Wild Rumpus

Vance Gilbert and a lot of metaphors

2012-01-16T11:48:00.002-06:00

Dearest Esther,

I am behind in updating your milestone book and I don’t want to wait until I have written up my notes on months 5 and 6 before I put last night’s adventure in writing.

(As an aside, here's a video of how much you like your Obasan right now.)

Your Obasan and I have been through a lot together. As freshmen in college, she taught me to laugh out loud, even when it would make people turn to look at us. Junior year, she broke my heart and transferred schools. We stayed on the phone and she came back to see me graduate; then I returned the favor a few years later. We have evaluated each other’s boyfriends and comforted one another through break-ups. She has answered the phone often to nothing but silence as I gasped for breath through my sobs. She was my maid of honor and she went with me to the courthouse when I finalized my divorce. She signed the ketubah when I married your dad and she helped me give birth to you.

Through all of this, we have had Vance Gilbert. Tonight, we took you to his concert. I was very nervous that people would give me the stink eye for bringing a baby to a concert but since your Obasan loves spending time with you and you are such a pleasant child, I was willing to try it out. You know, because urban babies wear black and go to concerts. But they sit in the back, just in case. We had taken you to a klezmer concert during Hanukkah and you were brilliant.

Obasan and I spotted Vance when we walked in with you and giggled to each other, “There he is!” He smiled at us but I worried he would think we were being disrespectful of his talent and hard work by risking the effectiveness of the performance and communication with your potential cries.

As we took our seats, though, people smiled at us, chucked you under your chin and called you sweet pea. Most of them were grandparenty in age and I wonder if they thought that life was too short to waste on worrying if a show will be ruined by a cute baby. Because seriously, there’s a cute baby to smile at. And there are never enough chances to do that in our short lives. Concerts come and go, right?

Still, I wanted you to behave.

So, you sat on Obasan’s lap and watched the stage as Vance walked up on it. Rapt. The word is, “rapt.” I wanted to take your picture because it was such a perfect image. But I’m a terrible photographer and the lighting would have never translated. So, I resolved to tell you this story the way I know how. You dipped your right hand into the little bowl of cheerios like you were eating popcorn in a movie theater. You were like an adult in miniature, perfectly replicating our mannerisms even though I know that you were just being yourself. I love imagining how you must be experiencing these situations so differently than those of us who have completed the language acquisition stage of development.

Although you have the pincer grip to get cheerios to your mouth most of the time, eventually, you just let the slobber on your right fist pick them up for you before you jammed the whole thing in your mouth and sucked off what you could.

After awhile, you turned to me and patted my upper arm.

It kills me when you do that. Just one or two pats while you look me in the eyes, as if to say, “Yes, you are my mother and here you are.” Usually you turn back to whatever else had previously had your attention.

This time, you made it clear that you were ready for me to hold you. We nursed and your Obasan and I passed you back and forth until you landed in my arms, standing on my lap while turning turning turning like you do because you know I’ll help you get your 360 degree observation of any room we sit in for an extended amount of time.

I like it that you are cute but I am so relieved that you are curious.

During quieter moments between songs while Vance talked, you began growling at him. Sometimes your dad and I call you Grumbledore because of these growls. I was really nervous when you started doing this because there is no way to quiet you since you’re not upset. You father and I began preparing to take you out into the hallway.

But Vance laughed and started talking about you. He asked your name and connected it to Eostre, the goddess of rebirth. This type of exchange actually happened a couple of times and I began to relax. He hummed a Vancified version of Brahm’s lullaby and pretended to speak with your voice in disgust that he wasn’t a bigger star.

However, as you got more tired, you got more cranky and when it seemed like you were going to start crabbing at me, I got up to go out into the hallway until I could rock you to sleep in your Ergo carrier. I knew it had to be me since you won’t fall asleep with anyone else. At least, not quietly.

Vance actually stopped me and asked me not to go. “Don’t take her out,” he said. I’m terrible in improv situations and couldn’t say anything witty in response. Finally, I managed to protest, “But it’s going to be a pretty song.” Since he had asked, though, we stayed, standing near the stage because that was where the exit was. The pretty song that he had already begun playing while he told the story was one that he had written for the children in his neighborhood, so it was particularly apropos. He called it a tone poem and it’s called Come Here My Love.

Of course, I cried as he sang, “And my eyes linger too long on your face / It’s like staring at the sun / And you see a good in me / The world don’t seem to recall.” You have given my life such direction and purpose, even in the midst of my dithering about my changing identity from professional to homemaker. He kept looking at us as he sang and all of my fears about whether or not I should have brought you finally melted away. That’s what it actually felt like: a hard candy shell was melting away and I could relax.

I remembered that part of why Vance Gilbert concerts are so special is that each one is unique. He is really engaged with his audience and the space he's playing in. One day, I'll tell you about the show with his good friend Ellis Paul and how they had to improvise the second show since most of us from the first show just stayed through. We keep going back because he's not just doing a set. He's communicating.

I mouthed, “Thank you,” when the song finished and we went back up to our seats where I stood in the aisle and rocked you until you fell asleep.

Esther, my love, you will stop needing me so soon. We will not be this entangled in each other for very long. I have been the protagonist of my novel for 34 years. Right now, you are a supporting character but soon, you will have your own novel and I will become some archetype to help you in your own hero’s journey. I know this. You will not always have the burden of being the sun that lights up my life. But you’ll have lots of little narrative cycles before the big trip to the cantina in Mos Eisley to find a pilot with a ship that has made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. I intend to notice and be present for every one of them.

Vance shifted that song to sing directly to you, wishing aloud that you will grow into a good girl and clarifying in verse that good didn’t mean doing what was expected of you but meant being good to other people. He also riffed on an earlier joke that we were setting your partner preferences by exposing you to him this early and that you’ll probably marry a black man someday. He also blessed you, saying you will be special since your parents take you to see “cool shit.” So, as you begin venturing out from my lap, I’m so gratified that Vance Gilbert – who has meant so much to your Obasan and me- affirms that what I can do is show you some of the settings that my own story progressed through and give you access to many of the other characters I know. After that, I promise let go and simply read the parts of your novel that you share with me.

And it will be good enough to be a bestseller.

Left-handed

2011-11-23T15:06:00.001-06:00

I am still brooding over the existential crisis I had a few weeks ago. I feel like it needs a more definitive response than the anecdotes I've shared here and here.

As I talked about my feelings with my friends and family, as well exploring the tension inside me that was sapping my joy, truth began to emerge: I was denying my desire to give my energy in a focused way to being a stay-at-home mom.

Apparently, just like when I play Dungeons and Dragons, I have no desire to play a multiple-class character. Just like I'm not interested in being a roguish monk or a warrior priest, I do not want to have to wrap my brain around the two sets of rules that govern the life of a working mom.

That desire for simplicity is what I have been denying. I think it would be too easy to say that twisted ideals of being a super-mom led me into my emotional tangle. That identity has never been one I would crave. It's too much like the over-achieving AP student in high school or the management consultant in her twenties. When given those options, I chose to be an average student and to work in education and non-profits. Enjoying life and feeling balanced has always won out over working my fingers to the bone in order to achieve.

Rather, I think that my delusion that I wanted to continue to self-identify as a professional comes from habit more than anything else.

Sometimes, I run into people that I haven't seen since high school. Acquaintances, parents of friends, members of my home church or teachers, their questions rarely deviate from a theme. All of them want to know if I have continued to pursue music.

It surprises me every time. I left behind my identity as a musician in college when i was too shy to figure out how to audition for the choir at the beginning of my freshman year. I took some private lessons and have held two recitals since then, but at most, I am a vocalist with a pretty voice who can still sight-read passably. I haven't been a musician in over a decade.

But as a child, I sang a lot and I sang a lot in front of a crowd. I had solos in church and most choir concerts. I was in small ensemble groups that got out of class to sing at events. I had lead roles in the musicals. I had a group of friends who sang harmonies for fun while infesting someone's house as part of a larger group of loitering teenagers. I was in at least three choirs and even sang in my Dramatic Duet Acting competitions.

Music was such a part of my public life that I remember realizing one Sunday after church that I needed to figure out how to accept a compliment about my singing that was theologically appropriate while also being social gracious to the complimented. Nothing is more annoying that being corrected by someone that "it's God who should get the credit," as if they were kind of a dolt for suggesting otherwise simply because they were inspired by the performance or wanting to communicate appreciation or to foster confidence in a young kid.

But I have become such a different person since then. It is totally understandable that people would assume that music would determine the trajectory of my life. At yet, it did not. Something altered my flight path.

I think something similar has happened since Esther has been born.

I have spent the last 15 years actively pursuing social justice as a career. Like the people who knew me for the 15 years previous to that, people that know me now (including myself) don't imagine that my life would not continue along the path it has been traveling. A life that did not include professional work on behalf of oppressed people would not be recognizable as mine.

So, everyone asks when I will go back to work. Some of that is that most moms do go back to work these days. A lot of what motivates the question, though, has to be that I have been so passionate about my work before Esther was born.

I have been listening to old Rob Bell sermons lately and in one he discusses the passage where Jesus says, "When you do good works, do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing." One of his points was that we often try to control how other people perceive us and that this commandment of Christ's was also a commandment to stop worrying about who the right hand thinks the left hand is.

I have been desperately trying to live up to the expectations of others (and myself) that I will continue to work outside the home as a social entrepreneur. Their expectations are not unfounded. Nor are they malicious. Their expectations are a natural conclusion based on what my life has been up to this point.

But yearning for who I might be again in the future is keeping me from fully immersing myself in who I am right now. Right now I am a mom. Just a mom. Breaking the habit of thinking of myself as a professional was holding me back from the joy that was waiting for me on this different path. I’m glad I figured that out.

Bright spots

2011-11-06T15:32:00.001-06:00

I think that it's possible that I have never felt more joy in my life than when my four month old daughter pauses in her nursing to look up at me, smile and put her hand on my chin. I don't think that I knew she would be so much fun.

Better

2011-11-02T12:57:00.001-05:00

I am on the mend. It turns out that I have had a sinus infection for who knows how long but,of course , the ER doctor in Danville, IL didn't diagnose it two weeks ago when I went in with a severe bout of vertigo and a splitting headache on one side. (I should tell you someday about sitting in that waiting room with my grandma on a Sunday when she didn't believe I was really all that sick because I had eaten a good breakfast.) So, looking back on the last two and a half weeks, I realize I have felt deeply despondent about my life because my energy was being sapped by what my doctor called a "horrendous" infection in my left sinus.

Since I started the antibiotic two days ago, I feel much less conflicted about being a homemaker.

In fact, today and yesterday, I have been making bibs.

First world problems

2011-10-27T14:24:00.000-05:00

Warning: You might not want to read this one, Dad, because it might come across as a little bit whiny. I say this because, well, I think it's a little bit whiny. However, in the interest of full disclosure to achieve the goals of this blog, I figured I'd post it anyway.

Yesterday, I was walking to my car from Whole Foods and wondering why I should keep making the effort to drive all this way if I no longer really cared about fair trade and organic purchasing, or at least, the causes behind them. On my way to return the cart, a giant SUV entered from the Exit and the driver stopped impatiently to let me pass. When I returned to my subcompact economy car, I found the SUV parked next to it, almost blocking me in, it was parked so crookedly.

I had my answer, of course.

I don't want to become that asshole.

But the fleeting thought made me realize I had to go deeper. What did I mean, I don't really care anymore about fair trade and organic purchasing or the causes behind them?

Lately, when I examine the things that I care about, the list does not much resemble the list that existed before Esther was born. This is a hard thing to say.

I have been kind of drifting, a little despondent, without motivation or enthusiasm for the tasks at hand. I have been aware of this for awhile and have chalked it up to the transition from seeing myself as a professional to seeing myself as a homemaker.

But Esther is four months old now and at some point here, I have to get back on that horse named Life and go somewhere. This means that I have to stop thinking of myself in transition and start figuring out who I have become. Because once I know who I am, then even the laundry and calling the plumber can have a vibrancy to them that they don't have right now.

Identity can often be determined by learning what motivates a person to act. What do they want? So, I have been thinking about what I want. I'm defining the word, "want," here as a visceral desire. What does my gut move towards? There are things I still affirm intellectually, like opportunity for all people, an end to the degredation of our environment, religious access to God in community for folks who are fed up with religion and a broad social network, but what I am willing to put creative energy into each morning is much less lofty.

I want to play with my daughter and watch her smile.
I want to be held by my husband and to watch him care for Esther.
I want to read books.
I want to eat good food.
I want to bake.
I want to spend time with my own parents and with my siblings and nieces.

I no longer want to go swimming.
I no longer want to change unjust systems by working on spreadsheets and intra-office systems.
I no longer want to meet my good friends for coffee.
I no longer want to work on refining and strengthening my marriage.
I no longer want to go to church or be a part of the church leadership.
I no longer want to host parties and make people feel welcome in my home.
I no longer want to quilt.
I no longer want to build community.

Again, I still believe that all of the things on that second list are good things. I think I would be sad if I had to live with the consequences of not doing them. But before, I felt passionate about digging in and getting to work. About challenging the status quo to make things better: for myself, for others and for society.

Jacob and I were talking about this and he helped me see that now I'm tired of dancing to the beat of my own drummer, of swimming upstream, of going against the flow, of coming up with anything other than cliches for constantly rejecting the easy way in order to do the right thing.

I don't know how to rest from this. I don't know how to let my life take a nap. I know that people will tell me that I must if I am to go on trying to "be a blessing." That sustainability is crucial. But I don't actually know which actions to take so that I end up refreshed. I don't want it to be like when you get home from a vacation and you feel like you need another one before you can actually be productive again. So, I worry that simply not doing the things I don't want to do is the wrong tactic.

Of course, I could just suck it up, rub a little mud in it and do the stuff anyway. Most people have to live that way; what makes me so special that I can naval-gaze like this?

This seems to be one of the central questions of my life and I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with any of the possible answers. However, recently it occurred to me that although privilege is probably 94% of the reason why I feel entitled to wait until I "want" to do something before I do it, I can take maybe 5% of the credit for consistently making choices in my life that allow me to actually take breaks. It can't be a coincidence that I took a break from teaching and got the opportunity to go on tour with a theatrical production plus I took a break after my failed marriage and got the opportunity to live on an island in the Pacific Northwest plus I took a break after finishing my degree . . . wait. Scratch that last one. Although I did not have a job immediately after graduating, it never felt like a break. I planned a wedding and did a shit-ton of relationship work to launch a marriage. Jacob and I both mourn our disaster of a honeymoon since I couldn't wind down enough to enjoy it. Then, back to the grind and finding a job and the rest of life from then until now.

I'm a little afraid to ask for a break, though. Jacob doesn't get one. How could that possibly be fair? But I would keep Esther with me however I rested. But I have just thought of something while writing this post. What might happen if, instead of bemoaning the fact that circumstances have taken over agency in my life, I rejoice in it? If I figure out how to take a break, won't an adventure present itself to me in time? If the history of my life repeats itself, won't that adventure teach me new lessons and re-set my life course toward a more Godly one?

I have set a pattern for my days. I have established habits. That should be enough for maintenance of my basic values until I can get back to directly monitoring them. I don't think I'll actually become that asshole in the SUV. Right? If that's taken care of, I probably should figure out how to make some space to take God up on her offer of a radical change.

I'm OK; Nipple shields are OK

2011-10-20T19:32:00.003-05:00

Last week, I posted about the major changes in Esther's eating life. I posted something similar on my Facebook page and got these responses:

MM: Yeah, just when you think you got the little pishers figured out, they throw you a knuckler. Hang in there!
October 3 at 9:00pm · Like

MS: Expect the surprises to keep coming along...for years! Enjoy every adventure!
October 3 at 9:40pm · Like

MMS: We drove ourselves crazy trying to figure this stuff out!
October 3 at 9:50pm · Like

MW: They tend not to get as much milk with the shield-she may start to gain more weight (and your supply will increase) now that she is off of it.
October 3 at 10:17pm · Like

Rebecca: Actually, there's no research to support that statement about shields.
October 3 at 11:55pm · Like

Rebecca: Let me rephrase, when I was bewildered as to why everyone but my doctor and lactation consultant acted like using the shield created a "less than" nursing experience, I could not find any citations to any research supporting those claims, even though I really wanted to so I could give in to peer pressure and wean her off before she was ready because of the inconvenience and because I was feeling vulnerable to the sheer weight of public opinion. All I could find was one study of less than 20 moms done with rubber shields rather than the now standard silicone ones. Luckily, this snapped me to my senses so I could stand up for my (and my doctor and lc's) decision to well-meaning but insensitive folks from that point on.
October 4 at 12:10am · Like

SR: We used a shield for a little while with Ian. Trust yourself and your little one -- listen to advice from people who know and understand *your* specific situation -- and whom you trust. Know that no matter what you will all be ok. We've got your back.
October 4 at 12:18am · Like

MW: I guess I also heard the inaccurate info about shields, Rebecca. Sounds like you are working with a good lactation consultant who can help you with any problems you might have!
October 4 at 8:41am · Like

KG: What is a nipple shield for? I had to supplement with Jack from the begginning, it took me a long time to come to terms with it. It made me feel like a failure as a woman/mother that I couldn't provide all of his nutrition like I was supposed to be able to do. What kind of formula are you using? Maybe that is why she is spitting up more.
October 4 at 10:17am · Like

I'm sure you noticed MW's response and my response to her. Normally, I'm not that confrontational, especially on Facebook. However, I thought long and hard about it before I posted that rephrase because 1) she offers lots and lots of unsolicited advice so I figured she would be able to handle a little push back and 2) I feel very passionate about the misinformation out there regarding nipple shields.

Luckily, my friend was really gracious. Based on the curiosity of other folks, I also figured I would elaborate a little bit more here.

A nipple shield is a piece of molded silicon that fits on top of a woman's nipple so that the muscles of a baby's mouth don't have to work quite so hard to mold the nipple to the shape of their own mouths. Preemies often need them and Esther needed one, too, for whatever reason. The lactation consultant in the hospital worked with us in a couple of good sessions before we went home and Esther just wasn't getting the hang of it so we started using the shield. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to feed my daughter.

However, lots of people had a reflexive response that the nipple shield was a bad thing. I often got asked, "When will you wean her off of it?"

The first few weeks of a new mom's life are incredibly vulnerable. She's having a severe case of withdrawal since her ~~dealer~~ placenta is no longer pumping her full of hormones. She's physically wounded and has usually depleted her energy reserves that are usually used for healing. She's not sleeping very much. The patterns of her day are totally altered and she must think about what the baby needs every time she considers doing something for herself, like going to the bathroom or showering. The autonomic responses are all that are left to her, life breathing and having her heart pump. All of her stress-coping mechanisms and her defense mechanisms are disabled so attacks that could normally be deflected hit hard.

One of the easiest targets is feeding this new child because it is one of only 4 needs that must be fulfilled by a mom: eating, sleeping, being cleaned and being touched. So, any comment that feels at all like a criticism takes up an inordinate amount of space in a mom's spirit.

Being asked repeatedly when I would wean Esther from her shield felt like people were asking when I was going to really start breastfeeding her because didn't I know, breast is best?

So, when I realized that the money I spent on a second lactation consultant was wasted because she was fixated on the shield rather than on the problem I went to her with, I began searching the internet.

(As an aside, I ultimately made a rule that I could not research any parenting questions between the hours of 9:00 pm and 8:00 am on the iPad while nursing. To much hostility out there and no filter to figure out whose solution is right for my family.)

What I ultimately found out is that there is no reason (other than inconvenience) not to nurse your baby with a shield for the entire time that you breastfeed. However, lots of breastfeeding advocates like La Leche League disagree with that statement, both vehemently and inferentially, even though the only proof that nipple shields are bad is anecdotal at best.

Even Kellymom, which claims to be research based, cites nipple shields when discussing decreases in milk supply.

The reality is that there is no research that supports this advice. All of it is about the old, rubber version or has a tiny sample size. When I was talking about this with my friend who is studying to be a lactation consultant, she sent me this great article, which debunks the myths.

The problem is that La Leche League and folks like Kellymom are the only folks out there advocating for breastfeeding and they are fundamentalists. Fundamentalists, by definition, believe that there is one true way to do something and that all other versions are inferior to that one true way. In the case of La Leche League, they believe that the one true way for all infants to be fed is that every meal be taken skin to skin at the mother's physical breast. There is a hierarchy of deviations from this ideal; some are better than others but all deviations are seen as a slippery slope toward all babies being fed formula with bottles from their viewpoint. Take a look at this document that they publish for local leaders on how to convert bottle-feeding mothers to feeding directly from the breast. It reads to me very similarly to literature advising conservative Christians to befriend folks in order to get them to say the Sinner's Prayer with paragraphs like this:

Working empathically [sic] with a woman, respecting her and her authority as the mother of the baby, we build rapport. Whether over the phone, by email, or after a meeting, when we work one-on-one with a mother so that she feels heard and respected, she may become receptive to hearing other ideas about how to handle her situation. Perhaps she isn't aware that there are means of feeding her baby other than a bottle, such as a cup or spoon, a periodontal syringe, or a supplemental nursing system at the breast. Perhaps a mother who called for help with the bottle will be moved to come to a meeting and gain a new perspective there.

This section does not encourage leaders to be empathetic to a new mother in a vulnerable state simply because it's the right thing to do. There is an agenda to the act. Also similar to evangelizing Christians, there is an assumption that the object of their help is ignorant of the one true way. If they were knowledgeable, then why wouldn't they see things like we do? Basically, formula-feeding women are the pagan babies of the Breast is Best crowd. This condescending paternalism continues in a section a little further down:

Although teaching a baby to take a bottle isn't why we became Leaders, helping parents become sensitive to their babies' cues is a part of what we do. By helping parents with the bottle we may not only preserve breastfeeding, but also promote cooperative rather than coercive parenting. Perhaps the approaches and attitudes used here will carry forward to introducing solids, weaning and toilet training.

Clearly, if a family is feeding their baby with a bottle (even if feeding pumped breastmilk), then they won't raise their children right in other areas like toilet training. Because feeding with interventions or formula is mutually exclusive to being sensitive to a baby's cues. (Catch the sarcasm here.)

I understand and even appreciate why La Leche folks are like this. Societal change is generally only accomplished by extremists, the "small group" that Margaret Mead lionizes, although I disagree that they need to be thoughtful. (Tea party, anyone?) There are plenty of studies out there showing that people who are politically active above and beyond voting are closer to the ends of the ideological spectrum than the majority of the population, which is fairly centrist. Counteracting status quo requires force and an absolute ideal gets more folks behind it than a a diffused vision of more choices for more people. The pendulum of public policy swings back and forth and society generally benefits from the majority of time it spends close to the middle.

This societal change is definitely necessary because corporate influences have totally sabotaged breast feeding as a valid option in a variety of ways. The Feminist Breeder describes this well in her recent post. It is unconscionable that our society overwhelmingly thinks of breastfeeding as dirty or inconvenient or any number of other descriptors that aren't true but influence women and their children who would otherwise benefit from breastfeeding to use formula. I love efforts like the Doula Program at the Ounce of Prevention, which helps women in poverty overcome that influence of the corporations.

Also, folks are often drawn to groups like La Leche League because in their vulnerability, it provided resources to meet their needs. This kind of rescue can inspire an honest zealousness in well-meaning folks to help others experience the joy they have experienced. Although leaders of the political movement may exploit this emotion in participants of the movement to ensure self-perpetuation of the organization, the individuals are simply trying to help others in the way they have been helped. I respect that impulse.

However, I am a feminist because I believe that all women should be supported in the choices that they make and that society should be changed so that all choices are available to all people. I believe that people are generally capable of weighing variables in a situation and choosing the best option for themselves. If they aren't, it's because they lack information or they lack the emotional IQ to determine what is best for themselves. Both of those can be solved without condescension or paternalism. Maybe that's the University of Chicago-trained economist in me but I just think folks are rational actors in their own lives.

I object to the fundamentalist viewpoint when it comes to breastfeeding because it can be a major impediment to the very goal it seeks to achieve. By setting a goal that most women cannot achieve, some - or maybe many - women will turn away from a choice that might have been right for them because they don't feel like they really belong in the community. They are not like "those mothers" so they just won't try. For instance, La Leche suggests that working mothers find childcare that is close enough to work that the provider can bring the child to the mother for all of his meals.

Right.

There are so many assumptions about who that mother is, I could write a whole essay on that recommendation alone. She has a flexible job, she can afford a caregiver who only looks after her child, he and the child are physically capable of nursing, etc. Those types of prerequisites tend to be available only to privileged upper-class folks.

When I was able to analyse the situation and figure out why everyone was acting so weird about the shield, I could relax and even do a little education when I started to feel insecure because of someone else's mis-education from the Breast is Best advocates.

As it turns out, Esther mouth muscles just needed to get a little stronger. At around 3 months, she batted the shield out of the way and latched on all by herself. The latching was new since she often accidentally knocked the shield off before latching. She stayed on for about 4 minutes but needed the shield to finish the session and then didn't want to latch that way again for another week. I kept offering her the bare breast at the beginning of sessions and eventually she latched on sporadically for greater and greater periods of time, until the point when she protested when I offered her the shield. We no longer need the shield at all at mealtimes.

I was fully prepared to use the shield the entire time she nursed, buying 8 shields and stashing them in the glove compartment of the car and in every bag I had, so that we would never be caught without one. Because, with it, I could feed my daughter. Let me repeat that. With a shield, I could feed my daughter. Everything else is irrelevant once that's been said. I made the choice that I didn't want our early life together to be a struggle to get her to latch without it. Trust me, it was ugly every time I tried. Milk everywhere. Both of us sticky and crying. I am certain that the psychological damage this would do to her and to our relationship greatly outweighed any trumped up harm that breastfeeding advocates could cook up as caused by the shield. Nipple shields are OK; you are OK. End of story.

The Fit is go.

2011-10-17T08:37:00.000-05:00

It turns out that buying a car from the dealership feels uncomfortably like being married to my ex-husband. Everything they say seems plausible but over time, one gets a sneaking suspicion that something fishy is going on.

Let me say up front that I probably made a mistake by going to the Gold Coast to buy a sub-compact, economy car. I should have known that they simply wouldn't have much stock to choose from. But they were the easiest to get to by bus. I also should have walked out when they told me that there wasn't a single basic-model Fit anywhere in the Midwest and I would have to buy the more expensive Sport model if I wanted one at all. How could that possibly be true? At that point, though, I had been there for three hours so although I emailed another dealership and they said that it wasn't true, I think some of my life force had already been depleted and I decided not to fight that battle. I should have also probably challenged their statements that although they had both a used Fit to sell me AND a Fit they were using as a service vehicle, only the service vehicle was available for the test drive because Clark Kent was "being serviced." I definitely should have challenged them when they preemptively warned me after I said I would take it that it was still being serviced and I might not be able to drive home in it. Preemptive excuses make me nervous (see previous marriage).

I am proud to say, though, that I did not succumb to their obvious ploy when they explicitly and repeatedly stated, "I'm working hard for you because I want your business," as if by hearing it often enough and from enough people, I would simply accept it as true. It was pretty clear that when my sales rep was "checking with her manager," they were back there letting me cool my heels. I was also told a couple of times by the manager that he wanted to make a deal for me, for my sales rep's sake so that she could hit her numbers, playing on my heartstrings. How could I deny her making her quota by going anywhere else?

I did get a screaming deal and I was comfortable that was true, especially because I could use their wireless to check Kelley Blue Book. However, their claim that putting the car through the paces to qualify it as "certified" would pretty much cost the same as the warranty I would purchase is probably bogus, especially since when I looked at the warranty, it doesn't cover all the little parts that break like hoses and stuff. I was also totally unimpressed that they claimed the car had 28,000 miles while we were negotiating but it wasn't until I was filling out the final paperwork that I learned it actually had 34,000 miles. That's a pretty significant number to simply spread your hands and claim that the used car manager isn't really good with technology. I took him up on his compensatory offer of calling him if I was at all surprised by the car when I wasn't told until I was buckling my daughter into the back seat that the car only had one key but any copies needed to be made by a dealership service department and they couldn't do it that day because they didn't have the necessary blank in stock. They did give me a free copy two weeks later when they finally responded to the messages I left asking for one. Really. A car from the dealer only comes with one key? Who would even think to ask about that?

So, I came out ahead financially but I had to negotiate hard for that and walked away feeling pretty slimy about all the ways that they tried to manipulate me. I'm sure there were more that I didn't catch. I like assuming good faith exists with folks I interact with and that may be naive but it pays off a majority of the time, which makes my life so much more peaceful. Since Fletcher Jones Honda does not start the conversation with that same assumption, I wouldn't go there again. Of course, the car I was replacing was a '99 Nissan so it might be awhile before I need to put these lessons learned to use.

I hate being weak

2011-10-14T09:52:00.001-05:00

I am at the CCDA conference with Esther this week. I have to tell you that it is a lot of work to be attuned to her needs every minute while also paying attention to speakers and trying to be open to the Holy Spirit and networking with folks who are passionate about the same things that I am passionate about.

For instance, today, Esther is wearing her third outfit of the day after soiling two and I am on my second after she managed to hit both top and bottom of my first outfit with her, well, crap.

But it's worth it. It's worth it to expose her to the cadences of African American pastors, communicating their wisdom. It's worth it to include her in the corporate prayer of these development practitioners. It's worth it to let her experience the rhythms of Richard Twiss's Lakota prayers and sense of humor. I think these early experiences are helping to lay a map in her brain that her growing sense of how the world works will be laid upon.

It is the same reason that I took her to high holiday services this year. I could have begged off and asked to stay home since that is much much easier at this stage, since it's hard for me personally to get spiritual nourishment from so much Hebrew and since I wasn't fasting this year. But it's important that she rest against her father's chest as he sings the prayers and that while she is nursing, she hears the rhythms of the cantor. It's important that all of that Hebrrew begins settling itself in her consciousness. It sets the pattern of the seasons in her nascent cycles.

