gas station blueberry danish

on the abominable metric system

2010-06-17T18:41:00.002-04:00

Brother David Cloud: "Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the Bible recently to prove that Jerusalem belongs to Israel. At a parliamentary session commemorating Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, Netanyahu stated that Jerusalem and Zion appear 850 times in the Old Testament. He then said, “As to how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the holy scriptures of other faiths, I recommend you check” (“Netanyahu Turns to Bible,” Reuters, May 12, 2010). The answer is none. Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran, for example. It is fascinating to see secular Jews like the thrice-married Netanyahu quoting the Bible, even though they don’t believe it or obey it. They are back in the land, but they don’t know how or why. They have fierce enemies, but they think this is just bad luck, not willing to recognize that the reason, as in days of old, is Israel’s own stubborn rebellion to Jehovah God and her vicious rejection of the Messiah 2,000 years ago. Israel is back in the land in wonderful fulfillment of prophecy, but she is spiritually dead according to Ezekiel 37:8. We are now waiting for the other prophetic shoe to drop, when the church-age saints will be Raptured, followed quickly by the Antichrist’s rise to power, Israel’s conversion after the “time of Jacob’s trouble,” and Christ’s glorious return. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

Set aside the bizarre use of Ezekiel 37, if you will. Set aside the toxic, piecemeal literalism that would lead one to interpret "I will settle you in your own land" as a literal reference to Jewish people resettling in Israel, but read "you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them" from only one verse prior and not think of zombies. If this had literally happened, post-WWII Israel would have been settled by people who were actually killed in concentration camps, not by people who lost their families there.

At least the bones aren't naked now, because skin literally (and infallibly!) means a parliamentary system of government? Let it go.

Set aside the even more bizarre notion that modern Israelis don't know how they got to Israel. You, dear reader, may or may not be Israeli, but perhaps you know that you can look up things like the British Mandate for Palestine on the interwebs. Set aside, too, the odd phrase "they are back in the land." Who are "they," in this context, when the majority of Jews don't live in Israel? Also, perhaps Netanyahu is married to three women simultaneously- a patriarch, just like Abraham, with a perfectly Biblical understanding of marriage?* I don't think that's the case, though, because I don't think that's Netanyahu's brand of crazy. Somehow, it doesn't seem to be Jewish people who insist upon dragging such nonsense into the modern era.

Polygany for wealthy men- it's in infallible scripture! Ok; let it go.

Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran.

What makes something relevant?

I mean, we could point out the obvious: Muhammad wrote the Qur'an, and he seems to have died before the Islamic Empire reached Jerusalem. So, while the Hebrew Scriptures contains lots of passages about being in Jerusalem or wanting to be back in Jerusalem, the Qur'an doesn't have anything like that. Because they hadn't been there yet. This is like trying to explain blue sky to someone wearing orange glasses, though: Look, Chalcedon is important to Christians because Christians did important things there. It's not in the Bible because the Bible was written before the Christians did those things. Similarly, Jerusalem is important to Muslims because Muslims did important things there; those things aren't recorded in the Qur'an because the Qur'an was written before they did those things. How can something so obvious even need to be said?

In bizzaro-orange-glasses world, though, such banal linearity does not apply. Things are not true because they happened; things are true because they can be read about or read into a particular book. Places aren't of importance just because people understand their loving, working, and dying within that geographical context; places matter because they can be looked up in the index at the back of a textbook with gilded edges. If the book can be read or misread to say that the sky is brown, no amount of you pointing out the window at the blue sky makes a difference. The story that Muslims tell is the story of their ancient book, full stop. The story that Jews tell is the story of their ancient book, full stop. And heaven help us all if Christians act as though anything important has happened to the church since John the Revelator was sent to sea.

In other words, in bizarro-orange-glasses world, there is no continuing story outside the text, and the text is assumed to contain all the assumptions of the orange glasses wearer. All the important things that have ever been done and ever will be done have been written down in a special orange glasses compatible code. In secular terms, this would be like saying that Gettysburg is an important place because we have a copy of the address that President Lincoln gave there, and then inferring from a literal read of the address that devotion was being physically measured out in cups. And then proclaiming that the point of the Gettysburg address is that we should measure liquids according to the English system, because the metric system is an abomination- if liters weren't good enough for Civil War era soldiers, then they're not good enough for us! And then disenfranchising anyone who thinks that sounds crazy.

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." An interpretative method that disguises importing human created doctrine as 'studying scripture in the light of scripture' is in direct contradiction to this teaching. Ezekiel 37 is given by inspiration of God; the nonsensical interpretations clamped upon it like barnacles on a ship are not.

And goodness, the Muslims don't have to have a proof text for the importance of the Dome of the Rock to them. Being People of the Book doesn't mean that any of us have to be people only of the book.

---
*This would be a good place to say that I read Bro. Cloud even though I disagree with pretty much everything he writes, largely because he's not a tool. That is, he doesn't criticize Netanyahu's three marriages, but then ignore the fact that Reagan was the USA's first divorced and remarried president. He's not, you might say, a respecter of persons; I like that about his work.

Hitchens

2010-06-16T19:18:00.003-04:00

Christopher Hitchens picking on Prince Charles: read all about it! The first part is fun stuff- it makes me happy to read someone wholeheartedly defending materialism. Toward the end, he connects the prince's vapid anti-intellectual soul talk (and his desire to be crowned as the defender of all the faiths, instead of just the Anglican one) with the desire of some Muslims to proselytize more in Europe. The prince delivered his speech at the Center for Islamic Studies, which is connected by religion to the Islamic Forum of Europe. He writes:

"I quote from a recent document published by the Islamic Forum of Europe, a group dedicated to the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate and the imposition of sharia, which has been very active in London mosques and in the infiltration of local political parties. "The primary work" in the establishment of a future Muslim empire, it announces, "is in Europe, because it is this continent, despite all the furore about its achievements, which has a moral and spiritual vacuum.""

I think this is supposed to disturb me because a Muslim empire would be scary- and, granted, I wouldn't enjoy living under sharia. I like my cute skirts and driver's license. The creepy thing about the quote from the IFE, though, is that I've heard it all before:

"The primary work is in Europe, because it is this continent, despite all the furore about its achievements, which has a moral and spiritual vacuum.
-Islamic Forum of Europe

"ECM is an international, interdenominational mission that seeks to plant and support local churches throughout Europe... Please contact the appropriate office to find out more about ECM and to see what you can do for this needy continent."
-European Christian Mission

"When it comes to spirituality, Europe is needy. God is using people who are willing to go, live among the peoples of Europe, and tell them about His love."
-Greater Europe Mission, which would also like to tell you about the 40/70 Window of evangatastic opportunity. If you weren't familiar with the 10/40 Window to begin with, you should definitely look up the 40/70 Window, because you are way behind on your world domination strategy. When you've caught up with the rest of the (evangelical Protestant) church, come on back to Europe; it's where the action is. And get excited: studies are being conducted as to how best conquer Europe for Jesus (again).

And from WGM, the missions organization that I grew up hearing about, a plan of attack being devised one country at a time: "Alcoholism and suicide rates in Hungary are the highest per capita of any nation in the world. People are finding that a new job, more possessions, and a new government system are not what they are looking for. They need to know that Jesus Christ is the answer to their problems." I don't know how the Hungarians would assess this description of their country, but it sounds like WGM is seeing their moral and spiritual vacuum as a conversion opportunity.

Oddly, I think I like WGM for some of the same reasons that I like Gülen. The quote from their Hungary page sounds like something he might write; people are abandoning their faith because they have nowhere to seek refuge from their doubts. In a post-Communist world, how can one feel the greatness of faith to God? The answer is not to gain more of this world, but to be transformed by the perspective of the hereafter.

After all, how could a person of religious conviction, someone who believes that there is a deep, peaceful order to the universe that transforms the faithful participants in hir faith, look at the state of Europe today and not see spiritual vapidity?* This is certainly how it was presented to me as a teenager, when I went with Teen Missions International on a summer trip to Austria. These people, I was told, had been enthralled** for generations by false religion, and now they were losing hope entirely. Marx and materialism were the only things that Western Europeans believed in now, but we were coming to show them a more excellent way. These poor people were following after secularism like children after the Pied Piper, but we would stand in the streets with our puppets and simple German songs, luring them heavenward instead. Austria would be won for Christ!

We built a garage on an orphanage, so I don't regret the trip. I have to admit of myself, though, that I have personally attempted to recolonize spiritually vacuous Europe with my faith. My own history places me in an awkward position, then, when I hear that the Muslim hordes want to claim Europe for Allah. To be honest, part of me wants to tell them not to bother- you can stand in that square all day singing simple German songs about the Just One and the river of Paradise, but they don't care. As far as I can tell, Austrians just want to do their grocery shopping. Vienna is under seige by Muslims, you say? That's so 400 years ago. And Austria won, so, whatever.

And yet, Byzantium did fall to the Ottomans, which led directly to the Battle of Vienna; for those who closely associate the cause of Christ and the political successes of Christendom, I suppose we've lost these battles in the past, and have come close to losing the war.

"The primary work is in Europe," says the Islamic Forum of Europe***. I think when this is quoted to me, I'm supposed to picture a meeting of nefarious men, perhaps in a dank basement, sitting at a poorly lit table and planning the end of times. I'm supposed to imagine networks of infiltrators with secret agendas, meeting once a week for strategy sessions on how to bring on secularism's demise. The IFE, you see, is pressing their advantage with weak-kneed leaders like Prince Charles, demanding concession upon concession, until eventually Rowan Williams will be handing over the treasures of the Anglican Church to be melted down and carefully gilded on the domes of mosques.

Really, though, I just picture missionaries. With silde shows, and a table full of cultural items: folksy musical instruments, perhaps, or wooden shoes. Maybe a chunk of the Iron Curtain.

