SIGH!
Now that we're gone from the city, it's time to think about Joe's post from a while back. I said to Brent last night that really, this past year we experienced a lot of the things that make city living difficult without experiencing hardly any of the really great things that make city living worth it. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's no exaggeration to say that in the time we lived in NYC, we saw two movies and one show. That's it. So I think, well--maybe everyone needs to live in the city once, but the time to do it is when you're single and you've got a little money to spend and the flexibility to be spontaneous. What I know of the city is limited to the immediate neighborhood and consists of grocery store locations and nearby parks. And I will never haul a stroller up and down subway stairs again. Hallelujah!...And yet, there's still a part of me that's sad to go. I have the suspicion that with another year, I might have learned enough about how to navigate the logistics of the city to have enjoyed it a great deal more. It's a big comfort to know that it is, after all, just a 45 minute train ride away.
That sadness is also greatly diminished by the excitement of exploring our new home. Summit is a beautiful town and we live right in the heart of it, three blocks away from downtown. Playground at the school across the street for Clare, plus a beautiful backyard of our own that rivals the Close for relaxation and beauty. Farmer's market on Saturdays across the street. And the house itself...well, Brent had taken pics for me when he toured it earlier but it was still completely overwhelming to walk in and see it for myself. I hope that I managed to be appropriate and gracious in my responses to people but I was just totally overwhelmed by how preposterous it is that we are moving in to this beautiful old house. It makes me want to giggle because it is so absurd. Really? We're living here? Pardon while I rearrange my worldview to accommodate this...um, sorry, it didn't work. I'll keep trying though. In the meantime, I will just attempt to suppress my maniacal urge to giggle at the madness.
Other random bits:
Brent really can put things together without directions. Amazing!
No church bells, but we hear the organ music from the church next door. Clare's reaction: "Music! Jesus!"
Clare thinks riding in the car is a novelty. Hope that lasts for our roadtrip to NC. :)
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
ameritocracy.com
Not too long ago, just a few years ago anyhow (though this might be surprising to some given the discussion over at Scott's blog yesterday) I was cynical, indifferent and entirely apathetic with regard to politics. In fact, I never voted at all until after I got married and then it was because Brent just seemed to expect me to, not because I had any real interest or felt like it was a civic duty or that it would make any kind of difference anyway. I defended my cynical apathy with regard to the political process in this country with an argument based on epistemic unreliability. It went like this: the only information to which I have access comes from sources who have an interest in telling me what they think I want to hear, and the only thing I know for sure is that this is unreliable. Casting a vote based on a bunch of stuff that I know is at best misinformation and at worst outright lies is epistemically irresponsible. Best course of action: take the high road and ignore the crap, and just generally hope for the best (i.e., no real crazies are elected, just garden-variety power-hungry egomaniacs).
[n.b.: I did vote against W twice--what I heard from him, especially given that I figured he was spouting what "I" (Mrs. John Q. Voter--and the archaic form of polite address is deliberate, folks) wanted to hear, was absolutely frightening.]
Of course during all this time, there I was in Abilene, reading Dr. Frederick Aquino's dissertation on Newman and social epistemology, again and again (yes, it's just that good. Oh, and it was my job). Embodied knowledge, collective knowledge, partial perspective, epistemic judgment, epistemic virtues and vices, the necessary role of exemplars of informed judgment, etc., it's all still banging around in my head... So eventually, I realized that of course I was right about all the epistemic unreliability, but that this was no good excuse for pretending like politics didn't matter and that I had no responsibility for shaping political outcomes. What was I waiting for? "Certainty"? Right. I was just taking the lazy way out: I didn't want to do all the hard work of really figuring out, first, what I really thought about a bunch of things I didn't quite properly understand--like health care, and the economy, immigration policies, etc.--and second, how I was going to sort through all the propaganda thrown my way and evaluate the information about candidates. Where would I go, what standards could I use to evaluate, and all that. Because I was already aware of the problem, having used it as an excuse to get out of all this work, I couldn't regress and just start picking someone I liked better and trusting everything he said while distrusting everything the other dude said. Finally I resigned myself to just muddling through the morass of misinformation and praying to God that somehow I would be able to make an informed judgment.
I think most of us have felt this frustration to some extent, though maybe no one else let it paralyze them the way I did. But the constant refrain of lament about the state of American mainstream media, from both sides (and even more vociferously from the marginalized Greens!), says to me that everybody is aware that there's both too much information and too little trust. This may be somewhat unfixable, as I think trust is directly related to the epistemic agent--and this social group (America as a whole) is too large for the kind of direct personal knowledge of the epistemic agents in question to be the route for developing the necessary trust.
When I was in Wuhan, China in '98, the year America "accidentally bombed" the Chinese embassy, my students were so pissed off at me as representative American that the only effective pacificatory thing I could say was, "do you think Bill Clinton knows my name? do you think even if I personally told him to own up and take responsibility for this awful tragedy that he would care what I think?" The point was, I and the average American don't personally know these people we vote for, nor do we personally know the people on TV who report about them. So on what basis do we start investing our epistemic trust? Why trust what they say?
It seems like an unsolvable problem, one that has only been multiplied by the internet's glut of information and the ubiquity of bloggers like me who get on here and spout whatever we damn please, with no regulation whatsoever.
So: ameritocracy.com. In creator Porter Bayne's words:
You can read the rest of the interview here.
What impresses me about the project, given my sense of the enormity of our collective epistemological quandary, is that it offers a way to navigate the problem without promising to hand out a solution on a silver platter (or golden plates inscribed from heaven). It's a way to help you make an informed judgment, rather than making a judgment for you. We're not being offered the Truth (always a false offer anyhow). We're being offered a specific tool in the hope that we can make better judgments of the information we have.
