive plan recipients, God as a never-tiring dispenser of instructional materials, and a pass-fail transactional relationship between us rigged for failure. What's gracious about that?

One person once said she thinks my sons are in heaven, each on the lap of the grandparent he was named after. Another wonders whether the first three have come back to us in the second batch: three boys lost, three boys living. Someone asked me where they went – when I picture them, where are they? I said, “They’ve been reabsorbed into the love from which they emerged. They are always right here, right now, where love is, and when I live in love, we are not separate.”

Maybe I ought to stop calling my family "Plan B" (and I will), but not because it is unkind (and it is). Maybe there is no plan B for my family or my life, because there are no plans. There’s just life.

Not tonight; I have a headache.

"You wouldn't think teachers would get stressed; they just had the whole summer off." This from my sister, when I complained of my migraines ramping up. A dentist, she was commenting about her patient load filling up with teachers coming to her facial pain clinic before school starts for help with their TMJ, teeth clenching, headaches, jaw aches, and the like. Some of her suggestions are wonderful: rest, biofeedback, relaxation, mindfulness, and, less helpful for me, mouth guards.

It reminded me of sitting on a basketball court floor with Bart Campolo at a youth retreat in 1989, after he had challenged us to spend a summer in Philadelphia with inner-city kids. "Don't you hate us?" I said as we watched a room of white kids play games with plentiful equipment in a clean, well-lit gym their parents had paid for, "for being rich?" He said no, he loves each of these kids, too. "Pain is absolute," he said. Rich kids suffer too, and their money doesn't diminish the pain they encounter in life.

Funny that teachers often get accused of living on easy street, with wonderings about how hard we work compared with how much we get paid. If we really were concerned about equity between effort and pay, I'd suggest first considering migrant farm workers, or slaughter house workers, or child care workers. Their work is in no way commensurate with their pay, and many don't have help for migraines or dental care, either.

Pain is absolute, and so is stress. Frustrating to me that I experience the stress of school even before it begins -- I feel in my body a reality that isn't in my daily life. It's all anticipation, living in the future and trying to catch up to it, feel it, live through it, before it ever comes. And then feeling bad about being such a beginner at relaxation, at acceptance, at life itself -- escalates the stress. School starting is a big change. Even though I just had 90 days to rest and play with my kids, it's hard to have that taken away (I could have used 93 days, or maybe 97...).

Each day will open up by itself -- I don't need to rush ahead in my mind and unpack the future. The only day possible to live is this one. Each day is a new opportunity to breathe, relax, and be OK.

And speaking of the present moment, it's time for breakfast. Enjoy yours.

One more favor

Sorry to keep asking for stuff, but I really really need a copy of The Simpson's episode 19, season 17 "Girls Just Want to Have Sums" to show on the first day of class. (Yes, students really do pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to watch the Simpsons with me. Trust me, the critical thinking dialogue afterward will be worth every penny.) How can I get it? I don't see it at FOX officially, and I don't think season 17 is for sale on DVD, and I see free downloads of Simpsons episodes but I'm afraid to use them (are they illegal, will they blow up my computer...).

Computer geeks, please help!

Like I need more books to read at the beginning of fall semester! If you've read something totally amazing about marriage -- a narrative, self-help, theology, whatever - let me know. But it has to be good to read, as well. Not dense and boring. I read a wonderful Harville Hendrix book ten years ago (Getting the Love You Want), and haven't read anything on the subject since. I'm wondering how marriages change over time, how people learn to live with each other, how they survive parenting, etc.

Homosexuality in the Bible

Does anyone know when the word "homosexual" first appeared in English translations of the Bible? It must be in the 20th century, because the word "homosexual" didn't exist before the late 19th century. And which words were used in Paul's 'sin lists' before that?

Seems like the kind of thing someone has surely researched, but I'm not finding it in search engines. I'll take my own advice to my students, and go see a reference librarian... but asking here is so much easier.

Nooma film

Trailer for Rob Bell's new film on the feminine dimensions of God. We're going to read his Sex God in my fall course on Sexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspective. I'll show this video, too, and see what students think.

