on abortion

Here is a comment I made on a recent blog discussion over at Scott Freeman's free thoughts. I am posting it again here because, upon review, I think I managed to articulate exactly what I feel--not a common enough occurrence, generally speaking, and even more rare in the blogosphere.

"Caring for the unborn and for the mothers both is exactly what I’m trying to advocate for. Nor do I assume anyone here is unconcerned with this matter. But here is the difference. I don’t think it constitutes “care” for the mother to explain to her why she is wrong. Women who have abortions know exactly what it is they are doing. They know it better than any of us, because they know it from the first person perspective. They don’t need an ultrasound to show them it’s a baby. Their own bodies tell them in a way that it is impossible to appreciate until you experience it. Having my own baby radically changed my thinking on abortion–not in the sense that I “switched sides” but in the sense that I finally understood what it meant to have an abortion. It meant experiencing the anticipation of pregnancy as terror. It meant experiencing the growing life within you with dread. It meant agonizing over the fact that the tiny life completely dependent on you for survival is one whose blind trust is misplaced. It meant knowing in a place far deeper than the brain that the wrongness that marks our world runs so incontrovertibly deep that the possibility of new life is not always a good one. I firmly believe that most women who have abortions do so out of a sense of care for their unborn child–care that emerges in this monstrous and perverted form not because the mother is at fault or is morally deficient or ignorant, but because the world in which we live offers her no options than a choice between horrific evils. Is it caring for a child to bring her into a world where hunger, abuse, neglect are as inevitable as destiny? If you loved the baby in your womb, would you condemn her to that? What about women whose lives are so marginal that they physically cannot adequately nurture a child even in pregnancy? Is it caring to carry that pregnancy to term, knowing that you cannot provide even in the womb what that new life requires in order to flourish? Guilt lies in every direction for these women. Guilt for being pregnant–whether or not it’s their “fault.” Guilt if they birth a child they can’t protect and nurture. Guilt if they don’t. Yes, we don’t want her to live with guilt. So let’s recognize that no matter what the decision, guilt is there to be absolved. And that is certainly our job as the church. But we as the church cannot even begin the task of addressing and absolving this guilt unless we are also doing what is necessary to create a place for women to see beyond these desperate, guilt-inducing options. We have to make it possible for these babies to be born, and not just born, but nurtured and cared for in the same security we seek for our own. And we have to make this not only a fragile possibility but a stable reality that women can count on and expect, so that it is no longer necessary to end a life before it begins out of fear of what that life will mean. That is our real task. Legislation be damned."

For further reflection, here are a couple links to follow: "A Place to Turn when a Newborn is Fated to Die," (thanks to Joe for this link) and "Italy Takes High-Tech Tactics for Abandoned Babies" (thanks to Brent).

Baby Einstein

Clare's been addicted to Baby Bach since she was a couple months old. Couldn't get enough of it. Brent and I could, though: I started hearing Bach as performed by the Baby Einstein Music Box Orchestra in my head while grocery shopping, I would hum along while cooking dinner, it was the soundtrack to my dreams at night. So for Christmas we requested some more Baby Einsteins for Clare, looking for a little relief from the awful monotonous tyranny of Baby Bach. Unfortunately for us, Baby Mozart doesn't play on our DVD player, so now we are sampling as many Baby Einsteins as we can get through Netflix to find the best replacement.

There are a LOT of Baby Einsteins. Baby Monet, Baby van Gogh, Baby da Vinci, Baby Shakespeare, and on it goes. Right now Clare is watching "Baby Einstein: On the Go," which I guess was a hard concept to find a genius for (Henry Ford? Wright brothers? James Watt? Pierre Lallemont? Really, with Google all you have to do is type in "bicycle inventor"!). It's okay: organized around vehicles that go on land, on water, in air...and I was all set for another segment for "in space," but apparently we don't want to encourage our babies to leave Earth no matter how fast and cool the vehicle is.

So I'm disappointed. But rather than just sulk about it, I'd like to encourage Julie Aigner-Clark (the inventor of the Baby Einstein stuff; you may have seen her singled out for recognition in GWB's State of the Union address) to produce a "Baby Armstrong," or maybe--this is even better--"Baby Buzz." Our kids need to know that Earth isn't the center of the universe, right?

While we're at it, I'd also like to see a "Baby Margaret Mead"--let's teach our kids that America isn't the only country in the universe as well (maybe we have a philosophical disagreement on this point--after all, Julie was lauded by President Bush)...just please, oh please, not "Baby Columbus."

Oh, but here's the best idea of all: how about a "Baby X"? Oh, okay, fine; I can settle for "Baby MLK, Jr." (although James Cone would advise you to partner them up for effectiveness). While we're teaching basic shapes and colors, why not add a little dose of political activism? All sorts of possibilities here: teaching babies how to march, make the peace sign, shout slogans, make signs...these all incorporate practice of basic skills! Brilliant!

Any other suggestions for Julie while we're at it?

Update/correction: Julie sold Baby Einstein to Disney...so now who do we talk to??? But surely a quick word from her would hold some weight still...

what can Clare do now?

1. eat Cheerios...and more Cheerios...and nothing but Cheerios
2. look at books instead of eating them
3. say "book" rather indiscriminately
4. pull herself up, chase the cat 'round the apartment, and stand on her own momentarily
5. screech like a chimpanzee
6. play nicely beside others...
7. and bully those others.

Clare discovers Cheerios. And how to get them to her mouth. Yay!

O Happy Clare!

Clare loves her Elmo book. Thanks, Grandmom!

Everybody meet Sylva!

Clare meets Sylva and discovers the joy of playing beside another baby.

We have matching hats! Huzzah!

Oops...

yao bu yao

So, yesterday I was feeding Clare lunch--yummy yummy baby oatmeal, green beans, mashed banana, and the inevitable Cheerios since nowadays she gets frustrated after too long without being able to take control of her own eating process. I was sneaking in spoonfuls of green beans in between the Cheerios and her attention began to wander: the cat had walked over to our corner and Clare got all maniacally happy like she does when she sees the kitty. So I attempted to get her attention. "Clare," I said, to no avail. "Clare! Clare!" and holding out a spooful of green bean mushiness, "Clare! Yao bu yao?" That got her attention. And she started giggling maniacally at me...every time I asked, "yao bu yao?"

"Yao bu yao" is Chinese for "do you want it?" although literally it's more like "want-no-want." I guess I've never spoken Chinese to Clare before. I wasn't planning on making lunch a Chinese lesson yesterday, but it was such a simpler way of asking "do you want more green beans?" Chinese is such an economical language--all kinds of meaning packed into a few single syllables.

So why was it so funny? She kept laughing so much every time I said it that she nearly spewed green beans all over both of us and everything else in the vicinity including the cat. I don't know. Maybe after 8 months of incomprehensible English noises coming at her she somehow knows that these syllables don't make sense? Could she know somehow that this is a different language? Even before her own Chomskian black box of language acquisition apparatus starts humming?

Well who knows. But I am going to start incorporating some of my favorite and more useful Chinese phrases into our daily one-sided conversations. Mei wen ti. Hao bu hao. Mei guan xi. Zou ba. Kuai le! Maybe even the Wuhan-hua "ni he wo!" Because although I, as a kindergartner, found it dreadfully inconvenient that my teacher couldn't understand me when I told her, "I have to go xiao bian" (xiao bian means pee, and da bian means poop. "xiao" is little and "da" is big; I don't know what "bian" is, but Chinese is nearly always politely euphemistic so it can't be too bad) it's also really cool that I have tidbits of Chinese in my childhood vocabulary, and something of Thweatt family history that I'd like to pass along.

