Kavannah

Gloriously Female

2008-12-23T10:09:00.006-05:00

At the halfway point of your mother’s uterine life, she had all the eggs nestling and jostling about in her little ovaries that she would ever have. At twenty weeks she had 6 to 7 million proud eggs within her, fresh heirlooms of genetic brilliance all. A woman’s egg, her offering in the formation of a new human soul, is yet another example of nature’s lavish abundance. For “the millions of eggs that we women begin with are cleanly destroyed through an innate cell program called apoptosis. The eggs do not simply die— they commit suicide. Their membranes ruffle up like petticoats whipped by the wind and they break into pieces, thence to be absorbed bit by bit into the hearts of neighboring cells. By graciously if melodramatically getting out of the way, the sacrificial eggs leave their sisters plenty of hatching room.” (1) The eggs that survived the sweeping rejection of apoptosis now await their chance to slide down the fallopian tube to the uterus. Here, many years later, the egg that formed you was one of the few who were surprised to be eagerly met by thousands of sperm whipping and racing towards it. One sperm penetrated the luminous egg and formed you— a statistical miracle.

Though you were either genetically male (XY) or female (XX) at fertilization, your sex was otherwise indistinguishable for the next several weeks. The male and female gonads plod along without committing to either sex into the sixth week of gestation before converting into either ovaries or testes. Little boys immediately go about egging on their prized gonads, whose job is to pump out the testosterone that affects the remainder of their development. Girls are a bit shyer; they set about primping their müllerian duct into the appropriate internal organs a few weeks later. By birth, you came into the world a fully female baby with your chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormone levels, and brain processing all intricately synchronized like a master Russian ballet.

“Except when you don’t. Because, sometimes, you won’t. I'm sorry to say so but, sadly it's true that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you.”(2) This timeless wisdom from Dr Seuss aids me in warning that at every step of the sexual differentiation, something can, and often does go wrong. The four defining sex characteristics include a person’s chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormone levels, and brain processing and a discrepancy between these puts someone into the category of being an intersexed person; that is, not fully male or female. Milton Diamond commented on intersexed development saying it is “biologically understandable while statistically uncommon” (3). “Ironically since the advancements in surgery have made it possible for intersex conditions to be concealed, many people are not aware of how frequently intersex conditions arise in human beings or that they occur at all” (4). How commonly is a person born who can’t be clearly defined as ‘male’ or ‘female’? A study that surveyed medical literature from 1955 to the present found that as many as 2% of live births do not conform to the ideal male or female (5).

The list of possible deviations is long. Some people have ambiguous genetic material with some XY cells and others XX. A common condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome occurs when chromosomal ‘males’ are androgen insensitive resulting in the body developing female genitals and hormone levels. Distinctively feminine to the eye and often in their gendered identity, AIS women often do not discover their condition until puberty or when they seek infertility treatments and a doctor informs them they are infertile due to the fact that they are— partially men. Likewise, genetic females can be prenatally overdosed with androgens resulting in partial male development. Any mis-measure of the hormonal cocktail produces a person whose sex cannot be confirmed by a quick diaper change. Not only is the amount of necessary uterine hormones precise, the timing is as well. The timing of hormonal exposure can result, for example, in a person who is a fully functional male on the outside, but partially female on the inside with most of the piping for female reproduction. “Sometimes a person isn’t found to have intersex anatomy until she or he reaches the age of puberty, or finds himself an infertile adult, or dies of old age and is autopsied. Some people live and die with intersex anatomy without anyone (including themselves) ever knowing” (6).

Unfortunately this is a reality that most people are unaware of, and of which I myself didn’t even stumble upon until three years into the research of this book when I had a hard time finding an answer to the basic question: ‘what does it mean to be female?’ Surprisingly, the common notion that females have XX chromosomes and boys the XY, is not even close to being true. The New York Times, in the excellent article “What If It's (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?” notes: “even the International Olympic Committee acknowledged this when it suspended its practice of mandatory chromosomal testing for female athletes in 2000, reflecting current medical understanding that a female who tests positive for a Y chromosome can still be a woman” (7).

To be Continued...

Angier, Natalie. Women: An Intimate Geography. New York; Peter Davison Publishing with Houghton Mifflin Company. 1999 P 3
Diamond, Milton, H. Keith Sigmundson. “Management of Intersexuality: Guidelines for Dealing with Individuals with Ambiguous Genitalia.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. (1997)
Dr. Seuss. Oh The Places You’ll Go.
Domurat Dreger, Alice. “‘Ambiguous Sex’ –Or Ambivalent Medicine?” The Hastings Center Report May/Jun 1998, Volume 28, Issue 3 P24-35.
Blackless, Melanie, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, Ellen Lee. How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and Synthesis. American Journal of Human Biology Volume 12 Issue 2, P 151 – 166
Intersex Society of North America. “Does Having a Y Chromosome Make Someone A Man?” May 2006.
Weil, Elizabeth. “What If It's (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?” The New York Times. September 24, 2006

