Lindsey Kay's Blog: *! (on Goodreads), page 6

Mennonites and Ladybugs and Me Learning Not to Whine.

In the last week, I’ve seen six conservative Mennonite women with their hair pinned under bonnets and long, flowing, flower dresses.  I know it was 6 times because I counted.  There was one working in the emergency room, there was another one shopping at Target, another one shopping at Safeway, one walking around the campus at my school, and two walking together downtown.  This stands out so clearly to me, because in the entire time I’ve lived in Yakima I’ve never noticed one.  People have told me that there is a conservative community out there, somewhere, as in:  ”I think they live in Moxee and make cheese.”  But have I ever seen evidence of their existence?  No, I would have noticed.  (I think.)

So this past week I’ve been wondering why now?  I’ve been missing my home town desperately, so maybe it’s just my mind being tuned to the signs of what I lack.  Or perhaps in all my praying about where the future may lead, this is the universe’s way of reassuring me.  Or, who knows.

Yesterday while I was in the garden, I saw hundreds of ladybugs.  I always see ladybugs in times of great change.

I was crying.  It’s hard to verbalize why.  I was picking tomatoes and red beans furiously.  Just furiously.  I was angry because my best friend moved to the other side of the country.  I miss her, I miss having very many friends.  I feel so lonely most of the time.  It’s not because I don’t have friends in Yakima, although I pretend I don’t so I can feel sorry for myself.  I have a lot of friends but not close friends, not “let me lay my troubles on you” friends, although I have many friends that could become that if I took the time to nurture the relationship.  I suppose I was crying because I was realizing how selfish I can be, how selfish I’ve allowed the past five years to make me.  How guarded and defensive I’ve become, how unwilling I’ve become to invest in others.  How resentful I’ve become of my life.  And why?  Why am I feeling that way?

My life right now doesn’t suck.  I enjoy school, I enjoy work, I don’t fantasize about my husband getting in a car wreck and dying.  Life has made progress!

But I still feel the hangover of exhaustion from all the trauma that led me here, the constant desire for some kind of vacation that I will never get.  It’s been years since I’ve had a single night away from the children.  YEARS.  I can’t even put my finger on the last time I woke up in the morning not feeling completely exhausted.

I sit in the garden picking red beans and wondering when that chore will end.  Why?  I enjoy it.

I stare at the tomatoes and wonder if I should stop watering the garden and let them die.  Why?  I enjoy them.

I curse the fact that anything, even the things I love, even friendships, ask something of me.  Why?  Why?  Why?

When did I decide that I have nothing left to give, no more energy to invest, no more desire to make the effort to make my own life better? I’ve spent the last 30 years waiting for someone to come along and take care of me, and there is still this little part of me that constantly says, “damn it.  Why do I have to take care of myself?”

My mom’s latest favorite phrase is that we have to be ridiculously responsible for our own worlds.

Ridiculously responsible.

It’s still something I’m learning.

But somewhere in the mess of the garden ending, in the gallon of dried pods of red beans and the pile of halfhearted tomatoes, in the soil that badly needs more nutrition and the yard that is giving up on life for lack of nutrients, I heard a small voice asking me if I was willing to be taken care of.  Isn’t all of this part of the same cycle, the cycle wherein I pretend there’s nothing I can do?  As if my life is still something that happens to me, I am still a victim, instead of someone who is capable of making life what I need it to be.

I swear, I heard God laughing.  As if he can’t be my rest, my care, my friend.

As if I’ve been missing the point.

There were ladybugs everywhere, on everything, crawling on my hands.  I was wondering, have I even seen ladybugs out here before?

It’s okay.  It’s okay that I don’t know my future.  I haven’t known my future for five years now, and it’s been okay.  So I had one future wrenched away.  So what?  That future wouldn’t have been good for me.  I do have friends, I do have a life, I do have ladybugs.

I’ll get some sleep eventually.

I tell myself I don’t know how much longer I can remain strong, how much work is left in me.

But don’t I want to find out?

It’s like resenting going to the gym but at the same time wanting a nice body.

When am I going to learn to be grateful for the fact that here, now, I have a chance to make my life something that nourishes me?

So I laid down in the dirt like a crazy person and laughed and cried.  The neighbor walked by and said, “garden fell apart, eh?”

I threw a tomato at him and replied, “it still makes food, ya jerk.”

We had a good laugh.

Laughing is good.

FYI (for girls and boys)

So in the wake of one lady’s attempt to get her son’s Facebook friends to cover up (complete with bonus pictures of her topless sons), as well as one friend’s wife’s attempt to bring a little clarity to what it feels like as a Christian teen trying her best not to be seen as a hussy temptress, I’ve been thinking a lot about what responsibility women do have to their bodies.

Here’s the thing:  women have heard it all.  ”Don’t be a stumbling block.”  ”Don’t cause your brother to sin.”  ”You have a responsibility.”  ”If a guy sees your breasts he won’t respect you, you’ll forever be an object to him.”

I can’t help but remember one time when I was wearing a pair of hole filled jeans my brother had given me, and a band tee that was two sizes too big.  I remember walking around at a (Christian) music festival feeling pleasantly asexual, when one leering guy loudly said to one of his friends, “girl tries to hide it but I bet if you peel away the layers there is one sweet body wrapped up in there.”

God, I was so embarrassed.

