UPI Column
Subtitle: This heretic is mad as hell and isn't going to take it any more, or at least, she's going to dispassionately redefine her terms.
(I have to say that the "H." comes from my editor and I howled when he suggested it... Perfect.)
Btw, I have a new photo of me that is more recent than the previous one in my profile --from last weekend with my cyber friends. Thanks to Beth for her mad photo skills.
Julie in Baton Rouge
And here's one with the mad photographer herself (she's such a fox!):
Beth and Julie
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
You Go Girls!
Tonight after grad school, I hunkered down for a long chat with one of my fellow (male) students. He had pushed, ahem, several of my feminist buttons during the break - the old, "Have you ever noticed the way feminists start out being logical and then they just get passionate and stop being logical?"
Steam pours from ears as involuntary, passionate, terribly logical karate chop springs from my right hand.
Then, I regrouped and we decided to chat in the library instead of the hallway (hard to commit acts of retributive terror in the library).
Great conversation ensued (only wished for beer).
We talked about feminist theology, translation of Scriptures (and how every act of translation is a betrayal), the burden of being white and male and looking a heck of a lot like a big red bull's eye for all the marginalized groups of history who are finally getting a chance to shout their anger and more.
God, it was so illuminating, for me too. I love my program. I love my fellow students.
Bill asked me what in the heck anyone can do when he or she is in the privileged group? It seems so frustrating to always be in a position where we are told what we did wrong but no one gives us any meaningful way to right that wrong. I've learned, slowly, that the first step is "shut up and listen." Listening is not a sound bite process, but a sustained commitment to hearing what is uncomfortable to hear, for a long, not-politcally-correct time. The words that fly our way will not be measured and attentive to our feelings. They will be attentive to pain.... which means they usually smart to receive.
The conversation is not over when I get irritated or bored or consider the speaker to be illogical, emotional or deluded. It's not over because I say we've discussed the topics "enough." It's not finished once we agree or when we can't agree. It's over when the victim is talked out and says so.
If we look at the discourse around women in church or blacks in the inner cities and so on, one way to tell if dialog is really ocurring is to see who is controlling the conversation and defining when it starts and stops...
An example sprang to mind. My mother told me years ago (over twenty now) after my parents' divorce that she knew she'd caused me emotional harm. She apologized for that pain and did a lot to repair the damage. Then she gave me the most precious gift of all. She told me that any time more pain came up - memories that hurt or renewed anger or a deeper awareness of how robbed I was, I could come to her, for the rest of her life. Ten years later, twenty years, even forty years. Didn't matter. She would listen and hold my pain. She'd hear it. Until I was done.
So like Jesus.
So completely able to shoulder the burden - not put it off or control it or define it or tell it to go away. No telling me what the right way to grow past it is or how to get over it, or what would be excessive expression of pain.
Just full responsibility and a willingness to embrace me as long as it took. Amazingly, I have not felt much need to really unburden myself because the resentment just had no reason to grow. But in those moments when there is a new flash of pain or sadness, I do know I can call her. And it helps!
We can be like that for others... for blacks, for women if you're a man, for gays, for illegal aliens, for homeless people, for whoever offends, upsets, intimidates or worries us. For whoever we (our people) have harmed.
In keeping with seeing "privilege" and getting a glimpse of how language marginalizes, I want to post a link to Rick's blog. He has a list of why men should not be ordained. If you are blessed with the gift of irony, I think you'll find it zings you right in the bull's eye of your heart. :)
Thanks Rick!
Steam pours from ears as involuntary, passionate, terribly logical karate chop springs from my right hand.
Then, I regrouped and we decided to chat in the library instead of the hallway (hard to commit acts of retributive terror in the library).
Great conversation ensued (only wished for beer).
We talked about feminist theology, translation of Scriptures (and how every act of translation is a betrayal), the burden of being white and male and looking a heck of a lot like a big red bull's eye for all the marginalized groups of history who are finally getting a chance to shout their anger and more.
God, it was so illuminating, for me too. I love my program. I love my fellow students.
