The Paris Project

2009-10-04T14:20:00.007-04:00

Hibernation

Like a bear in late fall, I feel an instinct to hibernate.

I have a lot of writing to do, and instead of being a playspace for practicing the craft, the blog has started to feel like yet another source of expectations I'm failing to meet. (The people here are wonderfully gracious; it's just the blog itself.) The Paris Project has developed beyond its initial purpose and has lost focus. I need to invest my best in my classrooms, my family, and writing for publication, and set my on-line life on the back burner to simmer awhile.

So, until early 2010, The Paris Project is officially in hibernation. Don't mistake me for dead -- life is still pulsing. I'll emerge, just as soon as instinct tells me to.

2009-09-24T09:01:00.002-04:00

I should have listened

to Dr. Paul Reasoner, a philosophy professor at Bethel University, who said to me when I announced my intention to become an anthropologist, "Don't anthropologists have a very basic problem, in that they don't agree on what their subject of study is? What is culture, anyway?" I'm sure that's a poor paraphrase - it was 18 years ago - but his point stuck with me. At the time, my sister was becoming a dentist, and she's never had to question the basic definition of "tooth." But culture? Anthropologists have studied it for over a hundred years and still can't agree on what it is.

I just wrote this sentence in my forthcoming (God, please help it really come forth!) book:

Sexual desire is now considered central to human identity, and sexual self-expression is seen by many in our culture to be essential for healthy personhood.

I know many anthropologists would critique the words "our culture." Who are "we"? And can "we" claim to possess a single, unified "culture"? And if so, how can that culture be described, and who has the authority to offer a definitive description?

Earlier notions of culture as a discrete, bounded set of beliefs and practices that are shared fairly homogeneously by a group of people just doesn't work in a globalized world. Cultures are very diverse internally, and don't have precise external boundaries. I get that, but still, in my book I refer to "our culture" and its beliefs and values and practices and frameworks. I don't mean that our culture is our nation, or our linguistic group, nor do I mean that all of us (whoever "we" are) carry or express an identical cultural set. I do think there are some dominant frameworks, beliefs, and practices that impact some people ("us") but not all people, and that the people to whom my book is marketed will resonate with what I'm saying. The sign-signifier relationship for "culture" is more complex than for "tooth", but I still think it's a useful concept. We do still live in human groups that share beliefs, behaviors, and ways of life, and "culture" is a good concept for framing the shared dimension of human life.

I just hope no one with a PhD in anthropology who is predisposed to criticize me reads the book.

2009-09-23T12:50:00.002-04:00

What's in my bag right now

wallet, toothbrush, journal, calendar, The Dobe Ju/hoansi by Richard Lee, animal crackers, gum, Kung Fu Panda stickers, pens, and a Christmas wish list from my nieces (should you be interested, it reads "3T shirt, light-up toys with big buttons, American Girl clothes, Pixos, size 6 leotards").

What's in your bag?

Subtext to this post: Wow - I really will do anything to avoid writing my book. I'm going to do it now. Really, I am.

2009-09-21T14:37:00.004-04:00

An Idea Why

Christy's comment has been haunting me since she wrote it last week: "You are fabulous, and I have no idea why you stay in that world [American evangelicalism], but blessings on your work and your voice." The voice in my head keeps taunting me, "Christy doesn't know why you stay, and NEITHER DO YOU."

I wrote this essay explaining why I stay in evangelicalism for cultural reasons, and I still stand by it. But there's another reason, too, and I can't explain it in any other voice but an evangelical one. I believe in having a heartfelt relationship with Jesus. I believe in conversion - turning, again and again, to Christ. I believe in cultivating an intimate, emotional, inner conversation with God.

These emphases aren't unique to evangelicalism -- you'd find these elements in many Christian traditions -- as hallmarks, even, of Pietism, Wesleyanism, Pentecostalism, and others. But evangelicalism is the tradition that preserved these beautiful practices for me.

Evangelicalism is, for me, like a rotten apple. I see the rot - it's political (obviously), sociocultural (patriarchy, abuse, anti-intellectualism, etc.), and personal (bad pastors and leaders). I spend (waste?) plenty of time pointing out the stink to others, but I don't think the rot extends all the way to the core. Maybe I'll change my mind -- I can't see the future of the spiritual trajectory I'm on -- but for now, I'll hope Christy's blessings come to fruition.

2009-09-14T20:40:00.005-04:00

Admit it!

Sometimes I can’t help myself from goading my children to admit things they’ll never, ever own up to. Admit it, you’re tired! Tell me you ate the cake – I see your fingerprints in the frosting! They just can’t step up to responsibility, and though I know its futile, I just can’t stop prodding them.

Same goes for Calvinism. Despite overwhelming evidence of the futility of my efforts, I just can’t stop prodding contemporary evangelical Calvinists to admit their theology is driven by patriarchy.

Timothy George writes a fantastic Christianity Today article on John Calvin. George knows Calvin so well - the article is filled with easy quips and interesting asides. I loved it, except for the conclusion section on “Calvinism Reborn.” After describing Calvin as ministering on the margins, never fully at home in public ministry, Calvinism Reborn celebrates contemporary appropriations of Calvinism by J.I. Packer, R.C.Sproul, the Southern Baptist Convention, Tim Keller, John Piper, and the Passion and Together for the Gospel conferences. These people and movements are united more by patriarchy than by Calvinism – seriously, they’ll tolerate more discussion and intellectual disagreement over the Institutes than over the role of women. Timothy George encourages us to respect Calvin for living on the margins, but then doesn’t critique this list of contemporary Calvinists that includes not a single person of non-male or non-white identity, people who are not marginal in their own right, but are cast as marginal by this reappropriation of Calvin's theology.

Jim Belcher publishes Deep Church, a “third way” approach to church that moves beyond traditionalist and emergent theologies. I read the book when it was in manuscript form, and was turned off by the fact that the book doesn’t mention a single woman until close to page 100 (my friend Crystal Downing), and then only a few more for the rest of the book, and because Belcher leans Calvinist. But I was turned on by an interesting discussion of traditionalism and emergent, critique and appreciation of both, and a lovely vision for what church could be. But now it’s in published form, and because I had already read what’s inside, I judged the book by its cover. Endorsers include Rob Bell, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and Scot McKnight. Only white men, one of whom is known to be aggressively misogynist. This assemblage of white male voices, collectively endorsing another white male voice, is itself an assertion of power and a vision of how authority flows and how knowledge is produced in American Christianity.