I never wanted to be a sexual object.  When I was young, a so-called friend of my brothers grabbed the neck of my tshirt and pinched my ass and ogled my breasts.  It scarred me in a serious way.  Some girls, after something like that, choose to be sexy to feel in control.  I chose to be asexual until I was in college.  I’d dress in baggy clothes and keep my body hidden and blush for any attention at all.  Yet, guys still talked about my body.  Guys still asked to see my breasts.  Guys still obviously lusted for me.  So what was I doing wrong?

I would be openly, violently opposed to any male advances to the point that guys called me a lesbian.  Yet once, one drunk friend got me pinned in a corner and kissed me.  What was I doing wrong?

I was being female.

I realize now that it was all I ever did wrong.  I was a girl in a world that tells girls that their bodies are a problem.  Yet I cannot stop being a girl.

Here’s the problem:  when you tell a girl to cover up her body to keep men from stumbling, you are telling her that her body is a stumbling block.  Her body, which you also say was made to glorify God.  You give her conflicting messages, saying in one breath that her female form is a source of shame but also telling her that she should glorify God through childbirth.  As if the end result is holy (she will bear children) but the function itself is vile (she has an attractive body which she will give to a man in order to conceive.)

It simply doesn’t make sense.

Women cannot control men’s attraction.  Even by covering up.  The knowledge that the female body is possessed of breasts and a vagina does not fade just because they are out of sight.  Pure attraction, involuntary attraction, the longing of one body for another to touch, doesn’t fade no matter what clothing is involved.  The only responsible way to handle that primal, human, urging is by teaching our children what it means and how to control it in themselves.  Blaming it on females is recklessly irresponsible; especially, given the knowledge that males are not the only ones who experience it.  (Yet we do not caution our men to hide the traits which women most find appealing.  Imagine if we told our young boys to speak in high pitched voices, avoid growing muscles, and to disdain showing any affection or appreciation towards girls in order to protect girls from feeling lust!)

Women’s bodies should not be seen or treated as a source of shame.  Yes, I understand that in the Garden of Eden, after eating the fruit of the tree of Knowledge, both Adam and Eve felt shame in their nakedness and God clothed them.  Yes, that is all good.  But didn’t God at the same time throw layer upon layer of curses on them?  Are those curses, and that shame, things that we as redeemed people should embrace?  Absolutely not.  We have freedom from those curses, we seek out a more perfect state of being, one in which we can taste the taste of Eden and walk unashamed at the side of God.

Let me be absolutely blatant:  This fervent, senseless shaming of young girl’s bodies is a stumbling block to achieving that blessed state.

I would never unfriend a young girl who posted a coy selfie.  I would never tell my daughter that it is her fault if young boys see her as a sexual object, and I would never tell my son to blame a young girl for his attractions.  No.

No.

No.

I will tell my daughter that her body is a blessing and a beautiful gift.  That it can give her joy, it can give her future lover joy, it can offer comfort and safety and warmth.  Her body is capable of creating the miracle of life and her breasts are glorious gifts that can give sustenance to a child.  I want my daughter to rejoice in her body.  Will I explain to her about society’s expectations, and dressing in a way that people show respect?  Yes.  But I want her to understand that there’s a difference between dressing in a way that shows respect for your body and others and dressing to hide yourself.  Those two are not the same and should not be treated as such.

A woman who wears shapeless dresses and lives in terror of being seen as the sexual being that she is does not show herself, or others, respect by doing so.  She shows fear.

And I will explain to my son that the things he feels are not to be blamed on the people that incite them in him.  It’s not other people’s fault when he is sad or angry or bored, nor is it their fault when he is sexually excited.  They are his feelings, his to understand and his to control. Those feelings, when shared with others, can be a blessing or a curse.  I will teach him not to curse others with his sexual urges.

So, remember that your body is a gift, the feelings it can create in others and yourself are also a gift.  There is no reason to be ashamed of having that capability or feeling.  What matters is how you take responsibility for yourself.  You cannot take responsibility through blaming or shaming.  Women, dress yourselves with grace and love.  Men, treat your attraction with grace and love.

And don’t be ashamed.

what makes women objects?

The more the Miley Mania drags on, the more I want to throttle people.

I need to say this:  If you are implying  that Miley SHOULD NOT twerk all over the person of her choosing, you are taking away her freedom to explore her sexuality in whatever way she wants (however freakish and unsettling you may find it) and you are taking away her right to be the kind of performer she wants (however embarrassing and grotesque it may be) and trying to craft her into an object of your desiring.

Yes, it is fine and good and occasionally beneficial to talk about what kind of a society we live in and what kinds of examples we want our daughters to follow, but the Miley Mania has gone far beyond that.  I am starting to find it acutely disturbing.  People are saying, in not as many words, that Miley somehow owes something to their families and should remain the chaste, adorable teen idol she started out as.  As if, because she was thrust into the spotlight at a young age and profited from it, she now owes society back.

She’s not a person, she’s an object.

The objectification of Miley Cyrus as a sexual being started LONG before the VMAs.  It started with the blurred lines between her and Hannah Montana, the plastering of bedrooms with her face, and the parents who willingly told their daughters that she was someone worth becoming.

Which, I must point out, objectified their daughters, too.

Anyone who is shocked that such a journey would culminate in the show at the VMAs must not pay attention to how the world works.  Sexual imprisonment does tend to lead to sexual rebellion- and public sexual imprisonment does tend to lead to public sexual rebellion.

But let’s talk about objectification more, why don’t we?  Because it’s oh so tempting and oh so easy to blather on about objectification as if the only time it happens is on billboards and magazine covers and on TV, as if the only way women are ever objectified is as sexual objects that men control and consume.

Ha.

If only.  If only.

