Wild Rumpus

A productive member of society

2009-12-16T01:37:00.002-06:00

I have the exact same cold that I had three weeks ago. Really. The exact same symptoms that morph into the exact same new symptoms along the exact same timeline. The only good news is that although I know that Wednesday and Thursday I will be in excruciating pain and discomfort, by Friday life will return to normal.

Which is good because I start my new job on Monday!

Wha wha wha what?

That's right folks. I am finally going to be able to dig my fingers and toes into a project and grow with it.

And it came about in the best possible way.

Last week, at an event where I was networking fairly hard, I met my future boss. I had actually attended the gala for his organization three years ago and receive his monthly emails so I started the conversation there. We shifted very quickly to what type of work I was looking for because, honestly, my dad had earlier stood up in front of the 110 attendees of the event and begged them to give me a job.

It was pretty funny.

And full of love.

So, my future boss is asking me about my experience and I tell him about my master's degree. He says, "Oh, I started that program but dropped out."

Probably my humor was unwise at this moment but I said, "Was it the math?" in a mock-empathic tone with raised eyebrows and a knowing grin.

"Yeah but I figured that I already had a doctorate so I didn't need to do all that work figuring out something I wouldn't use."

While we were talking, my dad walked up, put his forehead on the guy's shoulder and said, "Please, please, please. Please give my daughter a job." And I was worried about my professionalism.

The future boss and I continued talking after my dad walked away and then he asked for my card. I gave it to him and moved on to talk to someone else.

Well, he followed up with me that night, sent 2 pdfs describing the program he is working with and asked if I could come in later in the week to talk. After we set up the meeting, he forwards me a working document that he just received from a mutual friend who is helping him with the vision for where the program is going.

I feel pretty attended to by the time I get to his office. I read all the stuff, print out some of it so I can reference it during the conversation and put on my suit for the meeting.

He spends, no kidding, an hour and a half alternately courting me and questioning me on my ideal job. He has an understated personality, which is always hard for me to read since it is so foreign to me. It wasn't until later that I realized that when he said, "It's not very often that you get the chance to actually change the world; it's kind of neat," he might have been persuading me and not just describing his own experience. I don't think he set up the phone call from Katie Couric's producer to come right in the middle of our meeting, but I'll admit, it worked.

I love the work he is doing. I love that it is being recognized as actually creating systemic change that measurably benefits under-resourced kids. I love that he has a secondary goal of revitalizing the Church by entangling people's lives with the lives of the poor. As Shane Claiborne says, "The problem is not that wealthy Christians won't help the poor; it's that they don't know the poor." Jesus knew the poor.

I also love that when he finally offered me the job, he said it like this: "When I met you on Tuesday, I thought, this is someone special. Then I got your resume and thought, here is someone with experience thinking about different forms of organizational design, someone who cares about marginalized folks, and someone with a lot of unique experiences. Also, you're really smart."

I have to admit that I misted up when he said. Professional, I know. It's just that I have spent this entire unemployment feeling like I was uniquely unqualified for every single job that was posted. If the job needed a master's degree, it also needed five years of experience in that particular field. Or they wanted an MSW instead of an MPP. Or it needed supervisory experience. Also, almost half of the reason I went to grad school was to prove that I had the chops and that I wasn't just getting jobs because my dad begged his friends on my behalf.

And here is this guy saying, "I wasn't going to hire staff to expand this program into a nationwide network in a decentralized way because I don't know how to do it, so I don't know how to tell someone else to do it. But I think you could run with this." And it's because of me and the work I've done, not because I'm my father's daughter (although in every other scenario, I am proud to wear that title). And he knows how hard I've worked because he took the same classes I did and struggled with them as much as I did.

After I said I'd go home to my husband and talk about it and pray about it, we bantered a little bit now that the climax of the meeting had been survived. He said that he thought my resume was playing with him since I describe myself as a social entrepreneur and he just won a fancy award for being a social entrepreneur even though he had never heard the phrase before he won the award. I said, "What should really freak you out is that when I reached into my purse to write something down, I pulled out from the linty depths the pen I got at your gala three years ago."

I can really make a difference for kids in this job. I believe deeply because it's been proven to me by all sorts of dry and boring research that the answer to society's problem can mostly be solved if we make sure that all kids are nurtured during their first 5 years. During that time, they learn non-cognitive skills that are crucial for learning cognitive skills later. Skills like delaying gratification to achieve a task, a desire to learn, the ability to sit quietly and listen, the rudiments of language acquisition. This job is preventing trauma in the lives of young children on a measurable scale, which allows them the chance to fulfill the potential that God gave them when they were born.

How could I say no?

So, I have been frantically finishing the Christmas presents that I thought I had another two weeks of unemployment to finish and trying to squeeze in some of the volunteer work I have been doing on my church's behalf.

I have been coughing at night, which keeps Jacob and I awake, so tonight I took the medicine my doctor prescribed which was a cough syrup with codeine.

Apparently, codeine keeps me awake so you all are the beneficiaries of the crash I'll feel tomorrow.

I hope things are going as well for you as they are for Jacob and me. Chag Sameach!

Institutionalizing fluidity

2009-12-09T15:51:00.004-06:00

When I tell the story of my faith journey, sometimes I begin to doubt that I was rejected as much by traditional church people as much as I felt like I was. Sure, I have some specific anecdotes. For instance, I clearly remember being told by my friends from youth group that marrying my first husband was wrong because we would be unequally yoked and realizing that such an unsupportive comment was indicative of a deeper judgment that those friends felt for me. I remember being angered by Sunday School classes where volunteer teachers insisted that the interpretation of Revelations in their book were the only possibility. I remember arguing with the new youth director when he brought in a guest speaker who cared more about declaring "right teaching" than about how unwelcome he was making my friend Nels feel. I remember the condescending tone of voice of the member of Intervarsity who told me I used scripture incorrectly in the fundraising letter I had written as a favor to him. I also have a slew of experiences with my extended family (who I am quite close to) where they used dirty argument tactics to try to convince that my liberalism wasn't right in God's eyes. My aunt once told me that if it was right to make condoms available in schools then everything she believed was wrong. That's a heavy weight to put on an 18-year-old's shoulders if she wants to stick to her convictions. An uncle was so insulting as he argued that we celebrated the Sabbath on Sunday because it was literally the day that Jesus was raised from the dead that my father left the table in and announced his protest of the way I was being treated.

However, the vast majority of experiences that I have had with traditional church people have been strikingly positive. I have felt safe and loved and supported in most of my life. People who welcomed me into this world at my baptism are on my Christmas list and show delight at seeing me when I show up at Christmas Eve services. The church I attended in my early twenties welcomed me and valued my participation in the choir and asked me to be a deacon.

Still, by then, I was learning only to bring part of myself to church. I had doubts regarding the fallibility of translation or my thoughts about homosexuality not being a sin or my discomfort with the idea of good people going to hell simply because they hadn't acknowledged Jesus as their lord and savior. I knew, just knew, that if I discussed these thoughts, I would be labeled "heretic" and a gulf in the relationship would widen between the church person and myself because I would now be viewed as the sheep who had wandered from the flock and needed to be rescued rather than being part of the in-crowd. Since I was desperately looking for community, I left these parts of myself at home when I went to church. I did this with all of the churches I attended before I found the emergent movement. And it didn't work.

I was still lonely.

Unless I was being loved for my whole self, it just wasn't enough to feel like actual community.

However, once I reached adulthood, I didn't give any of those three churches even the chance to love me. I had my defenses up and didn't want to give them the chance to hurt me with their rejection. So I don't really know how they would have responded.

So, I come back to my original statement that I wonder sometimes if I'm not remembering my history with the bias that comes from my insecurity. Once bitten, twice shy, you know? Do I think that my experiences were worse than they really were?

The reality is that it doesn't matter if people were as inhospitable as I thought they were. What does matter is that I perceived them to be that way and acted on that perception. If I felt that way even though most people were nice to me most of the time, then other people are also feeling alienated from God and alone in this world even though most Christians are nice to them most of the time. (And this doesn't include people who feel alienated from God and alone in this world because most Christians think they are an abomination just for being who they are.) If I felt this way when maybe I shouldn't have and other people feel this way when they don't have to, they why do so many people feel disaffected with the Church?

For my experience (which is probably generalizable), I believe my fear of being rejected stemmed from two sources:

1. A growing sense that I didn't like the person I was becoming when I did things that traditional Christians were supposed to do. The greatest shame of my life is telling my best friend that I thought she was going to Hell. In addition to feeling remorse that I had hurt her, I slowly (so slowly) began to realize that I was damaging all of my relationships by practicing a faith that was so judgmental. So, I feared rejection from other Christians because I myself had been repeatedly judgmental.

2. The larger Christian culture and the traditional institutional framework that churches function within emphasize insider and outsider statuses as a means of reproduction and survival. They need people to profess the same beliefs despite different experiences, and those beliefs need to create an "other" so that folks within the community will bond together more cohesively. This is the definition of ideology, isn't it? A system of living that protects individuals from the hard work of dealing with a changing environment? Traditional church policies ensure that our experience with God is predictable: we will be buried the way everyone else we know was buried, we can raise their children the way we were raised, our spouses expect the same things out of life that we expect. And for most of history, this worked for Christians because the world changes only gradually. However, with the introduction of instant communication, the world changes quickly and traditional church paradigms no longer comfort everyone but instead push out more and more people for the sake of the few who remain within. So, I feared rejection from other Christians because Christian ideology made it very clear that I could be rejected for the sake of the group.

So, although it's possible that many of my fears would never actually come true, I believed they would and that caused me to leave part of myself at home when I went to church, a completely unsustainable habit if I ever wanted to feel fulfilled.

I have since found a church and a movement that are trying to create new Christian norms and new church infrastructures that do not rely on some people being on the inside and other people being on the outside. These inclusive churches try to make everyone feel welcome to bring their whole selves to church, without fear that they need to change in order to be fully loved. These churches know that encounters with God rarely leave folks unchanged but we are content to leave that work of transformation to God and focus on the task we have been given: to love one another.

I have found great healing in being part of this movement and being part of the leadership team of my church, which might be a model for a new generation of churches that are trying to remove the systemic obstacles that our culture has put up to block access to God except to those who are "approved" and safe.

I know that I have healed deeply from my fear of rejection because I have recently begun re-engaging Christians who still function within the old model. I am meeting monthly with a group of pastors who have good hearts and are friendly and want to serve the poor with humility. They know that my theology is comfortable with being married to a Jewish man and they know that I am active in the emergent movement but I'm comfortable enough in my differences from them that I don't need to throw it in their faces.