Bill asked me what in the heck anyone can do when he or she is in the privileged group? It seems so frustrating to always be in a position where we are told what we did wrong but no one gives us any meaningful way to right that wrong. I've learned, slowly, that the first step is "shut up and listen." Listening is not a sound bite process, but a sustained commitment to hearing what is uncomfortable to hear, for a long, not-politcally-correct time. The words that fly our way will not be measured and attentive to our feelings. They will be attentive to pain.... which means they usually smart to receive.
The conversation is not over when I get irritated or bored or consider the speaker to be illogical, emotional or deluded. It's not over because I say we've discussed the topics "enough." It's not finished once we agree or when we can't agree. It's over when the victim is talked out and says so.
If we look at the discourse around women in church or blacks in the inner cities and so on, one way to tell if dialog is really ocurring is to see who is controlling the conversation and defining when it starts and stops...
An example sprang to mind. My mother told me years ago (over twenty now) after my parents' divorce that she knew she'd caused me emotional harm. She apologized for that pain and did a lot to repair the damage. Then she gave me the most precious gift of all. She told me that any time more pain came up - memories that hurt or renewed anger or a deeper awareness of how robbed I was, I could come to her, for the rest of her life. Ten years later, twenty years, even forty years. Didn't matter. She would listen and hold my pain. She'd hear it. Until I was done.
So like Jesus.
So completely able to shoulder the burden - not put it off or control it or define it or tell it to go away. No telling me what the right way to grow past it is or how to get over it, or what would be excessive expression of pain.
Just full responsibility and a willingness to embrace me as long as it took. Amazingly, I have not felt much need to really unburden myself because the resentment just had no reason to grow. But in those moments when there is a new flash of pain or sadness, I do know I can call her. And it helps!
We can be like that for others... for blacks, for women if you're a man, for gays, for illegal aliens, for homeless people, for whoever offends, upsets, intimidates or worries us. For whoever we (our people) have harmed.
In keeping with seeing "privilege" and getting a glimpse of how language marginalizes, I want to post a link to Rick's blog. He has a list of why men should not be ordained. If you are blessed with the gift of irony, I think you'll find it zings you right in the bull's eye of your heart. :)
Thanks Rick!
Jim Wallis at Xavier
Thirty years of running Sojourners and he finally has a book tour that's taking the mickey out of the right. Strange.
He led with a story of his first conversion "since evangelicals often have multiple conversion stories" (shared with his mostly Catholic audience). He told of being six years old and in his parents' church when an evangelist came to save souls. He was seated in the front row with the other little unsaved six year old kids who'd already performed enough evil deeds to send them to hell for eternity.
The evangelist pointed a bony finger at Jim's chest, looked directly into his eyes and said, "Son, tonight if the rapture were to occur, your mommy and daddy would be taken to heaven and you'd be left behind. Do you want that?" The Catholics laughed uncomfortably, but I sat with jaw dropped open. Isn't this what children of alcoholics do? They make jokes that are meant to minimize the sucky childhoods they've endured when all around can't laugh... it's too ugly! I hung my head in shame for evangelicals.
Gee, Jim, nice tradition we come out of...
His delivery shouldn't have surprised me, but it did! He went into full tilt evangelical rhetoric to deliver a mostly vague message about the need to become involved with social justice (easy sell to this crowd). I'm all for social justice, but I'm not all for smug self-righteousness disguised as reading the will of God.
If he had substituted missions language into his talk, it would have been the same one that drove me to the mission field in 1983. That's right - there was no substantial difference in the delivery or the shaming/motivating tactics he used to reach this audience. The only real difference is that he had the wrong audience. The Catholics weren't challenged by his talk - they were relieved of the burden of understanding their evangelical brethren. By the end of the night, they could feel smug and justified in their contempt for the religious right and their historical interest in social justice.
So how did he do it?
Well, he used these kinds of phrases:
I want to commission this generation to seek a vocation, not a career.
The faith based communities are the ones who have invariably led movements. It takes the religious to lead a movement of real change. Secular people won't do it.
God has a purpose and plan for your life and it's your job to figure out what that is.