Of course, how political quotes and epistemic agents get rated is a matter of who does the judging. Which means that the more people involved, the better these collective judgments will get. Particularly, the more diversity of perspective included, the better these judgments will get, that is to say, more nuanced.
So I'm bookmarking the site, still in beta testing, and soon I hope to get brave enough to sign up and start sharing my own more-or-less-informed judgments. I hope some others do, too. Even those pesky Anabaptist-leaning types who still think we ought to just not get involved...because despite how much you annoy me, we need to hear from you too. :)
[n.b.: I did vote against W twice--what I heard from him, especially given that I figured he was spouting what "I" (Mrs. John Q. Voter--and the archaic form of polite address is deliberate, folks) wanted to hear, was absolutely frightening.]
Of course during all this time, there I was in Abilene, reading Dr. Frederick Aquino's dissertation on Newman and social epistemology, again and again (yes, it's just that good. Oh, and it was my job). Embodied knowledge, collective knowledge, partial perspective, epistemic judgment, epistemic virtues and vices, the necessary role of exemplars of informed judgment, etc., it's all still banging around in my head... So eventually, I realized that of course I was right about all the epistemic unreliability, but that this was no good excuse for pretending like politics didn't matter and that I had no responsibility for shaping political outcomes. What was I waiting for? "Certainty"? Right. I was just taking the lazy way out: I didn't want to do all the hard work of really figuring out, first, what I really thought about a bunch of things I didn't quite properly understand--like health care, and the economy, immigration policies, etc.--and second, how I was going to sort through all the propaganda thrown my way and evaluate the information about candidates. Where would I go, what standards could I use to evaluate, and all that. Because I was already aware of the problem, having used it as an excuse to get out of all this work, I couldn't regress and just start picking someone I liked better and trusting everything he said while distrusting everything the other dude said. Finally I resigned myself to just muddling through the morass of misinformation and praying to God that somehow I would be able to make an informed judgment.
I think most of us have felt this frustration to some extent, though maybe no one else let it paralyze them the way I did. But the constant refrain of lament about the state of American mainstream media, from both sides (and even more vociferously from the marginalized Greens!), says to me that everybody is aware that there's both too much information and too little trust. This may be somewhat unfixable, as I think trust is directly related to the epistemic agent--and this social group (America as a whole) is too large for the kind of direct personal knowledge of the epistemic agents in question to be the route for developing the necessary trust.
When I was in Wuhan, China in '98, the year America "accidentally bombed" the Chinese embassy, my students were so pissed off at me as representative American that the only effective pacificatory thing I could say was, "do you think Bill Clinton knows my name? do you think even if I personally told him to own up and take responsibility for this awful tragedy that he would care what I think?" The point was, I and the average American don't personally know these people we vote for, nor do we personally know the people on TV who report about them. So on what basis do we start investing our epistemic trust? Why trust what they say?
It seems like an unsolvable problem, one that has only been multiplied by the internet's glut of information and the ubiquity of bloggers like me who get on here and spout whatever we damn please, with no regulation whatsoever.
So: ameritocracy.com. In creator Porter Bayne's words:
"I think each of us involved in the project had our own light bulb experience. For me, I originally came up with a similar concept in 2004 when I was frustrated with how so many of my friends/colleagues were repeating misinformation straight from campaigns’ mouths or their favorite radio show, and they didn’t trust information from the “other side.” Then one day my sister, who reads voraciously and has as many degrees as my right hand has digits, said “I just don’t know how you stay up on political information”. That made it real to me: people just don’t have time to keep up."
You can read the rest of the interview here.
What impresses me about the project, given my sense of the enormity of our collective epistemological quandary, is that it offers a way to navigate the problem without promising to hand out a solution on a silver platter (or golden plates inscribed from heaven). It's a way to help you make an informed judgment, rather than making a judgment for you. We're not being offered the Truth (always a false offer anyhow). We're being offered a specific tool in the hope that we can make better judgments of the information we have.
Of course, how political quotes and epistemic agents get rated is a matter of who does the judging. Which means that the more people involved, the better these collective judgments will get. Particularly, the more diversity of perspective included, the better these judgments will get, that is to say, more nuanced.
So I'm bookmarking the site, still in beta testing, and soon I hope to get brave enough to sign up and start sharing my own more-or-less-informed judgments. I hope some others do, too. Even those pesky Anabaptist-leaning types who still think we ought to just not get involved...because despite how much you annoy me, we need to hear from you too. :)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
an open letter on the unity of the church
Dear Brother,
It's taken me a few years to write this letter. This isn't the first one I wrote. That one was angry, and hurt, and after a half dozen editing jobs, politely angry and hurt. I never sent that one; it sits on my hard drive still. I never could send to the trash bin, because a part of me really wanted to explain, persuade, defend.
But pretty soon I'm going to delete that file, because I've finally realized that that letter, the one where I explain how wrong you were so very politely, isn't the letter I want to send. It isn't on topic. It's not even close.
And I've wondered if, when I am again in the neighborhood, I will dare to walk through your church doors again, or not. And which would be the right choice?
I've wondered if I really should just give up, and go away. I can't count how many people over these intervening years have asked why I don't--students, friends, family, colleagues. My answer used to be that this church is my home; how do you leave your home? But that Sunday I wondered for the first time if maybe my home might leave me, instead. Later, in defiance, my answer was, why should I? This is my home, too. Then I wondered if it was true that my presence was divisive and harmful to the church, an act of self-gratification and arrogance. I began to be afraid that I really was the kind of person described in your sermon.
For a long time, that was my fear: that my sincere wish to remain a part of the body of Christ into which I was baptized and raised in the faith would be divisive and contentious no matter what I did or didn't do, because of what I do (or don't) believe on this (or that, or that other thing).
But now, I know what I will do next time I'm in the neighborhood. I will be walking through those church doors. I will take a seat in a pew and I will sing, and pray, and listen, and contemplate scripture. I will praise God with you. Because I am certain now that it is not divisive for me to remain. It is a conscious act of unity.
