by JDB

My mother and father had me baptized in the Lutheran Church when I was a baby. I was confirmed as a child and took my first communion at the octagon rail with the other children, eating the bread we had made in Sunday School class and drinking the juice from the small glass cups. I can still remember what it felt like to walk and kneel, waiting my turn, then taking the bread while Pastor W. put his heavy hand on my head. “This is the body of Christ broken for you, Jennifer.”

My family stopped going to church a little while after that. My mom was exploring other ideas about God and the universe. I was invited to my friend’s Nazarene church in fourth grade and found a community that wasn’t as reverent as my earlier years in the Lutheran Church, but very emotional and desperate in its need for Jesus. I went down to the altar and accepted Jesus there. My friend’s family supported and encouraged me in all my search and made sure that I wore a skirt or dress to church. My mother even came to church with us once, but her Methodist upbringing and lifetime of searching was not compatible with the emotional pleas from the pulpit.

I went onto the Presbyterian Church with a boyfriend in junior high. I remember being in a “new Christians” class with 2nd graders. I remember friends who were partiers on the weekends and devout Christians on Sunday. I also remember the first time I prayed out loud. It was in a prayer chain in a group of young girls. My heart beat so fast and I thought I might fall out, but the ability to pray and proclaim to my God in front of other people was humbling and exhilarating at the same moment.

I moved onto the United Methodist Church with a new boyfriend during high school. My experience was vast and full there. When the youth ran the service one Sunday, my friend Tara and I read the scripture and prayed from the pulpit. I was one of the teens who ushered and passed communion trays. We had a woman co-youth minister.

I met Jeff in 1996 and started exploring the Church of Christ. We were dating long distance. He was at Harding University (which I had never heard of) and I was at the University of Tennessee. I wanted to see what his “denomination” was all about. I went, on my own, to a local “progressive” Church of Christ, eager to figure out where I could be involved. As I sat in the pew I couldn’t find my place. I would gladly pass plates. I would gladly pray or read. I would gladly serve in a way where I could be involved in the worship service, but I couldn’t see a place for me, especially as a single woman. It bothered me, but not enough to leave. I thought maybe I was missing something and I wanted to know my new boyfriend’s perspective on Christ and his indwelling.

Jeff and I got married and we moved to Tupelo, Mississippi. We attended the “progressive” church that was really an old church that had been taken over by some of the mainline churches’ splits. It was a bit of a mess, but it was immediately our second family. We were on our own with our parents at least 6 -8 hours away. We became the de facto youth ministers in this very small congregation. One day Jeff asked for someone to lead prayer in the youth room. After none of the boys were willing, one very spunky young woman volunteered and then looked around nervously. Jeff and I enthusiastically encouraged her. After a few moments of silence she deferred until “maybe next week.” She also rebuked the boys for not taking part in this wonderful opportunity, one that she wasn’t sure she should participate in. Jeff asked the youth to come to us or to their parents if they had a problem with a girl praying in class and let us know. The next week she wouldn’t pray, and no one else would either. So I did.

The emotions still blind me. I cannot convey adequately the heartbreak, confusion and sorrow that both Jeff and I experienced in Tupelo. I cried a lot. I didn’t take communion one Sunday because I could not be in communion with this body. Jeff was required to attend the Men’s Business Meeting in which he had to defend me and my willingness to pray in front of these youth. Jeff asked fervently for our church and our preacher to study 1 Corinthians 11, especially the verses dealing with women praying and prophesying in the temple. The preacher said he would have to study on that. A month later when Jeff asked our preacher if he had looked into the verses the preacher said he had not been able to get to it yet. No one came to me except for one woman, my friend, who cried with me but then said that these issues were not such a big deal for her now in her older age.

We left Tupelo.

In Jackson, Mississippi we found a good church. A church that truly wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus. A church in which we found some kindred spirits. A church that was bound by its tradition in deeper ways than I could fathom. In a “young professionals” class the role of women in the church came up. Surprisingly most of the men were very comfortable with the idea of women in leadership, although some of them said it might be strange to have a woman preacher. Even more surprising was that the women who had grown up in the Church of Christ were not remotely interested in using their gifts in a position of “leadership” or what they perceived to be leadership. I couldn’t understand the wholesale denial of the joy of serving in a worship service because it was in front of people.

In Jackson I also heard our gifted, wise preacher wonder aloud why women would want to serve communion when they would get a chance to be off their feet.

Now in Montgomery, Alabama, we attend the most gender inclusive Church of Christ available in our city. Men and women read scripture together during the service. I have read scripture by myself in a service. Women pray in class, even in front of elders. Men have joined the women’s class at times. We love the pastor (he even calls himself that). We love the elders, with whom we agree on some things we wouldn’t share with many people. The rub comes when our two year old daughter mentioned to my husband, “I want to throw the plates,” while watching men pass the communion trays. We’ve talked to our pastor and some elders about this. They sighed and said, “ah, yes” and suggested that for now that Kate accompany Jeff when he passes the offering tray. That was about six months ago. We have tried to encourage her to go with her daddy, but she refuses now. I have offered my services to be the “first” woman to pass trays and have been told that my offer is appreciated. I would be willing to be the first to pray, do the communion meditation and possibly preach, although I would need some good practice for that. Maybe if my daughters see me doing these things, they too will be able to imagine they will experience the beauty of serving God and serving His body in a moment dedicated to Him.

I want to participate fully in the worship service. I am so appreciative of the steps that have already been made. We are ready to make the next steps.

God bless us all.

from Amy Wilson: "She-Preach"

By Michelle Sanchez, MDiv
Printed in Priscilla Papers, Vol 23, No 2, Spring 2009

Flames of beauty-fire erupt from her lips
Like pure Pentecost
Her sister-speech sears and refines
Until all who listen
Dazzle like gold

Her mother-mouth is a fountain of life
Beckoning blossoms to sprout in desert souls
And birthing warm, fresh children
Into the cradle-kingdom of God

With enraged enmity her seed-sayings
Crush the skulls of satanic strongholds
Warrior-princess, her daughter-declarations
Authoritatively enact the triumph-rule of her Father-King

Like Eve, she promises life and redemption —
Like Sarah, she finds and inspires faith —
Like Miriam, she leads her sisters sweetly in song —
Like Deborah, she leads her brothers boldly to battle —
Like Jael, she is a secret weapon who smashes the enemy —
Like Ruth, she righteously breaks the rules —
Like Abigail, she is an ambassador of reconciliation —
Like Hannah, she prays in the revival of nations —
Like Huldah, she poignantly prophesies the troubling truth —
Like Mary, she chants magnificent melodies of peace and justice —
Like Priscilla, she patiently teachings the mysteries of the Word —
Like Junia, she is an outstanding preacher of the gospel!

Sister-mother-daughter-aunt-wife-friend . . .
At last!
Her soprano sermons rise and resound
As she joins the symphony with the best of her brothers
And so
The Great Co-Mission
May be completed
At last!

by TKP: Not Being Able to Come Home, Part 1

I was absolutely livid. As I sat on the couch and squeezed my fiance's hand so tight it turned colors, my mind was furiously racing.

How can they just sit here and not say anything? Why are the loudest supporters of women's spiritual second-class status female? Did I spend the past seven years preparing for and practicing church leadership just so I could come home to this?

I had so many questions and comments that I wanted to contribute to the discussion of F. LaGard Smith's Male Spiritual Leadership, but I kept them to myself. After all, I was a woman in a church of Christ. It didn't matter that this was the intimate house church that lovingly raised me with my parents since I was an infant. It didn't matter that I was baptized in a literally ice covered river in March when I was 13 and then surrounded by these people with towels and blankets to keep me warm. I didn't feel warm anymore. I was heartbroken, frustrated and angry.

As my fiance and I drove back to my parents' house that Sunday evening we couldn't stop talking about what had happened. John, my fiance, pointed out that the man leading the discussion had problems pronouncing the relatively easy words in the book, while his wife (who had just taken off her head scarf since the 'official service' was over) had to frequently correct his pronunciation. We also discussed the fact that another woman often corrected her husband's off key lead singing, but only after he had started the song off himself.

We talked about my experiences growing up in a loosely defined house church of Christ in rural Iowa. My ties to the mainstream church of Christ came through reading The Christian Chronicle, going to Bible Camp, youth rallies, The Tulsa Soul Winning Workshop, and being recruited by York College on numerous occasions. I loved my church growing up; my mother was frequently my Sunday School teacher and she was a nurturing and creative hands-on teacher. Even though we had to rotate homes every Sunday (some weeks traveling as far as 70 miles) it was always worth it, because we'd enjoy a meal together afterwards. This was my second family.

I began noticing gender issues after I became a teenager. One day in Junior High, after listening to a riveting Voice of the Martyrs radio program about current church persecution (which I knew nothing about), I became convicted of the human rights atrocities happening every day. I tape recorded the next radio program and asked my father if I could play it for our church, as it was being held at our house and it was his turn to lead a lesson. He agreed and we all listened to it that Sunday. After we prayed about it together, our church decided to contribute money to sending Bibles to Christian persecuted areas. That day I became an advocate. The ministry bug had bitten me.

part 2: the place I went

With no place to go, I went as far as possible.

As a sophomore in college I had, actually quite unintentionally, been audience to a missions workshop presentation on the possibilities of teaching English in mainland China. All that was required was a college degree, a native accent, and the ability to raise the airfare. Conspicuously absent from the list of qualifications: maleness. I thought it was perfect.