I can laugh at my kids when they refuse to own up to what they’re really doing – they’ll grow up someday. But this is not Calvinism Reborn -- it’s Patriarchy Reloaded, and it’s no laughing matter.

2009-09-10T07:58:00.000-04:00

How are you being shaped as a lover?

In his new book Desiring the Kingdom, Jamie Smith is arguing that we are not just thinking heads, shaped by ideas and beliefs. We are desiring beings, shaped by culture to be lovers. He asks readers to think about ways in which they are shaped by the cultural institutions they participate in. He acknowledges that secular institutions can be beneficial, but leans more heavily on their idolatrous potential - how the mall, or the sports arena, lead us into love of self or material things. He gives very detailed analysis of a worship service, showing how the elements of worship can shape our loves in positive ways.

I took up his challenge to think about how my participation in a variety of cultural institutions shapes me as a lover. On a weekly basis, I spend time in four places, each of which shapes me deeply.

Christian college (40 hours/week). My place of employment shapes me into a person who is financially afloat. In addition to employment, my Christian college also helps me to give and receive happiness, education, love, respect, and creativity.

YMCA (8 hours/week). The YMCA is shaping me into a person who is healthy, balanced, and responsive to her own needs. It is a healing place, reminding me that I am more than a gestating, nursing, care-taking domestic drone.

Home (117 hours/week). At home, I do round-the-clock primary care-taking of children (they mostly sleep through the night now, but I'm still on call and have half an ear listening to them through the night). It is, by a long shot, the most formative institution in this season of my life. It is shaping me to be loving, self-sacrificial, happy, and in relationship.

Church (3 hours/week). In comparison to the other institutions, I spend very little time at church. And I don't enjoy worship services, in and of themselves, as some people seem to (Smith, for instance, and worship leaders and pastors). Worship, as configured in American culture, just isn't my cup of tea. I totally believe in church, and i've attended regularly since infancy -- I never took time off to rebel or be an atheist for even a summer. But sometimes I worry that, after 37 years immersed in this institution, church has formed me to be a judgmental jerk. Hopefully there are other good things happening in me that I just don't see yet. If you only invest several hours a week in church, maybe it takes 50-60 years to see results.

I like Jamie's exercise and encourage you to reflect (or comment) about how a cultural institution is shaping you. The exercise actually made me less worried about the idolatrous potential of cultural institutions, and more grateful for the common grace that comes to us wherever we are in God's world.

2009-09-05T13:08:00.005-04:00

Don't Move On

When you're grieving, well-intended people sometimes say, "It's time to move on." And if you get stuck in the early phase of grief where every single thing you do -- eat, sleep, dress, talk -- relates directly to your loss, people might say behind your back, "She really needs to move on."

The very notion of moving on has made me fear I'm grieving incorrectly -- I'm stuck, depressed, or insane. But today, six years since my triplets died, I can finally say with confidence that I'm not moving on. When an intimate dies, it's up to you to respond in your own way. If you need to move on, maybe because the person or their dysfunction tormented you, then you're finally free to enjoy this world without them. But if you weren't ready for them to leave, then you can keep them close.

Theologian William Spencer writes in this month's Christians for Biblical Equality newsletter about his mother. As her Alzheimer's progressed, a physician asked her how many children she had, as a memory test. She added one to the usual number, but it wasn't due to memory loss. Bill learned she had a stillborn baby, and never spoke of the baby even to its siblings. Another friend of mine said that, as her mother was dying, she spoke most often of her baby who had died sixty years earlier. She was eager to finally get to hold that baby.

You don't have to move on; you can move with. As I'm sure many of you do, I have a small collection of dearly departed friends and family who move with me in this life. They each offer something different to me - hope, love, courage, and joy. May they rest, and may we move, in peace.

2009-09-02T09:36:00.003-04:00

Desiring a good book

It makes me happy when theologians take culture seriously, and in a way compatible with cultural anthropology. Jamie Smith's Desiring the Kingdom is the first volume in a series of three that will, all together, offer a vision of what Christian higher ed is supposed to be doing: not just educating minds, but forming desires in ways harmonious with the kingdom of God.

I like the book because it takes Christian Reformed "worldview" ideas in a good direction, toward practice. In one sense, the book is an insider's conversation about shifting "worldview" discussions away from the intellect and toward practice. For some time, I've heard CRC conversation about how it's not just a "worldview", it's a "world-and-life-view", but that phrase was too clunky to really take off.

In my Christian Scholar's Review article, "A Pietist Perspective on the Integration of Love and Learning", I tangled with the Christian Reformed dominance in faith-integration discussions. As a pietist (a tradition I grafted myself into b/c my childhood fundamentalism doesn't take me very far in the world of ideas), and in the Anabaptist tradition that my college is related to, practice is emphasized over belief or knowing. And in cultural anthropology, Christian practice blesses our fieldwork and scholarly application, even if a Christian worldview doesn't ever gain traction in the secular mainstream.

But I'm not a theologian, and I'm not Christian Reformed -- in fact, I argued for grounding the practice of Christian scholarship in a variety of traditions, rather than scholars of various traditions assimilating into a Christian Reformed paradigm. Jamie Smith's work has potential to shape the dominant faith-learning tradition because he's part of it, and his innovative ideas about worship and practice and their relationship to worldview and belief are all part of the Christian Reformed swirl.

But my favorite part of the book wasn't such an insider's matter (inside CRC, or inside Christian higher ed). More to follow.

2009-08-25T13:00:00.004-04:00

Leah was Unloved

John Piper clarified his tornado post, comparing his cancer with the Minneapolis tornado. It's a tender post that reflects on his cancer and his beliefs about how God was present in the cancer-tornado (the logic is the same for both the cancer and the tornado). He believes God sent the cancer as a warning against sin, as a call to repentance and holiness.