See, I realize that we will probably never agree about a lot of things, and some of these things we both think are really important. And we can argue or debate, and maybe we should. Maybe we can even change each other's minds on some of these things. Maybe not. But the unity of the church has never depended on this. Unity is not conformity of doctrine, and Campbell just plain got that wrong. The unity of the church is a mystery not unlike the mysterious unity of the one-in-three, the mysterious unity of Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father--consider Jesus' prayer in John 17: That they may be one, as we are one.
See, I realize that we will probably never agree about a lot of things, and some of these things we both think are really important. And we can argue or debate, and maybe we should. Maybe we can even change each other's minds on some of these things. Maybe not. But the unity of the church has never depended on this. Unity is not conformity of doctrine, and Campbell just plain got that wrong. The unity of the church is a mystery not unlike the mysterious unity of the one-in-three, the mysterious unity of Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father--consider Jesus' prayer in John 17: That they may be one, as we are one.
That we may be one, as our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father are indeed One.
the tat
I delayed this post out of respect for the much more important events going on in Brent's life--being ordained into the sacred order of deacons in the one holy catholic and apostolic church is really a very big deal.
But now that that's done and properly celebrated...
done! and saran-wrapped for freshness.
(now all I need is a pedicure.)Perhaps at some point I will comment about why a tattoo at this point in my life when I'm obviously way too old for such things, and what this particular tattoo means. But I am kind of worn out from having this conversation over and over with Brent, who really really really dislikes tattoos and was pretty darn unhappy with my decision to get one. (But, as he said after I came home, deed done, "it's permanent so I guess I better start getting over it.")
But for now I just want to say thanks to Casey, who apparently esteems me enough that she was not dismayed that I wanted to share her tattoo--same pic, same place and everything. And so over and above anything the dove symbol means on its own, it is also about communal shared meaning rather than private idiosyncratic self-decoration. And that is beautiful.
But for now I just want to say thanks to Casey, who apparently esteems me enough that she was not dismayed that I wanted to share her tattoo--same pic, same place and everything. And so over and above anything the dove symbol means on its own, it is also about communal shared meaning rather than private idiosyncratic self-decoration. And that is beautiful.
I delete all over your censored
Clare's "Obama baby" video is now at over 11,000 hits and I get a new comment every few days. Most of these are the kinds of things you'd hear at a baby shower: she's so adorable, etc. And that's about the level of discourse that video deserves. But occasionally there's a comment that, generally with a great amount of cursing, calls Obama "Satan himself" claiming that he voted for infanticide and throwing babies in the trash. (Wha??? Someone sponsored a bill for this?)
Now, I get that this video is labeled with Obama's name, and that it clearly indicates a voter's preference and is in some sense advocating on behalf of a candidate. But it's also primarily a proud-parent video of my precious little baby. And so I think it's doubly inappropriate for these troll-ish comments to appear...not only ignoring all standards of rational debate, common sense and basic courtesy, but forgetting that this video is about Clare more than it is about politics. Please don't cuss on my baby's video, people. That's just awful.
Now, I get that this video is labeled with Obama's name, and that it clearly indicates a voter's preference and is in some sense advocating on behalf of a candidate. But it's also primarily a proud-parent video of my precious little baby. And so I think it's doubly inappropriate for these troll-ish comments to appear...not only ignoring all standards of rational debate, common sense and basic courtesy, but forgetting that this video is about Clare more than it is about politics. Please don't cuss on my baby's video, people. That's just awful.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
By the Grace of God and with the People consenting,
the Right Reverend George Edward Councell
XI Bishop of New Jersey
will ordain to the
Sacred Order of Deacons
in Christ's One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church
James Brent Bates
Justin Anthony Falciani
John Franklin Hartman
James Matthew Tucker
on Saturday, the 7th day of June
in the year of our Lord 2008
at 10 o'clock in the morning
in Trinity Cathedral, Trenton, New Jersey.
Your prayers and presence are requested.
Clergy: Red Stoles Reception follows
Sunday, May 18, 2008
thank you everyone!
We worked hard on some genuine handmade toddler thank-yous for all our AIDS Walk supporters but they were around for so long that Clare found them again and destroyed them with the enthusiasm of uninhibited youth. We may try again but in the meantime, here's a video thank-you and a shout out to Lucas & Cara, Grandmom & Grandad, Liz and Bryan, Fred and a special thanks to Gilda who remembered that Clare's mommy had a fundraising goal to meet too. :)
We had a bit of a struggle with the video thank yous too so I figured I would upload the whole saga...
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
what I wish he'd said
"Religion must always maintain a position from which to speak truth to power. Reverend Wright is speaking the truth as he sees it and as he sees fit; this is his call as a prophetic leader of a religious community in this country. It's his job. A prophet's words are often harsh, and condemning, sometimes hyperbolic, and always unwelcome. But that's his job. It's not my job. As a Senator and a candidate for the presidency, I am...power. And my job is to listen to those prophets, however unwelcome their words, to that truth that they see fit to deliver to those who hold political power. The mistake is in assuming that either I must echo these unwelcome words or refuse to hear them...the truth is that I, we, must stop and listen. This is a democracy where all voices must be heard."
Now why didn't someone write that down on a post-it and hand it to the man?
Now why didn't someone write that down on a post-it and hand it to the man?
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
lame live blogging
preliminaries and thank yous...I hate that old joke about "marrying up" and the success of a man due to his wife being a great asset. Boo.
"our problems are bigger than the smallness of our politics"...etc. Is this an apology for the tit-for-tat recently?
It's all about McCain...that's interesting. And consistent with the implicit apology and rhetorical move to refocus the campaign on its original message.
WE. The man loves the first person plural.
(And the chanting. Yes, we can.)