But I am having some doubts about the amount of money this non-professional is spending on this experience. I am trying to acknowledge the presence of these doubts and worries gently, though, while looking past their urgent flailing for my attention so I do not let those doubts interfere with what I'm trying to do. The monkey mind can be calmed.

And, as usual, God is revealing that I am here to accomplish much more than I thought I was. This week seems to have a recurring theme of forcing me to get comfortable with not being able to claim my professional identity. No one is interested in what I used to do. These folks are engaged in current work. And my current work is raising Esther and creating a nurturing space for Jacob and for our marriage. Wow. That's hard. So much of my self-identity has been dependent upon being a "worker."

Part of this lesson of comfort that I am learning happened this afternoon. My cohort was supposed to meet at the pub around the corner from the hotel. I walked in and the waitress looked at me in distress. "Oh honey, you can bring a baby in here. It's a bar!" She then said something about an Indiana law. Seriously, Hoosiers? That's how you defy your rural personality?

So, I waved to my new friends and turned away regretfully but with dignity, I hoped.

As I walked away, though, I was freaking out a little. I mean, the relationships that I'm building as a part of this cohort is the number one reason why I'm spending all of this money this week. To miss our main meeting was definitely disturbing my calm. So, I raced back to the conference hotel to see if childcare was still open. It wasn't. So, my mind whirled.

Earlier in the morning, as I was swabbing Esther down with what would turn out to be a total of seven wipes, a good acquaintance swooped down from heaven and asked if I needed help. Did I? I took her up on her offer to hold Esther once she was in a fresh set of pajamas while I went up to my room to change my own clothes. We sat together after that and caught up at lunch. She assured me then that if I needed any more help, she was happy to do it.

I thanked her but didn't actually think anything would come of it because, hey, if I can't be a professional, I can be independently competent at being a mom, right?

Yeah, I know. I never learn. Seriously. No wisdom teaches that kind of goal. Villages, Rebecca, villages.

And yet.

So, as my mind whirled to find a way to go back to the bar, I realized that I could call my acquaintance.

But could I?

If I did, I would owe her.

I know, I know. Favors should not be transactional in the Christian community. We should give generously, knowing God will take care of our own needs. And I don't mind giving. I mind receiving.

Because accepting her generosity might change my relationship with her. I might need to consider her kindness the next time she invites me to coffee during a week when I just want to hide in my cave. I might need to attend one of her neighborhood meetings for her educational organization. I might lay awake in the middle of the night and realize that I really should set up a play date with her son and Esther. All of these opportunities already exist in our relationship, but I have previously felt comfortable engaging or not engaging based on what my needs are. Now, would I need to consider her needs since she would be so other-focused today?

Trust me, as I was thinking it, I was looking at myself incredulously. But I persisted in my whiny protest. I am nothing if not tenacious in my sin.

I hate relationships that change toward more intimacy. Anything could happen.

But. I'm at a conference that emphasizes that we must live in community to be close to God. It's why I love this organization. Community demands the giving and receiving of favors, especially when we are vulnerable, even when we don't want to admit that in addition to not making money anymore, I can't take care of my daughter without help.

So, I called her. And she was happy to do it. And I had a beer.

Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?

Cha cha cha cha changes

2011-10-04T09:41:00.003-05:00

In the last week, Esther has:
1. Totally abandoned the previously established rhythm of her days
2. Cut her nursing time down to a third of its usual duration
3. Weaned herself off of the nipple shield that she has needed since birth
4. Begun getting supplemental nutrition to counteract her persistent lack of ability to gain weight
5. Started spitting up significantly more
6. Occasionally refused the breast but accepted a bottle.
Plus, 7. I have stopped leaking breastmilk, which was a constant annoyance up to this point.

Some good developmnts; some bad. Some solutions would be counterproductive to other solutions if implemented. Causality vs correlation has yet to be determined. It hasn't helped that we have been out of town for the holiday.

Yesterday, I was a mess: sleep deprived, worried that I would lose my milk supply, and grieving the fact that my child has been at least a little bit hungry for her entire life (as the doctor said, "She got used to the fact that that was all she got"). Since her rhythm had changed, she cried a lot more because I had to figure out each time what she needed rather than knowing that it was time for her to be hungry, wet or tired and solving the problem quickly. Increased crying creates a wholly unique emotional response in a parent that should have it's own name but doesn't and so must settle for "frazzled" or "harried." These words do not communicate the worry, anger, despair, self-recrimination, violence, depression, and frustration that are wrapped up in the primal sense of emergency that extended and abnormal crying provoke in parents.

Also, not being able to explain for certain why any of this was happening caused massive anxiety to roil furiously just underneath my exhausted exterior. There are theories for individual behaviors but no way of knowing if the fact that they are happening all at once is coincidence or consequence of choices I have made. For instance, many babies become more efficient at eating around Esther's age and drain all the available milk much more quickly than when their mouth muscles were still weak and training. This could also explain why she no longer needs the shield. However, what if her desire to eat without the shield means that she gets tired more quickly and that's why her nursing sessions are so short? If that's true, then she's getting even less nutrition than before and my supply might decrease even further because my body thinks there is less demand.

Or not.

It's despairing for a person like me who's self-identity is wrapped up in being able to figure stuff out. Living in the mystery is a spiritual ideal that I strive for in theory. Putting it in practice is difficult.

What I can do, though, is put aside my personal plans for the day and pay attention to my daughter. Instead of trying to shoehorn her needs into a day that was designed around her old patterns, I can wipe the slate clean and look for the new patterns that emerge when she's given the chance. So right now, she's asleep in my arms, having nodded off when I offered her a pacifier when I realized that her conflicted behavior of wanting to suck but not wanting the breast might be solved that way. Would I rather she were in her crib so I could work on my to-do list? Absolutely. But now that I have slowed down, I have confidence that we'll get there eventually once we're through this transition. If she is well-rested, the transition will go even quicker.

I feel so grateful that I have the luxury of time to parent this way. I am savoring every moment because life will not always be like this. That transience of situation is both to be looked forward to and to be dreaded. That's actually mystery that I can live within.

A family event -pictures from Esther's naming

2011-09-22T14:15:00.000-05:00

We asked my friend Jen to record Esther's naming in photographs so that she would be able to see who had been part of the community that welcomed her into life and Judaism.

I live my life on the iPad right now since Esther tend to nurse for about an hour each time, which makes it hard to upload photos. Luckily, Jen posted of the best on her website. Follow the link below to get there.
Simchat Bat
Jen does such an amazing job and has insight into people and their relationships. She also fits right in with our family and friends as a guest who just happens to be taking pictures. Her joy in her work really comes through. As she said, "I got to take two hours of candies. So great!"

So great indeed.

Pretty in pink

2011-09-18T15:46:00.000-05:00

It will surprise no one that, ideologically, I favor gender-neutral clothes for kids. It will probably also surprise no on that I can -and have- made passionate arguments against pink for girls and football appliques for boys. Once, while pregnant on a crowded bus and discussing this with Jacob, a very effeminate man cut in and camped, "Honey, they could have painted a football stadium mural in my room and it wouldn't have made a difference."

He's not wrong and not alone in this belief that some things are hard-wired into us at birth that no amount of "nurture" can override. I also agree with most folks that, on average, there are differences between the genders that are probably a result of "nature." I laughed very hard at this comic.

Louis CK also seems to hit the nail on the head.

I'm sure that we have many very strong biological urges that assist in species survival. However, there are four problems with a fatalistic belief that nothing we do matters when trying to teach gender equality through neutral environments.

1. It's clearly bullshit.

Do we really believe that parents have no ability to influence their children? We all know people raised poorly by their parents and people raised well by their parents. The line tracing their major malfunctions to their parents' screw-ups might as well be drawn with a giant Sharpie. If it's true for self-esteem or chauvinism or racist jokes, why can't it be true for how comfortable one is in one's own skin when one wants to both play football AND wear pink?

Of course, there are exceptions. Lots of people with alcoholic parents turn out to be warm, loving and present. Lots of people with great parents turn out to be total slackers with mean streaks. These exceptions lead us to number two.

2. A culture that rigidly defines what a kid should and shouldn't like is oppressive to those kids who deviate from the norm, which limits their options for life decisions. All of the social change I try to participate in is about giving people choices so they can fulfill the potential that God gave them. I don't want to be complicit in a system where it never occurs to girls who are good at math to want to be a "business woman" when they grow up or where boys don't get the chance to interact deeply with each other and with girls because "men don't talk about emotions." There is also the heteronormative aspect of gender typing that creates so much trauma for gay and queer people. Pink vs. Footballs is the visible organ of that oppressive system. It teaches kids early that there are only two choices and teaches which of those two indentities is theirs. There is no room for any grey. Girls don't like football and boy don't wear pink. Girls don't like dinosaurs and boys don't like flowers. Girls don't marry other girls and boys don't nurture children. Ugh.

3. Parents should give their kids tools for resisting the larger culture's usual state of apathy. The tools are the same for any issue: poverty, lack of equal access to clean water, sizism, etc. It's worth modeling this with the low-hanging fruit of expected gender preferences since they are exposed to it from the first cry of "It's a girl/boy!" at their birth.

4. Sometimes, it turns out that we were wrong in our assumption that a characteristic is genetically motivated. Did you see the new study showing that men with children produce less testosterone, which allows them to be more sensitive to their family's needs? So all that noise about the degree to which women are better suited to be caregivers genetically has to be reexamined. When it turns out we were wrong about the things you can't change about gender preferences, we can't go back and undo that social "nurturing" that shaped a kid into a limited role. Better to make all options socially acceptable for all kids and make sorting out what's genetic and what's training important only on a theoretical level.

So, I would have written all of that before I gave birth to a daughter. What I didn't expect about my current response was that I would feel so angry about it.

I started this essay with the assumption that folks who know me would either know or quickly deduce that I would not be a fan of dressing my kid in pink.

However, based on the presents we received (98% of which were pink), I have to assume that most folks who know me never stopped to consider an alternative to a pink gift. I have to think that if they had considered it a choice to be made (pink vs. one of the six other colors), it would have been a no-brainer.

I am so grateful that we have so many people in our lives who care enough about us to put forth the energy to select and send a gift to celebrate esther's birth. When I examine the anger, I relieved that it's not aimed at them personally.

I'm angry that this pink gender-typing for girls is so pervasive that most folks don't even recognize it as a choice. We all have a crap-ton of choices to make every day and so any limiting of the field that the market can do for us is appreciated. I get that. But I seem to be angry that the market has chosen to narrow this particular field. It feels so personal.

I'm not a conspiracy theory person but it feels like someone out is making it so that my daughter stays in "her" place from a very young age. "You only get one color and that color is so powerless that only a handful of Fortune 500 companies use it for their logo. That's OK though because girls are biologically designed to play with dolls and stay home to raise families."

All right, so maybe some of my anger comes from feeling conflicted about my own choice to be a stay-at-home mom. But my larger points are still valid.

So is my anger.

So, when I was at Gymboree, raging at the passive messages on the pink girl onesies ("Pick me!" versus "Wiggle, squiggle, squirm"), all I could do was cross over to the boy's side a spend my merchandise credit (from returning something pink) to buy a t-shirt with a math joke and the aforementioned active orange lizard onesie.

It's both a small political act and a large spiritual one. I won't affect market forces all by myself, but every time someone says in surprise, "Oh! She's a girl?" once the conversation moves beyond their initial question of how old "he" is, (this happen 5 out of every 6 times the question is posed to me) I hope I've planted a seed in people's minds that girl babies can wear white or green or even blue, even if they don't have matching hair bows. Just re-establishing it as an option is enough for me as a start.

I believe that mindfulness of the moment and being deliberate in one's choices is the height of spiritual practice. I believe that God wants us to direct our attention to establishing shalom -a state where every person becomes who God intended them to be- as a way of helping us get close to her so we can feel how loved we are. I struggle with this a fair amount now that I'm not doing this work professionally. But this is the moment I'm in and pink is the injustice I can do something about right now, with my own daughter.

I am pleased that this anger has not extended itself into judgment of other families who make a different choice for their daughters. I love seeing kids in their little ruffly outfits. Genuinely. In fact, I'm happy to regift things to those families. That's a major step forward for me.

Before Esther was born, I figured that I would be deliberate about my own purchases but that her life would have a mix since I value including other people's aesthetic in her experience. And she does have some accessories (boppy, etc.) that are pink because they came to us previously owned by friends and family and I value re-use. But now i remember that my father used to make my brother return birthday presents that were guns to their givers and my mother made me put Barbie dolls into storage until I was older. so, when I look into Esther's eyes, I find that I am intolerant of pink clothes. They go straight into the hand-me-down bucket. If the world were going to pay her dollar for dollar that a man working the same job would make, it would be no big deal. But for now, going along with the pink status quo is not a limitation that I'm willing to subject my daughter to.

Deliberations

2011-09-02T11:56:00.000-05:00

So, here is how God worked in my life this week. Of course, God works in my life all the time and I just don't notice it but here is how God hit me over the head with her love this week.

The exhaust system fell out of my '99 Nissan Sentra on Sunday. As Anne Lamott says, it's like my car just prolapsed. The tow truck driver laughed at how entirely it has fallen down. Since it is a 12-year-old car and we have a brand-new baby whose safety we need to consider, this is the moment to let Ole Blue go.

That was my thought, anyway.

However, I'm mature enough to know that my husband might not feel the same way. So, after getting a quote of $417 from the mechanic that my parents and I have relied upon for over a decade, I went back to Jacob to see what he thought.

Together, we made the decision to donate the car to Willow Creek's ministry that fixes up cars with volunteer labor and gives them to single moms who need them, just like we did with our last car.

I called the mechanic early the next morning to let him know that we wouldn't be having the work done and to ask if we could leave the car in his lot for a few days until the ministry came to pick it up. He sputtered a little and was definitely surprised. He said, "That's not what I would do."

Chip is notoriously full of integrity and he rarely offers unsolicited advice so I asked him what he WOULD do. He said that if we did the work, we could probably sell it for $1000.

I thanked him but said we wanted the ministry to have.

Then, I hung up the phone and began to second-guess myself. Donating the car was all well and good when I didn't know the opportunity cost but $600 is not a small amount of money around here anymore since I quit my job. Plus, that's more than 100% ROI. We do a lot more creative moving around of our investments to make a lot less than that, both in total cash And ROI. Even considering the convenience factor of not having to find a buyer in addition to the tax deduction, was this the best choice for us?

I called my dad because I respect the spiritual advice he would give me. He said a lot of things and assured me that whatever choice I made would be a good one because Jacob and I believe that what we have belongs to God so act on that belief in several different ways. Dad said he was sure that our values of tithing and of leaving a small consumer footprint in all of the areas of our life would balance out whatever choice we made about the car.

This reminded me that the end goal of donating the car was to put it in the hands of someone whose life was very difficult without a reliable car. Since a person that would buy a car for $1000 is either a teenager, or more likely, a person who can't afford anything better. $1000 cars are always pieces of shit that require a lot of money in maintenance, but the market value stays high because the buyers are usually desperate and can't come up with the extra money for a more reliable investment. Earning that profit would mean I was benefitting from someone else's dire straits. Giving it away meant that a similar owner would get the car in better condition since the ministry would fix everything, not just the fallen exhaust system. Also, less resources would be lost to a middle man/men.

So, I chased my doubts and stood firm in our decision to donate the car.

Then, Chip called me back.

My resolve wavered.

He asked if I would sell it for $300.

Whew! Not nearly as tempting as $600. Easy to refuse.

Except, it was for guy Chip knew who had been out of work for two years and Chip was going to front him the money for the car.

Actually, this was even better. All of my spiritual goals would be met plus we would get $300. Win. Win.

Giving a gift is fun. Making it so that someone else can give the gift is even better.

Thanks, God.

Simchat Bat

2011-08-30T10:54:00.001-05:00

I was not at my best Sunday for Esther's naming that took place at my parents' house.

When I talked about this with Jacob yesterday, he reminded me that the outcome of the day was a success and I guess that counts for something but when you lose, they always say that if you did your best, that's all that matters. Shouldn't the reverse also be true?

Luckily, I wasn't my worst, either. I was just unfocused and unhelpful, even though it was a party for my daughter. I left my purse at home and some crucial props for the ceremony. I wasn't really spiritually present so, even though I had given some thought awhile ago to my parts of the ceremony, I couldn't communicate clearly with our gathered community and was surprised by my own blubbering. (Usually, I'm prepared and stay functional while experiencing intense emotions in settings like this.) I participated in gossip and shouted at both my mom and my husband. I was one of those moms I swore I'd never be by taking Esther out of Jacob's arms when she wouldn't stop crying during the ceremony. I would have preferred to publicly demonstrated the fact that I know he is good at parenting her.

However, I had foreseen forgetting the nipple shield that I use to help feed my daughter and had a back-up in the car and I was able to connect well with many of my friends despite my overall inability to attend to the event. Also, I didn't freak out when the entire exhaust system fell out of my car three blocks before we arrived. Those can be seen as successes of a sort. I certainly believe that working within our inevitable human failures to find joy is a success, even if most folks (and a nagging voice in my gut) would say that I shouldn't have made the mistakes in the first place.

And I suppose those successes are the take-away for the day. Those and the fact that now my daughter has been blessed, welcomed and named by her community in a lovely event with amazing food. My own experience is secondary to the gift of the experience that my daughter received.

I suppose that last sentence is a microcosm for parenthood, eh?

Bananas

2011-08-23T07:12:00.001-05:00

When Esther was four weeks old, she and I got on a plane for four hours to San Francisco, then in a car for a five hour trip over the mountain to an old hippie commune turned retreat center with 20+ strangers so that we could get to know one another at the beginning of a two year cohort experience. All of us care passionately about community development to the point of being young (25-40) leaders in the field.

As usual, I feared being an outsider. In fact, I had billed myself as one in my application to look attractive for the diversity I'd bring. (haha, funny joke in an organization that is proactive about racial reconciliation) Most folks in the organization that sponsored the cohort are evangelical and do direct service work with under-resourced people. However, I am mainline Protestant -emergent, no less - and try to work at a systemic level to effect change. These differences had the potential to drastically deforest our common ground both culturally and personally.

For instance, a week before the retreat, the organizer sent out an email to group, telling us we were responsible for our own praise and worship time. He pointed out that previous cohorts had contained members who were active in their music programs at church so if those folks in this group would bring their instruments, we would be able to put something together ad hoc.

Although I have some worship team experience, it was mostly when I was a much younger Christian and my repertoire consists mostly of late 90s Christian camp songs and "contemporary" hymns.

Mot of my spiritual communities since then have been more traditionally liturgical or contemplative in nature and haven't kept up with the latest praise music.

As a result, when the annual conference for this organization is always dominated evangelical worship teams, I often feel left out because I don't know the songs and, generally, the songs I do know don't particularly inspire worship in me. So, I had a sinking feeling that the same thing would happen on this retreat.

As it turned out, no one in our cohort had the requisite "spiritual gifts" to lead that type of experience. What we did have were a couple of people who work in a camp ministry and regularly lead young children and teenagers in easy to learn music.

I loved it.

I'm generally quite reserved when it comes to music and worship. I don't dance when our crazy rabbi leads our minyan and I'm somewhat inhibited when it comes to clapping and such in other services. I just don't tend to feel the spirit that way and so have no reason to overcome my default staidness.

However, with this group of strangers I decided to just have fun, you know?

I don't often have fun. I enjoy myself and I experience satisfaction, contentment and happiness. However, grinning and giggling in fun are less frequent.

Still, with a brand-new babe sleeping in her Moby wrap and the sense of freedom brought on by successfully navigating our travel, I figured whatthehell.

So, each session, I danced as I peeled bananas with hand motions and laughed as I shouted, "Go Bananas! Go, go bananas!"

And I grinned as I looked around at all these other adults - working so hard to extend the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of God, with all of the seriousness that requires - spinning with their arms flailing like peels. I could be like them if I gave myself over to it. If I let God in enough to remind me that I have never been an outsider to her.

And then we sang, "As a deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee," and I could hear my junior high youth director sing in my head, "Bom, bom" in a rising third like he always did in those days when fun and the awakenings of spirituality were so inextricably bound together.

There comes a time in most new groups when I get some sort of feedback from the other people that I am now known and, often, liked. This time came on this trip when I was expressing my enthusiasm for the worship by saying, "This is so much better than two sensitive guys with guitars."

One of the men leaned over so he could see me, laughed and replied, "You just said that, didn't you," as disbelieving affirmation.

Yes. Yes, I did.

Now let me see your funky chicken.

2011-08-21T17:49:00.000-05:00

During Esther's check-up a couple of weeks ago, the doctor asked about developmental milestones and wrote the answers in her chart.

Doctor: Is she starting to smile yet?
Me: Yes.
Doctor: Is she starting to coo at you and make other pre-verbal noises?
Me: Yes.
Doctor: How is she sleeping at night?
Me: Well. She usually sleeps anywhere from 4 to 6 hours every night.

She looked up from the desk and said, "It's a pretty good life, isn't it?"

I smiled and agreed.

Raisins and Almonds

2011-08-18T17:41:00.000-05:00

The unexpected result of giving birth to Esther is that I have newly intense insight into how Jewish folks engage with the world.

You see, although Esther may one day choose to be a Christian, she is already Jewish. Some denominations recognize patrilineal descent in addition to the fact that she will practice the religion with her father and I, while also being surrounded by other Jewish folks who will treat her as Jewish. Birth, practice and culture are the three legs of the Jewish identity stool.

This was brought home to me when Jacob and I went to see The Last Act of Lilka Kadison at the Lookingglass Theater last weekend. The play was lovely and powerful, illustrating the universal human need to give life meaning through telling our stories by following a dying woman and her care giver as she struggles to re-member the love affair of her youth in Poland that was ended by the beginning of WWII. As an aside, I appreciate that our society has reached a point where the art that grows out the Holocaust no longer needs to include graphic retellings of the horrors of the camps (like Night) or to focus on the most tragic stories (like Sophie's Choice). Even simple stories of teenage romance disrupted before it could fully develop are important when never forgetting.

I had to keep myself from sobbing through much of the second half and although the play was well-written and elegantly staged, I wondered if something else was happening than just catharsis.

It turns out that I gave birth to a Jewish daughter and this affected my engagement with Jewish art.

These stories are my daughter's stories.

She belongs to the continuous line of people who have lived these experiences.

I am not like the guy on Seinfeld that converted in order to tell better jokes; I am not claiming the stories and experiences as my own. But a mother's love for her daughter is an entangling thing.

I am now entangled with the Jewish experience in a much more intense way that I was simply by marrying a Jewish man and practicing religiously with him.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with someone I love dearly about his insistence on using racial and ethnic slurs ironically and casually in conversation. His argument has always been that words themselves have no power to hurt and since his motivation is not hateful, people should back off.

He loves this clip from Louis CK (as do I) and I'll be honest, I am moved by a similar argument made by David Foster Wallace in his essay, "Authority and American Usage":

I should note here that a couple of the students I’ve said this stuff to were offended – one lodged an Official Complaint – and that I have had more than one colleague profess to find my spiel [regarding Standard Black and White English] “racially insensitive.” Perhaps you do, too. This reviewer’s own humble opinion is that some of the cultural and political realities of American life are themselves racially insensitive and elitist and offensive and unfair, and that pussyfooting around these realities with euphemistic doublespeak is not only hypocritical but toxic to the project of ever really changing them.

Since I do agree in theory with these folks, I'll tell you right out that my friend used the word, "kike," jokingly, trusting that I knew he's not actually bigoted in his choice. And while normally I would just give him a disapproving look and move on, instead I got really upset. When we came back to the conversation later, he made the points made above and I had two responses.

First, although I know he's not bigoted, he made the joke amongst a group of people for whom that could not be said quite so securely. They don't actually know many (any?) Jewish folks besides Jacob and a few of them have said distressing things in the past. Since my friend is a charismatic and influential guy, part of my upset reaction was that he was giving tacit permission to the rest of the group to also use that word.

Second, he made the joke in front of Esther. She's tiny now but she'll get bigger and no one really knows when verbal perception begins. Plus, it will be a long time before she really understands sarcasm and every other time she hears that word, it will be from people who don't like Jews simply because they are Jews or in the context of discussing those people.

I never want her to wonder - not even for an instant - whether this man that she loves dislikes her because she is Jewish.

On the other side of the coin, I know that we tend to believe our loved one's opinions about our identities and I don't want her to believe - not even with a tiny sliver of her mind - that being Jewish is a bad thing.

To his credit, my friend acknowledged my arguments and agreed not to use historically degrading words around my daughter. I know this gives the words continued power in the larger culture but I want to limit the amount that I sacrifice my children's well-being for the sake of the larger culture war. This is a battle I choose to back down from.

Seriously?

2011-08-01T22:46:00.001-05:00

It's like Industrial Light and Magic designed her to be adorable enough to market action figures of her.

Burns

2011-07-29T16:53:00.003-05:00

Today, I decided that I was ready to begin making challah bread for our shabbat again. (This readiness may be correlated with the fact that all the challah I made and froze before Esther was born is gone.)

While making it, I was rejoicing in her increasing ability to sit by herself in her little rocking chair. Up until the last couple of days, she has refused to be put down. At. All. (When other parents at a class I recently went to said very sweet things about "one thing they had learned" in the icebreaker session, I didn't stop before I answered honestly that I had learned how to ignore her crying.) But yesterday, she let me shower a full shower without hollering and today she was content while I got through all of the steps of baking up until adding the water and the yeast.

When I got there, I accidentally splashed her with just a few drops of boiling water.

I quickasaflash picked her up before the hollering started and she calmed down quickly enough without even a red mark to show for her mother's negligence. She spent the rest of the time with me in the Moby wrap (aka "the bag," as in "All right, back in the bag you go!").

The experience made me think of my trip to Africa and my realization that so many children there were seriously burned and scarred. A side of a face. A forearm. A shoulder. In a society where all meals are cooked on open flames, this is just one more hazard that kids routinely encounter. I can't imagine that life for my daughter or myself since I would have to watch her be burned so badly.

This type of psychological association is one of the major things that makes motherhood difficult for me. I have many very run-of-the-mill difficulties: Esther doesn't like to be put down, my body still isn't quite healed yet, Jacob and I are still in different beds since Esther will only sleep for any length of time when she's in the bed with me, frustration with my lack of ability to be productive, middle of the night fears that Esther's not eating enough or that I'm ruining her forever by not practicing tough love and building her character. (No need to comfort me on those last two: I know they're ridiculous and untrue but 2:30 in the morning is an evil hour for worrying.)

No matter how mundane each of our experiences are, with few exceptions, they produce valid emotions. Although we can tip over too far into self-pity, for the most part, each of us feels appropriately. I'm OK with this for the most part, my practice of the spirituality of imperfection generally makes it easier for me to process my emotions without judging myself for having them in the first place (which only compounds any paralysis I'm experiencing).

However, I'm struggling to keep up this practice lately. I keep comparing myself to moms that have to go back to work and single moms and moms in Africa or Iraq. My frustrations seem laughable in comparison and my self-perception is gradually shifting to a belief that I am weak because of the paths we are taking or the pace at which we are taking them. This is not a foreign experience for me but I can't remember how I snapped out of it in the past.

I am going to try to stop doing this. God gave me this life and it would be ingrateful of me to behave as if I had less blessings than I do. That is not the truth and I believe Jesus when he says that the truth will set me free. I think I have already made the first step by making a rule that I am no longer allowed to use the iPad to research parenting tips in the middle of the night. Instead, I'm reading Game of Thrones while Esther nurses. I'm feeling better already.

Relevance

2011-07-25T20:41:00.006-05:00

Last week, Esther and I went to California for a professional development retreat. We got through security at the airport, traveled beautifully through both the take-off and landing, and then drove 5 hours north, stopping a few times so Esther could eat.

Whew!

We stayed at an old hippie commune with 25 other people who are also passionate about community development, getting to know one another, doing a little training and eating good meals together.

As part of the events, we wrote reflection papers on In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen.

Despite my seeming pulled-together-ness last week, I'm still struggling to get much done during the day, so I am sharing it with you so that this space won't become a total desert.

This is the second time in my life that Henri Nouwen has incensed me. Such powerful emotions. This happens to me sometimes when people write well and are clearly writing truth out of their authentic experiences with God. I am a reader. Bookish, even. I want to relate to the protagonists of the books I read. I want to see myself in them and I want to become more like them. I just named my daughter for two protagonists in books that I want her to be like.

So, when a writer like Nouwen speaks of experiences that seem utterly inaccessible to me, I become incensed. I have developed tools for feeling this way. First, I write a lot of angry annotations in the margins of the book. Second, I try to clearly articulate arguments about why the author’s lessons don’t apply to me and finally, I remember that I’m not in charge (thank goodness) and ask God to show me how the lessons apply to me.

So, the margin-writing is done and it’s time to articulate the differences between Nouwen’s experience and my own.

First, Nouwen seems to equate Christian leadership with priests and ministers. Are only those who are called to professional ministry the only people who are Christian leaders? If this is the definition that Nouwen is working with, at what angle should lay-leaders and worker bees view his lessons? It’s possible that there are options for non-pastoral Christian leaders outside of what he outlines here. So, although Nouwen exhorts pastors to move toward irrelevance and reconciliation on a micro scale, maybe others of us are called to work towards impact.

Which leads me to my major disagreement with Nouwen. I am 33 years old – Jesus’s age – and have spent a lot of time in prayer and in community, learning what my spiritual gifts are. I try not to become complacent, but value working toward constantly honing and refining those gifts, as well as taking myself out of my own comfort zone to discover whether or not any latent gifts are waiting to emerge.

Caring for others is not one of my gifts. I am abrasive, I problem-solve better than I listen, I get peopled out very quickly and I need to recharge in true introvert form by spending literally plural hours a day in quiet alone-time.

I have found my servant niche as an administrator. Frederick Buechner says, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I am deeply glad when I am puzzling out obstacles to an organization’s success and developing strategic plans to further the Kingdom of God through organizational efficiency.

Since most folks in ministry and non-profits would agree that there is a deep need for this kind of work, I became comfortable years ago that my path was a different one from Shane Claiborne or Bart Campolo. I have been called by God to macro-level reconciliation.