It helps so much to see that the tornado opinion comes from a man who has a life that is as complicated as the rest of ours. But I still respectfully disagree. It's not a disagreement that needs to escalate into ad hominem attacks, foundational theology, or the quality of a person's faith. It doesn't need to escalate because we can't know these things - why tragedy happens or where exactly God is in it. We believe such things, we experience them, and we have faith/trust in them, but we don't know them. We should speak tenderly about such tender things.

I remember hearing a huge crack, like a splitting of the sky, several years ago. I was infertile, and I was trying to gain spiritual insight by studying Rachel's story, because she was also infertile. Genesis 29:31 says "When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren." The resounding crack I heard was a shattering of my belief in the literal reading of Scripture (not its authority or its inspiration - but my way of reading it). I had believed that when the Old Testament describes God's actions, these are literal. It's our job to believe that God did what the Bible says God did, and for the stated reasons, and to believe our world is just like that world. Asking deeper questions would be a sign of weak faith.

Gen 29:31 seems to say that God causes infertility because of the condition of women's lives. Even something as innocuous as being loved by your husband could be just cause for God closing the womb. But it hurts my head to try to figure out why many well-loved women do, in fact, have babies. And many unloved women do not have babies - having a crappy marriage doesn't guarantee fertility. So if this information about God's behavior is true (opens the womb of the unloved, closes the womb of the loved), it is strange in and of itself (Rachel didn't sin, and Leah didn't do anything virtuous). And God seems to apply this logic capriciously, which means I can't use it to definitively interpret a particular instance.

But when I started to question the text, so much more was revealed. In many tribal cultures, including the ancient Hebrews, people believe God (and gods) speaks through nature (bushes, tornados, etc.), judges, lots, and ordeals (Num. 5). Those are religious beliefs and conflict resolution mechanisms that are linked with a particular economic and social organization. In a capitalist state, we tend to believe God speaks through charismatic individuals, and that God speaks directly to individuals, often through romantic, intimate, 'heart' ways. See - religious beliefs aren't just linked to culture; they are culture.

So maybe the man who wrote Genesis believed that natural events like infertility could be 'read' like a text written by God. And maybe God really did speak to them through bushes, judges, and ordeals -- it's incarnational, how God comes to us in our cultures. And that man maybe thought Rachel was a little over the top with her distress over infertility (Jacob had other wives and maidservants, so Rachel's infertility didn't weaken the patrilineage). Tribal women in general, and Rachel and Leah specifically, might have heard a different message from God in their experience - maybe something about God blessing or cursing Jacob's seed - it just isn't recorded.

I don't rule out the possibility that God speaks to us through infertility, cancer, or tornados, and it isn't impossible that God causes these things. But I can't buy into tribal logic wholesale -- if I did, I'd have married my cousin and we'd be herding cattle together. (But if we did marry cousins and herd cattle, God speaking through a tornado or a closed womb would make a lot more sense.) But immersing myself in tribal logic (by reading the Old Testament) is good, though, because it helps diminish my tendency to buy into my own culture's logic wholesale -- that Jesus is my boyfriend, that God is only loving and nice as I define those terms, and so on.

I take the Bible very seriously, so seriously that I midrash it -- keep my eyes and ears wide open, and talk about the texts for years and years without firm conclusion -- rather than close my eyes and swallow it like a bitter pill.

Why is there cancer, tornados, and infertility? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I do know this - when a man writes about a tornado, he's also reflecting on his cancer. When a woman satirizes a man writing about a tornado, she's also grieving the babies she didn't have. At some level, theology is almost always theodicy, and theodicy is personal. So let's be kind to each other, or at least civil.

2009-08-25T07:54:00.002-04:00

The first day of work

Well, half day. We do some faculty development stuff before classes begin next week.

I skipped out of the house this morning, happy to have a destination in the workplace. Because in the workplace, there's so many things we just don't do: have tantrums, wear diapers, do laundry, cook, clean, kick other people in the face, rip peoples' possessions out of their hands, drool on others, and yell "mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy" so many times each day.

But there was a downbeat to my skips; they dragged a little. Because in the workplace, there are other things we just don't do: kiss each others' tummies, take naps, go swimming, give extravagent attention to scrapes on our knees and elbows, hug, watch TV, wear tiger costumes, stroke noses and ears, and whisper, "I love you mommy" so many times each day.

Good thing I get to go home in the early afternoon.

2009-08-20T13:34:00.007-04:00

The Toddler, The Discharge, and The Humidity

John Piper explains the biblical connection between the Minneapolis tornado and its target, the steeple of Central Lutheran Church where the ELCA was meeting to discuss homosexuality and church leadership. His conclusion? “The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin.”

Wow. Today the weather in Grantham, PA is “82 degrees, feels like 88.” The humidity is 73%. God is speaking to us, too, and he preordained me to interpret today’s weather for the residents of Grantham, and perhaps even Mechanicsburg, our surrounding suburb. My spirit is unclear regarding Camp Hill or the city of Harrisburg, so I don’t think the prophecy extends that far.

1. In Matthew 5:37, Jesus said, “Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” This means, weather-wise, that 82 degrees should mean 82 degrees. Anything more (the 6 degree difference due to humidity) comes from Satan. Humidity is a sign of God’s wrath. I know it’s hard to believe, but just ask anyone in Grantham. I’m an eye witness and I can tell you it’s true; it really is 82 degrees, and it really does feel like 88.

2. God has established restorative rituals by which we may cleanse ourselves of duplicity (when we, like the weather, seem to be one way but really are another). For example, when males become unclean, they are required to follow a seven day process of ceremonial cleansing (Leviticus 15) Males become unclean due to bodily discharge (including semen, but not limited to semen). According to Leviticus 15:3, whether it continues flowing from his body or is blocked, it will make him unclean. The uncleanness affects the following -- The man’s bed is unclean. The person who cleans the man’s bed is unclean. If the man with discharge spits on someone who is clean, he makes the other person unclean. Everything the man sits on is unclean. Any wooden items touched by the man become unclean.

3. So, why is it humid in Grantham during August? Because Maxwell Porter Paris, age 2, is an unrepentant sinner. Just the other day he eliminated a blocked discharge while running naked on the deck. He defiled his mother by making her clean it up, and while she was tending the discharge, he ran across the deck emitting a flowing discharge. He made footprints in the discharge, and touched his brothers, extending his uncleanness to them. He didn’t spit on his brothers, but he does open-mouth kiss their shoulders, which I think we better count as spitting just to be on the safe side. The deck is made of wood, so it is unclean. The sin of Maxwell has tainted himself, his mother, his three brothers, his father, all the household furniture, his crib, and the deck. Instead of following the seven days of ceremonial cleansing, he jumped in the backyard pool and shouted “Cold!” with a spirit of mockery.