An Inferior Love

2007-11-27T00:58:00.003-05:00

Shopping season has started again. I live at Herald square where the streets are lined with festive stores and on the corner, the famous Christmas windows of the world’s largest store. This year Macy's is playing ‘O Christmas Tree’ nearly 24 hours a day which you can hear with the windows shut on the top floor of my building. Christmas season alone probably accounts for why this street corner is deemed the fourth loudes-on the planet. The sidewalks outside my shop-lined street slow like traffic at rush hour. Never again will I complain about sitting in a climate controlled, adjusted seat car with music and cup holders; standing in traffic is immeasurably worst. Today while I was waiting to cross a street I glanced into a store’s windows at the purses. I know their price tags are well over what I make in a week, but I’m fairly confident that I wouldn’t want one even if my income easily allowed for one. (Somehow I escaped from a family of four daughters without a purse or shoe fetish, which is a rare phenomenon in this corner of the world.)

Augustine, genius of the patristic era, wrote of how “some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there are others which are to be enjoyed and used.” Purses and shoes seem to me to be things I merely use— not things that I find great joy in when I get dressed in the morning. Now, I am not at all implying that luxury items are inherently unnecessary; if your first love is fashion and you live for designer purses, then by all means, delight in high craftsmanship. If your hobby is cars, get one with a good engine and leather interior. Fill your life with things that bring you joy which Augustine noted that we “cling to with love for its own sake.”

A strange trend is happening in America. I sense it in the air at Christmas time and read about it in the newspapers. I feel it surge up in me more often than I admit. All around us are people who have blurred the lines between belongings ‘to be enjoyed,’ and those meant ‘to be used.’ We seek gratification in common useful possessions, such as cars, houses, technology, and clothing. The point at which enjoyment becomes consumerism is when there is no differentiation between items of use and enjoyment. While there is nothing wrong with investing in aesthetics and good things, confusing the useful and the enjoyable goes to extremes very quickly. As though humans were not insatiable enough, this blurring deceives us into thinking that useful items must be upgraded in order to give us increasing satisfaction. There are three compelling reasons why life is more fulfilling when people are aware of the difference between useful material things and those which actually improve their quality of life.

The first is that few people have incomes that allow them to buy everything they can think of to buy. For the rest of the world who have to decide between purchases, being able to identify the option that will bring more pleasure will raise the value of every dollar spent. Material possessions that genuinely raise a person’s quality of life are few, because a person can have but a few passions in life unless they condition themselves to find joy in indiscriminate acquisition. For example, a person who will only be satisfied with a big house, fast car, flashy wardrobe, and extravagant vacations is most likely not an interior designer, car enthusiast, trend-setter, and a lover of new cultures. They have merely conditioned themselves to need the best of everything without really enjoying the possesions. But if you can condition yourself to need things, you can learn to go without them. If a person can learn to only spend their extra money on things that give them genuine delight, they will have more money and enjoyment.

The second reason to differentiate between the good and the useful, is because those things which have the power to give you joy also have the power to take it away. No one needs a life where they are flooded everyday with disappointment over their purse collection or vinyl seat coverings. Walk through the avenues of Manhattan and you may find yourself suddenly very discontented with everything in your possession, right down to your toothbrush holder. There are better thoughts to think than these. This leads into the third reason. The third and most important reason to grow in an awareness of this distinction is because, as Augustine notes, that when we “wish to enjoy those things which should be used, our course will be impeded and sometimes deflected, so that we are retarded in obtaining those things which are to be enjoyed, or even prevented altogether, shackled by an inferior love.” As Americans, we have trained ourselves to value things that once obtained, do not increase our actual quality of life in any way. Why do this, when there are so many more worthy pursuits to strive after? I will leave these crosswalk musings with one final warning from Augustine: “between temporal and eternal things there is this difference: a temporal thing is loved more before we have it, and it begins to grow worthless when we gain it, for it does not satisfy the soul whose true and certain rest is eternity; but the eternal is more ardently loved when it is acquired than when it is merely desired.”

Mere Christianity

2007-11-15T12:47:00.001-05:00

The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right. Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that. As Dr. Johnson said, "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed." The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see...
The second thing to get clear is that Christianity has not, and does not profess to have, a detailed political program for applying "Do as you would be done by" to a particular society at a particular moment. It could not have. It is meant for all men at all times and the particular program which suited one place or time would not suit another. And, anyhow, that is not how Christianity works. When it tells you to feed the hungry it does not give you lessons in cookery. When it tells you to read the Scriptures it does not give you lessons in Hebrew and Greek, or even in English grammar. It was never intended to replace or supersede the ordinary human arts and sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs, and a source of energy which will give them all new life, if only they will put themselves at its disposal.