Does it make me feminine that the clip made me cry? The part with a mother carrying her child in the dark. Women in the church learn about God from men, imagine God from a male perspective, see God as a male. Women sometimes begin imaging, imagining, and valuing the feminine characteristics of God, as well, but usually only in the company of other women. That a white male pastor of my generation would in any way "get it", would make the effort to imagine other points of view or to speak from non-dominant narratives, reignites a little flicker of hope for me.

More on that which I said I wouldn't write about

In this discussion as much as in the topic itself, I have an impulse to connect more than divide, which I think is proper for Christian dialogue and can’t be entirely attributed to my femininity. (If I really wanted to preserve relationship more than principle, as gendered ethics would say of women, then I wouldn’t have brought up this subject in the first place, nor would I write much of what I write.) I most strongly agree with the contention that many men are frustrated with what passes for generic “feminized” spirituality. Women are frustrated, too! Women don’t need Jesus as a boyfriend and don’t need a spiritual environment filled with flowers, niceties and theology that placates. Women are as wild as men in their anger, sexuality, and despair, and are hindered in their growth toward humanness by Christian encouragements to be ‘feminine’ (or ‘spiritual’, which really means ‘feminine’.)

Spirituality shouldn’t be generic; it should be generalized at the level of culture and diversified at the level of the individual. Gender is an element of culture, one that people in our culture are very concerned with. Mars and Venus wouldn’t sell millions in Waorani culture, or Kung, because those cultures are mostly egalitarian (with a sexual division of labor that accommodates reproduction). They acknowledge gender, but live as humans; I’m concerned our Christian culture moves too far to the reverse of that.

My desire to downplay difference is at least partly in response to my Christian socialization that squelched my leadership gifts and personality and made it very, very difficult to both develop my personhood and remain in good standing in the church. I found much more support and education in secular environments – they didn’t downplay difference, but framed gender differently. I’m surprised the church doesn’t produce more transgendered people – telling girls their gifts are really masculine, that they should suppress themselves and act by a predetermined script, that God created them with gifts that ought not be used, that boys ought to do, feel, and like certain things… that produces a profound disjuncture between a child’s sense of their own created self and the morality taught by religious authorities. You’d think God made a mistake in making some girls girls, and some boys boys. I was taught that God gave leadership gifts to boys so they could lead, and the very same gifts to me so I could learn submission and humility by subduing them.

In parenting, I see the boyness of boys with a new clarity, which is shaping my feminism, my views on gender, and my faith. Despite being raised by a Christian mother who leans toward ‘sameness’ feminism, my boys love things with wheels more than things with faces, dirty more than clean, whatever daddy does more than whatever mommy does, and above all, constant motion. But with them and with my husband, I notice so much more in common. We all get angry, we all want to be loved, we all like blankets and touch, and we all hurt each other. We do all those things in gendered ways, but I’m trying to leave plenty of room for each to be male in his own way. They need to develop spirituality first and foremost as individuals, in the dual contexts of church and world, with gender as a mediating but not leading variable.

And as for shooting and hitting, I didn’t mean that men should­ ­only stop shooting and hitting, but that if we could accomplish only that lowest common denominator, things would be better. Pacifist traditions would argue that while competitiveness and aggression may be important for most men, shooting and hitting are not necessary manifestations of those impulses. (Unless you mean shooting for the stars, or hitting injustice in the knees…)

Male spirituality

After reading this post I started brainstorming a book about male spirituality. (Wait, wouldn't that be ridiculous? Well then stop reading books about female spirituality and sexuality and psychology written by men. Unless they're useful, in which case you should read them as well as books about maleness written by women.) I'm not really going to write about male spirituality ever, except for this post.

Is there such a thing as gendered spirituality? Does gender shape the lives of men and women uniformly enough to make generalizations about each group? Being myself a woman who doesn't fit the female stereotypes served up by the Christian authorities of her day, I say no, except sometimes yes, sort of. In that spirit, here's a few pointers for men pursuing the spiritual life. I may not be male, but I live with four males. And I'm a doctor.