4. I cannot stress enough that God is not making Grantham humid because He hates Maxwell. He’s making us all miserable with heat and humidity because He loves us so much. God will increase the humidity as a sign of his love, calling Max to repentance. It’s true: between 1 pm and 3 pm today in Grantham, the weather shifted from 82/feels like 88 to 83/feels like 90. A sun shower of sprinkling rain is falling on our pool; surely each drop is a tear shed by our loving God who is always angry with us. Or is He our angry God who loves us so much?

5. Conclusion: II Samuel 3:39 states, “May the LORD repay the evildoer according to his evil deeds!" Therefore, until Max repents, the weather will continue to bear witness to his sin. The air will be one temperature, but will feel like another, providing a natural analogy to Max's life, which claims to be one thing (dear toddler), but really is another (rotten sinner). When humidity decreases, and the weather is one in measurement and sensation, you will know that the uncleanness of 108 Woodside Drive has ended.

2009-08-20T08:39:00.004-04:00

Is meditation by proxy possible?

Won't someone attend this on my behalf? It's a one-day time of retreat and renewal, led by my favorite Buddhist priest and writer, Karen Maezen Miller. (Not that I have a long list of Buddhist priest/writers, but still, she's great!)

Mother's Plunge Retreat and Renewal It's in Rochester on Sat, Oct. 10

I'll actually be in Minnesota that weekend also, but speaking at Christianity 21, and for some reason they didn't schedule in 10 hours of free time on Saturday for traveling to Rochester to attend a different event.

Are you going to be at Christianity 21? I'd love to know if there will be friendly faces in the crowd.

2009-08-16T20:17:00.002-04:00

A Two-Track Mind

I really miss blogging, but I'm finding that writing two books simultaneously is really cutting into my blogging time. One is due Oct. 1, the other Dec. 31, and life should open up again after that. Seems like, all summer, I think of only two things:

1. My books. One is a cultural anthropology textbook (co-authored with Brian Howell), the other is about sexual identity. Night and day, I ruminate about questions like, "Is it Ju/hoansi, !Kung, San, or Bushmen?", or "What ethnographic film was that where the guy makes a blow gun for several days, running wet sand down the shaft to smooth it?" And, of course, when I struggle to write a glossary definition of "cultural anthropology" or "fieldwork", then I have to question whether or not they ever should have given me a Ph.D. (There's a name for that - the more educated people become, the more they doubt their expertise.)

2. My kids. The twins (4) are talking, swimming, and parts of their faces are growing at different rates, which is great for an anthropologist-mother to practice her observation skills (fieldwork: the anthropological method involving participant-observation). The 2-year-old, when he isn't bullying a younger child at a park, is throwing tantrums. When I'm not thinking about Yanamami ebene (or wishing for some - it's their hallucinogenic drug), I'm deciding between ham and pb & j for lunch, pool or park for playtime, and time-out or spanks for whoever is asking for it.

And as summer closes, I'm going to have to cram one more thing into my life -- my job. Good thing I'm teaching Intro to Cultural Anthropology, using a draft of our book as the text. But this blog is likely to just limp along for the next six months. It's good for my readership, though - winnows it back down to the devoted few.

2009-08-06T07:14:00.002-04:00

Intentions

We're spending the week at my mother-in-law's cottage on Chatauqua Lake in New York. Traveling with children is a chore, so everything we've done has had upsides and downsides: walking around the Chautauqua Institution (carrying a 30-pound child in the pouring rain), playing at the beach (having meltdowns from travel stress), sitting out on the porch looking at the lake (while the toddler runs into the street), and so on.

I had a moment of clarity and a moment of recall. I recalled a dreadlocked brightly-dressed woman on Oprah saying something about speaking your intentions into the kindness of the universe. Sounds crazy, but not crazier than what I've done most of my life -- taking advice from old overweight suited white men on TV speaking about the things of God in affected, booming voices.

So I said it. "I want to come back here lots of times." May it be so.

2009-07-30T18:50:00.012-04:00

The right kind of grace

In my first-year college western civ course, Dr. Michael Holmes lectured on the Renaissance. He said the masculine ideal was to be skilled and knowledgeable in many different areas, but the Renaissance ideal went even further. The man needed sprezzatura -- an ease, grace, even near-nonchalance that would bring beauty to his displays of skill and knowledge.

Dr. Holmes' voice (from 19 years ago!) came to mind today while I was screaming at my kids -- so many times I now have a sore throat. In my defense, here's what transpired by 7:45 am. Daddy starts waffles, but the waffle maker breaks and I insult his choice of waffle maker, something I had already done comprehensively at its point of purchase five years ago. Toddler whips off diaper and poops on the carpet. In reaction, a twin vomits his entire breakfast, also on the carpet. All three of them make a beeline for the mess to investigate, so I herd them upstairs. In the time it takes me to get shorts out of the closet, they flood the entire bathroom with an inch of water. I scream, they cry. I dress them: three shirts, three shorts, two underwears, six socks, six shoes. We head for the car, but two take a detour to hurl themselves down the slip-and-slide, getting soaking wet. Four more shirts, two shorts, one underwear, four socks, four shoes. The toddler's carseat hasn't been replaced since it was moved yesterday. "Fuck this!" I yell, and that becomes the twins' chant while I put the carseat in. Eleven more hours until bedtime.

Yesterday a woman e-mailed a request for wisdom regarding "work-family balance" (she must have read some other publication of mine - no blog reader would solicit such wisdom from me). Here's part of what I told her:

I don't balance motherhood and work - I think it's impossible. Work has a tendency to always want more from me, which is sort of an idolatry (tendency to take over life) that I can try to keep in check. But family always wants more, too, and that is totally fair. The kids really would like for me to be with them all the time, meeting every need at the moment they experience it, round the clock! And that's just the nature of children - it's not wrong, and I don't resent it. But this means that for any one thing I choose to do, there's always at least one other thing that I also could be doing. That doesn't seem possible to balance - I use the metaphor of survival instead of balance. James and I ask ourselves, are we surviving this? Are the kids surviving? And yes, we all are, so OK, we're doing good enough! It's a low standard, but we live pretty close to the bone most days. We are making it, but if you saw us, you wouldn't say we make it look easy. It's hard work, and we make it look even harder.