Lobbyists. Interesting, because Clinton made a big deal--mentioned it twice--about being "outspent 3 to 1" in PA...as if posturing as the financial underdog were at all plausible. Seriously.
80% reporting, 55% Clinton, 45% Obama. Sigh.
We can be the party that does where everyone has to agree...or we can be the hybrid cyborg party (a free JTB paraphrase): "we are not as divided as our politics suggest." It's still a good line.
"I'm not a perfect man, I won't be a perfect president." That's a far cry from Clinton's "being president is the hardest job in the world.....I'm ready on Day 1." just a bit arrogant, yes? Particularly in contrast.
mankind? I really wish people would ge with it and start amending to "humankind." It's not that hard.
All in all...no mention of "losing" while Clinton was all "neener neener neener." Gotta love the High Road.
"our problems are bigger than the smallness of our politics"...etc. Is this an apology for the tit-for-tat recently?
It's all about McCain...that's interesting. And consistent with the implicit apology and rhetorical move to refocus the campaign on its original message.
WE. The man loves the first person plural.
(And the chanting. Yes, we can.)
Lobbyists. Interesting, because Clinton made a big deal--mentioned it twice--about being "outspent 3 to 1" in PA...as if posturing as the financial underdog were at all plausible. Seriously.
80% reporting, 55% Clinton, 45% Obama. Sigh.
We can be the party that does where everyone has to agree...or we can be the hybrid cyborg party (a free JTB paraphrase): "we are not as divided as our politics suggest." It's still a good line.
"I'm not a perfect man, I won't be a perfect president." That's a far cry from Clinton's "being president is the hardest job in the world.....I'm ready on Day 1." just a bit arrogant, yes? Particularly in contrast.
mankind? I really wish people would ge with it and start amending to "humankind." It's not that hard.
All in all...no mention of "losing" while Clinton was all "neener neener neener." Gotta love the High Road.
Monday, April 14, 2008
the dots
When I first started teaching the toddler class at CCfB I had no clue what I was doing. Sure, one of the toddlers was my own daughter but it's one thing to handle your kid at home and another to try to handle two or three at a time in a space that's not your own. And try to teach them something about Noah, or Jesus, and produce some kind of passable crafty thingy. Not really within my particular form of spiritual giftedness. (I'm getting better at it; and more importantly, I've discovered I totally enjoy spending that time with our toddlers. They are beautiful little people.)
A couple weeks into it I called my mom, who teaches toddlers at Enumclaw Community Church, and said, you gotta help me out. Along with the predictable things like reminding me there's no such thing as an attention span at that age, and to be flexible and go with the flow, she told me about the dots. She got this from Happiest Toddler on the Block. You give dots--little dots with a marker on their hands--when toddlers do something specifically good. Within 2 weeks of introducing this system in the CCfB toddler class, I had these squirmy toddlers sitting and listening and drawing and sharing and singing and whatever-ing on cue. And when they run out of class back to church they proudly display their dots to show everyone how good they are. I love the dots. And so do they!
It's worked so well at church that recently I started doing this at home with Clare. We've had trouble lately with getting her cooperation in basic necessary actions like changing her diaper and brushing her teeth. Timeouts have worked pretty well with Clare (although the logistics of a safe and effective timeout are a little difficult in an apartment like ours). But they didn't seem to make a difference with her defiance at getting-ready-for-bed routines. Like me as a kid, she seems to figure she can take whatever we can dish out and to consider it a decent tradeoff for maintaining her defiant integrity. But now, she knows that if she cooperates with brushing her teeth, she gets a dot...and if she doesn't she gets a timeout. Once this double whammy was successfully communicated, we've had the easiest toothbrushings in our lives.
What I really like about the dots is that they're symbolic. Like stickers, but even easier and cheaper. So I don't feel like I'm bribing her with food or toys or some kind of unsustainable system of increasing rewards. I also like that the dot is specific--it says, "You did what I asked and I'm proud of you, good job." It separates out praise for behavior from general and constant parental love. I hope that means that Clare will never feel like she has to perform in order to earn love...while at the same time learning to meet our not-unreasonable expectations and standards for behavior. We do after all owe it to everyone to civilize our little monkey child. And we owe it to her not to let all her teeth rot out of her head. And eventually get her out of diapers.
I can't even tell you how good it felt when we finally saw it click in Clare's brain that she had a choice: cooperate and get a dot, or tantrum and get a timeout. It was incredible, after weeks of toothbrushing standoffs, to see her suddenly sit still and open her mouth and let us brush her teeth and be so calm and pleased with herself afterward. I felt like such an incredibly successfully parent. You just don't get to feel that all that often. Most of the time you're just muddling through, getting it done, more or less, figuring that if you're not doing well you could at least be doing worse and after all at this point they're not gonna remember your horrible mistakes anyway, thank God. But this one moment, I felt like I'd been awarded the most elusive prize for good parenting ever: The Toddler's Award for Effective Parental Communication.
I think I deserve a dot.
A couple weeks into it I called my mom, who teaches toddlers at Enumclaw Community Church, and said, you gotta help me out. Along with the predictable things like reminding me there's no such thing as an attention span at that age, and to be flexible and go with the flow, she told me about the dots. She got this from Happiest Toddler on the Block. You give dots--little dots with a marker on their hands--when toddlers do something specifically good. Within 2 weeks of introducing this system in the CCfB toddler class, I had these squirmy toddlers sitting and listening and drawing and sharing and singing and whatever-ing on cue. And when they run out of class back to church they proudly display their dots to show everyone how good they are. I love the dots. And so do they!