Because I believe that we are to be more Christ-like, I do push myself to do some incarnational ministry. My church attracts quite a few social misfits and I practice a spirituality of hospitality to all, including those who annoy me. I make myself vulnerable to them, remembering my own misfit status and accepting their ministrations for my brokenness as well as being available to their needs.

In fact, I agree heartily with Nouwen that part of our spiraling spiritual walk involves rediscovering and exposing our vulnerable selves that bring nothing to God’s table but our brokenness. I am engaged in a life-long process of truly acknowledging my real relationship with God (i.e. that I am not, in fact, God).

However, I cannot believe that God intended for my parts that are not totally broken to be overwhelmed by the cracks and be in a constant state of uselessness. Jesus was effective both because he taught and because he sacrificed himself to be resurrected. In fact, each role was necessary to give the other divine meaning. In other words, if Jesus has not taught, his sacrifice would not have meant much (or possibly even have occurred) and if he had not been resurrected, his teachings would not have drawn the attention of people that needed to hear them for the last 2000 years. Similarly, my weaknesses and my strengths are interdependent to my participation in the Kingdom of God here on Earth. It is not time yet for me to retire to an intentional community and focus my energy on individuals rather than systemic change.

Frankly, it seems a little unfair for Nouwen to say, “Be irrelevant” now that he has had the privilege of being relevant for the last 20 years.

Of course, whenever I spend this much energy rebutting someone, I need to look inside myself to figure out what I’m insecure about that’s causing me to put my own views forward so vehemently. I think the most obvious answer is that motherhood is forcing me into a less impactful stage of life. I use the word “impact” in it’s most technical sense meaning measurable achievement of goals. In becoming – ugh – a stay-at-home mom, I actually am retiring to an intentional community to focus my energy on individuals rather than systemic change. I do not have a set plan to go back to work, meaning I am setting aside my training, my degree, and my network. I have heard women describe this as dying for our children in obedience to Christ’s teaching that we die in order to live in him. While that resonates as truth when I hear it, I’m still struggling to know if it is the right path for me. There are lots of different truths out there.

I know that I am called to use the privilege that I was born with to leverage the work of street-level practitioners in order to help change the world so that more people can reach the potential God intends for them rather than being stunted by oppression and lack of resources. I have not yet figured out how to do that while also creating a healthy environment for my nascent family.

That lack of resolution causes me to rail at Henri Nouwen and motivates me to ask this cohort for help in discerning my path.

By the time we shared these essays at the end of the week, I almost felt like it no longer applied. Many of my cohorts also feel a calling toward impact: God's justice in addition to God's mercy. There were several other mothers there who were clearly figuring out a balance. We're going to meet several times more over the next two years and I'm looking forward to becoming friends and figuring out some of these things.

Esther Alanna

2011-06-25T08:31:00.001-05:00

I'm pleased to introduce to you my tiny daughter, Esther Alanna.

She was born last Sunday after a fairly difficult labor and delivery both healthy and surrounded by immense joy.

She was 8 pounds and 7 ounces and 21 inches long. She also has gigantic feet. She has a full head of the softest hair I have ever stroked and I am unembarrassed in fulfilling the cliché of a new parent who can spend huge chunks of time simply looking at he baby when once she itched to be "productive" with handicrafts in every idle moment.

Jacob has taken to fatherhood like a duck to water, to embrace another cliche. This morning he stumbled into the nursery, bleary-eyed and smiling, demanding his turn to hold her. He somehow sensed that she was done eating from the other room. I am healing and get worm out pretty quickly and Jacob has been amazing both in his uncomplaining assumption of all domestic chores and in his total support of me when I get overtired and despair or lose all perspective with which to problem-solve the frustrations that come up.

I thank God multiple times a day that this baby arrived when she did in my life, with this partner. I am also reminded regularly by my body what an amazing machine God constructed to be so powerful and with the ability to be taxed to it's limits and then to heal with resiliency afterwards.

My best friend Susan was present for all four days of labor and all three hours of pushing and delivery. When I helped my other friends give birth, the mother told me that she couldn't have done it without me. I thought she was being sincere but hyperbolic until my own birthing experience. Without Susan to cradle my head and shoulders, lifting them up and curling me forward with every push, talking to me and providing a focus for my energy, they would have had to send me up for a c-section. She has known me intimately for 12 years and is a god leader in all sorts of circumstances. Helping me was the perfect combination of her skills. Her presence allowed Jacob to be present for his own experience of becoming a father, allowing him to witness and assist in Esther's emergence, building a foundation for their relationship. I am so grateful for the balance that Susan's effort allowed Jacob and I to experience.

I hope to write out my birth story for those of you who are interested, as well as to tell you more about her names. I hope to continue feeling better so that I can do this.

Welcome to the world, sweet baby girl. I have been struck over and over again in the last week by just how enlarged my soul feels at the prospect of sharing what I have collected, learned and created with you. The dancing means more now that your father and I have you to dance with.

Due dates are not deadlines

2011-06-08T21:11:00.003-05:00

When I was an adolescent, my father would regularly greet me by replacing my name with whatever was emblazoned on my t-shirt. "Hey, A Midsummer Night's Dream!" "Good morning, multi-colored bugs!" "Hello, Winter Retreat '92!" When you read those sentences, be sure to hear them with an overly enthusiastic sportscaster voice and quite possible a slow rise in pitch to the exclamation point at the end.

It was horrifying.

Once, he had to resort to simply, "Hey, red shirt." I think he might have embarrassed even himself when he said, "How ya doin', Glen Ellyn Girls Softball All-Star Team!"

I hated it and he had to know it. I was not necessarily subtle in my eye rolls, my angry huffing and my mumbles (which were far from sotto voce). I'm sure I actually yelled at him for it once or twice. I believe that my main complaint was that he had named me a perfectly nice name, why did he insist on ignoring it? The reality, of course, is that his motivations were mostly to engage me on the topics of things I cared about and to be playful. However, this was combined with a general perverse love of harassment, especially when the recipient is not receptive. I watch him do this to my 15-month-old niece now so it certainly wasn't personal then. The reality about why it pissed me off had more to do with wanting people to value me for me, not what I wore or what I did.

I told this story to my friend, Mark, who now has two children of his own that are old enough to talk. Usually, Mark thinks my stories are great and that I am a generally very charming tragi-comic protagonist in them.

This time, however, Mark just let his forehead drop into his hands and said, "Your poor father."

Traitor.

It's one thing when I recognize that I have a history of being less than gracious. That's humility, a spiritual blessing. It's totally different when someone else sides with your embarrassing dad. That's basically an attack, right?

All joking aside, Mark gets it. I'm learning that loving your child is scary intense and mine isn't even on the outside yet, much less talking. I have had lots of conversations about how mean kids are to each other but we don't talk much about how mean kids are to their parents. How do you defend yourself against that kind of rejection?

Anyway, I've been telling people the first part of that story as an illustration of how I expected it to be difficult as my pregnancy started to show more and more and people began to think that this parasite inside of me was their business. The story proves that for a long time in my life, I have struggled when I feel like people don't see and engage me and I feel instead like they are treating me like a vehicle for something that they actually care about. I have hated when people ask me about how my sick relative is doing before asking how I am doing. I have hated when people asked me about wedding details instead of what I actually cared about: marriage. Whether they actually are prodding only for information to interests them (like I fear) or whether they they are looking for a way to break the ice (which is usually true), most people just want to connect if they're bothering to talk at all. It's not their fault I'm an unforgiving bitch with insanely high standards for intra-personal interaction when I get stressed out.

So, slowly, I have been working on becoming more and more gracious when people express interest in my life cycle events. I remember to be grateful that people care about me at all. I also remember sometimes that everything isn't always about me and that sometimes people are interested about my life cycle events because it reminds them of their own experiences, which is not a bad thing.

Or, sometimes, I remind myself that maybe they are just being kind because I'm looking a little bedraggled and they want to give me the opportunity to vomit a little something up to see if I'll feel better, like holding someone's hair when they've had too much to drink.

I expected to have to practice these skills with determination as my pregnancy become more and more visually undeniable. People warned me that strangers would want to touch me. I knew many of my co-workers would ask the same questions daily as greetings.

This is where the grace of God comes in.

Because I haven't seemed to mind these intrusions on my social space. Actually, very few people want to touch the belly (maybe I haven't completely shed the air of intimidation I carry with me) and the obvious excitement of others fills me with joy and I can feel myself glowing. I embody the cliche. Apparently, I love being pregnant and love being reminded of it.

There are exceptions, of course. One woman at work always takes my polite acceptance of chit-chat as a challenge to say something that will shock me. For example:
Co-worker - Girl, you are getting big!
Rebecca - I know, right?
Co-worker - Naw, you don't know. It's going to get much bigger than that.

And once an old lady touched my belly as I was getting out of the shower at the YMCA.

But yesterday a tiny old woman standing outside the hospital told me in a thick accent, "Be strong."

And I heard a lady in the pool exclaim in delight to her friend, "It's been so long since I've seen a pregnant woman."

Also, several street people have not even bothered to ask me for change in the window they have with me as I walk past, preferring instead to speculate on the gender of this little one.

On the bus yesterday, an 88-year-old woman with nubs for teeth - but who was otherwise generally clean - used my pregnancy as entree to get me to guess her middle name then entertained the entire bus with her loud and ridiculous storytelling. (Her cat is named Pussycat, even though it's a boy because it's not like she's going to call him Peniscat, is she?)

So many people do literal double-takes as they pass me. I assume this is because I am so big and so dramatically carrying it all in front, like I've stuffed a pillow up my shirt. Women smile at the sight of me and I can tell they don't realize they are doing it until I smile back.


This is me three weeks ago. Imagine what I look like now that I'm a full 40 weeks!

This baby causes so much joy in the world and s/he's not even born yet. It won't be a blank slate when it's born; it will have already had a good 3-4 months of meaning and purpose in the world racked up in the tikkun olam column.

However, I have found recently that I really do not like when people ask me when the baby is due and more recently when friends send texts and write on my facebook wall asking if contractions have started yet. For all that I laugh it off when people inquire if I'm dilated yet (really? the inside of my vagina is your business?), it's hard when people talk about due dates as if they were deadlines and calculate in their heads whether or not I'm late. Or when they project onto me their anxiousness for me to push this baby out already, I experience for the first time in this season that objectification I have felt in the past. I'm actually quite content to wait out my body's endgame and it feels like people who assume that I'm anxious for this pregnancy to end don't actually care about me and my unique experience.

So, I sat down and problem-solved in my head some responses so that I could remain gracious. When folks ask about when the baby is due, often I simply say, "Any day now." If they persist, I have a little friendly lecture about the arbitrary nature of due dates that consists of two points: 1. Most are based upon the first day or your last period and are not related to the date of actual conception and 2. I am not a microwave so my body should not just automatically go into labor at 40 weeks. A little good-natured educatin' goes a long way to communicated to people that I'm not interested in their stock responses of "not long now!" (For some decent data on due dates, check out Space Fem.)

For the friends who have been checking in with me by asking if the baby has arrived yet, I have decided to simply ignore them. Regardless of their good intentions, it makes me feel bad and I've decided to have a little grace for myself and not push myself too hard to be a better person in addition to dealing with swollen feet in this 95 degree weather.

But for the friends (and my mother-in-law) who end voice mails with, "you totally don't have to call me back; I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you" and who write lovely comments about how good I look or what a great mom they think I'll be, I treasure these words up and ponder them in my heart. Then, I try to affirm their responses.

I want to tell you that my dad falls into that second group of sensitive people. He left a message for me today where he successfully affirmed that he and my mom were ready to support me when I go into labor without implying that labor should hurry up and start. This is a sophisticated little piece of communication to pull off. When listening to the message, I felt so good that he has been paying attention to my actual state of mind regarding this stage of pregnancy and that he refrained from harassing me, even though that's a pattern that we're both now mostly comfortable with. I feel good when he's tender with me sometimes both because that feels good and because it means that maybe I've become a little better at letting him love me so he doesn't have to proactively defend himself against my eye-rolling.

Like figuring out how to successfully interact with . . . you know . . . people, parenting is going to be perplexing and hard, dude. But if even my dad can figure it out, all hope is not yet lost.

Intercessory prayer

2011-05-26T10:23:00.000-05:00

I have had several experiences in my life of praying fervently for something on behalf of a loved one and feeling closer to God because of my desires. In the history of my spirituality, these experiences are fairly evenly spaced with intellectually acknowledging that I don't actually want to be in a relationship with a God who changes her mind because enough people beg her to.

I am usually content to let both of those extremes exist together and I'm pretty comfortable knowing that even if the only result of prayer is that it changes me, that is enough to make the action worthwhile. I'm pretty sure it changes me to bring me more into alignment with the place in which I actually fit in this world. That is, if I remember that I am dependent upon God, I might remember where I'm supposed to stand in relationship with everyone else, too.

In church on Sunday, a phrase written by Hafiz was the epigraph for the entire service: "Your breath is a sacred clock, my dear-- Why not use it to keep time with God's Name?" It's amazing how my ponderings tend to converge on a unifying theme.

As I understand it, labor involves much breathing. In fact, pregnancy has involved much breathing. Anyone around me can tell when I'm nauseous or feeling a Braxton-Hicks contraction or just generally uncomfortable because I start blowing air out of pursed lips.

I have had a few showers thrown for me in the last couple of weeks and at most of them, we have asked people to write down their prayers of supplication so that while I am breathing like a sacred clock during the early stages of labor, I can do so in time with God's name.

My blogger friend, Baraka, has inspired this request. Toward the end of her own pregnancy, she wrote about a Muslim tradition that gives women the opportunity to make prayers of supplication – called du’a – during labor.

She explained: “[A laboring woman] has been imbued with the ability to create life by the One who created all life. The word for'womb' in Arabic, rahm, comes from the same root of the word that the Creator uses to describe Himself most often, ar-Rahman, the Most Merciful One.

Labor’s sacred secret is that not only is it purposeful in bringing a child into the world, but it holds the power of prayers answered for oneself and for others. In the throes of deep pain and bringing forth life, the woman is utterly close to her Creator.”

This sentiment closely parallels my own understanding that we finally let God get into our hearts through the cracks and brokenness of our lives, including when we are in pain.

Please consider prayers I can make on your behalf and on behalf of your families and leave them in the comments below or send me an email so that I can make du’a during my labor to help me remember my constant connection to God.

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!

2011-05-23T01:47:00.024-05:00

UPDATE - Sorry this has taken so long but our winner is #10, Phoenix Peacock. In response to the final snarky comment, I am so glad to find a good home for this treasure since I do not have the local community of friends with crafting skills that she assumes I must have and I have found the online crafting community to be amazingly trustworthy. I'm not worried that any of Sew Mama Sew's readers are going to exploit or abuse this afghan in any way. :-)

One of our tenants had to move out quickly to take care of some health issues and left this gorgeous afghan behind. Someone had put too much time and energy into it for this crafter to simply hand it over to the Salvation Army.

I'm hoping that the Sew Mama Sew crowd will provide a good home for it.

I'm not sure if it is crocheted or tatted, or even what the difference is between the two. My ignorance on the subject means that I am not the person to do the necessary repairs since there are several holes. The total dimensions are 100 inches by 100 inches and seems to be made from cotton.

I'm only shipping within the US and I really want this to go to someone who will respect the memory of the woman who originally made this by making the necessary repairs.

Leave a comment below and I'll choose someone randomly in a week. Please leave your email in the body of the comment so I can contact you.

Good luck!

Preserving Beauty

2011-05-13T18:34:00.000-05:00

My amazing friend Jess has begun a blog called Preserving Beauty that uses the metaphor of canning and preserving food to express and discuss larger issues of how to sustain the things that nourish us. She brings in guest writers, as well as writing about these topics herself, and intersperses those essays with stories and recipes for literal canning and food preservation. Plus, gorgeous photographs.

I love it love it love it.

She asked me to write a guest post and it went up today. I'd love it if you would check it out: Preserving Beauty Means Asking For Help.

Oxytocin

2011-05-02T07:33:00.000-05:00

Skin to skin contact is kind of amazing.

A nurse friend with a newborn says that when the baby won't stop crying, she strips off her own clothes, she strips the baby down and then puts her in the Moby wrap because she needs the skin-to-skin hormones this produces so she won't drop the baby off at the fire station.

This last month or so of pregnancy is proving pretty hard for me. I'm still exercising regularly and going to yoga. I meet up with friends for coffee, especially friends with babies, now that I'm only working one day a week. I see my therapist and am going to church again. I'm doing all of the things that you are supposed to do to stay emotionally and physically healthy.

And yet, there are days when I cannot stop feeling panicky and like the tears are just below the surface if anyone cared to prod.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Actually, it's pretty amazing to think about (if not to live through). It's easy to think of this last trimester as simple in terms of the baby's development. The baby puts on weight and the lungs finish developing. However, on Saturday, I felt fine. On Sunday, I was flooded with hormones. It is not static in my belly. It is a highly coordinated effort on the part of my body to create a complex living creature. We are not simply gaining weight.

So, I woke up in pain because hauling my girth from side to side in the bed makes my back hurt by the time morning comes. Most mornings, I'm OK with this, but yesterday it caused me despair that set me off on the course of the day. I tried to focus on just one task at a day, willing myself not to think about an entire day like this, which would be overwhelming, but instead just thinking about unloading the dishwasher. Folding the towels. Showering. Answering one email. Not panicking.

Don't ask me what I was panicking about. My actual life was not the cause of these feelings. The hormones were. Oh, once the feeling is there, I can generate a list of things worth panicking about. And they are valid. Jacob is an amazing partner and never treats me like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. He says, "If you set up the Netflix to watch a Monk, I'll eat my lunch, rub your feet and then fold the laundry." Then, he gets his own lunch, gets the laundry AND sets up the Netflix because I haven't lifted my head from the couch and have, in fact, begun crying.

But the foot rub was magical.

The tears stopped and the panicky feeling eased. The marvel at his enjoyment/jealousy of Monk's idiosyncrasies that is always present surfaced into actual laughter from me.

Skin to skin contact.

I know that we all rightly wonder how single moms parent without going crazy. Not having anyone to share responsibility with for the rigors of parenting is a daunting prospect.

I don't know how single moms get through pregnancy without a partner to touch.

That's how I went through the day yesterday. Put fabric away on the shelves. Put my hands on my husband's shoulders. Put beans in the crock pot for church. Sit in the chair next to him checking the computer with my hand on his knees. Read my book. Go for a walk holding hands.

And when I begged him with my eyes and I tried to calmly state, "I would love it if you slept with me tonight but I understand that you have work tomorrow," he brought his pillow out of the guest room and spooned up next to me.

Neither of us was physically happy this morning: he had dark circles under his eyes and my back was screaming in pain. We have gotten very used to the physical selfishness of separate beds as I have grown increasingly thrash-y. But I don't feel any panic as I type this. I, in fact, feel capable of writing, instead of weighted down by the items higher on the priority list that should be completed in this time.

8 hours of skin-to-skin contact worked its magic.

Woman, why are you weeping?

2011-04-24T22:20:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago, my blogging friend, Erika, used this quote from Heather Armstrong in one of her posts:

“I fart, you fart, we fart, they fart. People in bathrooms fart. If there’s a place on earth where you should be able to fart, where it’s wholly legal to fart, it’s a bathroom, for crying out loud.”

She was commenting on witnessing women giggling at the gas of another woman in a public restroom. Erika did an amazing job of connecting this to church, basically pointing out that, similarly, we should not be ashamed to lose our shit and cry in church.
When Mary goes to the grave of her beloved pastor who has just been brutally tortured and killed and finds that in addition to those indignities, someone has stolen his body? She loses her shit and cries in that hallowed place, in church. She wanders the cemetary in her grief, asking anyone she comes across if they saw anything or heard anything about who took the body. They ask her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"

Mary was not the only one being asked that question during the Easter service tonight at my church. When we opened up our service by singing All Creatures of our God and King, I didn't make it to the first set of Alleluias before losing my own shit and crying. Big fat tears. It got my bulletin wet. I felt bad touching the microphone afterwards in order to pass it down to someone. I tried not to slime but anyone on the receiving end would have to be suspicious.

Jacob asked about it on our way home and I tried to explain. I have been really wrestling with a desire to avoid church lately. When I think about going, it just seems like so much work. I've been a leader at my church almost from as soon as I started going there and I feel a certain, almost civic, responsibility to contribute positively to our culture of hospitality when I'm there. One of the things I love most about our church is that it not a dispenser for religious services. You can't just show up, pay your offerings, get a little spiritual candy bar and leave anonymously. This is a place for folks who are looking for community. So, I introduce myself to people and ask them questions about themselves. I keep my eyes open for awkward introverts and make sure they get a personal invitation to stay for dinner. I touch base with people I know well and talk with them about things I've seen on their Facebook pages. And so many of them do the same for me. It's an amazing dynamic.

But, man, that's hard some days when all you want to be is anonymous. When all you want is to crawl into a dark room, curl up into a ball and wait for God to show up and tuck you in so you can finally rest. At times like these, going to church feels like just as I'm reaching over to turn out the bedside lamp and people keep knocking at the door to ask if I need a glass of water or to ask me one last question or to sit on the side of the bed and tell me about their terrible night.

I've been dealing with some difficult life transition issues for the last few months, in addition to my advancing pregnancy plus Passover really took it out of me. And I'm realizing that I haven't finished grieving over the absence of my friends who moved in August.

I've talked about my church avoidance with my pastor and with the rest of the leadership team and with my monthly small group of church leaders from other churches. Everyone keeps giving me permission to take care of myself, either by not coming on Sundays or by coming and functioning at a reduced hospitality capacity. This is a wonderful response from people who love me very much. So many people are not supported when they need to cut back. But still, I chafe and it doesn't sit quite well with me. I especially don't like it when I start wondering if maybe my needs have changed and I should start looking for a new church home. This makes me uncomfortable in a lot of ways. So, even though I missed a lot of Christmas this year but I couldn't quite bring myself to find some "high church" Passion week services to go to. A half-hearted google search was all I could muster.

So, Jacob and I went to the Maundy Thursday service. It was a good experience for the most part but I felt like my contributions were a little shrill and bossy. This happens sometimes and I know it's also similar to farting in the bathroom. If you can't bring your whole self to church, even the shrill and bossy bits, then your problems are bigger than one night of making a bad impression on people. It wasn't the quiet tenebrae service that I was longing for but it was good to sit with people we know and dedicate some time to thinking about the season. Then, we showed up for Easter Sunday tonight and opened with a hymn that connected me to every Easter of my youth.

I had changed out of my maternity velour sweatsuit and put on my current favorite outfit, which has become my variation on wearing a new Easter dress in my adult life. You know, that outfit in which you have no insecurities about how good you look? In fact, you look exactly like your very best self? I wore that one. As we walked from the car to the church, I reveled in feeling just a little bit under-dressed for the weather but not being so cold that I became disgruntled. This is a very Easter feeling for me. Who has ever wanted to put a winter coat on over a spring dress? And a new one at that? Better to hunt for Easter eggs feeling a little chill.

Between the physical sensation of chilliness and the cascading Alleluias, I was broken wide open. In all my talk of having my needs met and putting effort into creating a certain social dynamic, I can't believe that I forget time and time again that church is a place where we meet God. Sometimes that's through other people and sometimes it more intangible than that. Today, God came to find me and ask me about some things she's noticed lately but reminding me of where I come from. By weaving me back into the traditions of my youth and reminding me that I belong to a long tradition of people engaging God in similar ways. That part of why I love this church is because I get to be Presbyterian and contribute to a healthy future for this denomination by building a new model for how to do church. That, in fact, the reason we sing a traditional Easter carol is that I pushed for it a few years ago. This church would be different if I did not contribute to it. Not necessarily worse, but different.

That's powerful stuff. Even when I feel like there are about four different leadership projects at church in which I should be taking a more active role because of my unique skills and talents, including just plain showing up. I have had an impact here. What glamour does being anonymous hold compared to that?

I found that when our service concluded and we moved on to potluck, my earlier physical exhaustion from a day keeping house and making marmalade had dissipated. My trepidation about engaging people didn't even occur to me. I was home and I loved hugging my friend as she cried, introducing myself to someone new, making sure all the food had serving spoons and asking about the toddler's new Easter dress. This is home for me and when God breaks me wide open, I remember that. It's really no work at all.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings

The Princess and the Pea

2011-04-19T16:22:00.000-05:00

Hi folks. I am recovering physically from preparing the house for Passover and cooking for our Seders. Last night we had three toddlers and a four-year-old (in additional to 11 adults), so we needed to go past our usual tidying to actually dealing with the piles of crap that had built up in the corners as we have been rearranging, acquiring and purging furniture to make the house efficiently serve our family values of hospitality and baby-raising. Also, I didn't want the crawler to go home with dirty knees so some major deep-cleaning needed to be done.

Jacob is an amazing partner: taking direction, using initiative and showing understanding when I need to stop and rest.

Yesterday, I made homemade gefilte fish, a huge brisket, homemade horseradish sauce, matzoh ball soup and what feels like a bazillion other things.

So, after my midwife appointment this morning and some errands, I have plunked my ass into my new recliner in the baby's room (where we did have to pile up some crap that we didn't have time to put away in their forever homes), letting my body rest. I am discovering that in this last trimester, physical exhaustion manifests itself as emotional instability. So, as much as I do not like the lack of productivity that sitting in the recliner forces onto me, I vastly prefer it as a preventative to weeping.

I will need to get up eventually and make a fresh batch of matzoh balls, as well as slice the brisket to warm it and prep the asparagus. However, until then, I want to talk to you about princesses.

One of my favorite t-shirts right now was a Christmas gift. At the time I thought, "This is so huge!" but now I am grateful for the roominess. I don't have a picture of it with me in it but I can show you the catalog picture.

Normally, this would not be my style at all. The generic arabesque font and design elements, the glitter, the rhinestones and the fact that it is pink would all mark it for the Salvation Army bag. I am a terrible elitist and the acrylic nails with the French manicure on the model only confirm that I am not the intended market for this product.

However, I have a strange relationship with my title as a Princess.

I grew up as the only girl among three brothers and approximately 75% of the time, when people learn this, they say, "Oh, so you were the princess, right?" I agree with them good-naturedly but I know that their definition does not actually match my experience.

I think most people picture a girly-girl in patent-leather shoes, Shirley Temple-style, who had her parents wrapped around her little finger, getting whatever gifts and attention she wanted because what she wanted was so special when compared with the rough-and-tumble nature of her brothers.

Yeah. Not so much. I don't know how to distance myself from that image without sounding full of denial but I'll try.

My dad and I fought constantly. Ours was a complicated relationship. I was totally unaware of the power I had over his affection because I was so angry with his attempts to get me to do . . . well . . . anything. As a family, we have all come to acknowledge that many of my father's parenting requests were often arbitrary and tyrannical, but many of them were also pretty reasonable. Bike safety, manners and respect for other members in the family are, in fact, lessons that good parents teach their children with a variety of methods. Still, I resented his attempts to guide me and the power he had to coerce me when I dug in my heels too far. Also, I'm pretty sure that the force of my personality and the depth of his love for me allowed me to win more of those power struggles than a parenting book would say that I should have. Just because I was totally unaware of my power doesn't mean that I didn't use it unconsciously.


See? I let him love me sometimes.

Did we have fun? Yes. Did we laugh a lot? Yes. Did his struggle to teach me skills that would make me successful pay off in the long run? Yes. Does my cell phone bill show that he is the person I spend the most amount of time on the phone with per month now that we're both adults? Yes.

But, as a kid, whenever my father addressed me as "Princess," it was usually sarcastic. He did not hold me in the air and playfully ask, "Who is the prettiest princess?" At least, I don't remember it that way. It was usually something like, "Well. Princess. Did you want that?" after I had barged in somewhere to take something that, yes, I did want. I remember being 19 years old or so and sitting in on a meeting he was having with a donor to his organization. I wasn't at the conference table but nearby on a couch, waiting for them to wrap up. However, they said something that, in my 19-year-old hubris, I thought I could shed some light on. I don't even think I turned around to look at them; I think I might have just spoken loudly so they could hear what my thoughts were. Because I never doubted that they would be interested. To break the awkward tension this must have created in their business meeting, my father said, "Well. Princess. Did you have an opinion on that?" I was totally oblivious.

This story is pretty typical of my entire childhood when it came to telling other people what I thought I knew. I remember learning about feminism in high school and reading about how many girls don't raise their hands in class because they believe that boys won't like smart girls.

I was blown away.

I had never made that connection. As much as I wanted the boys to like me, it had never occurred to me to change my behavior that way to get what I wanted. I liked being smart so much that my sub-conscious must have just made that decision for me without bothering my pretty little conscious mind about it. Like I said, oblivious. And, Princess.

But this is not the image that folks have when they ask if I was the princess in my family.


One of my favorite outfits. The buttons had a picture of Annie and Sandy on them. My grandma made it.

Additionally, my mom did not model girlie-girl culture to me. For example, when I was 9 or 10 and wanted to grow out my pixie hair cut, she warned me that she wouldn't be able to help me put it into pigtails or braids because she didn't know how. We shopped a decent amount together, which is typical of the mother-daughter transmission of princess culture but I remember a lot of helpful conversations about whether I really needed things and about my allowance/babysitting money that were tempered with indulgences.


My little brother got full-sleeve tattoos when he was 19. Coincidence?

I wore precious outfits whenever I would let my mom put them on me and often wore matching outfits with my younger brother (who was even worse about letting my mom dress him). But I was not demanding frothy pink gowns and tiaras. I think the closest I came to that is when I wore a flower girl dress to play in constantly. I have no memory of this.


Seriously. These pictures are better for how they depict my brother's knees than for illustrating my personal fashion history.

Aside from the clothes I wore when we were getting dressed up to go somewhere, I mostly remember wearing clothes like the clothes my brothers wore. Maybe they were hand-me-downs? Maybe not.


Baseball helmets, Luke Skywalker underoos, overalls, my babydoll George, and a wooden tripod. I can only imagine what we game we had dreamed up that afternoon.

