Thursday, July 31, 2008

Ruminatively Rousseau

A true story, if such a thing exists:

Kate and Ella, two adorable toddlers, play together one evening at Ella's house. It just so happens that there had been a wonderful party there the day before, and at that party two very shiny balloons were left floating magically in the air. In an effort to promote sweet camaraderie, Ella offers one of the balloons to Kate with the idea that they could play together and share something nice. Kate's eyes widen. "How generous of Ella to offer me something so lovely," she thinks and accepts the beautiful balloon with great enthusiasm. Ella thinks, "How nice of Kate to play with me!" A smile adorns both of the girls' faces and they twirl and laugh together, balloons flying. All is well in the universe.

And then..

Kate looks at Ella's balloon, the silver sparkling in the light, and wonders, "If holding one balloon feels this great, how would it be to hold both of them?" And even though she understands that her one balloon is a very nice prize, Kate decides that only holding one is not enough. She wants all of the balloons for herself. She decides that she will do anything she can to get what Ella has, no matter the cost or who it hurts. Kate yells and lunges at the unsuspecting Ella, hands snatching, jaw gnashing. Ella pulls back, not understanding what is happening and is frightened by the turn of Kate's hand. She screams, alerting the grown-ups to the fact that all is not well anymore. The laughter is over. The twirling has stopped.

Kate's parent urgently grabs Kate's arm, and firmly tells her in a most severe voice, "No! You do not take what is not yours! Friends do not take from each other. Friends are supposed to share." She then pulls Kate into the corner for a much deserved time out. Kate stands there and shrieks, for even though her mother tried to explain friendship and sharing, she doesn't understand why she can't have it all.


What a pitiful sight - the sad little girl in the corner holding only one shiny balloon.


The grown-ups in the room, though sympathetic, sit uncomfortably still, a little alarmed by all of the broken harmony. Their eyes track to the empty corners of the room. They hold their breath. And though they exhale a collective laugh in an effort to make the mood lighter, a hint of color tip-toes across their cheeks.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Friday, July 25, 2008

10 Whole Years

Today is the day that marks the fact that I have been legally married to the same man for ten years. (!) Does that mean that before I was illegally married? (eyebrow raise). Perhaps..

Anyway.

The following demonstrates how important this day is to the both of us:

Scene: The house is quiet. Rich and Jack are asleep. Ginger is awake, the only time she gets to herself, and checks email.

Ginger: (silently reads the words "Happy Anniversary!" in an email from her mom)
(under her breath, to herself) Anniversary? Today? Is it the 25th?
(checks her calendar)
Huh. It is.
(walks to bedroom where Rich is asleep and sits on the side of the bed; whispers) Rich. Wake up, Rich! Hey. Happy Anniversary, Rich!

Rich: (groggily) Oh yeah. That is today. Ten years?

Ginger: Yeah. Weird, huh.

Rich: Yeah. Hey. Maybe later, when Jack is asleep, we could celebrate our love by, you know..............................taking a nap.

As in seriosly, lets take a nap.

And Scene!

10 years, it's been, folks.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Godless Indifference

This afternoon I read a speech given by Elie Wiesel, the man who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a boy and who became a Nobel Peace Prize winning writer. He is famous for La Nuit (Night) which details his experience in the concentration camps and which rips out your guts and leaves them on the floor to be stomped on repeatedly by your own conscience, as they freaking should be, for humanity's sake!

The speech called "The perils of indifference" was given at the White House in 1999 partly in response to NATO's humanitarian role regarding the Serbian oppression of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, of which the US played a major part.

As is true of any great writers, Wiesel relates personal specifics that, in any context, are universal and important so that average Jills like me can translate them in the context our own time periods and plant the messages in our hearts. And since we never live long enough* to permanently fix anything worth repairing or to think of anything new, the words have to carry out the missions in remembrance. Our hearts have to do the cultivating so that our hands can do the renovating.

And I'm rambling.

Anyway, two specific universals that Wiesel planted in my heart today were these:

1. When in the concentration camps and according to Jewish tradition, people often felt, "that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one... Man can live far from God-not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering."

and

2. "...to be indifferent to [suffering] is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred." The idea is that anger and even hatred can elicit some sort of a response, even if that response is fighting, denouncement, or disarmament. "Indifference elicits no response ... And therefore indifference is always the friend of the enemy...
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide ranging experiments in good and evil."