Certain sillyheads claim that liberals, for unfathomable reasons, secretly support the reestablishment of the Caliphate. Let me, therefore, make this absurdly clear: I do not want to live under sharia. In the case of Europe: I do not want Vienna to be conquered by Islam, or the Sistine Chapel to be turned into a mosque, or good Christian children to be forced to pray Muslim prayers in school.

Conversely, however, I do not want Vienna to be conquered for Jesus. I don't want to hear R. C. Sproul preaching in the Sistine Chapel. I really don't want good Muslim children to be forced to pray Christian prayers in church, particularly if my tax money is funding that school. And don't be deceived by all the fearmongering about Islam- we Christians have our own version of sharia, and some among us are working, right now, towards implementing it.

None of this regulatory nonsense relates even superficially to creating a society in which one can feel the greatness of faith. None of this provides a refuge for the weary. None of this is infused with the perspective of the hereafter.

More importantly, though, it has to be said, over and over, that what Muslims are not being stopped from implementing restrictive, faith-based practices by Christians any more than Christians are being stopped from implementing restrictive, faith-based practices by Muslims. Fundamentalists are being stopped from imprisoning women in their homes by secularists. Fundamentalists of all stripes are being stopped from requiring religious tests for public office by secularists. Fundamentalists, whose desire to control outstrips their commitment to their faith, are being stopped from reshaping society in their own image by secularists, who claim that public space should be, well, public.

If this field of ours has a pearl in it, it would be that notion of public space.

---
*Well, huh. Pretty much anytime I ask a rhetorical question like that, I can find an answer if I poke around long enough. Turns out that there is "grave danger" in believing that Europe has become irreligious. The author's distinction between Europe's understanding of religion vs. the way a similarly worded poll question would be answered in the US was interesting, as well as the lists of practices like "church taxes" that not even the most nut-jobby right wingers in the US would propose. Is Europe a spiritual nightmare? Perhaps only if you're evangelistic about USians First Amendment freedoms.

I can't say I'm convinced, though, that the EU can still be considered the coming of the ten-headed Beast even though the membership has expanded beyond 10 nations. Not that the whole "no really, Revelation is a blueprint of the future" perspective ever made much sense, but saying that the 10 heads are 10 groups of nations? What's the point of having a blueprint if it's not even right? And really, if you have to keep changing "what the text clearly says about current events" in order to match it to how those events actually play out, then talking as though the text has some mystical, otherworldly knowledge about Europe's future just makes you just look like a cheap magician at a child's birthday party. "Look at that pigeon, children, while I stuff a bunny in this hat! Ok, look back- oh hey, there's a bunny in this hat! Admire my hat's infallible bunny producing powers!" That's an insult to a perfectly good hat, which could be quite useful doing hat-like things like shielding the eyes or covering bad hair, but isn't designed to be a bunny machine.

**Enthralled is derived from the Old Norse word thrǣll: slave. To be enthralled is to be enslaved. Enthrall has an overlay of spectacle, though, as though our eyes specifically have been taken captive; we're enthralled by dancers, by orchestras, and in this case, by priests.

Sometimes, when a Viking warrior died, a thrall or thralls would join him on the funeral pyre so that someone could attend him in the afterlife. That's unrelated, except to note that Europe has always been a pretty damn religious place, at least from the time that they started keeping written records.

***Does this sound a little self-aggrandizing to anyone else? Like, maybe the Islamic Forum of South America would be saying that the primary work is in South America, and so on? Am I really to believe that the Islamic Forum of Europe would say publicly that the primary work is, say, in Indonesia? That seems unlikely to me, just on the face of it.

M. Fethullah Gülen (II)

2010-06-14T19:57:00.003-04:00

Universalism, for me, is a synonym for humility. When I do universalism well, I do not insist that if I cannot see God in someone's practice, that God is therefore not present. God may well be present, and the trouble be with my own eyes. If I visit someone else's world and do not feel "the greatness of faith to God," as Gülen put it, I must consider the possibility that I'm surrounded by a great faith that I cannot yet see.

Being a universalist, then, means acknowledging that since we all have access to the same Source of Grace, a failure on my part to recognize that Grace might be the root cause of any difficulty I have in engaging in worship with others. That is, if I join an unfamiliar group in worship and do not sense Christ in their* midst, then maybe their worship is not in spirit and in truth; some things called worship are not much related to acclaiming the worth of Christ. Perhaps, though, I simply haven't bothered to learn their language of devotion. Perhaps it's been easier for me to make fun of their carnivals than to be challenged by their understanding of holiness. Perhaps I have been a voyeur of sorts, watching their transitory firework parties without engaging my soul in their deeper joy.

Perhaps, in other words, I'm simply not paying attention to Christ.

Gülen writes: "...we sip the unsurpassable benevolence and joys from the hands of all these tribulations, because we have our beliefs, our connection to the Just One and our hopes! Those who do not recognize the trials and pleasures to be the product of the same will writhe in never-ending agony, while in our own atmosphere we see clearly that everything will be transformed into deep compassion. We taste a whole life, with its bitter and sweet facets like Kawthar, the blessed water of Paradise, in everything that we eat and drink, at every place that we inhabit, with all the beautifully divine discoveries of our own inner world."

It's not clear to me that Gülen would consider me someone who is capable (without converting to Islam) of tasting a whole life, but that is certainly my goal. Now I see through a glass, darkly; now I see in part. The more I see, though, the more compassionate I become- and the more compassionate I become, the more I am able to see.

I would be exaggerating if I said that I experienced a tribulation at business meeting yesterday. A chunk of focus, however, was on what strikes me as the liberal equivalent of handing one's tithe money to a Pentecostal businessman in exchange for specially blessed paper prayer mats: using small polished rocks to open chakras. I don't have much of an opinion on chakras in general, since I find my time rather occupied with trying to take my own religion seriously. Boiling major aspects of other people's faith down into something easily manipulable (and by the look of the little rocks, purchasable at the dollar store), though, irritates me quite a bit. It strikes me as disrespectful.

It's also idolatrous witchcraft, in the same way that those silly prayer mats are, but that's a different post.

I won't say that little polished rocks on leather cords make me writhe in never-ending agony.** I am reminded, though, that I am nowhere near tasting the whole life in every place I inhabit. I may be a universalist in theory, but I am far from a universalist in practice.

Christ, I believe that you are in all and with all; help thou my unbelief.

---
*Even more likely: if I'm looking for Christ in their midst, rather than Christ in our midst, then who am I to criticize them for an apparent lack of Christ? If the group is them to me, then I haven't even shown up yet.

**Although it becomes more true when the oh-so-rustic leather is being displayed by vegetarians.

M. Fethullah Gülen

2010-06-14T19:49:00.002-04:00

"In every community and society there are people who are inclined to abandon their faith and there have been many times when such people have spun out of control; other communities and societies do not have such powerful places to seek refuge when faced by these abysses and weaknesses as we have. Indeed, they have thoughts which soothe, beliefs which reconcile, days and nights which tremble with joy, festivals and carnivals; but, these days, these nights, these festivals, these carnivals are devoid of any holiness. They are like fireworks, shining for a moment and then are gone, giving only instantaneous pleasure; they are ephemeral and physical, not promising anything in the way of spiritual joy. Indeed, in their worlds you cannot feel the greatness of faith to God, nor can you feel that souls are free from the boundaries of time and space; everything starts with a false and transitory happiness, and takes place in a delirium of flesh. All is then transformed into painful memories, regrettable dreams, and disappointed hopes, and finally everything simply disappears." (Link.)

Gülen is a fascinating man, and if you aren't interested in him now, you should go to his website and read until you are interested. He is an advocate of tolerance, a friend of peacemakers, and a force in interfaith dialogue. He's a poet and a public intellectual, a prolific author and an inspiring preacher- in short, a face of Islam that I too often forget to seek out.

He makes an interesting contrast, in this section of the article, between secular society and Islamic society. In a secular society, there are no safeguards to protect those who are inclined toward atheism- nothing in the social structure tugs them back toward faith. Islamic society, on the other hand, has what Gülen calls "powerful places of refuge," which my secular friends (and to be honest, probably my religious friends as well) might rephrase as stifling traditions, limits on freedom, or invasive proselytizing. Gülen seems* here to come down in favor of building a social world in which the "greatness of faith to God" is inescapable, so that those who would be tempted to abandon faith can be strengthened by their more faithful neighbors. His portrait of a society without these places of refuge sounds like a blurb on the back jacket of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, next to a picture of decadent flappers smoking elegant cigarettes and wondering why the carnival disappeared; which is to say that, in some ways, it rings very true.

It's uncomfortable for me to sit with Gülen's article, and with this paragraph in particular. I keep rereading "Indeed, in their worlds you cannot feel the greatness of faith to God..." and wanting to ask this man (who has never met me, and knows nothing about my life) for some kind of reassurance that he's not talking about my world; that he didn't move from Turkey to Pennsylvania and decide that, nationwide, you just cannot feel the greatness of faith to God in the USA. I worry that that's exactly the comparison he's making, though. As a nation, we do a decent job of castigating honest atheists, but the dishonest ones? The ones who are willing to bow their heads while Grandpa prays at Thanksgiving, but are peaceably and quietly abandoning their faith? We wish them Godspeed, you might say; very little in our society calls them back to the churches. We call this freedom- Gülen calls it anarchy.

This strikes me as being one of the great ecclesiological questions: is faithfulness ideally a choice to reject the prevailing order to join a righteous remnant, or a choice to construct a more righteous order? That is, are we pessimists or optimists about the possibility of building a God-honoring society? Given that question: if our entire society was entirely focused on God, what would an individual's choice to worship mean? Conversely, can an individual choose to worship without also choosing to remake hir surroundings in honor of God; is remaking the world necessarily a part of proclaiming God's worth?