Within a few weeks of my arrival, a unilateral attempt to homogenize our house church practices with regard to the conduct of women was initiated by one zealous colleague. Showing up unannounced at the home of our hostess one Sunday morning, he delivered a sermon which enumerated precisely what women could and could not do. Proof texts for word studies of the Greek laleo and ekklesia were cited; in possession of the only Greek NT in the room, I searched diligently only to find that those words did not appear in the cited texts. The consternation on my face and page-flipping in my Greek NT flustered our unannounced guest preacher, who stumbled and lost his focus just as I figured out the problem: he'd gotten the citations mixed up. Desiring to reassure him, I began to say, "It's okay, I got it"--and then realized, that would probably count as laleo in ekklesia. Oh well.

For awhile I hosted church in my living room--it seemed like a practical and concrete contribution, and moreover, entirely uncontroversial. I cleaned house every Saturday and rearranged the living room furniture to seat as many people as possible. On Sunday mornings I made the communion bread in my tiny narrow kitchen, and baked it in the toaster oven. Having suffered through some Sundays choking down manifestations of the body of Christ that were truly inedible--stale, or tough, or worse, one time somehow slimy--I was determined to make it good. It took a few weeks to get it right, but finally, a pastry-like bread made with the only margarine available, "Mother's Choice," evolved from my earnest experimentation. One Sunday, inspired, I threw a pinch of sugar into the flour mixture; the bread that morning was flaky, baked to perfection, and just faintly sweet. I thought, now this is the body of Christ. After church someone complimented the bread: it's the best communion bread I've ever eaten, he said. Thanks, I told him, see, I put a pinch of sugar in it this morning. A few minutes later, I was summoned to my living room, and sat down on my couch, and rebuked. Sugar doesn't belong in the communion bread, Jennifer. Don't do that again.

Frustrated, we women instituted a Tuesday night women's bible study, and my centrally located, easily accessible apartment was an ideal spot. Almost immediately we began to outgrow the space available--we packed ourselves like sardines on the couch, perched on the arms of chairs, even sat on the floor, which I scrupulously cleaned every week. We had, after all, come to do mission work, and we could do it on Tuesday nights among ourselves without the boys around. The singing was marvelous. The discussions even more so. The prayer time got so long that we exhausted ourselves with it. After awhile the men started their own Tuesday night study, and after it concluded, would drift over to my apartment to hang out. Sometimes they would arrive before our study was done, and we would close the door to the living room and, conscious of the male presence in the apartment, would try to hurry up and finish.

One evening, after all my students had said good night and drifted away, two girls approached me and asked if I was a Christian. Yes, I said, surprised at this directness. One of them wasn't my student; she was a friend of a student, and had come to my class specifically to engineer this moment and ask this question. She had been a Christian for two years, she said. She wanted to ask me about baptism: what was it, and why were people in the Bible always doing this mysterious thing she couldn't find a satisfactory definition for? I invited her to Tuesday night Bible study, and went home and wrote a whole new lesson plan for it, on baptism. After the study she approached me with eyes shining, and said, "God has answered my prayers in your words. Now, I think I understand, and I want to be baptized. ...But...you never said...how do I do it?" Overwhelmed, I assured her that was the easy part. (If only that had been really true.) We could do it now, I said, if she wanted to. Yes, she said, and we called the man in our group who held the membership card to the swimming pool in the luxury hotel down the street. "She's ready," we said, "we need the pool card," and he replied, "I'll get my swim trunks and be right there." When he arrived, swim trunks in hand, we were ready to go. But he wasn't. Leading us back into my living room, he sat my friend down on my couch, and let us know that if he were going to perform this baptism (no one asked him to!) he needed to be sure she was ready (we had already told him that!). I watched, feeling absolutely helpless, as he reduced my friend to tearfully admitting that she was not, could not be, a Christian yet, despite her years of faith, because she was not yet baptized. Only then was she ready to be baptized. By a man she'd never seen before who had just reduced her to tears, in the uncomfortable intimacy of immersion in a public pool, wearing a borrowed swimsuit.

A few months later, another friend arrived at my doorstep to spend the night, as she routinely did on Saturday nights, fresh from Bible study. It was an uncomfortable friendship, full of unwanted intimacies I hadn't asked for: I discovered in retrospect she'd been borrowing my toothbrush for months, and she was either lacking in standards or adequate facilities for personal hygiene. That night, she told me that she had decided to be baptized, and she wanted me to do it. Um, okay, I said; but knowing this would be controversial within our group of Americans, I said, what did [her Bible study teacher] say when you told him this? She answered, with a puzzled look, "He said, 'isn't God a man?'

I like to tell people that I went to China to be a missionary, and became a feminist. This is why.

Part 1: dressed up, with no place to go

One time, very young, seized with a sudden inspiration during Sunday school while singing the "The B-I-B-L-E," I literally took my stand on the Word of God by putting my Bible on the floor and standing on it. I was aware that this wasn't what the song really meant, but I thought it would be funny. It was.

I learned to sing harmony and read music sitting in the pew (second row, on the left) next to my mom, following her strong alto and watching my dad lead the singing from the pulpit.

I would listen to sermons until they got boring, and then pass the time by reading Proverbs or Song of Solomon. And Revelation 12: I didn't understand it, but I liked picturing the woman "clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars."

In high school my dad led our small "youth group" in a study of the gospel of John. I can still remember the fascination of delving into the meaning of those first words: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. I can remember the thrill of the realization that here was something huge, so much packed into these words, something that just kept getting better and richer the more I thought about it. No one else seemed to get excited about that, though everybody was polite. Just my dad, and me.

In college, I took "Religious Speaking for Women," and first year Greek, for fun. My senior year a well-known CofC author visited Harding's campus to give a series of lectures on his new book. On the slight strength of a rather extended family relation, I decided to introduce myself to him afterward, and tell him I was thinking about studying theology. His answer was very kind, and sincere, and direct. He didn't tell me not to. He just said, "I think you'd be getting dressed up with no place to go."

He was telling the truth; and nowadays, there are a great many of us, well "dressed up," with MDivs and MAs in missions and theology and Christian education and even PhDs in Old Testament and ethics and church history and philosophy. And we have "no place to go," still, unless we choose to leave the church that inspired to study and devote our lives to these things. To leave the church we started out inspired to serve. Because that church refuses to make "a place to go" for us. That church refuses to hire the talented ministers who graduate with the same MDivs as their male colleagues. That church refuses to recognize their readiness, their ability, their gifts, their willingness to make the work of the church their life and calling. That church continues to say, "you look real pretty all dressed up, too bad you have no place to go."

the invitation

One of the most powerful things about the Friday morning panel at the Christian Scholars Conference, which I blogged about below, was the simplicity of it. It was, simply, a time and space created to let women talk: to say the things that are scary or straightout forbidden to say at other times and in other places. We need more opportunities like this. Part of the problem is that the institutional structures of our churches define when and where things may be publicly shared, and who may share them, and this rarely includes women. Even in those public spaces and times when women may speak, these experiences and stories are not the ones being sought. Why would they be, when they are cries of pain and stories of exclusion, and prophetic condemnations of the injustice of the way things are? You can hardly respond to the great challenge of being the first woman to teach a class in your church, or lead communion, or preach a sermon, by sharing truths that are so unedifying and disturbing.

So: we need more of these times and spaces. We need them convened in the flesh, and God bless the CSC and the brave folks whoever they were who organized those sessions. Let's do it again. In the meantime, let's do it here. Let me know if you'd be interested in guest-blogging. If you want to be anonymous, email me and I'll post for you. I want women's stories and women's voices, but men, if you've got a story to tell, bring it. I want stories of staying and stories of leaving. I want stories of heartbreak and stories of hope. I want it all. We need to hear it, all.

***
Here is the introduction and the prompts from the CSC discussion, moderated by Dr. Ken Cukrowski:

Intro
As the church and the academy have addressed the topic of women's roles, various theological resources have been brought into the discussion. Not surprisingly, given our heritage, Scripture has played a significant role in our reflection. Reason has also played a role, although this issue understandably stirs emotions, which sometimes strains our use of reason. Tradition--what we have always done--has played a huge role in actual practice. The use of experience--of women specifically--however, has been rare or absent, for at least a couple of reasons. First, there are few opportunities when women are invited to speak in public; second, it is culturally difficult for a woman to ask for the floor without negative connotations. So, women's stories have gone untold and unheard.

Our goal is to provide a place where those stories can be told and heard. Specifically, we'd like to know how has being female in CoC has affected you over your lifetime? How has it affected your religious experiences (e.g., in church, with other members, your own spiritual life)? How has it make you feel? In short, how has your gender affected your heart, mind, faith, and families?

Questions
I will ask specific questions, more or less moving across the life cycle:

1. What's your first memory of realizing that being female meant something different in terms of opportunities or expectations?
2. How did being female in CoC affect you as a teenager, in college, in your dating relationships?
3. How has being female in CoC affected you as an adult?
4. How has being female affected your church life?
5. How has being female in CoC affected your marriage relationship?
6. How did has being female in CoC affected your interaction with children (yours and others' children)?
7. Last question: What would you like to say? What do we need to hear?