Of course, she's also going to have to learn Spanish if she doesn't want to be shown up by her cousins...

PTS blogs

Okay, so I found one of you through statcounter and I know who you are...so I have added you to my links and you are, for now, the sole representative of the category "PTS bloggers." But surely there are others. Not everyone can be so driven that they haven't discovered the Great Timewaster, the internet's Gift to All Procrastinators and Free Thinkers, the Electronic Abyss into which we type our best thoughts...ah, blogging.

Are there any other PTS bloggers out there who want to 'fess up?

today's AWAD quote

Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them.

--Alvin Toffler, futurist and author (1928- )

"The Glove of Power" vs. "Power Glove"

This semester, I have my dream job: I get to read SF books, and then get together with other people and talk about them, and get paid for it. Oh, there are a couple things I'd change about this job if I could: 1) I'd make it permanent and 2) I'd pay myself a lot more. But really, to be paid at all for doing something you love and would do anyway...who can beat that?

One of the things we've discussed is, what is the difference between SF and fantasy literature? There are a lot of definitions floating around there proposed by critics who spend their time doing things like defining genres and getting paid for it. I guess that's their dream job. Or at least I suppose it pays the bills. But I have yet to read a definition that beats the distinction proposed by my OR friends: "When the title is 'The Glove of Power,' you know it's fantasy...when it's 'Power Glove,' it's SF."

As I child, I probably gravitated toward the fantasy end of the SF-fantasy spectrum. I read Narnia, of course, and L'Engle, and Lloyd Alexander's series, and Earthsea, McAffrey's Pern books, and a whole host of other things that were less worthy but equally enjoyable for a kid. I also read early Heinlein (Dad kept Stranger in a Strange Land out of my hands till high school) and later on Asimov. And as I got older I found myself gravitating more to SF. I still enjoy a good fantasy series, as long as the author has the sense enough to end the story well before it dies the death of a thousand wordy sequels. But it's SF that most often gets my mind going in the speculative directions I enjoy most.

I'm unsure why this is. It could perhaps simply be a personality thing, a quirk of temperament and preference. But it seems that fantasy, as genre, offers the same possibilities as a good SF story for exploring the matters that concern me most, both philosophical and socially critical. Perhaps the mode of exploration differs a bit; but in the creation of any alternate world, whether it is built on magical or technological systems of manipulating physical reality, there is the possibility of commentary on the sorry state of things as they are through the simple juxtaposition of the world of the text and the world of the reader. So why is it that I find this so much more often in SF than fantasy? Is fantasy inherently escapist? SF inherently realist?

While I'm at it, just for fun, here's a list of Heinlein novels that I read as a kid and still regularly re-read today, that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone who enjoys a good SF yarn. In all of these are direct and indirect commentary on social matters such as education, sexual taboo and norms, systemic economic injustice, racial oppression, politics, gender, and religion; in all, a sense of both the potential and depravity of human beings. (Yes, depravity: I used the Presby word. I wonder why that might be.) Most of these are not terribly philosophical, except perhaps for the first, which asks some direct questions about criteria for life, sentience, and humanity.

1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
2. Have Space Suit--Will Travel
3. Sixth Column
4. Citizen of the Galaxy
5. Podkayne of Mars
6. Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers and Space Cadet

big feet

I've heard about this quiz before but never bothered to take till now. Find out how big my ecological feet are...and yours too.

how NOT to do it

Those of you interested in the religion and science stuff, don't miss this article from the New York Times (thanks to Brent who always leaves up the interesting articles in our browser for me to read).

So, this dude writes a dissertation that's "good science, great science" in paleontology, a dissertation that accepts completely and works within the current paradigm of millions of years of evolution in the fossil record...and yet personally is a young-earth creationist who sees no problem with juggling two completely incompatible paradigms in his academic and personal life.

Or should I say lives? Because, in the end, whatever this guy has, it's not a life. To be completely honest, perhaps he should have adopted a pseudonym for the dissertation and all academic work; then no one would have to deal with the utter confusion I feel when trying to apply the same nominal designation to the two lives this one bifurcated person is attempting to lead. What kind of intellectual integrity can you have, when you've only avoided lying to yourself and others by a strategy of self-induced religio-academic schizophrenia? How can what he produces be "good science," and how can what he professes be real faith?

See, people, this is just not how to do science and religion. I don't know what this guy is afraid of, but this non-solution he's adopted and trying to live with can, in my opinion, only be the result of fear. Maybe he's afraid of going to hell. Maybe he's afraid of his father and of disappointing his family. Maybe he's afraid there is no hell, and no God, and a fossil record millions of years old is a poor substitute for the security blanket of his faith, and he's not ready to give it up. Maybe he's afraid to realize that what he's got, in the end, is no kind of faith at all, really. Because if dead stuff in the ground can poof your faith away...well...what exactly is it that you think you're holding on to anyhow?

All these concerned professors interviewed in the article, with their varying opinions of this dude Marcus Ross, and their investment in "academic integrity" and institutional reputations, even the ones who know him and seem to like him and granted him a degree--none of these people see the real problem and underlying tragedy in this situation, and that is, someday this piss-poor strategy of living with contradiction is going to fail Marcus Ross, and he will be shattered, and someone is going to need to help him pick up the pieces. And what help with all these people be then? Even if they care enough about this guy to be around, none of them seem to have thought through the real issue of how religious belief intersects with science; the only ones who even address the issue seem to endorse the separatist strategy that's doomed to fail, because their only concern is that he produce "good science," despite his kooky religious convictions, regardless of the personal cost. He's gone further than I would have thought possible with this lamentable coping strategy--all the way to a Ph.D.--and the further he goes, the harder he'll fall.

May I ever so humbly recommend something for Marcus Ross' reading list? Give this a try: The Shaping of Rationality by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, and follow it up with Alone in the World: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. Not that I'm partial or anything, but there's a guy who gets it right. And takes paleontology a hell of a lot more seriously than does Marcus Ross.

about Brent

Yesterday, I had a clumsy-ass day. Maybe y'all don't have those, but I do. Not every day, but often enough that these days are a phenomenon with a label. On those days I do a lot more cursing than usual. I refer to myself as 'clumsy-ass bitch,' usually more than once, because once the clumsy-ass starts happening, it's rampantly contagious and starts happening everywhere with everything.

So last night, after spilling hot soup out of my bowl down my jeans, onto my socks and slippers and all over the kitchen floor, twice, and then knocking a whole bunch of DVDs clattering down onto the floor after Clare was finally asleep in bed, it's miraculous that Brent could somehow make me laugh at myself after all that elaborate and totally sincere cussing. But he did. Just one more reason to love him.

That, and the fact that he can't hear that little sound that old people aren't supposed to be able to hear and I can.

"it's all due to the chickpeas"

So tonight, I was grading some papers and, sorry to say, despite the extremely riveting essays I was reading, my mind wandered a bit. I was reading all these summations of Calvin's view of baptism, all of which kept mentioning that baptism is initiation into the church. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder why it was that the Church of Christ so vociferously opposes this view of baptism. Given that the basic, broad theological concern of the Churches of Christ is ecclesiology (I mean, what are we supposed to be restoring in this Restoration Movement, anyway?) it seems like, systematically speaking, one would actually expect a theology of baptism that reflects this strong ecclesiological emphasis. And yet we repudiate it. So, I wondered, why is that? At first I couldn't think of any good reason, and so I tentatively concluded that our hermeneutics had once again triumphed over any systematic impulse in our theologizing...But a few hours later, after having gone to precept and returned to my ever-present though slowly dwindling stack of exam papers, I realized that it was probably that Alexander Campbell just really hated the Calvinist doctrine of election. Baptism is the means by which one is saved in the Churches of Christ because it is the means by which one knows one is saved.