Occasionally, though, I get surprised. Today I was talking about the new community of young people in which one of the young men was participating. He earnestly described for me his struggle to keep them from "heretical ideas." I think I did a physical double-take. I have spent so much time now with emergent folks who sometimes reclaim the label "heretic" to make jokes about themselves, like gay people call themselves queer or women call themselves bitches. I have spent so much time with people who believe that our understanding of God will never be complete and so the only way to know right from wrong is to be in community, groping for the right path while we keep in sight of each other to make sure that no one goes haring off down the wrong path. I have spent so much time in this new paradigm that I forgot people still talk about "heretical ideas."

I said, "Wow. That is so outside of the framework that I work in that I'm intrigued but don't want to start a fight." (Yeah. I really do talk like that.)

He acknowledged my motives and I asked him for an example. He said that yesterday was the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which is the celebration that Mary was also born and lived without sin and so was as divine as Jesus.

He expressed discomfort that by saying that Mary was also divine, folks were putting her between them and Jesus. He never used the word, "idol," but I think that's what he meant.

My mind was swirling because I live in this spiritual place where I see Christ as a tool that God used to communicate infinite love and to bring people closer to God. Again. After trying to communicate love and to bring people closer to her in a billion other stories throughout the Old Testament. I guess I don't see Christ as an end onto himself so if some Latino Catholics can get to God through the female-friendly door of an immaculate Mary, I don't really mind if that bypasses Christ.

I expressed some of this and expressed my discomfort with the idea of heresy since it created a divide between people on the inside and people on the outside. I said that if it were my community, I would wonder why people needed to define Mary that way and examine whether or not the God we were worshiping was too small to fulfill them since it was a strictly male god.

He agreed with me that God was neither masculine or feminine but protested that our theology should not be informed by our experiences. I asked him to expand on that chicken and egg idea. He expressed that theology (what we believe about God) should come from what we find in the Bible; that we shouldn't change the Bible to suit what we think the world should be like. I agree with the idea that we shouldn't just justify our desires with new interpretations of Scripture but I do not agree that Scripture is straight-forward enough to extract God's will from it whole, like Athena being born from the head of Zeus. I'm a mystic at heart. I think you can only glimpse truth with peripheral vision. So to believe that Scripture alone can dictate doctrine is a heinous denial of the human element of interpretation. And once you deny that humans are involved in the process of creating doctrine, all sorts of exploitation and oppression can get by unchallenged.

At this point, I must have given off some non-verbal cues of consternation that maybe made him fear a little bit. Or, at least, he should have picked up that vibe because I was nearly bursting to tell him how wrong he was. I am relieved I was able to refrain from talking about translations of the Bible and how they can be used as tools of the hegemony or no one knows what the Bible really means and we're all doing selective interpretation and isn't that a cotton/poly shirt he was wearing and doesn't Leviticus tell us that is an abomination, also? I stayed quiet, though.

Before I could figure out what to actually say, he quickly changed tacks and asked if he could give background about why he was saying those things. I really respected his desire to let me actually see inside of him instead of just insisting he was right. He talked about how he was an Anglican (which set me raging on the inside again but I am constantly groping for a non-judgmental habit so, again, was relieved that I said nothing) and told me a few stories about his experiences that lead him to be disgusted with the Episcopals on their side of the schism. He said two things that sounded like alarmist propaganda and would surprise me very much if they were true. He sounded like a little kid complaining to his parents that his 58-year-old, established, much-beloved grandma of a teacher told him he was dumb and would never amount to anything. It just doesn't make sense within the larger framework of what I know is true. She wouldn't be all of those other things if she went around telling little kids they were dumb and would never amount to anything. The child's statements shouldn't be dismissed out of hand but they should be evaluated with skepticism about his motives. So, the man today said that Episcopals are now stating that unless you are Episcopal, you are not going to heaven. Then, he said that Episocpals have literally re-written the Bible to make it fit their world-view about homosexuals. Actually, I don't think he ever mentioned The Gays out loud but since that is what caused the schism, I'm not sure what else they would have re-written the Bible to support. Neither of these extreme acts seem to fit within the context of what I know about the Episcopal denomination. It felt like the complaint of someone who was trying to recruit others onto his bandwagon because he is feeling a little unstable up there alone.

So, I actually could have gotten pretty righteous at this moment since I would definitely qualify as someone who literally re-wrote the Bible because I look at the historical context of those 6 Bible verses that seem to oppose homosexuality and come to the conclusion that they are not describing homosexuality as we know it in our culture. Luckily, a few more people arrived and I was able to thank him for his story and blow him off a little about finishing the conversation later. Actually, now that I think of it, that wasn't very loving of me. I should probably try to have coffee with him soon and give him a chance not to reject me.

That kind of growth and chance for more healing is why I want to stay with this group, in addition to the other good things I get there. I'm not afraid of their rejection anymore because my spiritual home accepts my whole self. If they reject me, I have a safe place to retreat to.

My church is the kind of place that I want to support and also to dive headlong into building infrastructure to build capacity so that it is sustainable and can make a lot more people feel as safe as I have felt. My pastor calls it institutionalizing fluidity and no one has figured out yet how to do it. I want to try. It's crucial if we want everyone in this world to have equal access to God. It's work worth doing.

Forgiveness, gratitude and joy

2009-11-25T12:52:00.002-06:00

I'm having some seriously entangled thoughts about gratitude, joy and forgiveness.

The first of these is that I find myself longing for the joy that comes with wisdom and spiritual enlightenment. Descriptions of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu (I love titles) almost always involve descriptions of embodied joy, often in the form of giggling. I find myself longing for that. I'm tired of being offended and upset and brittle. I want the freedom of living out joy.

But wait, Rebecca, didn't you just marry the man you never thought you'd find? Aren't you getting an extended vacation to quilt and bake while you look for a job? Don't you have a great spiritual community that values you? Isn't your family healthy?

Yup.

And still, I find myself offended and upset and brittle more often than I would like to admit.

Meg, over at A Practical Wedding keeps talking about wanting to have a Brave Marriage and go traveling and having adventures and I love her spirit. It's made me think about what I do not want to regret about our marriage and I find that I'm not all that concerned about travel and adventure. I had a lot of that as a single person. As my friend Jess put it, "It about roots and investments for me now." Will that possibly involve a certain amount of radicality for Jacob and I? Probably. But new experiences for the sake of being new aren't what I'm looking for. I want to find joy in the life that I'm living at home. I want sustainability for that joy. Everything has been in such upheaval over the last year (finishing school, meeting Jacob, moving, marrying Jacob) that I want to spread my toes into the carpet and take root so that I can keep spreading my arms up into the sky and stretching my sideribs into growth. (On a side note, I want to keep practicing yoga, as well.)

I find that it is hard to live this out when so much of my energy is spent being offended and upset and brittle.

On the surface, it seems like these are reactionary emotions. People in my life are offensive. People in my life are upsetting. I rightly need to protect myself from some people in my life.

These people can be found in two different areas right now: my in-laws and friends of my ex-husband.

Let me explain. I have never been more thoroughly disapproved of than I have by my in-laws in the last year. High school was a cake walk compared to this family. Five out of the eight family member have told my husband at some point or another that they were upset by something I did. An email I sent, a voicemail I left, a decision I made, a story I told. Additionally, even though I have asked them to come to me directly, they still communicate their disapproval through my husband, so I have no recourse except confrontation, which has felt inappropriate.

I am not used to being disapproved of. My friends think I'm great and tend to know me well enough to forgive me if I'm insensitive. My family doesn't generally practice disapproving either. My parents have always said explicitly, "There is nothing you can do that can make us love you any less." And living that out has generally taken the form of live and let live. Sometimes my parents aren't happy about choices we've made but they believe their job is to love us, not to judge us, so it doesn't affect how we interact. So, it is a completely new sensation to find myself on the receiving end of disapproval from people whose opinion I care about. I'm just not used to people thinking I should be anything other than who I am and expressing it (however indirectly). Although I know with my head that their behavior probably has very little to do with me and very much to do with a pre-existing dynamic, I can't seem to help myself from feeling wounded by it. As a result of those wounds, I find myself offended, upset and brittle a lot of the time.

On the other side, I went to my friends' wedding last weekend and it was one of the loveliest weddings I have ever attended. It was full of laughter and funk music and a general sense of gratitude on the part of the guests that two people who are loved so well would take this step and make each other even happier.

However lovely the event itself was, it has had a certain amount of emotional upheaval on either side because so many of the guests know my ex-husband. Everyone was very polite and glad to see me and one woman even made vague apologies for how weird everything was, which I very much appreciated. I had a great time immersing myself in their particular brand of humor. But I learned that some of the people whom I really like, who never told me I was a bad person, who indicated that they knew he was lying, whom I would love to rekindle friendships with, are still actively friends with my ex-husband and his new wife. They have monthly dinners together and invite each other to parties. I am surprised by how angry this makes me. I feel like if someone knows how absolutely rotten he was to me, how could they keep being his friend? Who could trust someone capable of such atrocities? How could they reward his affair by letting their babies play with the child of his mistress? It hurts me that they would choose him over me. This hurt leads me to feel offended, upset and brittle a lot of the time.

This is very far from the joy that I would like to be living in.

As luck would have it, a perfect storm of commentaries has come into my sphere of attention to remind me about forgiveness and gratitude.

For the last three days, I have been confined to the couch with a raging head cold. Most of the time, I have not been able to open my eyes because they were so swollen. During this time, I listened to the backlog of podcasts in my iTunes. Randomly, the first three were sermons on forgiveness by Rob Bell.

He started each sermon with a caveat of sorts. He made sure to say that forgiveness is about the state of our owns hearts. It is a personal things. It is about setting ourselves free from the feelings of bitterness that can own us if we let them.

This is not new to me. Certainly, I have dealt with my feelings about my ex-husband with this understanding. But I've not done a very good job of applying it to the rest of my life. When looking for that last link, I found this post, which shows that I haven't grown much in the last seven months.

Anyway, to make his point clear, Rob says that forgiveness is not condoning the behavior. Forgiveness does not require forgetting. In fact, we should set boundaries to protect ourselves in the future. Forgiveness does not necessarily involve interrupting the natural consequences for someone's actions or forgoing justice. Finally, forgiveness is separate from reconciliation, which is a process that requires two people.