Women are also objectified as virgins and mothers and cohorts and workers and teachers and on, and on, and on.

Women are still treated as commodities that society controls.  Sometimes it’s the way Miley Cyrus has been, and sometimes it’s the way Marisa Mayer has been, or the way Michelle Obama has been, or the way my junior high English teacher was.  I mean, there are a million ways to make other people into objects.  It happens to men, too.  Men who are “supposed” to be strong when they want to lay down and cry and take a nap, but then society tells them their man card will be revoked.  Or kids who are told that they should be playing with toys instead of reading, or that they should play sports instead of music, or that science is for nerds only.

But I suppose women feel it the most strongly still- not because we’re objectified as sexual beings (although that sucks) but because we’re objectified as persons.  Women’s bodies, for instance, are legislated to an extent that men may never fully grasp.   Our reproductive organs are debated in the legislature routinely by people who don’t even possess them, as if by being born female we are born potentially guilty of crimes we must never be allowed to commit.  Crimes like, for instance, wanting to not have a baby.  God forbid the “naturally tendency to nurture” not kick in and we don’t rush to sacrifice our careers and marry the bad sexual choice who impregnated us.  And we’re objectified as workers- told we don’t have the “natural competitiveness” to take on the sorts of assignments that are given to men, so over time we earn less and less money.  BUT THAT’S OKAY.  Because, as the objects in need of protection and provision that we as women naturally are (that is sarcasm, in case it’s not clear) we will marry one of those “naturally competitive” men who can foot the bill for us, and the progeny we are legally obligated to some day provide for him, should we ever conceive.

And don’t get me started on the way that abused women are objectified.  First, by the guy that gives them the black eye.  Then, by society.

Our choices are debated as an entire subclass, as if all women are the same and can be held to the same standard.  And the women who do live up to the standard become objects of adulation.

God help them should they make the wrong choice the next time around.

“She should have known better.”

F***ing objectification, right there.

So stop objectifying Miley Cyrus.

Stop objectifying women.

Stop objectifying people.

Take your anger and your outrage and use it to change society.  Change yourself.  Change your need for puritanical teen idols for the girls in your life to adore, as if YOU, YOU cannot be the example they need to see of how a woman can be successful.  Change the rules that say that women can’t make good choices about their own body and their own reproduction- or bad choices, too.  Change the stupid standards of society that say that women can’t deal with difficult and demanding jobs and shouldn’t be paid well when they do, as if women are just beings that should have been born men but don’t have enough testosterone to function properly.

Just stop.

All of your outrage just fuels the idea that a woman needs society to tell her what to do.

 

Who is worse: She who twerks, or he who is twerked upon?

I know.  Everyone is sick of Miley Cyrus.  Like Bald Britney and High Lindsay Lohan, Miley has captivated our national dialogue with her painfully wedged boy-shorts and hypnotically horrible twerking.  I joked with a classmate that maybe it was all a misunderstanding.  Miley’s manager said, “you need to really work on your stage act” and Miley was like “twerk on stage?  Got it.”

Hahahaha.  (Gotta laugh through the tears, man.)

So why am I blogging about this over-wrought issue?  Well, first, there’s this:  Miley is not the first girl to twerk, or even twerk to the point of nausea.  This is nothing new.  Nameless, faceless booties twerk in dance videos all the time and there is no uproar about how it is destroying society.  It seems like the only time twerking is so horribly wrong is when it’s Miley doing it on stage at the VMAs.  Even the songs she twerked to, songs that glorified drunken sexuality and whoring (although not *quite* in so many words) are not new songs, so why the uproar now?

Because it’s Miley, of course.  She’s supposed to be sweet and innocent.  Her face has been plastered all over children’s clothing lines, trapper keepers and backpacks and posters on wall.  She, as an image, is supposed to MEAN something.  Now that meaning is threatened, and all the little girls that idolize her see something else.  And they wonder what it means and why.  So I can understand being just as upset as people where about Mary Kate and Ashley Olson’s drug use or Lindsay Lohan’s whatever-the-heck-that-was.  I do, I understand.

Only women have twerked before in the public eye, and sexual songs have been sung.  I’m sorry, but as a society we need to accept that those messages are out there, and while it may feel more egregious when it’s Miley Cyrus sending them it’s not.  When there’s a public outcry over Miley Cyrus twerking what it sends isn’t a resounding message that such behavior is harmful; it sends a double standard.

After all, men have been twerked on before.

Let me back up a minute:  Miley wasn’t the only one on stage.  But the guy she was twerking all over is rarely being called out for his part in the performance.  There are very few voices condemning Robin Thicke for allowing Miley Cyrus to make such a spectacle of herself all over him.  We can’t point our finger at Miley and say, “grotesque!  Objectification!” but HELLO, let’s point our finger at Thicke and say, “Objectifying!  Shameful!”

As with every other video where a woman, a complete being with thoughts and needs and desires, is boiled down to a scantily clad twerking ass.

I’m serious.

Because otherwise, we’re saying it’s fine for women, their glorious bodies, and their complex selves to be made as nothing more than a tool for men’s desire, unless it’s Miley Cyrus at the VMAs.

We’re saying it’s okay for men to want this and glorify this and to pay some women to do this, but not Miley Cyrus.

And why is it not okay for Miley?

And for all of the men that get off on it, what do we say about them?

It’s okay, as long as it’s a woman who is nameless and faceless.

I realize I may be beating a dead horse, but it really bothers me.