If I had wanted a princess costume, I'm sure my grandma would have made me one. She was a horrible woman but I think she was trying to show love in the only way she could when she made doll clothes and actual clothes for me. She certainly would have indulged a princess dress request if I had thought to make it.

Queen at Medievalfest my junior year. The fabric came from the calico section at House of Fabrics.

When I got older, I do remember longing for medieval and Renaissance-type costumes. This longing would be especially strong after I finished a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. When that would happen, I would pull out my stack of catalogs that I had written a letter to the company in order to get on their mailing list that sold Ren Faire costumes. Many were mom and pop outfits but I remember getting the Folkwear Catalog once a year and Jacob and I bonded because we both got Museum Replicas Limited at similar ages. I was well into high school at this point and soon made my own costume from cheap cotton, which escalated to getting a job at the actual Renaissance Faire several years later.

In later years, I was told this was called the ice cream dress. Blessedly, I was not told this until I had grown out of my innocence gently and at my own pace.

However, I think that fantasy is a little different than the princess persona that 5-year-old girls currently experience. Which is why I'm a little embarrassed to be wearing my Princess and the Pea t-shirt. I feel like I'm representing an identity that I don't actually claim. When I object to the spoiled dog being called Princess or my niece taking my title, I am defending something other than pink plastic high heels and purple feather boas.

I just finished reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter. This is the second book by Peggy Orenstein that I have read and it was exactly what I needed to help me think in a more focused way about gender typing and this baby I'm about to put forth into the world. We do not know whether we will have a boy or a girl but, either way, I want this child to have a broad range of experiences open to him or her. I know that Jacob and I will not be the only influences on this child's sense of what is possible but I want to limit how much corporations (and their minions, the other children at pre-school) tell my child what they can and can't do because of his or her gender. This includes the pink/blue stranglehold we'll have to dodge when shopping for clothes and toys.

I'm haunted by this blog post that shows the colors of corporate logos. It's titled "The Most Powerful Colors in the World." It has a whole bunch of charts showing the most popular and financially successful colors and charting them according to the color of their logo. Regardless of whether their choice of color contributed to the success or whether the success reflects on the color choice when others make it, can you guess which color is barely represented? (Click to enlarge.)

Orenstein presents some persuasive evidence that our kids do seem to make gender-differentiated choices out of instinct. (She points out that as parents, we can broaden their horizons, as well.) Preferring the color pink is not one of them. This seems to be a purely social construct and when I look at those graphs, I can't help but think that we're unwittingly contributing to the status quo that believes as truth that men belong in business and women to softer pursuits. Long-time readers kno how much I hate being part of systems that oppress people, even people who are far removed from the direct consequences of my actions. Can you imagine how much more I hate the idea of enlisting my child - boy or girl - as an accomplice? If I only buy thrift store clothing to avoid rewarding companies that use sweat shops, if I buy organic meat, dairy and produce whenever possible with the money I saved from the thrift store, if forego the salary my fancy degrees could get me in order to pursue justice professionally, how to I do fight gender inequality in the choices I make on behalf of my child without actually damaging my child by making him or her an outcast among his or her peers and/or totally antagonizing the kid to the point that I've sacrificed years of family harmony for the sake of the larger cause?

I have no idea.

Reading the book helped, though. Acknowledging that my own princess experience was different from the one my own daughter will experience helps, too. Being able to sew and craft also helps ease my mind that I do not have to deny my child completely when I deny her corporate crap. (Have you seen some of the costumes Amy Karol makes her daughters? Here, here and here.)

I also know that it will be a phase that we'll weather like any other phase. I'll ask a lot of leading questions and make a lot of safe space to encourage conversation about thoughts my kid will have as he or she engages the world. I will also not beat myself up if I give in to corporate temptation every once in awhile.

At least I think that's how it will go. The only thing I'm sure about when it comes to parenthood (6 to 10 weeks left at this points, folks) is that it could go any which way it wants and the best way to make God laugh is to tell her your plans.

The Sartorialist

2011-04-01T18:05:00.002-05:00

http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-streetangelika-milan.html
I have been thinking about this post and the backlash this week. I think that the outrage is prompted because "curvy" DOES describe weight in today's culture. It, as well as "sturdy" and "bigger" are some of the few words that woman with normal body sizes (i.e. - almost every woman over 25 not involved in the fashion industry) have left to describe themselves positively/neutrally. To appropriate the words for a skinny woman simply because she's relatively large for their narrow community just adds salt to the wound that normal people experience in regards to image and self-esteem.

I think Scott puts up a pretty pathetic argument about the vagueness of the word "normal." In fact, by definition, normal are folks that make up a majority of any particular characteristic. It's the opposite of "outlier." So, asking which woman - 5'0" or 5'9" - should be considered normal is a false question. Neither of them is. The women who are around 5'5" are normal. So, since the average dress in America is a size 12, describing a woman who is, at most, a size 6, by words that belong to average-sized and plus-sized women is insulting.

Me want food!

2011-03-10T20:54:00.001-06:00

The most common question that I get asked during this pregnancy is whether or not I have any weird cravings. Pretty much, the answer is "no."

Sure there was that little incident in the first trimester that had me sitting in the car in the Trader Joe's parking lot, digging through my purse to find the fork from lunch two weeks earlier that I knew was still in there so that I could eat the cottage cheese I had just bought RIGHT NOW.

But that's less of a craving and more of an emergency. I think of cravings as those longings for a specific food so powerfully that you would sacrifice anything - even your partner's good feelings toward you - to get it into your mouth right now.

I don't have that. The one night that I wanted a cherry Hostess Fruit Pie, Jacob looked at me incredulously from the other end of the couch and I caved immediately, saying that we could wait until the end of the TV show and see if I still wanted it then. Then, I ended up just making my own pie. He did help peel and core the apples but didn't like when I responded to his complaint about how much he disliked peeling and coring apples by making a suggestion of how to do it more easily.

So, mostly I experience preferences. During my first trimester, I ate a lot of whole-grain toast and butter. I had a stage a couple of months ago where I preferred to eat snacks that involved cream cheese. I eat a ton of oranges and other fruits right now. Lately, I have been choosing grits rather than a traditional dessert.

I am lucky in that I think I have formed fairly healthy eating habits before I got pregnant. I had eliminated most junk food and processed food from my diet so I didn't crave those. I have been introducing whole grains and vegetarianism into my life. Most importantly, I have been learning to listen to my body for what it wants. I think I learned how to do this from Anne Lamott. (If you haven't read her essay on recovering from her eating disorder, please go do it right now.) Also, my mother, who taught me never to eat anything that was a waste of calories. In other words, don't fill up on bad food that you didn't want in the first place. You know, bad grocery store cake or a big dinner when your big late lunch is still lingering on your tongue.

So, I think about what my body is expressing a preference for. I believe that there is a science behind this somewhere that some goofy holistic medicine person somewhere has deciphered but cannot communicate in way that does not sound ridiculous. Probably, when the body is deficient in iron, it craves meat. When it needs fats and protein, it craves cheese. I'm sure this is informed by emotional needs and experiences but for the most part, I figure my body is smarter than I am, so I listen to it. It's actually kind of fun. Someone asked me the other day if I enjoyed being pregnant and deciphering what odd, seemingly unbalanced thing my body wants is part of why I can say, "yes."

Today, I ate probably two cups of baba ghanouj over the course of the day. I also ate half a cucumber, an orange, and fruit salad from the cafeteria over the course of the same 6 hours. I figure that counts as lunch. I do eat more meat than I used to, but not all the time. Tonight, I pick up something vegetarian for dinner at Whole Foods while I buy another armload of produce before my Dungeons & Dragons game. There is a wedge of brie cheese in the fridge and, at some point, that will probably get consumed in a similar way as the babs ghanouj.

I figure that as long as my midwives are comfortable with my weight gain and I don't feel food-tired (something I learned to determine before pregnancy), eating like a toddler is probably OK.

Let's not talk about how I consume baked goods, though, OK? That's a little more embarrassing. Two weeks ago, I walked in front of a woman giving a presentation to a group of 50 co-workers in the cafeteria that adjoins my office to get a piece of cake that I heard was on the other end of the room.

Then, I did it again.

On the third time that I did it, I just took the last two pieces to save myself that inevitable walk of shame one more time.

When I first saw the movie Fargo, my mother about fell off the couch laughing at how Frances McDormand's character ate constantly. I thought it was funny but not that funny at the time. Now? I am grabbing a donut on my way out of a community meeting on the west side, knowing full well that this probably means that one of the local folks won't get one. Hey, it was offered! You shouldn't offer donuts to pregnant ladies if you were just trying to be polite. I get it. I have no idea why my body is deficient in refined sugar, fat and white flour but, hey, it's rarely wrong.

I checked out an amazing whole-grain cookbook from the library and am hoping to have the chance to make something soon to at least mitigate some of the harm these baked goods are doing by adding fiber.

That should help, right?

Becoming Ma Joad

2011-03-07T18:57:00.005-06:00

What I have managed to collect so far for the baby's nursery.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at an event with a warm acquaintance from grad school. I was delighted to see her because, although circumstances weren't right for us to pursue an actual friendship while studying, I thought she was a neat person and would gladly pursue one now, especially since she has a 5-year-old and a 3-month-old. I would love to build a circle of intelligent women with children who sometimes think about the world the same way I do: through the lens of policy, economics, organizational theory and systemic incentives and limitations. This would calm my fears that I will become unbalanced after my child is born, thinking only about how many poops today and the price of laundry detergent.

So, when she told me that she and another mom from grad school (whom I lovelovelove) were starting a business together and were making a presentation the next week, I didn't think twice about telling her that I would be there. I was a little distracted and didn't ask any questions. I just assumed: two U of C graduates + business presentation = something I would be interested in.

It probably won't surprise any of you that I showed up at her house to find a coffee table arrayed with cleaning supplies, cosmetics and "nutricueticals" and that I then had to sit through an hour and a half of a power-point presentation on the benefits of becoming a preferred customer by buying a subscription for $50-$70 worth of the stuff every month. A good percentage of the pitch was also focused on persuading us to host similar presentations in order to receive a cut of other people's subscriptions.

I was disappointed but not overly so and I was suitably impressed at a meta-level at the presenter's skill and earnestness at making what was clearly the company line sound like she was coming up with it on the spot. I even thought I would actually sign up until I realized that we just don't spend $50 a month on those types of products.

The experience has me examining who I will be once this baby is born. What will give my life meaning when I am exhausted but the dust bunnies keep piling up? How will I keep from becoming selfish and forgetting that Jacob needs a partner, too? How do I avoid becoming the type of person who sells non-perishable household products for a living even though they used to be passionate about changing the world?

I had dinner with a new friend the other night and she shared with me her trepidation regarding starting a family. She said she just didn't feel ready.

I remember that once I said that to my own mother, years ago, as she peeled me a pear while I sat at the island in the kitchen and did nothing. I commented that I didn't think that I would ever be able to serve my children so habitually. My mom said, "No one is ever ready."

Can I tell you something, though?

I feel ready.

I feel like I've spent the last 8 years of my life acquiring a toolbox to help me realize when I have lost the plot and then to help me adjust and get back on track. I have been practicing a spirituality of imperfection to come to terms with the fact that - because I am human - I am bound to make mistakes. This is the way it is supposed to be. So, I don't have to freak out or deny that I screw up every once in a while (or even every day, or several times a day). Freaking out or denying won't change the fact that it happened or help me make sure that it won't happen again. So, I acknowledge and examine mistakes that I make - including any feelings that come along as consequences - and try to mitigate the damage before moving on and trying not to do it again.

And then I do it again. Because I'm human.

As far as I understand it, that describes parenthood, as well. We do the best we can and still, we screw up often.

The parents that I do not want to emulate tend to be the ones who freak out or deny that either they or their children could screw up. They go to great lengths to help themselves believe that they can control the outcomes of their actions. Then, other people have to walk carefully around them so that they don't snap.

However, the fantastic parents that I know are the ones who laugh at themselves and move on. Or they cry and move on. Or they scream in frustration, break things, remember to breathe, call a friend and move on. They set up loose systems to help calm the chaos and mostly remember not to get so focused on the systems that they forget the goal.

I think I'm getting pretty good at that. I feel like I have quite a few successful experiences in my history of rolling with the punches or recognizing when I haven't rolled with the punches and figuring out how to back up and fix whatever had broken because of my rigidity.

With this realization that my Batman Utility Belt is now pretty useful, I begin to get a sense of clarity about who I will become when working professionally to change the world is no longer the center of my life. Last weekend, I wrote this note to the baby in his/her book that we write weekly notes:

I am just sort of trusting in good faith that spending my days changing the world on a nuclear level by helping you develop into a stable and loved human being will be equally fulfilling [to my professional work]. There will be the logistical tasks of making and keeping house around you, as well as the administrative tasks of creating a culture in which a harmonious family can thrive. I want you and your father to be able to contribute to our life together as much as you receive from it. I want to make sure that you both know how integral you are to all three of our lives now. Life will be less good for all of us if any one of us is unable to be fully ourselves. So, I will work hard at encouraging the two of you - as well as paying attention to my own needs - to make sure this dynamic is possible.

Coming up with this mission statement has been very emotional for me. It's HUGE. To live my life for others, peeling pears because it makes their lives more pleasant? I'm already good at living for myself and will continue doing so. Professionally, I have been gaining expertise at living my life to achieve an objective (which usually involves helping others). But to make my primary focus two other people? There is something very noble and spiritual about that. However, I am scared of it in the way an alcoholic is scared of getting sober. I have no idea what my life will look like or who I will be once I start acting on that decision.

There are four, things that make me nervous about making this choice. The first is that this is such a traditional arrangement. The woman changes her focus from her career to her family and the man brings home the bacon. In the case of our kosher home, the man will be bringing home the brisket. Because the man is bringing home the brisket and this is stressful, he has less time and energy to worry about the social calendar, extended family dynamics and learning exactly which small crunchy snacks the toddler is allowed to eat. So, because they are partners, the woman becomes the expert in those things to ensure that they are attended to.

I have plenty of friends who switch this up because it works better for their personalities and their earning potentials for the man to safeguard the harmony of the family. We don't happen to be one of those families. This should be fine.

However, there is this whole historical precedent that continues to inform a culture where most women must take on this role; they have no choice. If I choose it for myself and do not oppose the systemic injustice of misogyny that is still institutionalized in our society, am I contributing to the problem?

Ultimately, I will choose what is best for my family but I think I'll always be a little conflicted about it. This weekend, I attended a conference with other members of my church's leadership team and we got to hang out a little bit with Bruce Reyes-Chow. The conversation turned to enneagram personality types and I was reminded that I am very clearly a 1 - "The Reformer". Can I really make a choice for my life that will not directly and positively impact the suffering of others? Is it selfish to have children of my own who will require me to take my eyes off the prize in order to be fair to them? I can't see myself getting comfortable with this anytime soon.

Another fear that I have is that I will become a little unbalanced since every report of parenthood I've ever heard seems to describe unending exhaustion, isolation and insecurity. This makes me worry that Jacob and I will fall even further into traditional household roles, becoming Everyone Loves Raymond, where I have particular ways that things around the house must be done and Jacob's only option for navigating those obstacles is to become the bumbling husband who sometimes "babysits" his kids so mom can get out for a half-hearted book group that exists for the large glasses of wine served. I know that women do this because they feel under-valued in their roles and so grasp for whatever power they can get. This often means that they create territories where they are the expert and defend that territory fiercely, insisting that the dishwasher be loaded in a particular way and that Junior certainly will never be able to fall asleep unless he is sung to in a specific way that dad can't possibly duplicate. I have always thought Hanna Rosin did an excellent job describing this trend in her article The Case Against Breastfeeding in The Atlantic.

Similarly, I fear going too far with the Defender of the Hearth identity, taking over too many tasks and making Jacob feel infantalized because of my low expectations of him, which might alienate him and drive a wedge between us. I also want to always have the ability to see those things that make me admire him and respect him. I don't want to lose my delight in the fact that I actually get to hang out with this hunk of a guy or lose the self-esteem boost that I get because this man thinks I'm awesome or lose the constant sense of gratitude I have that the universe aligned in such a way to help us find each other in just the right moment when we finally able to recognize the benefits of a life together.

Finally, I fear losing my edge and thinking that becoming a direct sales person is a good use of my time. I love having smart conversations with people about education policy and local politics. I care a lot about how Christians engage the world on topics of injustice and race. If I need to make more money, I want to use these unique skills and passions to do so. At the same time, I can understand how direct sales is appealing. The more time that you dedicate to using your high levels skills, the more energy that you have to take away from cultivating a safe emotional space for your family to reach their full potential. If you can work a simple job, all it costs is your time.

What I need to do is let go of these worries and trust that the type of person that I become as a result of my choice to be the glue that holds my family together will be someone that I like. I like most of the people that I have been in my life and this identity shift will probably not deviate much from that pattern.

My mom told me once that when my younger brother and I were little, the three of us conspired to "surprise" my dad when he walked into the house after work. We "hid" in the fort we had made of cushions and jumped out and ran over to him when the door opened. Mom must have thought of it when she heard his car pull into the driveway. Later, my dad told her that coming home was the best part of his day.

I want to be deliberate like that about the interactions my family members have with one another. I want to create the space for it. I included the picture of the nursery-so-far at the beginning of this post because I look at those newly-painted orange walls every day and get excited about the start I have gotten on tending to my family in this new way.

Look hard.

2011-03-01T21:57:00.010-06:00

I have several friends on Facebook who have been actively lobbying to see pictures of me in my pregnant state. Until recently, I had yet to give into their requests, not out of pique but simply because I’m a little lazy and because I did not understand the motivation behind their requests so did not place the task high on my list of priorities.

However, Facebook being what it is, another friend heard their pleas and offered to bring her fancy camera and her composition expertise over to my house on Saturday and document my growing bump. How could I refuse?

24 weeks

As you can see, she positioned me so that you can see my belly in the mirror while the camera looks over my shoulder. She told me that this was so that people could see that I have only gained weight in my belly and that my ass remains its regular size.

I appreciate her attention to detail.

One of the Eastern European cafeteria ladies at work has recently declared that we are having a boy since my lips and backside “they do not get big, yes?” She claims she has never been wrong when guessing the gender of a baby and who am I to doubt the folk wisdom of middle-aged ladies from Albania? So, I've been thinking hard about boy names.

I have been feeling pretty good during this second trimester. The nausea and utter exhaustion are behind me and I’m not so large that I’m uncomfortable yet. I’m able to swim 2-3 times a week and I have gone back to my regular yoga class, which is equipped to modify my regular, fairly rigorous practice for safety during pregnancy.

I’m pretty lucky. I am definitely not willing to congratulate myself on this turn of events. Other women make the exact same nutritional and activity choices that I make and are having a terrible time at this point. Every baby plants him or herself differently in the torso and every woman’s body responds differently to the influx of hormones and structural changes necessary to manufacture a tiny person.

In other words, there are way too many variables for me to narrow down the cause of my relatively successful experience as my own efforts. That would be like when super-models tell their interviewers that the reason they ended up on the cover of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition was that they drank a lot of water. It probably helps but it’s no guarantee.

Where does this impulse to take credit for good things come from? I’ve noticed it in parents with “good” babies, too. The reason their kids sleep so well is because they co-sleep. Or they don't. The reason their children are so content being held by new people is that they socialized them early. Or they didn't. I rarely hear someone give credit to luck or chance when they had "easy" babies.

My experience so far tells me that this is a defense against the fierce judgmentalism that comes down on new parents from the moment they announce their pregnancy. And this judgment doesn't only come from mean-spirited people. Lots of people lots of the time imply that a new parent's choice is the wrong one simply because they don't know what else to say but want to say something. Or, I know that I have twice already said something truly ugly to each of my sisters-in-law because I was feeling insecure myself. I mean, come on, at Christmas one of my aunts was upset because I didn't have to wear jeans with big elastic belly panels like she had to wear when she was pregnant. The chain reaction was that she made me feel bad and I turned on my sisters-in-law. Beware anyone who wasn't expecting to have to defend themselves against my raging incredulity that anyone would not prioritize a well-informed and self-advocated natural birth experience, complete with a detailed understanding of the history of modern medicine and how it has marginalized women's knowledge of their own bodies.

Yeah. I know.

Luckily, my sisters-in-law are beautiful creatures who allowed me to make amends so I probably didn't cause too much harm to the relationships. Luckily, it's no longer the holidays so I only have run-of-the-mill judgment to deal with and not additional extended family judgment.

So, if we as new parents have a proactive defense against these attacks, like claiming that the good things are a result of our own choices, we hope to diffuse potential advice givers/failure imply-ers. You see, we're already doing it right. We don't need you to tell us what you think we should be doing.

I have been thinking a lot lately about my own capacity to judge others unfairly.

Awhile ago, I commented on a guy named Andrew Marin and basically stated that until he came out a declared his beliefs regarding sin and homosexuality, I couldn't trust him or his ministry.

However, after listening to his interview on Moody radio, I began to realize (yet again) that my condemnation was coming from someplace inside of me rather than being prompted by him. I realized that he answers questions like my pastor. By that, I mean that he reframed the questions people were asking him and pointed out the larger issues at stake. When someone asked him point-blank whether homosexuality was a sin, he talked about how Jesus often got asked yes or no questions but only answered them on two occasions that we know of. All of the other times, he told a story or asked another question in response or answered what wasn't being asked. I was impressed by how well he knew scripture and impressed at the way he used it to redirect the question to what was more important: the role model Jesus was for how to deal with beliefs that could potentially divide people rather than helping them to see one another as sisters and brothers.

And of course, when I heard my own question come out of an angry conservative's mouth, I had to re-examine myself. I realized that if someone had labeled Andrew "emergent," I never would have been so hard on him. I would have defended his right not to be defined by his beliefs but rather to be judged by his practice. That is what my church is all about: finding a new Christianity that is practice-based rather than belief-based.

And yet, I find that I still must not be quite confident all of the time in my spiritual identity. I needed to define this guy as "other," probably in defense of my own choices.

Glennon, over at Momastery, has posted a follow-up to her original post about bullying, homosexuality and Christianity. I was so moved by the original post that I plan to print it out, frame it and hang it in the baby's nursery. In her follow-up, Glennon details her own spiritual realization that she was doing what I was doing: dividing groups into good and bad that God has declared to be unified as loved.

Luckily, I got a chance to have lunch with Andrew and I found out that he is a fantastic guy. He's doing good work and trying hard to do it with integrity. He tells his story and works hard not to exploit the stories of others. He is funny and good-hearted and went with me to Hamburger Mary's to satisfy my baby's trayf craving for red meat with cheese. As Glennon says in her post, "Do not be afraid of people who seem different than you, baby. Different always turns out to be an illusion. Look hard."

I am lucky to be getting to learn that lesson over and over and over again. I think I'll need it as a parent.

Birth and re-birth

2011-02-17T08:49:00.000-06:00

On Sunday morning, I looked at myself in the mirror of a public restroom and thought, "This must be the time of life when women start wearing too much make-up. Anything is better than nothing."

Many women glow during their pregnancy. Others, regress to adolescence because the new hormones cause them to produce a lot of oil and they break out in acne.

Guess which camp I'm in.

I do not wear make-up except when I'm dressed all fancy so a fancy face matches or when I'm interviewing for a job. Even then, there is no foundation or eye-liner involved. Lipstick, mascara, maybe some eye shadow. Just enough to enhance the contrasts of my pale skin, dark lips, blue eyes and dark hair. You know, the Snow White look. I never have worn much make-up probably because my mother didn't so I never had that kind of time commitment modeled for me. I am grateful to her for that.

But Sunday morning, I wished for a little something to give a boost to my sales pitch.

I was at a satellite campus of one of the mega-churches that flourishes here in Chicagoland, recruiting volunteers for my organization.

Mega-churches are always so surreal for me. As I drive around Chicagoland, I am beginning to notice that they are often across the highway from each other since they came into popularity (or, at least, had raised enough money in their capital campaigns) around the same time and so were able to purchase large swaths of farmland as it went on sale at the same time. It's kind of a neat parallel to the historic downtowns of many midwestern towns where there are mainline Protestant churches and Catholic churches across the street from one another.

However, I tend to like the satellite campuses much better than the main campuses. The people on stage are less manicured, more like real people, even if the camera-person doesn't ever give the Big Girl on the music team her close-up. The people milling around the narthex (can you call it a narthex if it's a converted warehouse?) mostly look like people I would actually be friends with, rather than being a homogeneous group of make-up-wearing, skinny suburban moms and their un-intimidating and soft husbands. Don Miller describes churches like that as going to church at The Gap. The reference is becoming outdated but I think you get the point. I'm never quite comfortable at the main campuses, which are generally located in wealthy suburbs, even though I have come to know and love some really good and interesting people from those communities.

(Yesterday, in response to a snarky comment I made similar to the one above describing the members of main campuses, my father wrote back, "Maybe this is a reminder to you and I that we worship a God that NEVER gives up on us no matter how bad we screw up." I love that my father knows that I make those statements with a tone of self-deprecation because AS I AM SAYING THEM, I know that it's mean and that I am a little bit a bad person for thinking it's funny. He knows I won't take offense for pointing out that I am "screwing up" in that moment. I consider the friendships I have with folks who fit that description as the grace God offers me by reminding me that every person is unique and most are quite lovely, regardless of their appearance.)

For whatever problems I have with the evangelical culture, though, I have to admit that they do adult baptisms really well. Full immersion in hot tubs on stage. These baptisms, like the revolution, are definitely televised. You get to witness the emotional experience of the candidates as the jumbo-tron displays their faces in close-up as they tell their story to the pastor who is standing in the tub with them. During the year that I spent at the evangelical church here in the city, I was really moved by being able to be a part of the worship team for the baptisms that took place in the lagoon down the street. The physicality of full immersion allows people to access their spirits and let them come to the surface and you can really see just how excited and grateful they are that their life has been changed because of their new-found relationship with God and that transformation has been made public through this ritual.

Jacob and I lay in bed at night and talk about the birth rituals for our baby, including baptism. In my tradition, we baptize infants as a way of welcoming them into the community and exacting a promise from that community to teach the child what they know about God. I know that some traditions include a belief that eternal salvation as part of the equation but that doesn't come into for me or for my denomination, as far as I know.

When we first began discussing baptism when the first babies in our church were being baptized, we toyed with the idea of doing the bris or the simchat bat on the same day as the baptism for the convenience of gathering our large community together only once. Also, I wanted to insist that my in-laws commit to loving and accepting the both-ness of our child by being present for the Christian baptism.

Over time (what a difference a year makes!), I have less need to control my in-laws. They are good people on their own journey and I'm becoming much more willing to let them take their own lead (and accept their own consequences) in how they interact with me and my children. For one, I probably don't know how to make sure that everything between us is hunky-dory and for two, I couldn't pull it off anyway. So, we'll baptize the baby when s/he's a little older and do the traditional Jewish welcome straight. Last night, we fantasized about the menu of bagels, lox, egg salad and kugel for the celebration.

The baptism on Sunday had me in tears. However, I can never fully immerse in evangelical worship and sat in the tension of being so happy for these people putting themselves forward for this extremely vulnerable ritual and so moved to "remember" my own baptism but at the same time being completely disgusted that the song the worship team was singing had the recurring back-up vocals of "we crown you, we crown you" while the melody sang, "Kings of kings and Lord of lords."

Ack! I cannot relax into a theology that puts me, ME, in a position to crown God, to give God the authority to rule, to decree that from here on out, God gets to make all the decisions.

Our covenant with God is not a democracy. We do not get to elect her out of office if we get tired of her. The beauty of it is that we will never need to. God is good and it always turns out to be us who are wrong when we take it into our heads to break the laws that God sets forth.

How could I be the one to make God the King of kings and Lord of lords? I would have to be pretty powerful myself, wouldn't I?

And I'm not. I can only witness the spectacle and report back to others what I've seen.

Now, I do resonate with a theology that puts forth that I have to bow my head and accept God's authority, that I have to acknowledge what has always been true: that God is in charge.

I find this to be terribly liberating. Because the concurrent realization is that I am not God, which means I don't have to know all the answers and that I'm not responsible for making sure everything turns out OK. What a weight off my shoulders! This is a spirituality of imperfection that I practice and that makes claiming the ability to actually confer sovereignty on God as repugnant.

Still, despite the soundtrack, there is no denying that the members of this church were experiencing real transformation. Given my disgust at looking in the mirror earlier that morning, I was struck by the two women who climbed into the tub, completely devoid of make-up and exposed. I felt a kinship with them, our physical appearances altered by the expectation of birth and, for them, re-birth.

Aren't we lucky that that we worship a God that NEVER gives up on us no matter how bad we screw up?

The sun and the rain and the appleseed

2011-02-14T19:36:00.000-06:00

I have been thinking about what I will sing to my little one.

Both of my parents are kind of tone-deaf when it comes to singing so I did not grow up with what I consider to be a classic childhood of lullabies and folk melodies. A friend once told me about how special it was to him to get to sing "too ra loo ra loo ra" to his granddaughter like his Irish mother sang to him. As often happens, my suburban, totally ethnic-less upbringing made me completely jealous for that kind of generational continuity. I am also often struck by a quote used in Oh Coward, a review of Noel Coward songs that I grew up listening to: "I was born into a generation that took light music seriously. The lyrics and melodies of [the Edwardian Era] were hummed and strummed into my consciousness at an early age. My mother played them, my father sang them, my nurse, Emma, breathed them through her teeth while she was washing me and putting me to bed. My aunts and uncles, who were legion, sang them singly and in unison at the slightest provocation...."

This was not my experience.