***
If you've been silent, not because you thought it was biblical, but because you thought no one wanted to hear what you have to say, this invitation is for you. If you've been silent, because you've never been asked to find the words for your experience, this invitation is for you. If you've been silent, because you're too busy seeking ways past the scandalous obstacles placed in your path to even bother with thinking about or sharing your experiences, this invitation is for you. If you've been shouting because it's been impossible to get anyone to stop and listen, this invitation is for you. If you've been crying, because the time for words is past and all you've got left is tears, this invitation is for you.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

On Friday, this is what I heard:

a panel of women--academics, ministers, teachers and other professionals, wives, mothers, grandmothers--talk about their experiences as women in the Churches of Christ. The purpose of the panel was explained briefly and simply: while we do a lot of talking about the "issue" of "women's role," and while that talking has utilized scripture, and reason (at least some form of it anyhow), and tradition (defined as 'how we've always done it'), experience, women's experiences, have been glaringly absent from our considerations. The panel was convened to address this gap, to create an opportunity for women to share their experiences. The first question was, "when did you first realize that your gender mattered in your church, and what was it that made you realize this?" This question generated answers ranging from early exclusion from brothers' childhood church roleplaying to "not until my 40's." These experiences were not uniform, except in one respect: at some point in their lives, each woman was forced to the realization that being a woman limited her ability to participate in the kingdom of God in the ways she knew herself to be capable of, in ways that she knew to be needed. And the responses to this realization were not uniform, except in one respect: each woman refused to listen to the message that she could not be the Christian, the fully empowered agent of God, the imago Christi, that the gospel itself proclaims she is. Whether she continued her work by creative accommodation of restrictive boundaries, or sought alternative spaces where she could serve without restriction, each woman's life testifies to the inherent power of the gospel as good news, for everyone, despite the ways our human flaws and blindnesses restrict it. The emotions present were not uniform, except in this respect: every one of us in that room wept at someone else's pain, whether it was generated by that first shock of discovery, or the backlash against stepping out in faith to serve, or the sense of fear and failure that accompanies these attempts. We all wept. Because these stories, which we have so long refused to allow to even be told, are about courage and fear and pain, survival, and hope that maybe things will change for the better.

At the end of the session, the woman sitting next to me, whom I'd never seen before, dabbed at her eyes and smiled at me, and gave me a hug. She, older and never married, native Tennessean and CofC her whole life, read my nametag: Jennifer Thweatt-Bates, Princeton Theological Seminary. "Good for you," she said. (And, "are you related to...?") I thought, this is who sits in our churches' pews, silent and with so much to say.

On Saturday, this is what I heard:

three ministers, all formerly of the Churches of Christ, currently "disaffiliated." Their experiences were not uniform any more so than the previous day's panel, other than that each one of them had remained in the Churches of Christ for as long as possible, and each one of them left sorrowfully. Each one of them, it was clear, still grieved the necessity of departure--whether it was decades ago or still fresh. Disaffiliation is too neutral a word. Divorce would have been better. The Churches of Christ divorced them, on what it self-righteously considers to be biblical grounds.

At the end of the session, a man I'd never seen before walked up to me and introduced himself. He'd been watching me watch them, he said, from his unseated vantage point at the front of the room facing the back, where I'd been lucky enough to snag an extra chair in that packed audience. He'd been watching me weep through Micki's recount of her preacher refusing to recommend her for divinity school, because she was a woman. He'd been watching me weep as Katie told how they'd told everyone they were preparing to leave the Churches of Christ for months and months, hoping someone would say to them, "please stay," make it possible to stay, and no one did. He'd watched me smile wryly as Andre told about the pink-haired tattooed girl in his ACU preaching course, who stunned everyone in her initial sermon with insights they'd never heard before, because "we never had a pink-haired tattooed girl before." He'd watched all this, and said to me, "These stories are your story right now too, aren't they?"

On Sunday, this is what I heard:

a youth minister, emceeing the baptism of a 15-year-old girl, rhapsodizing about the intimacy and spirituality of the experience for a father to baptize their child.

a sermon illustration comparing the experience of the Spirit to falling in love: the passion of the process of courtship, all the silly things guys do to woo their loves. You know what I'm talking about, don't you, guys?

an introduction of a missionary couple, in which the man was congratulated on finding himself such a great wife.

Afterward, no one said anything about any of that at all.

in the hometown

First, it wasn't till I went back to middle TN that I realized this is our sixth year in NJ. That seems like a long time. We didn't, like some folks, celebrate our New-York-aversary, or whatever the NJ equivalent might be, because, well, NJ isn't NYC after all. (I do love the Garden State and all, but...) Anyhow, going back produced, like always, those feelings of simultaneous belonging and strangeness. That's not sad; it just is. And that weird limbo is familiar space to me in so many ways anyhow that it ceases to be weird, and is just...life. And, you know, I enjoy it.

Second, there will be some kind of major blog post soon, on some of the incredible moments from the CSC. And possibly some follow-ups of an anecdotal sort, taking my cue from the format of the Friday morning panel session on women's experiences within the Churches of Christ. I wish I had taken notes--but it was impossible to even think about it--the whole thing was too riveting for such a distraction.

Third and most important, if you don't know what's happening in Honduras, get thee to a TV or NPR or whatever you use for news these days and find out. Then get yourself on twitter, and follow @missionlazarus to get my bro-in-law's updates. And then pull out your prayer hankies, your prayer rug, your prayer bench, or whatever it is you use, and start haranguing the Almighty to keep Jarrod, his dad, and all those children at the Refuge safe, or perhaps just to come down and start enforcing that will-done-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven bit. Yes, harangue. No pretty pleases or polite petitioning. Start yelling--God can handle it, and this is important.

on God the Great Physician and Jesus the Healer

Yesterday, one of CCfB's longtime members spoke to us on the topic of vocation: specifically, the challenges of integrating his Christian faith and daily work. He is a physician, as is his wife. He spoke personally and candidly, and it was riveting. Stories of turning of machines; of saying the words, "I'm so sorry" to families in waiting room; of confronting the dilemmas of social injustice in treating the uninsured and the homeless; of struggling to resist the pressure to treat sick bodies rather than sick people.

As he spoke I thought of Jesus' healing miracles, and how Jesus must have confronted these same challenges and pressures in his ministry. So many people pressing in, demanding help. So many unsolvable problems. So much to do, and only a finite opportunity and limited options. No wonder Jesus withdrew to mountains to pray, and climbed into boats to get away from the crowds. And yet, the stories of miraculous healings demonstrate above all that Jesus never neglected to deal with people holistically: body and soul and spirit. My own theological preoccupation with embodiment has led me to think of the healing stories as emphasizing the importance of the body--which is true--and yet, the testimony from this physician reminded me that in the profession of healing there is a danger of reductionism that many fall into, and the struggle is to keep oneself open to the reality that these material bodies are people, with emotions, families, goals, fears.

And never has the metaphor of God as the Great Physician been more meaningful to me. What was once a purely intellectualized theological grasp of that metaphor has been enriched with this glimpse into what being a physician really means.

Pete Sessions Hates Babies

Okay, so that's inflammatory and ridiculous. But any politician stupid enough to allow this soundbyte on the airwaves deserves to be labeled a baby-hater just for plain political stupidity.

Maybe we oughta just tell people to stop fucking around and making babies while we're in this recession. Then, Sessions can quit worrying how we're gonna pay for the enormous economic cost of these pesky babies and their thoughtless, thoughtless mothers.

Federal Employees Closer to Paid Parental Leave

Latina wisdom: a blog post on epistemology and politics

Let me start with something that I think should be fairly uncontroversial, given its pride of place in the Western canon on philosophical axioms:

Know thyself.

When Judge Sonia Sotomayor talks about the role of experience and her identity as a wise Latina woman, she is not sounding some crazy radical pomo activist socialist whateverist scary siren song of identity politics and--as the more ridiculous critics have termed it--racism. (Honestly?) She is stating something obvious and unavoidable, and something absolutely necessary to the process of making decent judgments about, well, anything. Know thyself. Plato said it first, and I guess we'd put him in the category of hallowed white males, wouldn't we.

In the lecture that the supposedly damning quote is pulled out of, Sotomayor makes two points, both of which hang on the necessity of knowing yourself as a part of the process of making judgments. The first is that being who you are, whether that's a "wise Latina woman" or a "white male," is a specific identity, the cumulative result of a lifetime of experience and circumstances that are unique to each person. This is the part where the quote comes from. The controversy about it comes not from her acknowledging that she is a Latina--which everyone is busy pointing out as well. It's fine that she's willing to acknowledge the specificity of her identity. The controversy comes from the presumption that a Latina's specific experiences are a valid perspective from which to judge. That presumption means not just that Sotomayor is rejecting the idea of some universally objective non-personal standpoint but that she regards Latina experience as on par with any other American experience, equally valid and representative. And this is only controversial because in his country, apparently, we still retain the idea that there is some kind of universal American experience and identity from which all judgments should be made--and that this universal American experience and identity is the epistemological possession of white men. (If Sotomayor were willing to say it doesn't make a difference that her body is Latina because her mind is the same as a white male's, then we would call her "fair" and "objective" and "dispassionate." She would also, of course, be a liar, but that lie is one that we cherish and like to hear.)