If you had the option to build a world in which acting righteously was supported at the expense of the individual's freedom to choose righteousness, would you do it?

---
*I don't claim to be familiar enough with Gülen to know how this plays itself out across his oeuvre.

fruitfulness

2010-04-25T15:15:00.003-04:00

O hai, blog.

In no particular order, these are the factors on which I judge a city:
1) presence of a good co-op
2) reasonably smooth roads
3) fun places to get coffee
4) can be driven out of in 10 minutes or less

Syracuse is a great city by my metric, as far as cities go- although, oddly enough, Richmond is only disqualified by potholes.

One fun thing about Syracuse is that there are so many places to worship. We have Methodists both Free and United, as well as a Unity church if you'd prefer to do without the method. We have a solid smattering of Lutherans, a full selection of Baptists, and a host of homes that have been taken over to house various Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. We have Catholics in at least Italian, Irish, and Polish, and perhaps other flavors as well... and if the Catholics do not fully meet your need for bells, incense, and patriarchy, we have Orthodox churches: Greek, Slavic, Macedonian, Coptic, and Russian, just to name the ones I've seen so far. We have Episcopals all over the city, Presbyterians ranging from the very conservative to the very liberal, and on out further we have a healthy dose of Unitarian Universalists. All this, interspersed with synagogues, mosques, at least one zen center, and I'm sure an even wider variety of religious meetinghouses than I'm able to recognize.

What we do not have, however, is a programmed Friends meeting. Syracuse boasts one Friends meeting, a lovely unprogrammed group that meets in a converted house close to Syracuse University. I've been attending since moving to Syracuse, and the worship there is wonderful. I've appreciated the depth of the Friends I've met there, both in the hour of waiting worship and in the discussions held afterwards.

They are not programmed, however, and do not talk much about Jesus.

Today between worship and discussion, I discovered that I could go upstairs to the First Day room and hear church bells. I sat by the window and listened to the Methodists play:

All the world is God’s own field, fruit unto His praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.

All the world is God's own field. I'm struggling with that, here in Syracuse. I worry sometimes that I'm looking for my field, a place where I feel comfortable, more than I'm focusing on my place in God's field.

Note to self: the goal isn't to find the right patch of dirt. It's to yield fruit to God's praise.

reasons to be a feminist, part eleventy billion

2008-12-18T21:59:00.002-05:00

Jill:

We’ve already seen rape survivors being refused emergency contraception, women in the process of miscarriage being refused treatment, and lesbians and unmarried women being refused fertility assistance. So what if a pharmacist wakes up tomorrow and decides that AIDS is your punishment for being gay, or your STI is a punishment for being a big whore, and refuses to fill your prescription for the medication you need? What if a Scientologist decides that he shouldn’t have to leave his moral beliefs at the door, and refuses to write or fill any prescriptions at all? What if an ER doctor or EMT’s religion forbids them from touching someone of the opposite sex and so they refuse to treat half the population, even in emergencies? What if my moral belief is that sanctimonious fuckwits who don’t do their jobs shouldn’t be given medical treatment — if I were a more vengeful person, could I go ahead and let them suffer, like they would do to me?

That's all really bad, no doubt. It sucks to think that I might have to drive around town to get a birth control prescription filled, and it's even worse to think that someone in a more remote or conservative area might not be able to get her prescription filled at all. And it makes me really angry that it's all so clearly about birth control, even though all the rhetoric is about abortion; I'm sure the lies make it more palatable, but they're still lies.

Really, though- I'm mostly just sad for my more conservative Christian friends who think that the Republican party gives a crap about them. Bush II had eight years to screw over American women, and he does it now? When it's going to be undone almost immediately, if not soon enough? I certainly feel disrespected, as a woman who like to make her own decisions about her body, but I also feel like the whole congregation that I grew up in just got disrespected, too. They've been telling each other for 7.75 years now, "Look, he's appointing pro-life justices to the Supreme Court! I'm sure he'd do more, but he's jousting with Congress/saving us from the infidels/whatever." I wonder what it means to them to find out that Bush could have done this all along, and just didn't.

snow!

2008-11-16T14:47:00.003-05:00

This is a close up of snow gathering on my windshield wipers.

This is the beef stew I made to warm up with.

short note

2008-11-14T11:37:00.000-05:00

Fafblog has new posts!

done!

2008-11-04T06:52:00.003-05:00

I'm not a big fan of these sorts of machines. I have to admit, though, that it's a reflexive position for someone who spends a lot of time reading liberal blogs, and I haven't looked into it much myself. This machine didn't give me any trouble, and the poll workers apparently didn't notice or didn't care that I looked like I was trying to call a friend for help while voting.

why Echidne is a feminist

2008-10-28T13:25:00.003-04:00

I hear a lot of my friends, particularly female ones, refusing to identify as feminists. That's their right, I suppose. It's a position that I don't really understand, though, since feminism is pretty central to my understanding of building a more just world. I happen to like voting, owning property, safe houses for abused women, the availability of contraception, and so forth. I really liked this (thus far) four-part series at Echidne of the Snakes, in which she explains why she is a feminist:
The Right To Go Out
The Planet Of The Guys
Our Father Who Art In Heaven
The Invisible Women

comparing apples to smushed apples left under the fridge

2008-07-07T17:28:00.002-04:00

You know what's worse than picking up sequins spilled onto carpet?

Picking them up with the assistance of a small kitten who thinks she is the heroine of a movie called Sparkle Kitty, Cowgirl Princess of the Sequin Rodeo.

caffeinated tipsyness

2008-06-16T13:59:00.003-04:00

I am all in favor of coffee, particularly in concentrated forms. Coffee flavored vodka, though, is just disturbing.

Link.

little signs of wealth

2008-05-27T12:30:00.003-04:00

Craig and I have been going on walks through the snooty part of town. The lawns have a distinctly unfriendly feel, but this has been the best example thus far.

PS: Fafblog rocks:
FB: Now, back when your husband was president he cut nine million poor women and children off welfare. But now you're the candidate of women and poor people and poor workin women. So did you approve of what your husband did at the time, and if not are you going to reverse it as president and give all those poor people their money back?
CLINTON: Ha haaa! That's an excellent question, Fafnir, and the only way to answer it is with a hearty chuckle followed by a complete non sequitur!

yet more doodles!

2008-05-21T12:13:00.012-04:00

I like having someone to watch the geese with. I also particularly like watching geese use their necks in odd ways, as though they are made of rubber and springs.

Aaarugh! A volcano!
With a cute little explosion!
Is she standing in a forest of seaweed? Talking to her twin sister, the water nymph? Wondering if the volcano is actually her hat? You decide.

William James envisioned an alternative to the army that was remarkably similar to the Peace Corps, except that he argued that men who served in this army would find that the "women would value the men more highly." This, apparently, would be because they had proved themselves against the temptation toward "a world of clerks and teachers, of coeducation and zo-ophily, [...] feminism unabashed."

Zo-phily. It's fun to say.

This is a peaceful bird, unless you happen to be an olive branch. Then, it's a mindless, sap-thirsty mutilator.

I've had Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog in my head for a week. "Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea."

Ze ladeez, zay are dancing.

Now begins the fashion show portion of this blog post.

Continued...

Hats are in this year, I hear.

These are 'flying eyeballs,' although I'd be happy for someone to come up with a more creative name.

And, just a doodle:

cool phrase

2008-05-20T10:01:00.002-04:00

Potemkin village \puh-TEM(P)-kin\, noun:
An impressive facade or display that hides an undesirable fact or state; a false front.

"A Potemkin village is so called after Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, who had elaborate fake villages built in order to impress Catherine the Great on her tours of the Ukraine and the Crimea in the 18th century."

Link. My goal for the second half of today's class is to slide this phrase into the discussion of Carol Gilligan.

I don't want to dislike Sen. Clinton baselessly...

2008-05-19T12:15:00.006-04:00

but she makes it so easy!

She also dismissed Democratic nominating rules requiring proportional allocation of delegates from primaries and caucuses, rather than the winner-take-all system used by the Republicans.

“If we had same rules as the Republicans, I would be the nominee right now,” she said.

Whatever the real merits of various plans to reform the Democratic nominating process might be, she ought to be able to give a better reason than 'but the Republicans do it this other way, which is more valid than ours!' Did she completely ignore all the talk about framing after the last election? Or does she just think it's acceptable to use Republican frames to attack Democrats?

More doodles!

2008-05-16T13:54:00.002-04:00

Kohlberg!

For all of my trash taking about Gilligan, she's a lot better than Kohlberg was.

Some doodle people:

This was from back in the Bonhoeffer seminar:

And, evidence of the occasional foray into sap, in part because Craig is away for the weekend:

ahh, intensives

2008-05-15T12:36:00.012-04:00

I was impressed today by Piaget's term for his field of study: genetic epistemology. It sounds singularly important, even without knowing anything about his research. My new life goal is to come up with a similarly pretentious label for my doodles. Suggestions will be gladly accepted in the comments.
These doodles are from class.
Thinking about different kinds of hiding...

and about awareness...

and original sin...

and just sketching - no names, but that's a paper clip on his tie.

things I like this spring:

2008-05-12T20:37:00.004-04:00

Guava paste, blueberry incense, spinning seeds, sunshine, red socks, Turkish Delight, fidgeting, conditioner, the Mexican grocery store, walking, Jesus, flower trees, backrubs, baking cakes, Craig, leaning left, mowed grass smell, fancy cheese, glass beads, coffee, more coffee, drinking too much coffee, new leaves, geese, Craig's parents, teaching, sectarianism, sunglasses, Goodwill, lightening, gospel music, beetles.

(Image link.)

but those were MY rules!

2008-05-08T10:41:00.002-04:00

Newt Gingrich:

Senate Republicans should mount an ongoing fight (including a filibuster of other activities if necessary) to get the American people to realize that liberals want to block all current judicial appointments in order to maximize the number of left wing radical judges they can appoint if they win the White House. [...] It shows the Democrats are not engaged in fair play.