However, I had a childhood full of music. Both parents loved showtunes and we listened to cassettes that my father brought home from work where they had the amazing technology of transferring his LPs to cassettes. They were adorned with manually typed labels that look like parchment paper. I wonder now which old-school secretary he talked into putting such care into the tapes that we listened to in the big red van. Before I understood recorded music, I remember marveling out loud that my favorite song was always on the radio when we got into the car. I think I just lumped the entire soundtrack of They're Playing Our Song together as my favorite song. A different memory of that musical revolves around being gently pulled aside into the adjoining dining room from the kitchen and being told that there were some songs we don't sing when my Great-Aunt Delores was visiting. To my eternal gratitude, my parents were big fans of differential response to behavior that was appropriate in some settings but not in others. I guess they thought we were smart enough to figure it out if they were instructive. Or, they were wary of being hypocritical by punishing us whenever they realized that there was no possible way we could have predicted a social rule.

I had been singing the line, "To him 'broken heart' is a phrase I should write for his God-damn middle part."

So, there was a lot of singing in my house. It just wasn't usually generated from the inside and sung as a serenade by the adults. It was sung along with recorded media. Of course I'm jealous at others' stories of family sing-alongs.

It's not really fair. We often sang the Johnny Appleseed song before dinner and another pre-dinner song when with my grandma. At Christmas, we celebrated Advent every four Sundays before Advent and would sing carols as part of the ritual, often to the accompaniment of the piano from the other room that my brother and I were painfully learning to play. There was a lot of stopping and starting since neither of us actually liked practicing.

All four of us kids are actually above-average musical. We all studied under Dick Whitecotton and all played instruments in the band to varying degrees of commitment. I am also the dork that played in the varsity handbell choir in junior high. Occasionally, we sing together in church or around the dinner table in nostalgia. It sounds pretty good.

I don't know how to re-create that for my own kids given their likely urban setting with its fluid nature that will lack a stalwart influence like Dr. Whitecotton and his wife.

Also, since I still have a lovely voice (not to my own credit, at this point, since I continue to not actually like practicing), it seems like I should be somewhat intentional about singing to and with my kids.

There are lots of Jewish prayers we'll probably introduce into our routines including the Shema at bedtime and the Modah Ani in the morning. But what will I bring to them from my own traditions?

Johnny Appleseed, definitely.

But what else? Lullabies? I don't know any of the words past the chorus. Are there any good recommendations for particular versions I could listen to in the car and learn the words? I suppose there are songs like the itsy bitsy spider and such. Any good resources for that? Who wants to make me a mix CD? Anyone?

I'm actually looking forward to figuring this out. I know without some deliberate learning, I'll default to just turning on my iTunes. But I think it will be more fun to actually sing as I go about my days, getting to know this child of mine. What do you think?

Virtual Quilting Bee

2011-02-11T17:46:00.002-06:00

I'm nesting pretty hard. The day after our roommates moved out I found I was urgently scrounging up the two baby magazines I've unwittingly acculumlated because alluvasudden, I needed to see pictures of people who had successfully used a peachy orange color on their nursery walls.

As part of that, I've been drawn to something called a Virtual Quilting Bee. There is a great explanation here. Basically, 12 people gather via the internet and every month they make just one quilt square for someone else in the group. So, when it's your month, you send out 11 packets of fabric and you get 11 quilt squares in the mail. Add your own and you've got a sizable quilt.

I know that I've got a lot on my plate right now but I'm really being tugged by this idea of creating small pieces of art on a schedule for other people. I've learned to pay attention to these artistic tugs.

I know there are some quilters out there. Would any of you like to join in this project with me? Let me know by sending me an email or commenting on this post.

Yay for art in the midst of chaos!

Just to get back in the swing of things . . .

2011-02-09T21:21:00.001-06:00

. . . let me tell you the two favorite things anyone has ever said about me that were both said in the last couple of months.

From a guy that I spent every day with for five months (we were on tour together) but who I haven't seen in a decade: "Someone would have to work pretty hard to be as naive as you were in your early twenties."

I don't know why this makes me laugh as hard as it does every time I think about it but it does. Maybe I'm just so delighted to come as far as I have and to have that affirmed by someone who didn't necessarily watch the entire process.

From one of my closest friends, "It's OK to be not OK when I'm talking to you because you don't think you're OK either."

This is the best compliment I could ever ask for from anyone.

Baby Brigade

2011-02-06T21:33:00.000-06:00

One of the main reasons that I keep a blog is because I have a strong sense that it helps to mend the world a little when I write about my experiences (both external and internal) so that other people who read them might sometimes be struck with a sense of not being alone because someone else out there had a similar reaction to a similar situation.

I have not been writing much lately because I have felt underwater. My job is very emotionally difficult right now and that sucks all of my energy because I continue to care about doing good work there. Any leftover energy goes to basking in the love my husband and I share, getting as much time with my family as I can, and working through some of the issues that bubble up inside of me and that come out of Jacob because I'M HAVING A BABY IN FOUR MONTHS!

I often think, "I should write about that on the blog because I bet I'm not the only one who feels like that." And then I think about how soothing it would be to run the sewing machine for awhile while my fingers play with color and I consistent eat the candy instead of the broccoli.

We have had a relaxing weekend and, with the encouragement of one of my closest friends, I think it's time to get some of this out of my head and set it loose into the world. Also, one of my new favorite bloggers recently wrote on the same topic and this kind of online dialogue really intrigues me.

High school was really hard for me in terms of making friends. I did not have a group of friends that consistently included me and my best friend was a relationship that existed independently of other relationships so I felt consistently like I was not successful socially. I was constantly reaching out to kids and asking to be included. Sometimes I was but often I felt like everything fun and meaningful happened on nights when I didn't want to risk being rejected or being viewed as pathetic and therefore unworthy of future inclusion so I didn't try to tag along.

I am sure it wasn't that bad. I was active in choirs and theater and speech and spent lots of time with other people in those venues. I remember a lot of laughter and moments of being deliberately included as someone who had earned a place within some of those circles through my talent and tenure. I had friends like Tricia and Janstee who would come by and pick me up and just drive around with me talking and talking and talking. Still, my lack of a designated role within a delineated group made me feel inadequate. I always felt jealous when Tricia or Janstee or my best friend talked about experiences they had where I had not been invited. I wanted to be essential to someone else's experience or the group activity.

When I got to college, I began to really explore social dynamics and my place within them. I read books with titles like Making Friends. The sitcom Friends was in its heyday and when my mother pointed out that real life wasn't like what was depicted there, I clung tenaciously to that truth as an "unthought known," even though the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity continued as I won and lost temporary places in a variety of groups and most of my four years without a best friend on campus. Again, I made good friends (many of whom I remain close to) but was never crucial to anyone's experience.

My ex-husband did have a group of friends and, after some initial friction, I fit in well with them. In fact, when they turned their backs on me during the divorce without ever asking to hear my side of the story, I felt more betrayed by some of them than I was by my husband. It was a welcome relief to be valued by a group but they were mostly guys and and most did not yet have female counterparts (we played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons) so I knew I needed to continue seeking out my one-on-one female friendships.

Thus began my adult pattern of practicing the adage: "To get friends, be a friend." Recently, through my church involvement and my fabulous pastor, I have begun to see this as a spiritual practice of hospitality. I know now that most people feel as insecure as I do and want to be invited as desperately as I do. So, now I see it as extending grace that has been extended to me. In the beginning, though, it was pure survival. I became socially disciplined under the impression that people would not be interested in me unless I took risks and sought them out. Based on those early experiences, I consistently make lists of people I haven't seen in awhile and reach out to them to set up coffee or dinner. My ex-husband used to joke, "Rebecca sees all of her friends twice a year, whether she needs to or not." I throw parties with themes and mailed invitations and fancy fonts to make them seem like events not to miss (lately, I've let evite take over this task). As my friends began to have children, I made sure to be flexible to accommodate their new schedules and to make it as easy as possible to get together by driving to their houses for dinner so they wouldn't have to get babysitters.

The pursuit of these friendships has been worth every minute of planning time I have dedicated to it. I have countless hours of meaningful connection with good people that has shaped me into the person that I am. There has been laughter and joy and great excuses to make gifts for them. I learned that I am a person of value to some pretty neat people. When I was planning my second wedding, I realized that it would look ridiculous to put all 15 of my girlfriends into matching dresses and parade them down the aisle and instead formed them into a Bridal Brigade and gave them matching brooches. Who has 15 girlfriends close enough to be bridesmaids?

I do.

None form a Sex in the City-style group but individually all love me as much as I love them. It's hard to be more blessed than that. I have also gratefully noticed when these folks have reached back to me, deliberately including me or seeking me out. When I get an email with dates included for potential dinners or a request that I be a bridesmaid or that I assist with a birth, I just about lose it because it utterly refutes my unshakable belief that I will always be on the outskirts of others' existence.

Now, the pursuit of these friendships has not been without its bumps. I have had to figure out when folks were making me feel worse about myself because they demanded more than I was already giving or because they weren't putting even a little energy into maintaining the relationship. That was usually painful to resolve in my heart. Sometimes, I could let a person slide from my life knowing that friendships are made of equal parts effort and circumstance. So, when circumstances change, I learned not to take it personally when my emails and phone calls weren't being returned.

I know that I have not been a perfect friend. There are times when I couldn't reach out as much as I'd like or when I couldn't give what someone needed and so avoided them just a little. Not blatantly shunning them but not going out of my way to connect, either.

Which brings me to one of my fears about having a baby. I am afraid that my friends are so used to me being the one to organize get-togethers and used to me being the one going over to their houses for dinner that when I am no longer able to be as proactive with scheduling or as flexible with location, we will fall away from one another. Maybe I am having "delusions of grandeur" about my role but I am afraid that when I am no longer pursuing friendships with practices developed by a desperate twenty-something, the circumstances will be so different that my friends will let me slip away rather than stepping in and shouldering some of the responsibilities that I have been willing and eager to own in the past.

Intellectually, I'm pretty sure that this worry is totally needless. Emotionally, it makes my gut twist to think about being isolated like that as a new mom.

It makes me want to brainstorm what practical things I can do not only to alert my friends to this vulnerability but also to empower, encourage and affirm them in changing the way they interact with me regarding the logistics of our friendships.

Are there other responses to this worry that I should be considering? Is there some other angle from which I can look at the situation?

At the practical level, are there any suggestions for how I can deputize my friends into a Baby Brigade? I trust that they will want to help me out (this is a huge step for me) but, like anything, I know that folks often feel more able to help if they have concrete suggestions. What types of support could I ask them for?

O Come All Ye Faithful

2010-12-24T02:09:00.001-06:00

Most religions develop a liturgical calendar. Liturgical calendars are basically a cyclical journey through a year that creates a ritual scenario in which to experience the major emotions that we tend to feel in life in a controlled setting. The purpose of having a liturgical calendar is to practice for these real life events. When we "cry out" in anguish, the spiritual leader reassures us that our pain has a purpose and that God is in control. When we "shout" Hallelujah, we are accompanied by brass instruments playing in a major key. We confess both our own sins and the sins of our community and a shofar is blown to reinforce both it's importance and it's forgiveness. We "gather in" the harvest and are led to give thanks for the bounty in our lives.

Because we have practiced these emotions, we have an expectation for what comes next: redemption, comfort, joy, gratitude and even repentance. Think of it this way: do you remember mix tapes? Remember how you would listen to one over and over and over to the point that when you heard a song from the mix on the radio, you felt a little disappointed when you didn't hear the next song from the mix at its conclusion? The liturgical calendar is a little like that. It creates spiritual associations for the universal experiences in which we all find ourselves at some point or another. Fasting ritualistically prepares us for life's lean seasons because practice tells us we can look forward to breaking the fast with joy someday. Mourning the death of the deity or even fearing that we ourselves have not been written in the Book of Life this year prepares us for the death of loved ones because every year the spiritual story has a happy ending. The ritual acknowledges the need to mourn and atone and makes space for it but reminds us that ultimately life is for living.

The Christian liturgical calendar has two poles holding it up: Christmas and Easter. Birth and Death. Could there be two more universal experiences?

For many of us, Christmas is an entire season, starting at the beginning of the month of December with the First Sunday of Advent. Advent means "coming" and by ceremonies of anticipation for each of the four Sundays before Christmas, we replay what Mary and Joseph (and all expectant parents) must have felt: excitement, self-reflection followed by a sense that we don't measure up, reassurance from outside sources that we will be fine, reaffirmation of why we made the choice to have children (or embark on any endeavor), preparation of the necessary accessories to the birth including love, swaddling clothes and the gracious acceptance of gifts.

My life feels pretty chaotic right now. Jacob points out that to the outside observer, it doesn't look chaotic but it certainly feels that way. I've lost the list of things to do that I wrote a month ago, my things are strewn around the house because we haven't yet assembled the shelves that should have been done in October. Craft projects are piled everywhere. Stuff I've cleaned out of my purse as I was walking out the door is piled everywhere. Nothing has been cleaned, like with soap and water, in weeks. (The kitchen counters might be the only exception to this.) Work emotionally exhausts me daily. I'm digging into some pretty heavy stuff with my therapist. There are several important friends that I haven't seen in over 3 months and some in over 6. My efforts to do some the work that needs to be done for our church to thrive has been cut back to the bare minimum, which does not feel like enough. To top this all off, my body is becoming increasingly high maintenance, needing food and fluids at much more frequent intervals, which also requires me to urinate much more frequently or experience light-headedness if I don't pay attention to my body's demands. The nausea in the first trimester caused me to stop working out and I haven't yet put that back into my schedule, which makes me feel slow and creaky. I have roommates for whom I don't do a particularly good job of making feel welcome. The Christmas letter is definitely not written.

I'm a hot mess.

I'm happy, which is a blessing. Tired and totally spacey but happy. There is a low-grade despair that seems to be always lurking around the corner because of the chaos in my head, but when it makes a full-blown appearance, Jacob lays on top of me while I cry and then I feel better. He and I are particularly playful and I only yell at him every once in awhile and mostly without the venom and instability that I displayed in the past. We watch TV to decompress and I slowly accumulated the necessary Chanukah and Christmas presents.

But we haven't really celebrated Advent this year.

And I have missed it.

We haven't celebrated Advent because, frankly, Jacob is still uncomfortable with it and I didn't want to fight for it amidst all the other chaos. So, no tree, no decorations, no candle ceremonies, no Christmas music.

I have missed it.

There is an emptiness in me from the absence of the rituals of preparation. My decisions and motivations are built upon a foundation that views Jesus as a divine teacher whose ultimate sacrifice on behalf of mankind was a major example of God's love for us. Opting out of the spiritual practice of anticipation and preparation - especially when, for the first time, I am expecting my own child - was a mistake. My decisions and motivations wobble if I don't maintain the foundation through participation in my own liturgical calendar.

I have absolute faith that Jacob will come around. He has promised to create a home where our children feel comfortable living into their identity as products of both Christianity and Judaism. This will only happen when he celebrates Christmas with joy. He will eventually find values in Christmas that are meaningful to him much like I value food deep-fried in oil for Chanukah and the gathering of friends even though the victory of the Maccabees means nothing to me. I know it's hard for him and I know why it's hard for him. It's worth reading the comments on the Velveteen Rabbi's post on Christmas through Jewish eyes if you want to go deeper into where he is coming from.

And he's trying. Remembering that I expressed interest in the Do-It-Yourself Messiah last year, he got us tickets and doggedly sight-read the entire piece so that I could immerse myself in an experience I haven't had since college. It was phenomenal to flex those muscles again (figuratively and literally). I was astounded to come across passages that I vividly remember being drilled in the rhythms or note patterns to get them right.

My father asked me a few weeks ago if I considered myself athletic and I said that I did. I feel like I have slightly above-average eye-hand coordination and enough hours logged successful being athletic that I have the necessary confidence to tackle physical tasks without the nervous hesitation that will guarantee athletic failure. Also, I have muscle memory. When I pick up a tennis racket, I can shift it to the right position in my hand if the ball comes to my left side rather than my right. I follow through on my strokes without thinking about it. I catch things that are thrown at me. I throw things where I want them to go. In yoga, I can isolate and refine movement such as tilting my pelvis correctly or balancing better by adjusting my center of gravity. I have been seeing a physical therapist for an old injury that pregnancy has re-ignited and she loves working with me because I'm "body conscious."

This athleticism is necessary in singing a piece like Handel's Messiah. How you stand affects the quality of breaths you can take. How you hold your music affects how you well you can watch the conductor. How you hold your head affects the sound of the notes you make.

I remembered all of it even though I haven't been in a choir in 8 years. It was glorious.

In Waiting for Guffman, one of the subtle pieces of humor is that the strange little music director who feels threatened by Corky has built a professional-grade orchestra out of the various members of this little Midwestern community. My childhood experience was like that. I was taught by classically-trained musicians who imparted good technical form, professional behavior standards and a sense of discipline through regular and rigorous rehearsals. Sure, lots of kids goofed off but those of us that wanted to be at the top of our games were given the opportunity. I was blessed with a voice that people like to listen to and doubly-blessed to be born into a community that had the resources to help it flourish. I get so much satisfaction from singing a difficult piece well.

There is no audience at the DIY Messiah. The audience is full of participants. Self-satisfaction in one's own group participation is the only motivation.

It filled in some of the emptiness. For an encore, the director had the audience play the Hallelujah Chorus again. I had already put away my score but actually know that movement by heart. To stand and sing victoriously to the sky with no sheet music to block my communication, "The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our lord," nearly caused me to lose it entirely. It is a ritual that I know by heart to begin quietly for the first half of the sentence because I do not belong in the world. As Yoda says, "Luminous creatures are we." Without fail, the music suddenly becomes loud and the orchestra fully supports us as we sing of the radical transformation and shift of power. Where before the world used to be in charge, I can now choose to put God in charge with the coming of Christ. So powerful. So redemptive. It reminds us of the creation of the world. God (or Aslan) speaks a word and the chaos becomes ordered.

The old pastor of my parents' church would walk into the darkened church on Christmas Eve with one candle and recite with gravitas, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." This piece of scripture explicitly describes Jesus as the Word that brought order out of chaos.

Singing Handel's Messiah again was a spiritual practice to help me remember that I can choose to put God in charge of my life. That I am not left to wallow in this chaos alone.

What is the Word? It can be a lot of things. Certainly, John says that the Word is Jesus and I think he was definitely a physical manifestation of the larger definition. What makes the most sense to me is to think of the Word as the guidelines that God puts forth in scripture for how to make decisions in order to be satisfied with this life. Love others. Make them feel welcome. Take care of the hurting. Work towards justice. Rest. Tithe. Be mindful.

Keeping a kosher home has certainly given me new insight on how to hear God's Word if it is defined this way: as the laws she sets forth. My favorite part of saying the Shabbat blessings is that after I light the candles I say in Hebrew, "Thank you, God, for giving us your commandments." The Word is something to be grateful for.

Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the laws that the Jews followed in an attempt to be faithful to God. Instead, he came to fulfill them. He was born to help give people that next big push that they needed to be faithful to God. For many folks, the Jewish purity laws weren't helping anymore, so like she always has, God sent a new Word to help people create order out of Chaos and to put their relationship with God as the highest priority in their lives by following the teachings of Jesus, which were informed by the Jewish purity laws and, by the way, their liturgical calendar.

I told my pastor friend yesterday that I believe God leads us to our spouses to teach us that we don't always get everything that we want immediately. We have to practice waiting and working in good faith for that which has been promised to us during our marriage vows. This, too, is part of choosing to put God in charge, which will bring order out of the chaos. It is practice for the larger narrative of an entire life. I may feel a little empty without a tree or Advent candles this year but I got what I needed from Handel's Messiah and Jacob is the one who delivered me to that ritual.

I will wait in good faith for the birth of Jesus on Saturday and I will work in good faith alongside my husband to create the interfaith house that we have promised each other.

O come let us adore him.

Lunch Lady Land

2010-12-10T14:36:00.000-06:00

Because my office is located in a foster home, there is a honest-to-goodness cafeteria here and honest-to-goodness lunch ladies. The are small and Eastern European and fierce with those people that they don't like.

I decided early on to make sure that they liked me.

Unfortunately, almost every single lunch they make involves meat: chicken alfredo, turkey ala king, meatball sandwiches, beef stew, hamburger tacos, fried chicken and other classics that you might remember from your own junior high experience.

Although I'm the worst vegetarian that you know, I sensed that the lunch ladies would not understand if I picked and chose amongst their creations. They were already expressing a little good-natured-but-serious disappointment that I kept walking past them to put my lunches in the microwave. So, I explained apologetically, "I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat meat."

"You no eat meat? Why not?"

"Well, it's just healthier for me."

Disbelievingly, "No!"

Shaking my head, acknowledging how crazy it was, "I know. I know. But I feel better when I don't eat meat."

"OK. You have baby. Then you eat meat."

You heard that right. They told me that I should get pregnant so that I would then want to eat what they had cooked with their own two hands.

My friend A. has an Eastern European mom who is constantly giving her food and asking her when she'll produce grandchildren. When I shared that conversational exchange on Facebook, my friend commented, "When did my mom start working in your cafeteria?"

I literally laughed out loud when I read that.

The baby theme is a popular one with my lunch ladies. I fended them off for awhile when I explained that Jacob and I hadn't yet been married a year and we wanted to get to know each other a little bit before adding to the family.

But in September, they started asking again.

I don't even remember telling them which month I married!

They are a force to be reckoned with.

So, for the last couple of months, they have been eying me speculatively with a slightly suspicious look in their eyes.

"You have baby?"

"No, no."

"Why not?"

I was at such a loss for an answer to this question that I broke my own rule not to justify my personal fertility decisions to anyone nosy enough to challenge them.

"Well, we're ready when God is ready."

I submitted. They won. They established themselves as more powerful in the battle for information.

Which is why I have felt terrible for the last two months in keeping my pregnancy a secret from them.

I'm sure they know by this point that I'm lying to them. They must have keenly-trained eyes for breeding women and I bet my gait has changed. Plus, I stopped wearing a belt weeks ago.

On Monday, the leader looked me up and down like she was a construction worker I was passing on the sidewalk before she greeted me.

"You have baby?"

"No, not yet."

Then, disgusted and kind of mean, she said, "So is just fat, no?"

Only my shame at deceiving her and my anticipation for telling my boss after my midwife appointment this morning protected me from feeling hurt by her remark.

On Monday, I will take her a Hallmark card that says, "I'm sorry," while I tell them the good news. They made me promise to tell them first and confided that they wanted to throw a shower for me at the leader's house.

Can I tell you how much that makes me want to weep? I am so honored that they want to extend that kind of hospitality to me across language, cultural and class barriers. It makes me feel stingy in comparison that sometimes I struggle with having a couple from church living in our guest room for three months who is demographically identical to us.

So, it's official. My new identity as an expectant mother is public knowledge. We're due sometime in early June. I'm excited and nervous and so in love with my husband. Sometimes, it becomes very real to me and the "whump!" that I feel puts the "whump" that I felt when stepping under the chuppah to shame. Jacob told me that he wanted to tell the midwife to stop holding the doppler wand to my belly because hearing the heartbeat for the first time was making me cry.

I was pretty nauseous in the first trimester but no vomiting and I could mostly function. Also, not too much fatigue. I think we got off pretty lucky but I would bet Jacob has a different story to tell. I have already pieced a quilt top and have plans to hand-quilt it to some softsoft minki after I finish the Christmas presents. Oh, the things I can make!

Since my older brother and his wife are expecting in March and my younger brother and his wife have an 8-month-old, next Christmas will be bustling with grandkids. My parents just had to wait until they were 63 years old to get that dream fulfilled. While we're on the subject, let me give a giant statement of gratitude to my parents for never pushing any of us, saying to friends and us that they wanted most of all for us to be happy and in stable relationships before we made the decisions that were right for us. So awesome.

So, I might hang out here more often, now that I can write publicly about this huge thing that happening in my life. I saw an ad in a parenting magazine that said, "With every child born, so is a potential mommy-blogger," and I have never felt such doom in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I'll reclaim the title mommy-blogger by doing what I've always done: tell stories to entertain and to make people feel like they are not alone in the world; explore spirituality based on my experiences; and share pictures of the delightful things that I come across in my adventures. If that's a mommy-blogger, I'll take it!

Then, I'll eat meat.

An anecdote

2010-12-01T15:32:00.000-06:00

Earlier today, I was hanging out with a group of about 10 people who have similar jobs that meets monthly to support each other. It's a great group and over time we have really become close as we've shared our triumphs and our challenges.

One of the men was talking about something that has been hard on his wife and expressed how it didn't really bother him. To us, he said disparagingly, "It's only 3 miles, pfff!" Someone joked and said, "Did you say it that way to your wife?" We all laughed, as the guy intended, but the speaker got a little serious and said, "I used to," which made us laugh even harder in recognition of our own stupid interpersonal mistakes of that nature.

He continued, "I just realized over time that what I wanted from my wife was intimacy and closeness. . . but then I say these stupid things that sabotage myself."

I really appreciate his perspective of being married 34 years. The transformation he described was recent and ongoing. He certainly expressed that he still sabotaged himself.

But he's trying.

Because what he wants from his wife is intimacy and closeness.

I like that.

Janice Ann

2010-11-09T16:30:00.003-06:00

Aunt J with my brother Daniel at my wedding.

I am very close with my extended family on my father's side. Twice a year, we get together and spend a few days under the same roof. This can often mean 20 or more people milling around a kitchen, reading books while draped over couches or going on roadtrips to blow off some steam.

My dad has three sisters who live all around the country and decided more than 20 years ago that if their children were going to actually know one another then they needed to provide this kind of intimate experience. And it has worked. For instance, this summer, my college-aged cousin called my husband "beard-face" with a certain tone of derision in her voice. I was delighted to realize that my first response to Jacob was to explain: "That's just Eliza. It's actually a compliment that she noticed you enough to insult you." If we lived in normal families, I would never know something that nuanced about her personality because of the more than 10-year age difference and 700 miles between us. Weddings and funerals wouldn't have been enough to teach me.

Being this close to my cousins actually makes wedding and funerals more intense and meaningful experiences. Many of you may remember that I spent the hour before I married cloistered away with my family, singing hymns, eating lunch and praying because that was the only thing I could think of that would ensure I was myself when I got married and not some stressed-out stranger in a bride's costume. Don't get me wrong, I experience a lot of stress being with them sometimes and I sometimes feel hurt or marginalized by their manic mob-mentality that requires a certain amount of looking out for one's own to have one's need met. But at the same time, I've never met a group of people more willing to make me a sandwich, to pray together that an enema will relieve someone's constipation, to forgive my ex-husband long before I could ever consider the option or to laugh at a self-deprecating story describing a pratfall or total boner mistake. They love me in all of my moods, even if they are the cause of some of the uglier ones. Can there ever be a better definition of family?

When we gather, we have recently begun bringing inspirational stories and obituaries with us to read aloud over breakfast. By the way, breakfast is the best part of the day. My mom makes perfect fried eggs to order with a side of toast grabbed the second the toaster pops and permeated with so much butter that it forms small white peaks. My Aunt Cynthia makes grits that can be garnished with so many variation of dairy, both sweet and savory. We read newspapers and get on each other's nerves as our different political leanings surface. We speculate when the teenagers will emerge from their rooms, bleary-eyed in pajamas with their hair sticking up in mats, looking around to see if someone saved their favorite doughnut for them by hiding it behind the cereal boxes. So, it seemed a natural extension to begin bringing other entertainments to extend that magical time together.

It started as a way to make my dad cry. He's kind of a sucker for a well-written obituary, describing a life of quiet heroism or the small miracles that often accompany the human drama of death and dying. It is family legend to remember the story of the woman who danced with her son at his wedding the day before she died since the couple had changed all their plans to accommodate her illness. Not a dry eye in the house for that one. And a lot of laughter at our own frailty. What goofs to cry. How vulnerable we are to dream that when hardship strikes, we might live up to these stories of everyday people being extraordinary.

My father is the oldest of the four children and the eldest of his younger sisters died over the weekend. It seems like she's spent the last 20 years fighting one form of cancer or another but, honestly, I still sometimes forget about the cancer when I think of her. It never defined who she was. Her personality was so strong and her relationship with God such a prominent part of her experience that the cancer seemed like a secondary characteristic of her identity, like the color of her eyes or her favorite book: cancer was a fact of her existence but not a defining feature. She could have gone into complete remission and it wouldn't have changed how she interacted with people. She loved people and wanted them to know God. I can only hope to want that for others as passionately as she did. She also had a wicked sense of humor, which included an inexplicable love for Vern and Ernest movies.

Now, let's be clear, of all my aunts, I butted heads with Aunt Janice most often. She had a lot of opinions about how life should be lived and these applied to everyone. None of this live and let live garbage. She was often vehement that people needed to be on the right path and I often disagreed - almost violently - with her definition of what "living right" entailed, as well as her own ability to fulfill her stated values.

But where else but in your family can you feel that way about a person and feel just as strongly that the world is a better place for her contribution?

As I have thought about my grief and the implications of my loss from the death of my aunt, I have pictured my extended family as a whole cloth that now has a little hole in it. The frayed ends at the edges of the hole are the people in the family for whom she was part of their daily life: Grandma, her daughters, her husband. They must be feeling so ragged. But her absence will also affect the experience of being with my family that I wrap around myself twice a year. Aunt Janice had patterns and rhythms to her participation that we have all come to rely upon. The whole cloth of our family will be changed. We will have to change to accommodate what's now missing.

One of my favorite sites is called Craftzine and it has all sorts of news and tutorials about how to make cool stuff. One of the tutorials shows how to fix a hole in a sweater by attaching yarn to the ragged edges and creating the patch within the hole. (Take a look here.) You can't go back to when the cloth didn't have a hole but you can restore the integrity of the garment. My family will be like that as we adjust. We've done it before when my grandpa died so I have no doubt that we'll do it again. Our resilience is why I keep coming back to my extended family: it keeps being strong enough to support me, as well as to make space for me to support them.

We will begin gathering tomorrow for a funeral on Thursday. Aunt Janice's obituary was published today. I hope that some other family reads it, tears it out to read over breakfast when they're all together and then laughs at this line, "Many people benefited from her 'lectures' whether they wanted to or not," and cries at this one: "She treasured her family. Her grandchildren brought her tremendous joy. Above all, her priority in all things was to serve and bring glory to her Heavenly Father." It would be a great tribute.