1. The most important thing about male spirituality is that nothing is more like a man than a woman. Men and women are not like Mars and Venus, waffles and spaghetti, or hunters and caged prey. [Please, please, stop using any derivation of the word 'captive' in relation to women.] Whatever we say about maleness and femaleness should honor our created capacity to be friends and lovers. Gendered spirituality is minor commentary on the major theme of being human.

2. Male spirituality should be thoroughly enculturated, because masculinity is always lived in culture. Assertions about men's created nature is often more about socialization than about creational intent -- we aren't able to ever perfectly separate created nature from culture because we are created to live in culture. Men in foraging cultures may be hunters, but they often value being clever more than being strong, and avoiding danger more than conquering it. Men of the privileged classes may value chivalry and authority without seeing the cultural privilege that denies such masculinity to the oppressed. Today's "male spirituality" is based on fantasies about hunter-gatherer culture, kings, or medieval or victorian culture. We need a male spirituality contextualized in a post-industrial, information-based economy set in a context of global inequality, environmental threat, and war. Don't ask me what that would look like. After all, I'm just a woman.

3. Male spirituality should direct male movement. If I would make any generalization about men, it would be that testosterone and motion are linked. Women have plenty of testosterone too, so again, it's not like we're from different planets, but male testosterone earns my respect and awe. If men could be healthy and whole in the way they move -- whether with vehicles, guns, tools, or their own bodies -- the world would be a better place. Don't even worry about being proactively protective or chivalrous ... just stop shooting and hitting.

What else would you add?

A Tale of Two Posts

My recent post about Eckhart Tolle was reprinted at the Emergent Village blog. Here at the Paris Project it generated one neutral comment and then took its place in history. At Emergent Village it generated 19 comments that escalated in intensity until one stranger called my salvation into question.

What makes one virtual space so different from another? The Paris Project is affiliated with nothing but my own self. I have to be mindful of my work, church, and personal affiliations, but I don't officially represent any of them, and whoever wants to read or engage here does so personally and directly with me. Each post has a context and a backstory, and readers know quite a bit about my life (or can if they want to) and the reasons why I believe and speak as I do. At Emergent Village, commenters were only minimally concerned about me -- Tolle, emergent, and the masses of people who might be harmed by my bad ideas were greater concerns. By posting there, my name and ideas became associated with a movement -- so what began as a personal reflection about what I had learned from a nonChristian author shifted into a polemic about whether or not Emergent glorifies anti-Christian teachings and relativism. Interesting that no commenter responded to my context -- I wrote that Tolle was helpful to me during a time of grief. My life, my story, my pain even, became irrelevant in the defense of Christian ideology. I am not cool enough to quote Bono, but U2 has a good lyric about people who die in wars -- "Their lives are bigger than any big idea." In movements, ideology quickly becomes more important than individuals.

I heard Brian McLaren speak the other day - I had never seen in him in person. He just talked like an ordinary person about ideas important to him. He didn't mention emergent, or any movements, or any books, action figures, or lunchboxes he might be selling. He didn't try to ingratiate himself to the group with whom he was speaking, or antagonize them, or defend his differing ideas very vehemently. He was more like a prophet speaking his mind. The Q&A afterward, courteous as the emergent village discussion of my post (the salvation comment was an unfortuante exception to an otherwise decent exchange), turned to ideology, movement, and ideas. No one asked about McLaren's story -- how has Jesus changed his life, what spiritual practices keep him alive, what community grounds him. I wanted to, but wasn't sure if it would be invasive or inappropriate or unintelligent or make me look too feminine and touchy-feely (precisely the mechanisms of social control that privilege theology over spirituality). Dialogue was more about theological categories, movements of scholarship and literature that need to be sustained, and words that would or would not describe that which is beyond words.