Sprezzatura is a kind of grace - that of an athlete or an artist. Some parents have it, too, and I admire them when I see it. But like a party girl might skip over the wine cooler and go straight for the shots, I look right past sprezzatura in search of hard-core grace. It's grace that these children adore their mother, though she screams. It's grace that I adore them, though they vex me. We get by on grace, just not the kind that makes us look good.

2009-07-28T21:11:00.002-04:00

Beer with the Prez

Will a beer shared between President Obama, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge Police Officer Sgt. James Crowley be a waste of the nation’s time? I heard a cable news commentator say the President should move on to more important things, like health care. Others say Obama shouldn’t have commented on Gates’ arrest at the Presidential news conference; it is a matter too small for presidential attention.

The only thing that’s too small in this story is a single beer. They should each have several, if they like, and let the conversation take as long as it takes. Thus far, our nation has wasted over three hundred years on racism. Surely we can spare an hour or two of our President’s time, not wasted on racism but wisely invested in racial reconciliation.

Another thing that’s too small is the amount of time I have to take a shower. With three preschoolers, I can sometimes get a quick rinse, but never indulgences like facial moisturizing or leg shaving. So as I often do, this morning I deposited my little boys at the YMCA child care center, worked out, and headed for the shower. I chose the only curtained stall at the far end of the otherwise open women’s shower room, which I’ve seen other leg-shaving women do (local cultural norms allow public leg-shaving, but privacy is preferable.) A flock of senior ladies filled the shower room after their swim class, and one stood outside my shower curtain and began berating me. “That curtained stall is for handicapped people! I’m handicapped and she’s in there just taking her time!” Someone offered her a chair, available for those who need to shower seated. She yelled, “I don’t want that chair! I’ll just lean against the wall here, an old handicapped lady, while this girl takes up my shower!”

I emerged, with only one smooth leg, into the midst of twelve other bathing ladies and offered her my space. I think my voice was nervous, sarcastic, and sincere all at the same time. She screamed, “Get out of there! Who do you think you are? And shave your legs at home – that’s disgusting!” Another woman came over and whispered, “Her only handicap is being an old bitch. Just forget her.” But being berated in front of a group of people while naked isn’t easy to forget.

And though I’m white, I can see why, if you’re African-American – even a highly educated, successful one like Dr. Gates – it isn’t easy to forget the slavery, subjugation, discrimination, and on-going inequalities hurled at your people. Gates’ career, of course, is committed to remembering these truths, not forgetting them. The encounter between Gates and Crowley was not an interpersonal conflict; their encounter set a ball in motion that, as it rolls, gathers up the racial disparities in the criminal justice system, racial profiling, mistrust between police and racial minorities, segregation, and even slavery. That ball rolls very, very quickly, harnessing all that energy in an instant when black and white come together in America in a contentious situation.

I don’t know the details of Gates’ arrest, and I’m not drawing conclusions about blame or innocence. But I do know this: President Obama and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. are two wise Americans, and when they apply their wisdom to race, it behooves the rest of us to pay attention.

Look at what just happened on an ordinary day at an ordinary YMCA: two people couldn’t resolve a conflict, despite sharing a common gender, race, nationality, social class, and language. I left angry and hurt, and I imagine her emotional tea kettle is still whistling. The woman who comforted me did so by berating my accuser, which was well-intended and well-received, but didn’t help bring real peace or harmony. And all the by-standers, the other ladies, were diminished by having to witness our encounter. How much more difficult if, in addition to the interpersonal dimension, conflict also hounded the dynamics between our genders, nationalities, or races?

Is it possible that Gates and Crowley, two men from races and social institutions (criminal justice and academics) that are often at odds, can dialogue about their encounter? We see it so rarely, it’s hard to even fathom a productive conversation about a racial conflict in which each person tells their version of the story and describes their decision-making and their feelings, and each truly listens to the other. And maybe they talk for a very long time, sometimes resolving differences and sometimes deciding to let the irreconcilable rest. And maybe it spins out into talking about slavery and colonialism and segregation, and then it spins back in to talking about family and favorite books and who should have won American Idol last season.

That the citizens of this country learn to successfully resolve conflicts, without emotional or physical violence, is a matter of presidential concern. That the descendants of slaves and the recipients of white privilege learn to live successfully together in a society is also worth the President’s time and attention. Racial problems ripple through our lives on every level, political, economic, domestic, and interpersonal, and so whether the President works for justice over lunch with policymakers, or over beers with two of his fellow citizens, it is worth the nation’s time. I’ll be watching closely, hoping to gain insight and communication skills that I can take anywhere, even to the shower.

2009-07-27T16:27:00.001-04:00

Fetish

What kind of man are you: breast, leg, or rump? When it comes to women and meat, many men have favorite parts. I like to see myself as more high-minded than that; whether meat or manly parts, variety spices my life. But when it comes to writing, I think I may have a fetish.

I’m a sucker for topic sentences. When I start to grade a paper (I’ve been grading for the last few days), I begin with anticipation. Beautiful things catch my eye, and I can’t help but stare: a prudent thesaurus consultation, an absence of misspelled homonyms, a clear thesis – no, wait, a clear thesis and a roadmap sentence that follow a clever lead. When a paper flaunts what it’s got, and makes it seem effortless, of course I stop and take a second look. Don’t judge me; you know you do it, too.

But when I see a well-formed topic sentence with six to eight sentences following that relate to the topic sentence and advance the thesis appropriately, well, I’m hooked. My eyes dilate, my pulse increases, and my palms start to sweat. I keep reading; I can’t not keep reading. If the next two paragraphs also have clear topic sentences that advance the thesis even further, I sink into the paper like a mother of preschoolers sinks into an easy chair after the dinner dishes are done and the little monsters are finally asleep for the night.