It's worked so well at church that recently I started doing this at home with Clare. We've had trouble lately with getting her cooperation in basic necessary actions like changing her diaper and brushing her teeth. Timeouts have worked pretty well with Clare (although the logistics of a safe and effective timeout are a little difficult in an apartment like ours). But they didn't seem to make a difference with her defiance at getting-ready-for-bed routines. Like me as a kid, she seems to figure she can take whatever we can dish out and to consider it a decent tradeoff for maintaining her defiant integrity. But now, she knows that if she cooperates with brushing her teeth, she gets a dot...and if she doesn't she gets a timeout. Once this double whammy was successfully communicated, we've had the easiest toothbrushings in our lives.
What I really like about the dots is that they're symbolic. Like stickers, but even easier and cheaper. So I don't feel like I'm bribing her with food or toys or some kind of unsustainable system of increasing rewards. I also like that the dot is specific--it says, "You did what I asked and I'm proud of you, good job." It separates out praise for behavior from general and constant parental love. I hope that means that Clare will never feel like she has to perform in order to earn love...while at the same time learning to meet our not-unreasonable expectations and standards for behavior. We do after all owe it to everyone to civilize our little monkey child. And we owe it to her not to let all her teeth rot out of her head. And eventually get her out of diapers.
I can't even tell you how good it felt when we finally saw it click in Clare's brain that she had a choice: cooperate and get a dot, or tantrum and get a timeout. It was incredible, after weeks of toothbrushing standoffs, to see her suddenly sit still and open her mouth and let us brush her teeth and be so calm and pleased with herself afterward. I felt like such an incredibly successfully parent. You just don't get to feel that all that often. Most of the time you're just muddling through, getting it done, more or less, figuring that if you're not doing well you could at least be doing worse and after all at this point they're not gonna remember your horrible mistakes anyway, thank God. But this one moment, I felt like I'd been awarded the most elusive prize for good parenting ever: The Toddler's Award for Effective Parental Communication.
I think I deserve a dot.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
AIDS Walk 2008
It's springtime!
Maybe that means allergies. Or enjoying the pretty flowers. Or cleaning out closets.
But it definitely means walking.
For the second year in a row, CCfB has had teams in the MS Walk and the AIDS Walk. Today was the MS Walk and several people were absent from PS 261 today as they were walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to raise money for the National MS Society.
Next month is the AIDS Walk. Clare and I did this last year--got on a train in Princeton Junction, met up with the CCfB team and walked through the Central Park alongside tons and tons of other people. Our fundraising goal in 2007 was $50 and it was met in ONE donation and that made us very happy...so I thought this year we would double it, send out an email, and hope for the best. You can check the sidebar to see how we're doing...and yep, that's right--we're nearly double our $100 goal for this year. Wowee! (That doesn't mean we wouldn't accept more, of course.) We're already working on our thank you notes. :)
This is one of the great things about CCfB...it's not just that we do these things, but that we do them because someone among us has a passion for this particular way of helping make the world a better place. This is why we walk to help raise money for organizations dedicated to alleviating the suffering caused by particular diseases, and it's why this past year we bought a cow and counted the homeless, and why we help support a small church in Mexico and Camp Shiloh. It's why we switched from disposable coffee cups to washing our own mugs after service and to fair trade coffee. It's why Joe can blog about his dreams of starting a tutoring program, and it's why I've no doubt that dream will come true too.
In a month or so I'll be posting pics of me & Clare and CCfB at the 2008 AIDS Walk New York. This time, you'll see Clare on her feet in her teeny little tennis shoes instead of bundled to my hip in my beautiful homemade Maya wrap sling. I expect I'll be a lot less exhausted afterward this time around.
Maybe that means allergies. Or enjoying the pretty flowers. Or cleaning out closets.
But it definitely means walking.
For the second year in a row, CCfB has had teams in the MS Walk and the AIDS Walk. Today was the MS Walk and several people were absent from PS 261 today as they were walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to raise money for the National MS Society.
Next month is the AIDS Walk. Clare and I did this last year--got on a train in Princeton Junction, met up with the CCfB team and walked through the Central Park alongside tons and tons of other people. Our fundraising goal in 2007 was $50 and it was met in ONE donation and that made us very happy...so I thought this year we would double it, send out an email, and hope for the best. You can check the sidebar to see how we're doing...and yep, that's right--we're nearly double our $100 goal for this year. Wowee! (That doesn't mean we wouldn't accept more, of course.) We're already working on our thank you notes. :)
This is one of the great things about CCfB...it's not just that we do these things, but that we do them because someone among us has a passion for this particular way of helping make the world a better place. This is why we walk to help raise money for organizations dedicated to alleviating the suffering caused by particular diseases, and it's why this past year we bought a cow and counted the homeless, and why we help support a small church in Mexico and Camp Shiloh. It's why we switched from disposable coffee cups to washing our own mugs after service and to fair trade coffee. It's why Joe can blog about his dreams of starting a tutoring program, and it's why I've no doubt that dream will come true too.
In a month or so I'll be posting pics of me & Clare and CCfB at the 2008 AIDS Walk New York. This time, you'll see Clare on her feet in her teeny little tennis shoes instead of bundled to my hip in my beautiful homemade Maya wrap sling. I expect I'll be a lot less exhausted afterward this time around.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
currently thinking about
Vocation.
Language of "calling" is somewhat foreign to me, although I have learned to use the word in a way that fits well enough within my other theological commitments. But it is not language I grew up with. "Call" seems to imply a sense of God's intimate and detailed providential involvement, not just in the world, but in one's own individual daily life and decision making processes. But this language has also been somewhat formalized, so that potential pastors and ministers in many traditions talk not just about "call" in a theological sense but a practical one as well--one finds a call to this place or that place, this church or that church, this ministry or that. In this more formalized sense, when all the negotiations and handshakings and prelims are over and one is invited to accept a position somewhere, it is called a "call:" I've accepted a call to such-and-such Church in Wherevertown, USA.