Translation: I made up a bunch of meany-pants rules to restrict the minority in the legislature when I thought that the Republicans would be in control forever. But now we're not in control anymore, and it just doesn't seem fair that icky Demoncrats get to even approximate my level of unfairness. Waaah.
Question: Why does Gingrich suddenly seem like one of the more sensible Republicans on the public scene?

2008-04-28T15:25:00.002-04:00

From the New York Times:

When the Pennsylvania returns rained down Tuesday night, the narrative became clear fast. The Democrats’ exit polls spelled disaster: Some 25 percent of the primary voters said they would defect to Mr. McCain or not vote at all if Barack Obama were the nominee. How could the party possibly survive this bitter, perhaps race-based civil war?

But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn’t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party’s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain. Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party’s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That’s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama.

Those antiwar Paul voters are all potential defectors to the Democrats in November. Mr. Huckabee’s religious conservatives, who rejected Mr. McCain throughout the primary season, might also bolt or stay home. Given that the Democratic ticket beat Bush-Cheney in Pennsylvania by 205,000 votes in 2000 and 144,000 votes in 2004, these are 220,000 voters the G.O.P. can ill-afford to lose. Especially since there are now a million more registered Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania. (These figures don’t even include independents, who couldn’t vote in either primary on Tuesday and have been migrating toward the Democrats since 2006.)

(hat tip)

I hadn't heard that before, but just today at a polling station I saw a sign out for Ron Paul. He should be expected to do well in Indiana, right?

things I read during history class today

2008-04-24T15:14:00.002-04:00

McCain: I Support Women's Rights...As Long As They're Meaningless
McCain the Women's Libber
“Fun Dads”, “Strict Moms”, the myth of male weakness and female anorexia: some further thoughts on Courtney Martin’s book
Crazy English
Wagering with Zeno
The Color of Plants on Other Worlds
Eviction Slip
Reading Herodotus

Hard To Get

2008-04-16T17:28:00.000-04:00

"Did You forget about us after You had flown away
Well I memorized every word You said
Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While You're up there just playing hard to get
You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was
Still we do love now and then..."
Rich Mullins

I hope it stays back this time.

2008-04-01T12:42:00.000-04:00

Fafblog!

copy editor?

2008-03-11T16:19:00.002-04:00

From the Earlham College newspaper, I just learned that the "sexual violence advocacy program" is unsustainable.
Frankly, I'm of the opinion that we have enough advocation of sexual violence as it is.

virginia is not on my short list...

2008-02-29T11:41:00.003-05:00

...of places I'd like to live. Usually, asking anti-abortion activists how long a prison term they envision for women who end their pregnancies works as a rhetorical strategy. Gets folks rethinking the matter.

In Virginia, though, the answer is apparently "five years."

(link to picture)

Unrelatedly, this is more fun.

new definitions

2008-02-14T17:47:00.002-05:00

“Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse. Today it’s simply, ‘Let’s don’t go forward with this act.’” (Link)

You might have thought that defining rape more along the lines of 'sexual intercourse with someone by force,' and then saying that rape so defined is a bad thing, was a positive development. Clearly, this is because you are a godless liberal.

things I've read lately

2008-02-11T21:56:00.000-05:00

You Like It, You Wear It
Obama's "Universal" Healthcare Deception
Anti-choicers still want to ban your contraception
Huckabee to Get Evangelical Leader's Nod
Dobson Endorses Huckabee
The Evangelicals' New Clothes

how big a geek am I?

2008-02-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

...every congressional [district] attributes a number of delegates -- between three and eight. It is very difficult to get an extra delegate in an even-numbered district. For example, in a 4 delegate district, the candidate split the delegates 2-2 unless one of them breaks 62.5%, in which case the allocation is 3-1. In a 6 delegate district, the allocation is 3-3 unless a candidate breaks 58%, in which case it's 4-2. In odd delegate district, a one vote margin in that district gives the victor an extra delegate. So if a candidate gets 50.01% of the vote in a 5 delegate district, that already creates a delegate gap.

I thought this was a great article, that's how much.

I liked this snippet from a post supporting Sen. Clinton:
...in his effort to woo more conservative voters he's running to Clinton's right on health care and using right wing language on anything from Social Security to tax cuts. It used to matter to progressives how a candidate talks about issues; it still matters to me. It's not that I think Barack Obama isn't a progressive, certainly his voting record is, but the idea that he would run right to make distinctions from his opponent in a Democratic primary goes against everything we've been fighting against; and how else am I supposed to judge how he'll be as president than by the policies he's offering as a candidate? Whenever Obama does something questionable to progressives, it's fascinating to see the bending over backwards that goes on throughout the blogosphere to justify it. I don't think we should be trying so hard to look for signs that Barack Obama is a friend to the progressive movement even as he boasts about wanting to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

But I liked this, too, supporting Sen. Obama:
The problem with Clinton then is that she seems hopelessly frozen in these narratives – a byproduct of 1994 and coming of political age in Arkansas. Regardless of her disagreement with Republicans on individual issues, she cedes ultimate political victory to them because she accepts the terms of the debate they establish. Her stances on Iraq and Iran are objectionable to be sure, but what really concerns me is that they reveal a worldview that will result in more future bad decisions. Similarly, while her immigrant-bashing might help her tactically, it’s a long-term loser because it solidifies the view that (1) legal process is something one must earn; and (2) immigrants are bad. On the taxes front, her bashing of Obama’s payroll tax suggestion falls into this same category.

Actually, come to think of it, I've found two quotes that don't support either candidate. They're both negative. I miss Chris Dodd.

creeping racism

2008-01-13T16:53:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted anything I've read lately, so here's a link: Link.

I'm not a big fan of Clinton, but...

2007-11-17T18:12:00.000-05:00

When women say they support Hillary it's because they are irrationally supporting someone because of their gender. When men say they won't support Hillary it's because "she gives off the feeling that she despises them." If you even bring up the fact that there are men out there who will refuse to vote for any woman, you attacked for allegedly saying that men aren't decent people. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Link.
That makes me want to support her, war votes and all.

i knew it!

2007-11-17T18:05:00.000-05:00

chalk one up for Morty

2007-11-14T16:09:00.000-05:00

Now Morty can get ham flavored soda. Or pop, if he prefers; I don't know he swings on that.

When I ran "ham soda" through Google Image Search, this picture came up.

postbreakfast not-so-jauntiness

2007-10-25T12:55:00.000-04:00

Latest depressing development in my prayer life: iGod won't talk to me. I said 'Hello,' and the page froze. I don't even know where to begin theologically reflecting on that.

This afternoon, though, I've learned that Halloween is for Devil worshippers, and that Bush has declared war on fire.

One of those is clearly a joke: you decide.

further adventures with iGod

2007-09-26T12:04:00.000-04:00

Me: Could I please have some more coffee?
God: I think you could, if you put your mind to it.
Me: Trouble is, I can't put my mind to things very well without coffee. It's like needing grace before I can be good, you know?
God: Are they exactly the same? Interesting comparasion.
Me: No, not exactly; without grace I'm totally depraved, whereas without coffee I'm totally groggy.
God: Precisely. Are you serious? Are you serious? "Without your space helmet Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult." -- HAL.
Me: Um, my name's not Dave.
God: Woe! Oh I'm sorry what is your name?
Me: Julie. Pleased to meet you.
God: That input matched my default category. Nice meeting you too.
Me: So, are you going to give me some coffee?
God: Take it easy. Why do you want it?
Me: I get impatient without it, impatient and cranky.
God: Where did you get it?
Me: This morning? I got it at home.
God: What does "this" refer to? Where did you get it?
Me: This = Coffee. I get coffee from a coffee pot.
God: What does "this" refer to? Where did you get it?
Me: Do you need some coffee?
God: Yes and I think Dr. Wallace wants some too.

I think we've all learned an important lesson today about the vulnerability of iGod, particularly if s/he hasn't had enough coffee.

random phrase generator

2007-09-21T11:55:00.001-04:00

try it.

troubling

2007-09-21T11:22:00.000-04:00

There's a lot more going on with the story about Juanita Bynum than I understand. She's a Pentecostal preacher who married another Pentecostal preacher, after having preached a pretty conservative message on abstinence and sexual fidelity, and perhaps wifely submission as well. Her husband beat her up in a parking lot, and now she's filing for divorce.

I keep reading it argued that the message she preached leads women into abusive relationships. Maybe so. Pam does a particularly good job of getting into the stickiness of criticizing the message she preached on femininity without saying that the abuse was her fault.

Pam links to this article on the story from the New York Times, which just made me angry:

Conservative critics among the evangelical clergy have accused her of exploiting the attack for publicity, calling her “loud,” “angry,” “aggressive” and “out of control”...

I wish the author had cited particular conservative critics, so that I could write them each an email explaining why it is inappropriate to belittle a battered woman for being 'aggressive.' Loud, maybe; she's a prophetess, and somehow I doubt those critics were belittling her for being loud when she was preaching on abstinence. But angry? aggressive? She ought to be angry, perhaps even more at evangelical clergy who would ask her to shut up than at her own husband. And slamming a battered woman for being 'aggressive' is... sickening.

nostalgia

2007-09-19T15:31:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else remember giggling while ending a hymn title with 'under the covers'? Like this:
Be Firm and Be Faithful (under the covers)
Take Me As I Am (under the covers)
Be Thou My Vision (under the covers)
Nearer, Still Nearer (under the covers)
To the Work! (under the covers)

Did anyone else do this, or was I just a particularly bad kid?

fun

2007-09-11T13:26:00.000-04:00

this.