I will respond to these ideas, but not today. I need to digest them fully first, and will respond in the comment section. I would love to hear your thoughts/responses/reactions to them.

*"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Sunday, July 20, 2008

The Moths

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.

-Mary Oliver

Sunday, July 13, 2008

"The perfect antidote to The Passion of the Christ" *

It turns out I watch a lot of movies when I am home for the summer, caring for a baby Jack. This means that I get to ruin review all of them for your reading pleasure, so that you don't actually have to see any of them. (sigh)

Whatever. Let the review begin!

So, the movie we watched yesterday has a disclaimer that says:

"Rated R for strong sexual content including a scene of aberrant intimacy, graphic nudity, frank dialogue and some language."

Rich said, "Hmm. Frank dialogue? Intriguing."

"Of that whole list, that's what intrigues you?" I asked.

He stared at me blankly. blink. blink.

Apparently so.

Anyway. The movie, Forgiving the Franklins, though not my favorite, makes some interesting points. I'll briefly note them for your consideration.

Firstly, the story is about what happens when a Bible belt Christian family of the James Dobson persuasion (sort of) dies (save one), goes to heaven, and meets Jesus who is tattooed, has an excellent fro, and is cutting down crosses that keep falling from the sky and planting themselves in the ground. He mumbles something about the cross reminding him of the worst day of his life. He can't imagine why anyone would want to remember it.

Jesus literally reaches into the skulls of the family and pulls out bloody apples (from the infamous Tree of Knowledge, I presume) then sends the family back to suburbia where they awaken as if they were in the Garden of Eden, unashamed of their nakedness, and impervious to any societal rules. They only know to love one another and their neighbors, and to enjoy and be thankful for their human forms, hence the movie's aberrant disclaimer. The family's new behavior horrifies the one daughter who doesn't come face to face with Jesus, and it baffles the Christian neighbors who immediately ostracize the family for their "craziness."

The family walks out of church mid-hellfire-and-brimstone-sermon but without disdain or anger. They simply don't want to be subjected to that sort of message but don't mind that others want to be. In the end, it isn't good news for the family since their community can't accept them any longer. Whether this is because the community members are jealous, lost, or completely dependant on their idea of Christian normalcy, is debatable.

I'm not sure I would recommend this movie to everyone, certainly not to my grandmother. But I do think that it raises some excellent points:

A. Jesus probably doesn't look like we think he does.
B. God's version of truth varies greatly from our indoctrinated, human perceptions of those truths.
C. The way in which we pray is a little bit ridiculous and should be more about giving thanks than anything else, instead of prayer that lends itself to guilt.
D. We should enjoy our lives with love as the foundation.

Thoughts?

* review by Premiere Magazine

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Persepolis

This beautifully made film is a biography of a woman, Marjane, who grew up in Iran during the 80's and follows what happens to her as she moves to the West - losing and regaining her identity along the way. It is animated, using the old-school, hand drawn method, and is thought provoking and lovely! Rent it.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I want to believe.

As I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room for a full hour yesterday, I decided to pick up my poor, neglected The New Yorker magazine and trudge through an article that I had been meaning to read - no, had tried to read, but couldn't because the writing was so. freaking. monotonous. that, though I was interested in the content, I kept falling asleep or reading the same line over and over again and asking myself, "What's it mean? What's it saying? The words make no sense.." So, I figured that a tedious wait in a doctor's office was the perfect place to read the article because it might actually seem entertaining in that type of atmosphere, or at least give my eyes a place to focus since God knows you don't make eye-contact in an OBGYN office. And no, I did not randomly go to a doctor's office waiting room so that I could actually read the article, though it isn't a bad idea come to think of it. I'll have to suggest this to my students when their eyes become heavy and they begin drooling during "A Modest Proposal" and/or (dear God) Paradise Lost.

Anyway.