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity Page 74

The Sky Is White

2007-11-11T14:18:00.001-05:00

There’s this verse in Hosea that talks about rain—it begins: “sow with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness. Break up your fallow ground,” which may mean, don’t be like the unreceptive soil in Jesus’ parable of the sower which cannot receive good into it. Fallow ground is a poetic reference to the places in our lives where we are refusing grace. Fallow ground is the unfruitful part of your soul that is “choked with the worries and riches and pleasures of this life” (Luke 8:14). Hosea says, break up the unfertile areas of your life and the last clause says why: “break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes to rain righteousness on you.” The thought that causes me to pause when I read this verse, is when it describes the righteousness that comes into a person’s life when they pursue wisdom. It rains on them.

It rains in Manhattan. It rains on streets where there is nothing growing. When I walk down the grey streets in the rain I think that somewhere there is a flower unfolding into the rain—nourished. Rain is indiscriminate. It falls on the just and on the unjust. I wonder if when I receive good into my life if that righteousness doesn’t just nourish my soul, but also those around me. Now when it rains, it reminds me how connected we all are, how my actions affect those around me and the world and how I too am touched by them.

It rains in on the streets of Manhattan.
It rains where nothing is growing and I think that somewhere there is a flower unfolding into the rain—nourished.

Thoughts on Identity III: There Are No Children Who Live Here

2007-10-28T14:38:00.001-04:00

The second reason to pursue a sense of self that is separate from achievement is because this way of thinking naturally leads to a balanced life. This understanding of self will result in a heightened awareness of yourself as an organic person: one who has a context, a family or community they are a necessary part of, a person who has time to play with children and listen to the stories of those who have lived long and good years. Identify a place that places a high value on productivity and you will find a place where isolation is prominent, suicide rates are higher, and a population that has imbalanced age distributions. Manhattan is just such an example. There are no children who live here.

An awareness of how belonging shapes us will lead to a life that balances productivity with rest. And not just the type of rest that aims at maintaining functionality, but a rest that acknowledges worth which transcends productivity. Rest steps out of the working world to experience nourishment and the seldom transcendence that speaks to our souls. To balance our modern concept of identity with the meaningfulness that comes from belonging provides for the season when tragedy or old age will strip us all of our vitality. So, who are you, really, as a person? How you answer that question, shapes the world more than you would think.

Thoughts on Identity II: Beef, It's What's For Dinner

2007-10-19T21:44:00.001-04:00

The first reason to pursue a sense of self that is separate from achievement is because valuing self only for production’s sake leads to destructive trends in society. The world has been permeated with evolutionary social-science for the past 150 years, which has lead to a world where unwanted children and ethnic groups, the poor, elderly, and handicapped have been exterminated in the name of the survival of the fittest. This atheistic worldview has no rational basis for ethics or logically consistent motives to help the weak in the society. While other nations have followed evolutionary thought to its logical conclusions, America, which is also influenced by Greco-Roman law and Judeo-Christian ethics, has been slower in moving toward this end.

A Judeo-Christian understanding of the world promotes the idea that human life is inherently valuable. This was particularly heinous to Nietzsche, who listed the intolerable Christians as the primary detriment to mankind’s evolutionary progress—they wouldn’t let elderly people just die or the plague-infested towns to be quarantined and starved. Buddhism is the only other religion that has regard for life, qua life, but it regards plant, animal, and human life to be equal which both elevates plant and animal life to the level of human dignity, and reduces human life to that of a plant’s. (The effects of these beliefs are exactly what you would think they would be, such as children starving while cows roam the streets, among other problems.) The top three sociologist in the world agree that people groups who agree that life is inherently valuable, will naturally emerge as the greatest force for justice, the quickest responders to disaster, and the most concerned for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. Being someone who believes they have more value than just what they can contribute to society creates a world that has a place for those who do not contribute to the national GDP.

Thoughts on Identity I: Actually, It's Just Conan

2007-10-14T12:43:00.001-04:00

Who are you, really, as a person? Ancient cultures knew a person according to who they belonged to. If you had just met a person at the village well, you would ask them who their father was, and in that collectivist, backwardly-focused culture, you would know who the person was. This type of culture would be concerned with who you were as an individual only to the extent that you brought honor or shame to your family, and it was out of this framework that the entrenched casts of the aristocrats began. Today, the majority of cultures, including America, are individualistic, forwardly-focused societies. When you meet someone at the office water cooler, you ask them what they ‘do’—what their job is, where they are going in life, or what their ambitions are. Conan, son of Thor, has now become just Conan. Democracies have an even stronger tendency toward individualistic thinking because our society has no aristocratic tendencies of latent casts; you could easily become the President of the nation even if you were born into the log cabin of a backwoods farmer. Far from knowing a person by who their father is, modern cultures know a person according to what they do.

Today people marry later in life (only to divorce later), move farther from home, and participate less in social and religious communities than they did even fifty years ago. Many social trends have cultivated an increasingly isolated population in America. Many people work in professional (i.e. sterile) environments only to pull into their driveways and enclave themselves within their house for the night after the garage door seals with the cement. In our driven, individualistic pursuits, it may be worthwhile to rediscover the simple joys that come with an ancient understanding of finding self by belonging rather than achieving. This way of thinking is beneficial for two reasons.