It’s okay to objectify women as long as we never are reminded of who they are and who we wish they could be.  It’s okay for women to be made into sexual objects as long as we are not reminded of the childhood and innocence they lose in order to do so.  It’s okay for women to make spectacles of themselves for men’s pleasure as long as we don’t have other goals for them.

And our daughters get the message that it’s okay for men to want to make them objects.  It’s good, it’s desirable for a man to want you to make yourself a sexual object for him.  But you shouldn’t, because people will be ashamed of you.

Which, to a rebellious teen, sounds like a challenge.

It sounds like a dare.

Call me Candidate Warrior.

So I had my orientation to the teacher preparation program yesterday.  I’d spent the last month in a bit of a fugue, wondering if I was making the right choice.  The program is rigorous, and because it’s designed for people who work part time already it’s mostly evenings and weekends.  I’ve had my heart in my throat over the fact that I’ll be seeing less of the kids, and knowing I’ll have days to myself to work on writing and my own things has been no comfort.  Yesterday morning I joked to The Husband that maybe I should drop out and just keep working in my job as a tutor until I’m really sure about what I want to do.  He answered with an eye roll.

Yeah, I can be worthy of eye rolling.

So last night I walked into the teacher prep orientation and looked at all the faces of my peers shining with anticipation and I wondered if that was really what I wanted.  Was it?  At one point we had to share about what inspired us to become teachers.  ”My eighth grade teacher always looked out for us,” one girl said.  ”I really love being with kids,” said another one.  ”I really enjoy math,” said another.   There I was, pointedly staying silent.  I wasn’t here because someone inspired me to want to take care of kids.  I was here because working as a tutor had shown me that people come into college with only a conversational grasp of language, and it dumbfounds me.  I want to be in a position to lobby for better standards for how language is taught and evaluated.  I want to start a national conversation about the role that language plays in poverty and economic success.  Maybe I don’t belong in a classroom.  This is not for me.  Everyone else here is so passionate about taking care of kids and here I am, just so angry that our system is broken.  Then we had to write a short statement about our goals and share it with a small group.  There were people sharing about creating a loving and safe environment and other ones about modeling good behavior, and then me with my screed about Bridges Out Of Poverty and how what home a child is born into shouldn’t be the major determining factor in what kind of language they are able to use as an adult; the language of negotiation is reserved for the upper classes and poor kids grow up only knowing the language of survival and intimacy, and we are failing them, and I want to see if it’s possible to tweak the programs we HAVE to teach to involve opportunities for kids to master the kind of language they need to better their position in society.

So I was chewing on my lip as we moved into the final portion of the orientation, where we talked about the rubrics and standards for temperament, character and behavior.  I’m so glad I hadn’t walked out before then, because suddenly everything changed.  As we discussed the framework for the education department’s philosophy we were handed a chart.  It’s one of those Venn diagrams, and the middle facet, the one that all of the other areas of professionalism overlapped in, was dedication to social justice.  One of my peers asked why that was there and I felt this sudden warmth in my heart, because I knew.  Because it was why I was so angry, why I changed my major in the first place.  And the instructor said words I’d said earlier that evening, even though he couldn’t have known it, he said, “what home a child is born into shouldn’t determine what opportunities they have in life.  Our role as teachers has to be making sure that everyone has the same chance, the same education, and the same ability to benefit society.”

I nearly screamed “AMEN.”

Then we talked about what kind of person you need to be to survive a career in education.  Sure, patience and compassion and consistency, which had been so exhaustively discussed, were on the list.  But it went beyond that.  Are your responses appropriate to the situation at hand?  Are you dedicated to self-reflection and self-improvement?  Do you seek out professional support and collaboration and realize you are incapable of individual success without others?  Do you seek out diverse opinions and examine all situations with multiple viewpoints in mind?

Suddenly the cry in my soul, asking what had I done and why, started to subside.  I found myself saying, “yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

He said that we need to be ready to fight.  ”Teachers are held to the highest standard in society. We have to fight every day to exceed expectations and face every criticism with a smile and open heart. We guard the future.”  When your students see you in the grocery store, they are watching.  Their parents know if you’re in a neighborhood bar and how much you drink.  What you eat, what you wear, what you do, all of those things will be under a microscope.  In the world of social media you have to be careful of how and why you have a bad day, because people are watching.  It’s not for everyone, he said, so don’t be embarrassed if you want to change your major.  But it’s about what we’re fighting for, he said.  If we want a better society we have to be that better person for the kids who are entrusted into our care, and our first and most constant thought has to be why we choose to do what we do.

Yes, yes, yes.

We have to ask ourselves, he said, if we are strong enough.  ”Are you strong enough?”

I was taking notes (of course), so I wrote in the margins, “perhaps I forgot to mention, I am a warrior.”

I am a warrior.  I can do this.  I can become a teacher.  I can become politically active.  I can write a doctorate thesis on uses of language in the home and television and on and on and on.  I can do this.  I WILL do this.  Because I’m not Teacher Candidate Lindsey.  No, I’m Teacher Candidate Warrior, and I have a mission.  Do I know why I care so much?  Why I’m crying as I’m writing this?  Why I threw psychology under the bus like last year’s fashion even though it was a lifelong passion?

Yesterday morning I may have said that I was confused, but I’m not now.

This profession ISN’T for everyone.  It’s for the people who have the strength, drive, and passion to never forget why we do what we do.  And we don’t do it because we’re softhearted and naive and rosy-eyed and just want to spend the day with kids (although there is that, too), it’s because we’re freaking warriors.  We have to be, because society doesn’t value education.