This is the generation that can change things. We are waiting for you.
Get in on what Jesus is doing, on what God is doing and what he cares about.
Blah, blah, blah.
Uh, this is the message of evangelicals everywhere you go. The religious people are the best people, they are the ones who know what God is up to, they are on the cutting edge walking forward with vocations, not just ugly self-serving careers, the 20 somethings will save the world because hey, this is a different generation than the ones sitting next to you who botched it and missed the message back in the day...
Bitter much? Yes!
I could have stood it more if he hadn't name-dropped every ten minutes showing off how many Big Stars he had chatted with and the wonderful life-changing impact about to sweep the world as a result of his insight and vocation!
Now here's the deal... I'm won over to the social justice agenda. I liked when Jim said "political, not partisan." I liked it when he talked about how the right has focused on saving the unborn and forgets about the born... and how to help them. He had some great word pairs that I jotted down and then lost. :) It was the overall tone and style of the thing that upset me.
Get me away from the tactics of leaders who believe they know what I ought to do (or what I didn't do) and who shout it to me. I'm utterly allergic. If I could find one person who is self-deprecating, who knows what needs to be done, but appeals to our own weaknesses, our repeated distractibility and yet finds a glimmer of hope in us anyway, who admits to the scale of the issues and gives me a practical, realistic step I can take today (rather than committing to saving the whole fucking world), I'd join up...
Oh wait! I do know someone like that: He's right here.
He led with a story of his first conversion "since evangelicals often have multiple conversion stories" (shared with his mostly Catholic audience). He told of being six years old and in his parents' church when an evangelist came to save souls. He was seated in the front row with the other little unsaved six year old kids who'd already performed enough evil deeds to send them to hell for eternity.
The evangelist pointed a bony finger at Jim's chest, looked directly into his eyes and said, "Son, tonight if the rapture were to occur, your mommy and daddy would be taken to heaven and you'd be left behind. Do you want that?" The Catholics laughed uncomfortably, but I sat with jaw dropped open. Isn't this what children of alcoholics do? They make jokes that are meant to minimize the sucky childhoods they've endured when all around can't laugh... it's too ugly! I hung my head in shame for evangelicals.
Gee, Jim, nice tradition we come out of...
His delivery shouldn't have surprised me, but it did! He went into full tilt evangelical rhetoric to deliver a mostly vague message about the need to become involved with social justice (easy sell to this crowd). I'm all for social justice, but I'm not all for smug self-righteousness disguised as reading the will of God.
If he had substituted missions language into his talk, it would have been the same one that drove me to the mission field in 1983. That's right - there was no substantial difference in the delivery or the shaming/motivating tactics he used to reach this audience. The only real difference is that he had the wrong audience. The Catholics weren't challenged by his talk - they were relieved of the burden of understanding their evangelical brethren. By the end of the night, they could feel smug and justified in their contempt for the religious right and their historical interest in social justice.
So how did he do it?
Well, he used these kinds of phrases:
I want to commission this generation to seek a vocation, not a career.
The faith based communities are the ones who have invariably led movements. It takes the religious to lead a movement of real change. Secular people won't do it.
God has a purpose and plan for your life and it's your job to figure out what that is.
This is the generation that can change things. We are waiting for you.
Get in on what Jesus is doing, on what God is doing and what he cares about.
Blah, blah, blah.
Uh, this is the message of evangelicals everywhere you go. The religious people are the best people, they are the ones who know what God is up to, they are on the cutting edge walking forward with vocations, not just ugly self-serving careers, the 20 somethings will save the world because hey, this is a different generation than the ones sitting next to you who botched it and missed the message back in the day...
Bitter much? Yes!
I could have stood it more if he hadn't name-dropped every ten minutes showing off how many Big Stars he had chatted with and the wonderful life-changing impact about to sweep the world as a result of his insight and vocation!
Now here's the deal... I'm won over to the social justice agenda. I liked when Jim said "political, not partisan." I liked it when he talked about how the right has focused on saving the unborn and forgets about the born... and how to help them. He had some great word pairs that I jotted down and then lost. :) It was the overall tone and style of the thing that upset me.