Margin Room II

2007-10-10T16:46:00.001-04:00

In America we live at such a fast pace and it can be hard to imagine a society could operate differently. It’s not just our imagination: Americans work longer hours than the rest of the world. Lawrence Jeff Johnson, a chief labor market economist, has proven “workers in the United States are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world.” However Johnson adds that “we're not the most efficient, when you compare it per hour.” It can be difficult to imagine a place where shops open at ten, close at six, and lunch breaks are long enough for social gatherings and naps. That’s right— naps. Not errands. Naps. In some Africa cultures social obligation to a visiting neighbor has priority over work (wrap your mind around the implications of that) and it is unthinkable to stop and ask a stranger any question, such as for directions or for the time, without inquiring after their family and life.

A life ordered in a way to allow margin space emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially and socially is a life that creates reserve tanks for when they are most needed. However the fact that I am arguing for our need of rest, by citing that it increases the functionality and fullness of life shows that I have not yet understood the role that rest and margin space should have. The point of rest is not to keep ourselves functional. Real rest is an acknowledgment that our worth does not lie in functionality. We do not merely rest from work and for work, but it is rather through rest that a person can step out of the working world to experience nourishment and transcendence. Leisure is the basis for culture, and as the author of that title wrote: “Leisure, it must be remembered, is not a Sunday afternoon idyll, but the preserve of freedom, of education and culture, and of that undiminished humanity which views the world as whole.”

It is in the margin space of life that relationships and thought, and art have space to unfold. I don’t know how to realistically seek rest within the culture I am immersed in, but I think that perhaps it may start by me giving permission to myself to have an identity based not in doing, but in being. This certainly needs to happen before I can invite others to slow down and simplify their lives. Since all that has ever been asked of us is who we will be today, for my part—today— I plan to live a life where neighbors and art matter, and the music drifting out of coffee shops is worth pausing to listen to. My hope for us all is that we would find margin space. May we learn to gather the daily manna of beauty without hoarding. And when we learn to release busyness, may we find in the end the life it promised but never reached.

Margin Room I

2007-10-06T16:50:00.001-04:00

High risk living captivates us. It’s the feeling of breathing thin air the first time you hike past 8,000 feet— the cold that rushes past your Gore-Tex when your kayak lifts off the edge of a waterfall and you hope the whole freefall that you raised the bow enough— it’s a rock climber whose silhouette suspends from Red Dihedral in the High Sierras. The saying, ‘living on the edge’, immures this idea of pushing yourself to a level where the difference between defeat or even danger is separated from glory by a single breath. This way of living has always appealed to me. I open my eyes every morning eager to analyze all the good I can compress into one day; I analyze my budget to see how many adventures I can pull from the bottom line, and love diverse experiences. The things we fill our free time with are always worthy pursuits: I never regret the great literature when I make time to read, the dynamic people I have intentional time with, or the classes and walks and community gatherings. As Thomas Aquinas said, “in the pursuit of the end, no limits should be set.” Living at maximum capacity is a life full. Or so it would seem.

A few months ago, my life began to change, slowly at first, but small changes soon became a way of living. I started skipping social obligations and avoiding people on the way to appointments. No longer was there time to savor the simple joys of sleep and food, coffee and periods of relaxation; these became a means to further productivity. Instead of providing my body with nutrients it could sustain itself with, I found myself inhaling caffeine (or worse, energy drinks) to artificially push it through fatigue. It is common that people who deeply appreciate the simple goodness of life can go wrong when they gather too much of it. Just as manna hoarded into baskets goes bad, so too worthy pursuits crammed into day-timers ironically decomposes into a life un-lived. Living at full capacity will inevitably replace enjoyment with duty, and restful awareness with rushed narrowness. There is no margin space in which relationship or quiet learning can be cultivated. Life on the edge has no margin for wonder.

Besides being unfulfilling, living at full capacity is not sustainable. The problem with trying to live continually at a maximum capacity is that when a person is operating at their highest emotional, physical, spiritual, and social abilities, one unforeseen event (also known as life) can effortlessly present a small demand which pushes them over the limit of what they are capable of dealing with. I found this to be true when my schedule would have melt-downs if I got lost reading Emerson even by fifteen extra minutes. Any random serendipity had the potential to thwart all punctuality for the remainder of the day. One slight disagreement became more than I could emotionally deal with. Life on the edge has no margin for error.

Soul Vs. Spirit

2007-09-23T23:22:00.001-04:00

Some consider a person as divided into two parts, the body and soul-spirit. The other camp holds to a triune division of body, soul, and spirit. Good and godly scholars hold both views. I take a triune position mostly because there are multiple verses in both testaments that speak of the soul and spirit in the same sentence as though they are different. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 lists the division plainly: “may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless...” The other key verse in this debate is the well known Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit...” Watchman Nee agrees “the Bible never confuses the spirit and soul as though they were the same. Not only are they different in terms; their very natures differ from each other.”