So we have to fight, and fight, and fight- in a world that thinks we don’t deserve to be paid, that we are failing as literary rates fall, that pans the profession on the evening news without a second thought, where kids come into the class more concerned with their kill rate on video games than reading a decent book, and where half of them are more distracted by thoughts of getting through the day than ever giving a second thought to their future.

A future that teachers have to fight for.

Because it’s not our fault that kids are failing.  It’s our society as a whole that has failed.

But teachers take responsibility for it anyway, don’t they?

We’re warriors, and that’s what warriors do.  They take up the sword and fight on.

Princess or Warrior?

Brace yourself for a ramble.

So last night, my darling two year old, MonkeyPants, decided to dive-bomb me from the pass through behind the couch and nailed me between the ribs with her knee, causing me a world of hurt.  This is something that she does often.  Her favorite thing is when I’m folding laundry on the bed.  She’ll come up behind me and dive over my shoulder, and I have to catch her with one hand or she’ll do a full roll and sometimes tumble off the bed. Of course she has to plant it JUST RIGHT or I also get a knee in the back of the head.  Now, I’m not complaining.  I can take a good beating and still keep a smile on my face, and I have to say that one thing I love the MOST about MonkeyPants is that she is WILD.  I love having a wild daughter.  I love wondering what she’ll come up with next and seeing her control of her body grow.  It’s incredible, because at two she can lay out her 7 year old brother flat and get him in an arm bar, and she’ll tousle with the dogs and cats and pretty much everything.  She once saw a video of Steve Irwin wrestling a crocodile and, with awe in her voice, pointed and said, “I DO THAT.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if some day she did.

And then this morning she picks out the FRILLIEST, PINKEST, most bedecked in bows and layers of ruffles, most princessy dress she owns and wanted me to do her hair with a pouffed up hair piece.  And I did it all, chuckling to myself because here’s the girl who quite possibly dislocated one of my ribs in a Tarzan-like performance last night wanting to be the perfect little princess, probably so she could sit on the dogs and yell at them in style.

But I have to wonder, why should these things not belong together perfectly?  Why can’t a girl be a crocodile hunter in a pink frilly frock?  (Of course there is the maneuverability problem.)  But honestly, why is it that these days there are so many anti-princess sites telling people not to tie their kids down to the princess ideal?  I get that you don’t want to force being a princess on a child, or portray it as the only or best option, but why is it that these days it seems like being a princess is the enemy?

If the goal is to let our children determine who they want to be without restriction, being a frilly pink crocodile-wrestling mountain exploring zoologist should be on the table.

Princesses don’t have to be helpless, simpering idiots.

After all, Leia was a princess and she was a better shot than Han or Luke!

Okay, okay, so I get that by and large in the Disney-style mainstream princess culture, pretty girls are helpless prisoners of their beauty, like Snow White, who have to be saved by someone else.  All they are good for is keeping things pretty.  But do we really want to send the message to our girls that being beautiful is the enemy?  That by seeking beauty you are limiting yourself?  That you should hate pink dresses and all they represent?

Someone else decided that pink and frilly meant demure and in need of masculine aid.  I want MonkeyPants to decide for herself what it means, and God help anyone who sees her in a pink dress and decides she’s delicate.  By Heaven, she will rain down punishment on them from above and get them in an arm bar and force them to admit that being feminine does not mean being weak.

And I love that about her.

I love her in a pink dress sitting on her brother’s shoulders and telling him he’s being Batman wrong.

There’s always been this debate about Xena the Warrior Princess and whether or not she’s a decent feminist role model because of the iron bikini.

I mean, screw that.

By choosing to be beautiful women are not objectifying themselves.  Beauty, delicateness, comfort, submission, providing for others, selflessness, none of these are qualities that we should desire to beat out of our daughters.  Princess or warrior is a false choice.

No woman is an object as long as she never allows herself to be made silent and stationary.

And putting a dress on MonkeyPants certainly doesn’t shut her up!

Honors Badge on a Real Diploma! (Or, how I’ve spent the last two years of my life.)

If you had told me three years ago that I would start crying real tears of joy when I got a diploma for a moderately useless two year degree from a community college, I would have probably laughed in your face.  No, really.  For one, if I ever wanted to go back to college I would have been going for a four year degree in something that could help people, like social work or psychology.  And I didn’t want to go to some community college where half of the freshman drop out after one quarter (or two weeks into the first quarter).  I wanted to go to a Proper University and get a Proper Degree.

So how did I end up locking myself in my bathroom to cry upon receiving the meager title of Associate in Arts heading to an English Major with a teaching certificate?  I mean, this isn’t my life, right guys?  This isn’t the life I moved across the country to live.

But, it’s better.  Because it is real.

Originally when I moved to the Valley it was with these grandiose dreams of getting a psychology degree.  My first job after setting foot here was working for a non-profit mental health organization.  I wanted to get my doctorate.  I wanted to run the place.  But not having many options open to me, I had to enroll in the only school that I could make work with my job and my newly minted separation from my husband (also unexpected).  I went to Yakima Valley Community College because it was inexpensive, close to home, and admitted everyone.  At the time I felt like I was just making the best of bad circumstances, but it wasn’t really what I wanted.

How silly I can sometimes be!