In his sermons, Rob speaks about the destructive nature of revenge. How when someone hands us a hurt, we want to hand it right back and that this can be a passive response, as well as an active one. I fear that this is how I feel about Jacob's family. I certainly repeat the litany of offenses in my head as I swim or fall asleep or wash the dishes. I form the words in my head of what I would say to them if I got the chance. And no matter how graceful those words are, no mater how well they utilize reconciliatory language, I mean for those words to hurt them as much as I have been hurt.

It is a form of revenge. And I know it won't work. I know it will escalate the situation, like the story of Sampson.No, not that one. The other one. In addition to escalating, it probably wouldn't hurt them anyway since my retorts all work on the assumption that they care how their behavior affects me.

So what do I do?

I will not act on these feelings. I have come that far in my spiritual journey. I have learned to stay quiet until I can speak from a place of tranquility and stable self-esteem. But if I can't hand the hurt back to them, what do I do with it? How do I keep it from eating me up, as it clearly has been since I feel mostly offended, upset and brittle right now?

This is where the perfect storm comes in. On Sunday, my pastor closed vespers with her usual benediction,

Let us go out into the world in peace;
Have courage;
Return no one evil for evil;
Strengthen the fainthearted;
Support the weak;
Help the suffering;
And in all these things;
Take courage in the Spirit,
Who nourishes us and makes us whole.
May the fire of God
Burn deeply within you
And shine brightly upon you,
Now and always.

There are a couple things there of note. It reaffirms the other things I have been thinking about returning evil for evil and reminds me that I am not alone in this effort. The shekinah of God will help. I probably need to pray to really access this one.

This reminds me of Alcoholics Anonymous advice that I've received: "Pray for the bastard." Of course, this goes along with Jesus's advice to pray for those who persecute you.

Also, I recently finished Eboo Patel's book, Acts of Faith, in which he describes Islam by paraphrasing Fazlur Rahman,

I learned that Islam is best understood not as a set of rigid rules and a list of required rituals but as a story that began with Adam and continues through us; as a tradition of prophets and poets who raised great civilizations by seeking to give expression to the fundamental ethos of the faith.

. . . [T]he core message of Islam is the establishment of an ethical, egalitarian order on earth. . . .The central aspect of this moral order is merciful justice . . . God . . . gives each human an inner light, which the Qur'an refers to as taqwa, the writing of God on our souls. [It] is the single most important concept in the Qur'an. It is the piece of us that innately knows the mercy of God.

I think that if I try to actively remember that God loves me and so forgives me, much like my family and she wants me to love others just as much. In other words, if I develop my taqwa, my sense of merciful justice, it might get me a little closer to forgiving my in-laws and the friends of my ex-husband. Also, I need to remind myself that God has set up a higher order of things and just because I do not see her justice does not mean that it is not being enacted. I do not need to be one more misguided vigilante for God.

I think that fostering this sense of taqwa might involve remembering the good things that I do have. Yesterday, our rabbi posted on the benefits of gratitude journals. Although it feels hokey, I'll do just about anything at this point to stop feeling so offended, upset and brittle.

Finally, I am currently reading Don Miller's new book and he writes, "And once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don't have a choice." I have been thinking a lot about volunteering during this time that I am looking for a job. My life feels so hectic and that it might even be irresponsible to take that time away from the search but I'm starting to think it might be essential. That this might be the better story that I need to be living. That it is part of the roots and investment that I crave right now. If I put my time into the children of our neighborhood at the Boys and Girls club down the street, I will make this place more of my home and find more joy here.

Rob Bell leaves me with this haunting image. When we do not hand back a hurt that has been handed to us, we are left with the agony of holding onto it. That agony is like death. But as people following the Jesus Model, that death can give us hope for a resurrection and a new life and a new world order. I am hoping that my three days are up and this Thanksgiving marks a rolling away of the stone. I am ready to be thankful for what I have and so filled with joy that I have to forgive because there is no room in my heart for bitterness.

Shabbat shalom

2009-11-20T16:21:00.003-06:00

Sometimes I think my challah look like Irving Penn's corpulent nudes. Check them out here. I'm serious.

Don't ask why the sewing machine is in the kitchen. It's that kind of week.

24 Hours from Tulsa

2009-11-13T09:57:00.003-06:00

I am heading to Tulsa this weekend for another wedding after the wedding tonight. Is it terribly inappropriate to call my cousin, the bride and sing this song?
Just checking.

But delivered a mule!

2009-11-10T16:05:00.004-06:00

I have been thinking a little bit about my first marriage lately because on Friday, I will attend a wedding of a friend from those days and will see a bunch of people that I have not seen since before the divorce. I'm a little nervous because my ex-husband spread a lot of lies about me (For example, that I had an emotional affair with a co-worker, that I was a bitch in various ways including how I talked about people behind their back and how I demanded total control over decorating the house, etcetera) and I don't know how many of these lies have since been debunked for the folks attending the wedding. Even if they are no longer friends with him, unless misstated facts have been specifically retracted, they might still passively believe them. Because of these types of lies and the lies that he told me daily about himself and other people, a huge part of the healing process for me has been about letting go of my desire for control over how other people think about me. This has not been easy because I have always felt a strong desire to have people think the best of me, even if that meant emphasizing the "weird" part of my personality so that even if I could never successfully come across as polished and successful, like everyone else, at least I'd come across as interesting. However, I think I have made progress in letting go of that which I cannot control and have found a reasonable balance in my life to be comfortable with who I actually am. Still, when confronted with socializing with a bunch of people who may believe terrible things about me, I have found myself trying on a lot of different outfits to try to communicate that I am someone different than who I was.

Today, I was having lunch with a friend and she asked me how my relationship with my in-laws has changed now that the wedding has passed. I described for her the slackened pressure but also a couple of ways that Jacob has really stepped up and been an advocate for me, without my prompting. She said, "Well, you have told me before that you thought he was the kind of guy who, once he made a commitment, lived into it completely. This just shows that you were a good judge of character."

I broke out into tears there in the restaurant.

I was such a bad judge of character the first time around. It doesn't matter that everyone else made the same mistake about my ex-husband that I did. I paid for a bill of goods that was never delivered.

I am so grateful not to have made the same mistake twice and Jacob just keeps showing me that I haven't. A couple of days ago, I told him how much I loved his new business cards because although he uses his new married name on top, his URL and email address are still based on his bachelor name. Giving up the privilege of keeping his name for the sake of gender equality in our society makes his story (of being a newlywed) that much more transparent to folks and, as he looks for a job, makes him vulnerable to the same misgivings that women in the workforce have faced for 50 years. Will he want to start a family soon? If he's so progressive to change his name, will he want paternity leave? What if his partner makes more money than he does and gets transferred? Will our investment in him pay us back in the long-run? As I talked about this with him, he shrugged his shoulders and told me I was being silly. Once he made the decision, he was all about moving forward.

Further confirmation that what my friend said at lunch today was true.

I have chosen well and this good choice will affect my life so much more than my bad choice ten years ago ever will.

With that in mind, I think I can attend Friday's wedding in peace and with absolute joy for a couple that are making the same kind of good choice. (Of course, having a killer black dress doesn't hurt, either.)

Still moonlighting

2009-11-09T14:04:00.003-06:00

I hate to send you somewhere else again, but I finally responded to a request for my spiritual bio. You can check me out here. The woman who pulls these biographies together is pretty neat and I'm happy to contribute. It's interesting to see who else is out there. I love being amidst the same ranks as Arloa Sutter, Julie Clawson and Bruce Reyes-Chow. I had listed the first two as some of my favorite websites even before I knew they had already participated. It is also interesting to to acknowledge that almost all of us are selling something. Maybe not money but everyone seems to self-describe as a writer or speaker of some sort, which means we're trying to get folks to see the world through our eyes. I bet most of us do it because we have been changed in some way and want to offer that opportunity to others but still, we're selling something.

At synagogue yesterday, we were made a little uncomfortable because a man joined a conversation we were having, which was fine at first. Then, he shifted the conversation to the Leadership Institute that he is involved in and even went so far as to hand us brochures for an upcoming conference at the low, low price of $995. I was simply uncomfortable because he had clearly lost all perspective on interactions with other people except as a means to sell his viewpoint (literally) but Jacob was offended that the man would be selling at temple and on Shabbat. When the man followed up with Jacob asking again for his phone number instead of just his email, Jacob explained his feelings directly and I was really proud of him for that.

As an update, I have to tell you that I'm starting to feel some of the magic of marriage. Being home so much with Jacob is allowing us to work out a harmony of movement in our home with the chores. We have also had the opportunities to have some big fights that have gotten a good portion of my insecurities out into the open. Second marriages are hard because it has been difficult to believe that this one is for real. My pastor once said, "Sometimes we push against love to see if it is fragile." I have been pushing a lot and Jacob has been so good about proving that our love is not fragile by wrapping his arms around me and pushing back that way.

Last night, during the 10 minutes of silent meditation at church, I ran through a series of words to focus on for my centering prayer and settled comfortable onto "closeness." I sat with Jacob and felt closeness. I sat with my community and felt closeness. I sat with God reflected in the candles and the music and the icons and my husband and my community and felt closeness.

This is what everyone has been talking about.

Chicagoland peeps

2009-11-06T14:01:00.002-06:00

First of all, is there anyone who lives near me who needs packing plastic? You know, bubbles and those little packets of air that come with your mail-order stuff? If not, does anyone know an organization that re-uses it? Pottery studio or something?

Second, as my unemployment stretches on, I am getting to practice more and more domestic skills like cooking. I'm making some pretty amazing soups and breads and I am finding that buying grains and legumes in bulk in good both for our pocketbooks and for the environment (pesky plastic bags). However, our appetite for dried bits in overcoming our appetite for the spaghetti sauce that provides the jars to store them in. Does anyone have jars - spaghetti, canning or otherwise - that they'd like to donate to our increasingly earth-mother-y kitchen?

Where's Rebecca?

2009-11-03T08:34:00.002-06:00

Folks, unemployment is hard. I'm super-busy trying to do all of the networking necessary to find a job, acknowledging the "who you know" part of the success equation. Also, Jacob has recently been downsized so we're home together, which is delightful and a little scary. We're trying to take advantageous of this unique opportunity to extend the honeymoon-ish period and to get to know each other better in a setting that is not vacation and where individual work still needs to be done while we are in each other's presence. Mostly, we love being together and sometime conflicts arise. I am confident that we are setting good precedents for the rest of our lives together because we have the space to do it deliberately and for that, I am grateful, even if the opportunity costs of our salaries seems a little steep.