I presume if you’re a “leg man” or a “breast man,” the fantastic-ness of that one part can overcome other flaws. Topic sentences do this for me. Because I’m professionally obligated, I grade on misplaced apostrophes, mis-chosen spellcheck suggestions, 1.5-inch margins, and reference formats that conform to no known style guide. But truth is, if a three-page paper has four or five body paragraphs with nice topic sentences, I could easily overlook the overwrought thesaurus synonyms, the inappropriate use of the second person, and the footnote referencing a conversation with the author’s boyfriend as an ethnographic interview.

A student offering me a topic sentence is like the power triad of stranger, baby, and candy. Dangle a topic sentence at me and I can’t help but snatch it, fresh saliva gathering at the corners of my mouth, and rip the wrapper off to get at the rest of the paper.

2009-07-23T13:10:00.003-04:00

Gender difference

Tomorrow through Sunday I'll be speaking at the Christians for Biblical Equality conference in St. Louis, MO. The gist of my plenary talk is that today's Christian culture overinflates gender difference, locating supposed difference mostly in personality and temperament, and grounding gender difference in creation rather than in culture. But perhaps I should revise my talk in light of my ethnographic observations at the Camp Hill YMCA this morning (I was doing participant-observation, blending in perfectly as a treadmill mom):

From 9:15-9:30 AM, eleven boys (age 7-9) and eight girls (age 7-9) and three camp counselors waited outside for a schoolbus to take them to the beach. The children were limited to a small hillside space, and the boys dominated about 90% of the space by using the full range of motion of their arms and legs. Most girls stood or sat beside their bags, lined up on the perimeter of the space. Many girls were in constant motion, but with their mouths and hands, within 6-8 inches of their bodies.

Activities that most boys did (but not all), but no girls did: turned their lunchbags into guns, swung lunch bags around their heads, kept large muscles in perpetual motion, engaged other boys without smiles or verbal invitation, tried to disassemble a brick wall, tried to disassemble fencing, tried to disassemble a sewage drain.

Activities that most girls did (but not all), but no boys did: hugged counselors, admired counselor's clothes and hair, organized contents of lunch bag, sat quietly, talked quietly, used smiles and words to engage others.

Activities that girls and boys both did, each in their own way:
- girls and boys both shoved, but on the two occasions that girls shoved each other, the shove transitioned into a hug. Many boys shoved numerous times per minute (I lost count at 50 times in less than 5 minutes), and never hugged.
- a lone girl and six boys competed to climb the hillside and stand on a covered drain. The boys then tried to disassemble the drain, and the girl lost interest.
- girls and boys both ran. Boys paused to destroy landscaping. Girls paused to compare shoes and bug bites with each other.

This evidence is real -- I saw it with my own eyes, and I see it in my own boys everyday. In the last 24 hours, we had one boy run over another boy's arm with a bicycle and ram the bike into his face, one boy hold another under the water until he panicked (it was either waterboarding or attempted drowning - we're not sure), one boy stomp on both brothers' arms, and so on. But they're polite -- after one twin rammed the bicycle into the toddler's face, the other twin asked nicely, "Daddy, can I crash Max's face now?"

Gender difference is real. But it isn't located primarily in temperament -- girls = nurture and loveliness, boys = adventure and competition. It's located everywhere -- in bodies as well as temperament, and it's cultivated by culture. We don't know gender apart from culture, and we shouldn't be so quick to assume that what seems natural to us was given by God. "Natural" often just means successful socialization, not "derived from nature."

And, most importantly, gender differences do not add up to women deserving to be subordinated, abused, marginalized, silenced, or excluded from leadership. And they don't add up to men deserving power, privilege, divine right, or domination. Leadership would be much, much improved if he who turns lunchbags into guns led in close cooperation with she who hugs after shoving.

2009-06-26T13:47:00.010-04:00

Fire insurance

"Being saved is about your whole life, and all the decisions you make each day. You can't just rest on the fact that you prayed a certain prayer." So said my childhood friend, now a mother of small children, when I asked her whether she is teaching her children to become born-again in the way we were taught it thirty years ago.

"But still," she continued, "my kids have prayed the sinner's prayer. I'm not totally sure what I think about it, but it's good insurance. You know, something to fall back on. At least they're several years away from the age of accountability, so I don't have to worry about it too much yet."

In my household, the age of accountability is, well, whatever age you happen to be. My four-year-olds are held accountable for their decisions, and so is the 2-year-old, and so is the 36-year-old and so is the 42-year-old. I can imagine my preschoolers being questioned by the Great Judge, "Did you enjoy the sunshine I gave you? What about all that love your parents had for you -- did you receive it? And the bruise on your twin's face, Wesley, have you apologized for that yet?" There's no two ways about it -- they're accountable. Each of us, regardless of chronological age, is responsive to and responsible for the grace, love, and joy that flow in and out of our lives.

But that wasn't what stuck in my craw -- it was the insurance. Is it a good idea to have an insurance policy against spiritual failure? I buy insurance to protect the semi-valuable things in my life: possessions and income. The most valuable things, however, have no back-up.

Take marriage, for instance. My husband and I agreed to be partners for life, and sealed the promise with a spoken word. I've got no contingency plan, no husbands on stand-by, and no escape hatch of my own. If it ends, it will end very badly. Marriage is supposed to last on the strength of a promise and an ever-accumulating stockpile of shared experiences. The relationship calls for faith and trust, and girding it instead with plans and policies just doesn't work. Taking out an insurance policy would actually sabotage that which I hope to strengthen.

I imagine my friend's little boy standing before God someday and being judged unworthy of eternal life with God. The boy reminds God, "But I prayed the sinner's prayer way back when," and God is forced to relent -- the insurance policy holds. The boy has no faith -- he only has his transactional prayer. And this God has no love or mercy -- God is bound by the very rules He inflicted on us. It just doesn't make sense, relying on insurance as back-up in a relationship that is, by its nature, uninsurable.

I'll just hit "delete" and erase that part of the conversation with my friend. Because the first thing she said makes such beautiful sense all on its own: "Being saved is about your whole life, and all the decisions you make each day." Living free -- trusting only God's promise and the ever-accumulating stockpile of experiences you share with God -- turns out to be not fire insurance against hell, but blessed assurance for this blessed day.