TOOTH!

No pictures, because it's hard to see, and she's shy about it. But it's there, all rough and pointy, on the bottom, left (as you look at her, not her left). Yay!

update

rude sermons has a new post: the first one in months and months. All you sermon-starved readers out there, go check it out. The rest of you normal people, avoid the weirdos who read sermons in spare time.

shake those Harding hips

I just got an email from a friend and fellow Harding alumna with these links:

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/littlerocking/2007/01/review_robert_randolph_at_sear.aspx

http://www.markaelrod.net/2007/01/27/robert-randolph-show-mayhem

See also Malibu Librarian's post, which has several additional links as well.

Ah, I remember me a time when I joined a very subversive conga line during a TMBG concert in Benson Auditorium. Yes, and sure enough, the conga line, or perhaps it was the equally subversive performance of the song "S-E-X-X-Y," got them never invited back. Bloody miracle they were invited in the first place, not being country singers. And doubly miraculous that they came! But of course no good deed goes unpunished, not even might-be-giants'.

Unfortunately for me, this little story of my alma mater, like most I suppose, leaves not just the warm fuzzies thinking of all those innocent little undergrads shakin' their hips on the Benson stage to the greater glory of God, but leaves me with a little tingly feeling of dread and dismay as well. It's not that I'm surprised by the rank hypocrisy of a school that forbids dancing while simultaneously endorsing the overblown spectacle of euphemistic choreography dubbed "Spring Sing" every year. No, that's just to be expected; part of the quirkiness of Harding life.

It's the appearance of "CABs" [Campus Activity Board] in special uniform green T-shirts that bugs me. College students deputized to enforce the kyriarchy's arbitrarily decided standards of morality. Can we think of any precedents for this move toward empowering young people as a police force against their peers? Hmmm...Dolores Umbridge's "Inquisatorial Squad" comes to mind, as do more obvious historical examples, and none of them are at all positive. Does Harding really want to be teaching its students that the most moral way to relate to the other is as adversary, watch dog, policeman? That the path to Christian living is marked by a readiness to use force in order to ensure conformity? That control over others is the moral goal of any pious Christian? That other people simply cannot be trusted to exercise good judgment over matters such as how to properly move their limbs?

CAB, IS, or any other acronym you care to add, it doesn't matter. The creation of any such organization, and the lessons it teaches, are the same, no matter what the ostensible moral concern to be enforced is. Sure, quibbling over dancing is nowhere near the level of moral seriousness that, say, racism is. But empowering one subset of people over another within a general population teaches the pernicious lessons of moral superiority, endorsement of force as a moral means to an end, and the disrespect of others.

Shake your booty down to the floor, y'all. If dancing is all it takes to be subversive, well, start small. Sooner or later your moral senses will escape the appalling damage being done to them and you'll wake up to the issues in the world that are really worth fighting for.

Children of Men

So, what could possibly make me want to see a dystopian near-future sci-fi flick? (Who am I kidding...you all know by now I'm addicted to sci-fi dystopias.) But hearken to this amazing and only slightly ironic endorsement from newly-wed mei mei Emily: "It made me want to have a baby."

Normally, I think attempts to make sci-fi movies are doomed to cheesy failure. This isn't sci-fi's fault, but the exceptions are few. Enemy Mine (1985), with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr., is one of the few exceptions (I re-watched it while hanging out in WA this past week. It's still pretty awesome.) And this movie. I thought the portrayal of the near future (the 2020's) was visually realistic, and the technological flourishes were well-chosen and not too brash, except for maybe the scene at the dinner table with the virtual keyboarding, but that didn't bug me (it probably bugged Brent). But there are no big pointy shoulders in shiny clothing; what a relief to look into a future where people wear things still recognizable as clothing.

The basic premise, and I'm not giving away anything you don't pick up in the opening scenes of the movie, is that for some undiscovered reason, human beings have lost the ability to procreate. It's been roughly 20 years since the last baby was born, and the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What's the point of...well, anything, when there's no future to anticipate?

So of course, the plot unfolds around the figure of a pregnant girl. Unwed, marginal, and vulnerable, she is very much a Virgin Mary symbol (even makes a virgin birth joke before admitting she has no idea who the father is). And of course the baby is a baby Jesus figure, a concrete embodiment of restored hope for humanity. One interesting aspect of the story is the reversal of the assumption of the male gender of the baby, an assumption made by the mother and then later by a traitorous Judas character. That the baby is a girl underscores the break the baby represents from the violence presupposed in the worldview of the men in control of this anarchic future. The most arresting scene of the movie (despite the awesome moment where you get to see the baby come out, and let me say how excited I am that they included that, and also add, don't worry, it wasn't "gross") is the escape from the bombarded building: mother and baby and protector simply walk out, and as the soldiers hear the baby's cries and comprehend the significance of them, the fighting simply ceases...Until fired upon from afar, and then the frantic and ineffectual violence breaks out anew.

But for all that, the movie ends optimistically: Tomorrow really exists.

I cannot help but add one small pet-peevish criticism. I have no idea why, especially in a movie where the director was brave enough to give the audience a close-to-real birth moment, there would be no concern for continued verisimilitude regarding care. That poor baby went at least a whole night and a day without eating once. I was so concerned about this that I leaned over to Brent and hissed, "that baby needs to eat! why doesn't she feed her?" Is there some reason I don't know about that breastfeeding cannot even be hinted at in a movie? I know this is a small thing to pick on, but honestly. Wouldn't it be nice to have at least one movie remind us that breasts are not just pointless lumps of bodyfat that men (well, mostly men, I suppose) have arbitrarily decided to get off on? For myself, I had never regarded my breasts as anything but pointless, and if they had been any bigger I would have regarded them as pointless and annoying (friends not as lucky as me tell me that they really do have to wear bras...an awful way to have to live, in my opinion). Now, however, I am quite absurdly proud of them. I like them. I think they're beautiful. And they have a point (so to speak). I truly think this movie would be better if someone had thought of this and included a breastfeeding scene; it would have added to the feminist theme, the peace theme, the nurture theme, as well as reinforcing the point, first made visually and symbolically by the sight of the pregnant belly, that humanity's biology had been restored to rightness.

favorite Seattle pictures

mobile!

As of January 23. Forward crawling motion achieved and perfected in a few short hours. Bonus milestone: she pulls herself up to her feet now using any available surface.

But where oh where are those teeth she's been promising for months now???

"vacation"

So, here we are in Seattle!

It's been great. I slept in till 9:30 this morning, pretty awesome, I must say. I've watched some Battlestar Galactica with my mom, and tonight we will get me caught up on season 3 in time to enjoy the premier tomorrow night. And I'm reading the new posthumous collaborative Heinlein novel, Variable Star.

But I am also:

1. grading TH 222 term sheets and exams
2. writing up a paper proposal for a conference opportunity I just learned about, with a deadline of Jan 31
3. working on my sermon for Feb 4
4. prepping for precepting next semester's theology & sci fi course (ED 325)--PTS readers (all 2 of you), if you're looking for an awesome course for spring semester, check this one out!

So, basically, vacation means time to do all the stuff that I don't really have time to do at home. Except, you'll notice, the one thing I should be doing prominently not on my list...

on breastfeeding

Now that Clare's a little older, her singleminded devoted intensity to the eating experience has given way to distractability and some new habits.