Crunchy new leaves

2010-10-13T20:39:00.001-05:00

So, the initial twinkling in my gut offered by the prospect of rallying to help American take it down a notch has grown into a sparkly new equilibrium that I’m so relieved has arrived.

Shortly after we made that decision to go an adventure, we tore the entire house apart.

Actually, those activities are not related. Several months ago, Jacob and I were in a middle of an argument and the topic shifted to the condo, it’s state of cleanliness, whose jurisdiction various cleaning tasks fall under, the piles of junk that have no home and whether or not I have ever felt really welcome to live into the space. In a “Fine!” “Fine!” moment, we decided to resolve the issues by marking off an entire weekend to buy some shelving units, buy some new furniture, get rid of awful furniture and reorganize in general. I also intended to give away copious amounts of stuff since I feel liberated when I do that.

We did not have an entire weekend to do that until 2 weeks ago. However, before we could get down to it, we invited a couple from church to move into our guest room for the next three months before they move to California. This added a certain amount of urgency to find new places for all of the stuff that was stacked up in the guest room.

So, reorganizing weekend rolls around and I feel great. I move from task to task with verve. I borrow my brother’s car and drive not just once but twice to IKEA. I stay up working until 10:30 on Saturday night, sweeping and setting little things right. Jacob’s head cold doesn’t bother me at all. I just pick up the slack. There is a powerful feeling infusing my muscles that sings, “This is finally going to be done.”

Sunday moved a little slower but still powerfully. We fought a little because, seriously, I was upending the environment that Jacob has been living in the last five years and, although we discussed every decision, it was still hard for him. I totally empathize.

By Sunday night, we were in a good place. We had the major shelves up in the living room with everything cleared out of the guest room. Jacob had gotten rid of the gigantic and superfluous couches and I had gotten a couple to pick up the broken kitchen table on Saturday night. We made the old dining room table into Jacob’s new desk that he didn’t have to share with anyone and we anticipated building the new dining room table sometime during the week before our Shabbat dinner for about 10 people.

On Monday morning, Jacob started having abdominal pains. By 9:00 that night, he no longer possessed his appendix.

This was not part of our plans.

Still, I was feeling good. Tranquil. My feet were completely on the ground so I did not get knocked off-balance.

This is an amazing feeling, people. One can handle being exhausted if one hasn’t been knocked over.

By Thursday, Jacob was feeling well enough to help his brother put together the new dining room table. All the people coming for dinner were intimates so I didn’t mind them seeing the chaos of our possessions that were still out in the open. Because Jacob’s brother helped out, I could make soup to be warmed on Friday and lay out the ingredients ahead of time for the challah that Jacob could mix and set to rise before I got home from work.

Since then, our roommates have moved in and are wonderful. Jacob and I have had little tiffs but have worked them out without much ado and I have continued to make forward progress with the house while feeling comfortable to just sit and rest when I need to, knowing that it will all get done eventually now that it’s started.

I guess I wanted to share my new state of mind with you all since so many of my recent posts have shared my interior struggles. I credit lots of therapy, difficult self-reflection, amazing support from my husband and a sense of comfort in my relationship with God for giving me a framework to cradle me and gently push me upwards until I was above-ground again. I'm sure I'll fall into the depths again but I will not take this season of golden autumnal sunshine for granted. It has been long-awaited and sought after.

Intervarsity vs. Habitat for Humanity

2010-09-24T09:22:00.002-05:00

Last night, I spoke to a group about 200 evangelical pastors at a conference about evangelizing. I was part of a panel that consisted of 2 atheists and a Christian that most Christians would not consider Christian. I was the latter.

During the panel, I talked about my time in college and why I chose Habitat for Humanity over Intervarsity as my main social group. I said that when I looked at both groups, I think I chose Habitat because I wanted to be more like those people, while I definitely knew that DID NOT want to become more like the Intervarsity folks.

The list of why I was repulsed by Intervarsity is easy to come up with:

Girls were weirdly perky
Guys were kind of assholes but with a moralistic veneer
Girls and guys were separated and traditional gender roles were clearly the norm
I hated praise songs

In the Q&A sessions afterwards, a woman asked me what was so attractive about the Habitat for Humanity group.

I bumbled the answer so I thought I'd record what I should have said here:

They were fun and funny. This may be relative as I'm sure the IV folks experienced fun. But my personality liked the kind of jokes that were made at Habitat.
I had a liberating sense that I could be myself. The only social limit I saw was that you couldn't be an asshole. I sensed that in the IV crowd, I would have had to use clean language and did not see potential for personal exploration that I thought should be part of the college experience.
They were smart and wanted to change the world.
They actually worked at making the world a better place every Saturday. My first year, we raised $27,000 and built an entire house in partnership with the neighboring college.
They liked me for me rather than for how I might be lauded as an example of the success of their ideology.
There was a potential for me to be a leader there, even though I was a woman.

Unfortunately, this was the best question that a conference on evangelism could ask so I'm sorry that I bumbled it. If more churches were like that Habitat for Humanity group, more people like me would go to church.

Rally to Restore Sanity

2010-09-20T18:32:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to let you know that Jacob and I will be attending the Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington DC. Actually, Jacob will be attending the concurrent March to Keep Fear Alive, hosted by Stephen Colbert. I have never attended a rally of any sort but found myself weirdly moved to act when I heard about this one. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is hosting it and writes,

"We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles."

This describes me perfectly.

Also, when I started doing some research, I found that the idea originally came from a Reddit user and that members of that forum donated over $200,000 to Donors Choose in order to persuade Stephen Colbert to make this idea a reality. I really like that model for change. I hope it catches on.

Lately, I've been feeling pretty paralyzed when it comes to making decisions. I've talked about it with my therapist and have all sorts of complicated explanations for it but the basic problem is that I just can't discern which consequence I will regret more. Whether it is choosing dinner, sorting out my stuff for what to give away or making financial or social decisions, while I can imagine what possible outcomes might arise from making one choice or another, I can't imagine how I will feel about those outcomes.

For a girl who is used to going with her gut, this is perplexing. I have never really found it difficult to decide what to do next. As I have said before, one idea just seemed like the next thing in front of me and so I did it. Anne Lamott writes about her pastor's decision-making process and says that she gets very quiet and breathes in and out slowly. Then she looks down at her feet and imagines her options as stepping stones on either side of her. The stone that appears to have a spotlight shine on it in her mind's eye is generally the path she should take. Or maybe I am remembering that all wrong. Still, I've used that advice before. But now, there's no spotlight at all. Is it too melodramatic to say THERE IS ONLY DARKNESS?

I'm not a person who makes lists of pros and cons, nor am I someone, not do pareto analysis or decision trees appeal to me very much. The best I do is some sort of back of the napkin cost benefit analysis.

So, I spend a lot of my non-work hours pretty overwhelmed and sometimes a little panicky. Where did that confidence go? I've asked that question a couple of times here in the last several months.

But when I heard about this rally, I just knew it was the next thing in front of me. I feel so bewildered but grateful for the light shining inside of me when I think of it.

So Jacob bought the tickets (choosing from the different options was too much for me) and I asked a dear from from junior high and high school to put us up on her futon. I'm excited about the atmosphere that we'll be a part of: funny, smart people who believe that this slightly ironic gesture will actually make a difference. I think it will be festive and ridiculous. I missed the celebration in Grant Park when Obama was elected. I'm hoping to find some of that jubilation and the experience of being part of a crowd all feeling the same feelings at this rally.

No follow-up obligations. No homework to do before-hand. No family to be in relationship with. Just an experience. An adventure, one might call it. A real vacation.

The right question

2010-09-09T08:12:00.001-05:00

Lately, I have had a couple of people look at me strangely when I tell them that I often sit quietly in meetings at work when evangelical Christians assume that everyone else in the room shares their religious and political opinions. I think that my friends know me as outspoken and also an advocate for marginalized folks and so the idea that I would sit quietly doesn't jive with the persona that they know. Of course, they could also rightly see me as bossy and tactless and have a similar response. I'll hope for the former.

However, my position as director of partnerships means that when my professional hat is on, I have to put the relationship of my organization with their organization as the top priority and challenging the beliefs of the representative of another organization puts the mission I'm working so hard to achieve at risk. I know that some folks might worry that this suppression is hurting my soul but I don't grit my teeth while keeping my mouth shut, nor do I seethe with unexpressed loathing. I'm really comfortable that as I get to know people, my testimony will be more easily heard because it will be in heard in context with the way I live my life, which is as a mostly loving, mostly gracious Christian.

The annual Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) conference is here in Chicago this year and it is again a mix of delight at catching up with my growing network of friends and colleagues in the industry, fun in hanging out with my dad and angst at feeling a little bit on the outside of this predominantly evangelical crowd.

For the last several years, I have been hearing about a guy named Andrew Marin, who is becoming a leader at CCDA. (It's worth doing a google search to see how many different people on the spectrum have an opinion about the guy's work.) I know that at some point I should read his book but it just hasn't gotten to the top of the pile yet. Instead, whenever anyone asks me about him, I ask about him right back. I tend to say something like, "I hear a lot of good things about Andrew but I am a little fuzzy about what he actually believes about homosexuality and the church. Everything I read online seems to dance around that issue." I haven't gotten an answer to that question yet that has let me feel comfortable forming an opinion about his work.

He works to be a bridge between the evangelical community and the GLTBQ community. As far as I can tell, he encourages the evangelical Christian community to drop their fundamentalism and reflect God's love to all people, including gay folks. He doesn't seem to feel a need to assure evangelicals that he believes homosexuality is a sin but he doesn't affirm it either. I call that progress.

Yesterday, I was asked about Andrew Marin by a former supervisor whom I really respect and feel pretty comfortable with. When I asked, "But how does Andrew actually feel about homosexuality?" he gave me a typical response and said, "You're asking the wrong question." I like this man enough to push back. I said, "As a person whose church welcomes and affirms gay people, I have to say that I think it's the right question. If someone does not feel like the marriage of Michael and Rodrigo is worth our community's support then we might need to protect them against you." I probably didn't say it that well, but I hope I got the gist out.

My friend referred me to Andrew's interview on Moody radio, which I haven't got a chance to listen to (I'm taking advantage of a rare and limited quiet moment to write this post) but hope to soon. I appreciate the help.

I want to say again, I think it's the right question. I think Andrew's work is great progress for the evangelical church. Lots of people need to hear that the way they act on their beliefs hurts other children of God and are, thus, actions that aren't Christ-like. However, I think that message needs to be a gateway to folks examining their actual beliefs and determining if they are themselves the beliefs Christ would hold in this day and age.

This may seem hypocritical to some folks that have been reading this blog for awhile. As an emergent Christian, I am adamant that all beliefs about God are the result of our experiences with God and are therefore totally unique to each person and should not be used as a basis for whether or not we are in relationship with one another. We shouldn't judge each other's experiences with God as valid or invalid. It may seem like I am saying that Andrew Marin's relationship with God is not as enlightened as mine since he seems to believe that homosexuality is a sin.

I am not saying this. Andrew Marin is just as good a Christian as I am. Probably better. However, beliefs about other people are not on the same level as beliefs about God. I am asking the right question because it is essential that we human beings continue moving along the path toward believing that other human beings are equal to ourselves in the eyes of God and that we believe that we are fully loved for exactly who we are, without ever needing to change to maintain that status of being loved. As Christians, we need to be constantly moving toward dropping our agendas for how to change other people, which means that we need to move toward changing our pesky habit of believing that we know how other people need to change. Only God knows that. We delude ourselves into thinking that we ARE God when we take on that mantel.

Early abolitionists advocated on behalf of the rights of African slaves while still believing them to be an inferior species. Those of us engaged in racial reconciliation from the social context of membership in the privileged, dominant culture (i.e. white folks) still struggle with our complicity in the structures that have been created over time that continue to treat African-Americans as second-class citizens as a legacy to that racism of the past. We acknowledge that everyone is still a little bit racist. Even puppets acknowledge this. Acknowledging this flaw in our characters allows us to be on the look-out for how it hurts others. However, if we tried to say it was OK to be racist, we would begin heading down the slippery slope of excusing our mis-treatment of others, which stops our forward progress of becoming more Christ-like.

As far as I know, Andrew Marin is doing great work in helping Christians examine their actions. The oppression of homosexual children of God is a problem that needs to be attacked by people from all points on the spectrum. However, I will continue to insist that until it becomes as appalling in our society to be against gay marriage as it is to be against interracial marriage, the positive outcome of the battle is still far from being inevitable.

And your heart was an open book

2010-08-31T11:43:00.000-05:00

I used to feel like a vibrant compilation artist, moving fluidly from adventure to reflection to expression, experimenting and experiencing whatever circumstance brought me and as my whimsy took me. Now, I feel like an accumulation of skills and talents learned on those adventures, made useful by practice and with a responsibility not to waste that utility because of the concomitant knowledge gained over the past 15 years about the suffering of so many other people.

I fear that this is adulthood. I fear this hardening. It is so new and I don't know yet how to reliably find joy within it. When I thought that adulthood was being married and owning a house and having kids and being respected for my opinions, I welcomed it. I can see how one would find joy in all of that.

Now that I understand that adulthood is commitments, I have been feeling bereft. And, let there be no mistake, I don't mean commitments as in a lot of things to do; I long ago learned basic time management skills.

I define "commitments" to mean "things I have given my heart to and so desire to pour my best effort into." There are only so many things you can pour your best effort into. Right now, I feel like I am filling holes to keep the ground level rather than building anything worthwhile.

When I told Jacob last night that everything moved too fast, I couldn't explain the metaphor, but just knew it was true. I can't catch up and I can't slow down and absorb the life that is all around me. I make lots of stupid mistakes, like forgetting to tell Jacob that I already ran an errand and wasting his time or forgetting to tell him that I need something that he would have been happy to have the opportunity to provide for me. Jacob can't and shouldn't have to do all the housework himself so the house is a complete sty. I am also unconsciously avoiding simple tasks that have any chance of difficult emotional underpinnings, like basic implementation of financial decision that Jacob and I have made.

This will not end well.

So, I am hoping that identifying this new state of being will be the first step toward accommodating it and finding balance. My parents checked in on me last night since they hadn't heard from me in awhile and my best friend in Minnesota called. That helped, too. But my best friends in Chicago, the people who have poured their best efforts into me, are moving tomorrow. My grief is embarrassing and doesn't help with the larger problem.

I'd like to be an artist again. How does one find the necessary liberation to experiment and express when one has commitments? Do you know?

25 new things about me

2010-08-09T22:48:00.001-05:00

1. I have witnessed the laboring of two women in the last four months and helped with the actual birth of one's child.
2. I am no more baby-crazy than I have been my entire life; the people closest to me are just beginning to have babies that I feel I have a right to obsess over.
3. I remember being angry with the old lady who babysat for a whole group of us kids while our moms had a Bible study upstairs. I was only 3 or 4 years old but I was indignant that she wouldn't let me hold the babies.
4. I have been married just shy of a year.
5. Dude, this marriage shit is hard.
6. And I have a lot of fun.
7. And I'm not lonely anymore.
8. And I like having the opportunity to care for my husband and to do things simply because they will make him happy.
9. And that scritchy-scratchy feeling of wariness from a constant expectation that life could jack-knife and go shooting off in any direction while leaving me behind has also significantly decreased.
10. However, I am fully aware that this new-found sense of stability is merely illusion; the easiest way to make God laugh is still to tell her your plans.
11. I believe in a God who wants the best for me; my explanation for why bad things happen to good people is that we live in a broken world (for some reason) and so consequences of that brokenness hurt folks, often when they didn't break a thing in the first place. It's not a satisfying theology but I'm learning to live in the mystery.
12. After I met my husband, his Judaism taught me the phrase tikkun olam, which is a concept that God wants all of us to participate in mending the broken world. This is part of why I need Jacob and his faith: to give me words for what my Christianity has neglected.
13. I have somewhat traditional beliefs about God and Christ. You know, the Trinity, the co-existent divinity and humanity of Christ, death and resurrection, and the persistence of the Holy Spirit.
14. I do not need anyone else on the planet to believe the same things that I do.
15. I think that beliefs are a direct result of experiences. Therefore, everyone's beliefs are slightly different.
16. So, my Christianity gets expressed by gathering with other people who all start from different places but who are all heading in the same direction - toward God - rather than being expressed by clustering with people who are exactly like me.
17. I make quilts.
18. I recently knit a sweater for the first time even though I have been knitting hats for years.
19. I used to live on an island in the Pacific Northwest.
20. I have a job that perfectly melds my profession passions and skill sets: I build capacity within an organization that is just beginning to succeed at effecting policy change at a systemic level regarding how American society views vulnerable children by challenging Christian to live into their faith and care for a child in their homes for a little while so the parents can get their feet back under them.
21. I am very close to my family.
22. I struggle a lot with treating other people well. I just can't seem to get the hang of seeing things from others' perspective. This sucks for everyone involved, myself included.
23. I fear that if most people had to describe me with three words, the first two would be "abrasive" and "intimidating."
24. That fear probably explains a lot to anyone who is trying to figure me out.
25. I laugh a lot over the course of a day.

Previous descriptive list posts can be found in these posts: 25 Things About Me, Because My Old One Is Woefully Out of Date, and 100 Things About Me.

Happy birthday

2010-08-05T19:34:00.000-05:00

When my friend finally gave birth today, I had my face next to her face, holding her shoulders from behind and cradling her head with one arm to help her to curl up to push. There are images in life that never leave you and seeing the tiny ear, so perfect, so defined, emerge from the mess of flesh and hair is one of those images. I whispered in Jess's ear, "There's an ear!" And when the baby slithered out, I was the first one to tell her, "You have a baby girl!"

Her water had broken 34 hours earlier and she labored that whole time. I joined them for the last 5 hours, bringing fresh energy, telling funny stories in between contractions and then just sitting quietly as things progressed sooooo slowly and my friend began to struggle. She became a Woman Giving Birth, beyond humor, focused on getting it right, focused on the intense work of pushing and focused on the animal fear caused by pain. She was exhausted and glorious. More than once, I teared up when all my eyes could register was how strong she was. Instead of thinking, "That is Jess," I thought, "That is strength." Also, I was profoundly aware of the honor of being allowed to work with her, lending her my muscles to help her change positions or to hold her legs up and out. I felt such keen affection for her body, kissing her ankles and massaging her feet, smoothing her hair and wiping a cool washcloth on her forehead, neck and wrists.

I also almost passed out but we don't need to talk about that. :-) I had locked my knees while standing at the side of the bed to hold her leg and between that and the tiny breakfast, I felt the world swim and recognized what was going on soon enough to ask her mom to take my place so I could lean against the birthing tub with my head between my knees. The sweet and awesome midwife called out a little later, "You OK, Rebecca?"

"Yes, but this isn't about me anyway."

But it was a little bit, too. My perception of my place in this world has mostly involved feeling like I was not #1 on anyone's list. I have had few seasons with best friends and many of those BFFs had other totally legitimate relationship priorities going at the same time. Have I ever told you about when I was 11 and offered a best friend charm with a heart in three pieces to girls from church and they turned me down?

My friend who gave birth today is particularly talented at making friends. And she chose me to be there. And expressed earnest gratitude when it was all over and she was herself again. (I mean, she was always herself. The worst her language got was when she shouted, "Oh! Goooosh." It was just an unfamiliar self.) This made me feel special in a way I have not felt before. It made me feel like there was something good about me that shined brightly enough that they saw it through the abrasiveness and whatever it is about me that intimidates most folks. I didn't want to be trite when they thanked me by saying, "No, thank YOU," so as I stumbled to find something else to say, all I could come up with to explain my feelings of reciprocity was, "I love you."

And isn't that the reason we want to be important to other people? We want to be given deep enough access to fully love them. The act of loving is crucial to our well-being. When too many people in our lives consider us to be in the third or fourth tier of intimacy, we don't have the chance to love them.

But today, I got to tell a friend that she had a daughter and give her periodic sips of water and so I'll say here what I didn't want to say there, "No, thank YOU."

Happy birthday.

The battle is already won

2010-07-31T15:28:00.000-05:00

Remember how I wondered in my last post about how one takes a vacation from the continual process of fitting a chipped cog into the broken machine that is this world? I have to admit that grace has allowed me to stumble into an answer. Wednesday night, while feeling hormonally miserable and wandering around the house aimlessly waiting for Jacob to come home so we could talk about the dreaded finances, I looked into our Jacuzzi bathtub and thought, "Hmn. Why not?" I filled the tub, added Dr. Bronner's lavender soap and read Anne Lamott's Rosie until Jacob came home and climbed in with me. At that point, I was positively playful even though an undercurrent of insecurity remained.

As an aside (I'm not finished yet describing my return to being fit for human consumption), we seem to be in a new season in our marriage. I think we started with sorting out the logistics of life together combined with tapering stress-adjusted adrenals then moved into a phase where we were both sorting out our roles within the relationship and now I'm in a place where I need to be assured that this is for real. Whatever love is, right now I need to know that Jacob has something to smooth out my rough spots in his reception of me. I hate to be so cliche, but as a girl who has been left by a husband before, there is something primal within me that just needs to hear, "I will never leave." Unfortunately, we're both learning that Jacob speaks with action and I hear with words. I know, it would make sense that since my ex-husband was so good at telling me what I wanted to hear and so bad at actually following up on any of his promises, I would now be looking for a man who spoke through actions.

It would make sense.

But no one ever accused my emotions of using much sense. My choice to marry Jacob was very much a choice of the head. I love him but I have loved men before who would be terrible life partners. Slowly, I learned from my dating experiences how to discern a bad partner and when Jacob came along as the antithesis of that archetype AND I loved him, I chose to pursue marriage with him.

When I spell it out that way, our relationship seems pretty unlikely and therefore magical. He is my great exception.

But sometimes my emotions are still patterned around the men of my past, who were mostly good at making me feel better with their words. Jacob is honest, which cannot always coexist with making me feel better. So, I have to learn how to make myself feel better most of the time. That's a compromise I'm willing to work towards since the reward of never having to doubt him is so great.

But on Wednesday night, after our financial talk had worn down the protective layer of playfulness (finances are just inherently stressful for me), I was exposed again and feeling unsuccessful and I was worried that Jacob had made his decision about me like I made my decision about him: with his head. You see, if he used his head he must has been basing his decision on faulty data because who would marry someone with as many neuroses as I have and as many bad habits and character flaws that I do? (The Imp of Insecurity was working overtime whispering persuasively in my ear at that point.) And if he based his decision on faulty data, by now wouldn't he be discovering the truth and wouldn't that mean he would feel justified in terminating the contract?

I laid in the bed and he laid his weight on top of me over the covers and I babbled all of this to him with tears dripping into my ears.

And do you know what my man of action told me, "Honey, you didn't look very good on paper when I made the decision to marry you." Then, he listed all of my faults.

It was the best thing I have ever heard.

Because if he can list all of my faults and married me anyway? Then I have nothing to worry about. He can't feel deceived or resentful. He loves me just the way I am and we can move forward from there as equals in this relationship. I don't have to struggle to be the best me all the time for fear that if I slip, the scales on his eyes will be lifted and he'll leave. I can be myself, knowing that it is enough, growing at a normal speed into a better human being. Before I was feeling like I had to use fertilizer to be as impressive as possible but scared because modern farming technique aren't sustainable and deplete the soil. Now, he and I can work the farm organically.

I will slip into insecurity again and have the same feeling of relief and comfort again because that's the way life works. Things change incrementally. I'm OK with that because the next time I feel this insecure, I have a history of knowing that although Jacob speaks with actions, sometimes his actions are to use words to reassure me. I can trust in that.

When I started writing this post, I thought that I would tell you that the solution to the puzzle of how to take a break from being oneself in the world was to sleep until noon (like I did today), babysit for one's baby niece (like I'm doing right not) and get a phone call that your husband is returning early from his hiking trip and wants to spend the evening relaxing together (like I just got). But it turns out that's not the solution. I can enjoy those things because my soul is at peace but that peacefulness comes from having chosen a good partner.

How lucky am I that the answer to my problems is a choice that I made almost a year ago? The solution is now always there, I just need to remember to reach out to him.

Thread through a needle

2010-07-27T22:08:00.000-05:00

I have been working on a mix CD for my best friend entitled, "Aren't We Aging Well?" because of a Dar Williams song and it's got me thinking about emotions.

I have been thinking about so many mixes made in the past. Mixes made out of infatuation, mixes made out of grief. Mixes made for my car stereo and not to give as a gift because I wanted to wallow in their emotion and not feel as alone.

I made break-up mixes in honor of my college boyfriend that included the Indigo Girls singing Love-Struck Romeo and shouting in my heart, "But it was just a scene to you!" When I left my first job bitterly, I made a mix that highlighted Ani DiFranco's Million That You Never Made. I made a mix for my ex-husband before I knew our marriage was dead with Garth Brook's Rodeo mixed with Dolly Parton's Touch Your Woman inexplicably mixed with Aretha Franklin's Rock Steady because he still gave me joy but I couldn't say out loud that he was growing distant. After the divorce, I made a mix with the Rolling Stones's Sympathy for the Devil because I discovered it helped to put it on repeat and turn the stereo up - way up - in the car. My first mix for Jacob had Thao's Bag of Hammers because I really really wanted him to stay and not get on that interstate bus when the inevitable fights came up because I was so delighted with him and wanted it to work but knew that I was was like a bee sting sometimes.

The emotions that we make mixes to reflect are powerful. They inform our day to day living. We sing songs in our heads while swimming and driving and filing and we want those songs to be appropriate to our mood so we craft little soundtracks for ourselves or as gifts for others, trying to help them feel less alone and more loved. They are big emotions.

Now that I am married, I wonder if these big emotions get short shrift. Now that the break-ups are done, what is left to make mixes about? Logically, there should be plenty of stuff since big emotions are probably pretty evenly distributed throughout life and not front-loaded to life before marriage. I wonder if I bury them under the equally large but more culturally acceptable emotions of love and contentment. We all fall into the lie that life is a Disney movie that ends with a happily ever after and I wonder which parts of that I have not been unpacking.

I'm not asking for tragedy to strike but I think I need to start noticing other events in my life that need mix tapes. I have walking around in a low-grade rage for a couple of weeks after a lovely stint of calm and serenity brought on by intensified therapy. It has had me puzzled until I started to think about mix tapes. What lyrics are speaking to me in the music I'm listening to? For one thing, the other day I realized that I had never uploaded my Alanis Morrissette or Violent Femmes albums. That should tell you something about what my sub-conscious mind is asking for. The Dar Williams song above makes me cry every time because I feel both that I AM aging well but also that I'm not. The rest of Susan's mix that I'm working on now has some pretty hard-driven funk like the Chili Pepper's version of Higher Ground and Ida Maria's I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked but also has fun dance songs like Kermit and Fozzie singing Movin' Right Along.

So, what emotions am I brushing off because they seem less important than happily ever after emotions when really they deserve their own mix tapes? Well, I have stopped engaging a dear, dear friend of mine because we had a blow-out and she insists on treating me like a monster that she doesn't feel safe with unless she hides behind email or has a mediator in the room. I can't handle being the bad guy for her anymore. There is real sadness mixed with real relief there but I don't know how to process it. Or, out of his own intense emotions, Jacob said something deeply insensitive on Friday. We have talked about it and grown closer but I find that the wound still stings. Also, I feel pretty unsuccessful in my interactions with folks in a variety of communities, like I am not navigating well the narrow line between being myself and not offending or upsetting others.

None of these powerful emotions are really attached to an inciting incident that would typically be noticed in the story arc of a normal life. I mean people all around me are having babies and moving and dealing with cancer, for Heaven's sake. I would have expected that the emotions associated with my situations would flare and then dissipate since they are not as huge as, say, getting married. They are part of day-to-day living, not events.

But as I think about mixes, about soundtracks, these little tensions inform everything I do when I succeed at being present in the now. Like the WS Merwin poem says, they are "like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with [their] color."

This will require me to change the lens on the camera aimed at my inner landscape. I'm so tired. I would love to just be. How does one take a vacation from the continual process of fitting a chipped cog into the broken machine that is this world? Maybe not so strangely, I have been finding comfort in a Vance Gilbert song: Your Brighter Day.

I won!

2010-07-26T15:32:00.001-05:00

Since entering the wonderful world of crafting blogs, I enter giveaways all the time. I have never won, though.

But today, I won! How exciting is that! Free fabric for me! I'm getting a charm pack (small squares of a bunch of different fabrics from the same design line) of a gorgeous fabric that is also environmentally friendly. Could there be a more perfect giveaway for me, given my charm quilts?

Take a look around at the site of my benefactor. They are one of my regular reads because it is just pure delight to see which fabrics are out there. It's probably not very good for my pursuit of materialist freedom since it is a very real example of a burgeoning desire to collect once I begin seeing just how much is out there. What was once contained to what I could find in the local craft stores has opened up to actually searching for online stores that carry a particular designer (Heather Ross, anyone?). Still, I rarely make anything for myself and instead goes out as gifts, so, it can't be that bad for my spirit, can it?

Thanks, Kim. I'm super-excited.

Hath no fury

2010-07-21T21:06:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things to do is to really point out to someone that they have been hurtful and are therefore wrong. My therapist describe it as coming out of his shoes. (He likes to do it, too, so we understand each other.) It feels so good to describe my expectations and then to carefully analyse for them just exactly how someone doesn't measure up.

The last time I really let myself go to do this was in college. A mutual friend hurt my best friend and I went over there and made her cry.

In my pursuit of grace and peace, as well as my desire to prioritize relationships and making people feel as loved as God makes me feel, this practice has laid mostly dormant. It comes up in fits and spurts if someone provokes me over email, which is why I have requested to all of my friends that they not say potentially hurtful things over email. I've worked really hard to get good at accepting criticism to my face so that people can actually feel like they can take me up on this request without getting burned. I stumble here and there but I have lots of success stories to tell, too, so I know I'm on the right path.

I have also cut back on this activity because it just doesn't work. Most people, myself included, respond more to body language and tone of voice than they do to carefully crafted sentences. Words just don't mean much in the heat of a disagreement between intimates. Finding closure after my divorce required embracing the futility of finding exactly the right words. My ex-husband was never going to admit that he made certain choices even though he knew they would hurt me. He was never going to give me a carefully crafted apology in response to my carefully crafted dressing-down.