PS: it smells like autumn today.

sitting at Rita's desk, again

2007-09-04T14:20:00.000-04:00

I'm sleepy- didn't sleep well last night, kinda groggy, and wanting some coffee before my evening class. Oh, and today was the first Common Meal of the semester, so I made an ass of myself. Just like last semester. I guess someone has to be graceless and groggy so that everyone else feels at home.

That's it: it's not total lack of poise and tact, it's a ministry of hospitality.

So, sitting here at the desk in my cute skirt, reading stuff online. Last semester's beginning poem was The Layers, which turned out to be an appropriate choice for both the semester and the summer. Still sorting the layers from the litter. This poem that I found on Hugo's blog will hopefully not be equally appropriate to this semester, but I do like it:

Account

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, thought it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own — but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

--Czeslaw Milosz

Other reading from the afternoon has included this Harper's article on dolchstosslegende, a story via Digby on clowns at a KKK rally, and a slideshow via apostropher on a 200-yard spider web.

More to come, perhaps.

Update: Also Is There Anything Good About Men?, Art for our sake, India's middle class failure, Hey Folks, You're Spending My Inheritance, and The elegant assissin.

omphaloskepsis

2007-08-28T15:50:00.000-04:00

From Evolving Thoughts:
Let's set the scene with some philosophical definitions. A scientific question is one that evidence can tell for or against. All else is a philosophical question, or as it is popularly known, navel gazing.

The article goes on in an interesting fashion, but I was reminded of one of my favorite parts of the OED: omphaloskepsis, or navel-gazing.
Here's a link for the OED-challenged.

sitting at Rita's desk

2007-08-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting at Rita's desk today. For those of you not familiar with the ESR community, I've dressed up very professionally and am spending the day pretending to be a very competent and outgoing receptionist. It's fun for moonlighting, but I wouldn't want to do this every day. And no, I haven't really been asked to make coffee, although I've sure been drinking it.

There's not much to do- I cheerfully and graciously answer the phone when it rings, and then transfer the lucky callers to whomever might be able to actually help them. The unlucky ones get lost somewhere in the system, and I return to two important tasks:
a) looking competent
b) updating various things on the internet.

So, I've changed my Facebook status and updated my books, changed some Myspace stuff and left some comments, tinkered with my email, and now I've updated my Blogger list of books I want to read. It's in the top right hand corner, just in case you ever come into a large amount of money and want to spend some on me. I'm also updating my articles list, which I think I haven't touched since last semester. At some point, I will stop everything to search out more coffee, and perhaps redo my hopefully competent looking hair- if I've learned anything from working at the Roadhouse, or from preaching, it's that looking like you know what's going on is half the battle.

I read this today: The Peace Racket. "...we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations." Well, thank Heaven for that, at least.

And this: Enhancing Humanity "Of course, people are worried about more invasive innovations; in particular, the direct transformation of the human body. And this is where the gradualness of change is important, because as individuals we have a track record of coping with such changes without falling apart or losing our sense of self entirely. After all, we have all been engaged all our lives in creating a stable sense of our identity out of whatever is thrown at us." Narrative identity, etc. I've been reading a lot about that lately. Pieces of it will probably end up in my credo; my credo, in fact, is mostly pieces of things I've come across over the summer that I thought were interesting. It probably says more about my faith in its form than in its content.

And then this, from my hero Ben Witherington: Ignorance is Bliss? Biblical Illiteracy in the West. "Well of course part of the problem is the very nature of the modern and western church. It is all too often narcissistic and self-serving to the core. It spends the vast majority of its budget on itself-- its own buildings, its own clergy, its own self-help and nurture programs. The church has ceased almost altogether to be what it was at its inception-- an evangelistic movement, that also did some nurture and training of converts. Instead we are nurture institutions that might have a missions committee. Talk about placing the emphasis on the wrong syllable as the culture becomes increasing less Biblical. [...] What's wrong with needs based preaching? First of all in a culture immersed in constant advertisements and sales pitches, most people in the West have no idea what their real needs are. They can identify their wants, and they mistake them for actual needs." I just like Witherington, that's all. I love the fact that he has a blog, and that he uses bad grammar on it.

Ok, time to find more coffee.

overheard at Sacred Grounds

2007-08-27T19:03:00.000-04:00

Spike Haired Fellow: Well, I don't know much about economics, but I've heard the argument that the economic success we saw under the Clinton administration was really due to Reagan and Bush, but we just have such a short view of things that we don't really think about long term effects. At least that's how it gets reported in the media, you know?

Baldy: So the economic success of the Reagan Administration should be attributed to the Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, right?

Spike Haired Fellow: Well, um, well that's where I don't know much about economics.

What Spike meant was "well, that's where I don't know enough about economics to be able to twist whatever evidence I have into my right-wing mold," but he had to stop mid-sentence to thoughtfully sip his drink.

I thought that was funny and blogworthy, but now that I've written it I'll probably see them at Convocation as new Bethany students. Hopefully they won't recognize me as the young woman who was laughing at them at the coffeehouse.

carnival of the feminists no. 43

2007-08-19T17:42:00.000-04:00

Link. Good stuff- I keep forgetting that these awesome carnivals exist.

anxious men

2007-07-29T13:32:00.000-04:00

From Pandagon:

The insistent EP theory that men want to [make love to] everything in sight while women simply have some sort of wedding dress-and-fidelity gene is exposed as, if nothing else, too ridiculously simple to be real science and too obviously wishful thinking on the part of some anxious men.

Take that, Steve Pinker. I want to find a copy of the book Amanda's reviewing.

happy

2007-07-16T12:04:00.000-04:00

I saw an Indigo Bunting, yesterday. They make me happy.

It's been a happy summer all around.

homeyness

2007-05-22T18:05:00.001-04:00

I called my mom this afternoon and found out, among other things:
-the dog died and the cat disappeared
-my aunt Shirley probably hasn't died yet
-my sister dinged up both vehicles while practicing parallel parking

No word on said sister's motorcycling adventures, but I'm sure they'll be glorious.

'cause I stopped the slaughter of turnips

2007-05-18T13:48:00.000-04:00

...by killing five men in a rage.
Link.

mail check 2

2007-05-16T16:14:00.000-04:00

Junk mail, in various designs of paper-wastiness. Also can be taken as metaphorically exploring the ultimate meaning of life, but I'm in too good a mood.

mail check

2007-05-15T16:01:00.000-04:00

Today I received a wedding invitation, a flyer about this summer's family reunion, and a fundraising letter from the cemetary association that manages the spot up the road from my parents' house where many of my relatives are buried.

That pretty much covers the important life events that one might find notice of in the mail. It was a bit overwhelming, but I survived.

what makes me happy?

2007-05-01T15:28:00.000-04:00

Sunshine on the back of my neck makes me happy.

Also, banana chips. I used to go to camp every summer at High Braes, which is about a half hour drive from my house. It was (and still is) free for the kids who attend, and mostly supported by area congregations. I'm sure there were many things that my mom liked about sending me to camp, but every year I would look forward to eating banana chips at lunch. I never saw them outside of High Braes, so I thought of them as a special 'church camp' item that only the cook at the Braes could find. They fascinated me; I understood that raisins were dried grapes, and prunes were dried plums, and I had seen other dried fruits, but dried bananas just seemed magical.

At some point, perhaps in high school, I found a tub of banana chips at the grocery store. It was shocking, paradigm shifting- I could just buy banana chips on my own, without going to church camp! I could eat banana chips all year 'round! I could eat them in the hay! I could eat them every day! I could eat them on a boat! I could eat them with a goat! (but I wouldn't share them with the goat, because I like them too much.)

Anyway, I like banana chips. I got a box from my mom yesterday that had banana chips and yogurt raisins in it, among other things. I like yogurt raisins, but the tub of banana chips was the most exciting thing I've seen all week.

Hooray for banana chips. And sunshine- they go together.

straw person

2007-04-24T16:43:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned this before, but I like Fred's weekly exegesis of the Left Behind series.

I'll note, though, that due to the sinister tentacles of feminism reaching into even evangelical colleges, I learned about the 'straw person' argument instead of the 'straw man' argument.

future assistant manager

2007-04-23T14:21:00.000-04:00

I think I can sum up large chunks of high school by noting that I think this comic is funny.

Really funny. 'Laughing out loud in the computer lab' funny, even though I'm pretty sure that makes me an awful person.

Not that the career track that I'm on is much better, but, um, I've been to school a lot. That should count for something.

commonsense

2007-04-19T13:41:00.000-04:00

Because there are other surgical options for late-term abortions, it is highly unlikely that banning IDX will prevent a single abortion. It may, however, prevent some women from having the safest procedure for their particular circumstances.

What the court's decided, in essence, is that a woman's right to make her own medical decisions is less important than preventing legislators from getting an ooky feeling by thinking about fetal heads being punctured. Our safety is less important than their feelings.
-Link

Spectacular. I'm sure Jesus is happy that if I get pregnant, and then the fetus dies in my uterus, I might have to undergo labor and delivery rather than having an IDX. Cause you know how clear the Bible is that a woman ought to be legally coerced into less than stellar medical options because Tony Perkins can't tell the difference between live fetuses and dead fetuses:

This is a victory for a commonsense measure that is overwhelmingly favored by over 70 percent of the American people who increasingly support protections for unborn children...
-Link

Bah. Not only does he not know how to use commas, but I do not think that 'commonsense' means what he thinks it means.

planning- not so much

2007-04-19T10:58:00.001-04:00

You Are Root Beer

Ultra sweet and innocent, you have a subtle complexity behind your sugary front.
Children love you, but so do high end snobs... when you're brewed right.

Your best soda compatibility match: Dr. Pepper

Stay away from: Diet Coke

What Kind of Soda Are You?

planning

2007-04-19T10:38:00.000-04:00

It hurts less if I call it a plan.
That's more or less been my approach to this semester. It's time to start regretting that, and perhaps planning to do some work.

poem of the day

2007-04-11T15:32:00.000-04:00

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood - The Moment

hmm...