Get me away from the tactics of leaders who believe they know what I ought to do (or what I didn't do) and who shout it to me. I'm utterly allergic. If I could find one person who is self-deprecating, who knows what needs to be done, but appeals to our own weaknesses, our repeated distractibility and yet finds a glimmer of hope in us anyway, who admits to the scale of the issues and gives me a practical, realistic step I can take today (rather than committing to saving the whole fucking world), I'd join up...
Oh wait! I do know someone like that: He's right here.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Notes from real life
Hi everyone.
I'll be checking in with more detail over the next few days. I spent the weekend with my friends from the online forum I host: The Trapdoor Society. We have a retreat about every 18 months and have met five times around the US. This time was in Baton Rouge. Really great to be with cyber friends in person. Always amazing to see them with their real (dyed) hair, earrings, shoe choices, and tinkling laughter.
Came home to some difficult news. Jon has to leave his current forty hour a week job. They are giving us a good severance, but this means that we will now be launching into the less secure waters of home businesses and teaching. More details as we chart a course. It does feel daunting today, honestly.
Tweaked my back on the airplane so I'm a bit stiff and sore today. Still, we're going to try to see Jim Wallis at Xavier tonight. If I make it, I will most certainly report back with details here.
Thanks for your comments Dave and Bill on the UPI Column. Hope to respond to them in short order.
Julie
I'll be checking in with more detail over the next few days. I spent the weekend with my friends from the online forum I host: The Trapdoor Society. We have a retreat about every 18 months and have met five times around the US. This time was in Baton Rouge. Really great to be with cyber friends in person. Always amazing to see them with their real (dyed) hair, earrings, shoe choices, and tinkling laughter.
Came home to some difficult news. Jon has to leave his current forty hour a week job. They are giving us a good severance, but this means that we will now be launching into the less secure waters of home businesses and teaching. More details as we chart a course. It does feel daunting today, honestly.
Tweaked my back on the airplane so I'm a bit stiff and sore today. Still, we're going to try to see Jim Wallis at Xavier tonight. If I make it, I will most certainly report back with details here.
Thanks for your comments Dave and Bill on the UPI Column. Hope to respond to them in short order.
Julie
Thursday, March 23, 2006
You Can't Cheat the Dark Gods
UPI column.
I will be gone this weekend (leave tomorrow for Baton Rouge) to see a gaggle of online girlfriends for our annual get together. Unfortunately, that means no blogs from me until I get back next Monday.
In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. [bg]
Hugs to all!
Julie
I will be gone this weekend (leave tomorrow for Baton Rouge) to see a gaggle of online girlfriends for our annual get together. Unfortunately, that means no blogs from me until I get back next Monday.
In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. [bg]
Hugs to all!
Julie
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Snow and Schleiermacher
We got snow! Lots of it. Weird. First day of spring and the ground is covered for the first time in months.
Meanwhile, I'm slogging through an abudance of Schleiermacher. He is the guy who is credited with the diabolical origins of liberal theology - hiss, boo, snipe, snipe. He talks about "self-consciousness" and "god-consciousness" enough to get him a free pass into Terry Cole Whittaker's Science of the Mind!
I love him, though. He pushes so many important buttons. And he loves art. I just wonder if he was cute, too.
He is the guy who makes "experience" a fundamental category for theological reflection (don't you love how I worded that? So all "academic-ky"). And it's experience that I find riveting... yours, mine, ours.
More on that in this week's UPI column, I think.
Anyway, here's a tidbit of Schleiermacher while I sit in the snow for my parting thoughts:
Meanwhile, I'm slogging through an abudance of Schleiermacher. He is the guy who is credited with the diabolical origins of liberal theology - hiss, boo, snipe, snipe. He talks about "self-consciousness" and "god-consciousness" enough to get him a free pass into Terry Cole Whittaker's Science of the Mind!
I love him, though. He pushes so many important buttons. And he loves art. I just wonder if he was cute, too.
He is the guy who makes "experience" a fundamental category for theological reflection (don't you love how I worded that? So all "academic-ky"). And it's experience that I find riveting... yours, mine, ours.