Of course, not all Americans are white or male, a point that Sotomayor also makes. Most of the defenses of her that I've heard focus on this point, arguing that she is talking about her Latina experiences as particularly relevant in the context of discrimination cases. As true as this may be, it is the wrong defense to make, because it emphasizes the experiential gap between the "wise Latina woman" and the white male--precisely the thing that scares the pants off of all the white males calling her racist at the moment.

It would be smarter--and more relevant--to point out that Sotomayor goes on to make the second point, also connected to 'knowing thyself,' that acknowledging one's specific experiences and identity does not mean one is unable to understand that other experiences are real, valid, and require understanding. Rather, it means the opposite. Being a wise Latina woman does not mean that she can only properly understand the experiences of other Latina women, or that she makes Latina experience universal for everyone in an epistemological oppression mirroring the supposed universalism of the particular experience of white maleness. Understanding that her experiences are particular, not universal, she can therefore perceive the need to actively seek to understand experiences not her own. Only if you understand the particularity of your own experiences can you get the fact that other people's experiences may differ from your own. The larger question Sotomayor addresses in her lecture is how one goes beyond the particularity of personal experiences in the process of making judgments: does one do by aspiring to some sort of universal standpoint outside onself, "objectivity," or does one do it precisely through acknowledging the preferences and presumptions one's own experience has provided, seek to evaluate their relevance and impact on one's decision making, and possibly revise or even counter them in light of the experiences of others? Sotomayor advocates the latter. As any honest thinker should--and must. This is what makes her, not simply a Latina woman, but a wise Latina woman.

on what you can and can't say, in church

I was a high school kid, telling an anecdote about something outrageous after church, standing in the center aisle...and slipped up and said "damn it." "Jenny! You're in church!" came the shocked response.

A couple years ago, Joe asked us to share our most joyful moment as we prepared to celebrate the Eucharist together. Everyone in the church shared something about the most joyful moment in their lives, and then it was my turn. I described how it felt to pee on that little stick, wait 2 minutes, and look at the little blue plus sign. "OH shit. We've done it now," is what I said in that moment, and this time, my church family didn't censor me at all--just joined in the sense of stunned wonder I felt as I realized I was responsible for nurturing a whole new life in this world.

See, I go to a church where you can say anything. Even "shit."

But all churches--even mine--have to work hard to be places where people can say what they really think, really believe (or don't), really feel. But if church isn't the safe place where people can be honest and vulnerable with each other--what the hell is it? And if the people who are part of your church don't feel safe in expressing what they think and feel and believe, how in hell is someone who's not a part of the church going to feel like it's a safe place to walk into?

In my church, we have to work hard to make sure that those still struggling with how to read the Bible and understand it on the topic of human sexuality know that they can say so, without censure. We have to work just as hard at that as any conservative church in the midwest has to work to make sure that the lone gay marriage supporter in its midst knows she is still welcome, even if she's not understood.

Because that's what unity is. That's what bearing with each other means. That's what living in community takes. And it's worth it. As we struggle through the conflicts of opinion and disagreements in doctrine, we each bear witness to the gospel--to each other. And often, out of dissensus comes greater understanding of what living the gospel really means. But we can't bear witness to each other in this way unless we're free to speak our minds, unburden our hearts, and live our convictions. We can't bear witness to each other, if we're too busy censoring each other's statements.

And if we can't bear witness to each other, how can we bear witness to the rest of the world?

Is anyone else totally grossed out by the ubiquitous "cure your yellow teeth" ads in the hotmail sidebar and all over facebook? The ones with the "free" and "discovered by a mom" taglines, with the great big closeups of people's mouths. The last straw was the mustachioed man licking his white white teeth. BLURG! Please, please, please make it STOP.

AIDS Walk NY 2009

The AIDS Walk was Sunday. Our CCfB team collectively raised $475, and Clare and I officially reached our donation goal of $100!

Special thanks goes to Grandmom and Grandad, and Sylva's Nana.

Clare's collection can gathered a total of $10.97 from various anonymous donors, from both CCfB and Calvary Episcopal Church (where we placed the can in the church office). Thanks to all of you, too. I matched your donation to bring it to an even $20 with some "play money" from Anna Mercedes, so thanks to Anna for helping us make our goal!

Y'all ROCK.

And as Dora would say, "Thanks for helping!"

the Beatles on scientific epistemology

c'mon...tell me you see it too...

"Nowhere Man"

He's a real nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.

Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere Man, just listen,
You don't know what you're missin',
All the world's at your command.

He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?

Nowhere Man, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all 'till somebody else
lends you a hand.

Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere man please listen,
you don't know what you're missin'
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command

He's a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.

question of the day

Question: when will you have your first/next child?

Answer, me: when the dissertation is done.

Answer, sister: when my kitchen is remodeled.

Answer you?

publications

Today I got my copy of volume 12 of Stone-Campbell Journal, which includes my pretentiously entitled article "How to Talk about Religion and Science...Rationally." It's probably unfortunately not apparent how ironic I conceived that title to be, but in its original form the paper was a presentation for a session on "Re-imagining Faith and Reason" at the 2007 Christian Scholar's Conference--hence the "rationally." It's probably even less evident that the "how to" is meant ironically, though I dare to hope that reading the article makes that at least somewhat clear.

Also included in the volume is a review of the one-volume commentary from ACU Press, The Transforming Word, which includes my little essay on religion & science. The review singles out my essay, which would be a good thing, if the reviewer had in fact said something positive about it. Instead the essay is criticized for being too general to be helpful, which I personally find to be quite fair--that's pretty much exactly how I feel about it. Sigh.

And now to click over to the ol' CV and change the "forthcoming" to "12.1 (2009): 31-38."

AIDS: New York and Rwanda 2009

This year is my--and Clare's--third year to participate in the AIDS Walk. One of us can legitimately say that she's been doing this her whole life. That would be Clare.

The first year, I brought the stroller but spent most of the time carrying Clare in my homemade Maya sling, although I also pawned her off on other willing CCFB walkers. The second year, Clare was sick and running a fever, so I left her at home with Brent and went walking without her. But since Clare was the bigtime fundraiser, I think she legitimately deserves the credit.



This year is different; we will participate in raising money but we will probably not actually walk. Our time together on Sundays at CCFB is getting more and more precious as the weeks go by, and none of us wants to miss even one chance to be together, even for something which has itself turned into a CCFB annual event like the AIDS Walk.

We're a quarter of the way to our modest goal of raising $100, because I believe in putting my money where my mouth is. If you'd like to help Clare and me make our fundraising goal for the third year in a row, click here to get to my donation page, and we thank you.

While you're at it, pause for a moment to consider how much effort and general human kindness and goodwill goes into organizing the raising of these funds for the GMHC in New York every year...and think about the millions of AIDS sufferers in Africa without the benefit of such massive organization and affluent givers to help them. Greg Kendall-Ball is raising money in order to partner with the organization Physicians for Human Rights, to document the effect PEPFAR funds have on the lives of people in Rwanda. Greg's goal is to use his skills as photographer and visual storyteller to help organizations like Physicians for Human Rights effectively communicate--thereby enabling them to better help the people they seek to serve. As Greg says on his site, "Statistics can tell part of the story, but putting a real human face on this global pandemic is crucial." Click here to read more about this trip and to reach his donation page.

Greg's fundraising strategy is microdonations from as many people as possible--so consider splitting what you might put toward Clare's and my AIDS Walk fund, and give some to Greg. A little can go a long way. It might even go as far as Rwanda.

commentary: which whos are Whos

received a political email forward today which contained at least one statement I do in fact wholeheartedly agree with:

"But the meaning of marriage – how it is defined and who defines it – is tremendously important for our entire society, because it has implications that go well beyond the desires of two consenting adults."

The italics are mine, because that is indeed what I see to be the central struggle: how it is defined, and who defines it.

The power of defining is, as this statement suggests, a political one. And in this country, which at least attempts to place political power in the hands of a broad constituency rather than concentrated in the hands of a few (rich white male) persons, the power of defining ideally belongs to everyone--more accurately, all citizens (leave aside who has the power to define "citizen," although that question truly gets at the heart of the difficulty of inclusive democracy, and the immigration issue in this country puts that front and center, yes?).

Which means that "the power to define marriage" is (again, ideally) a collective power shared by all citizens. And as long as you're honest enough to admit that there are in fact gay people who are American citizens, then you ought to be honest enough to recognize that they too are (ought to be) included in the "who" who gets to define things. Including marriage, which as this statement at least implicitly grants, is a social and political institution in addition to being whatever else you might believe it is.

Or, you're claiming they're not a "who." They're a They.

And as Horton would remind you: "a person is a person, no matter how small; a person is a person is a person, after all."

commentary: Horton the Elephant

Horton the Elephant Hatches an Egg was never one of my childhood Seuss favorites as far as I can recall. I dimly remembered the book, mainly through phraes like "lazy bird Maisie" and "I meant what I said and I said what I meant, an elephant's faithful 100%." So watching the 1942 cartoon as an adult, a theologian/mom/feminist adult, is pretty interesting: I wish I could say I liked it--or disliked it--100%, but I'm not Horton.