But we don't do that in the CofC, really. So in trying to think theologically about vocation and calling in our ecclesial context, there are a lot of things to be sorted out. How does vocation relate to formal ordination, and how does the lack of formal ordination in CofC practice affect how we do or don't use language of vocation? How does a doctrinal commitment to priesthood of all believers affect our sense of ministry and the status of preachers, teachers, elders, deacons, and others specially "called" to serve the church in specifically designated ways that intersect with our strong sense of everyone's status as a minister? Do we or don't we give our preachers a special kind of authority and status? Is this or isn't it consistent with our doctrine? What exactly is spiritual leadership and spiritual authority, and how is this related to vocation and formal or informal ordination?
And how, in the midst of all of this, do we talk about the vocation of women within our churches?
This year's Women in Ministry Conference is set for May 12-14, at the Manhattan Church of Christ. The topic is vocation; and the list of speakers for this year is exciting--women who have been working through all of the above, not just by sitting in a chair in front of a computer and blogging about these theological questions, but by living them and working them out in the most intimate way possible. They embody their answers to these questions, and they'll be sharing the fruits of their experiences with us.
Language of "calling" is somewhat foreign to me, although I have learned to use the word in a way that fits well enough within my other theological commitments. But it is not language I grew up with. "Call" seems to imply a sense of God's intimate and detailed providential involvement, not just in the world, but in one's own individual daily life and decision making processes. But this language has also been somewhat formalized, so that potential pastors and ministers in many traditions talk not just about "call" in a theological sense but a practical one as well--one finds a call to this place or that place, this church or that church, this ministry or that. In this more formalized sense, when all the negotiations and handshakings and prelims are over and one is invited to accept a position somewhere, it is called a "call:" I've accepted a call to such-and-such Church in Wherevertown, USA.
But we don't do that in the CofC, really. So in trying to think theologically about vocation and calling in our ecclesial context, there are a lot of things to be sorted out. How does vocation relate to formal ordination, and how does the lack of formal ordination in CofC practice affect how we do or don't use language of vocation? How does a doctrinal commitment to priesthood of all believers affect our sense of ministry and the status of preachers, teachers, elders, deacons, and others specially "called" to serve the church in specifically designated ways that intersect with our strong sense of everyone's status as a minister? Do we or don't we give our preachers a special kind of authority and status? Is this or isn't it consistent with our doctrine? What exactly is spiritual leadership and spiritual authority, and how is this related to vocation and formal or informal ordination?
And how, in the midst of all of this, do we talk about the vocation of women within our churches?
This year's Women in Ministry Conference is set for May 12-14, at the Manhattan Church of Christ. The topic is vocation; and the list of speakers for this year is exciting--women who have been working through all of the above, not just by sitting in a chair in front of a computer and blogging about these theological questions, but by living them and working them out in the most intimate way possible. They embody their answers to these questions, and they'll be sharing the fruits of their experiences with us.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
culling the crowd
Some of you may have noticed that this blog, unlike many others, does not require a word verification or a blogger name/password in order to comment. That's mostly because I blog about things most people aren't interested in discussing--personal news, occasional theology and posthumanism just doesn't get much traffic. That's fine, because that's how I like it.
But other blogs and groups are organized around the purpose of generating discussion and/or debate. GKB's was a veritable hotbed of controversy back in the day before he got kindler and gentler. It can be an enjoyable or exasperating distraction, and it can sometimes lead to a helpful clarification or expansion of a topic, a sort of virtual seminar, if it goes well. But it doesn't always go well and probably mostly doesn't; many people have noted that the anonymity and disembodiedness of virtual encounter in the blogosphere tends to encourage loosened standards with regard to the epistemic virtues of intellectual rigor, honesty, humility, and courtesy.
Which brings me to my question. How do you determine when enough is enough? What standards are fair when deciding to block comments or bar participation? And how do you balance this with maintaining a spirit of openness to dissent--an absolutely necessary component to any collaborative human effort at seeking truth together? When does moderation become censorship? When does dissent become blasphemy? When does consensus become tyranny?
And what might our alien friends think of all this misbehavior?
But other blogs and groups are organized around the purpose of generating discussion and/or debate. GKB's was a veritable hotbed of controversy back in the day before he got kindler and gentler. It can be an enjoyable or exasperating distraction, and it can sometimes lead to a helpful clarification or expansion of a topic, a sort of virtual seminar, if it goes well. But it doesn't always go well and probably mostly doesn't; many people have noted that the anonymity and disembodiedness of virtual encounter in the blogosphere tends to encourage loosened standards with regard to the epistemic virtues of intellectual rigor, honesty, humility, and courtesy.
Which brings me to my question. How do you determine when enough is enough? What standards are fair when deciding to block comments or bar participation? And how do you balance this with maintaining a spirit of openness to dissent--an absolutely necessary component to any collaborative human effort at seeking truth together? When does moderation become censorship? When does dissent become blasphemy? When does consensus become tyranny?
And what might our alien friends think of all this misbehavior?
Saturday, April 05, 2008
mommy's precious little political pundit
Well, Clare didn't make the cut, but CNN ran a story on the incredible number of Obama baby videos on youtube nowadays...apparently enough to constitute their own "genre." And the number of hits on Clare's video have spiked--now almost 1500 views and a few more comments as well, some of which seem really engaged in figuring out if the baby videos are just mimicking sounds or these babies actually mean something. This is apparently turning into a real discussion.
Now, of course MY baby is a total verbal genius but I think it's hilarious that people would take seriously the "issue" of what these babies mean. CNN got a speech development expert to point out that "ba" and "ma" are the two most commonly babbled sounds a baby makes (in almost any language, I would add) and therefore "Obama" is just a baby-friendly name that's fun and easy to repeat. Ummm...DUH. (That's also a baby-friendly syllable fun and easy to repeat. Let's say it again: DUH.) And anyhow, if someone were to disagree with that obvious point...would we really therefore be contending that these babies and toddlers are somehow expressing some kind of considered political opinion? Clearly if there is any pre-opinion being expressed it's a matter of picking up cues from the folks. The little monkeys are pretty good at that, after all.