I don't engage with emergent because it's a movement I want to help feed. To the extent that it is a movement, it becomes, by definition, concerned with power, positioning, prestige, and self-protection. I allowed Steve Knight to reprint my post there to be part of a conversation -- emergent is best as a conversation, with individuals speaking their minds grounded in their contexts and backstories... now that's an interesting thing. (And that is how that blog functions -- why would my ideas represent something larger than myself, and why would Steve be the official selecter of official representative voices? It's a voluntary conversation about things of common concern, not a defense of pre-established positions by official voices.) Conversation has real life so much more in each of our lives and local contexts, and so much less in disembodied settings like publications, conferences, and classrooms. Respectful conversation doesn't barge, shout, demean, or self-promote; it just emerges.

Responsibility and Regression

Like a surgeon navigating his way through hospital hallways to an emergency surgery, Max (15 months) marched chest-first from the van all the way in to the child center at the YMCA, pushed through the door, sat himself down at the table, and asked for a snack.

While Max plowed ahead to playtime, Wesley climbed into the empty stroller, pacifier in mouth and bear in arms. Wesley's wistful about the very stage of life Max is trying to blast his way beyond. Three years and three months old, the twins aren't potty-trained or pacifier-weaned or able to dress themselves. We had to cancel their preschool for the coming year because they were the only three year olds - according to their teacher - unable to use potty. And Wesley's not the only one regressing; Oliver was potty-trained and now totally isn't. They still have the physical needs of babies, but the emotional challenges of children (for example, they can't hear me shout "It's time to leave the park!", but hear a whispered "ice cream" from across the house). They have the skills to do responsible things like clean up, use spoons, or get dressed, but find the will only when it's for play. If there are stakes -- like timeliness or parental expectation -- it' s easier to have mommy do it.

This morning I counted and realized that between the four of us I had put on 34 items of clothing, some of them twice (socks and shoes quickly become toys). I thought turning 3 would be a huge transition: after enjoying birthday cake they'd just magically dress themselves, use potty, and reject pacifiers and sippy cups. Instead, they just shout "I'm three!" and keep doing everything they did when they were two. I wasn't mentally prepared for more months of total physical care of three wiggly people.

I empathize with the twins' reluctance to take up the responsibilities of childhood. Far too often I find myself dismayed by the effort required for basic hygiene and safety, not to mention the same for my children, and then everything else in life, too, and cower from the responsibilities facing me. But I love life like Max does. He inspires me to barge right into whatever's next with certainty that something good will be mine. Our littlest child shall lead us.

I'm Sorry To Be Blunt, But Nothing Will Make Your Pee-Pee Bigger. This May Seem Unfortunate, But The Truth is You're Just Fine With the Ba-Donk-A-Donk God Gave You.

If you watch The Colbert Report as faithfully as I do, you've seen women acting foolish in the presence of Smilin' Bob in Enzyte commercials. This sexual aid promises "more" and "better" sex, promising longer and better erections and implying hope for a bigger penis (Enzyte used to promise this, but under legal duress had to move it from statement to implication).

My husband and I decided to investigate Enzyte's claims, but not the fun way. We did some reading on-line and learned that Enzyte is a pill, a mixture of herbs that can all be found in your local natural health store. Steven Warshak, the president and owner of the company that makes Enzyte, was indicted in February 08 of money laundering, wire fraud, and bank fraud. He faces a potentially 20-year prison sentence (one situation in which longer isn't better).

Enzyte has never been scientifically tested. Many users report no effect whatsoever, and then also report difficulty in getting promised refunds. "Natural male enhancement" belongs back in the 19th century with other similar marketing ploys.

The thing is, Enzyte and another product (I've seen TV ads for it with a silhouetted couple dancing) are being marketed to HEALTHY men. It's not a corrective for erectile dysfunction; it's for people who want something vaguely "more" out of their sexual relationships. The implication is that sex "as is" is not good enough; every man needs enhancement. If you're just having sex the old-fashioned way with an unenhanced man, you're missing something.