2007-04-09T18:58:00.001-04:00

Your results:
You are Mystique

Mystique		53%
Poison Ivy		53%
Venom		43%
Dark Phoenix		41%
Mr. Freeze		33%
Apocalypse		31%
Dr. Doom		31%
The Joker		30%
Catwoman		25%
Magneto		22%
Green Goblin		21%
Juggernaut		21%
Lex Luthor		15%
Kingpin		15%
Riddler		11%
Two-Face		9%

Sometimes motherly, sometimes a beautiful companion, but most of the time a deceiving vixen.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

ugh

2007-04-09T18:35:00.000-04:00

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said."

More at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Also, I liked a lot of things about Lexington, but this wasn't one of them.

multiple choice quiz

2007-04-05T14:31:00.000-04:00

"I wish you were my Jewish grandmothers" was said by _______ to _______ and _______.

1) Jeff, to Jon and me
2) Me, to Tracy and Jeff
3) Tonda, to Adriana and me
4) Jon, to Adriana and Tracy

haven't done this in a while

2007-04-05T14:05:00.000-04:00

List of stuff I've read and liked today:
The Bargin and The Prize
Democracy's Enemies
Compassion in the Bush
Sami Al-Arian
Quote of the Day
Angry White Man
Tuesday Forgotten American Blogging: Henry Wirz

rilke!

2007-03-29T14:05:00.000-04:00

You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don't seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it's not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

It’s Not Too Late, Rainer Maria Rilke
Image here.

desire

2007-03-27T14:28:00.000-04:00

More on the Rebelution, from someone more thoughtful than me: here and here.

Image: here.

home, home in the snow

2007-03-20T14:59:00.000-04:00

"Wherever you go, there you are."
-attrib. to Grandmaster Cliche

There's something profound to be said about identity observing the self, but I'm going for a walk instead.

on the blessing of community

2007-03-15T11:54:00.000-04:00

"There is no use trying," said Alice. "One can't believe impossible things."

"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

-Alice in Wonderland

Yoga by the mailboxes with Adriana and Tonda, followed by jumping on the couches and throwing pillows, makes me feel like I can believe the impossible. Even if Etienne does laugh at us.

quote of the day

2007-03-13T15:35:00.000-04:00

From Twisty:

Their remarks represent what I have scientifically determined to be the most prevalent misconception about American feminists (aside from our famed dedication to the Three Hs: Hairiness, Humorlessness, and Hate): that we desire “equality” with men. This notion of inadequate women clamoring for parity is undoubtedly a comforting one, since it postulates “men” as the ideal that is desperately sought by legions of shrill bitches who, ultimately, are doomed never to prevail owing to “innate differences.”

That equality with men is the last thing on the radical feminist’s To Do list will not blow any veteran blamer’s mind, but it is incumbent on the spinster aunt to reiterate every ten minutes or so that our objective is liberation from male dominance, not the opportunity to mimic the patriarchal model of oppression .

fred on civility

2007-03-06T14:28:00.000-05:00

"The Ramones rock!" is a statement, albeit an ambiguously defined one, about the world, about our shared reality. "I enjoy the music of The Ramones," is a statement about me. You can agree or disagree with the former, but not the latter, which is irrefutable but also -- as far as the world and our shared reality goes -- irrelevant.

To be civilized -- to live together -- we need to be able to talk about the world we share. We need to be able to talk about art, politics, religion, economics, science and all the other vital components of our civilization and not just about our own feelings. This conversation doesn't always have to be nice, but it has to be honest and it has to be responsible. That is what "civility" means.

Link. I may have said this before, but I'd like to marry Fred when I grow up.

Also, East Germany lives! (source)

Also, I'd be willing to marry Glenn Greenwald, too.

four cups of coffee

2007-03-06T13:18:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, particularly when I've had a cup of coffee prior, I get excited in class.

Excitement, unfortunately, doesn't correlate very well with coherence. We were talking in Ethics about the Niebuhr brothers and critiques of pacifism. Reinhold critiques most forms of Christian pacifism as being little more than humanistic optimism, and advocates instead a realistic amassing of power to counter other power centers in global politics.

(Something like that- I've now had four cups of coffee, so my thinking is faster than my typing. Good for the thinking, not so good for the clarity of writing.)

Anyway, I heard something or other about balance of powers and my caffeinated mind said 'Dahrendorf!' Then, because I am ever-so-embodied, my mouth followed suit, leading the class to ask me what the connection was between the ongoing discussion and my animated citation of a British sociologist of whom no one else had heard.

Enter incoherence: "well, he wrote Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, and he's roughly contemporary with Niebuhr, and he was interested in how power is divided and diffused among groups so that, um, oligarchies... yeah, so that the power doesn't get centralized... which is sort of what Neibuhr is saying. So they're connected...?"

I have a bookshelf in my house. It's not big enough to hold my books, so they sit in stacks two deep. They aren't organized, either, just thrown in out of boxes from when I moved over the summer. I've tried a bit to put the books I don't expect to use toward the back, but it's a subjective process that sounds like this:
Hm, Acts of Faith, I might want a little rational choice analysis of religion, I'll put that toward the front... yeah.
I don't do well at anticipating which books I'll want on a whim, though, so of course Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society was buried under a stack in the back.

Enter motivation, though: I drug it out. No clue when I'll look back through it, but it's in my backpack waiting. The connection is clearer to me now than it was in class- I really like our buddy Reinhold, and his critique of active Christian pacifism makes sense to me. It would make more sense, though, if he were writing from a secular position... in which case he would more or less be Dahrendorf.

And I do like Dahrendorf. And coffee.

I'm not a militant, but...

2007-03-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

Some friends and I were talking, Friday afternoon, about young women who will say "I'm not a feminist, but..." and proceed to make feminist points.

The only relation between that conversation and the following link is that they both appear in this blog post:

Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

''We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem,'' Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Link. Made my day.

finally!

2007-02-26T22:51:00.000-05:00

Remember the Rebelution?
Well, you can browse the results now.

I feel so... edified.

thanks for all the tips

2007-02-22T21:46:00.000-05:00

Ford looked stunned.
"Where have you been?" he demanded.
"Making some coffee," said Arthur, still wearing his very placid face. He had long ago realized that the only way of being in Ford's company successfully was to keep a large stock of very placid faces and wear them at all times.
From So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

Tonight, at the Roadhouse:
Guest, with menu open: So, your Rattlesnake Bites... are they real rattlesnakes?
Me, with placid face secured: No, they're made with cheese and jalapeño peppers.
Guest, obviously disappointed and confused: Oh. Well, if it's not real rattlesnake, I guess we'll just take a Cactus Blossom.
Me, not out loud: That's not actually a cactus; it's made out of an onion.

Placid faces = Useful inventions.

Oh, and while I wouldn't expect anything called The Gender Genie to disappoint me, playing with it was tons of fun and even reasonably accurate.

The Gift

2007-02-22T16:35:00.000-05:00

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife's right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

-Li-Young Lee

ash wednesday

2007-02-21T13:02:00.000-05:00

In the deep stillness of prayer my soul fasts. Fasting, at its heart, is turning away from what keeps me from God. Two things I must leave: the walls I build around the space that was made to be God's dwelling; the absurdities I keep in that space, so jealously hoarded. Taking down the wall that protects the false self I have been building, all these years ... risking exposure, emptiness, loneliness.

The fast is silence, ocean-deep and prolonged. Shard by shard, the wall begins to fall. Inch by inch, the space clears, and Love lights the shadows.... In letting go is abundance. In emptying I am filled. This is not denial, but freedom. Fast is feast.

-JoAnn Staebler

a Klashnikov and a black hose

2007-02-20T23:43:00.000-05:00

As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.

-Link. River's blog is consistently one of the most horrifying things I've ever read.

long drive to Scot's house

2007-02-16T14:34:00.000-05:00

I drove out to Scot's house last night, after a 6.5 hour shift at the Roadhouse, because I love his chickens t--h--i--s m--u--c--h.

Not really. The chickens are fun, but I'm a much bigger fan of the cat.

The first thing I did, upon arrival, was get my truck stuck in the snow. Funny thing about that; I was just telling a friend that all my arrogance over my winter driving skills would come back to haunt me. And there I was, all stuck and whatnot.

The second thing I did was swear loudly, and the third thing I did was make a cup of tea. After that it gets boring, and my nose was cold.

It's a long drive out to Scot and Jen's house, but the nice thing about it is getting Richmond, Dayton, and Cincinnatti radio stations relatively well. I appreciate having my scanning opportunities enhanced; each new station represents a higher chance that I won't be disgusted with the song they're playing.

Home played as I drove through Eaton, complete with the obligatory 'does every train in America have to go through Eaton, because it feels like I always have to stop at this crossing' experience. If you go here you can listen to the song yourself.

And I’ve been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two
“I’m fine baby, how are you?”
Well I would send them but I know that it’s just not enough
My words were cold and flat
And you deserve more than that

I owe my sisters Valentine's Day cards, I'm told, since I had snowdays on which to complete them. (And they aren't allowed to be Violentine's Day cards, even though that would be vastly more amusing.) I can make them belated ones, or just start now on some goofy Ash Wednesday cards; my mom wouldn't approve, but Kim at least would think they were great.

So I've been thinking about my sisters, and thinking about home... hardly suprising topics. Buble seems to be singing to a person who is home to him, rather than to a place. I tinkered with the idea that a person could be home for me. Maybe that's how I think of my sisters, or maybe it's how I could think of some dreamboat fellow like the guy who left his number with the bartender last night.

Maybe not, though. That's a lot of load for someone else to bear, to be home for me.

What would it mean to think of God as my home?

storytime

2007-02-15T13:05:00.000-05:00

The wife of a man became very sick. On her deathbed, she said to him, "I love you so much! I don't want to leave you, and I don't want you to betray me. Promise that you will not see any other women once I die, or I will come back to haunt you."