More on that in this week's UPI column, I think.
Anyway, here's a tidbit of Schleiermacher while I sit in the snow for my parting thoughts:
The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.(Better translation might be: utter dependence)
For when it is the good that is under consideration, and the ethical object is predominant, truth must be considered more in reference to art than science, if, that is, unity is to be preserved in the work generally.
No God without a world, and no world without God.
And, moreover, it is art in its most general and comprehensive form that is here discussed, for the dialogue embraces everything connected with it, from its greatest object, the state, to its least, the embellishment of sensuous existence.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Wake-up Call for Ms. Four Spiritual Laws
New UPI column is up!
After reading your comments last week, I wanted to let everyone know that these columns are only 700 words long. I'm going for provocative over nuanced. But I love to discuss nuances so feel free to ask questions or suggest the missing touches that I can't get to in such a short space.
Julie
P.S. For twenty-four hours, I am a featured columnist on the main page of the UPI website: UPI. An honor! (And gone. :) Fun while it lasted... post comments here. I keep getting emails. :))
After reading your comments last week, I wanted to let everyone know that these columns are only 700 words long. I'm going for provocative over nuanced. But I love to discuss nuances so feel free to ask questions or suggest the missing touches that I can't get to in such a short space.
Julie
P.S. For twenty-four hours, I am a featured columnist on the main page of the UPI website: UPI. An honor! (And gone. :) Fun while it lasted... post comments here. I keep getting emails. :))
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Little things
Sunshine.
The kids roller blade in the garage, through the basement, up the driveway and out into the big street--dodging cars and the odd dog on a leash.
Caitrin's foot long hair flies.
An archly Protestant friend studies Catholicism and likes it... not predestined after all.
Jon in my bed after five nights away.
Noah studies French, Greek, semantics, and asks "What does Salaamu Alaikum mean?"
Liam smells like sweat and shows off red ears after lacrosse practice.
A UU friend is sane, funny and has my back, thanks be to the Non-Material Layer (NML).
Crocuses bloomed even though I thought I'd killed them last fall with that one mistaken scoop of the shovel. I mourned... but it turned into dancing.
Online friend sends me yaoi because she understands sexy.
Kroger's carries PG Tips British tea... Like, they really have the real British stuff which means fewer trips to the Jungle Jim's twenty minutes away.
Johannah sets foot for the first time in an elementary school... and teaches second graders to count money. She loves the little boy who chews on his shirt when he adds things up.
Jacob plays tasty music on his sax from upstairs and it hugs the house.
Email buddies initiate plan to save the world. They will. They're that smart.
Chickadees weave a home in our new bird house.
Online friends make me cry... tears of sympathy and anger.
The kids roller blade in the garage, through the basement, up the driveway and out into the big street--dodging cars and the odd dog on a leash.
Caitrin's foot long hair flies.
An archly Protestant friend studies Catholicism and likes it... not predestined after all.
Jon in my bed after five nights away.
Noah studies French, Greek, semantics, and asks "What does Salaamu Alaikum mean?"
Liam smells like sweat and shows off red ears after lacrosse practice.
A UU friend is sane, funny and has my back, thanks be to the Non-Material Layer (NML).
Crocuses bloomed even though I thought I'd killed them last fall with that one mistaken scoop of the shovel. I mourned... but it turned into dancing.
Online friend sends me yaoi because she understands sexy.
Kroger's carries PG Tips British tea... Like, they really have the real British stuff which means fewer trips to the Jungle Jim's twenty minutes away.
Johannah sets foot for the first time in an elementary school... and teaches second graders to count money. She loves the little boy who chews on his shirt when he adds things up.
Jacob plays tasty music on his sax from upstairs and it hugs the house.
Email buddies initiate plan to save the world. They will. They're that smart.
Chickadees weave a home in our new bird house.
Online friends make me cry... tears of sympathy and anger.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Poison Kool-aid Drinker Tells All
My latest UPI Column is now posted.
I hope you'll chat about this one with me. It took about sixteen drafts and far too many hours for this entry. But am I enjoying it!