First off I'm struck by how misogynistic the characterization of Maisie the Bird is. She's a completely despicable character and soundly condemned by adjective in the text: Lazy Bird Maisie. Her opening monologue is a self-pitying rationalization of how she really needs a rest because she's tired of sitting on her egg, it's boring, it's too much work, and she would rather play. Of course we hate this deadbeat mom who lies to the faithful Horton. But who hasn't watched Toy Story or Nemo or Horton the Elephant for the zillionth time in a row and thought "this is boring," or cleaned up vomit from bedsheets and blankets and child in the middle of the night--twice--and thought "this is a hell of a lot of work," or just wished that for once, you could sleep in or (dare I say it) head for Palm Beach? And if there's nothing wrong with the sentiment, what is it about saying it, or even doing it, that is so dastardly? I mean, outside of seducing and lying to a poor dope and totally ditching your egg. But the fact is, judgment is passed on Maisie before she commits that crime; she's already the villain simply for doing a little bitching about her life. Which IS, let's be honest, totally boring. Even Horton the hero thinks so when he ever so faithfully takes it on.

Whic brings me to the next complaint--the cartoon actually in some sense upholds Lazy Maisie's view of the burdensome nature of motherhood, because Horton confirms it repeatedly, and on top of that, Horton is, bluntly, a dope. So despite the overt moral regarding 100% faithfulness, apparently, you have to be a little bit of a dim bulb in order to voluntarily take it on and do it right. Yeah, that's the image of SAHMs I've been looking for. Just flippin' great.

Not to mention the completely random fish that commits suicide by shooting himself in the head with a gun after beholding Horton sitting on the egg.

On the bright side, when the egg hatches, of course, not only is the little offspring loyal to Horton, who despite adversity cared for this egg he inadvertently inherited--subverting myths of blood ties, inherent maternal nurture, etc.--the little thing's a hybrid: it looks like an elephant but with wings like a bird. Oh how I love me a hybrid little elephant bird who prefers a non-traditional parental unit over the uncompelling tie of biological kinship. What's so spectacular about it is Horton's initial objection of being biologically unsuited to hatch the egg is completely subverted; he hasn't feathers (boobs?) and he hasn't wings (womb?), but not only does Horton show, through the act of hatching the egg, that biology doesn't make the crucial difference in the act of nurture--the elephant bird understands that Horton is the real mom. And in undoing the biological essentialism of motherhood with regard to Horton, it's also by extension undone with regard to Maisie--whether the narrative itself goes there or not.

(Should gay parents adopt? Is Horton faithful 100%?)

There's a legendary story that gets retold on occasion at my family's gatherings, about my great-grandmother and g-grandfather. My great-grandmother was an amazing woman. She was still cooking and hosting and playing piano and writing music and painting well into the 1990's. There was a show of her art and a write-up in a Nashville newspaper about it when she was 90-something (?) years old. One of my treasured possessions is a little print of one of her paintings, in an original handpainted frame she made herself--all the great-grandkids (and there are lots of us) got a different print for Christmas one year. I have a book of her original hymns. There was, however, one thing this amazing woman apparently couldn't do.

As the story goes, one morning my great-grandmother decided to get up early and cook a special breakfast instead of just a normal breakfast. Eggs, bacon, biscuits--the whole Southern breakfast deal. Instead of the usual canned biscuits, because this was a special thing, she made biscuits from scratch: mixed them up, rolled them out, used a biscuit cutter. My great-grandfather ate his breakfast and his special homemade biscuits without comment, until the end of the meal, when my frustrated great-grandmother prompted him with the question, 'what did you think about the biscuits?' to which the reply came, 'I b'lieve I like t'other brand better.'

Biscuit FAIL. But apparently she did successfully resist clobbering him with her skillet. She was, as I've said, an amazing woman.

But truthfully, who has ever made homemade biscuits that are as yummy and fluffy as the canned ones? No one can replicate with regular old butter and flour and baking powder what those mysterious chemicals and preservatives do for canned biscuits.

Until NOW.

Over Christmas my mom made us a batch of biscuits using a Cook's Illustrated recipe for Southern biscuits, and if I hadn't watched her do it, I would have sworn it was impossible that they were from-scratch. Tall and fluffy and buttery and WOW. Of course, they're a helluva lot more trouble than opening a can, but they are totally worth it. The ingredients are pretty basic except for an increase in the liquid to dry ratio, but the real secret is in the handling of the dough and the shaping of the biscuits. From now on in my house they will be called "Nana Biscuits" and no one in my family will ever have to say, I b'lieve I like t'other brand better.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 T sugar

4 T cold butter, cut into little cubes

1 1/2 cups cold buttermilk

1 cup extra flour for handling
2 T melted butter to brush the tops

Mix the dry ingredients together by buzzing a few times in food processor, then add butter cubes and cut in by processing a few times more until the cornmeal-like consistency is achieved. (Personally, I have trouble getting this step to really work and end up cutting in the butter chunks with my pastry cutter, so I may eliminate the food processor altogether and see what happens.) Add buttermilk and mix until just incorporated. Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, scoop the biscuit dough and place the mounds on a cookie sheet dusted with the extra cup of flour (the dough will be very wet and goopy). Consistent 1/4 cup scoops will yield 12 mounds of biscuit dough. Sprinkle some flour on the tops, then pick up each mound and toss in your hands until it forms a rough ball shape, and place in a well-greased round cake pan (9 biscuits on the outside, 3 in the middle). Brush melted butter on the tops (currently without a pastry brush, I just drizzle the butter over the tops and this seems to work too). Bake for 5 minutes in a pre-heated 500 degree oven, then lower heat to 450 and bake about 15 more minutes until well-browned on top. Let cool in pan 2 minutes, then turn out onto plate.

Lenten disciplines

This year, our Lenten disciplines as a household are pretty simple and practical: top of the list, no more casual eating out. This is harder than it sounds, even for me, who grew up practically never eating out. Now that I'm all grown up (hmph) I appreciate the implicit training I somehow soaked up from Mom's disciplined weekly menu planning and grocery list making and shopping. It's what I do. But I'd fallen into the habit of planning for 5 or 6 meals a week and counting on one night of beng able to talk Brent into pizza, Chinese, or burritos or whatever. Plus, I'd gotten very permissive about indulging my love for egg sandwiches...stopping on the way home from Clare's preschool to buy myself a happy little breakfast is the kind of expense I'm usually good about resisting, but I'd gotten sloppy. So what this really means is paying a bit more attention to what we're eating, making sure that I plan and buy enough food for all our weekly meals, staying within our budget--while "eating well," mindfully and sustainably and nutritionally. It's a bit more work but truthfully, not that much more than I was doing before anyway. And I've found that a judicious combination of Trader Joe's and the Shoprite near St.Stephen's is the economical way to go. (I'm especially happy with Shoprite's new organic store label...my canned tomato buying is much simplified thanks to that.)

Personally I'm also trying to re-start my habit of the daily Jesuit pray-as-you-go podcasts. I'm not doing so well on this one yet but I'm not giving up. Sometimes it just takes awhile to get back into the groove.

The other personal Lenten discipline that I'm resolved upon is a little vaguer than the concrete goals of not eating out and listening to the prayer podcasts, but no less important. I am finding it harder than usual these days to maintain a sense of willingness and ability to give to others, probably fueled by all the apocalyptic economy talk. I suspect this is the case for lots of other people at the moment as well. It's hard to spontaneously and generously give to others when you suspect the tradeoff is your own security. But this instinct of withdrawing and pulling back from our commitment to other people is the problem and not the solution. So I'm looking for ways to remind myself that we all depend on each other, and the illusion of self-sufficiency created by shrinking back into our own households actually makes us all more vulnerable.

If you're looking for a good Lenten discipline to remind you of all the above, think about visiting the Webb family's site and donating a few dollars to help with travel expenses to Ethiopia for their two adopted daughters. A better reminder of the dependency of all human lives on each other, this material world, and ultimately the mysterious sustenance of God that fuels this creation, cannot be found. $25 won't break your budget, but it may remind you that a willingness to share, to love, to recognize our connection, is what makes human lives worth living.

Mommy loves Clare (and everybody knows it)

Recently added to the expanding list of things Clare will do when she grows up (and gets taller, can touch knitting needles, and can eat corn nuts): "have a baby in my tummy."

She was a riot on Sunday. Also announced to the whole church during Life o' the Church time that the everyone should pray for her mommy and daddy, she loves her mommy and (more quietly) mommy loves Clare. I think she was drunk on blueberries.

But really, I hope someday when she grows up she will get to do all these things, especially have a baby in her tummy. It's one of the best things I've done so far.

fish are friends (not food?)

If you've got a toddler living in your house, you recognize that line. Finding Nemo's character Bruce the Shark's 12-step program for "nice sharks, not mindless eating machines" begins with a pledge that concludes with the mantra: "fish are friends, not food." Nemo is Clare's current TV obsession; so Bruce the Shark's fish-friendly mantra has been repeated about three times a day for the past week during Clare's mid-winter break. (Don't worry, we've done other stuff too--fingerpainting, trips to the playground, a quick jaunt out to Princeton to say goodbye to friends moving overseas, that sort of thing. It's not all glassy-eyed TV coma around here.) She's a mimicry machine these days and so of course, not only is Bruce repeating his mantra three times a day, Clare wants to remind me too: fish are friends, not food.