1. Hand on head, elbow out, in the "don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful" gesture.
2. Hand raised up in the air in the "praise God!" gesture. I suppose she's praising God from whom all (milky) blessings flow.
3. Hand grasping big toe in what I will call The Multitasking Yogi Pose.
4. Hand reaching up to touch my face in her most endearing new habit. It's nice to think that she's realizing there's a face attached to the boob, and Mommy is more than just a milk dispenser.
5. Hands grasping the boob on either side in the desperate "isn't there any more in there???" gesture. That one being, obviously, my least favorite.

A concluding theological thought: if more theologians were mothers, perhaps we would have an understanding of kenosis linked to breastfeeding as a symbolic and physical "emptying" on behalf of others.

nonresolutions

I don't make resolutions. Not really. I mean, not consciously. I don't write anything down and don't pick any goals or deadlines. This would be a great time for me to resolve, for instance, to start working on getting back into shape, or more specifically (I read somewhere that generic resolutions are the first to go) to not skip any more yoga classes. But I don't resolve. I'm not sure why I don't join with the millions of people who make promises to themselves upon the occasion of the new year, but I just don't.

However, I find that I mark the clean slate beginning of a new year in other ways. I just cleaned out my hotmail inbox. I had nearly 500 messages in there, stretching back to before Clare was born, before I was pregnant even. I don't know when it was that I lost control over my inbox. But messages just kept compounding.

But now, it's all gone. With a few clicks of the mouse I ruthlessly deleted almost everything. I didn't go through the messages. I deleted whole pages of missives without a glance, a hundred at a time. I saved an email from Brent with the subject line "I love you" and a couple messages from people I wanted to remember to write. And that was it. Now I have 5 messages in my inbox.

And boy do I feel good.

I also shaved my legs today for the first time in a long, long time. And I cleaned out the closet this week. And gathered up all Clare's outgrown clothes to pass on to friends. And yesterday I reorganized my desk.

It should be a good year, 2007.

things Clare is doing now, and Christmas '06 pics

things Clare is doing now:

1. babbling: ga, la, da, na, ba, wa, even ma. She likes reduplications and Malda swears she heard "mama" while we were in TX. And she's definitely saying "dada."
2. sitting up--she's an old pro at this by now. I saw her pull herself up from her tummy to sitting up during our visit.
3. nearly crawling. I'll keep you posted.
4. getting frustrated when I take a toy away. Not a very welcome milestone, let me add.
5. eating her veggies with gusto. Once at Harding I had to take a psych test as part of the app process for becoming an RA. It had this question on it: "Do you eat your food with more gusto than other people?" I've been paranoid about my level of enjoyment of food ever since, but luckily, Clare has not inherited this neurotic anxiety.
6. closely related to #5, pooping a lot more solidly than before. Yay.
   

Christmas Day at Granddad and as-yet-unlabeled grandmother's house


five generations: Zada Belle Finley Gravette, Clare Madalyn Thweatt Bates, Malda Lyn Coulson Bates (bottom, right to left); Delphene Gravette Coulson, James Brent Bates (top)

three 2007 beautiful things

1. watching a husband be a daddy.
2. Sol's first US Christmas with all the family.
3. five-generation pictures. We go to Whitesboro, TX (yeah, I know, maybe someday the Chamber of Commerce will decide that's awful...) today to get a picture with Clare, Brent, Malda, Mimi (Brent's grandmother Delphene) and Nana (great-grandmother Zada Belle).

three 2006 beautiful things

1. Clare.
2. Officially ABD.
3. Being pregnant, and not being pregnant.

Thanks to Casey for the link to Three Beautiful Things (written by another Clare, coincidentally).

there were never such devoted sisters...

My sister Ally has a couple of very interesting theological posts over on her blog, demasiada. If you've been suffering from withdrawal from lack of the substantive theological discourse that you've become addicted to since reading this blog, since I am always so theological and substantive, go see what my sibling has to say.

another post about church

Sometimes I find it hard to explain to people what I think is so wonderful about a set liturgy. Yes, it's beautiful. Yes, it serves a catechetical function. Yes, it takes the guesswork out of the important rituals of the church, a very good thing. But all of these things don't really add up to the sum of why I have a love for liturgical worship.

Like so much else, that which can't be dissected rationally can be communicated in narrative.

Yesterday evening I had volunteered to lead Communion for our church (check out the new website!!!). Last year, with Brent's help, I adapted the Eucharist liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer for use in our church context--basically, trimmed it down and made it a bit more casual, and took out all the really "priestly" elements (inappropriate, of course, for a church with no priests). Ever since, when I celebrate the Lord's Supper, I use the form that we created. One of the elements we retained was the Lord's Prayer. Often we will pray this at the end of our worship service, if we haven't already during Communion.

Last night one of the residents at the YWCA where we worship on the 4th floor came in late during the sermon. Sorry I'm late, she announced in a loud voice while Joe was mid-sentence. Glad you're here, come in, Joe answered, without skipping a beat or losing his train of thought. And she sat down near me in the back. A couple of weeks ago when I first met her I quickly realized that it would be difficult to talk to her. For some reason, current impressions, memories, arbitrary connections, all spill out in a free flow of unedited rambling, so that no sentence is connected to the next in a way that anyone can really follow or respond to. Talking seems compulsive for her, and communication is lost in a maelstrom of time- and context-independent information overload. So it was unsurprising when she periodically would voice the random thoughts flowing through her mind as she sat in the chair near me during church.

Until we began to celebrate Communion, and came to the recital of the Lord's Prayer. And all of a sudden, the jumbled-up free-for-all slowed, and focused, and clarified, and she was able to voice along with the rest of us, in perfect unison, the words of our communal prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, for ever and ever.

Amen.

hiatus

Like so many others have done on occasion, I am taking a blogging hiatus. Not because I'm tired of blogging, or because I'm too busy doing other stuff to blog (although this is certainly true), but because it's almost November.

life bearing

This week I got to talk about the spirituality of childbirth with a new friend who's doing a project on this for a class. What I found out, as she interviewed me about my experience of being pregnant and giving birth, is that while I experienced it as deeply spiritual, I didn't, necessarily, experience it as Christian in any obvious external way. Maybe it's just that I'm a bad Christian, but I don't think so.

Perhaps surprisingly, I didn't theologize a lot about what it meant to be pregnant. It wasn't something I wanted to thematize, or abstract from. It was something to cherish experiencing, and so I spent most of it just trying to be in the moment. Writing little notes to Clare in her little purple journal while she was born was part of that, I think.

One theological thing that I did find myself with was a much more concrete conviction that God is a God of life. Instead of being a principle enshrined in a theological system, suddenly, God as a God of life was concretely located in the ever-growing massive space between my ribs and my pelvis, kicking and wriggling and declaring her living goodness. I was in awe of the process, in awe of my own body, and hers, and in awe of the resilient fragility of it all.

For comps, I read an essay by Rahner, anthologized in the Theological Investigations, that discussed childbearing as absolute risktaking. That struck a chord with me, being about 6 weeks pregnant at the time, when everything was still a huge unknown waiting to happen. Rahner argued that childbearing must have this character. I remember thinking as I read it that really, this is simply an instance of life where life's true character as risktaking is more evident than it is day-to-day. Life is risk. It takes faith to negotiate it, and to bear it.

yoga kitty

For Hermit Greg: to prove his cat's not the only cool cat around.

(Tiamat helps out with counterpressure for back pain my last week of pregnancy.)

prolegomena, or, The Question,

Or, "Good card players! But mind you, I wouldn't give them the time of day!"