As I said before, the article's content was of interest to me. It was about "new evangelicals," post-Falwell and (almost) post-Dobson. To sum it up (as could have been done in the article itself), the writer basically asserts that the Christian Right-wing Republican reign is (finally) coming to an end in favor of a new generation of Christian conservatives who actually have some compassion for the poor, the environment, and (gasp) the homosexuals(!), ones who don't automatically check the Republican box on their ballots, who actually do research and have reasonable opinions. According to the article, this happened accidentally when none of the curmudgeons could agree on which Republican candidate to support (Ooops McCain!), thus splintering the coalition and allowing for a new group to emerge. Too bad this happened after W's second term and not before.

This may sound like a slam to those "Focus on the Family" / I heart Rush Limbaugh types, and, by God, it is meant to be! And before anyone starts pointing fingers in my direction and crying "heretic!", I have to tell you that this falling "Christian" coalition is part of what turns me away from ever attending church again - or that kind of church.

I grew up Southern Baptist. I dedicated and rededicated my life to what I thought was godly at the time; I freaking wore out the carpet on the center aisle of the church for all of my rededicating. I worked at being a good person, since that is the Christian thing to do, and (as scripted), I was vocally intolerant of anything and everything that was remotely different. It took me being the object of that intolerance - literally being outcasted - to give me time to figure out what an idiot I was and that I was missing so much color in my life, and substance!

So this is personal.

And it turns out it is personal to many god fearing people who have been horribly embarrassed by what has been done in the name of Christianity. And I'm not just talking about Michael W. Smith here.

The point is that the political Christian powerhouses, at least the ones in the forefront today, scare the shit out of me. I am afraid of their platform which relies on fear mongering, war waging, and money wielding for votes. How do people not see that what they are doing is wrong, and is in direct opposition to what Jesus would actually do? - loving folks individually, regardless of culture or creed; working in the community, without a megaphone, soap box, or check book; and nourishing people, both emotionally and physically. The latter is the type of politic - potentially the politic of the new evangelicals - that has every right to march on Washington as it certainly should(!). And maybe, now that the mighty have fallen, the newbies, though I am still leery of some of their ideology, will have a chance to prove that Christianity doesn't have to be dogmatic, domineering, and prejudicially loud.

I want to believe that the Christian coalitions can be that mature.

Hell, I simply want to believe.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Ruminatively Rousseau

A true story, if such a thing exists:

Kate and Ella, two adorable toddlers, play together one evening at Ella's house. It just so happens that there had been a wonderful party there the day before, and at that party two very shiny balloons were left floating magically in the air. In an effort to promote sweet camaraderie, Ella offers one of the balloons to Kate with the idea that they could play together and share something nice. Kate's eyes widen. "How generous of Ella to offer me something so lovely," she thinks and accepts the beautiful balloon with great enthusiasm. Ella thinks, "How nice of Kate to play with me!" A smile adorns both of the girls' faces and they twirl and laugh together, balloons flying. All is well in the universe.

And then..

Kate looks at Ella's balloon, the silver sparkling in the light, and wonders, "If holding one balloon feels this great, how would it be to hold both of them?" And even though she understands that her one balloon is a very nice prize, Kate decides that only holding one is not enough. She wants all of the balloons for herself. She decides that she will do anything she can to get what Ella has, no matter the cost or who it hurts. Kate yells and lunges at the unsuspecting Ella, hands snatching, jaw gnashing. Ella pulls back, not understanding what is happening and is frightened by the turn of Kate's hand. She screams, alerting the grown-ups to the fact that all is not well anymore. The laughter is over. The twirling has stopped.

Kate's parent urgently grabs Kate's arm, and firmly tells her in a most severe voice, "No! You do not take what is not yours! Friends do not take from each other. Friends are supposed to share." She then pulls Kate into the corner for a much deserved time out. Kate stands there and shrieks, for even though her mother tried to explain friendship and sharing, she doesn't understand why she can't have it all.


What a pitiful sight - the sad little girl in the corner holding only one shiny balloon.


The grown-ups in the room, though sympathetic, sit uncomfortably still, a little alarmed by all of the broken harmony. Their eyes track to the empty corners of the room. They hold their breath. And though they exhale a collective laugh in an effort to make the mood lighter, a hint of color tip-toes across their cheeks.

Friday, July 25, 2008

10 Whole Years

Today is the day that marks the fact that I have been legally married to the same man for ten years. (!) Does that mean that before I was illegally married? (eyebrow raise). Perhaps..