So what's the point, if it's not that these babies are geniuses, or that they're really endorsing a candidate?
It's just damn cute, for one thing.
And it says to the world, not "hey world I'm a genius toddler and I'm voting for Obama" but "hey people, I have a proud mommy and daddy who think I'm cute and who support Obama for President." Now that means something.
Now, of course MY baby is a total verbal genius but I think it's hilarious that people would take seriously the "issue" of what these babies mean. CNN got a speech development expert to point out that "ba" and "ma" are the two most commonly babbled sounds a baby makes (in almost any language, I would add) and therefore "Obama" is just a baby-friendly name that's fun and easy to repeat. Ummm...DUH. (That's also a baby-friendly syllable fun and easy to repeat. Let's say it again: DUH.) And anyhow, if someone were to disagree with that obvious point...would we really therefore be contending that these babies and toddlers are somehow expressing some kind of considered political opinion? Clearly if there is any pre-opinion being expressed it's a matter of picking up cues from the folks. The little monkeys are pretty good at that, after all.
So what's the point, if it's not that these babies are geniuses, or that they're really endorsing a candidate?
It's just damn cute, for one thing.
And it says to the world, not "hey world I'm a genius toddler and I'm voting for Obama" but "hey people, I have a proud mommy and daddy who think I'm cute and who support Obama for President." Now that means something.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
the cyborg candidate
Disclaimers:
- This is not a post about the governor of California.
- I'm no conspiracy theorist. Calling Obama the cyborg candidate doesn't mean I think he's remote controlled through a chip in his brain by extremists. (Although I expect that rumor's already circulating somewhere; last week I received a forward that Obama is the Anti-Christ. Which, as Scott Freeman points out, doesn't really tell you whether the Left Behind-ists will vote for or against him...)
So, now that the crazy options are out of the way you may be wondering just what the heck I do mean. Well, while I sincerely try to avoid discussing my dissertation topic when in polite company, I do occasionally vent my enthusiasm for the posthuman here on the blog.
But this cyborg stuff isn't all academic. In the beginning, the cyborg was political, not academic. And while this aspect of the cyborg may indeed have gotten "lost" along the way, it's not been lost on me; and the bottom line, evident in Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, (or you may prefer the comic version), is that the cyborg is about dropping essentialisms and identity politics so we can get together and finally get some things done.
Now, does that sound familiar, anyone?
Before I go any further, let me unpack a bit. What is a cyborg? A cyborg is a creature that breaks down the ontological boundary between organism and machine: part organic, part mechanical. The word was coined in 1960 by a couple of scientists dreaming up ways to explore space; it seemed like a lot of trouble to engineer a mobile life-sustaining environment to meet all of the needs of the earth-bound human body...so they thought, why not engineer the body to dispense with those needs, or meet them some other way? Of course we haven't quite achieved this yet, although the cutting edge technology in things like prostheses and silicon chips that allow quadriplegics to manipulate computer cursors is pretty damn amazing. But that's not really the point. The point is, the cyborg represents a form of life that refuses to fit neatly into our conceptual categories: person/thing, alive/inanimate, human/machine, etc. The cyborg has a foot in both worlds, and to ignore that fact means pretending it doesn't exist, refusing to see it as it is.
Writers in postcolonial theology muse on cultural/social/racial hybridity in a parallel way: neither one category or the other, they forge identity out of between-ness, the both/and, the neither/nor. And this brings us to Obama, who is hybrid in a way similar to these postcolonial theorists: the son of a white mother and a black father.
The disappointing thing to me about the Rev. Wright stuff is not really in what the man said, or even how what he said was twisted around and used against, not him, but someone else...as if, should Joe Hays ever do/say something crazy prophetic, it would somehow reflect on me personally. (Joe, I know you're crazy prophetic all the time. Keep on.) No, what's disappointing to me is that this in effect reintroduces, with a vengeance, into the campaign discourse the very thing Obama has been seeking to transcend: identity politics. If he stands with Rev. Wright, then he's too black and scary for comfortable white folks, too revolutionary, too angry to be trusted...If he disowns Rev. Wright, then he's too white and scared for righteously angry black folks who understand the truth in the Reverend's prophetic utterances. It's all about trying to make Obama declare himself: are you white, or are you black? Are you or aren't you running as a black candidate, to become the first black President?
The fact that Obama's response to this provocation was a speech on race in America indicates to me that he gets it. It's not really enough to claim a hybrid pedigree personally, although I think it's evident that growing up with a sense of not knowing to which category you belong--and constantly being recategorized as the Other by everyone you come across--shapes your experience in a way that makes the limitations of those categories painfully obvious. Obama's not simply the cyborg candidate because he's the offspring of a black-white hybrid family. He's the cyborg candidate because, like Haraway, he realizes that it's not desirable or even possible to dream of uniting people on the basis of common identity anymore. That's not what we want. That's not the goal. It doesn't work. Haraway's point about the cyborg is that there's nothing basic, essential, on which we can unite. Haraway realized this in 1985, reflecting on the fragmentation of the feminist movement in the U.S. Even white women in America, who briefly came together and united on the basis of a fabricated common identity as Woman, found out the hard way that oops, we're actually a bunch of women who are all different...and that was before we learned the even harder lesson that we shouldn't have left out the black women, the Latina women, the Chinese- and Japanese- and Korean-American women (not Asian-American! Asia's a continent not an ethnicity!), all the women in other global contexts who have something to tell us about their own experiences and needs and hopes.