The instructors I dealt with were some of the smartest and most hardworking people I ever dealt with.  And the work itself was both harder and easier than I anticipated.  To be honest, I worked my butt off.  I stayed up nights late.  I did homework ALL THE TIME.  Supper is boiling on the stove?  Homework.  In the bath?  Doing the reading.  Working on an essay?  Expect me to dialogue stuff to myself while driving in an attempt to figure it out.  For the first year of my school career I worked 36 hours every weekend.  I got out of class at 11 on Friday and was at work by noon.  I worked until midnight, picked up the baby from her grandparents, went home, and tried to sleep.  I was up at six to be out of the house by seven so I could drop the baby off and be at work at 8, often working until 5 or midnight.  And the same the next day.  Looking back, I wonder when I did my homework.  (Oh, wait, always.)  And how did I stay sane?

I don’t know.  I wouldn’t accept failure from myself so I tried to do better than my best, always.  Other students would explain why they couldn’t spend more than four hours on an essay.  I told myself I wouldn’t be that person.  I would sacrifice whatever I had to in the short term as long as it wasn’t the kids.  The kids got my full attention during dinner.  I helped them with their homework and read to them for a half hour every night.

And I worked, and I worked.  Somewhere in there my husband and I reconciled, and I wish I could say that made everything easier.  It made it possible for me to only work part time, and it made the crazy reading schoolwork in the bathtub let up some.

But it didn’t make things EASY, just easiER.

If getting a degree and making something out of your life were simple, everyone would do it.  It’s not.

I feel so ridiculous.  I want to just walk around town shoving my diploma in everyone’s face and pointing at the Honor’s badge and saying, “I DID THIS.  ME.  ME WITH MY HITTING ROCK BOTTOM AND FAILING AT EVERYTHING.  THIS IS ME.”

I’m going to embrace the crazy, though.  I’m going to be as proud of that silly little bit of paper as if it were a degree from Harvard or Yale, because I had to work for it.  I suppose only I will ever know how much I went through to earn that ridiculous little gold emblem with the honor’s cap, but, hey.

I do know.

And if I’d told myself two years ago that it wasn’t worth it, I’d still be cleaning toilets for fifty cents above minimum wage, and mouthing off to anyone who would listen how one day I’d make something of myself.

Guess what, I made something of myself already.  And it may not be the fantasy, but I’ll settle for the reality.

A reality you earn with sweat and tears and sheer grit is better than a pipe dream anyway.  And did you see my diploma?  It has a shiny gold honor’s badge.  I did that!  Me!

Meffing Goatsheads: or, all I need to know about sin I learned from my garden.

Goatshead thistles, or puncture vine, is the most obnoxious weed in the world (according to myself) and one I never had the acquaintance of until I moved into our current home.

 

That’s a picture of a bucket of the stuff.  I’ve spent the last year trying to figure out how to get rid of it. I suggested burning all of the stuff growing in the driveway and was met with laughter.  Why?  The seeds are so waxy that burning them only helps them germinate faster.  You can spray the vine with weed killer but if it has already seeded, the weed killer won’t affect the seeds.  You can pull it up as it grows but you’ll be doing that for years, and years, and years.  The seeds can live for ten years or more in the ground, and it’s only a matter of weeks from germination to seed.

So what do you do?  There’s one thing that most of the gardening blogs seem to agree on:  Goatsheads thrive in acidic or base soils but don’t do well in soils that are well balanced.  They do poorly in competition with other plants, so planting another kind of groundcover and fertilizing the hell out of it will quickly crowd the weeds out and prevent them from seeding.

Yep.

The best way to get rid of them, to put it simply, is to make sure that your yard is a healthy place for other things to grow.

Which is tidily the best analogy I’ve ever heard for how to deal with sin.  Want to get rid of anger?  Focusing on your anger will never work.  Focusing on your anger will only amplify it. The only way to get rid of your anger is to make your heart the right condition to cultivate gentleness.  Want to get rid of judgmental attitudes?  Trust me on this, focusing on sin will only lead to more judgment and deep hypocrisy.  You weed it out by planting other things there: understanding, love, trust.  This is true of so many other things.  Greed can be treated with giving, addiction can be treated with self-control or self-knowledge, jealousy can be treated with self-care, and bitterness can be treated with grace.

If I had an empty plot in my yard and I thought I had to get rid of all the goatsheads before I started my garden, I’d spend the rest of my life cultivating nothing but mud.

It’s gotten easier to keep them at bay the more the garden has grown in, and for the most part now they are only growing at the edges where they are easily pulled.

And I think about the times I’ve spent in dark depression spiritually, growing nothing but figurative mud as I dug myself deeper and deeper into a hole I thought I’d never grow out of.

And the whole time, God was throwing me situation after situation full of the seeds that I needed to hold onto and cultivate for myself.  Constantly I threw the seeds back and then petulantly asked God why he wasn’t helping me.

I imagine God was much like I can be when I serve my kids a great healthy meal they just don’t want to eat.  An hour later, their plate is still sitting on the table full of food and they are whining, “what can I eat?  Mom I’m hungry!”

And I’m trying very hard not to roll my eyes and very patiently saying, “you can eat the meal I have made for you.”

God must shaking his head and trying not to tap his foot and saying, “you can grow the things I want for you.  Seriously, kid, stop worrying about that sh**.”

So you can spend your life giving yourself splinters and sores pulling up a weed that can multiply faster than you can kill it, throwing acid and poison on it and killing everything good and beautiful while it burns and doesn’t even care,

or you can think about what kind of garden you want to grow.

Like I said, it’s all I feel I ever need to know about sin.  Because, like with my yard, it’s not the bad things that you should be focused on anyway.  It’s the good fruit that you can grow there anyway that really matters.

It’s all that matters.

Don’t tell me about what needs to be killed.

What needs to be cultivated?

Book Review: Zealot, by Reza Aslan

(I received a promotional copy from Netgalley)

link to the book on Amazon

Have you ever really wondered what Jesus was like?