Julie
I hope you'll chat about this one with me. It took about sixteen drafts and far too many hours for this entry. But am I enjoying it!
Julie
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Old friends
For lunch yesterday, Jon and I met with a dear friend from missionary days. Steve was the one who gave us the pre-married "sex" talk in his suffocatingly hot little apartment in Malaga, Spain, right before Jon and I were engaged. The three of us laughed about it yesterday, because at the time, Steve and his wife, Jean, had been married about four years. Big expert. :)
Five years later, Jean and I became pregnant at the same time, when I was carrying Johannah. The missionary team held a baby shower for Jean and me at our annual team meeting in Spain in 1989. Jon and I had been on furlough in the states at the time so we flew to Spain for the meeting and were surprised with a baby shower. It felt so good to be with this "extended missionary family" where all of our children referred to the adults as "Aunt Julie" or "Uncle Steve."
We returned to the states after that team meeting. Two months later, Jean lost her baby on its due date. That was the same summer that one of our team members drowned in the ocean off the coast of Casablanca while his family played in the sand, and also the same summer that a dear French co-worker was killed in a freak accident involving a pebble the size of a quarter that rolled down a mountain in the south of France, banked into the car window and mortally pelted his temple. He died instantly, leaving behind his wife of seven years.
Seeing Steve brought it all back. The pain, the closeness, the sense of family and destiny rolled into missionary work.
Time collapsed between us as we went back over those years and all the people we have in common. Jon and I spent four years in the 80s in Morocco while this friend has been there since 1984 and continues to this day, fully immersed and fully satisfied. Jon made a Seinfeld crack and Steve responded, "Who's he?"
But it was not he who was out of touch. We were. Morocco has changed dramatically since we were there. One couple on our old team has planted a church in a region we only hoped would ever have a convert, let alone a church. Missionaries are no longer merely taking "cover jobs" but are starting NGOs and doing development work in agriculture and medicine. Development work! Back when we were in Morocco, we were encouraged not to do that kind of work because it might produce "rice Christians."
We spent the requisite time catching up on children: who is married, who turned out to be a brainiac, where others are going to college. We chatted about memories and all the funny peculiarities you remember about people with whom you worked and lived—affection pouring out like hot mint tea.
Poignant and painful.
And sweet.
Five years later, Jean and I became pregnant at the same time, when I was carrying Johannah. The missionary team held a baby shower for Jean and me at our annual team meeting in Spain in 1989. Jon and I had been on furlough in the states at the time so we flew to Spain for the meeting and were surprised with a baby shower. It felt so good to be with this "extended missionary family" where all of our children referred to the adults as "Aunt Julie" or "Uncle Steve."
We returned to the states after that team meeting. Two months later, Jean lost her baby on its due date. That was the same summer that one of our team members drowned in the ocean off the coast of Casablanca while his family played in the sand, and also the same summer that a dear French co-worker was killed in a freak accident involving a pebble the size of a quarter that rolled down a mountain in the south of France, banked into the car window and mortally pelted his temple. He died instantly, leaving behind his wife of seven years.
Seeing Steve brought it all back. The pain, the closeness, the sense of family and destiny rolled into missionary work.
Time collapsed between us as we went back over those years and all the people we have in common. Jon and I spent four years in the 80s in Morocco while this friend has been there since 1984 and continues to this day, fully immersed and fully satisfied. Jon made a Seinfeld crack and Steve responded, "Who's he?"
But it was not he who was out of touch. We were. Morocco has changed dramatically since we were there. One couple on our old team has planted a church in a region we only hoped would ever have a convert, let alone a church. Missionaries are no longer merely taking "cover jobs" but are starting NGOs and doing development work in agriculture and medicine. Development work! Back when we were in Morocco, we were encouraged not to do that kind of work because it might produce "rice Christians."
We spent the requisite time catching up on children: who is married, who turned out to be a brainiac, where others are going to college. We chatted about memories and all the funny peculiarities you remember about people with whom you worked and lived—affection pouring out like hot mint tea.
Poignant and painful.
And sweet.
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