Genesis 2:7 says that God formed man from dust “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” This word soul is nephesh in Hebrew. The nephesh is what gives life to the formed body, just as Aristotle observed, “the body apart from the spirit is dead” (James 2: 26). Aquinas talked about this life-giving soul as the “first principle of life in those things in our world which live...life is shown principally by knowledge and movement.” Leviticus 17:11, and 13-14 addresses this idea that unlike plants which only have a physical ‘body’, animals and humans have nephesh—an animating life which was why the blood of flesh was not kosher. It is clear that animals and humans have a life that is unlike the life of plants, but the Bible teaches that only human beings are fully in the image of God for they alone have a spirit.

So while our spirits are alike, our souls and bodies are different. I use the word soul as that which animates the body, and as the seating place of where the differences in how we think, feel, and act are. Nee writes of the soul that it “is the site of personality. The will, intellect and emotions of man are there.” There are liberal camps which recoil from suggestions that women could have a tendency towards a different kind of temperament or personality than men do, or can have a different way of thinking, but outside the academic world of political correctness, this idea is considered self-evident. Women also may experience emotions differently than men, and often have different intellectual processes. Clearly, our bodies are also beautifully, wonderfully different. There are other parts of the person that can be isolated and discussed such as how the heart, mind, will, or intellect, are different, but that goes much deeper into philosophy than I am able to present for your consideration, and is not relevant for our needs.

And That Was All There Was To It

2007-09-15T19:07:00.001-04:00

I was first made aware of how I could be celebrating and cultivating the part of me that was feminine only perhaps a year or two ago. My aunt Rachel (whom you’ll hear a lot about in this blog) wakes up every morning aware of and thankful for her womanhood. She has two children, a boy and a little girl, and she actively celebrates and cultivates both of their genders. That could not have been more foreign to me. I wondered, was that too feminist? Could you love the fact that you were a woman without feeling negatively about men?

Though the idea of a woman loving her gender was new, I began to embrace it more when I thought of how I desire for my fiancé Matt to be responsive to my womanhood and inspired by it. It occurred to me that I can’t help him to fall in love that part of me if I don’t fully understand or appreciate it. Similarly, if I don’t know how grow in being a woman, I can’t teach my (future) daughters to live fully in their femininity either. But I want my daughters to be glad and rejoice in what will set them apart in childhood as girls, and in their later years, as mature and beautiful women.

Just as the enjoyment of God overflows into spontaneous praise, so too my growing enjoyment of those qualities in women we call femininity has overflowed with ideas and conversations. C. S. Lewis’s well loved quote on praise is always worth reading again: “All enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise.... The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside... Just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?’”

Someone once said that “painters understand nature and love her, and teach us to see her”. What a beautiful and concise reason for us all to pursue our artistic expression. Van Gogh is my foremost inspiration of what it means to behold beauty— to internalize it— and then to desire to share it. “If you read the letters of the painter van Gogh you will see what his creative impulse was. It was just this: he loved something—the sky, say. He loved human beings. He wanted to show human beings how beautiful the sky was. So he painted it for them. And that was all there was to it.”

Naturally

2007-09-14T21:55:00.001-04:00

"The holier a woman is, the more she is a woman." -Leon Bloy

Some have established the position that womanhood happens naturally; they consider gender to be so tailored into the fabric of our being, which makes it unnecessary to reflect on at length. I agree that part of what gives womanhood its charm is the way it springs up inherently in little girls and shines out of old women who pin their hair every morning—for beauty. I agree that part of the process does unfold naturally, like a flower that leans into the sun or opens to the rain. And it seems like it should be that way.

I was supposed to be a boy according to the ultrasound, but sonar imaging was poor quality in the eighties, and it turned out that I was a girl— the second-born of four actually. I’m just as ‘female’ as I was twenty years ago, but I like to think that I am becoming more feminine. That is one of the foundational ideas in this book on womanhood: that there is a difference in being a female genetically, and growing in feminine qualities. I will always have the feminine chromosomes sketched into every cell of my body, but there is something deeper that I can grow in specifically as a woman. It is an amazing moment when you believe, perhaps for the first time, that God was glorified, and the world, somehow bettered, because you were born a little girl. Considering gender as something to be celebrated— everyday— not just on the first day, of a person’s life, is meaningful because it is a testimony that the depths of God are deep and wide and that His image was diverse enough to spill from Adam’s ribcage and into Eve.

Evidences of Grace

2007-09-10T15:21:00.000-04:00

I was reading this morning in 2 Kings, and also in Romans 11, and Paul was talking about a moment in the prophet Elijah’s life when he was heartbroken because he couldn’t see any men standing up for God in his nation. (Like how I am sometimes). Check out the verse:

“Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? "Lord, THEY HAVE KILLED YOUR PROPHETS, THEY HAVE TORN DOWN YOUR ALTARS, AND I ALONE AM LEFT, AND THEY ARE SEEKING MY LIFE." But what is the divine response to him? "I HAVE KEPT for Myself SEVEN THOUSAND MEN WHO HAVE NOT BOWED THE KNEE TO BAAL." In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God's gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.”