Anyway.

The following demonstrates how important this day is to the both of us:

Scene: The house is quiet. Rich and Jack are asleep. Ginger is awake, the only time she gets to herself, and checks email.

Ginger: (silently reads the words "Happy Anniversary!" in an email from her mom)
(under her breath, to herself) Anniversary? Today? Is it the 25th?
(checks her calendar)
Huh. It is.
(walks to bedroom where Rich is asleep and sits on the side of the bed; whispers) Rich. Wake up, Rich! Hey. Happy Anniversary, Rich!

Rich: (groggily) Oh yeah. That is today. Ten years?

Ginger: Yeah. Weird, huh.

Rich: Yeah. Hey. Maybe later, when Jack is asleep, we could celebrate our love by, you know..............................taking a nap.

As in seriosly, lets take a nap.

And Scene!

10 years, it's been, folks.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Godless Indifference

This afternoon I read a speech given by Elie Wiesel, the man who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a boy and who became a Nobel Peace Prize winning writer. He is famous for La Nuit (Night) which details his experience in the concentration camps and which rips out your guts and leaves them on the floor to be stomped on repeatedly by your own conscience, as they freaking should be, for humanity's sake!

The speech called "The perils of indifference" was given at the White House in 1999 partly in response to NATO's humanitarian role regarding the Serbian oppression of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, of which the US played a major part.

As is true of any great writers, Wiesel relates personal specifics that, in any context, are universal and important so that average Jills like me can translate them in the context our own time periods and plant the messages in our hearts. And since we never live long enough* to permanently fix anything worth repairing or to think of anything new, the words have to carry out the missions in remembrance. Our hearts have to do the cultivating so that our hands can do the renovating.

And I'm rambling.

Anyway, two specific universals that Wiesel planted in my heart today were these:

1. When in the concentration camps and according to Jewish tradition, people often felt, "that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one... Man can live far from God-not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering."

and

2. "...to be indifferent to [suffering] is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred." The idea is that anger and even hatred can elicit some sort of a response, even if that response is fighting, denouncement, or disarmament. "Indifference elicits no response ... And therefore indifference is always the friend of the enemy...
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide ranging experiments in good and evil."

I will respond to these ideas, but not today. I need to digest them fully first, and will respond in the comment section. I would love to hear your thoughts/responses/reactions to them.

*"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Sunday, July 20, 2008

The Moths

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.

-Mary Oliver

Sunday, July 13, 2008

"The perfect antidote to The Passion of the Christ" *

It turns out I watch a lot of movies when I am home for the summer, caring for a baby Jack. This means that I get to ruin review all of them for your reading pleasure, so that you don't actually have to see any of them. (sigh)

Whatever. Let the review begin!

So, the movie we watched yesterday has a disclaimer that says:

"Rated R for strong sexual content including a scene of aberrant intimacy, graphic nudity, frank dialogue and some language."

Rich said, "Hmm. Frank dialogue? Intriguing."

"Of that whole list, that's what intrigues you?" I asked.

He stared at me blankly. blink. blink.

Apparently so.

Anyway. The movie, Forgiving the Franklins, though not my favorite, makes some interesting points. I'll briefly note them for your consideration.

Firstly, the story is about what happens when a Bible belt Christian family of the James Dobson persuasion (sort of) dies (save one), goes to heaven, and meets Jesus who is tattooed, has an excellent fro, and is cutting down crosses that keep falling from the sky and planting themselves in the ground. He mumbles something about the cross reminding him of the worst day of his life. He can't imagine why anyone would want to remember it.

Jesus literally reaches into the skulls of the family and pulls out bloody apples (from the infamous Tree of Knowledge, I presume) then sends the family back to suburbia where they awaken as if they were in the Garden of Eden, unashamed of their nakedness, and impervious to any societal rules. They only know to love one another and their neighbors, and to enjoy and be thankful for their human forms, hence the movie's aberrant disclaimer. The family's new behavior horrifies the one daughter who doesn't come face to face with Jesus, and it baffles the Christian neighbors who immediately ostracize the family for their "craziness."