I have recently begun to realize that my family has had a similar unique privilege of getting at least a decade to be in an adult child dynamic without the distraction of little kids. My youngest brother is 30 and my oldest brother is 42 and in April, the first grandchild of my parents will be born. We have had the luxury to mostly grow out of our childhood insecurities, jealousies and baggage and get to know each other as adults. This includes my parents, who are remarkable in their willingness to be self-reflective about their habits and the way that they raised us, examining and acknowledging the mistakes they made and accepting our thanks for the vast majority of things they got right. It would be so easy for them to settle into their senior citizenship with blinders on like so many people do and yet they do the hard work of continually changing and becoming more loving so that we are sustainable as a family unit.

On another note, I have been spending some of my energy creating a new online community with another blogger. We are done debating whether or not intermarriage is killing the Jewish community. Nowadays, fifty percent of marriages that involve a Jewish partner are intermarriages. Folks like Jacob and I are intractably part of the Jewish community and now the hard work needs to be done to change the community norms to value what families like us have to offer rather than continuing to hold us at arms' length for fear of contagion. Hannah and I have started a blog that discusses how that work is being done through stories and thoughts from our own lives. We hope to create a forum for others like us who want to be constructive in determining the Judaism of the next generations. Please visit us at www.fiftypercenters.com and participate in the discussions or just read what we're up to. If you have a blog of your own, I would appreciate if you would link to us in your blogroll and consider writing a short post about our project.

I love this blog and this community that has been created around my adventures. So many of you have expressed privately that you gain something important from my writing. Do not fear that I will love my new child more than my older child. It's just not possible. Hang in there. We'll sort out this new family dynamic and be rolling again soon. I couldn't be gone for too long. I promise.

JP

2009-10-24T08:31:00.003-05:00

Blogging to you live from CCDA.

John Perkins is teaching about 1st John 4 and stopped to get on his "hobby horse" about prosperity gospel. He said, "If you send me five dollar, the only thing I can promise you . . . is that I will have five dollar."

Dad and I have loved the preaching of John Perkins this week because he is an 79 year old man who wrenches every bit of meaning and color from this language that we all speak. He'll go into a piece of text and say, "Listen at this," and say some of the most brilliant things, followed with a joke about his wife of 58 years with an impish grin in his eyes. He nearly bounces as he talks. It is a joy.

Teaspoons

2009-10-23T22:31:00.000-05:00

Blogging live from CCDA.

Yesterday was a big day. By about 6:00, I was exhausted and it was difficult to process messages any further. I'm on the hunt for a job, so I am talking about that constantly and these reminders that I am adrift accumulated and weighed me down by the end of the day.

Lots of people here have also known me for a long time and so I am also talking a lot about being married. I am trying to be transparent in my responses and the reality is that right now, marriage terrifies me. There are so many ways I can screw it up.

A couple of my online newlywed friends speak in entirely authentic ways about how magical being married feels to them. It is sparkly and neat. Sweet A. wrote about how special it was to fall asleep next to her new husband while looking at their chuppah and I thought, "Wow. That is absolutely not my experience."

And yet, being married to Jacob is the right choice.

To back up a little, I asked Jacob shortly after the wedding if he felt any different and he agreed that he didn't. My theory is that the process of planning this wedding brought up a lot of big issues that had to be worked through as if we were already partners. And like with so many other things, when you behave as if something is already true, it becomes true. By the time we got married, the ceremony simply confirmed a partnership that already existed. Now, don't get me wrong. I hate it when men say to women, "What's the big deal? We're already married." I know they are saying the same kinds of complicated ideas like the one I just wrote out but, you know, they're boys. Like Hermione says to Ron, "Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have." So, in my best moments, I have grace for those types of statements. But in my human moments, I would shout at Jacob, "Then why I am spending all of this time and energy planning this f---ing wedding event?" I don't even want to think about what happened when he -out of an earnest desire to cheer me up and makes me feel loved at a time when planning was particularly hard- formally slipped the newly delivered wedding band on my finger when I wasn't looking, just for practice.

So, that being said and the goodness of our partnership affirmed, I want to be honest about the fact that these first six weeks are muchmuch harder than I expected them to be. I am plagued by the idea that if we do not set up the right dynamics now, the rest of our marriage will be like the leaning tower of Pisa, or actually, like the thousands of poorly constructed buildings that have fallen into rubble over the history of human civilization. I don't remember feeling this way during my first marriage (which wasn't actually toppled by this problem) so I wonder if it simply a natural fear of all divorcees in new marriages. There is no naivete of the possible pain keep us from flinching.

So, one of the topics of contention between us is the division of domestic labor. I like cooking us dinner and doing the laundry and hosting the parties by choosing the dishes and the tablecloths. I read all sorts of family porn blogs and dream about creating a nest of bright colors and textures to stimulate and nurture our children someday.

However, I've been looking around at the mothers at this conference, which makes me doubt my visions. There are about 2,500 people at this conference. Our society is still rampant with assumed gender roles and the folks here are no different than the larger society. Also, there are probably women here like me who really want their role as primary caretaker. There is daycare here for children who are old enough to be potty-trained and so the only children I really see are infants and toddlers. And 25% of the infants are held and comforted and walked up and down during the plenary session by their fathers. This is great. But 100% of the toddlers are being chased out in the foyer by their mothers. Something happens from the age when a child's needs are simple (being held, being warm, being dry) to when they begin to develop the difficult combination of a will of their own and mobility. It seems like the mothers have become experts in comforting their children as they grow but the fathers have devoted their time to other pursuits. (I know this is hetero-centric but I'm fairly certain their are no homosexual families here at this evangelical conference.) I fully support families that choose this kind of task differentiation and specialization. Like I said, I want it for my own family. At the same time, I fear being the kind of mom who has to always miss out on a speaker or an experience because Jacob and I have painted ourselves into a corner and Jacob cannot take responsibility for our child. I want us both to remain at least competent in any task that the other has primary responsibility. I don't want Jacob to ever feel alone in any of his tasks and I don't want to be stuck in my role.

Combine this resistance to getting stuck with my desire to set up the right patterns now and I fight with Jacob a lot to get him to validate my at-home work while I'm unemployed and even to get him to share it with me, even though it brings him no joy. I am brittle and snap very often.

Add to this, though, my desire not to make Jacob conform to my way of doing things and there is much more than a teaspoon of an emotional range. I see too often relationships that have lost their intimacy because the wife demanded that the counter-tops be disinfected her way and that the diaper be fastened completely straight. I hear my friends talk about this and see the rolling eyes of their husbands behind them. And the women usually win that battle but lose the war for closeness. The guys always put the milk back in the same place in the fridge but feel like strangers in their own homes. I don't want that for Jacob and I, but, as my dad points out, once I want him to take ownership of domestic tasks, I've already crossed the line of coercion. Then, it is about the tricky work of balance. This does not ease my sense that we could really screw this up in the next few months.

To be fair to myself, Jacob gets to determine some community standards, as well. We keep kosher. We live in the condo he bought in a neighborhood he chose. The house is, for the most part, furnished by his sense of aesthetics. He has expressed implicit desire for me to take ownership of these life habits while still giving me freedom within those constraints to do it well. There is nothing that says he can't step up to my requests with the same acceptance that I have stepped up to his.

And I have every indication that he will. He is, again and again, a good partner: willing to examine his motivations and to look out for my interests, willing to challenge me when necessary and show me that he's listening and thinking about when I least expect it. Last night as we talked about my experiences of the day, he spoke out loud my insecurities that cause me to yell at him so much. He spoke with forgiveness and understanding. He compared it to his own insecurities and assured me that we would find a way heal both.

Yesterday morning, I was standing at the breakfast table of friends of my father who have been married for at least 50 years. He complained about his food and the service and twice his wife said, "You're grumpy today." Both of them spoke with an underlying light-heartedness but both were also very serious in their complaints. I long for that security in our marriage. He could be himself utterly in relationship to the situation without fearing that it would affect how she felt about him. She could call him on his behavior without expecting it to change or worrying that he would take offense.

It is a beautiful thing: marriages that have been proven by the test of time. My parents have one. My grandparents had one. This couple had one. I think I have the making for one and it is that faith that keeps me going through my brittleness and complete lack of honeymoon sentimentality. I can't wait to get back home to my husband tomorrow night and that is proof enough that we made a good choice 6 weeks ago.

Convergence

2009-10-22T09:57:00.003-05:00

Blogging to you live from the CCDA conference.

John Perkins just said, “We have over-individualized Christianity.” He is speaking out of 1st John, Ch. 1-Ch 2:6

He is saying that this scripture points to the idea that God is transforming the world by kneading together people to sharpen each other’s lives. (Dude, he’s old and awesome and totally allowed to mix metaphors.)

This is an idea that is extremely important to Emergent Christianity. Once we say that the Bible is not a rulebook but instead worthy of study as a holy book of stories about people who struggle with how to align themselves with God’s plan, the ethical world at first seems a little fuzzy and, frankly, scary. Alluva sudden, not only to we have to do it right, we have to figure out what right is. And right changes from situation to situation. There are not many Emergents who deny that there is absolute truth somewhere. Most of us try to distance ourselves from relativism with nearly slapstick comedy. I think many of us have been hurt by someone responding to our testimony of hard-earned theological rebirth with, “But that’s just relativism.” How dismissive. How hurtful. So, we tend to affirm the idea of “right.” However, like God, right (as opposed to wrong) is a lot larger than our churches or our scripture can contain.

So what keeps us from haring off onto a path that leads away from God? How do we avoid getting lost in the woods during our explorations?

Community. John just read the verse, “My children, I am writing this so that you won’t practice sin.” If we have friends who are close enough and love us enough and make our lives bigger because we love them so much, they can help us keep moving in God’s direction. Conversations with these folks over dinner or coffee or at potluck help us craft a spiritual practice that does not involve sin. Experiences lived together with other people helps us see the world through their eyes so that we can understand better why an action might seem right to them but odd to us. The better we know each other’s patterns, the better we can help them determine right for their situation. The better we are known, the better someone can help us determine if what feels right is actually right. “When we obey God, we are sure that we know God.” In this case, obedience means living in community.

This is an old concept. Post-modern folks from Christian backgrounds often have to struggle with the words “accountability” and “submission” because traditional churches that focus on the Bible as a rulebook use those words to create an institutional framework to help folks follow the rules. Real community often grows within this framework but often people have been confronted about their spiritual practice and their lifestyle choices without actually being known by the people who are confronting them. How dismissive. How hurtful.