This verse gave me the encouragement that there is righteousness in people that I don’t have eyes of faith to see yet. In this passage, Elijah was not aware of even one man who was righteous, and yet God had preserved seven thousand! This inspires me to look for evidences of grace in people instead of sin. Any person can see the sin in people and talk about their problems. What a responsibility we have Christians to walk by faith and not by sight, training ourselves to see who this person was created to be and who they still could become through the grace of God.
And if we can see what God sees in them, we can encourage them to become who God desires for them to be. This verse on the role of an encourager inspires me, and I'll end with it. Notice in it what roles God plays, and what role the encourager has as you read:

The Lord God has given me the tongue of disciples, that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens me morning by morning, He awakens my ear to listen as a disciple. The Lord God has opened my ear; and I was not disobedient nor did I turn back.
Isaiah 50: 4-5

A Letter To A Friend; April 3rd 2007

2007-08-31T01:57:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

It is finally warming up in Manhattan- and just in time. I’m taking a Sabbatical from homework, and spend time in the tea shop ‘SubtleTea’ on Madison, and at in Central Park. When spring grows leaves, the skyline will be less dominating. It’s strange how the early spring days here are windless. I was lying on the boulders that cover the park and as I was looking into the sky I thought about how far I was actually looking. Ten feet up? A mile? Could I look farther if I tried to? Annie Dillard said “the naked eye can see 2 million light years to the Andromeda galaxy.” It’s like looking into water; when you focus differently, you can see at different levels. If I look at my reflection I completely miss the minnows, if I see only those at the bottom, I don’t see the air that can’t make up its mind to be in the water or air so it travels as a bubble down the stream.

I’ve been wondering recently if my perspectives on my life are too narrow and limiting. I’ve been struggling through life it seems—and the last few weeks have been progressively worse—challenging my passions and my theology. I’ve stopped writing my book. And I’ve been wondering a lot about if everything I’ve believed about suffering and brokenness has been right. This was certainly a time of un-sought trial. Oriah speaks of this: “Sometimes we go out and seek the first that will burn away what is dross in our lives. More often, we awaken suddenly to find ourselves encircled by fire.”

I know that we suffer just as Christ did- Luke asks: “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26) Jesus was such an example of sorrow in prayer—He was the “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) To quote a professor at my school, Peter Kreeft, from his incredible book, Making Sense Out of Suffering, “That God should take alienation away from man by inserting alienation into the heart of God; that he should conquer evil by allowing it its supreme, unthinkable triumph, decide, the introduction of death into the life of God, the God of life, the Immortal One; that he should destroy the power of evil by allowing it to destroy him—this is ‘the foolishness of God [that] is wiser than men, and the weakness of God [that] is stronger than men”’(1 Corinthians 1:24). God reminds me of these concepts through other authors and in prayer. When I think of Christ in the garden sweating blood because he was in so much emotional turmoil, I normally forget that he was praying. Luke 22:44 says “And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” Many of the times Jesus’ sorrow is recorded is during his frequent times of prayer—this could be because it was natural for him to pray when he was sorrowful but maybe it was because much of prayer for him was mourning before God. Hebrews 5:7 tells us “Jesus offered by both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death...” Jesus allowed his soul to be “deeply grieved to the point of death” (Mark 14:33) Henri Nouwen wrote in his wonderful book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, “There are so few mourners left in the world... I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving”

If only I had time for quiet and prayer and thinking! I hate constantly having to think other thoughts and write other things (because of homework). Which was why I am taking a break. I came across this thought in The Invitation- it describes just how I’ve been feeling: “Beneath the small daily trials are harder paradoxes, things the mind cannot reconcile but the heart must hold if we are to live fully: profound tiredness and radical hope; shattered beliefs and relentless faith; the seemingly contradictory longings for personal freedom and a deep commitment to others, for solitude and intimacy, for the ability to simply be with the world and the need to change what we know is not right about how we are living.” (Oriah, 5)

I keep holding on to the truth that we are made powerful for the kingdom in the same way a vine bears fruit- by unclogging itself so that the sap from the root flows into it. (John 15:5) Lon Solomon has said in his book Brokenness that “If we are ever going to be of any useful service to God as Christ-followers, all of us must come to grips with this eternal truth (speaking of brokenness). No matter how many people we can impress with out cleverness or attract with our personality or influence by our persuasive words or motivate with our natural abilities—spiritually, the results come to nothing! It’s all the flesh.” He believes that “brokenness and usefulness are directly proportional.” P47

God is prying my fingers off of my self-produced resources. I just keep coming back to the fact that a great foundation needs to be built quietly, and without much progress above ground before great buildings can be built. It is true that “we are impatient with anything that is not immediately understandable and obviously practical” (Buchanan, 58). I just pray for the time to think and reflect so that this period of difficultly counts for something. Only three weeks of school left. Hopefully I will make it with my dreams, and hope, and spirit intact. I am glad I have a whole summer to recharge, and to decide if I can do this all again next year. Pray for me,