We also made a short little shopping trip and picked up Eric Carle's Mister Seahorse for Clare. It's a beautiful book, with a cute little story about (of course) Mr. Seahorse and other various fish for whom the "daddies" are the primary nurturers of their offspring. [pause for tangential children's book critique: while I love the role reversal that is the theme of the book, the Mr. and Mrs. names for all the fish pairs irk me a bit, and when Mr. Bullhead tells Mr. Seahorse proudly that his eggs have hatched and he is now "babysitting," I can't help but hear echoes of a friend's anecdote about the absurdity of calling a daddy's care of his own kids "babysitting."] Mr. Seahorse, who keeps the seahorse eggs in his pouch; Mr. Kurtus, who sticks them on his head; Mr. Pipe, who keeps them on his belly; and Mr. Tilapia, who carries them in his mouth.

On this week's menu: pecan-crusted tilapia.

I'm not sure Clare will eat it. She might refuse on toddler-intuited principle. And hell, even my vegetarian baby sister will eat fish occasionally. (Pesky-vegetarian.) (Just kidding, mei-mei. You are a delightful vegetarian who makes a kick-butt curried butternut squash bisque.)

But the problem's worse than whether or not I can convince my toddler to ignore her Nemo-indoctrination and eat her fish, because the real issue to decide beforehand is whether or not I should. Aside from the fact that my Shoprite-bargain frozen tilapia fillets hail from China rather than sustainably managed US farms, (damn! should've known), the prior philosophical dilemma of how we define food and how to eat well are raised.

This is an ongoing negotiation for me. Not convinced yet that vegetarianism is mandated, I try to at least consume meat responsibly; this means, basically, eating less meat, and whenever possible, taking into account the practices that provide our meat. (These two things are mutually reinforcing, since free-range/organic/sustainable meat is more expensive.)

Fish are friends, not food: it's a curious mantra when you get down to it, the opposition of "friends" and "food" as categories. It reminds me of one of Mary Warren's seven multileveled criteria for personhood, specific personal relationship. She argues that even if you don't consider cats (for example) as "persons" categorically speaking, you're pretty likely to consider your own cat a "person," or something like a person, because you have a relationship with that specific cat. Now this makes sense, but by itself, the logic is inadequate. The big loophole of course is that we could turn it around and say, "I don't know you personally therefore you are not a person"--leading to a great rationalization for, say, killing people in a war. Just for example. We have a word for this of course: dehumanization. (Warren's proposal balances this criterion with several others, so this is not a criticism of her proposal as a whole.)

Fish are friends, not food: what kind of relationship is necessary with another creature to preclude categorizing it as 'food'? Pretty much everyone will stop short of human cannibalism; pretty much everyone would refuse to eat their own pet; pretty much everyone would refuse to eat other animals of the same kind as their pet. This is true even in places in China where dog is an acceptable meat for some dishes; I learned in Changsha that there is a particular breed of dog for eating, and it is not a dog one would keep as a pet--it has its own distinct ontological category. I wonder if people who keep aquariums feel queasy about eating fish. I bet most of them, like dog-eaters, accommodate by drawing more specific ontological boundaries.

What will I tell Clare? Will she connect the pecan-crusted tilapia fillet on her plate to Nemo and Mr. Tilapia, the good daddy fish with his mouth full of baby fish eggs? Or will there be an obvious and distinct ontological boundary provided, courtesy of the rounded edge of her plate--separating food from the rest of the natural world--to prevent her from making that connection?

The truth is, "there is no way to eat and not to kill, no way to eat and not to become-with other mortal beings to whom we are accountable, no way to pretend innocence or transcendence or a final peace" (D. Haraway, When Species Meet, 295). But this admission is no blank check, as if by acknowledging that we live via the practice of consuming our others, we put ourselves beyond redemption and therefore accountability. It matters how we eat, by what lives and in what we ways we sustain ourselves. Recognizing that the category of "food" overlaps with the categories of other creatures with whom we have relationship (acknowledged or not, functional or dysfunctional, personal or not, sustainable or unsustainable) is part of what it must mean to well, and not blindly. Bruce reassures us: "I am a nice shark, not a mindless eatin' machine." We too can at least aspire to be more than mindless eating machines. That fillet in my freezer is a fish: once a living, swimming creature with physical needs and competencies and intents, different from my own, but no less vital from the fish's point of view. Perhaps that fish once carried his baby fish eggs in his mouth, like Mr. Tilapia of Eric Carle's story. If Clare can make that connection, how can I deny it? Certainly not without distorting reality for the sake of maintaining a false purity of boundaries in pursuit of the innocence Donna Haraway assures me does not exist--and which, in the end, if she learns anything from me, she will dismantle as an adult. Maybe it's too difficult a truth for a toddler to understand, that killing and eating cannot be hygienically separated...and yet, Nemo's mommy gets eaten, as do all his siblings, at the very beginning of that Disney narrative; and Bruce the Shark's mantra is bookended by Nigel the pelican's dry comment, "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta eat."

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Awhile back I was invited to contribute to ACU Press's The Transforming Word, a one-volume commentary on the Bible. My essay is in the background knowledge section, on the topic of religion and science as it relates to biblical interpretation. It's a brief general essay aimed at making one very simple point: there's no good reason to assume that Christianity is or should be anti-science.

from the essay: "Dialogue permits exchange in a way that acknowledges the integrity of science and religion as distinct sources of knowledge while insisting that they cannot remain strictly independent. This type of relationship strikes a balance between the necessary autonomy of individual disciplines and the holistic nature of the human search for understanding. In dialogue, science and religion are equal partners investigating areas of common interest: the natural world, human nature, and the question of how God acts in the world.

But it is a little misleading to suggest that a single dialogue exists. In reality, there are dialogues between particular sciences and particular religions and theologies on particular topics. Conversations about human nature, for example, may engage biology, psychology, and anthropology, while conversations about nature may partner with physics and chemistry. The conclusions reached in these specific conversations may differ from each other, or there may be no conclusions reached at all. But this should be no surprise to theologians and Christians in general, who, after all, ought perhaps to be more sensitive to the limitations of human rationality than anyone else. Human reason is fallible, so all conclusions must be open to continued examination.

Finally, unpredictability in the dialogue between religion and science is a fact to be accepted, if the conversation is really to be genuine...We cannot afford to ignore that dialogue brings with it the possibility of disagreement, if it is in fact an honest conversation. Yet there is a positive side to this as well: dissonance often opens the door for renewed investigation and creativity. It is only when conflict is assumed to be a permanent and inevitable condition that it becomes detrimental to dialogue, because the motivation to find resolution disappears."

You can check out the list of contributors, etc., here. If you're looking for one great big giant book all about the Bible, this might be the one for you...:)

sometimes communal discernment sucks

You know in the abstract, "communal discernment" sounds so very peaceful. Like we're all sitting around humming "om" in the lotus position until we all get the same simultaneous epiphany. Hrmph.


I am, actually, very committed to the idea that dissensus is often more generative and creative and healthy than easy consensus. (Sheep achieve easy consensus. So do lemmings.) But voicing disagreements, hearing people out, and working out exactly what it is you don't agree with and why are painful and difficult tasks--especially when the issues at hand really matter.


I'm not good at this. I like to think a lot but I like to think by myself. My tendency in a group is to stay in listening mode--to absorb as much as possible, and take it home to ruminate upon until I've analyzed everything to my satisfaction. Then, at that point, I have lots of opinions to offer with very good reasons attached to them. Then, at that point, of course, I'm all by myself--the communal bit of the discernment gets a bit lost in my processing. Maybe this is just the natural tendency of the academic mind, but I suspect that a great deal of it also still centers around my reluctance to disagree publicly with people. (The blog has helped...but I remain a G.R.I.T.S. after all. Next time I wear my "this is what a feminist looks like" T-shirt, I'm going to feel like a fraud without one of those Cracker Barrel G.R.I.T.S. ball caps to counter-message it.)

We've spent a good amount of time lately discussing what our vision for CCfB's future is, or can be. Unsurprisingly there is dissensus. Theoretically I still maintain that this is a good thing, but concretely, it also sucks. It also sucks that I still feel like I'm trying to play catch-up on the details, and that I have to try to listen and learn and think while policing my 2-YO's really loud comments about her goldfish (the crackers, not the swimming kind). It also really sucks that I'm missing next Sunday's discussion, so I'm putting down some (belated) thoughts about the bits of the discussion I have been a part of. Because that's what a blog is for.

1. For me--and possibly for others who have been around from the beginning, or for long enough to have seen how CCfB has evolved over the last few years--there was an unnoticed and even in retrospect undiscernible point at which it stopped feeling iffy, and I began taking for granted that CCfB was just going to be there. (If there's any measure of "success" for a church plant, I think this should be it.) Losing that feeling of stability and being thrown back into iffy-ness is difficult. Panic is the right word for my initial response to that; that describes my initial post fairly well.
   