So, I am a better person for refraining from making people cry. But sometimes I miss the white hot intensity of righteous indignation. It recalls for me the rapture of writing my first letter of civil disobedience during my sophomore year in high school when the stupid cheerleaders screwed up and none of us got to have initiation weeks for our clubs. I was an International Thespian, damnit and I deserved to be publicly humiliated! Now, I usually write the email or blog post but then not send it or publish it. I try to make phone calls before misunderstandings get out of hand.

Still, yesterday I made an exception. I posted over at my blog for interfaith families if you'd like to see the result. Like my episode in college, I don't like it when the silent minority gets brushed off because there is no spokesperson. So, I became that spokesperson.

It was fun and I appreciated that the object of my anger was willing to comment so that I could also engage him with a more conciliatory tone so that something might actually be accomplished besides simply making oppressed folks feel validated (which has lots of value on its own, though).

My oldies station

2010-07-09T22:04:00.004-05:00

I started high school in 1990 and graduated from college in 1999. I think it's fair to say that if you pull together the greatest songs of the 90s, it will be the proverbial soundtrack of my adolescence.

Luckily for me, VH1 has done that work for me. I'm at my parents' house tonight all alone, by a fluke of scheduling. Since they actually receive a TV signal here (as opposed to our house, where we revel in Netflix), I stumbled on this paradise of mindless television and been on the couch for the past two hours knitting my first baby sweater and living the memories.

Since I'm still alone, I thought I'd share some of them with you. I should preface this by telling you that I am not in the slightest bit a music elitist. It plays in the background when I do stuff and there are a few albums that are written on my heart but I have never sat down and listened to an album, or even a song, just for the experience of listening to music. I used to try when I was in junior high because my brothers all did that but would not realize until the third or fourth song of whatever album I was listening to that I had gotten up off the floor during the first song and begun playing with my dolls or, often, reading a book. Needless to say, I do not keep up on the latest bands, even though two of my brothers actually know people who are actually in bands that other people have heard of. Since these two brothers will probably come up in this post a lot, I'll introduce them to you:

David is 8 years older than I am, a genius artist with a brilliant sense of humor. He was a "skater" when he was in high school in the 80s and built a 12 foot half pipe in the back yard for all his gorgeous skater friends to hang out at. Being surrounded by these suburban rebels with their asymmetrical haircuts and the scrawny but somehow muscular chests during my formative years can probably be blamed for many of my romantic mistakes once I came of age. I still resent Matt D. for not following through on his promise to marry me that he made when I was 8 and he was 15. David went to college in Champaigne during those years in the late 80s when bands like Smashing Pumpkins were playing in bars in Champaigne. We're still pretty sure one of our dogs is prominently featured on a vinyl release of a major single from that time. However, it should be telling that I can't remember which one. I still have my turquoise Powell-Peralta t-shirt that he left behind when he went to school.

Daniel is two years younger than I am and followed David's lead a decade later. He and I had many of the same friends since we both hung in the "alternative" crowd but he lived the lifestyle while I watched from the sidelines. Daniel is a true musician and his explorations into musical discovery and expression made me as cool as I am, even though that's not very cool. When we were still in junior high, he spent the entire summer learning Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner with the amp turned all the way up. It was a long summer. I am his biggest fan and stood in the front row for all of his shows, which included his first album release party at a local VFW hall as a sensitive singer-songwriter, his country band called Barely American and his glam rock years as Glam Dan and the Fancy Lads. You can actually buy one of their albums on I-Tunes. It's the best concept album I've ever encountered. Of course, remember that I have never actually sat down and listened to another concept album in my life.

So, without further adieu, let me attempt to paint the pictures that rise up in my mind as I watched some mindless television. If those C-listers can tells their stories, I should be able to, too. I just won't have M.C. Hammer adding some totally vague and affirming compliment at the end of each African American artist's song. You'll have to imagine that for yourself.

VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90's...

Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (1991, #6 US)

My main memory of this is hearing it at a party (I did not go to many of these and I think this was a pseudo-party hosted by some kid's mom in her basement) and hearing the other say it was amazing and realizing that I had heard it before. David had brought home the first two albums at Thanksgiving the year before and played it for my cousins and I listened from the doorway and marveled at the little naked kid on the cover.

U2 - "One" (1991, #10 US)

I got nothing.

Seriously, I know U2 is the shit but although I could probably sing most of their many hits word-for-word, I have never been a fan. I have never been emotionally moved by one of their songs.

Sorry.

Backstreet Boys - "I Want It That Way" (1999, #6 US)

Again, nothing. The boy bands were simply something to be mocked and endured at basement parties. I remember responding enthusiastically with my friends when some headbanging song came on because it was such a relief from music like this.

Whitney Houston - "I Will Always Love You" (1992, #1 US)

In college, I lived in Suite 3D with a bunch of other girls including Erika and Amanda, who were both bridesmaids in my first wedding and I performed that role in their weddings. Erika was in the Bridal Brigade for my second wedding. We used to sign this at the top of our lungs to each other, relishing the dramatic key change toward the end. At Amanda's wedding, we stood on chairs and sang it to her during the reception.

Madonna - "Vogue" (1990, #1 US)

Dan K. was bosom buddies with Daniel the summer this song came out and we changed the words to "Don't just stand there, let's get to it, pick your nose, there's nothing to it. Nose." We were all in the summer art and technology class for gifted kids and thought we were very clever, with our opaque projector and our video scanner that printed out pictures of our faces on the 8-bit printer. Dan, of course, came out of the closet 10 years later, a fact I learned when another fabulous friend told me that they had literally made out in the closet in high school.

Sir Mix-A-Lot - "Baby Got Back" (1992, #1 US)

Cliff C. and Brad D. were the two sociopaths of my church youth group. I felt tormented by them but desperately wanted their attention because they were just so fucking funny. And ridiculous. We were on a mission trip to Mississippi and in the kitchen of Canton Bible Baptist, Cliff did KP while wearing a walkman and occasionally shouted out lines from the songs. This is where I first processed the meaning of the line, "My anaconda don't want none unless it's got buns, hon." Actually, I'm not sure if Brad was there at that moment but I have other memories of him singing ridiculous things in that kitchen with the same energy so he's included in the nostalgia.

Also, Cliff used to sing Smells Like Teen Spirit in an astonishingly annoying repetition. I remember my youth director, Malcolm, trying to catch him up by asking him what a libido actually was. He might have been hoping to embarrass him but I can't imagine that tactic actually working since Cliff seemed to have no shame. He also did not know what a libido was beyond the fact that it rhymed with mosquito.

Britney Spears - "...Baby One More Time" (1999, #1 US)

Missed this entirely. I think I was planning my wedding at the time.

TLC - "Waterfalls" (1994, #1 US)

For some reason, I was listening to the local Black music station my first couple of years of college. This struck me as a bad attempt at poignancy and I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. It just seemed too obvious. I had NO cultural context to put it within.

R.E.M. - "Losing My Religion" (1991, #4 US)

Dan S. was one of my best friends and Michael Stipe 100% mimicked his physicality in this video. Dan was emo before emo was a thing and there was not one iota of affectation about it. He was just a shy kid who ran cross-country and talked late into the night on mission trips and retreats about important and intelligent stuff. He is possible the only male friend I hung out with in high school that I did not have a crush on. Sorry, Dan.

Sinéad O'Connor - "Nothing Compares 2 U" (1990, #1 US)

I remember mocking this for her weird voice. Then, it was the cool thing to do to mock her for her weirdo stunts. I learned from VH1 that she released an album recently called Theology and I'm actually kind of curious how she thinks about God because in maturity I realized that she must have been kind of interesting. (Although I don't buy her denial that she ever wanted to be a pop star. What? You stood in front of a camera and cried while you sang a Prince song because you were just looking to entertain the local yokels?)

Pearl Jam - "Jeremy" (1991, #79 US)

Uah. So tragic. So narrative. So comprehensible. So true. So true.

Alanis Morissette - "You Oughta Know" (1995)

I was a freshman in college and loved the surge of angry girl rock. This was just sexually explicit enough to titillate my slowly fading Vestal virgin persona. I borrowed the CD from the girl down the hall to put this on a mix tape. Oh yeah. Transitional audio technology. I was right in the middle of it. After my divorce, I listened to this album a lot.

Dr. Dre (featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg) - "Nuthin' but a "G" Thang" (1992, #2 US)

Guys in the youth group sang lines from this a lot but I didn't have a lot of experience with it. Their gangsta love felt vaguely exploitational and pathetic for a bunch of suburban white guys and it made me uncomfortable but one's last name was Guillemette so the G-Thang, G-String joke was pretty funny.

Mariah Carey - "Vision of Love" (1990, #1 US)

Nothing but mockery for this one. A 7-octave range meant nothing if it sounded screechy. I was just beginning to take voice lessons as a locally acclaimed soprano so I should know.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Under the Bridge" (1991, #2 US)

The cute senior in the theater class I took freshman year recited the lyrics as his dramatic monologue. What was disturbing was that he pantomimed shooting heroin before he began. In a world without internet, I'm now a little disturbed to wonder where he learned how to tie a tourniquet around his arm and tap a vein.

MC Hammer - "U Can't Touch This" (1990, #8 US)

This was just ubiquitous. I don't have a specific memory attached to it except to recall the trend of Z. Cavaricci pants. I suppose this is what grunge was rebelling against. My friend Carrie once went on a field trip with our girls' Bible study group to buy a pair at the Stratford Square mall and counted out over a hundred dollars in cash. For pants!

Destiny's Child - "Say My Name" (1999, #1 US)

Like I said, I was listening to a lot of B96 at this point but now it was because I had a job teaching African-American high school kids and I wanted to be up on the lingo. Also, I really liked it. So, this song is solely associated with being in my '92 stick shift Saturn that I bought off my dad when I graduated from college.

Metallica - "Enter Sandman" (1991, #16 US)

This song literally frightened me. I watched the video tonight and the strobe-light haunted house effect brought it all back. I remember being vaguely uncertain of whether or not this counted as "evil."

Beastie Boys - "Sabotage" (1994)

Again, my knowledge of the Beastie Boys came almost solely from the guys in my youth group. From them, I learned to prefer Paul's Boutique over the other albums. It was good to have a preference. If you have a preference, people think that you know something. Since I didn't actually care enough to explore new music on my own but still wanted to be cool, I needed to project that I knew something about music. This I could do by insisting on Paul's Boutique.

Hanson - "MMMBop" (1997, #1 US)

These guys came from Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is where my aunt, uncle and their five kids live. They used to hear Hanson play at the local water park before they were huge.

Celine Dion - "My Heart Will Go On" (1997, #1 US)

I think that my first real experience with irony occurred listening to Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. I loved it with all of my dramatic adolescent self. All of the interior urges that caused my to become a member of Thespian Troupe #233 - building sets and acting in high school plays, as well as a community theater production of Godspell - these urges were massaged by the drama . . .

Wait. That's not right. I'm thinking about It's All Coming Back to Me Now. My Heart Will Go On got mocking because it got played so incessantly because of it's association with Titanic, which I still haven't seen.

So, let's pretend we're talking about It's All Coming Back to Me Now. The video was created by the same guy who did Meatloaf's I Would Do Anything For Love and involved a castle and a hot guy dying in a motorcycle crash. It pushed every romantic button in my newly adult heart. At the same time, I knew it was incredibly cheesy. So, I lived in that tension. I think it was my first guilty pleasure that I mocked with a wink wink nudge nudge so that I could listen to it more. Irony. Or maybe camp. I borrowed the CD from the same girl I borrowed Alanis Morissette from and put the song on the same mix tape.

Beck - "Loser" (1994, #10 US)

Pretty incomprehensible. I have never liked songs that I couldn't understand the words. So, I didn't pay much attention to it.

Salt-N-Pepa with En Vogue - "Whatta Man" (1993, #3 US)

I have come to love Salt-N-Pepa much more in my later life than when they were an active music group. I found them to be catchy in my youth but was too intimidated by my lack of membership in African-Americanism to actually go out and buy an album. They were a little raunchy and that secretly appealed to me plus I could understand all the words and the words made me laugh. Delayed gratification is just as sweet, though.

House of Pain - "Jump Around" (1992, #3 US)

I don't know. Fraternity house basements?

Soundgarden - "Black Hole Sun" (1994)

Ubiquitous. Somewhat overly depressive. I didn't respond much to music that seemed like you needed to have taken drugs to understand what it was communicating.

Eminem - "My Name Is" (1999, #26 US)

Again, I didn't come to love Eminem until much later in life. At first, I rejected him because he was so totally offensive. Later, when I calmed down a little (you know, in general, with my personality) I realized that he was really clever and that I liked his use of assonance. My boyfriend on the island watched 8 Mile constantly, which again seemed odd for a white guy who was a professional sea kayak guide from my home town. Still, I watch a movie about a goblin king surrounded by Muppets who falls in love with a young girl (who looks suspiciously like an idealized version of me) and sends her on a quest because he is so conflicted about his love. So, who am I to judge? Has anyone else noticed that my relationship with music revolved a lot around my racial identity?

Counting Crows - "Mr. Jones" (1993)

Again, ubiquitous. Not very interesting.

Ricky Martin - "Livin' la Vida Loca" (1999, #1 US)

Loved this. It felt sexy just as I was getting sexy. It made me want to move my hips.

Vanilla Ice - "Ice Ice Baby" (1990, #1 US)

Some kid named Jason used to breakdance while singing this in the cafeteria in the 6th grade. I always felt bad for him because I think he thought he was secretly cool all along and the rest of the kids were finally recognizing his true self when the truth was that we were laughing at him. I think I projected a lot of my own fears in this scenario.

*NSYNC - "Tearin' Up My Heart" (1998)

I got nothing.

Radiohead - "Creep" (1993)

Ubiquitous. Nondescript. Again, it felt drug-induced and I never really jived with the Gen X loser sentiments. However, now I fully claim my Gen X status. I might have been on the tail end but I definitely relate more with the generation older than me than the one younger than me that has always had email and CDs.

BLACKstreet - "No Diggity" (1996, #1 US)

LOVED this. At one point, I think someone calculated that B96 played this 5 times every hour. I could understand the words and they sounded extremely sexual even though I couldn't quite map what was being said to my very limited understanding of what sexual acts were options. The rhythm was intoxicating. Again, this is absolutely associated with driving in my car. When iTunes made finding songs easy, I put this on the first CD I made from purchased digital music.

Spice Girls - "Wannabe" (1997, #1 US)

This song went on the same college mix tape as You Oughta Know and It's All Coming Back to Me Now. (Susan, did I get all of those from you?) It perfectly expressed the joyful silliness I felt after I found some friends in college to celebrate being a woman out on her own. My whole being felt this exuberant at times.

Third Eye Blind - "Semi-Charmed Life" (1997, #4 US)

Again, fraternity basements come to mind. Only a third of our campus went Greek but since it was a technically "dry" campus, the only real accessible parties were at the fraternities. Also, my close friend Emily join Sigma Kappa and took me along with her. They used to dress me in borrowed baby t-shirts since I still had yet to figure out how to communicate my personality through fashion in a way that could be understood by other people given the current style context.

Oasis - "Wonderwall" (1995, #8 US)

Another in the same camp as the other druggy, whiny, incomprehensible and dark grunge songs. I was firmly in the grunge demographic in high school and college. XL t-shirts that were tucked into the front of my baggy boy jeans with a flannel shirt were de riguer for me. I also had a great pair of railroad overalls purchased at the Big R in Danville, IL to give them authenticity. I have never felt comfortable with posers.

One of my best memories was hanging out with a guy named Paul, who was one of the first openly gay men I knew. Looking back, he was clearly in the natal stages of his fabulousness but it gave him style cred in my 19 year old mind. I was wearing a pair of grass-green corduroy short-alls with a white midriff baring tank top. Over it all was my favorite oversized flannel from the Gap, which was mostly white with the plaid being different shades of the same green as the short-alls. The shorts were only just longer than the tails of the flannel. Paul told me that he loved my outfit and then talked about it for awhile. I felt a blanket of justification wash over me. Like the break-dancing Jason in the cafeteria before me, I secretly believed that I had recently found my style groove and Paul validated that. Ah, grunge.

C+C Music Factory - "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" (1991, #1 US)

This is where I came into the program. I'm just going to pick and choose from here on out.

L.L. Cool J - "Mama Said Knock You Out" (1990, #17 US)

My youth director Malcolm used to sing this ridiculously. Mama said knock you down and so forth. He was interacting witht the aforementioned Cliff and Brad.

The Presidents of the United States of America - "Peaches" (1995)

Totally catchy. I had forgotten about this song. It felt just right for my alternative suburban, grungy soul. Playful and ironic without actually saying anything that I understood. But I could sing along.

Digital Underground - "The Humpty Dance" (1990, #11 US)

I have to tell you that this plays in a steady rotation on my iPod currently. It makes me laugh all the time. It's a song about being ugly but still having sex all the time. What could be better? I only have a vague memory of it from this time period.

Deee-Lite - "Groove Is In The Heart" (1990, #4 US)

I have never danced more ridiculously than I danced to this song and the B52s Love Shack. I have never felt more myself than while dancing this way. High school dances were actually quite fun for me because I was surroudned by a group of people who just danced in a big group and didn't have to talk. You could just run around and chase each other and laugh just like you were kids again. A few drank but you didn't have to in order to get a rush of endorphins and sexualized dancing was out of vogue at the time. You just stood in one place and bounced while moving your arms as the spirit moved you. I still dance like that.

Will Smith - "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" (1998, #1 US)

Similarly, this is totally danceable and I never felt the racial awkwardness with Will Smith that I did with the other Black artists.

Lenny Kravitz - "Are You Gonna Go My Way" (1993)

I owned every Lenny Kravitz album and went to see him in conert 3 or 4 times. This should tell you a lot since I rarely bought albums and didn't go to a concert until my freshman year in college. He was odd and sounded like the soul music that I liked on the oldies radio stations but he still rocked. I realize that my brother Daniel hasn't actually made an appearance but I've realized that is because he introduced me to older rock and roll classic like Led Zepplin and David Bowie. Lots of David Bowie. He also gave me Lenny Kravitz (and then stole my conert t-shirt that cost $25 bucks!)

Paula Cole - "I Don't Want to Wait" (1997, #11 US)

I preferred Where Have All the Cowboys Gone. The bleak portrayal of rural life for a woman combined with the conflicting longing for a strong man expressed the strange feminism I feel that I live with still.

Prince & The New Power Generation - "Gett Off" (1991, #27 US)

Too sexy for me. I love love loved this with all of my suppressed Christian loins.

Lisa Loeb - "Stay (I Missed You)" (1994, #1 US)

Janstee and I drove everywhere with this cassette single in her car's tape deck. I think her car was named Skippy and she used to hit curbs all the time when she turned. She was the first friend in high school that I felt totally at ease with. I felt like she genuinely enjoyed having me around even though she was much cooler than I was. We gossiped and girl talked and liked the same boys. And learned every word to this song. I recently bought a copy of the soundtrack to Singles at a garage sale just for this song.

The only song I can think of that is missing for me in Nine Inch Nails' Closer. It is the sexiest song I can think of besides anything made by Prince. The pulsing rhythm felt like everything I imagined sex to be. I remember gettign into a huge argument with Mike B. in my youth group because he and Brad thought it was evil and shouldn't be listened to. They thought it was written from the point of view of Satan and existed to encourage teenagers to have sex. I could see the Satan point but felt like it was a Satan who looked a little more like David Bowie in the earlier described Labyrinth: fallen but regretful and longing for the goodness he could no longer have. One of the lyrics is quite literally, "You get me closer to God." If sex was everything they taught me it would be in youth group, Nine Inch Nails expressed the transcendence perfectly to my imagination. I think Dave P. would be drunk at high school dances and grind with me, probably because he ultimately turned out to be gay. It was safe and experiemental. I remember being frustrated with the youth group argument because the guys wouldn't even consider my perspective. That was the quintessential gender dynamic in that group so should be recorded in this reminiscene.

So, that's it. More than you ever wanted to know about my adolesence and how it related to sex, race and music.

I realize that a lot of formative music for me was created in the 80s: Violent Femmes, Depeche Mode, They Might Be Giants. These came from my brother David's group and my friends who were following in his path. We would buy the albums on cassette and copy them onto tapes for each other. One alubm usually fit on a side of a 90 minute tape. It was great. David also bought me a Lemonheads album for Christmas one year and I listened to it so much that it is written on my heart.

What memories do these songs bring up for you?

Big month

2010-06-14T18:19:00.003-05:00

Seriously? It's been a month since I last posted? But I had notes in my journal and everything! I had a lineup of things I wanted to tell you! I was going to get to it! Really, I swear.

All protestations aside, I really am surprised that it has been so long.

Still, it feels like it has been a big month. To start with, we had four weddings to attend in May, two of which required travel, one I was in, and a fourth that I could attend blissfully without responsibility. It was such a sense of almost levitation getting ready for Amy and Chris's wedding because there would only be 6 people that I knew there and all were from church, so I didn't need to have any sort of agenda with my outfit (you know, boobs out for ex-boyfriends, professional for events where some attendee, somewhere might hire me). So, I could just try on dresses for Jacob and let him pick the one he liked best rather than asking his opinion and then telling him why it wasn't the right opinion. Here we are, dancing. I particularly love the dress he chose because I paid $3 for it at the thrift store and it looks classic, even though I know (with my freakish mind for costume analysis) that it is straight out of the early 90s. Seriously, can't you see Andie McDowell with this neckline? Or Elaine from Seinfeld? That photo was taken by the wedding photographer, Gavin Gould. There are more pictures on my Jake and Jess's blog.

Speaking of Jake and Jess, they have asked me to be their birth plan advocate. I went to tour their Alternative Birthing Center with them last week and when we were standing in the room in which they will become parents, I started to cry a little at the profundity of it all.

They want me to be there with them. While they become parents. I will be part of that intimate moment, even if I'm sitting in the corner knitting a hat as it happens. I was the girl that couldn't find friends to go to the Fun Fair with me in elementary school. I was the girl who knew the shapes of the headlights of the people in her youth group because I stared out into the dark wondering if they were going to stop by and see if I could join them while they cruised (life before cell phones = perpetual waiting). I was the girl who almost transferred out of college my first semester because I had missed the window to pair up with my new BFF and it seemed like none of the established groups were looking for new members. Now, I'm the girl that this family wants to be in the room to witness the new life of their child. When my brother's baby was born, he said, "Hold her now, she'll never be this new again." To get to do that again? For dear friends? It's too much of a blessing. I can't handle it when I think too deeply on it.

So, what else? Except for a short fall off the wagon on Saturday, I have felt very calm and with a stable sense of well-being that is so far from my cookie debacle awhile back. I just haven't felt the need to shout. I consider that only a little bit less than miraculous. As Katherine said in a comment to that last post, I have been less hard on myself. My therapist and I believe in a spirituality of imperfection, which teaches that we will not fix ourselves: no human can. All we can do is gently readjust our position so that we're more likely to receive God's grace that will help do less damage than we did before.

Saturday's fall off the wagon involved an impressive upwelling of anxiety regarding my absolute certainty that I am supposed to change the world in a measurable way, in a big way. I believe this more strongly than I believe that my feet will always be stuck to the planet by gravity. It's an internal motivation and therefore impossible to shrug off by saying that it doesn't matter what other people expect, which is how people try to comfort me. This is a huge weight and responsibility and most days I don't notice it. But I think that as I have been slowing down and examining myself, I can't help but notice it finally and respond to this inviolable expectation that I have of myself. It's difficult because as I slow down and quilt a little more often (Josh & Sara, Dan & Mary get ready!), I want this life for myself. I want a life where I'm only responsible for improving the lives of my immediate circle through love, caring and kindness. Systemic change is so all-consuming. It's a little scary.

Having lunch with Shane Claiborne, my nemesis, didn't help much. Nor did going to hear Anne Lamott speak on the same themes of focusing on our small communities and what we contribute. The one-day retreat in a beach house in Michigan, studying Henri Nouwen's, In the Name of Jesus, about his transition from hifalutin Harvard professor to companion of handicapped adults and Bart Campolo's talk at last year's CCDA about how impact might just be impossible to achieve in urban ministry certainly intensified this internal struggle. Sitting on the beach feeling almost too hot in the sun, with my feet shocked occasionally by the cold Lake Michigan water was so perfect, so restful, so uncomplicated. I lived in the now of physical sensations and felt a little transcendent. The daunting challenge of finding that same transcendence in the rest of my life is currently haunting me.

Still, I am happier than I have been in a long time. I am more in love with Jacob than I have ever been and my family is brilliant. My job continues to feel useful and the tasks I am set are mostly interesting. It's hard to complain about that and I don't think I am. But when given the opportunity to write a little bit tonight before I head out to my bi-weekly Dungeons & Dragons game, these are the things that were worth sharing with you.

Race and the Emergent Church

2010-05-13T20:41:00.004-05:00

So, I'm a little late in letting you all know about this but remember when I wrote about an interview I gave to a couple of reporters?

I have two responses, maybe three: one is to the content of the article, which may or may not be mixed with feedback from my Guatemalan-American friend from church, Jhonathan and finally, some meta talk about the process of being quoted in a major national magazine.

The article on race and the emergent church was published in Sojourners May 2010 edition. You can find the article here under the title, "Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only?" although in the ensuing online conversation, my favorite alternate title was suggested by Eliacin Rosario-Cruz: "Some color is not enough color in the Emerging/Emergent Church."

On that note, let's start here: a characterization of the emergent church as all-white is wrong. My church as an example is about 25% people of color. A picture of a box of uniform white crayons tells members of my church family that they are persona non grata and I will not let anyone do that without challenging them. By setting up a straw man argument that the default is white that needs color added to it, rather than acknowledging the color that already exists, the article disempowers the very people it claims to be advocating for. It disempowers Jhonathan and Noe and Mirari and LaDonna and Nkosi and Andy and Dev by denying that they even exist in the first place and this is happening from a major Christian publication. This assumption put forth in order to write the proof to convince people that Emergence is just an example of privilege self-perpetuating steals my friends' identities as both people of color and emergent, without ever getting to know them.

(By the way, ignorance can't be claimed here. I pointed out this demographic fact about my church to the authors and I introduced them to Alise Barrymore, an African-American pastor of a multi-ethnic emergent church. Although they quoted her, they did not mention that she was a person of color.)

So, I won't participate in the discussion within this incendiary frame. If we can agree to a frame that acknowledges the true starting point of the emergent movement, then I am happy to continue this important conversation and I appreciate Dr. Rah for bringing it to the attention of a larger audience.

My friend from church, Jhonathan, subscribes to Sojourners and when he stumbled across my name in the article, he texted me to see if we could sit down over coffee to talk about it. Before I talked with him, I would have protested Professor Rah's fixation on book contracts and speaking gigs. Many of the online responses point out that a majority of the work being done in the emergent movement is not by the writers and the speakers but by everyday people opening themselves to God to be transformed so that they can do the work of bringing justice to this world. (And many of these folks are people of color.) I often quote my pastor when she said that our church would have more non-white participants when we become the type of people who have more non-white friends.

However, Jhonathan thinks that the amount of attention that article authors focus on systems of oppression such as publishing and conference gigs is appropriate. He spent some time explaining to me that our emergent movement needs to be concerned with how we are perceived. He said that as a person of color, our church feels like home to him but it is also sometimes uncomfortable. He overcomes that discomfort but knows that there are lots of people of color out there who won't make the effort if we just sit back and wait for them. This was eye-opening for me.

The sentiment is echoed in a post by my friend Julie Clawson on power and the church, when she says

I’ve also encountered those that approach power openly [rather than hierarchically] who tell me, “step-up, we’d love to hear your voice.” It took me a long time to actually trust those voices and to take them up on it, mostly because I didn’t fully understand that there were people who truly did hold power in an open hand. I expected there to be hoops to jump through, votes to be taken, and popularity contest to be won, but when it came right down to it, none of that stuff actually existed. I think this is where the emerging conversation is most often misunderstood.

Jhonathan's point is that while Julie overcame her learned helplessness, other women and members of oppressed groups need to see -in authors and conference speakers- that their kind are actually welcome. I'm willing to back down from my earlier thought based on Jhonathan's willingness to challenge me.

So, we have a little bit of a dilemma. We can't just sprout people of color just to make other people of color feel welcome. (But don't forget that there are some there already.) It's actually part of a larger conversation that my church has all the time about how to empower folks to muscle through feeling uncomfortable so that they can welcome others both on a racial level and a regular-old introverted or socially awkward level. We don't have any answers: we just keep praying and experimenting and cheering each other on.

Still, it would be nice to have a toolbox to use for how to make the mechanics of our services more welcoming or how to go out and proactively invite people of color in an authentic way. Someone should edit a book of essays about that, right? If that person is white, he or she should co-edit with a person of color. Even better, all essays should be written in teams that include at least one non-white partner. How cool would that be?

On the topic of the experience of being quoted, I really like being in conversation with Professor Rah -he quoted me in book a couple of years ago, too- but I would not call his article comprehensive of the subject. I was surprised by which parts of the 90-minute interview he left out of the article and when I spoke with other contributors, I found that they too felt like he was pulling quotes that agreed with the point he wanted to make rather than using his research to generate a theory. Christianity Today published an article on race and evangelicalism recently and I thought they did a much better job of representing a variety of viewpoints. They are a more conservative publication.

However, I want to make sure that I point out that Dr. Rah's assistant was meticulous in making sure that the quote they did use accurately represented beliefs I hold and I really appreciate that diligence.