I love CCDA. I have grown up with its community development values ground into the moral lens through which I view the world. I love hearing John Perkins say that we need to live in community as a means to transform not only ourselves but also the world because sometimes I struggle with this community of people because they are overwhelmingly old-school Evangelical, concerned about winning souls for heaven. Justice and alleviation of the strife of poverty and even repairing the systems that cause poverty are the means by which these folks save souls, as well as a spiritual practice for them. It’s sometimes hard to feel at home in this altar-calling, praise-teaming, women-in-the-foyer-with-the-toddlers community. But when John Perkins says to them that we have over-individualized Christianity, I think maybe I could belong here someday.

nuChristian by Russell Rathbun

2009-10-12T11:20:00.006-05:00

For the first time ever, a publisher read something I wrote and asked if I would be willing to read an advanced copy of a book and make a review on my blog. Pretty cool, huh?

So, the author is a guy named Russell Rathbun and I have met him before. I wrote about it over on the up/rooted blog. Then, he had come to Chicago with his co-pastor Debbie Blue and one of their congregants, Linda Buturian. I bought and read both of the women's books but, for some reason, was not drawn to Russell's book, even though my pastor and several other folks that I know liked it quite a bit.

The publisher tells me this about Russell:

Russell Rathbun, MDiv, is a founding minister with Debbie Blue of House of Mercy, a pioneering emergent church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Rathbun is also the author of Mid rash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2009) and the critically-acclaimed Post-Rapture Radio (Jossey-Bass, 2008). He lives with his wife, two kids, and dog KoKo in St. Paul.

At the time I met them all, I wrote this about him:

Russell started out the conversation by describing their church, which they formed when they got out of seminary because they wanted a church where they would actually want to attend and that their friends, who were artists and stuff, would also want to attend. Russell, who looked like he would fit in quite well in Wicker Park with his black cowboy shirt with embroidered banjos and funky glasses, pointed out that their church had been around for 12 years, which is ancient for an emergent church.

I liked watching the energy of the two pastors: Russell and Debbie. Both were a little twitchy and awkward. Obviously, they wanted to be there and had such beautiful, honest and vulnerable things to say. But, part of that honesty and vulnerability involved allowing themselves to be the self-proclaimed introverts that they are, even in front of a group of strangers. As someone who has been trained to pull out my most charismatic identity when addressing groups of people, I admire their courage to simply be themselves.

Now, Russel has written a book as a response to David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons' book, unChristian. I haven't read the first book, but Russell has written this small chapbook to be part of the conversation that unChristian has started.

The basic premise of unChristian is to look at detailed survey data and determine how non-Christians in their late teens to early 30s perceive Christianity. Although I have my reservations about Barna statistics, the method is one with which this little University of Chicago graduate is very comfortable: ask a bunch of multiple-choice questions to a huge bunch of people. Then, figure out trends in the data.

What Kinnaman and Lyons figure out is that Christianity has a huge image problem amongst young adults. This is not a surprise to many of us. As a Christian from this demographic, I constantly encounter people who are clearly surprised and intrigued by the inclusive religion I practice that fully acknowledges that human beings are imperfect and that God doesn't really seem inclined to change that, even after someone has made a profession of faith. Christians who practice in a religion that preaches rules and that conversion will fix everything that is wrong in your life tend to be pretty loud, dominating mass media with TV shows, guest appearances on conservative talk shows, books and advertisements for megachurches. Folks like the people at my church are quieter and have smaller in population size. Kinnaman and Lyons document this imbalance of awareness by documented public opinion. They find that non-Christians in their late teens to early 30s think that "Christians are only interested in 'saving souls;' they are hypocritical, anti-homosexual, sheltered, too political and judgmental." Russell seeks to explain these complaints to more traditional Christians and suggest some ways to counter them. The book is entitled nuChristian and is available here.

What is most valuable about this book is the perspective that Russell is taking (I suppose using correct journalism means that I should use his last name. But I've met the guy! It feels weird. I'm going to go ahead and keep breaking the rules.) Russell is not writing this book for people who do not like the church. He is not trying to convince anyone they are wrong for thinking such things. He is also not writing for an audience full of emergent Christians: preaching to the choir, as it were. Russell seems to be trying to explain to folks like his own father what is going on with this new generation of young people and to insert his own experiences as a pastor to these folks as illustration for how these young people can best be assisted in living lives that are more spiritually fulfilled. Personally, this book is most useful to me as a resource to hand to someone I love who is a Christian but who just doesn't understand why I am so excited about emergence.

I think it is most useful as that kind of resource because Russell speaks the language of more traditional Christians. I think he must be in his 40s (about a decade older than the folks he is writing about) and he traveled the traditional path to pastorhood, even though he started a ground-breaking church once he graduated from seminary. I don't know how to say this but the rationale behind a lot of the things he says is very Jesus-y. Also, his vocabulary sets up a dichotomy of spiritual identity. He talks about Christians and non-Christians. I am much more comfortable with talking about spiritual identity as a continuum since I believe that we're all moving forward and backward on our paths in relationship to God. To create an arbitrary milestone that everyone has to have crossed and can never go back to in the form of saying the words, "Now I follow Christ" seems unnecessarily exclusionist to me. But I am not the target audience of this book. Folks who have never tried to wrap their heads around that idea (and many other emergent ideas like how culture affects church life or Christianity as something other than a rules-based religion) are the audience of this book. And I think Russell reaches out to those folks well because I can't connect with some of mechanics he uses to get his message across. I am too deeply entrenched in the post-Modern mindset that he is describing to be an effective translator. It's like listening to your own voice mail. The things Russell says are accurate just like it is actually my voice talking but because it coming from a different context, I get agitated at its unfamiliarity. However, my agitation is the price I pay for recommending this book as a resource to Modern-thinking folks about why emergents are the way they are.

My father read "Chapter 6: Sheltered from God's Children" and brought up what I think is the only weakness in the book's focus. He said, "I can't tell if Russell wants me to be more like a nuChristian or not." nuChristian is Russell's word for folks who identify as Christian but who are part of the post-modern generation and, therefore, different than Christians that have come before. My dad's confusion is totally understandable. To Russell's credit, he publishes a conversation he had with his father and it turns out the generational misunderstanding is common.

DAD: It seems that there are a lot of differences. In some ways you are saying to be able to reach out and minister to these new generations, I have to change my theology.
ME: I don't think I'm saying that.
DAD: It sounds like it. I have to change what I think about homosexuality , abortion, politics, the Bible, salvation . . . [laughs]. . . about the belief in absolute truth.
ME: That does seem like a lot of things. But I am not saying that you have to change what you think about these things. I am just suggesting what I think most postmoderns think about these subjects. And I am not trying to suggest that they all think the same way on any particular subject, I am trying to talk more about how they approach things.

I'm looking for a final quote where Russell clears this all up and there isn't one since the way we approach things is often entangled in what we believe. So, folks with Modern perspectives like our dads are always going to feel that if their approach has to change, so will their beliefs and it is always scary to consider one's beliefs changing since then we will probably have to change the way we live our lives, which is always uncomfortable. And isn't changing the way we live our lives equivalent to changing our approach to things?

It's a difficult task to resolve that circularity of intent and I do not blame Russell for being unable to do so. There were several brilliant moments in the book where he put concepts into words with a clarity I envied. Because of that, I do recommend the book as a great resource for folks outside of the movement or the generation or for folks inside the movement or from the post-Modern generation who need some help in translating their experiences.

One Great Month

2009-10-08T08:23:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I had lunch with an old friend of mine. He is getting married in a little over a month and I loved listening to him talk about how excited he was about his wedding. None of this my-job-is-to-show-up bullshit. We reminisced about my first wedding when there was an entire CD burned (this was before iPods) entitled, "To give Marty a heart attack" full of funk songs that this 6'3" guy with a wrestling manager's build wouldn't be able to resist. "He was sweaty," is how my friend remembered it. Then, he talked about why he liked the DJ they were probably going to go with. At some point in the conversation, he said the words, "I HAVE to send you a picture of the favors; they are perfect!" He told me about specific vows that he was particularly excited to agree to and how he was looking forward to the way certain family members would react to the audience-participation nature of the ceremony. He almost cried when he talked about his fiancee's dress and how beautiful she looked in it.

This is a beautiful thing in this world of ours.

Yesterday, Jacob and I went to Social Security to change both of our last names to a hyphenated common name. It was hard for him. He used the word, "trepidation." He acknowledged that my desire for this was mostly to mend the world by being ground-breakers by modeling new options for families that want an alternative to a societal norm based upon a belief that women and the children they produce are property. We decided this months ago after long nights of discussions that included some shouting and tears. We think the choices anyone makes are good as long as they are good for them but we want a world where every choice is actually an option that folks can choose without getting weird feedback. That's only done by making an option mundane instead of exotic, which means folks like us have to do more than just talk about changing the world until we reach a tipping point. Although Jacob agreed to this and his new Social Security card will arrive in the mail in two weeks, he needed to tell me yesterday while we waited on uncomfortable chairs, anxiously watching the early-model LED "Now Being Served" board, that he was doing it 80-90% because he loves me not because he's passionate about changing the world this way.

Both of these kinds of grooms are beautiful things in this world of ours. Weddings are important. Marriage is important. We do newly-created families a disservice when we delegate all of the hard work and excitement over to the brides. I am looking forward to this wedding in November because both partners will be fully present in the party that they are planning. I am looking forward to the rest of my marriage with a deep-seated conviction that Jacob is fully committed to this thing that I never had with my first husband. It helps me move past the last of my fears that history will repeat itself and I will be left alone and devastated again. With those fears so clearly unfounded, I can commit MYSELF fully to this relationship rather than sandbagging parts of myself in case I need them intact to survive another divorce.

To celebrate our one-month anniversary, I made Jacob this mix and since my music collection comes more and more from legitimate sources due to Jacob's beliefs about intellectual property, I was actually able to publish it as an iMix. You can purchase it for yourself here.

January Wedding by The Avett Brothers
Sing by Travis
Sweet Revenge by John Prine
Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young
You've Made Me So Very Happy by Blood, Sweat & Tears
Let's Get It Started by Black Eyed Peas
Dance Me to the End of Love by Misstress Barbara
Sexy M.F. by Prince
Let's Get Married by Al Green
Let's Get It On by Marvin Gaye
Hit the Spot by Leslie Mendelson
Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain & Tennille
Knocks Me off My Feet by Stevie Wonder
In My Life by Nina Simone
At Last by Etta James
Married by Judi Dench

I call it "One Great Month" and last night we danced around to it as I finished our celebratory dinner of "well-cooked" beef stew, fresh bread out of the bread machine and fruit salad. I'll be listening to it for at least a couple of days on repeat because I like it so much. It's so danceable in the middle since it's an electronica version of our favorite Leonard Cohen song, which is Jacob's favorite genre even though I hate it. It reminds me of our wedding when I was so awe-struck at how well The Beatles' "In My Life" applied to my life and I sang it to Jacob. When Judi Dench sings, "And the old despair that was often there suddenly ceases to be for you wake one day,look around and say: 'Somebody wonderful married me,'" I cannot remember feeling any other way.