It's just like Febreze (which, like Enzyte, should not be mistaken as a credible sexual aid). Febreze was first marketed as coverage for massively bad smells, but people didn't buy it because they didn't anticipate having massively bad smells very often. Then they changed marketing approaches, and now say it's something you spray in an already clean space as a finishing touch. It promises to help you enjoy the clean more than you would an un-febrezed clean. How can covering your air and possessions with a chemical be an improvement? (If they smelled massively bad, well then I can understand.)

Don't let marketers define your body or your air. You're fine as you are, right now, loved and loveable.

Happy Birthday to me!



I'm 36 today.

Nothing new (thank goodness)

In Christianity Today Online, James Beverly questions whether Eckhart Tolle is a Christian in an article unfortunately titled "Nothing New." Based on the title alone, I guessed and was right: Beverly concludes that Tolle is not a believer, nor are his ideas very compatible with Christianity.

Tolle doesn't claim to be a Christian, and I don't know of any Christian communities that claim him. But so what -- maybe there's another question to be asked: "How could Eckhart Tolle help Christians be better Christians?" Tolle had a powerful spiritual experience of insight that revolutionized his down-and-out life, and he is now a spiritual light/guru/presence who has apparently just been kicked through the goalposts of fame by Oprah. When I read him about four years ago, I wasn't concerned about his views of Jesus or the Bible because I wasn't taking him on as a Christian teacher. I didn't come to agree with some of his ideas and I never fully understood others. I see him as a fellow human being who has been spiritually transformed. I'd like to hear his story and be changed by it.

I read The Power of Now and Silence Speaks just after my triplets died -- some women in my fertility support group said Tolle's writings had been meaningful for them. Tolle helped me think about what was real in my life, and in what sense it was real. He validated the profundity of grief and physical pain, even if at the same time he says those things are illusions we create ourselves. Ultimately, he helped me find acceptance. Life is as it is; pain comes from wishing it were, or believing it is, otherwise.

God got my attention through Eckhart Tolle during a time when I was so angry I couldn't listen very well within my own tradition. Now there's something refreshingly not new: God pursues us any and every which way, even in silence and in the now.

A link

A moving article about a young female Wheaton grad making her way among the "old guard" of evangelicalism.

A Professor Comes of Age

Yesterday was ten years and four days since I defended my dissertation, and I hung my diploma up in my office for the first time. I enjoy seeing diplomas in colleagues' offices, but in mine it has always been in a box of dissertation notes on top of a bookcase.

When the diploma came in the mail, I had three impulses. The strongest was fear. For years I imagined a phonecall, "This is American University. We finally _really_ read your dissertation, and we're going to have to rescind that degree." The second impulse was related, but more personal: shame. Academics feel fraudulent more than accomplished people in other professions, and for good reason. I know more about the mid-20th century history of 8 square blocks of Washington, D.C. than probably anyone else on the planet, and more than anyone else on the planet, I know how little I know about that very small thing. The third feeling was anxiety, that a millstone had just come in the mail. I worried that by pursuing a higher social class and owning this token of elitism, I'd have separated myself from people I would want to have relationships with (like the 98% of the people in the world who don't have PhDs). What if the PhD damages my life -- I can't ever undo it. I felt like I'd accidentally gotten married, and was in it for life.

Ten years and four days later, I looked at the diploma with a sense of peace and I nailed it to the wall.

I think I finally get it -- that the dissertation was a means to an end, not a final representation of who I am and always will be as a thinker. The same is true of this day. The way I parent or treat my husband is not the final exam; it' s just a day. More chances are close at hand.

No one's going to call and take my diploma away -- it's mine to live up to. Same is true of my family. I really get to keep these children, and I can come to terms with that responsibility and that joy in my own time and in my own way.

I know a lot and I know next to nothing, especially about the things I know a lot about. But the same isn't true of life. It's more about love than knowledge, more grace than grades.

Coming of Age

Would you say that a college student is coming of age, or has already come of age?

Sorry you clicked over here just for that.

I am Old

I have a friend who sometimes wonders whether conservative Christiantity is really just a massive construct designed to prevent people from having sex before marriage. Donna Freitas' Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses is convincing me that even if my friend's claim is true, that might not be all bad.