For several months after her death, the husband did avoid other women, but then he met someone and fell in love. On the night that they were engaged to be married, the ghost of his former wife appeared to him. She blamed him for not keeping the promise, and every night thereafter she returned to taunt him. The ghost would remind him of everything that transpired between him and his fiancee that day, even to the point of repeating, word for word, their conversations. It upset him so badly that he couldn't sleep at all.

Desperate, he sought the advice of a Zen master who lived near the village. "This is a very clever ghost," the master said upon hearing the man's story. "It is!" replied the man. "She remembers every detail of what I say and do. It knows everything!" The master smiled, "You should admire such a ghost, but I will tell you what to do the next time you see it."

That night the ghost returned. The man responded just as the master had advised. "You are such a wise ghost," the man said, "You know that I can hide nothing from you. If you can answer me one question, I will break off the engagement and remain single for the rest of my life." "Ask your question," the ghost replied. The man scooped up a handful of beans from a large bag on the floor, "Tell me exactly how many beans there are in my hand."

At that moment the ghost disappeared and never returned.

-Link

important phone numbers

2007-02-14T10:08:00.000-05:00

It was snowing as I drove to work last night. It wasn't a heavy snow, but the roads weren't plowed either, so conditions weren't great. There was a fellow walking up Rt.40 in the same direction I was driving so I stopped to pick him up.

He didn't speak much English, and my Spanish hasn't improved since I nearly failed it in college. He and I shared words to complain about the snow and the cold, and he asked if I was married or had babies, but we weren't able to communicate on an issue of great importance to both of us: where was he going? I thought he was heading to the mall, but he motioned me to drive past it. On down Rt.40 we went, and then turned around, headed back, taking turns at the wild gesturing and frustrated laughter.

Finally, he got me to stop at Hobby Lobby. I don't think that's where he was going, but at least he got to warm up a bit in my truck. He said something, and I tried to indicate that I didn't understand, which greatly disappointed him.

"You no like Mexicans?" he asked.

All my year and a half at ESR kicked in. What could be worse than accidentally representing myself as disliking someone based on ethnic group? So I replied, "no, no, I like Mexicans!"

"You like Mexicans to marry? Ella es muy bonita. My name is Jorge. Let me give number..." and he proceeded to tell me his phone number, which I promptly forgot because:
a) I don't remember phone numbers
b) I don't have a phone anyway, and
c) I didn't intend to call him.

So, I finally got to the Roadhouse, twenty minutes late. My lateness went unnoticed, because most of Richmond was panicking over the strange white stuff falling from the sky rather than coming for steak and beer. I clocked in, poured myself some coffee, and settled down on a stack of peanut boxes to read for class.

Toward the end of the first chapter, Paulsell notes that one of the most difficult of Jesus' teachings, that our helping others in need is helping him and that our ignoring others in need is ignoring him, is really an embodied command. It's about loving people in their bodies, whether they need food, clothing, shelter, or anything else.

That's all well and good, but what stood out to me was that Jesus had just told me that I was very pretty and offered me his phone number, and I hadn't even had the sense to write it down. I could have aced a prayer class with that one. Everyone else could have been labyrinth walking or chanting or whatever, and I'd just be looking for a phone...

"Hey Jesus, it's Julie. Remember me? I picked you up off the side of Rt.40 in the snow, once."
"Hm, yes, little red truck, dirty and made a lot of noise, heat was on but the fan didn't work? Am I remembering the right Julie?
"Well... yeah that's me."
"You dumped me in the Hobby Lobby parking lot because you didn't have the patience to learn my language."
"um..."
"I've got grace for the language issue, but you need to get your fan fixed. And seriously, vacuum. There's no reason to have that much hay on the floor of your truck when you live in a city.

Next time, next time I'll have paper and pen ready.

snowday squared

2007-02-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

My dad, his truck, and a *lot* of snow.

In other news, I'm enjoying my second snowday in a row. It's a beautiful day: the air is crisp, the roads are what passes for plowed in Richmond, and the sun has even come out to sparkle on the new snow. I showed up at school for class today, assuming it wouldn't be canceled because, well, it's a beautiful day. And I could get bald-tired Barbwire out of the snowbank without even using a shovel, so why would school be canceled?

Ah, Indiana. What a great day.

one of ESR's favorite dead horses to beat

2007-02-10T19:54:00.000-05:00

"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are."
-Augustine of Hippo

ahem - now with pictures!

2007-02-09T15:03:00.000-05:00

THE LAKE SNOW BAND WILL SWING BACK TO THE EASTERN SHORE OF LAKE ONTARIO AND BRING THE HEAVY SNOW TO THE REGIONS WHICH HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED CLOSE TO OR MORE THAN 100 INCHES. SNOW RATES WILL BE AROUND 2 INCHES PER HOUR AND MAY REACH 4 INCHES PER HOUR WITH ADDITIONAL SNOWFALL REACHING 3 TO 4 FEET OVER CENTRAL AND NORTHERN OSWEGO COUNTY BY MONDAY.
-link

That's my family, under the snow. They'll have good stories, I'm sure, better than 'Indiana folks don't know how to drive.'

Update: Ok, not my pictures. But my friend Lindsey took pictures of digging her car out of the snow.

in my email this morning

2007-02-09T08:21:00.000-05:00

Sowing Hope, by Wendell Berry

In the dark of the moon,
In the flying snow,
In the dead of winter,
War spreading,
Families dying,
The world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside
Sowing clover.

pre-grumble announcement

2007-02-08T23:29:00.000-05:00

But the fact that we're seeing a black candidate who seems infinitely more relaxed with himself than his female competitor speaks volumes about just how much we're likely to punish women who step outside the bounds of corporate-flavored gravitas.

Part of this is Clinton's own fault — the very act of saying "you keep telling me to be funny" is depressing evidence of her burdensome self-consciousness. But then again, female humor is easily bent into the worst cliches about women. Funny men, after all, are considered smart, confident and sexy. But wisecracking chicks risk accusations of bitterness, hormonal instability and the assumption (no matter what they look like) that they're using wit to compensate for physical unattractiveness.

-Link

This just reminded me about chapel tomorrow: led entirely by women, with only women speaking. I want to be excited- I'm all about people being able to hear their call to ministry without being slapped down for their gender- but I have a feeling I'll be grumbly afterward.

So, if you're in a mood to listen to a few hours of agitated gender theory tomorrow, take me out to lunch! That's my point. Because a free lunch is a good lunch.

busted out the markers

2007-02-08T22:56:00.000-05:00

I've been drawing the same cartoon characters since high school, more or less, without paying much attention to them. None of them have names, and while all of them are somehow me, their individual personalities are rather diffuse. I'm taking Spirituality and the Body now, though, so I've been looking at them a little more closely. This one tends to hold who I am more than the rest, and what stands out to me now is how large her eyes are- up on stalks and looking at everything.

She's also got hips. Just sayin'.

I busted out the markers because pieces of a poem I posted before were in my head:

...I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray...

...Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go...

...a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Not done; I labeled that post 'inauspicious beginings,' but that actually sounds rather encouraging. I am not done.

My recent attraction to this poem is all tied up with what Hugo wrote on conversion and regret. I'm struck by his words on forgiveness, in particular, but not in any way that I can articulate yet.

For something completely different: "...and then he's shouting that my astronauts were living together in sin and that they deserved to be mulched!" -Aqua Teen Hunger Force!

God's Wheel

2007-02-08T11:06:00.000-05:00

God says to me with a kind of smile,
"Hey how would you like to be God awhile
And steer the world?"
"Okay," says I, "I'll give it a try.
Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?"
"Gimme back that wheel," says God.
"I don't think you're quite ready yet."
-Shel Silverstein

Letter from Soledad Prison

2007-02-07T12:03:00.000-05:00

Hm. And hm again.

Speaking of imprisonment, we had some snow last night. Not a lot, but some. It stopped around seven, so I assumed that I'd be able to drive on a major road when I got out of work at eight-thirty.

But no- this is Richmond. The road was still covered with snow, and my bald-tired truck and I had an adventure getting home. I could hear my dad sitting next to me: Hold it steady. Don't brake, downshift. Watch that moron fishtailing in the Civic. Turn the radio off, singing is a distraction.

I left the radio on, but we made it home alright anyhow.

swirly guy said it

2007-02-01T13:24:00.000-05:00

These aren't particularly funny cartoons from today's Ethics class. We're reading Hauerwas, which is great, but it took time and coffee to bring me to a point where I wanted to draw something other than pillows and blankets. The quote is from class, part of a larger image given about rules falling from the sky.

Hauerwas rejects both deontological and teleological ethics in favor of a narrative approach; our ethics are formed not by rules, nor by consideration of the common good, but by the stories that we tell one another within community. I'm not sure why he juxtaposes deontological with teleological, rather than with axiological, but on a broader level he sounds more like a sociologist than a theologian or philosopher anyway.

If our ethics are relative to the stories we tell one another, then sin would be telling a different story, tweaking the narrative somehow. I'm not sure what I think of Hauerwas, overall, but I can relate to a sense of my self as consisting of all the stories I've told and been told, stories about my family, about my church, about what it means to be from Upstate NY and what it means to be Julie. And when I step out of that story, I step out of myself. I feel smaller, scattered, and insecure.

The story goes on, though; the trick is the telling it.

contentment

2007-01-29T15:32:00.000-05:00

"But godliness with contentment is a great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out."
-1 Timothy 6:6-7

Or, for more fun, read it in the Wycliffe version:
"But a great winning is piety, with sufficience. For we brought in nothing into this world, and no doubt, that we be not able to bear any thing away."

Easier cut-n-pasted than done.