On a final note, I want to draw attention to the response my friend Mike Clawson wrote, entitled, "I Didn't Learn It From White Males" that points out an additional level of the conversation beside who the celebrities are and who the practitioners are: theology. He reminds us that some powerful theology has been developed by people of color and those people are who initiated him on his path to Emergence. This is another reminder that to have the conversation within a frame that claims that the current state of the emergent church is colorless will distract from the picture within. Dr. Rah is right to continue to bring up the issue of race in the emergent church, as well as to push other movements within the Christian movement to do the same. Racial reconciliation is hard and necessary work, with some great voices speaking into the process. I am convinced that the Kingdom of Heaven is totally mixed racially and I don't know how to recreate that here but I believe that if I keep following God and talking with God's children, I'll be able to do my part in mending what has been broken, if only a little.

Yes, Dear

2010-05-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

At church this past Sunday, a friend was clearing my place after dinner and when I gave a friendly instruction, he joked, "Yes, dear." We all laughed and he told us all that he had been well-trained by his ex-wife. We laughed a little more and he said, "No, I'm serious, she was like a Howitzer. The only thing I could do was say, 'Yes, dear.'" Then, he walked away and our conversation continued, altered a little by his interjection. Personally, I am always a little uncomfortable laughing at jokes that reinforce those gender stereotypes pf the overbearing wife and the hapless husband. My friend has great comedic timing and I love him, so I do laugh. However, I've shared before how much I fear becoming the Dear of "Yes, dear." These kinds of jokes hit a nerve because I know that I have the power of a Howitzer and I know that out of insecurity, I sometimes bring it to bear on Jacob. So, I told a story to my friends at church to redeem the story of my friend's ex-wife. Who knows, maybe she was just like me? Maybe she feared what would happen if she gave up total control of the influences on her life, even over little things like the food she prepared or the home she kept. So, in empathy for this ex-wife, I told a story about my experience. I told my friends that Jacob and I have been fighting a lot about food lately. I told them that I like good food and Jacob doesn't. (I also have pretty good comedic timing.)

So, I set up the story: On Saturday, I made cookies for our friends' party. I used the Cook's Illustrated recipe for perfect chocolate chip cookies that involves browning the butter and hand-whisking the ingredients. You have to whisk for 30 seconds, then let it sit for 3 minutes and repeat that 3 times. I really played up the labor involved to make the punchline dazzle. I offered a cookie to Jacob hot out of the oven and offered to get him a glass of milk. I warned him that he only got one since the recipe only made 24 cookies and I wanted to make sure there was enough for the party and I didn't want him to be disappointed later when he couldn't have a second. When he said he wasn't ready for a cookie, I was cool with that but because soft, warm cookies are so good, I offered again when the second batch came out and the third batch came out, just in case. The cookies turned out perfectly: crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, even once they were cool.

An hour or so later, Jacob wandered into the kitchen and ate his cookie. I asked him if it was, indeed, perfect and he agreed that it was good.

"I like them softer, though."

When I explained that they WERE soft because the butter had been melted and the size of the cookies created the perfect tension for rising, he asked if I couldn't have just taken them out of the oven sooner. I am not proud to admit that I went ballistic. I had worked hard on these cookies and he wanted some shitty under-baked mall cookie? Or worse, he wanted something filled with chemicals like super-market Soft Batch?

I shouted. I cried. I crumbled up a cookie with my fists to show him how fucking soft it was, leaving only 21 left for the party.

I told this story to our church friends with a tone of incredulousness at my own overreaction and self-deprecating humor. They roared with laughter in appreciation and horror. They asked how Jacob responded. I said he was perfect: that he held my rigid body and tried to calm me down. That he pointed out that this was probably not about cookies. That he hugged me again. That he kept insisting that he had a right to express a preference while still trying to soothe me. That he never said, "Yes, dear."

I don't like abusing Jacob' patience like this. I fear I am damaging us somehow. And I keep trying to fix it but I keep failing.

I considered stopping the story there. I'll be honest, though, I like to control how other people think of me and I didn't want them to think poorly of me upon further reflection during the car-ride home. Also, a small part of me wanted to be totally honest with these members of my spiritual community.

So, I told them (like I'm telling you) that recently I approached my therapist about this. I admitted that don't like being this person and that I fear that this person will push Jacob away. I want to be a person that makes space for the needs (and preferences) of others. I do not want to be a person who uses her weapons to mold the will of others to my own. As I told Jacob later, he is amazing and this inspires me to try to be amazing, too.

At this point, another friend interrupted and said, "You seem to be the last person I would expect to be in therapy."

I smiled and said, "That's how you know it's working." I have been with the same counselor since my divorce and it has made all the difference. I usually see him twice a month now, but with this new spiritual agenda, we will be seeing each other once a week. He said to me, "This is not going to be fun" and so far, he is right.

When they tell you that marriage is hard work, I think this is what they mean. Are you willing to take the time and the energy to become a new person? Are you willing for the parameters of that new personality to be formed around someone who is not you? It seems like this is the work it takes to have a sustainable marriage. I'm sure it's easier for some couple than it is for Jacob and I and maybe for some couples it's even harder. That's OK.

At a wedding last night, the couple asked my friend to read Khalil Gibran's On Marriage, which encourages a couple to "let there be spaces in your togetherness,/ And let the winds of the heavens dance between you." I absolutely agree with that but at the same time, people with personalities like mine (and maybe other types, too) need to err a little in the other direction and learn how to let their partners get closer, to allow those spaces to become less than arm's length.

After this poem that moved both of us, I leaned over and told Jacob that it was OK that I liked good food and that he didn't. He protested a little, not knowing me well enough yet to know that I was repeating a joke that is not very nice at its core while being emotionally moved in order to remove the venom of the joke. In that moment, it was so clear to me that my love for this man and his love for me was more important than our differing preferences for food. Art often uses juxtapositions of contradictory or unexpected images in order to communicate a message about one or both of the objects. I was immersed in this huge awareness of this bond between us and the juxtaposition of that feeling and my joke communicated that the joke was tiny and ridiculous and NOT TRUE. Unfortunately, since emotions are internal and words are external, I was the only one who received the communication. I smiled at Jacob's protests and apologized and told him I didn't mean it because all he could hear was the repetition of the joke.

Man, is that a microcosm of intimate relationships or what? Every word spoken is surrounded by unseen feelings, layers of associated memories, and sub-conscious sabotage that often makes us say something other than the truth we should be saying. These invisible and inaudible inflections make our speech also unintelligible to people if they need to know any nuance beyond the literal meaning of the words, like the difference between French spoken in France and the patois spoken in the former colonies of France. It is the work of the lifetime to learn enough about another person to truly understand what they are trying to say.

Jacob is worth that effort. In fact, I am excited at the prospect of knowing and being known. I also think the journey will be highly satisfying and, in fact, fun. I will become a different person in order to hear him better. I'm sure that he is changing for me, as well.

There is a Mary Chapin Carpenter song that goes, "It's too much to expect but it's not too much to ask." I think this is exactly the posture we must take toward one another. When I expect him to agree with me and try to manipulate him to do so, I become the Dear in "Yes, dear." If he does the same to me, he becomes a chauvinist. Neither archetype is appealing. However, if Jacob asks me to make space for him in my daily activities such as cooking, I can make the choice to become a person who lets him in and cares for him. This is the type of person I want to be. I am grateful that Jacob continues to inspire me to be that amazing person.

Solicitation

2010-04-25T20:49:00.003-05:00

So, folks, I've laid out the design for Baby Shashi's quilt. Will you do me a favor? Will you look at it and tell me if there are any aesthetic changes you would make? Like, does it look unbalanced in color or texture. Would you move the bottom right square to the second row from the top? Does the orange block need to be replaced because it won't fit? It looks right to me but I love the fabrics and can't see the forest for the trees. Feel free to click on the image to see it better.

Thanks.

Babies, babies, everywhere.

2010-04-25T11:44:00.006-05:00

This is my view this morning.

As my sister-in-law went out the door, she said, "Oh and her pants are on backwards if you change her."

I feel so lucky to get to be alongside she and my brother as they do these first few weeks of parenthood.

Although I'm somewhat amazed at what they don't know about babies and what they don't expect about parenting, (I'm kind of a whore for babies and I have gathered a lot of information over the last 30 years or so as payment for my diaper-changing, cry-soothing, oh-I-don't-mind-feeding-her services) I am awed by their good instincts and their general ability to live out this amazing change to their daily lives with grace, humor and pragmatism. I will not be that good.

As I talk about Baby Shashi, other people talk about the babies in their lives. Two days ago, a woman told a story about the baby blankets that her children took to college with and I remembered that Daniel and I both had blankies about which we felt the same. Shashi's maternal great-grandmother crocheted her a blanket but I had not even begun dreaming a quilt.

So, I began dreaming. I have taken large blocks of my favorite fabrics and found a way to put them together. Actually, I'm still laying out the design on the floor but I'll show you more as I go along.

Until then, I have been knitting loads of baby hats. The one I made for Shashi was the only small enough for her tiny head so I have gotten to see her in my creations already. For the most recent one I have made, I grabbed the yarn on the fly and didn't realize that it was denim cotton until I had started it. I had bought it for $.50 at the resale store and thought I'd just make another fruit hat, like I often make as evidenced by my friend's sweet baby here: However, the idea that this hat would wear with washing just like jeans was appealing to me. I decided to knit the whole hat out of one yarn and to stitch on a couple of rough squares that I cut out of an old t-shirt. I made this hat for a couple at church, who are expecting a boy. They had one of the best baby showers I have ever been to. It was more of a baby party. They held it in our church, inviting friends and family, put up a slideshow of their own baby pictures, served Sultan's Market, asked the Chinese grandpa to say a Buddhist prayer and our pastor to say read a Christian psalm, provided craft projects for us to contribute to and a Costco cake. What could be better? I had a great conversation with their midwife and we got to hang out with our church friends.

Someday Jacob and I will have a baby (not yet!) and I hope that we maintain our sanity like my brother and sister and that we can celebrate in our community like Andy and Jessi.

accordions, lace & petite chablis

2010-04-18T21:31:00.004-05:00

One of my favorite mix tapes from high school was when my brother had his stereo hooked up to the VCR and I had Han Solo responding to the anonymous rebel fighter's suggestion that "Your taun-taun will freeze before the first marker!" with "Then I'll see you in Hell!" I believe that I followed that with "Time Warp" from from Rocky Horror Picture Show which I had not yet seen but my brother had the LP and all my theater friends quoted it all the time. Actually, I had the chance to watch it on the tour bus for our choir spring break trip but I averted my eyes because it felt dirty and I didn't want to sully myself.

It's weird to think about who I used to be.

However, I still like making mixes.

So, when A. asked which of her readers wanted to do a mix CD swap, for nostalgia's sake, I jumped on the chance, even though my life is totally overwhelmed right now. I've made it as part of my sabbath rest day and it has given back my life force to be a compilation artist again for a few hours.

My mix recipient blogs at petitechablis.wordpress.com and gave me a blank slate upon which to download, writing, "I'm pretty omnivorous, and I love being exposed to new artists/genres that I don't usually listen to. My own collection runs heavily towards folk and indie rock (Dar Williams-ish)." Investigation on her blog let me know that she was a little sassy but the high frequency of references to computer gaming left me without much poetic inspiration, although I cheered when she wrote about how much she liked Snow Crash, one of my favorite books.

So, since her blog is named after a type of wine grape, I typed, "Wine" into my iTunes library and began the mix with a Tom T. Hall song called, "Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine." Then, I used the technique I used in high school listening to one song (as it recorded onto the tape) and using that as inspiration while I search for the next. That guarantees that each song is related to the last but that the overall mix stays varied. I tried to throw in a few other songs about drinking, just to set a theme and used lots of strange covers and slightly obscure artists or recordings, like I always try to do when making mixes as gifts. No sense handing someone songs they already have, right? I also included a Vance Gilbert song since he is my favorite folks/indie rock artist and I love introducing people to him.

If you're interested in hearing snippets of these songs or purchasing any of them, I made an iMix and it is available by clicking on the tite of the mix below below. It's accordions, lace and petite chablis.

REal human beings trying to follow Christ given the immutable boundaries that we are all handed in some form or another

2010-04-14T11:56:00.004-05:00

There is an interesting article in Christianity Today about a Christian musician's journey and the part of her journey that has involved being gay. Read it here.

Her name is Jennifer Knapp and although I have no idea who this woman is, I like what she says. Even though the header for the article calls it a "lifestyle choice," I feel like she shrugs off that label very well and speaks with her own voice but using words and illustrations that her Evangelical audiences will hear.

For instance, when describing her pursuit of a same-sex relationship, she responds the interviewer's question about whether she was "struggling" with that while recording one of her albums that was extremely confessional. "It never occurred to me that I was in something that should be labeled as a 'struggle.' The struggle I've had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I've been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I've always approached my faith."

I really appreciate her willingness to be vulnerable on such a large stage, knowing that it will lose her market share for the new album.

Air and Sun and Noodles

2010-04-05T17:02:00.003-05:00

We praise God for the healthy delivery of Baby Shashi. She is 6 pounds and 4 ounces. She has my brother's blue eyes and Meena's nose.

Because the cord was wrapped around her neck, they needed to deliver her by c-section. All are healthy and well and already nursing.

I swear this baby was like a celebrity with everyone clamoring to have their picture taken with her.

This is my first niece. The first child of one of my brothers. I was just holding her for a little while like I hold all babies and then at some point I let myself actually think about who this baby was.

I had this very powerful emotion and can only think of the lyrics to a Vance Gilbert song to explain it to you.

There is a hope
That's been expressed in you
The hope of seven generations, maybe more
And this is the faith
That they invest in you
It's that you'll do one better than was done before.

Yesterday Daniel protested that he will fight for the right for his kid to live out the status quo.

Somehow, I don't believe he'll need to.

Off the wagon

2010-04-01T19:00:00.002-05:00

I'm taking a break from the vegetarianism to use up some of the kosher chicken stock that we have in the freezer. This stuff is expensive and Jacob worked so hard on it that I don't want it to go to waste.

So? What to do? Matzo ball soup made with homemade schmaltz. I only had one piece of the gribness. Jacob burned his tongue eating all the rest. I am using the recipe I used last year for my successful Seder. (Someone remind me why it seemed OK to host my very first Seder with my in-laws while trying to finish up my Master's Degree and plan a wedding.) So, here's hoping a little extra animal fat in my diet will be worth it.

What makes tonight different from every other night?

2010-03-29T15:34:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to stop by and tell you folks that things are going well here. I'm currently in New York, preparing for Passover with my in-laws. It's actually quite pleasant and is starting to feel like vacation, rather than work. Like everything else post-wedding, it seems like things have calmed down enough that we can all be ourselves and "ourselves" are fairly interesting folks who have good intentions in their hearts. My mother-in-law has been delightful, caring and only the normal kind of crazy that every woman gets when she has to prepare a ritual meal for her entire family. I feel blessed.

My nieces are perfect 4 and 6-year-olds who think I'm fabulous. The 4-year-old asked me what I was reading and responding with perfect enthusiasm, "Oh! A fairy book? Will you read it to me?" She also explains the intricate details of whatever imagination play she is engaged in and does not mind when you need to walk away to carry a set of plates from the kosher-for-Passover kitchen in the basement to the newly clensed kitchen on the main floor. She is eternally patient. The older wants to be included in things and I've let her help me make the Jerusalem salad by having her hold the measuring spoon for the oil and asking her to transfer the vegetables from the cutting board to the bowl. She asked me, "When I'm a little older, will you teach me how to knit?" I love answering their questions and quizzing them about the preparations for Passover. "What else do we use parsley for during the seder?"

Tonight, we will tell the story of the Jews' liberation from Pharoah and remind each other that we have a duty to liberate others from their bondage. We start with ourselves, having patience for the endemic stress that is ubiquitous during holidays when it flares, shrugging our shoulders at someone else's melt-down to show helplessness in the face of criticism: both a mea culpa and a martyrdom for what we have not caused. We open our arms in the next gesture, making eye contact and smiling or leaning forward for the kiss that says, "We'll live through this," and "Isn't it nice to get to be so intimate because of these trials?"

Tomorrow, we will tell the story of the Jews' liberation from Pharoah and remind each other that we have a duty to liberate others from their bondage. Then, we will get on a train and take the long trip through the wilderness, wandering if another coal train derails on our route like one did on the way in, feeling lucky that it only delays our arrival by 6 hours, rather than 40 years. As we return home, we know that like the Israelites, we will turn from God and be given the opportunity - in fact, God will practically beg us - to return to the way of living that God gives us. We will light Shabbat candles every week and thank God for that way, for the commnadments that are called mitzvot in Hebrew, so that we have direction and purpose in our lives, instead of having to wander.

Good Passover, people.

Disposable income and disposable diapers

2010-03-15T20:45:00.002-05:00

One of the few organizations that I allow solicitations from is the Center for a Commercial Free Childhood. My parents did an excellent job of letting my brothers and I have childhoods of innocence and play. Aside from gigantic hordes of Star Wars toys (never as many as my cousin Eric, though) and about a bazillion Strawberry Shortcake figures, very few of our toys were licensed trademarks of anything. Of course, it was the late 70 and early 80s so there weren't as many out there and Legos were still old-school without story-lines and instructions, so that was a little easier. Still, at some point, my parents got rid of the TV for a few years and I was not allowed to have Barbie dolls until I was 10 so that I might have a modicum of a chance at a positive body image.

I also consider myself quite lucky that my adolescence was spent while grunge was the dominant style. Baggy jeans, big flannel shirts worn like cardigans and colored opaque tights under skirts and worn with Converse all-stars gave me all the protection my developing body needed from the degrading stares and comments of the adolescent boys I was surrounded by. I often look at teenagers (and younger) today and feel sad that their looks are so polished, with the visible and perfect cleavage with those flouncy little skirts. Did I even own an underwire bra before I was 20?

So, when an organization fights the constant erosion of childhood at the hands of market forces, I support them. They have asked me share a story with you about the aftermath they encountered from Disney after the Baby Einstein videos were exposed as frauds.

As described in the New York Times, last fall’s successful campaign to get Disney to offer refunds on Baby Einstein videos came at a price. At the height of the media flurry about the refunds, representatives from Disney contacted JBCC, and our relationship with the Center was changed irrevocably. We were pressured to stop talking to the press about Baby Einstein. Questions were raised about whether CCFC’s mission was appropriate for a JBCC program. Finally, in January, we were told that we had to leave—quickly. And, for our remaining time under JBCC’s auspices, we were forbidden from conducting any advocacy aimed at a specific corporation or product. You may have noticed that you haven’t heard from us in a while.

It is chilling that any corporation, particularly one marketing itself as family friendly, would lean on a children’s mental health center. We have great admiration for the Center’s staff, and the work they do for children. At the same time, we are deeply saddened that the institution ceded its ground and stopped supporting CCFC and our efforts to challenge powerful interests in order to protect children and support parents.

My brother and sister-in-law are expecting my first niece or nephew in a few weeks. I am trying to make sure that Baby Shashi has a chance to be a kid before she must become a consumer. If that jingles your bell too, check them out and make a donation if you're so inclined.

Take Me To The River

2010-03-11T20:10:00.002-06:00

I was reminded on Sunday why I go to church. So often, the pursuit of an interfaith practice or and emergent expression of Christianity is an intellectual pursuit for me. I get passionate about systems and infrastructures and just-how-it-will-be-done. For instance, writing the program for the wedding was by far my favorite activity, except for maybe writing the ketubah. Both spent a lot of time finding rationales and laying out frameworks for the spirituality and relationships that will grow upon it and within it.

But often, church is a quiet place to go, hug a bunch of people, laugh at some conversation, meditate for an hour and then have potluck dinner with some cool people. This is a lot and my work as Treasurer and on the Leadership Co-op help to make it happen. But most of the time for me, it's just a good party.

And then God wallops me one on the side of the head and I'm struck down by her grace for my shitty little blase apathy.

We had our first baptism this past Sunday and I was a hot mess. I cried throughout the ritual. I had asked to be the elder who presented the candidate for baptism and I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I could barely finish her full name.

I'm not sure what it was. Some of it was grief that I might not get to baptize my babies. Jacob and I haven't decided what we will do when it comes to that but as of right now, there are definitely still things about Christianity that feel threatening to him. Although he was out of town on Sunday and missed the show, I would be comfortable betting the nest egg that baptism is one of those threatening things.

I was also struck by what this act meant for our community. We had watched Emily grow with Satchel in her belly. We had thrown her a shower. We had crouched over the baby carrier when she was first brought to meet us all. I have gotten to swoop in after services and simply tote her around on my hip as I set out the dishes and cutlery for potluck while her parents socialize. That last act is something from my childhood at church: the un-self-conscious ability to simply lay claim to a baby without even considering that I might be infringing on quality family bonding time, which is the opposite of the experiences I have usually had in my adult life when visiting with parents and their new babies.

On that note, I would say that a majority of the powerful emotion seems to have been a profound feeling of continuity. On Saturday, I had answered a bunch of my friend's questions about my identity as a Presbyterian emergent Christian since he was writing a paper on the topic. I dug down a little to think about my history in the Presbyterian church and how exactly it has shaped me. This is an example:

- What does it mean to you to be Presbyterian? Is that identity important to you at all (especially as a lay person)?
For me it's more of mindset and a personality than a theology. I like order. I like study. I like that I come from a staidness that did not adapt well to contemporary Christian praise songs, although they tried very very hard. I like liturgy. I like knowing what will be next in the service. I like hearing the bulletin rustle when a section of the service requires a page turn. I was told when I was little that Presbyterian churches dedicated more square footage to classrooms to sanctuary space. This excited me. I like representative democracy. I like flannelgrams. I also really resonate with the idea of being reformed and always reforming. I like that there were strong female pastors in my upbringing.

Having this identity is great for jokes. But if there were not an emergent Presbyterian church, I would look to another denomination. The liberal Episcopalians appeal to me. I like smells and bells, too. However, Lakeview Presbyterian would probably feel like home, as would 4th Presbyterian. I would just get different things from them. When I lived in LaGrange as a young, married suburbanite, I was a deacon at the Presbyterian church there. I picked it after visiting all the churches within walking distance twice. No one spoke to me anywhere else. Twice, they welcomed me there. Also, other churches like UCC mess with the words to the hymns. No good.

With these memories so close to the surface, I was then immersed in the ritual that I have been a part of my entire life.

Powerful stuff.

The Presbyterian version is very simple but asks the congregation if they will accept responsibility for raising the child to know God.

Powerful stuff.

To be reminded that a group of people agreed to envelop me with that care when I had no personality, no language skills, little cognitive ability and almost no motor skills - in short, the things that I believe make me likeable - is a reminder of grace. In the Church, we are known before we know ourselves and that knowledge leads people to accept us as one of their own. God is very present in promises like that.

Powerful stuff.

I was a sniffly and weepy and seepy witness to the welcome we are just starting to extend to the next generation of this emergent thing we're trying to do. I got to make her a blanket that everyone signed. I got to run my fingers through her crazy hair, made stringy with water and oil. I got to sit in the presence of God and my community and know that I contribute as much as I receive.

A literary wedding

2010-03-06T19:11:00.003-06:00

My gorgeous friend Jess recently asked if I knew of any good love poems.

Do I?!?

First I pointed her to these two blog entries that I think are just brilliant: A Practical Wedding (of course) and Offbeat Bride.

Then, I went through my giant file of quotes that I love and created a document of the love and marriage ones. I figured I'd share them with you all while I've got them all in one place.

Because we had friends and family read the Seven Blessing in both English and Hebrew plus folks reading Hebrew scripture and Christian scripture, we felt it wasn't really necessary to have additional readings. However, that doesn't mean I can't love them.

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

I stepped into the room late last night
Because late is the time I keep
You were sleeping warm as coal
In a pocket of comfort and white sheets

But you don't startle anymore when I step into the room
Though the hour is later than midnight
And neither window can place a moon.

"I missed you," you say
And it sounds like a promise
When whispered half asleep
Your skin still damp with sweat
From thoughts your dreams refused to keep

I follow my memory to a switch on a light
"Shut your eyes," my voice cut short
When darkness turns bright

"Do you love me?" you say
But love is too familiar a word
For in this bed 10,000 times a phrase already heard
But, "I love you" speaks my reply
Though I know I failed myself and you for not
Matching how I feel with words of higher wealth

I know it's lonely in the world tonight
Because here is more than what's deserved
And the imbalance can't be summed in black and white
Cause "love's" too familiar a word. (Ellis Paul)

A marriage made in Heaven is one where a man and a woman become more richly themselves together than the chances either of them could have managed to become alone. (From "Marriage" by Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark)

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as the beating of my heart,
suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of the thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed,
choosing
again what I chose before. (Wendell Berry, "The Wild Rose)

On the one side is your happiness, and on the other is your past - the self you were used to, going through life alone, heir to your own experience. Once you commit yourself, everything changes and the rest of your life seems to you like a dark forest on the property you have recently acquired. It is yours, but still you are afraid to enter it, wondering what you might find: a little chapel, a stand of birches, wolves, snakes, the worst you can imagine or the best. You take one timid step forward, but then you realize you are not alone. You take someone's hand . . . and strain through the darkness to see ahead. (Laurie Colwin, "The Lone Pilgrim")

‘If a woman is stronger than her husband, she comes to despise him. She has the choice of either tyrannizing him or else making herself less in order not to make him less. If the husband is strong enough, though. . .' she poked him again, even harder, 'she can be as strong as she is, as strong as she can grow to be.' (Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos)

He closed the door carefully behind him, and at that Daily Alice awoke, not because of any noise he’d made but because the whole peace of her sleep had been subtly broken and invaded by his absence. (John Crowley, Little, Big)

A glimpse, through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room, around the stove, late of a winter night – And I unremark’d seated in a corner;
Of a youth who loves me, and whom I love, silently approaching, and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand;
A long while, amid the noises of coming and going – of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word. (Walt Whitman)

Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy. (Wendell Berry, “The Country of Marriage”)

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two. (Louis de Bernieres)

Marriage is in many ways a simplification of life, and it naturally combines the strengths and wills of two young people so that, together, they seem to reach farther into the future than they did before. Above all, marriage is a new task and a new seriousness, - a new demand on the strength and generosity of each partner, and a great new danger for both.

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky. (from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell)

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth. ("Late Fragment," by Raymond Carver)

Sometimes we push against love to see if it is fragile. (Nanette Sawyer, 28 September 2008)

We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. It isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems – the ones that make you truly who you are – that you’re ready to find a life-long mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person – someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.” (from Andrew Boyd's Daily Afflictions, Loving the Wrong Person)

While exclusionary interest in one other human being, which is what we call courtship, is all very exciting in the stages of discovery, there is not enough substance in it for a lifetime, no matter how fascinating the people or passionate the romance.

The world, on the other hand, is chock full of interesting and curious things. The point of the courtship -- marriage -- is to secure someone with whom you wish to go hand in hand through this source of entertainment, each making discoveries, and then sharing some and merely reporting others. Anyone who tries to compete with the entire world, demanding to be someone's sole source of interest and attention, is asking to be classified as a bore. "Why don't you ever want to talk to me?" will probably never start a satisfactory marital conversation. "Guess what?" will probably never fail. (Miss Manners)

In raising the status of wife to one of presumed equality, lesbian marriages have the potential to improve the status of women in straight union as well. Freed from being a term inextricably linked to “husband,” “wife” can take on new meanings. Once we accept the possibility of “wife an wife,” the whole system of opposite-and-unequal terms gets thrown out of whack. Instead of falling into preordained roles of husband as king of his castle and wife as “trouble and strife,” individuals can explore innovative ways to express relatedness. (Audrey Bilger, “Wife Support,” Bitch Magazine, Winter 2009)

An Interfaith Wedding

2010-02-28T07:03:00.001-06:00

Speaking of weddings, I recently posted the text of our wedding bulletin on the other website I co-host, which is for folks engaging with Judaism in non-traditional ways, such as from interfaith marriages, like mine.

Go check it out and come back here and tell me what you think.

The unexpected trials of vegetarianism

2010-02-26T09:39:00.000-06:00

I have been to several events in the suburbs now where there was absolutely no vegetarian option available. I take that back, each had a salad made of only greens, croutons and cheese.

I hate salad.

My mouth gets tired of it long before my stomach feels full.

So, I gave in and just ate what was being served. One of the main rules of my burgeoning vegetarianism is that I will never refuse someone's hospitality. Plus, I was at these functions for work and I didn't want to get grumpy because of my hunger.

This experience was unexpected because I feel like every event I have been in the past few years (which all happened to be in the city) have had fairly broad vegetarian options. I notice because Jacob only eats vegetarian when we're not at home. I know that I just plan menus automatically that have vegetarian options built in whenever I am entertaining. (I also make some pretty good vegan or gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free dishes.) I just know a lot of people who go that route and I want to make sure they feel welcome.

Does this mean that vegetarianism is still exotic out in the suburbs?

Maybe it's not geographic. My friend who is serving vegetarian food at her wedding has twice had to tell the graphic designer who is creating their invitations (who is a friend of the groom) that she does not need to warn people that no meat will be served at the reception.

Is vegetarianism threatening to people's ideology: the beliefs they have to protect their security?

That's weird to me because I feel late to the party on this one. Almost everyone I know flirted with vegetarianism in college and many people continue to eschew eating animals even into their 30s and beyond.

This is my first jaunt and I find that my wobble a little, but not unpleasantly so.

Still, I might start eating before these suburban events.

A Practical Wedding

2010-02-24T09:13:00.003-06:00

Woohoo!

There is only one wedding blog that I continue to read and that's Meg's A Practical Wedding. This is because she is sassy and talks authentically about experiences and is aggressive about encouraging people to have the wedding they want to have while being realistic about pesky things like family relationships and budget. She also encourages readers to think about what it means to be married and not just the event itself.

When people tell me they are engaged, I recommend that site, Bridal Bargains and Offbeat Bride. That's it. You really don't need anything else.

So, today, she posted my advice for brides that I wrote based on my own experience. These "wedding graduate" posts of hers were so helpful while I was planning and, you know me, I always want to give my own experiences more meaning by sharing them with folks. Go check it out here. Then, come back and tell me what you thought.

Heather's giveaway

2010-02-22T12:59:00.002-06:00

Hi folks. One of the bloggers that I read is hosting a giveaway to celebrate her first birthday. Go visit her site here and take your chances.