Growing up, I can remember seeing one too many pictures of Jesus as a blondish haired Caucasian man snuggling with a lamb, and thinking, “you’ve got to be kidding me.”  I read through the gospels very slowly, really trying to understand Jesus’s tone.  Not his words, so much, as his tone.  What did he sound like?  What did he look like?  What did he act like?  Who was he, not in the sense of was he the son of God or not, but who was he as a person?  I can remember the first time I told my dad, rather proudly, that a lot of the time I thought Jesus was being ironic.

“What?” Dad replies.

“I think he was teasing the disciples.  Being ironic.”  I felt proud of myself.

Dad laughed and said, “so you think the Messiah had time to joke around?”

Seriously.  How could you walk around for three years being the freaking Messiah and NOT take time to joke around?

All of that to say, I appreciate Reza Aslan’s deliberative attempt to paint a picture of Jesus not just as the Messiah, not just as a person in a historical context (but brace yourself for five exhaustive chapters of that) but as a man, who had a family and friends and kids that he ran around snot-nosed on the street with, and had a tone of voice and a sense of self that went beyond “I’M GOD, YO.”

This book is as intimate a portrayal of a somewhat secretive man that died thousands of years ago as could be done, I would imagine.  The author pored over texts and other historical documents.  He puts Jesus in a setting that is well-fleshed out, and answers a lot of really nagging questions about the use of language and theater that Jesus must have had reasons for.  Why did Jesus call himself the Son of Man?  What in the world was up with riding the donkey, waving the palm fronds, or turning over the tables of the money lenders?  What would life have been like for a carpenter living in Galilee?  Where would Jesus have worked?  Whose circles would he have run in?

While some aspects of Aslan’s work will probably raise eyebrows (for instance, how in the picture was Joseph as Jesus’ father?  Was the virgin birth a literal story or a fictitious cover for the fact that Jesus was really just Mary’s son?) there is a lot of real gold to be found in the midst of the rubble of broken assumptions.  My favorite theme was how much the tensions between the Priesthood, the Romans, and the Messiah really all boiled down to money.  Did Jesus threaten the temple’s ability to fleece the illiterate farm workers?  Was that why they hated him so much?

I thoroughly enjoyed this read.  It’s in depth enough to be really illuminating but short enough to not eat months of your life (you are on notice, NT Wright).  While Aslan does challenge a lot of assumptions his tone never becomes patronizing or flip.  I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who finds themselves curious about the nature of Christ as a person.

I give this book 5 Jesus-Cuddling-Lamb bookmarks.

Highly recommended.

In all seriousness, what would Jesus do?

Sometimes I feel like I get upset about the wrong things.  Let me explain, there’s this meme going around that talks about a new pastor’s first sermon to his shiny megachurch.  The story goes that the pastor pretended to be a homeless man and everyone ignored him, even when he begged for money.  He was asked to stand in the back of the church, and when he was finally introduced everyone was horrified, until he preached a really scathing sermon which culminated in his asking the congregation if they were ever going to choose to be disciples.

It seems like most of my Christian friends have been forwarding this meme around.  A lot of people say things like, “wow,” or “so humbling!”

My first reaction to it was to be sick to my stomach.  Then, I was angry.  Then, I was angry-sad.  Then, I had a headache.

There’s a part of me that thinks we all need reminders that Jesus told us that we would be judged by how we treat “the least of these.”  So why don’t I like that meme?

Okay, let’s go through it step by step:

 It isn’t true.  This is a story that someone made up, probably to try to put some of the things that Jesus said into a more modern day context, making the church analogous to the pharisees.  I’ve made that analogy myself, so why does it bother me so much in this context?  While I am a little bothered by the meme’s assertion that only a handful of people out of 10,000 would acknowledge the pastor’s presence, I’m more bothered by the pastor himself.  Here we have a well-to-do man with his suit and tie concealed under homeless man’s clothes.  He isn’t really a man of the street that lives off charity, but he pretends to be one.  When Christ said, “What you do to the least of these you do to me” he wasn’t saying it from a comfortable position as a pastor of a megachurch whose tailored suit was hidden under beggar’s clothes- he was saying it as a beggar.  He lived off of the charity and hospitality of others, so when he said, “do it as you would to me” that could be taken quite literally.  If you would welcome Jesus into your home, welcome the beggars in.  If you had food to share with Jesus you had food to share with the lame.  If you would offer Jesus a cup of water, offer it to the sick.  Every offering as such Jesus would accept as an offering to his own person- not because Jesus didn’t need the offerings, but because he did.  These days, we as Christians are far distanced from the reality which Jesus had to live.  I don’t know if we really understand the fact that Jesus didn’t have a pension plan, couldn’t file unemployment, and couldn’t ply his trade while traveling and teaching.  He didn’t have a trust fun he was living off of, he lived off of the goodwill of others.  When we feed the hungry and care for the sick and give room to the homeless, we are remembering that God himself once shared their lot.  This meme?  It doesn’t seem like a humble reminder of that reality, it feels like the opposite.  It treats the reality of Christ’s life that he lived for us as a charade, to be put on and then taken off at the most humiliating moment.
It’s a “GOTCHA” moment, not a humble reminder.  Jesus doesn’t deal in shame, so why should we praise those who do?  This isn’t the case of a pastor humbly searching for truth in the guise of a homeless man, like this one, this is a pastor knowingly setting a trap to catch his congregation in.  The whole story hinges off of the judgment that Christians, as a whole, aren’t choosing to be disciples.  That churches do ignore people who aren’t dressed right.  That parishioners with cash in their pockets for the offering basket would give no change to a hungry, needy man sharing their pews.  The pastor, prior to ever preaching a sermon to his new congregation, has already decided they aren’t following Christ and need a scolding.  And rather than, say, inviting actual homeless people in to be cared for, he pretends to be one just to hammer a point home.  No, no thank you.  Jesus didn’t contrive situations to shame his followers.  He lived his life as a genuine example.  Those teachable moments the Bible is full of?  They happened as a natural consequence of how Christ lived.  The only time he set up “traps” for anyone was in response to the traps that had been set up for him.  Jesus didn’t trade in shaming his followers, so neither should we.
Who made it up?  What was their motive? We don’t know.  Rather than putting their own name and face to the tale, someone made up a story just to prove their point.  I’m all for parables, Jesus himself was known for them, but this doesn’t feel like that.  This is a lie parading as the truth.  The internet, yes, is full of such things.  Pictures of babies born with deformities meant to shame you if you don’t share them.  Mangled fetuses.  Abused dogs and cats for whom some unnamed stranger will donate a dollar per “like.”  To put it plainly, bullshit.  But this bullshit I’ll take personally, because this bullshit is about the church.  This bullshit about the church hinges off of the fact that no one will question the idea that a congregation of ten thousand are ready and willing to reject a homeless man.