2. I heard more than one comment to the effect that Sunday is the highlight of the week for many people. It is for me. That seems to me to be a clear signal that whatever we do, part of our shaping vision needs to honor that. I also heard this being analyzed as social time, being able to be together with people you relate to who are going through similar struggles and who share somewhat similar beliefs. I don't disagree with that necessarily--but at the same time I'm aware that part of CCfB's vision has always been inclusivity and not homogeneity. We are in some ways a diverse community--and in some ways we are not. I would like to see us continue to reach out beyond the comfortable 'image of the same.'
3. House churches. Of course, we started out as a "house church" since we did after all meet in Joe and Laura's house. By the time we moved from there into our second location at the YWCA, we were really outgrowing it. If we go back to a house church model it will mean multiple house churches--a major decentralizing move. I left the small group discussion right as the invitation to those who have house church experience to share it was issued, so I don't know how that discussion concluded. But my 2 cents: I don't think it's the way to go. Particularly because so many people have stated that Sundays are the highlight of their week--if being together is what does that, and that's important to us, it seems obvious that not being together blatantly disregards that. Beyond that...well, I suspect that most people probably assume doing house church is easier than doing, um, church church. In my experience, it's not. It's harder. Creating liturgy--making possible a genuine and collective worship--is hard work even if you're in the best of all possible spaces, (say, for example, Calvary Episcopal Church) with organ and talented choir and multiple staff on hand to handle the details. People work hard every week at CCfB to transform the very mundane space of elementary school cafeteria into a space where God's presence is clearly signified. This isn't busy work--it's part of worship, and it's sacramental work to set up the chairs and lay out the red carpet on which our 'altar' bears it sacraments of bread and, well, most of the time, grape juice. Working this transformation in a cafeteria is hard enough; working it in your living room is damn near impossible. I've lost count how many times I was frustrated in China by having my careful preparation of our "sacred space" in our living room completely ignored by people putting everything from songbooks to feet on the coffee table serving as our altar, right next to the elements. Loss of sacred space slides easily into loss of sacred time. House churches get sloppy and lax and no one cares; besides, there's no one in charge to do something about it even if they did. Which reminds me of my first year in China, right out of Harding, discovering the hard way that I actually had theological convictions and opinions (and no one gave a crap about them). I was just the hostess: my job was to clean my house every week and make the communion bread (without sugar!!!) and scour the city for decent grape juice (hard to find in 1998 Wuhan). The boys would take care of everything else--except they didn't. And I was furious that the going assumption was that someone could saunter in late, assign worship leadership roles on the spot ("wanna do communion today? um, okay") because there was no forethought put to what should have been sacred time. I tried to organize things--to no avail. When no one's in charge, nothing gets done ahead of time. This is not how things go down at CCfB currently--or ever. We honor our time together and use it well. But the amount of forethought and planning that goes into that time happens between Sundays, and maybe we take it for granted, or don't realize that it's getting done. Or maybe it's not viewed as being as important as social justice involvement in the community, or the relationships between individuals that we all treasure as part of what defines us. But I think that's wrong. Without deliberate, purposeful time spent communally in worship, the consequence will be losing the source of spiritual nurture that so many people have straightforwardly stated they rely on week to week. We must find some way to make this happen--and this will be difficult, because in this we have relied on Joe and Laura both almost exclusively. I don't think it's impossible; there are plenty of talented people in our midst--though I think we will experience a learning curve as we adjust, and figure out who needs to pick up what. But we really can't afford to remain ignorant about this need or let it go unaddressed. Finally...I think house churches tend to become insular, turned in on themselves, and CCfB has always tried to avoid the tempation that churches have to look inward only and to be a locally involved, active community. In a crisis that's what you do--look inward. But it's also not CCfB. If we are going to make it through this transformation without losing who we are, I think we've got to try very hard not to forget this defining aspect of our communal identity. [I would rather see CCfB make a move toward merging with another body than shrink back in on itself in a mimicry of the form if not the spirit of CofC sectarianism (Brent points out, there's an Epicopal church in the neighborhood...:) It occurs to me that perhaps some of us are pretty sour on organized, institutional religion at the moment, and house churches may therefore seem all the more attractive, existing on the opposite end of the spectrum. I get it. But the opposite of organized religion is...disorganized religion. Appealing? Not really.]
   
4. Maybe there has been some detailed discussion about taking care of Joe and Laura while they transition, but if so, I've missed it. Maybe we're all still panicking too much about what the sudden precariousness of CCfB's future means for me to have begun thinking outside ourselves to consider what it means for the Hays family. Sure, there's a limit to what CCfB can do--if we could do what we wanted then they wouldn't be going anywhere. But even beyond showing some gratitude for the work they have done and continue to do, I think we all ought to be mindful of the fact that they're taking a hit for us--making a sacrifice themselves because they won't ask us to sacrifice ourselves in attempting the impossible. If that's not Christ-like then I haven't seen it yet. And we ought to honor that by doing everything possible--including simply reminding them how much we love them, but making sure that we do our part financially as well. Picking up the increasing percentage of Joe's salary that MCofC is dropping starting in March is the minimum IMO. Churches should take care of their people. CCfB has done this for various members as there has been need--including me!--and this is no different.
   

***update to #4: apparently this was agenda item #1 for the first major discussion of the transition team folks. Have I mentioned that I love my church? I really do.

P.S.: sometimes all six verses of "Just as I Am" are comforting.

So, I had a bad week this past week; I couldn't concentrate, couldn't focus, couldn't think very well and certainly couldn't write. I was totally exhausted from the moment Clare came elephant-thumping (the pitter-patter of little feet stuff is all propaganda, folks) into the bedroom to help us greet the dawn until falling back into bed at night--exhausted but unable to relax and get to sleep. I got through the days by deliberately overdosing on caffeine in various forms. Then, Thursday night, I drank a bottle of wine (unaided) and ate some macaroni and cheese comfort food, slept like the dead and woke up Friday feeling relatively awesome. I must have seriously frakked up neurochemistry.

Anyhow, after that unexpected jolt back into normal physical functioning, for which I'm ever so grateful, I'm a little more even-keeled. Brent said something absolutely sensible to me in the midst of my resveratrol (read: red wine) consumption. He often says absolutely sensible things, so that's not remarkable in itself. I often disregard these things, which is stupid but unfortunately unremarkeable as well. This time however I had ears for hearing it.

So, here's the thing. I added a whole layer of personal crisis on the stay-or-go question on top of the real CCfB crisis, which was maybe not totally unjustified, but a little blown out of proportion. Brent's sensible comment was: CCfB is still what it is, and if that's not connected enough to the CofC to satisfy people, then there are a whole bunch of other things they're not going to hire you for anyhow. So why sweat it. And this is so obviously true that I stopped sweating it right then and there. I resolved a long time ago that the CofC was going to have to take me "just as I am." I do not want to find myself feeling compelled to dissemble, evade and deny my theological convictions in order to land a job, keep a job, or just in general stay a part of the church tradition that I consider my home. Just as I am--or not.

So maybe it wasn't the wine. Maybe I just have an awesome husband who, in addition to being able to absolve sins and stuff, can absolve anxieties as well.

Happy Valentine's Day, babe. I'm glad I remembered to buy you some chocolate. Thanks for sticking with me.

V-Day

I know it's actually tomorrow, but St. Stephens Preschool is celebrating today, and Clare and I have spent the last couple evenings at the kitchen table making 43 valentines for the intermediate class of 2's and 3's. Yes, I said 43. We did it too. It took some time, and I'm now completely out of stickers, and our construction paper hearts with random stickers on them (Easter stickers, NYC stickers, cowboy stickers, ABC stickers, animals and birds and flowers and everything in the world except, you know, hearts!) are not going to win any arts-and-crafts prizes, but she put the stickers on them her own self, and proudly posted them into her friends' paper bags this morning. It was delightful.

So, that's great and all, and I like how having a little kid's perspective on Valentine's makes it so sweetly about friendship and inclusion--it's a nice break from the cloying romance and chocolate version, which of course puts my back up not only because I, like practically every other woman I know, has had some dreadful and traumatic Valentine's Day experience to poison it, but also because all the romance and chivalry and whatnot is so dependent on notions of the feminine and masculine and I would prefer to trash the medieval pedestal rather than climb upon it. But really, V-Day was redeemed for me when I participated in PTS's production of the Vagina Monologues, three years ago now I guess (it was B.C.--before Clare--by about 4 months). I like the irony of taking a day that consistently places women in that submissive recipient position and making it about empowerment.

If you've never seen the Monologues or have no idea what V-Day is, check it out. Chances are there's a production near you.

It's a hard thing to have a blog specifically for processing the stuff you find hard to talk about (or lack the audience for talking about with?) and then find yourself with the need to process something that you feel is too iffy for the blog, for whatever reason. This is partly why I try not to remember how many people I know who seem to read this blog (for whatever reason; it kindof mystifies me) even though I've discovered in doing this that I need to feel that there is some kind of "audience" for these words in order to have the motivation to set them down...but I digress. Get used to it because for this post I'm not aiming for coherence or any kind of narrative structure or any kind of thematic point whatsoever. I just need to barf it all up. That seems to be my motif this week. I'm over my physical stomach bug at this point, with its attendant nausea and the vomiting so violent I wet my pants every time I hurled, but I'm a bit soul-sick and there's no cure for nausea of the spirit. Other than just trying to get it all out, I guess.

It's been a week since CCfB learned that we were losing Joe and Laura. Like everyone else, I guess, my first reaction was simply anger. Not at them; it's clear that they are doing the only possible and sensible thing given the situation. My anger is more for them--born out of a sense that they deserve better than to be dropped without ceremony at a particularly vulnerable time. Secondarily, I feel a bit of the same on behalf of CCfB as a community, that we deserve better than to be dropped without warning at a particularly critical time. But even that is secondary to just being plain pissed off, with the frustrated sense that, in the body of Christ, we're supposed to be about taking care of people, not shoving them out the door with apparent indifference to the personal and communal consequences.