It used to be that people used to ask me, "What are you going to do with that?" when I told them I studied theology. I used to tell them, "Have babies with it." I enjoyed the irony that went straight over people's heads when I said it. This left me amused, and them undisturbed, which worked for everybody. It annoyed Brent, though, since no one ever got that I was being facetious. And eventually I stopped. But that doesn't happen so much anymore. Nowadays The Question has become, "why are you still Church of Christ?"

I've blogged about this before, done the tag thing, and so on. But I'm never really satisfied with anything that I've written on it. Nothing ever seems to really get at the heart of why I remain where I am, despite, well, you know, not being given the time of day. So to speak. (Name that quote? Anybody? Anybody not related to me, I mean?)

It hit me forcefully this week (again, I blog under the influence of TH 222 and a bit of sleep deprivation; Clare's temporarily abandoned her habit of sleeping through the night) that part of a theologian's responsibility--before they start theologizing--is choosing to whom and for whom they speak. Where to locate themselves. Am I speaking to the church? The academy? In the public square? What issues to address? Whose issues to address. This matter of prolegomena is prior even to considerations of method, the prolegomena that gets discussed in the classroom.

Some of this is determined for you. But it is also, I'm convinced, a matter of careful, deliberate and responsible choosing. Who do I speak to. Who do I speak for. This should not be a casual decision, or a ceding to the inevitable. There's nothing inevitable about it. Sure, I'm a white middle-class chick from Tennessee. But that doesn't lock me into anything.

So, why am I still Church of Christ? Because I choose to be. Because these are the people I choose to speak to. And, in some sense, these are the people I choose to speak for: that is, the people in our short denominational history and in our churches who have been left out and turned aside, who have had to look in from the outside and look on in silence, who have assumed this is how it's supposed to be, or who have chafed under the knowledge that it isn't, for years.

You're responsible for choosing where to be, and for when and to whom you speak, as well as for what you say.

This Sunday was Clare's dedication service at Christ's Church for Brooklyn. That's Joe anointing Clare's foot with some extremely fragrant "sweet-smelling stuff" (in fact, she's still smelling pretty sweet, which is great since, you know, babies don't really smell that sweet very often or very long) while Clare giggles right on cue. Isn't that an awesome picture?


I loved the Thanksgiving service at Trinity, and found it really meaningful that Brent's mom could be there, that some members Brent knows pretty well stayed after church to attend, and that Anne Marie celebrated it. But perhaps because I am still an "outsider" to Trinity and to the Episcopal Church, the Thanksgiving service was, for me, a theological declaration more than a communal celebration. It was speaking to God about Clare; expressing gratitude, asking for wisdom for ourselves as we raise her, asking for God's blessing in her life. But last night's service, while still doing these things, was so much more about the community. Last night, we were a family unit, but we were also part of a larger community of faith. Last night, Clare was our daughter, but she was everyone else's child, too.

I'm not saying these thoughts were missing from our first thanksgiving, but that I experienced it very differently. Part of the difference is me, and part of it is the rite itself.

But mostly, I am so happy to be able to say to my daughter, you are a child of God, and you belong in any family of God you find yourself in: at Trinity, at CCfB...at St. Barnabas, at Manhattan, at Enumclaw Community Church...

the flash

Every so often, something clicks in my head and things come together in a beautiful, crystalline way. It generally happens randomly, sparked by something read casually or spoken by someone else. I don't really understand how my brain works or why old bits of things float around in it unnoticed to eventually bump into something at the forefront of my consciousness and suddenly crystallize. But it happens that way.

So, the other day, I was sitting in 222 lecture (this being pretty much my primary out-of-the-house activity, second only to precepting; grocery shopping is a close third, and that is pretty much the sum of my out-of-the-house activity for a normal week) and something, I don't know what, suddenly flashed on in my brain. So at the end of my lecture notes, there is a squiggly box and in it I scribbled: Haraway--solidarity not similarity--answer to Xological problem.

So, I've been reading all this stuff, Barth, Calvin, Schleiermacher, on why Christ has to be both God and "Man" in order to do the work of redemption. Because how can Christ be our Mediator if he does not share in both natures?

Well...if Haraway's clue from feminist theory is worth anything, then maybe we can skip the whole Chalcedonian problem. Solidarity, not similarity. Does God have to be ontologically us to do the work of redemption? Maybe not. Maybe "mediation" isn't the way to think about it. Perhaps we can simply consider the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection God's act of sovereign solidarity with us, despite our ontological difference. I don't know how far I would want to systematize that--probably not too far, actually--but it certainly is a relief from the wrestling with the God-Man question. And, incidentally, solidarity-not-similarity would provide an answer to the "problem" of Jesus' maleness.

tracy asked...

Nana's blue dress

This is the dress my mom's 6-month picture was taken in, and the dress that my 6-month picture was taken in...Clare's not nearly 6 months yet but it's a good thing we didn't wait.

WWJD

I used to spend down time during first year Greek at Harding making up alternative meanings for the WWJD acronym. Wild Women Joke Dirty was one. Wet Willies Jiggle Dangerously. Willie Wonka Jives Deliciously. I think MTR was implicated in this as well but now that it's nearly a whole screaming decade ago, my memory's a little fuzzy. Or maybe it's just that my little gray cells are already multitasking to capacity these days and have no spare energy for frivolity.

Anyhow, my mom's been blogging lately on the shortcomings of the WWJD impulse. This week as I was reviewing Tillich in preparation for Friday morning's precept I came across a lovely passage which speaks directly to the concerns my mom is expressing. Full of joy that reading old dead German guys can still be relevant to the task of theologizing today, I include the passage below:

"Imitatio Christi is often understood as the attempt to transform one's life into a copy of the life of Jesus, including the concrete traits of the biblical picture. But this contradicts the meaning of those traits as parts of his being within the picture of Jesus the Christ. These traits are supposed to make translucent the New Being, which is his being. As such, they point beyond their contingent character and are not instances to imitate. If they are used this way, they lose their transparency and become ritualistic or ascetic prescriptions. If the word "imitation" is used at all in this context, it should indicate that we, in our concreteness, are asked to participate in the New Being and to be transformed by it, not beyond, but within, the contingencies of our life." Systematic Theology II, 122-3.

part III

And to bring this now flaccid conversation to its successful conclusion: part III.

did Jesus have a penis, II

Over on the newly resurrected kendallball (does this make .com the virtual heavenly body as compared to the old earthly .net?) there is an interesting post entitled "did Jesus have a penis?"

In the midst of quite a lot of male discussion about masturbation (how surprising) I commented that the interesting angle to this question was soteriological. I was asked to explain myself and rather lamely put the clarification as "can women relate to a male savior?"

Now, that's just not at all what I really meant to say, so it's been bugging me. And the conversation at that point seemed to flag and I thought that no one was interested in pursuing the female point of view on the Jesus' penis question. Except for me, so I decided to blog about it here.

But lo and behold, the newly appellated Hermit Scott did ask me to elaborate, perhaps even in my own blog post. Which makes me feel happy. Especially since I intend to at least partially make good on a promise I made months ago over on Gay Restorationist, and talk about whether men and women are ontologically different (in my opinion).

What I really meant to say was, if Gregory of Nazianzus is right, and "what is not assumed cannot be healed," does it matter that the human flesh Jesus assumed was male and not female? Are women left out of the significance of the Incarnation? (Luckily for me, as an aside in the Wednesday TH 222 lecture, this point was phrased exactly thus, and I shamelessly borrow it here.)

Because the answer to the question is, yes, of course Jesus had a penis. The real question is how does this matter.