Obama articulates the same realization when he urges us to unite in order to work towards common goals despite differences in color, creed, and experience. What's so impressive about his candidacy is that he has somehow managed to do this--every CNN retrospective breakdown of every primary, you see votes busted up: the white vote, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the women vote, the white male vote. And despite the fact that these categories are so taken for granted in America today that we receive this kind of categorical analysis as normal and coherent, what we see is that Obama's candidacy makes these taken-for-granted lines, drawn and redrawn in every political analysis, obsolete. Perhaps a better word than "unity," which seems to indicate a seamless whole, is Haraway's "coalition," a word Obama also employs; coalition doesn't imply melting into one another and merging into a whole that obliterates the differences between us that are real and important--those differences that make us, for better or worse, who we are. Instead it's through those differences, the recognition and communication and comprehension of them, that we come together; that is coalition. Haraway talks about it as chosen affinity, a matter of conscious alignment with one another; sometimes she talks about it as kinship--but not the kinship of blood relation, more like the kinship of adoption. A chosen affinity, a coalition of difference...but not, for that reason, any less real or potent.
In fact, for that very reason, all the more so. This is what I, very hopefully, see in Obama's candidacy. An option for coming together that skips the necessity of me being like you.
Now, if we could just learn this lesson theologically and ecclesially, maybe Jesus could come back already. Because Obama's right on something else, too: the most segregated hour in this nation happens on Sunday mornings. But if Jesus' speaking to adulterous women and traitorous tax collectors and dirty Samaritans hasn't somehow hammered the lesson that "me being like you" is not a prereq for unity, then the reiteration of that message from a political candidate, even a cyborg candidate, may fall on deaf ears; those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
3BT
- Even in the middle of a catastrophic day where nothing is going right for her, Clare still loves Albert. Amity's description: "they're sitting at her table looking at each other and smiling, like they're a couple at a cafe." Ah, toddler love.
- Ira Hays is home (and, I'm sure, making a lot of noise)!
- I can always make another pot of coffee.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
How many of you caught the Barbara Walters' special on anti-aging technologies tonight? What do you think?
Monday, March 24, 2008
excuses and miscellany
- Lately I've been working hard on the article my friend & favorite feminist theologian invited me to co-write. It's been a marvelous experience: the first really fun academic writing I've done in ages, an absolute joy to really dialogue with someone about ideas I'm passionate about without competitiveness or rancor (even in disagreement!), an opportunity to really delve deep into one of the most important scholars for my dissertation work and understand her better, and to develop my own "feminist voice," for this essay (unlike my academic writing to date) has a personal dimension and a poetic flourish. I've learned a lot...and not least that it really is possible to produce good academic work in a process free from the petty competition that characterizes so much academic exchange.
- I'm really loving the classic Sesame Street clips and TMBG ABC's and 123's videos...(thanks for the tip, Rick!) Really, youtube just keeps getting better and better! Clare has now graduated from the familiar shapes of circle, square, oval, triangle, diamond to "octagon" thanks in part at least to the awesome song "Nonagon." (Everyone should also check out "High Five.") Plus, there's a whole bunch of Obama babies' videos out there--apparently all toddlers are wise enough to know a good thing when they see it...(Clare's is the best though!!! a totally impartial judgment).
- I'm resolving to be in bed by 10:00pm every night from now on. I've had enough of waking up feeling like total crap in the morning. I've also had enough of waking up and finding Clare totally covered in crap, but that's a different problem, not so easily resolved.
- I'm also resolving to lose this last bit of baby weight by the time I have to get back into a swimsuit for the Thweatt fam reunion at the beach in NC in June. Ten years ago at the last one I wore a 2-piece. I still have it--it's the only swimsuit I own. So I guess I need to be able to fit into it, and it would be nice to feel good in it too.
- It's my turn to pick up teaching the toddler class at CCfB again. Despite feeling compelled to adjust some of the suspect theology in their lessons, and really enjoying getting to participate in worship and hearing sermons live, I've missed it. Dots! I can't wait to give Ira and Clare their 3 dots for being such good little kiddies!
- I'm really glad a friend here at GTS has taken the initiative to start a weekly mom's group. It's casual, Clare loves playing her friend A, and it's so nice to talk parenting with other people going through the same things you are. And, it gets me out of the isolation that I slide into when left to my own devices. (My own devices=computer.)
- I'm really awkward making casual conversation with people I don't know. I talk a lot, so that maybe people won't notice how awkward I feel, and then I do something like somehow inadvertently give a conservative Baptist the impression I'm an unwed mom. No, no...I'm just not wearing my ring because I deboned a chicken Thursday night. Honest, I swear. Really. Then again, I don't really feel like being mistaken for an unwed mother is the end of the world anyway, so &*@# it.
- Oregon Trail and Text Twirl were short-lived Facebook fads for me...but Scrabulous endures. (MOM, I'm winning this game BTW.) My theory that multiple player games are always won by the player who starts them (and goes first) may have been disproven but I think it's just an instance of the exception proving the rule.
- I've been loving Marti Stanley's very bright green blog lately. After this post, I scrubbed my whole bathroom with baking soda and vinegar. I won't be trying my hand at composting for awhile yet though...that takes, you know, a yard.
- I think about my sister Ally a lot more than I ever talk to her. I had a great plan for calling her every Wednesday afternoon, since that's when she was in the Choluteca office near a phone. Nowadays though she's not in the office much anymore, since she's working hard over at the Children's Home (where hopefully CCfB's cow named Brooklyn is living the good life and making lots o'milk!). I was bragging on her and Jarrod today at lunch. Love you, Al.
- Tomorrow Clare goes to "school" again even though it's Wednesday and Brent and I will hop on a train and go down to Madison and he will brilliantly defend his dissertation. Also, tomorrow at roughly the same time Ira is scheduled for the follow-up surgery.
Almost time for my new and improved bedtime now and I'm all out of randomness. I may, or may not, take up the suggestion to bloggily muse upon Obama sometime soon. I'd like to explain what I meant in an earlier post about him being the "cyborg candidate." That will take some actual thinking, unlike this post, which is all just fluffernuttery nonsense.
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