For all of that it is only fair to say that I know pretty much nothing about how and why Manhattan CofC chose this time to begin termination of their financial support for CCfB, and my anger about it--I know myself well enough to know this--is more about my personal tendency for coping with grief than it is about anything anyone has actually done, or not done. Like all the women in my family, I do mad a whole lot easier than sad. Hand me a tragedy and I'll hit you back with some righteous rage. It's not, probably, the most balanced way to handle shit, but I have never claimed to be balanced.

So was mad for a few days and then I was throwing up, and then everyone else was throwing up, and that kind of eclipsed things. It wasn't till I was sitting in church today that the sadness actually hit, and then I found that I couldn't trust myself to speak enough to answer the question, "how are you processing things?" I figured it probably wasn't going to be helpful to have someone start weeping on the front row, so I took a few minutes in the back to compose myself. It's nice to be known as such a die-hard coffee addict that no one thinks twice when you get up in the middle of church, just figures you're going for a refill.

So now I'm sad, which I find much harder to handle than mad, and having spent some time on the train in transit without the distraction of Clare, I'm realizing just how much of a crisis this is--for me, a realization I've been staving off with the help of anger (and vomit).

First, it's impossible to avoid realizing now how much harder it's been to remain a real part of CCfB after our move to NJ than I thought it would be, and admitting that really, the last few months, I'm barely there. There's not much I volunteer for anymore, because I know how unreliable I am and I figure it's worse to say you'll do something and not than to not confuse the issue by volunteering when I shouldn't. I would love to be on the teaching rotation again, but my attendance, while theoretically every other week, gets preempted by everything from stomach bugs to choir concerts and somehow, inevitably, it seems I am there one Sunday out of four every month. Realizing this makes me sad.

Second. I've been very conscious the last few years of what a haven CCfB has been for me as a somewhat alienated theologian within the Churches of Christ. (side note: "alienated theologian" is a reference to a bit of commentary in Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology, vol. 1; it's not a complaint, just descriptive of the odd relation in which theologians often find themselves with respect to their ecclesial communities.) On a personal level, being involved in a church in which I did not feel obligated to hide either my interest in theology nor my actual theological opinions offered a kind of healing I didn't even know I needed until I experienced it; being able to preach, to create liturgies, to pray--all that offered a healing that I knew I needed and had never been hopeful of getting. On a pragmatic level, being a theologian hopeful of gainful employment someday in the future and hoping that CofC schools would consider me a candidate, CCfB functioned as my official tie to the institution. (For my non-CofC readers, in a denomination with no denominational structure, an institution that exists without any actual institution-ing, the only way to be officially CofC is to be a recognized member of a CofC congregation.) For years now I have been able to say "I'm a member of a Manhattan CofC sponsored church plant" when inquiring minds wanted to know. Now my dodge won't work anymore. Personally, I think CCfB as a community needs to go its own way at this point, and not regret the loss of official (=financial) ties to the Churches of Christ. But what that means for me personally is that I am now faced with the necessity of finding another way to validate my ties to the CofC world--or entertain a question I was hoping to avoid for at least another decade: is it time for me to leave the Churches of Christ? I am not ready to face that question. Part of the CCfB crisis for me is that it seems I cannot avoid it, because my haven is disappearing.

Finally. As if the above were not existential/spiritual/pragmatic-career-choice crisis enough, I found myself crying on the way home when I realized that there's a reason I introduce Joe to the people he's met here in Summit, not simply as my friend, but as my "pastor." Because he is, has been. And, though this may sound odd to you, he's the only pastor I have ever had. Things are different when you're a PK, and married to a priest. And in losing Joe and Laura for the reasons we are--we simply cannot support a full-time minister on our own yet--means that it's not just that I am losing my first and only pastor in exchange for some unknown replacement. There is no replacement. There is no successor. I am losing my pastor.

I have no doubt that CCfB will continue. And I have no doubt that the future is a beautiful one. I wish that I could be a stronger participant in bringing it about, but the truth is, I probably can't be--though I plan to stick around, at least. Despite my confidence in this community that I dearly love, the unwanted unwelcome truth is that CCfB will no longer be the haven for me that it has been, and I have some hard questions to confront.

The American Way of Life, Obama, and a short list that ends with poop

Here's a short list of the easiest things I've done over the years to green up my lifestyle and household:

1. Buy the squiggly light bulbs. Duh.
2. Tack the city's recycling info sheet on the fridge right next to the trash can. I've been amazed at how many items I've automatically gone to the trash with, and then stopped when I realized that they were recyclable and I just hadn't made the connection.
3. Washing in cold water only. It really does get clothes just as clean, so unless there's a reason to sanitize in hot water, I don't.
   
4. Buying a CSA share. We loved our first summer at Honey Brook, but the year after waited too long and couldn't get a share. After that we were too transitional to figure it out. This year we're splitting a boxed share from Honey Brook with our neighbors (who, if you're a Calvary person, you of course know, but I like to be careful with putting people's names on this blog unless I have permission, or know them well enough to not care if they hate it.) If you're not local, you can check out localharvest.org to find a CSA near you.
   
5. Cloth napkins. Brent's mom finds a reliable abundant supply of these at estate sales, so they are free (to us), washable of course, a lot nicer to look at than paper, and do a better job of getting Clare's hands and face clean.
   
6. Hanging the tote bags for the grocery store on the door handle. It's the only thing that cured my constant forgetfulness when I was trying to cultivate the habit. Now it's a habit, and the tote bags live in a less intrusive place. They are so much easier than either paper or plastic, IMO, because they hold a ton more stuff and there is no worry about breakage. I can almost always bring the groceries in from the car to the kitchen in one trip. Nice when I'm generally also herding Clare into the house at the same time.
   
7. Sigg bottles. Thank you Sylva's Nana! I love mine, Brent loves his, Clare loves hers. We have lessened our demand for wasteful plastic bottles and are better hydrated to boot.
   
8. Always printing on both sides of the (recycled) printer paper, or, if using less than a full page for multiple copies of something, squishing it down and using half sheets to hand out. Joe's made fun of my CCfB handouts for this (but in a mostly nice way. I think.)
9. Using and loving Method products. Like the wood floor cleaner and the mop with the reusable cloth you toss in the wash. And the dishwasher pellets. And laundry detergent. And rediscovering how awesome baking soda is for kitchen and bathroom cleaning, and laundry.
   
10. Breastfeeding. Think about it. No bottle, no formula packages...
11. The Diva Cup!!!! I can't tell you how happy I am with this. Been using it for 2 years now. How many tampons have I not used in that time? No idea, but what I really love about it is the luxury of actually forgetting I am on my period for hours at a time. Seriously. Comfortable, simple, easy.
    
12. Putting the poop in the potty before putting the diaper in the pail. Yep, Clare's not pooping direct yet, but her poop goes in the potty. Turns out this is 'sposed to be how you handle all 'sposies.
    

So, I was thinking about this in the shower (perhaps washing with the Holy Cross Monastery's blackberry sage soap inspired my holier-than-thou thoughts?) and this was my short list. It's not really meant as self-congratulatory at all, because all of these things are very small things. Not like getting rid of the family car, or something. Plus, one thing I really wish I could list, but can't: cloth diapers. We didn't do it because of our living situation (communal laundry seemed an insuperable stumbling block), but it would have saved us tons of money, Clare would perhaps be potty trained already, and of course, no enormous bags of stinky disposable diapers piling up week after week.

I would love to hear back from some of you if there are other easy, simple things you've done that you would include on your own list.

But there's a larger point lurking here as well, and that is, these little things represent a deliberate modification of what we might label "JTB's Way of Life." I may have bitched about this phrase, "way of life," on this blog before--I don't remember. I don't remember because I bitch about it so often that I'm like one of those absentminded professors, or preachers, who keeps telling the same anecdotes to an audience who's heard it all before. Because I hate it. I especially hate it in the specific version we hear so often, "The American Way of Life." My automatic reaction to this phrase at this point is to snort derisively and mutter, "and WTF does that mean anyway?"

And then, damn it, Obama went and used it in his inauguration speech. And worse, defended it. And worse, said we won't apologize for it. If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would have bugged out and there would have been funny sound effects accompanying my "whaaaaaa?" headshake.

Because "The American Way of Life" is never defined, simply invoked--whenever we need an ironclad, ask-no-more-questions reason for doing, you know, X (fill in the blank: go to war, torture people, enact a law or amend the constitution or...you get it.) Our American Way of Life may be a blank concept, but it's a sacred blank concept, and one that you can properly consider the possibility of consigning your eternal soul to hell for defending, if that's what it takes.

But here's the thing. While Obama's inauguration speech overtly praised and promised to defend Our Sacred American Way of Life, it also more subtly made a case for the ways in which we must redefine that way of life and the reasons why. So...I'm on board with that, and kudos to the man once again for some kick-ass rhetorical strategy. Once we have a collective way of life that doesn't require apologizing for, I'm all for defending it without apology.

It seems to me that there's an assumption that making any kind of real change to how we live means massive inconvenience and difficulty, and so people avoid even contemplating it. Let's just not think about it, because if we did, then we would have to change, and that would just be too much to ask...I mean, really, that would be asking us to Change Our Way of Life. But my point is that redefining The American Way of Life doesn't have to be scary or too difficult to bother contemplating. There's not a single thing in my opening list that has made the quality of my life worse by doing it. There's not a single thing on that list that even qualifies as inconvenient. Sure, it takes a little work to remember the tote bags. But they work better. For me, and for everyone else too.