2009-06-25T08:10:00.003-04:00

Surviving the Island of Grace

Wow. I couldn't put it down, except to wipe away the tears that kept welling up. Surviving the Island of Grace is a well-written memoir about life as an Alaska salmon fisherman. I'm going to read more from Leslie Leyland Fields.

The book inspires me to be a better wife, to go outdoors, and to work hard at something practical someday (probably not salmon fishing, tho - seems like super hard dangerous work, which is bad enough, but it's cold, too.)

2009-06-21T09:18:00.013-04:00

Entrepreneurship

Frankie Schaeffer has a convert's zeal for Eastern Orthodoxy, finding there the true home that fundamentalism never was for him. Several friends in Pennsylvania have invited me, with similar enthusiasm, to consider becoming Episcopalian, or Brethren in Christ, or Unitarian Universalist. But I don't get it. I have rich experience and resonance with certain elements of the African-American holiness, Mennonite, and Episcopal churches, but none are home to me, not even the fundamentalism of my youth.

If organized religion is an apple, the shine on mine has worn through. In fundamentalism, I learned timeless universal truths that all people everywhere ought to believe, and that everyone in my church and family had always believed. But rub that shine even lightly, and it dulls. My church was pastored by a pedophile, and my friends' parents (the stalwarts) have moved in various directions from the one true point of truth where we we had vowed to stand firm. A genealogy of my family would show a hodgepodge of fundamentalists, Lutherans, Catholics, non-Christians, and generic nominal Christians. It seems to me that the fundamentalists felt most strongly about their beliefs, and imposed them more strongly forward in time on their children, and back in time through their interpretation of their ancestors. I learned to overperceive the scope and importance of fundamentalism in my family and my church, and to underperceive flexibility, difference, and innovation.

It's not a matter of tossing aside my bruised apple in favor of a new shiny one, which is the risk I run by hanging my hopes on some new tradition. Maybe I'll stick with the Brethren in Christ, the Wesleyan-Anabaptist-Pietist denomination of my college and my family's present church. But I won't tell my children this is the true and only way. Instead, I'll describe it like an entrepreneur looking to maximize a business opportunity. We go to this church because it was there. We're mustering up our initiative and hoping profit accrues by investing the communal part of our spirituality in this place and in these people.

I saw a documentary about an Italian family who has tended the same vineyard since the 16th century. It seemed wonderful to inherit a place and a purpose in the world. It seems like it would be wonderful, religiously speaking, to come from a family who loves the tradition that has shaped them for generations. But that's not what I have. My family abandoned whatever long-standing stability they ever had in Europe (which likely wasn't much, seeing as they left). We're new immigrants to the United States, for six generations shifting and striving to survive economically and culturally -- and religiously as well.

Religiously, we haven't been nurtured together by a common mother church. And despite what we tell ourselves, we're not the remnant, the few true believers huddled in our lifeboat while the world sinks to hell. If I had to choose a metaphor (and I feel as if I do), I'd say we're spiritual entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is one who manages one's own business, often with great initiative and risk. My genealogy shows many individuals and families taking initiative to live in the Way of Jesus, affiliated in various ways with the organized church as it existed in each generation. My children come from a long line of people who have taken religious and spiritual matters into their own hands. That's a risky way to live -- I might not recommend it as a general rule -- but I think it's working alright for us.

2009-06-17T08:34:00.004-04:00

What I Hate About Vomit, Written After Two Children Have Had the Virus, and One is Most Likely Still Going to Succumb Within the Next Day or Two

Revised Title: What I Hate About Vomit, Written Now That All Three Children Have Had the Virus (four hours after the original post)

I hate vomit. I hate touching someone else's stomach contents, even if I gestated that person. I hate the way its smell triggers my gag reflex. I hate the way children don't use buckets. I hate the way toddlers call out "mommy, I'm sick!" instead of cleaning it up themselves discretely. I hate the way vomit, if you sleep in it for several hours, permeates into your ears, skin, and hair, and won't come out even after a bath. I hate finding a vomit smell inside an ear or between toes, hours after a bath. I hate vomit's color and texture. I hate vomit's intrigue - the irresistible draw to define which foods are in it.

I hate cleaning up vomit. I hate cleaning sheets and bodies with only one hand because I have to cover my nose with a cloth. I hate cleaning up with two hands, and then vomiting myself. I hate discovering a vomit scent in carpet months after I thought I cleaned it. I hate vomit that soaks into pillows.

I hate vomit's timing. I hate having pukey towels, sheets, pillows, carpets, stuffed animals, and children on my hands at 3 am. I hate being woken up by the sound of vomit. I hate lying in bed afterward, anxious and fearful that someone's tummy isn't entirely empty (because it almost always isn't). I hate waiting for vomit to come out of subsequent children after its come out of one (because it almost always does). I hate losing sleep.

When it comes to spirituality, I'm all about accepting reality. Accept all things, even pain and suffering, for what they are. Wishing things away doesn't ever help; accepting their presence always does. But I just can't accept vomit. It is unacceptable on every level. That's the only thing I don't hate about vomit -- my resistance to it. I accept my non-acceptance.

2009-06-14T10:03:00.002-04:00

How to leave fundamentalism (without even trying)

My twins recently turned four. When I was four, I accepted Jesus into my heart. I've been agonizing over the fact that I haven't even invited my sons to accept Jesus into their hearts, nor encouraged them to abandon the frolicking hell-bound path of worldliness and sin that they're on. I haven't told them they're going to hell someday, and mommy and daddy are going to heaven, and if they pray the right prayer, then they can come to heaven with us.

Obviously I have some unresolved issues with my own journey to salvation! Accepting Jesus into your heart is a good thing. I believe that. But the accompanying theology, fear, and shame isn't helpful at all. And I no longer believe in the exclusivity of that metaphor for salvation -- that the sinner's prayer (which is derived from scripture, not written in it) is the only ticket to heaven.

Sometimes it seems the stakes are huge and they're planted here: aggressive evangelism of preschoolers. But the truth is, I'm teaching my children about spirituality every day, simply by living with them (it's everywhere, in my cooking, my yelling, my praying, my comforting, etc.). I don't need a system or an ideology to pass on to my children, because the Way of Jesus is a way. We live it together, even if (especially if!) we can't articulate it perfectly, systematize it thoroughly, or prove it scientifically.