So what does that tell us about the person who wrote the story, and what does it say about those who share it?

Judgment, and shame.  We’ve all judged the church as having fallen on it’s sword, and we all believe that it needs to be shamed.

What.

 

The.

 

Hell?

 

I spent one of the most fulfilling years of my life working as the site supervisor for a homeless shelter.  That shelter operated based off of the goodwill and cooperation of a couple of handfuls of churches surrounding a relatively small, but active, community.  Volunteers stayed with our guests overnight to make sure their needs were met.  Volunteers prepared and delivered hot meals for them twice a day.  Volunteers cleaned up after them.  Volunteers often picked them up and drove them to church on Sunday mornings.  Volunteers talked to them.  Volunteers let them know about job openings in the community, sometimes offered them small jobs, brought gently used clothing to hand out, made Easter and Christmas baskets, and donated thousands of dollars every night to pay the staff who served them.

None of those churches would have ignored a homeless person on a Sunday morning.  Quite the opposite.  Their attention and interest brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it to this day.

Let’s be evenhanded.  If we all agree that most churches don’t give a crap about the people who walk in their doors, what does that say about us?  Our faith?  Or, even more important, what does it say about our belief in God?

Essentially, what that meme says is not that we need to be reminded that Jesus asks us to care for the “least of these”;  what it says is that faith is pointless.  That no one is getting anywhere.  That two thousand years after Christ’s death, the church is useless.  That Christians are, as a whole, hypocrites.  (With the exception of a few self-righteous pricks waiting around for “gotcha” moments to humiliate us all and remind us how little we’ve grown.)  The meme doesn’t remind us of Christ’s love, it reminds us of our own selfishness.  What it offers isn’t hope but condemnation.

I have seen a pastor preaching shirtless in the streets because he gave the shirt off his back (literally) to a street kid.  I’ve seen a poor woman wander into a church in the middle of a service and seen everything stop while the congregation found out what she needed and got her help- including people running to the store to buy her baby diapers and formulas, and her having so many lunch invitations she had to choose who to turn down.

That’s my faith.

I’ve seen people give away the dinner they just cooked for their family and have toast for dinner instead because they heard that someone down the street lost their job and couldn’t get groceries.

That’s my faith.

I’ve seen families take in kids whose parents were arrested so that those kids wouldn’t have to go into foster care.

That’s my faith.

I’ve seen so many people show up at the hospital to pray for a sick relative that some of them never even got in the room.

That’s my faith.

That’s my church.  And I’m not just speaking about one church, but many.  All of the truly genuine people whose example brought me back to the feet of God after I thought I’d left him forever.  I may speak about the judgment of the church making me question my faith in God, but never let it be forgotten that it was the genuine love of the church that brought me back to him.  This is a sword that cuts both ways and cannot be ignored.  Yes, some Christians are assholes.  But there are still many who truly seek to follow Christ and emulate his love, and the only cure for the one is the praise of the other.

If we want people to stop being assholes, we shouldn’t be assholes towards them.  We should seek to be as loving, open, genuine, and kind as they are not.

The solution for a church that ignores the homeless isn’t a heaping helping of condemnation- it’s a loving example of the proper way.

*

Do I sometimes have harsh things to say to other Christians?  Yes.  I believe some of the attitudes I’ve seen towards the poor, towards single mothers, towards gay people, are incredibly destructive.  But I speak against it not because I believe the majority of Christians are selfish assholes but because I believe the opposite.  I believe that if most Christians realized the impact their attitudes had on others, they would willingly and quickly change.  And guess what?  In the six years I have helmed this blog that is what I’ve seen, time and time again.  I have so many stories of hope and change and trust and love that I could spend the rest of my life writing about them, and I’m only just getting started.

So, yeah, I had an allergic reaction to this particular meme.

That’s not my faith.

You, dear reader, you are my faith.  And you deserve better than to be shamed by a lie.

*This cannot be overstated.  If you want a church to take interest in the homeless, the best way is to bring the actual homeless into the church and take care of them.  People respond to love with love, and when they see you loving others their natural response is to do the same.  This is far more effective than shame could ever be.  Give the church an example to be like Christ, and if the church is full of Christians, it’ll happen.