-Steph

Mountain Dreamer, Oriah. The Invitation. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999. P102

Nouwen, Henri. “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” Doubleday Dell Publishing. New York, New York. 1994

Buchanan, Mark. Your God is too Safe. Sisters, Oregon, Multnomah Publishers; 2001 P58

To Walk Among The Beautiful

2007-08-26T23:49:00.001-04:00

Since I am writing full time, I have no money. I have never not had money for this long, and I have found it to be...surprisingly nice. Instead of meeting for coffee, I meet friends for walks. Preferably at night, and sometimes in the rain. We drive into the mountains and hike. I jump into quarries with my sisters. My consumerism is wearing off, and that is good. I am glad to be cultivating a taste for the simple and quiet things of life. This summer has been full of walking among the beautiful things of the world and then continuing on and leaving them behind. George Santayana was this amazing philosopher/poet type who wrote a lot on aesthetics, and he once wrote this: “I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions because they would take away my liberty.”

A Softer Offering

2007-08-20T22:03:00.001-04:00

Dusk takes Manhattan over in turn, street by street, and if you leave at the right time, and travel the right avenue, you can sometimes walk just ahead of the shadows that quickly lengthen. Last evening I headed towards Times Square as I weaved in and out of shadow. The remains of the day spilled down the streets from the Hudson turning everything gold. It’s my favorite time of day. Times Square is oddly named, because the advertisement lights take over the lesser sun, and cast their own shadows where birds come and perch at midnight, unnerved at the length of the never-ending days. Times Square observes no passage of time— save that of New Years Eve— which is celebrated with enough enthusiasm to forgive the Square for assaulting the great circadian rhythms of the earth with neon the rest of the year.

Weary artists pack up their displays as evening lowers over the city and move from Central Park to Times Square where people pass by all hours of the night. They paint charactures of tourists for five dollars and somehow make a living, even though the sketches I see people carrying around of themselves are never very good. I passed a characture artist who had in his seat a beautiful girl, no older than three, sitting for her portrait. She had a fountain of curls that flopped into her eyes when she reached forward to touch the artist’s round spectacles. The mother, whom I had not noticed before this, harshly pulled the girl back and told her to sit still. The little girl did. After examining her nails and swinging her feet for a moment, she began to sing. It was the most precious sight to see her unabashedly sing; people would pause to smile at her and she would wave, singing. People waved back. A little crowd gathered—enchanted. Still frustrated, the mother reprimanded her child again. No singing, no waving. What, I wondered, did she expect the little girl to do? Her child was being still enough for a portrait, and certainly couldn’t be expected to be entirely still for so long.

As I turned to continue on my way, it seemed to me that in that moment, every passerby on the street was enjoying that beautiful little girl more than her own mother. I know there could have been many factors I was unaware of that went into the situation, but still, I began to think under the neon glow of Times Square about how I don’t want to be so easily out-done in my enjoyment of the people I am supposed to love; especially my family. I don’t want my husband to always feel more respected at work than he does at home, or for my kids to constantly be convinced that their friends think that they are more funny, talented, or brilliant than their parents do. So many wives are less kind to their husbands than they ever would be to a waitress. Today, the husband whose wife values and respects him, and helps him believe in what he can do also, is the envy of the majority of men whose wives belittle and nag them. I was inspired to be irreplaceable to my husband in the respect and kindness that I gave him.

Just like the neon of Times Square takes over the softer offerings of sunset, it is easy in Manhattan to forget the simple but important things in life and relationships amidst the culture, fashion, materialism, and noise. As I headed away from the Square with its’ advertisements and glamour, I thought of how it’s the quiet strengths of beauty that prove timeless. As the poet said: in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of simple pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

God Is Green

2007-08-14T13:48:00.001-04:00

Well, I’ve gone green.
My receipt from Whole Foods says so.
I got a 20 cents credit because I stuffed my kale and five-pound bag of carrots into my business portfolio case. My whole life has been quite transformed since listening to Rob Bell’s series God Is Green (you can get the podcasts at iTunes). He talks about how sustainability was key to the Israeli law of agriculture Sabbath. I’ve always thought, you know, let’s work on saving babies before we start working on seals and redwoods, but this sermon series really convicted me that the effects of what we’re doing to the earth is causing serious problems as our bodies break down from what we’re pumping into the environment.

More importantly, what does it say about Christians when we’re equals with the rest of the culture in our mass consumption. Saint Augustine writes of how “some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there are others which are to be enjoyed and used.” Things we enjoy of course, are the things we “cling to with love for its own sake.” The other things in life are things we use in order to help us get the things we want to enjoy. As Americans, we have trained ourselves to value things that once obtained, do not increase our actual quality of life. Why do this, when there is so many more worthy pursuits to strive after?