Do It Together

2009-10-06T21:52:00.000-05:00

Just in case you're putting me up on a pedestle, let me tell you that I was not my best self today. I did not love another like I would want to be loved.

The day started off well. I was really moved to read a bride write about a friend who helped with her wedding. It perfectly described my best friend Susan: "She didn't say, "What can I do, what can I do?" She just stood quietly by with her ears open and her mind working and stepped in as needed." I don't think I knew what a gift that was until it was put in just that way. I think back on all things I did myself because I was pretty sure that it would be more work to get someone on board and explain it and risk possible complications (which would suck time and energy) than it would be to just churn it out. Also, I had lots of people offer to help but when I asked some of them, they said, "Well, that's not really the kind of help I had in mind," either with words or with their behavior. Humorously, they often signed off the email or the phone call or the visit in which they declined to help with, "But let me know if you need anything!"

This did not bother me at all, actually. At another stage in my life it might but mantra of always trying to assume goodness first and try to puzzle out extenuating circumstances that caused the deviation later seemed to work with these cases. They were quickly forgiven for not bending to my will. Plus, maybe I didn't give folks enough permission and affirmation so that they felt like they could just step in and offer to do something specific. Also, lots of people did help when I asked. A roomful of yarmulke-covered heads is proof of that.

But Susan? She was the kind of friend who also listened and stepped in. And I love her for that.

I also love my friends Jake and Jess. They comment quite a bit around here so if you read the comments, you've probably already experienced their enthusiasm. When they came over the weekend before the wedding to help get stuff done, I had fallen into the pattern of assuming this was another ingenuous offer, which is completely contrary to the evidence of their lives and personalities.

So, after hanging out for a little while and shooting the shit and enjoying this dynamic because I assumed this was what I would be doing all afternoon, Jess looked at me and said, "No really. We want to help. Put us to work." So I did. Jake and Jacob made the quilt square display board. Jess worked on the final yarmulkes with me and we all made tablecloths.
So, when my chuppah stand went missing, and it was a three hour round-trip to rent one and I couldn't find anyone to do the same to return them on the day after Labor Day, I knew that if I called Jake and Jess for help, they would not let me down.
Here is Jake building my chuppah four days before the wedding while I looked on semi-helplessly from a pool of despair that I was wallowing in. Even with his own exhaustion from nursing school and frustration over design obstacles, he assured me that it was no big deal for he and Jess and Rachel and Cory to stain it on Saturday morning and assemble it on Sunday morning and disassemble it on Sunday night.

See how good it looks?See the yarmulkes, too?

So, you would think with all of those thoughts of love and cooperation floating around in my head, I would be primed for keeping my ears open, using my smarts and stepping in to help others, right?

Nope.

Again, I started off well. On my way to my therapy appointment, I stopped at my brother and sister-in-law's place to use my spare key and drop off the chocolate ice cream I had made her. It smelled a little funny when I first walked in but my brother smokes and they have a dog that swims in Lake Michigan and they cook Indian food so I thought it was just a fluke combination of those elements. After I deposited the quart of ice cream in the freezer, I went to go say hi to the dog who was emotionally stuck to her bed (this is actually not all that weird: she's a rescue pit bull). On my way there, I notice a giant, stinky, runny, oddly gray pile of dog poo in the middle of the hardwood floor. Poor Beatrice had been so sick and not that I looked at her, she wasn't wagging her tail and she was ducking her head instead of looking at me expectantly for love, like she usually does. It was huge. More than the volume of ice cream I brought. And - the longer I was there - just as hugely disgusting to smell. It was starting to make me heave a little.

Because of my thoughts this morning, I really wanted to stay and clean it up. It was what I would have wanted someone to do for me. I even started to problem-solve about finding something to scoop it up with since a paper towel just wasn't going to cut it. Then, my eyes really processed the pool of liquid excrement surrounding the pile and between that and my olfactory experience, I was practically pushed out the door by my self-preservation instincts.

Not a good neighbor. As Anne Lamott would say, Jesus is sucking down a little medicinal whisky right now because he's so disappointed.

Poor Beatrice has to experience unfounded doggy shame all day and my brother had to clean it up. I called him at work to apologize and warn him what was waiting for him. (Can you imagine having a bad day and coming home to that without warning?) I then promised that I would never do that to Baby Shashi once s/he gets born.

Laugh all you want but some days we just cannot be our best selves. I thank God that Jess and Jake and Susan and all the other folks who helped with my wedding had better days then than I had today.

Zealotes

2009-10-05T08:21:00.002-05:00

Last week I was working at my dad's office on a grant proposal for his organization. I love doing this because our desks are right next to each other and we can talk while we work and, more importantly, I can hear how he makes his phone calls. I have been taking advantage of this set-up for almost 15 years and almost all of my professional mannerisms come from observing my dad talk on the phone with colleagues, donors and strangers.

Last week, someone called him mistakenly because the name of his organization is similar to the name of another organization. Instead of graciously taking his leave when the mistake was discovered, the caller kept my father on the line for 15 minutes, describing the work he does and asking questions, trying to get my father on board anyway. Dad is polite and gracious but kept making faces at me and shaking his head. (This is the exception to my use of him as a role-model; I know that I am not yet skilled enough to pat my head and rub my belly on the phone: my facial expression will be belied by the tone of my voice.) When he got off the phone, he bemoaned "you young people, you zealots." I deserved to be lumped in with that guy. I'll talk about my church or the Jewish community's response to interfaith marriage until someone's eyes glaze over. I hope that when I get a job, it is one that serves a cause that I can also get excited about.

But today, I read this quote in my Geez magazine, from the Orthodox saint, Isaac the Syrian:

Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth . . . once he has truly learnt [what truth is really like], he will cease from zealousness on its behalf.

It seems that my dad is wiser than he looks. I look forward to seeing the world from his perspective at some point in my life. If God is ineffable and unknowable and we can only catch glimpses of her through our peripheral vision, like watching the invisible wind move the trees or like Moses being allowed to see only the afterimage of God's passing, then how could we put that experience into words that we were certain enough about to fight for. As a zealot, I ignore the needs of others and try to manipulate them into believing what I believe, if only through the hope that they might lend the argument credence simply because my passion and enthusiasm is unlikely to be utilized on behalf of a dumb cause. Someday, I will trust that my work is worth doing, even if no one else joins me, because I finally trust that God would not tell me to do something if it were not worth doing and I will desist from my zealotry. Saint Isaac trusts that God will show all people truth and that their normal interactions will pass it back and forth between them. Zealotry is simply another way of making ourselves more important to the process of redemption than we actually are. God redeems us and the world. We are lucky enough to be invited to join in the task but our participation is not at all necessary. The work will get done either way.

Thank God for that since I do a pretty terrible job of mending on most days. Maybe one day, I'll be as good at it as my dad is.

A poem for my father on Yom Kippur

2009-09-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

A Poem by Edgar A. Guest

The Irish didn’t like it when they heard of Greenberg’s fame
For they thought a good first baseman should possess an Irish name;
And the Murphys and Mulrooneys said they never dreamed they’d see
A Jewish boy from Bronxville out where Casey used to be.

In the early days of April not a Dugan tipped his hat
Or prayed to see a “double” when Hank Greenberg came to bat.
In July the Irish wondered where he’d ever learned to play.
“He makes me think of Casey!” Old Man Murphy dared to say;

And with fifty-seven doubles and a score of homers made
The respect they had for Greenberg was being openly displayed.
But upon the Jewish New Year when Hank Greenberg came to bat
And made two home runs off Pitcher Rhodes—
They cheered like mad for that.

Came Yom Kippur—holy feast day world wide over to the Jew—
And Hank Greenberg to his teaching and the old tradition true
Spent the day among his people and he didn’t come to play.
Said Murphy to Mulrooney, “We shall lose the game today!
We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat,
But he’s true to his religion—and I honor him for that!”

A Pacific Northwest Adventure (Or Not)

2009-09-25T22:54:00.001-05:00

So, when you come home from Portland, Oregon, you have a lot if nickels in your pockets. Since there is no sales tax, lots of things are $_.95 rather than $_.99, I suppose this is since the actual amount is going to be predictable, rather than the result of a fractions math problem.

That's right. Jacob and I took our honeymoon in beautiful Portland, Oregon. Apparently, this is not a typical destination based on the looks that people acquired upon hearing the news and their cheerful, affirming, surprised and bewildered tones of voice.

We chose Portland while walking along the beach of Lake Michigan one day this spring. Going on the walk had been a way to enjoy the spring weather and to carve a bit of space to just enjoy each other in the midst of wedding planning and my efforts to graduate. About halfway through, the concept of an entire honeymoon suddenly occurred to one of us, like finding a $20 bill on the street. It was not one linear conversation but rather a series of short exchanges. One of us would suggest a city and the other would consider and respond.

We realized rather quickly that we were not beach people. I have to wear a lot of sunblock all of the time and I hate the resultant sticky feeling. (Actually, that used to be the way I told this story until Jacob finally admitted that he is a beach person but he wanted me to be happy.) We talked about the ability to sit and watch interesting people. We both like museums. Some minor hiking is tolerable to me. I especially enjoy being in communities that are full of creative and artsy people.

With these criteria in mind, we finally came around to talking about the Pacific Northwest. I used to live there and would live there still if my entire family wasn’t located in Chicago. But we wanted to go to a city that neither of us knew, so Seattle was out. Portland was an easy second choice. I spend some time engaging in an online craft community and many of the bloggers that I read are located in Portland. They talk about shops that they get their supplies at and galleries they show their work in. They do things that can only be done in communities full of supportive, crunchy people. I wanted to actually experience it for myself.

Unfortunately, we both got so caught up in planning the wedding itself that we didn't do a lot of research on exactly where those people were to be found or on the addresses of those cool shops and communities. Both of us had tucked away a file of articles on Portland to be read later but since neither of us brought a computer, those files were pretty useless once we got there.