John Calvin dispenses with this with a curt, "Why, even children know that women are included under the term 'men'!" (Institutes, vol. I, 479. The immediate question Calvin is addressing is why Jesus can be accounted the Son of David when Matthew's genealogy is the line of Joseph rather than Mary...but his reasoning in answering this little dilemma is clearly germane to our question here).

This of course is less than satisfactory for me.

Whether or not it matters that Jesus had a penis and not a vagina, theologically speaking, depends on whether or not you consider men and women to be ontologically different beings. If you do, then the fact that Jesus was male means that he assumed maleness but not femaleness, and the question of whether Jesus can save women becomes critical. This might explain why, in the Christian tradition, women were often considered partial, or defective, males; and the gnostic Gospel of Thomas deals with this problem by teaching that women who are saved will actually become men.

This of course is less than satisfactory for me.

But the idea that men and women are ontologically distinct is a pretty common one. It is at the basis of all forms of "complementarianism," whether explicitly heirarchical or not. It is one of the bedrock convictions that goes unexamined in all churches that teach that women have a different (silent, invisible) role in the church than men.

I used to argue this with Brent a lot when we were first married; he has always held a much more "unisex" version of feminism than I have. But in the course of these discussions I have come to realize that what I really think is that the difference between male and female is not ontological, but simply biological. And while that biological difference is clearly formative, and perhaps could be called foundational to one's identity, it lies in the plane of physical contingency and not ontological being.

So, did Jesus have a penis? Sure. (Otherwise, how could we possibly have the relic of the Holy Prepuce?) Does it mean that he only assumed maleness, instead of assuming humanity? It all depends on whether you consider male and female to be so different that being one means completely excluding the other.

triple snotrockets

Now we all have Clare's first cold.

snotrockets

Clare has got her first headcold. It's a little scary. Plus, really gross.

things Clare is doing now, or "dangerously maternal" post

1. Stringing more vowels together than Robert Plant. Oooooooo-ya-ee-ya-ee-yeah.
2. Sleeping like a princess in a fairy tale...all night long.
3. Creating masterpieces in her favorite modern art medium, mostly untitled, but some, particularly memorable, with titles like "that time there was so much it came up the front and the back" and "time to wash the bouncy chair again" and "wow! it hit the wall!"
4. Initiating a long-term scientific investigation into determining exactly which objects in the universe are soluble in human saliva.
5. Turning into a real milk junkie--looks like Homer Simpson eating a donut when she nurses.
6. Growing and growing and growing so much...like a bad hundred-year bloom. But in "the good way."

do I, really

For the last decade or so of my life this question has periodically resurged. I expect it will for however many decades remain to me. Every so often the absurdity of the things I’ve staked my life on overshadows the ordinariness that belief takes on in the lived-out day-to-day. And when that happens I am forced to confront it. To stop and ask, do I really believe this stuff? Do I, really?

Sometimes this is just a flash of feeling, and sometimes it lasts for a day or so and then subsides. Madeleine L’Engle wrote of “days of disbelief.” Sometimes it lingers for a while longer. I’ve gone for long periods of time, years probably, without really knowing or daring to hazard an answer to the question, because the answer might honestly be no. I’ve known those who, finally, did have to answer no. I find it brave, even admirable, though not at all enviable.

I don’t know what “blessed are the poor in spirit” is really supposed to mean. But when I hear those words I think of those who struggle to believe, who want to believe, and just aren’t sure they can.

Does this bug anybody? That an aspiring professor of theology must admit to periods of recurrent if temporary suspended belief? Because it’s just how it is. Maybe other people don’t experience this. Perhaps some believers remain confident and unshakeable from the moment of their baptisms, or whatever marks the beginning of their certain belief, to the end of their days. I imagine George W. Bush is one of these people. Maybe some people can pass through this world, so marked by tragedy and suffering and evil, and smile serenely and continue unruffled to bet on everything coming out right in the end and assert that that’s all that matters anyway. I am not one of these people.

Quite frankly—oh, let’s just go ahead and be rude—these people really fucking bother me.

I find that I cannot respect a faith that hasn’t questioned itself. Repeatedly. Because once you face the necessity of that questioning, you see that the question is never settled with any sort of finality. At least, not on this side of death. I can’t respect a faith that doesn’t recognize the very real possibility that it could become unfaith.

Faith is not measured by intensity of fervor, or even unshakeableness of resolve. Faith is simply flinging yourself forward into life—sometimes an abyss, sometimes a mountaintop. Sometimes you don’t know why you go on. And that, even at its most unreasonable, is faith at its purest.

postscript: go read Theoblogia today too.

Feminarian has some powerful words today: "Thoughts on an Anniversary."

my good samaritans

This Sunday Clare and I made our first trip to church by train. You can't really tell, but that's Clare in the stroller on the train.

Ah, the stroller. I took it because in addition to Clare and the requisite diaper bag, I was carrying my contribution to our monthly meal together: Thweatt rolls, a full Thanksgiving-sized double batch. I figured being able to put them down under the stroller seat and push Clare along would make things a great deal easier.

But in a city strollers are like cars--really convenient and helpful when you're actually moving and covering some distance, and really sucky to deal with all the rest of the time. I knew I had some stairs to contend with, but I also knew other people in NYC used strollers--I've seen them on the subway, I know it's possible to get your stroller down there. But this was my first stroller management experience. So I didn't know (till I asked for advice and received an extremely helpful tip from Laura) how to really handle the get-the-damn-stroller-up-(or down)-the-stairs hurdle.

But at every flight of stairs and at every elevator, train, and subway door, someone was ready to help. 12 people in all ready to hold the door or grab the bottom of the stroller to help lift it and carry it up or down the stairs. And it wasn't until I got to church and started thinking about it that I realized every single person who stopped to help me was a person of color.

Maybe it's a fluke but it seems astonishing to me. I'm no social scientist and this of course is not any kind of well-designed social experiment: this is just me not being able to handle my baby vehicle. And one trip is hardly representative, I'm sure. But I'm keeping my eyes open the next time I take the thing to NYC (not anytime soon--Clare may be heavy but at least in a sling stairs present no major obstacle) and we'll see if the experience repeats itself. Even though I now know the easiest way to get a stroller up or down the stairs is to pick it up and carry it myself.

when, and why

One of the things Brent and I are asked fairly often by people is when (or whether) Clare will be baptized. A couple of semesters ago, when I was precepting for TH 222 and just a few months pregnant, Clare became my class illustration (oh, the dangers of being a preacher's kid) on the subject during discussion of infant baptism and believer's baptism. It personalized it, made it a little less abstract--and unfortunately, a little less overtly theological for the students as well, I think. It's hard to theologize when all of a sudden, you're no longer talking about an issue, but a person. Thus, "unfortunately," because really, theology is ultimately about people, for it is always about relationship: to God and each other. Nothing is ever just an issue, floating around unattached to people, and doing theology as if there were such abstract, unattached and impersonal objects of investigation is (in my opinion) pretty much inevitably bad theology.

We've discussed this at least half a dozen times already since learning I was pregnant, and probably will discuss it that many more times in the next year or so. It's not that we disagree about it; it's not that Brent is for baptizing Clare now, and I'm not, or vice versa. It's more like, now that we have this decision in front of us, there are reasons on both sides and it takes a lot of back and forth discussion to negotiate it all, and in the end, when we're fatigued and the subject itself is exhausted, we know that we will revisit everything again in a little while.

Really, the question is, what is baptism, anyway? Is it something we do, or something God does? Do we have to be old enough to stand on our own two feet and speak for ourselves in order for baptism to be what it is? Or even further, do we have to be able to stand up and speak for ourselves as autonomous, responsible individuals--alone, as it were, before the throne of God, in order for baptism to be what it is?