The family walks out of church mid-hellfire-and-brimstone-sermon but without disdain or anger. They simply don't want to be subjected to that sort of message but don't mind that others want to be. In the end, it isn't good news for the family since their community can't accept them any longer. Whether this is because the community members are jealous, lost, or completely dependant on their idea of Christian normalcy, is debatable.

I'm not sure I would recommend this movie to everyone, certainly not to my grandmother. But I do think that it raises some excellent points:

A. Jesus probably doesn't look like we think he does.
B. God's version of truth varies greatly from our indoctrinated, human perceptions of those truths.
C. The way in which we pray is a little bit ridiculous and should be more about giving thanks than anything else, instead of prayer that lends itself to guilt.
D. We should enjoy our lives with love as the foundation.

Thoughts?

* review by Premiere Magazine

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Persepolis

This beautifully made film is a biography of a woman, Marjane, who grew up in Iran during the 80's and follows what happens to her as she moves to the West - losing and regaining her identity along the way. It is animated, using the old-school, hand drawn method, and is thought provoking and lovely! Rent it.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I want to believe.

As I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room for a full hour yesterday, I decided to pick up my poor, neglected The New Yorker magazine and trudge through an article that I had been meaning to read - no, had tried to read, but couldn't because the writing was so. freaking. monotonous. that, though I was interested in the content, I kept falling asleep or reading the same line over and over again and asking myself, "What's it mean? What's it saying? The words make no sense.." So, I figured that a tedious wait in a doctor's office was the perfect place to read the article because it might actually seem entertaining in that type of atmosphere, or at least give my eyes a place to focus since God knows you don't make eye-contact in an OBGYN office. And no, I did not randomly go to a doctor's office waiting room so that I could actually read the article, though it isn't a bad idea come to think of it. I'll have to suggest this to my students when their eyes become heavy and they begin drooling during "A Modest Proposal" and/or (dear God) Paradise Lost.

Anyway.

As I said before, the article's content was of interest to me. It was about "new evangelicals," post-Falwell and (almost) post-Dobson. To sum it up (as could have been done in the article itself), the writer basically asserts that the Christian Right-wing Republican reign is (finally) coming to an end in favor of a new generation of Christian conservatives who actually have some compassion for the poor, the environment, and (gasp) the homosexuals(!), ones who don't automatically check the Republican box on their ballots, who actually do research and have reasonable opinions. According to the article, this happened accidentally when none of the curmudgeons could agree on which Republican candidate to support (Ooops McCain!), thus splintering the coalition and allowing for a new group to emerge. Too bad this happened after W's second term and not before.

This may sound like a slam to those "Focus on the Family" / I heart Rush Limbaugh types, and, by God, it is meant to be! And before anyone starts pointing fingers in my direction and crying "heretic!", I have to tell you that this falling "Christian" coalition is part of what turns me away from ever attending church again - or that kind of church.

I grew up Southern Baptist. I dedicated and rededicated my life to what I thought was godly at the time; I freaking wore out the carpet on the center aisle of the church for all of my rededicating. I worked at being a good person, since that is the Christian thing to do, and (as scripted), I was vocally intolerant of anything and everything that was remotely different. It took me being the object of that intolerance - literally being outcasted - to give me time to figure out what an idiot I was and that I was missing so much color in my life, and substance!

So this is personal.

And it turns out it is personal to many god fearing people who have been horribly embarrassed by what has been done in the name of Christianity. And I'm not just talking about Michael W. Smith here.

The point is that the political Christian powerhouses, at least the ones in the forefront today, scare the shit out of me. I am afraid of their platform which relies on fear mongering, war waging, and money wielding for votes. How do people not see that what they are doing is wrong, and is in direct opposition to what Jesus would actually do? - loving folks individually, regardless of culture or creed; working in the community, without a megaphone, soap box, or check book; and nourishing people, both emotionally and physically. The latter is the type of politic - potentially the politic of the new evangelicals - that has every right to march on Washington as it certainly should(!). And maybe, now that the mighty have fallen, the newbies, though I am still leery of some of their ideology, will have a chance to prove that Christianity doesn't have to be dogmatic, domineering, and prejudicially loud.

I want to believe that the Christian coalitions can be that mature.

Hell, I simply want to believe.