This wouldn't normally have been a problem because we'd just ask around but we had really underestimated how tired I would be. Although Jacob was tired, too, apparently he retains his adventurous spirit in that state. Before we realized what was going on, we had some tenuous moments while my feelings of not having any fun and feeling bad about wasting the opportunities took turns boxing my emotional ears. For the first 4 or 5 days, I really thought that maybe we should have taken a beach vacation or rented a cottage on a lake in Michigan but who takes their honeymoon in Michigan? I ask that last question to be honest about the fact that what people think of me is sometimes important, even when I posture otherwise. Jacob was super-supportive while I got comfortable with the idea that the trip couldn't be a waste (since we were together, not working and married) even if we stayed in the room the whole time.

Isn't it a cutie-patootie room? We stayed at the Inn at Northrup Station, which is in the "trendy" Nob Hill neighborhood. I loved the fact that we could walk almost everywhere in the city. It was good for my soul for my body to stay busy while my brain went dead. However, I was under-whelmed by the neighborhoods that were touted as hip and bohemian. I felt like they were Chicago Lite and not all that unique.

Our first full day we walked down to Powell’s since everyone says “You’ve got to go to Powell’s.” Again, worrying about what other people think. I just couldn’t face the lack of understanding in people’s faces when they asked the follow-up.

Kowtowing to public opinion one one’s honeymoon so soon after a wedding which is at least a little about controlling people’s reactions (you want your guests to feel welcome, included and festive, at the very least) is a terrible idea. It was even more of a mistake because I don’t really like bookstores. But, since I’m so bookish, that kind of declaration elicits cries of disapproval and misunderstanding in the form of, “Really? But you read so much?” Since I was still in a sensitive place immediately after the wedding that I had not yet napped out of, even that much push back felt unbearable. But I just don’t like browsing. I have such a queue of books that I want to read that browsing for new material is just an exercise in futility. Also, I have a platonic ideal of used bookstores that involve very intense memories of plopping down on a musty-smelling floor of the science-fiction section in 12-year-old innocence of book queues and being able to waltz home with 13 books for $8 because every book was priced at half of its cover price. That type of bookstore is rare to find anymore. So, the sourrness caused by my early-morning Powell’s experience caused me to write things like this in my journal:

I suppose my fancy University of Chicago education in economics should cause me to admire them for their use of internet technology to determine the market value of each individual used book. However, seeing a mass-market paperback from 1988 priced at $15 flipped a switch in me somewhere.

The sarcasm that I recorded in my personal journal communicates “blissful honeymoon” well, don’t you think? We wlaked around downtown for awhile and I totally missed the charm of the parking lot full of food carts. Finally, we found a cup of tea that did not cost $4 after a search and Jacob let me just vomit up the poison and asked good questions to help it along. Here he is when I felt better enough (literally feeling like a weight was lifted from my heart) to want to take his picture eating a Voodoo doughnut. Note his expression that clearly says, “Is it safe to go back in the water?”

After that, we lowered our expectations, focused on eating well, getting massages, resting and playing games. We had particularly good meals at Carlyle, Laughing Planet and BeWon Korean. Restaurants are actually pretty tough for Jacob since his kosher restrictions limit him to vegetarian and fish dishes and most of the fancy American Cuisine places that feel so celebratory and indulgent to me don't carry much more than a salmon dish or a token pasta and cheese dish. As my nutritionist said, "Cheese doesn't count as a protein; it's a fat." What? A little tofu is so wrong for these places? So, a couple of nights we got kosher beef from the local Trader Joe's or at leftover and stayed in playing more games. Here's a shot of the beginning of one of our Carcassone games.
Throughout all of the emotional tides, I loved being with Jacob, holding his hand, feeling his ring between my fingers and making him smile when I could. As the week went on, the events we created were more fun. We went to the Muddy Boot Festival, which was exactly the kind of creative, crunchy, community gathering that I came to Portland for. Jacob rode a bike made out of bamboo while I talked with the company's owner about our much love of liberal politics. Here he is with Jacob after Jacob finished his ride.The famed Saturday and Sunday market was fairly disappointing with lots of mundane stuff. None of the great crafts that I read about on the blogs. My guess is that the fee to be part of the fair isn't possible for folks with an internet business model. This kind of thing is the reason I say that Portland needs a little adventuring. The Portland I have heard about is communicated through blogs but people tend to blog from home, not from the streets with strips of cutesy stores.

We did go back to Powell's to enjoy a talk from A.J. Jacobs and we also went to see the movie Big Fan and to listen to its star, Patton Oswalt, talk afterwards. Great movie and I'll talk about it more in another post. We also enjoy the Museum of Science and Industry but were glad we got in for free with our reciprocal Field Museum membership. (Jacob gets points for doing this without the card.) It was neat but not worth 2 $11 tickets. Still, I got this picture that describes our past week fairly well.We enjoyed the Kidd Toy Museum and the zoo and I feel like by the end of the week I had shed most of the wedding stress and exhaustion to reach a new equilibrium, which is a major purpose of a honeymoon. I loved that we could walk everywhere or take easy public transportation. That really helped me feel at home and really grounded in this place that was other in a way that driving around in a car would not. The eco-tours folks were kind of flaky and we were relying on that to get out into the country, so we still need to do that. The Beverly Cleary park was not near anything we were visiting so we still need to get my picture with the Ramona statue since she is me. Since coming home, we hear there is a craft thrift store that we missed so there are definitely reasons to go back if we can someday.

It was a good honeymoon even if it wasn't what I expected (isn't that kind of life?) and I snuggled Jacob all the way home while we read our books on the bus, on the MAX, on the plane and on the El, rubbing my face inot his shoulder to get his attention and smiling up into his returning smile.

It's good to be married.

IKEA madness!

2009-09-24T19:36:00.007-05:00

So, I'm supposed to be looking for a job (and I am) but I'm also nesting something fierce. Now that I don't need to be planning a wedding, I can start thinking about this space that Jacob and I inhabit. I can start eliminating the stress that is created by having to step over things and having to shove them together in a jumble.

Also, we got a lot of presents and I need a place to put them.

So, this is what the corner of the kitchen looked like this morning.

Then, I spent seriously 3 hours in IKEA today, basking in the capitalist, materialistic, whimsical wonder of it all. I promise you that I said no to just as many things that I knew that I "needed" than I said yes to. I feel OK about that. So, here is that corner of the kitchen now.

I never take for granted the ability to simply solve a problem by throwing money at it. It is a blessing.

Oops

2009-09-23T18:24:00.003-05:00

So, I have to admit that Jacob and I seem to have just survived our first necessary newlywed disaster. You know the old cliche about the new bride not knowing how to boil water or scraping the burned toast into the garbage?

I gave my husband salmonella.

I didn't mean to; I swear. It's just that I baked a chicken and I put the dark side down and I guess it didn't cook all the way through and even though I ate the leftovers with no repercussion on Friday, Jacob didn't microwave his on Sunday and then, well, you know.

So, we spent a full 60 hours in a sleepless hell of fevers and other more gross stuff. What I like best about the experience was that I did not feel at all resentful of the tasks necessary to take care of him. It was easy to do. That makes me feel really good about myself.

I like it when I cannot deny that I love this man.

Log Cabin Quilt Block Tutorial

2009-09-23T14:35:00.001-05:00

So, I'm really impressed by the contributions that Jacob and I got for our wedding quilt. I've heard that a few more are making their way toward us, as well. I'm pretty sure that I didn't post this tutorial on this blog and I want to, just in case any of you are interested. Like I said before, I couldn’t find one online that actually made sense to beginners, so I made one myself. Because it was there!

1. Start with a square of fabric. This one is about an inch and some change per side.

2. Cut a strip of fabric that has a height equal to the square and a width anywhere from 0.5 inches to 2 inches. Approximate. This is not a science.

3. Sew the strip to the east side of the square. (If there is no image on the square, put a pin in the top so that you’ll always know where north is.)
4. If the strip is actually a little bit longer than the square, that’s fine. (Better than too short.) Just trim off the edges once you’ve sewn the pieces together.

5. Press the seam away from the center. This will always be the rule. Press the seam away from the center.

6. Cut a strip that runs the length of the north side. (Remember, a little long is better than too short.) Again, it can be anywhere from 0.5 inches to 2 inches along the other dimension.
7. Sew it to the north side of your patch. Trim the excess once you’ve tied your knots.
8.Press the seam away from the center.
9. Cut a strip that is at least as long as the west side. (I keep using vague measurements since often these are made out of scraps.)
10. Sew the pieces together, trim the excess and press the seam away from the center.
11. Cut a strip that’s the length of the south side of your patch. (Are you sensing a pattern yet?)
12. At this point, you might want to use pins to hold the fabric together while you stitch if you are hand stitching. (Actually, you could do this at any point.)
13. Sew the pieces together, trim the excess and press the seams away from the center.
14. Repeat the process in a counter-clockwise (otherwise known as widdershins) manner.

15. When all sides measures at least your designated dimension, you are finished.

16. The back (with all the seams pressed away from the center) should look like this.
17. Trim the finished piece so that it is a perfect square of the appropriate dimension.

A wedding to love

2009-09-22T11:50:00.003-05:00

Meg has a wedding summary posted on her site today that is worth checking out since I feel like this bride really is offbeat. She admits that she and her husband have different ideas about marriage and weddings and that she compromised a lot of what she wanted in order to make him comfortable, which includes not working her ass off to have a "budget" wedding. I also like that she writes lines like, "I've always valued the the commitment inherent in a wedding and wedding vows but Omid's attitude and my tendency towards cynicism made me wonder, at times, why we were doing it."

Got to love straight-forward women. Check it out here.

Tashlich

2009-09-21T00:53:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Jacob and I celebrated Tashlich by going out to Montrose Beach and throwing the leftover challah into Lake Michigan to symbolize casting our sins away as we turn back towards God and community in the New Year of Rosh Hashanah. It was glorious. The sky was overcast and the waves somewhat threatening. Jacob and I scrambled over the big limestone blocks that line the shore until we were a little bit north of the dog beach. We began hurling big chunks of challah into the waves. The wind would catch it and it would hang in the air, which made me think that maybe I could hit one of the seagulls that was starting to converge on our coordinates. Jacob said that maybe that would be a bad omen for the new year. He began to read the traditional scripture off his phone but I barely paid attention in the baby maelstrom.

Micah 7:18 Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.

19 You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

20 You will be true to Jacob,
and show mercy to Abraham,
as you pledged on oath to our fathers
in days long ago.

I am often guided by some words spoken by one of the members of Sweet Honey in the Rock that was spoken on one of their live albums: "If you want change in your life and there is a storm, walk in to it. When you get to the other side, you will be changed." I am always emboldened by the assumption that you will get to the other side and that change is choice that one makes, not something that simple happens to us.