I have my doubts about this, even though this is the assumption I grew up with. I wasn't baptized until I was 16 years old, mainly because at the ever-impressionable junior-high age, I watched a bunch of kids from the youth group I was nominally a part of go tripping down the aisle like lemmings and jumping into the baptistry. I was hugely cynical, because the kids I watched make heartfelt confessions of faith up at the front were the same kids who were, for the most part, casually cruel to me week in and week out (or at least, as my memory may have exaggerated, completely indifferent). What could baptism possibly mean, I felt, if it was just some maudlin show that left no imprint on the remainder of someone's life? Later, after my family's move to NC, I resisted because I was determined that, whatever I eventually decided, it would be a real decision, something that would mark which way I was choosing to go with my life. Not being baptized would have been quite as much a decision as being baptized: it was one way, or the other. Very Gospel of John, light and dark, sort of thing. So I put it off, because for a long time I didn't want to come to that point of decision-making. I wanted to float, live in both worlds, for as long as I could. Eventually, of course, this quit working for me. I had to choose. So baptism was, for me, the paradigmatic autonomous individual squaring up to take the responsibility of choosing or rejecting God. Baptism, for me, was saying "yes" to God. For a long time this was all that baptism was for me. I understood in some kind of intellectual way that baptism was participation in Christ's death, was a washing away of sins, was the reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit, was incorporation into the body of Christ. But these were just words. What baptism was, experientially, was an existential decision that marked a direction for my life.

I'm not saying this is a bad understanding. I, in fact, treasure the memory of my baptism and am grateful that I have this moment in my life that does stand as a marker of saying "yes" to God. There is something firm and unshakeable about that, something that cannot be undone, that I can reach for in moments of doubt and regret. Baptism is still this for me, but what I now understand is that it is also a great deal more. It is, in a way that goes deeper than words, participation, cleansing, renewal, incorporation; and it was these things even when I myself thought of it merely as a moment of definitive spiritual decision-making in my life.

The World Council of Churches document, "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry," has this to say:

While the possibility that infant baptism was also practised in the apostolic age cannot be excluded, baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents.

In the course of history, the practice of baptism has developed in a variety of forms. Some churches baptize infants brought by parents or guardians who are ready, in and with the Church, to bring up the children in the Christian faith. Other churches practise exclusively the baptism of believers who are able to make a personal confession of faith. Some of these churches encourage infants or children to be presented and blessed in a service which usually involves thanksgiving for the gift of the child and also the commitment of the mother and father to Christian parenthood.

All churches baptize believers coming from other religions or from unbelief who accept the Christian faith and participate in catechetical instruction.

Both the baptism of believers and the baptism of infants take place in the Church as the community of faith. When one who can answer for himself or herself is baptized, a personal confession of faith will be an integral part of the baptismal service. When an infant is baptized, the personal response will be offered at a later moment in life. In both cases, the baptized person will have to grow in the understanding of faith. For those baptized upon their own confession of faith, there is always the constant requirement of a continuing growth of personal response in faith. In the case of infants, personal confession is expected later, and Christian nurture is directed to the eliciting of this confession. All baptism is rooted in and declares Christ's faithfulness unto death. It has its setting within the life and faith of the Church and, through the witness of the whole Church, points to the faithfulness of God, the ground of all life in faith. At every baptism the whole congregation reaffirms its faith in God and pledges itself to provide an environment of witness and service. Baptism should, therefore, always be celebrated and developed in the
setting of the Christian community.

I quote this at length because I figure most people won't bother to follow the link to read all that (and probably a lot of you skipped to the end here as well so if I caught you cheating go back and read it). For some people, it is very significant that "the most clearly attested pattern in the NT" is believer's baptism. With very few exceptions, the stories of baptism in the NT are adults choosing to make a confession of belief. The exceptions seem to be those places where it is indicated that whole households are baptized, households including people without direct volition such as children and possibly even servants or slaves. But this "most clearly attested pattern," as any CofCer knows, is not as clearcut as that simple phrase makes it sound. Think of all the headscratching we've done on the question of the Holy Spirit, and trying to figure why sometimes it comes before, and sometimes after, and sometimes as a result of, baptism.

It is also clear that the baptism of infants is a reasonable answer to the development of the church, to that first generation of children born to parents who were baptized as believers. Theological arguments of original sin as justification for the practice came after the practice itself, and are dispensable; you don't have to believe little babies are going to hell to practice infant baptism. You are, rather, affirming the fact that this baby is also a fellow human being both in need of and deserving of grace, and part of a community which knows this and will teach this. Clare can't articulate this truth (although she's doing great with oohs, aahs, and various gurgly noises), but it is true of her nonetheless.

So...when will we do it? And why? Right now our answer is to wait. Primarily because of my own experiential argument, and not because I "won" with a theological or biblical case for believer's baptism. I value my own baptismal experience so much that I can't shake the conviction that this should be possible for Clare, too. But I am highly aware that this is a personal preference, and not a theological stance.

BEM concludes:

In some churches which unite both infant-baptist and believer-baptist
traditions, it has been possible to regard as equivalent alternatives for entry
into the Church both a pattern whereby baptism in infancy is followed by later
profession of faith and a pattern whereby believers' baptism follows upon a
presentation and blessing in infancy. This example invites other churches to
decide whether they, too, could not recognize equivalent alternatives in their
reciprocal relationships and in church union negotiations.

Clare has been welcomed into the Episcopal church (see Brent's post for the really beautiful liturgy for this service). Sometime soon she will be welcomed into my church, too. And someday--perhaps sooner than any believer's baptist tradition considers proper, and later than any pedobaptist considers proper--she will be baptized. I bet if we took bets on it, she would pick some day nobody bet on, just to be her own self.

my word cloud (thanks Joe!)

birthday

Yesterday was Brent's birthday. He too has now reached the hallowed age of 30, and since he's teased me for a month about enjoying his youth (with the implication that mine was officially over July 20 at 9:34) I think his should be celebrated with a vengeance.

So yesterday I planned a day full of Brent's favorite things. Favorite foods, favorite drink, favorite activities, favorite kind of cake-from-a-box and favorite ice cream (well, as good as I could do, anyway--Ben and Jerry's is an acceptable substitute for Bluebell, which you can special order for delivery, but only at $89 a pop).

And I started a scrapbook--not of Clare, but of us. Turns out we have a pile of pictures from random times and places from the last 6 1/2 years, and someday Clare will want to know how Daddy met Mommy and now we'll have a little picture book to go along with our admittedly insane love story. We'll tell it as a cautionary tale, obviously.

So, happy birthday to Brent! Feel free to leave your mean, over-the-hill-themed comments below. Or your nice congratulatory ones too.

followup

From the New York Times:

August 26, 2006

Clergywomen Find Hard Path to Bigger Pulpit

By NEELA BANERJEE

pissed!

So, I've been watching the Today Show in the mornings while breastfeeding Clare. This morning, an exceptionally fine morning as Clare slept through the night!!!, was soured for me as I happened to see a segment entitled, "Power Girls: has empowerment gone too far?" I am, in fact, incensed. Enough so that I decided it was worth a bit of time to express my outrage in an email that will never be read. Which is why I post it below, so that at least YOU, my small band of loyal readers, can be equally pissed off and admire my nice turn of wicked phrase here and there.