Currently on Pandora: Last night, last night
Underneath the moonlight
I asked the owl, asked the owl
What to do
He said you only need a love that's true

That's what comes of swinging in ethical trees, I suppose.

cartoons

2007-01-24T23:36:00.000-05:00

I was asked, recently, why I never scan my cartoons and post them here.

Lots of reasons, I guess, ranging from 'I don't like using the scanner' to 'I don't draw very well' to 'an embarassing number of my cartoons express my deeply felt superiority to others in class.'

Here's a stab at it, though- this one's from yesterday's Ethics class. Something or other was being said about objective and subjective grounds for ethics; I'd give you more detail, but I was busy trying to draw an owl. It looks better here than it did in class. The question, I suppose, is whether the owl is talking to her friend in the tree, or to me.

And then there's reiterating my feelings on Ogden. Reading On Theology has not been one of the highlights of my week.

Appropriately, today's Word of the Day: 'inscrutable, adjective:
Difficult to fathom or understand; difficult to be explained or accounted for satisfactorily; obscure; incomprehensible; impenetrable.'

phooey on Odgen

2007-01-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

As far as I can tell, this fellow spent two full pages to say 'Christian Ethics must be grounded in a subjective knowledge of Christ.' I'm not really sure, though.

I didn't come to seminary for academic hazing, that's all I'm saying. Sometimes, I wonder if the anti-intellectualists in my religious heritage weren't on to something.

this clock would rock my world

2007-01-24T17:07:00.000-05:00

Seriously, go look. It's perfect for folks like me, except that I might not remember to look at my computer for the time.

Found that at Crooked Timber, where I also found this set of tag clouds. I didn't listen to the State of the Union, being too busy with considering yesterday evening's various propositions and learning that my jeans are totally slut gear, but I'm a little disturbed to note that my name was one of the most common words.

Apparently those sparkle-butt jeans are hotter than I thought.

inauspicious beginnings

2007-01-24T08:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the first day of class. I overslept, forgot to bring paper to class, made a frustrated and snarky comment about hoping that people wouldn't emotionally process in class, made an ass of myself at Common Meal, and then called it a school day and went to work. Last night's work experiences have been chronicled in a previous post, after which I went home, stomped around my apartment, came back to school to write about it until it was funny, and then showed up at Aaron's house after the Princess's birthday party was already gone.

A little storytelling, a little listening to poetry, a little Aaron guessing that I hadn't eaten supper even though it was after 10, and I finally got home around 1. Forgot to turn on the alarm, and woke up at 7:45 for today's 8:30 class.

So, still no notebook paper, on the second day of class. But I do like this poem from last night:

The Layers
--Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

the rebelution

2007-01-23T21:34:00.000-05:00

I don't often talk, around ESR parts, about the problems I see in conservative Christian circles. Folks here are quite motivated to address those problems, loudly and at legnth, even when they have no clue what they're talking about.

This survey, however, suprised me. It shouldn't have- I've met these folks before- but I guess it's been a while.

Some of the questions:
It is a stumbling block for a girl wearing pants to sit cross-legged (i.e. Indian style).
Seeing a girl stretching (e.g. arching the back, reaching the arms back, and sticking out the chest) is a stumbling block.
Seeing a girl take off a pullover (i.e. a shirt that must be pulled over the head) is a stumbling block, even if she is wearing a modest shirt underneath.
Dresses that are fitted at the waist (e.g. with a belt or waistband) are a stumbling block.
And etc.

First off, if the men taking this survey are turned on by girls, rather than by women, that's a problem that likely has little to do with the way the girl is dressed.

Perhaps the word 'woman' is immodest.

Anyway, I apologize to all the men I've tempted by sitting crosslegged in jeans, particularly the jeans I'm wearing today with the sparkles on the butt. If I weren't such a hussy, maybe I wouldn't get propositioned by guests at the Roadhouse.

I was joking with a friend over the weekend about going plain, but all this makes long skirts and headcoverings look pretty good to me.

swingingly naive

2007-01-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

I got a nine dollar tip off a thirty dollar check tonight. I asked the guys if there was anything else I could do for them, and they said "is there a room in the back where you could give us, um, a backrub?"

Nine bucks is nine bucks, I guess.

I went back to the storage area, later on, and some friends were talking about swing dancing. It's been forever since I've been swing dancing, and even though I'm no good at it I stopped for a listen. They asked if I wanted to join, and I said 'Sure! When?'

Long story short: they weren't talking about swing dancing. They were talking about swinging. I made a valiant attempt to ignore the problem by saying 'You've got a swing in your yard? Like a tire swing?'

Fellow gives me a long and somewhat discomfiting scan and says 'you know what I'm talking about.' Intensely. Then another person came up, and I slipped off with my ketchup.

Perhaps I should rethink my habit of dancing to rap music while climbing in the shelving. An odd night all around.

three heads

2007-01-22T23:26:00.000-05:00

JQ: ...I listened to the lecture and thought, “That’s a fascinating guy!” It turned out he was doing a lecture every day, so I kept coming back. The third time I came back, I was on a hallucinogen. I think that did influence me.

RU: He became more impressive? Kind of like the Grateful Dead?

JQ: Yeah, he became even more impressive and he had three heads.

-It's not a great article, but that part made me laugh.

what are you doing here, Elijah?

2007-01-22T12:14:00.000-05:00

Late last night, I was rereading a book of poetry by James O. Bond that I recieved from a friend who moved away. I had already turned out all the lights before I went digging for this poem, so I read it by a candle:

Let go, he said, and fall
Into the everlasting arms
Your frantic grasp upon the edge
Of sullen life is useless now,
Unhand the day, and unheeding fall
Into eternal care.

But no, I plead
I sense no sure embrace
I fear an everlasting fall
Into a cruel and empty space.

Remember yet, he said,
The gentle curvature of space
Encircling time and you
Holds in its arms
The wholeness of us all
And tenderly returns your fall.
Let go, he said, and rise
Into the endless skies.

It was also an evening for digging back through old music, starting with Eli and moving through Margaret Becker, Sarah Masen, Five Iron Frenzy, Third Day, and some Jars of Clay for good measure. Old friends of mine; I should haul them out more often for tea.

late, of course

2007-01-17T22:57:00.000-05:00

(I haven't been in much lately.)

We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization. There is still a voice crying out in terms that echo across the generations, saying: Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven.

This love might well be the salvation of our civilization. This is why I am so impressed with our motto for the week, 'Freedom and Justice through Love.' Not through violence; not through hate; no, not even through boycotts, but through love.

It is true that as we struggle for freedom in America we will have to boycott at times. But we must remember as we boycott that a boycott is not an end within itself; it is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority. But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

sleep and justice

2007-01-14T18:54:00.000-05:00

Last week or perhaps the week before, Aaron asked me if I wanted to go to a Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast. I said "sure!" Free food, talking about justice, hobnobbing with the Richmond social elite (I may have made the latter up); what could be better?

He checked back this afternoon, wanting to know if I was still up for breakfast. "Sure!" I say again. He tells me that he'll be by to get me at 6:40am.

6:40am.

I like justice. I want to see it roll down like the waters. I just think it should do so at a reasonable hour, say 10:30 for a nice justice brunch.

My committment to justice may be flawed, I suppose, but it will be more than made up for by my committment to coffee; I'll need a lot to make it through breakfast.

oh gracious

2007-01-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

"The sister of a Dutch bishop in Limburg once visited the abortion clinic in Beek where I used to work in the seventies. After entering the full waiting room she said to me, 'My dear Lord, what are all those young girls doing here?' 'Same as you', I replied. 'Dirty little dames,' she said."
(Physician, The Netherlands)
-Link

hearing gap

2007-01-11T20:51:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, in my class on ritual, we're holding Love Feast. For those of you not familiar with it, it involves feetwashing. A classmate who is working on the project gave us some simple instructions and advice, including (in my ears):

"Women ought not wear clothes around their waist."

Repeatedly, in this class, I've found myself identifying with the Brethren point of view. The professor describes 'the Anabaptist perspective' on a matter, and I think, 'Well, of course! What rational person could possibly think differently?' As galling as it is to admit that someone else might be right about me, I may find myself part of the Church of the Brethren before I leave.

Just the same, I don't think there's much Biblical basis for an ordinance of crop tops on women at Love Feast.

I waited, (semi)patiently for the discussion to resolve into something understandable, but noone else in the class reacted as though it was odd to ask that women not wear clothes around their waist. That was even odder; surely, in a class of eleven, someone might think that a bit strange!

My look of consternation was noticed by someone in the class, and I was asked what was on my mind. I paused a moment, trying to collect my thoughts, and repeated what I had heard.

"Women ought not wear clothes around their waist?"

Heard spectacularly wrong, of course. The advice was not to wear hose up to the waist, since wearing full pantyhose to feetwashing would result in a strip experience during worship to expose the feet. So the advice was about avoiding immodesty, rather than purposefully engaging it, although we did make the obligatory jokes about a new and more exciting version of Love Feast.

new favorite hymn, perhaps of the week

2007-01-11T20:34:00.000-05:00

(I love the Brethren Hymnal.)

Oh God, in restless living we lose our spirit’s peace
Calm our unwise confusion, bid thou our clamor cease.
Let anxious hearts grow quiet, like pools at evening still,
till thy reflected heavens all our spirits fill.

Teach us, beyond our striving, the rich rewards of rest.
Who does not live serenely is never deeply bless’d.
O tranquil, radiant Sunlight, bring thou our lives to flow’r,
less wearied with our effort, more aware of pow’r.

Receptive make our spirits, our need is to be still.
As dawn fades flick’ring candle, so dim our anxious will.
Reveal thy radiance through us, thine ample strength release,
not ours, but thine the triumph in the pow’r of peace.

We grow not wise by struggling, we gain but things by strain.
We cease to water gardens, when comes the plenteous rain.
Please, beautify our spirits in restfulness from strife,
enrich our souls in secret with abundant life.