Yesterday, thought, as I was hurling the last of my iniquities into the depths of a seagull's gullet via the lake, I did not think too deeply on what was happening or remember Sweet Honey in the Rock because I was, quite simply, caught up in the joy of furious weather. I looked up above me and found that the few seagulls I used as targets had multiplied until they were legion and they were thick not just in our area but all up and down the beach. It was glorious! We watched them hover in the wind and they didn't fight at all or make any noise. We grinned at each other and gushed about how cool it was.

Then, one particular bird whose plumage we were admired took a big shit where our sins used to be and we decided it would probably be a good moment to head back to the car.

To be honest, the other reason that I didn't really engage in the meaning of the tashlich ceremony was that I'm feeling a little steamrolled by Judaism lately, especially in the last few days. The wedding was almost entirely Jewish in form, even if it was interfaith in interpretation. Jacob and I have spent a year researching and reading and talking to dig out a place for ourselves inside his community and inside his own theology. My emotional responses to the behavior of my in-laws, who are unavoidably associated with Judiasm, have been exhausting. In the last few weeks before the wedding, I was taking the advice of so many of my closest advisers: just get through the wedding; then, you'll have time to breathe.

But just as I surface again after the honeymoon, it's Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Jacob thinks it would be cool to build a sukkah in our parking space and then Simhat Torah and we need to plan for a trip to New York for Thanksgiving and maybe a trip to Ohio before that for a charity event for the hospital that is so good to Jacob's niece and Channukah is early this year.

Where is that breathing? Where is that space a new couple needs to simply be without having to be . . . something? Of course, it could be that this is not something we're entitled to at all. I recently read a fantasy book called Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce in which white imperialists are referred to as "luarin." A line of dialogue spoken by one of the "raka" or native people struck me.

"That's the problem with luarin," Boulaj observed softly. "They think gods have rules and follow them. They should dedicate their lives to the Trickster, as we do. They would not be comfortable, but they would not have illusion that life is supposed to make sense, either."

This has made me start thinking that I easily think of Jesus as subversive and this could easily be communicated using a Trickster framework, like stories of Brer Rabbit, Coyote, Raven, Reynard the Fox, Enki, Loki, Hermes and Bugs Bunny. This shift in perspective to Jesus as Trickster might help with my overall sense of entitlement and give me the strength to be a good daughter-in-law and wife rather than letting myself be less than God calls me to be because I didn't expect the situation that I find myself in.

Last year, I read a book called The Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared and the spiritual journey that a deliberate celebrating of the High Holidays can lead one through is really beautiful. And there were moments in the 3.5 hour service on Saturday morning that were really beautiful, especially because they value storytelling and gave two members of the congregation amply time to reflect on the theme of the New Year in addition to the rabbi's homily.

But on Friday, I had a tough day because I missed the spiritual journey that I used to be on: the one of finding God's love for me as shown by the gift of Jesus in previously unlooked-for places so that I would feel it more deeply and hopefully be encouraged to reflect that love to others as my main action in life, seeking social justice and extricating myself from systems that oppress other people that God loves just as much as she loves me.

There hasn't been as much Jesus in my life lately, what with all the Judaism needing so much attention.

About two weeks before the wedding, Jacob and I decided that we wanted to do big group family pictures before the wedding so that we wouldn't waste any of the time we had scheduled for the band to be there. However, to make this work logistically, we had to do these two hours before the ceremony, because we had already paid money for the rooms for our kabbalat panim during the hour before the ceremony and we didn't want to waste it. So, we changed everything around and decided to have separate pre-chuppah receptions that were divided by family rather than gender.

This is maybe the best decision that we could have made for my peace of mind. When my extended family gets together, we often have family Bible studies where we briefly examine a piece of scripture, pray together and sing out of tattered Murphy hymnals that are about 20 years old with construction paper covers decorated with glitter glue and filled with our favorite xeroxed hymns. I decided that I wanted to do this before the wedding. My dad led a brief reflection on the scripture for the ceremony, we sang A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Wonderful Grace of Jesus and Come Though Fount of Every Blessing and then we prayed: once when they laid hands on me and once in a big circle that concluded in a recitation of the Lord's Prayer and followed by singing the traditional Johnny Appleseed which is always sung holding hands and swinging our arms back and forth. I think I cried the entire time.

Although I did not realize why I needed this time, I look back and can see that it allowed me to reside in the center of where I come from. I gave a lot of lipservice to the faith traditions that we come from in The World's Longest Wedding Program but had become distanced from what those traditions really were. By spending the hour before the wedding doing one of the rituals that has made me who I am, I could bring my whole self to the wedding ceremony. Without it, I would have only brought the harried, joyful, event planning self that I had been for the last 6 months to the chuppah. Instead, like Esperanza on her birthday from House on Mango Street, I could be all the Rebeccas I had been up to that point. I could bring the Jesus that lives in my heart with me down the aisle instead of having to just meet him there because my pastor brought him along.

But Friday, I felt like I had lost him again with all this Judaism swirling around my head like seagulls vying for stale bread. Maybe writing this post has helped me catch sight of him again so that I know which direction to walk in this new year. We'll see.

Shanah Tovah.

We get married in circles

2009-09-19T22:46:00.004-05:00

So, let's talk about the hora, shall we? Like A., I don't really want to report the wedding to you in a blow by blow, chronological fashion. Instead, let's use the topics that occur to me (or to you, just ask in a comment) and see where that takes us. Chances are, I'll get distracted and not tell the whole story, but then I get to relate it little by little as I tell other stories.

Fun, right?

So, the hora. What a great way to re-enter a celebration after taking my man by the hand and leading him off into yichud. I remember realizing that it was time after everyone shouted "Mazel Tov!" and realizing that no one else would tell us what to do next. I think I said something like, "OK, let's go!"As an aside, yichud is a time for the bride and groom to be together alone immediately following the ceremony. After hearing a horrow story about a woman whose mother-in-law followed them into yichud because "her feet were tired," I made sure to get good yichud guards and their 2-year-old son. Because who doesn't want to talk to a 2-year-old as the first public thing they do as a married couple? Our friends told us they thought they would be ceremonial but had to turn a surprising number of people away.

But after talking to young Sam about shoes and fruit for a little bit, we got down to the business of celebrating. Although we spoke to a few people who were still in the foyer near the food and wine, we quickly entered the hall and threaded our way to the dance floor and started spinning. At least that what it felt like.

I don't know if Jacob and I danced alone at first and people joined us or if people jumped right in. I know that early on, I really liked dancing the actual grapevine steps because it made the ruffles of my skirt flare. Soon, Jacob and I were grinning intensely into each other's faces as we spun and then his parents and then my parents joined us in a big circle. I think that as I looked beyond Jacob, I saw probably 60 people in two circles around us. It's all kind of a jumble, actually. I know that at one point, the girlfriend of one of Jacob's closest friends, danced a different step with me and I was so grateful to her for welcoming me into her Jewishness. I then went and found my friend Tabitha (who introduced Jacob and I) and danced with her.

In yichud, Jacob told me that he really came into appreciating the work I did to prepare for the wedding because he panicked right before the ceremony about being put into the air on folding chairs. He found the site coordinator and asked for solid ones and was shown that they were already in place in the front. I melted a little bit when he told me that because there was always a little bit of niggling struggle in the back of my head that we were falling into stereotypical gender roles. He plays the sugar daddy who can't figure out why I'm so exhausted at the end of each day planning the wedding and I play the whiny woman who holds all the cards tightly in order to validate her existence. I swear, when he said on the day before the wedding that we should remember to take the marriage license that I already had packed in a box to take to the venue, I could see our special guest appearance on Everybody Loves Raymond clearly in my mind. In economic terms, for the last 3 months, we have had a differentiated household. Jacob takes care of the living expenses; I take care of wedding logistics and process the concommitant family drama. However, it wasn't until Jacob noticed the fruits of my labors that I really felt that we were equal partners in our differentiation.

So, with the solid chairs that were stationed at the front, Jacob's mother took charge of the chair lifting during the hora. She told me how to sit on the chair and where to hold on. The part of me that longs for a good relationship with her was glad to see that she felt like she was welcome and an integral part of the action. Later, she pulled the chairs together in the middle of the dance floor and said, "Sit. Now we have to entertain you." I had not prepped anyone for this Jewish tradition because I decided to use my persuasive skills on other things, like getting people to actually feel comfortable dancing and getting people to move outside their comfort zone to make us quilt squares. But Jacob's mom led the way, dancing across the space in front of us holding an imaginary baby in her arms and getting a friend to dance back with her.

And people really caught on. I was amazed to see my friends and Jacob's family huddle their heads together to figure out some goofy dance that they could do. Every time I thought the pause between acts felt uncomfortably too long and was about get up and go back to dancing, someone else stepped in. My mom traipsed across the space looking ridiculous and completely lovable in her vulnerability. I clapped my hands above my head each time someone finished. It was an extra special gift when my cousin's brother-in-law danced for us since he is a principal dancer for the Hubbard Street Dance Company.

Then, it was back to the circle dancing. I could have done this all night. On the wedding blog I wrote:

Love sometimes feels overwhelming and too fast but also just plain fun. It is exhilarating and makes you feel like you might fall down. When you feel love, you want to make all of the right steps but sometimes you’re just so busy moving forward (or moving in an oblong orbit) that you can’t really get your feet under you enough to dance the pattern.

This is an argument for dancing the hora. It recreates and affirms our own experiences with love and communicates our hopes for more love to find us in the future.

I didn't realize until just now that the explanation I published in our program for the circling at the beginning of the ceremony is also reflected in the hora:

Bride and bridegroom performed the Dance of Isaiah. Hip to hip, arms interwoven to hold hands, [They] circumnabulate once, twice and then again, spinning the cocoon of their life together. No patriarchal linearity here. We . . . get married in circles, to impress upon ourselves the essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy, you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you began.

Meg of A Practical Wedding told me that it "slayed" her that I was using footnotes in my program. In the footnotes, I credited Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex for that quote.

We actually forgot to circle each other at the beginning of our ceremony, even though we had practiced a couple of hours earlier. When I remembered, I stopped the rabbi and we did it right before the first kiddush. It was a good thing, too, since my pastor based her whole sermon on the idea that we get married in circles. We dance the hora in circles.

And it's stinkin' fun, too.

Home from the honeymoon!

2009-09-15T23:50:00.003-05:00

The first photo to come back from our great photographer.

More words later.