And I'm heartened to see much of my fundamentalism left behind as if in a cake pan; I'll serve the best of my religion to my kids in large slices and leave behind the crumbs. Most of it isn't intentional, but when I engage the fundamentalism of my youth (on a summer visit back home), I see what I was taught as a child, but I'm not teaching to my children:

- that they're going to hell
- that God kind of loves them and kind of hates them
- that sex should be discussed with words like "filthy" "slutty" and "dirty"
- that rightful authority should be ascribed to James Dobson, Jim Bakker, Ken Ham, Bill Gothard, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell
- that conservative talk radio and cable news corresponds with conservative Christianity
- that whatever they're doing isn't good enough
- that their culture deserves their fear, judgment, and avoidance
- that the the world is 6000 years old and that God planted dinosaur bones in the earth to test our faith
- that Jesus is going to return any minute and won't they feel ashamed because their beds aren't made
- that, as boys, authority over women is their birthright
- that if they question outrageous, violent, ethnocentric, historically questionable, or contradictory things in the Bible, their faith is weak
- that a single moral point may be derived from absolutely anything in the Bible

If you have advice about 4-year-olds accepting Jesus into their hearts, I'll take it. That's a live issue for me, but wow, how much more of my theology has died as I become more and more alive. That's wonderful to have in my heart.

2009-06-12T13:12:00.006-04:00

Faith of my fathers

“Uh, could you try to straighten that out a little?,” asked my dad after I hoed my first row in his garden. On subsequent rows, he didn’t even bother asking. Come July, curvilinear crops of beets, beans, and carrots will fill up his perfectly square garden plot.

Dad gardens every summer, and every summer he compares himself unfavorably to his father. Grandpa was a fundamentalist Baptist minister who gardened as a hobby, a serious enough hobby to feed his family of six for several months of the year. Garden bounty was supplemented with small-town pastoral swaps: a chicken for a funeral, beef for a wedding.

If grandpa saw my rows, dad said, he’d say, “Why’d you send that girl to college? Go to college, and you come back and can’t even hoe a straight row.” True, but my life would offend grandpa in more ways than that. Grandpa read only the Bible – he didn’t believe in worldly learning, including the daily newspaper. His granddaughter learns from Marxism, feminism, anthropology, and puts no limits on her reading. Grandpa believed women were to be submissive wives and mothers, and here his granddaughter is a working mother with a husband who parents full-time. Grandpa didn’t believe in college – Bible school for pastors, and hard work for the rest. His granddaughter went to college and beyond, and now holds authority over men in the classroom. Grandpa died when I was two, so I can only imagine what our relationship would be like, based on stories from his children and his sermon notes. I do know my father, though, and while we see eye-to-eye on many issues, "women in the workplace" is not one of them.

Despite our deep differences, grandpa, dad and I can find common ground in the garden. We each parted ways with our parents, making lives for ourselves that might provide escape from our family’s status quo, and that might even reverse the Curse. Grandpa’s parents were North Dakota farmers, and grandpa set out to Bible school (William Bell Riley’s Northwestern Bible School). He didn’t want to do painful toil on the earth, producing nothing but thistles and thorns (Gen. 3), and found an open path in Bible study and pastoral work. But he always kept a massive garden (poorly, by his father’s standards). Dad escaped his family’s small-town Midwestern fundamentalism by attending a secular university and becoming a white-collar corporate worker, putting even more distance between himself and toiling in the earth. But he kept gardening too (poorly, by his father’s standards), and scooched over just a bit from fundamentalism to right-wing evangelicalism.

Just as grandpa and dad rejected Adam’s curse, I reject Eve’s, who was damned to a life of domestic labor and unfulfilled relational longing. As they did, I took drastic measures: moving to the East, becoming a professor, marrying an equality-minded man, and revising the right-wing evangelicalism of my upbringing to make space for my femininity. But I keep gardening, too (poorly, by anyone’s standards).

At twilight, dad and I stood at the edge of his garden, offering well wishes to the cucumber seeds and encouraging a toad hopping across pepper mounds. There’s no returning to the garden of our ancestors, but thank goodness we can make our own – such as they are – and enjoy their yield.

2009-06-10T08:07:00.002-04:00

Life in the big suburb

I’m overwhelmed by life in the big city, or should I say the big suburb. For the month of June we’re visiting my parents in a Minnesota suburb nearly twice as big as Harrisburg, the state capital and the biggest city within range of our Pennsylvania home. My parents moved here in the late 1970s when they were an upwardly mobile young family looking for a good school district and a house with central air. They stayed when virtually all their neighbors made the move to McMansions in newly developed potato fields, and today they are the elderly white couple living in an urbanized suburb with midnight basketball on their street, African and Asian languages called out from split-level kitchen windows, and exposed underwear easily viewed on teen boys with low-riding belts barely holding up baggy pants.

I can barely watch the news while I’m here. Minnesota news is notoriously alarmist when it comes to weather (STORM WATCH! TORNADO POSSIBLY COMING LATER! RAIN! MODERATE SUNSHINE CARRIES CANCER RISK!), but there are also so many individual stories of tragedy, property damage, crime, and death. I haven’t seen any news since day before yesterday – I’m still in recovery from that day’s report. A five-year-old boy was killed a few miles north of here when he chased his ball into the street and was struck by a garbage truck that was backing up. Garbage trucks are slow and loud (“bee-beep, bee-beep” when they’re in reverse), but he didn’t see the truck and the truck didn’t see him. His family had immigrated here from Liberia just a few years ago – his parents risked much more than mine did to improve their children’s futures by moving to this suburb.

The next day, a columnist in the local paper wrote about the importance of watching children. Their peripheral vision isn’t developed, so they don’t even see what adults see when we look at the street. While they may understand directions (look both ways, don’t run in the street), they don’t have good impulse control. And most importantly, curiosity trumps rules. Children must explore. They must dash. And they must do it right now, this instant. It’s just how they are.

It’s a dangerous way to live, but perhaps the only way. We must learn the rules, and as we grow up we have opportunity to master them. But deep inside, always, is the child ruled by curiosity. We’ve got to look out for each other, so that when one simply must dash after a ball or chase an opportunity, the rest can help him stay safe.