Dear Today Show,

I am writing to express my disappointment with a segment of this morning's show, entitled "Power Girls: has empowerment gone too far?" The premise of this segment, that empowering girls with the message that "they can do anything," has backfired and produced heightened reckless and irresponsible behaviors in girls (such as drinking, smoking, and drug use) is flawed and indeed damaging. The assumption that empowerment equals immature adolescent hedonism is never questioned in this segment, but quite the opposite: it is assumed to be true, and then lamented. The suggested solution is a return to "feminity," with the statement that in this way women will once again take their proper place as the moralizing force in general society. What an incredibly backward suggestion.

I find it hard to believe that anyone would present this as serious "reporting," or that any professional woman would be able to state such things on national TV with a straight face. Those two women could take on Steven Colbert anytime.

As a side note, I also found it odd that Seventeen magazine is now considered a legitimate source for parental advice. I'm certain my parents never consulted it while dealing with my difficult teen years, and as a parent myself I have not had occasion to seek advice about raising my daughter from a magazine whose major audience is the apparently over-empowered teen girl it purports to lament.

Now that the feminist "mountain has been climbed," as was claimed in the segment, are we to believe that achieving a semblance of equality and respect has actually damaged girls? Is the solution really to silently slink back down that mountain into our kitchens, don the aprons and kick off the shoes? And let's not forget that even here at "the top" of this mountain, women are still earning only about 60% of the income that men do for the same work. Have we really achieved what is being claimed here? I think not.

Please, do not air any more segments which undermine the true empowerment of girls and women. There are too many mountains that remain to be climbed.

Sincerely outraged,
Jennifer J. Thweatt-Bates

be a cowboy. or girl.

This is from an email that my sister and bro-in-law sent out a couple weeks ago. I'm trying to think of creative ways my church can help. Brent came up with a great idea but if anyone wants to brainstorm and share your ideas are welcome. Or hey, just go buy your own cow. Those of you with real jobs and that mysterious thing called "income" ought to consider it. The rest of us who haven't grown up yet, let's apply that creativity and imagination to coming up with ways to get those other people with income to buy cows.

Mission Lazarus

Cows for Kids

You have a unique opportunity to help children in Honduras in a real and tangible way. As most of you know, we are about to open a new children's home, Las Palmas Refuge, in southern Honduras and along with this comes the responsibility of providing physical nourishment for these children. So we are building the agricultural component of Las Palmas Refuge to provide for the nutritional needs of the kids. Fresh milk, cheese and other dairy products are vital for healthy children and thus we are focusing our initial efforts on the dairy herd. We really need your help in purchasing young cows so we can better provide for the children of Las Palmas.

Jesus spoke often about caring for little children. Mark 9 reads: "Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, "Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes my Father who sent me."

Our initial plan is to purchase a small herd of composite dairy cows. These cows have relatively low milk production but are fairly cheap compared to traditional milking breeds. As we grow our herd, we will improve the quality of our cows by using pure bred Holstein, Jersey and Brown Swiss bulls.

The cost of each cow ranges from $500 to $1000 depending on the quality of the animal and her condition of sale (lactating, pregnant, cow-calf pair, etc). We would love for you to purchase your own cow. You can get to know your cow personally by giving her a name and receiving a picture of her detailing her personality.

First Fruits

Just this week we started supplying our school in San Marcos with fresh milk from our first few cows. To see the smiles and contentment on the children's faces is indescribable. The feeling of love and gratitude is really overwhelming. This is the first fruits of our labor on this dairy project. With your help, we can continue to grow this effort and give these children the physical and spiritual nourishment they need.

We want to invite you to partner with us in welcoming the children to Las Palmas. Please consider helping us in the purchase of cows so that the table will be full when they arrive. If you would like to help purchase a cow, the whole thing or just part of her, please mail your donation to:

Mission Lazarus

47 W. Irving Park Rd.

Roselle, IL 60172.

Please note "Cow" on your check. You can also donate online at: ML Donate. All Donations are tax deductible.

Thanks for your help.

welcome to the world

Sylva Mercedes Bohannon was born yesterday morning: 8 lbs. 14 oz., 20 " long and lots of hair.

anticipation

Today is all about anticipation. I am waiting for a phone call from NC to announce the arrival of Clare's destined best friend. I thought the anticipation was unbearable when I went 15 days postdate, but this little baby has outwaited even Clare's record. So today, in defiance of all expectation, mom & baby are in a hospital for possible induction.

So much of giving birth is waiting and anticipation! I didn't know that before--TV makes it look like it's all about labor and contractions and pushing. That is just a tiny bit of it, in my experience. Far worse is the long, long uncertain period of waiting for it all to start and not knowing what it will be like when it does.

Hopefully, though, today will be Baby Bohannon's birthday and the birth will be gentle, unforgettable, empowering, and...SOON!

Say this quick prayer for mom & baby today:

God, it is time for this new life to enter the world. Let this entrance be peaceful and powerful. Strengthen mother and child for the labor ahead. Make this time holy and blessed. Amen.

Anticipating joyful news anytime now...

AWAD

Today's word was especially intriguing. Plus, I need to get that disturbing post about sex off of the top of the page before my mother sees it. Oops, too late. Before mei-mei sees it. Oops, too late. Before Hilary takes my dare seriously. Oops, too late.


This week's theme: words related to forecasting and divination.

bibliomancy (BIB-lee-o-man-see) noun

Divination by interpreting a passage picked at random from a book,
especially from a religious book such as the Bible.

[From Greek biblio- (book) + -mancy (divination).]

If you are having a hard time deciding between turning groupie and following
your favorite band around or to stay put in your accounting job, help is at
hand. Try bibliomancy. Here's the step-by-step method:

1. Pick a book you trust a lot.
2. Put it on its spine, and let it fall open.
3. With your eyes closed, trace your finger to a passage.
4. Interpret the passage as your lifemap to the future.

You could even add more randomness to the process. To do that at the macro
level, visit a library and pick a book at random from the shelves. At the
micro level, instead of interpreting a passage, pick a single word and let
it point you to your path.

Then you could try awadmancy -- divination based on words from AWAD. Focus
on the question in your mind and then click here to get a random word from
our archives: http://wordsmith.org/words/random.cgi

-Anu Garg (garg AT wordsmith.org)

"It was Margaret Drabble's new The Oxford Companion to English Literature,
which I'd been sent, to review. I'd been picking through it idly, looking
at this and that, seeing who was in and who was out, when, by a kind of
obscure bibliomancy, the book fell open at page 471, and there I was,
laid out drily between Robert Henryson, the 15th-century Scottish poet,
and Philip Henslowe, the Elizabethan theatrical diarist."
Philip Hensher; Brought to Book by the Literary Establishment;
The Independent (London, UK); Sep 6, 2000.

Sponsors' messages:
Always find the right word with the Visual Thesaurus. Wordsmith readers
save 10%. Try it free! http://www.visualthesaurus.com/?code=qt4&ad=aw
Subscribe to http://delanceyplace.com -- a carefully selected non-fiction book
excerpt free to your email each day. It's the thinking person's daily quote.
............................................................................
There is no coming to consciousness without pain. -Carl Jung, psychiatrist
(1875-1961)
Share the magic of words. Send a gift sub: http://wordsmith.org/awad/gift.html
Remove, change, or subscribe address: http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscriber.html
Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/bibliomancy.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/bibliomancy.ram
Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/bibliomancy.html

sex is good

Don't get all squiffy. You know I've had sex before because you know we have a bee-yoo-tee-full baby. So it's not like I'm telling you anything not already at least implicitly known.

But this post is a celebration! Because sex is good and people shouldn't be ashamed to say so. And because I just had my postpartum followup appointment and was pronounced perfectly fine and we went straight from the office to buy condoms.

Yay!

you're reading the wrong thing

Everyone needs to go read Brooklyn and Beyond today.