Only 20 pages in, I can already confidently recommend that if you interact with college students (or if you are one), you should read it. She did an online survey and extensive face-to-face interviews with students at seven colleges. She organizes the colleges into two categories: spiritual and evangelical. The spiritual colleges (including Catholic, private secular and public secular) have a culture that respects spirituality as an individual, private quest for meaning. Students want spirituality and sexuality to connect, but for the most part they don't. The vitality of hookup culture varies across schools, but regardless, many students feel dis-ease in their daily lives about how to socialize and participate in community -- dressing as pimps and ho's at theme parties, experiencing intimacy without commitment, wanting to be loved and respected but settling for less, needing to perceived as sexually 'normal' but not a slut...

Truly I am becoming a parent, horrified at the new world that my children will have to negotiate. It's been ten years since oral sex and pornography have become ordinary (neither were openly discussed, in my circles and TV shows, as late as 1997 or 1998, but are now), though both remain extra-ordinary in my mind. I need to reclaim my fundamentalist roots and move to the woods, break the TV, and homeschool. If they don't know about it, they can't do it, right?

In Freitas' view, evangelical colleges were distinctive in that their cultures really work -- they have cultural norms, and individuals are held accountable (both formally and informally) for how they participate in the culture. Chastity is the norm from which individual must choose to depart, rather than the opposite. Administrators, faculty, student life, and student leaders share a vision of human wholeness and work together to cultivate campus conversations about the meaning of holiness, spirituality, sexuality, and marriage. This makes me so proud to work at a Christian college -- we really are providing a distinctive environment in which young adults can spend four years learning to take up their responsibilities in social, personal, and spiritual relationships. (Not that these colleges are right for every student - Freitas has a great resource at the end of the book to help parents and prospective students use campus tours to discern the sexual climate of the campus).

The critique is on its way, somewhere after page 20, that in an attempt to honor chastity, evangelical colleges make a sin of sexual desire and even the fact that we are sexual beings becomes uncomfortable. Students crave better conversation, and students also make unwieldy attempts to deny sexual desire altogether. I'll write more about that when I get to it.

Freitas has used the tantalizing phrase "sexy spirituality", but hasn't defined it yet. I think she's going to call the spiritual schools to rein it in, and the evangelical colleges to really acknowledge sexuality as a good part of life, with this notion of sexy spirituality.

Just Say No

I had an opportunity to write something small for a National Secular Academic entity in my discipline. I was invited partly because of my credentials and partly because of a minority identity with which I am affiliated, but the topic was something I'm not expert in, I'm not interested in, and I don't have much to say about. The structure of that sentence alone should prevent any future writing offers from coming my way, so this exercise in discernment may not yield future fruit.

The one and only reason for doing the writing would be to get the name of the National Secular Academic publisher on my vita. Not for personal accomplishment, not for promotion and tenure, but for the general accumulation of good will beans at work that I can someday spend on sabbatical proposals, grant proposals, and scheduling courses at times of my own pleasing. I spent a week talking myself into "yes". "My writing is all lame, and this single item would boost the credibility of all the other crap I've published." "I spent too many good will beans already in my first year at a new job." "The good will bean accountant at work isn't very generous." "It's just a thousand words, no big deal."

But the big deal isn't the thousand words; the lies are. That sometimes you need to do small things that go against your heart, just to please someone else. That other people's standards of success matter more than your personal standards of significance. That you are never safe; always accumulate more power.

Sometimes it makes good sense to do something small in service of goals that aren't your own, if you semi-believe in the goals and have the time and will to do it. But in this case, I knew I'd be doing a good thing for all the wrong reasons and it wouldn't feel right. I found my "no", and here from my reply e-mail, it is in all its strength and vitality.

"Thank you so much for the kind invitation. I have a number of writing projects going, and I'm hesitant to take on another. I will continue to think about this for a week or two and see if I have any good ideas. I have a few colleagues you could also contact..."

If you can't roar, a squeak will do. What can you say no to today? Blessings on all your negations.