Besides consumption, I’ve also become very aware of trash production. I weight my trash now. Did you know that I personally, produce like my body weight in trash a month? That’s obscene. My kitchen’s floor space is 3 foot by seven. (And I just cooked for 17 people last night. We also ran out of forks. This is completely not related.) The reason I mention my floor space is because I have started to recycle and the bags take up like one third of my floor space. I have to move them every time I do anything. But I am glad to do it because I really want to start to be more aware of my consumerism and how I am treating this planet that I am fundamentally connected to.

If you think about, identity and purpose are the two biggest questions a person will wrestle with in their lifetime. Our identity is rooted in the earth—we come from earth, we will return to dust, we walk upon its’ surface every day and gather our sustenance from it. But earth is also tied to our purpose. Genesis 1:26 is called the creation or cultural mandate. Genesis teaches that we bare God’s image as we shape the earth in all forms: in music, art, education, government, law, economics, agriculture, family, and academic pursuits. Any activity that takes raw nature, and orders it, or shapes it to create something new, is what dominion is about. “We are God’s royal stewards, put here to develop the hidden potentials in God’s creation so that the whole of it might celebrate his glory.” (Bartholomew, 37) So disregarding what our life-styles are doing to the earth is really violating the deep connection we have with earth in both our purpose and identity which I had never thought about before. And it doesn’t take that much effort to do something about it.
Get the sermon series.
Listen to it.

Go Green.

Rain Part One: To Think It Falls Free From The Sky

2007-08-12T20:03:00.001-04:00

I was reading a book I found in my sister’s room this week that was written by a man who had a vision of hell. Though I had initially asked Erica if she trusted the validity of the claim, as I began reading, whether I believed his account or not didn’t seem relevant because it was so thought-provoking just in its' imagery. In this account, he described how a demon tortured him by ripping open his chest with its caws. He wrote: “My flesh hung from my body like ribbons as I fell again to the cell floor…” He realized as he was being tortured that no blood flowed from his body. The ground too was barren, it was unlike any vision man had ever seen of earth; for even earth, when it is stripped bare and furrowed, still holds in its nakedness the hope of harvest. George Henry Lewes wrote: “remember that every drop of rain that falls bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility.” There was no water in hell at all, for water and blood are symbols of life. There is no life in hell.

The author wrote of the how the desperate need for water overcame him. In Luke 16, Jesus describes the after-life in the story of Lazarus and the rich man. In this description the rich man in hell calls up to Abraham and pleads with him to send Lazarus even to just dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off his tongue, for he was in agony (Luke 16: 24). The torture of dehydration is hard for many of us to imagine. The brief periods that I have endured on wilderness hikes cannot even compare with experiences like Terri Schiavo’s. Kate Adamson was a stroke victim whose nourishment was terminated, but she unbelievably was able to regain bodily control in order to communicate. She barely escaped death by dehydration. Her description of that experience is horrifying. People say you can feel your organs drying; that it is one of the slowest most horrific deaths man can endure. After hearing stories like this, an eternity without water is nearly impossible to imagine.

And to think on earth that it falls free from the sky.

This weekend I left Manhattan and spent some time in Connecticut. Last night I was lying in bed between two girlfriends and as we were praying, I could feel the Spirit over me, inviting me to release areas in my life over to Him. As I did, I began to cry, and as water just streamed— uninvited and unstoppably from my eyes— I thought of what a bizarre phenomena tears are. Humans have water stream from their eyes when their souls are moved. Our tears are like a baptism of the soul. My aunt Rachel told me years ago at how she felt connection to the ocean, how she felt the salt of it in her sweat and tears. Just as we are connected with the earth, the earth’s water is one cycle of renewal. Rain is gathered in the skies as the oceans evaporate. Soon it falls and follows rivers and streams on its return to the sea. Our tears renew us; the Psalms talk about tears as seeds we plant into order to reap a harvest of sheaves, which are the answers to our labor of prayer.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him" (Psalm 126:5-6).

Part of that harvest is an energy or power for living life well. 2 Corinthians 12:9 is well known and quoted: “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then am I strong.” The cross holds space for me to be broken and empty. Every other religion from Catholicism to Hinduism is a list of rules, a path that its followers must walk. Christianity is the only voice that cries out in this wilderness of ‘doing’ that our God has already done. Buddha’s last words were: “Never stop striving.” Christ’s last words on the cross were: “It is finished.”

The Reason Why I'm Broke

2007-08-10T13:50:00.001-04:00

I have taken some time off from posting, because as my book progressed and I went deeper into the marital imagery of Scripture, I realized that I was too passionate about the topic to keep a discussion of it limited to what was relevant for a book on femininity. So I chucked it all. It was all I had worked on the whole summer. Maybe it will be a good second project. Anyway, in the meantime I have learning about different things while I’ve been restructuring 76,000 words on my 12 inch-screened computer. The next few posts will be a series on unrelated issues.

*Matt and Miranda at the beach

Eyes to See

2007-07-21T05:48:00.001-04:00

The reason I included this study on the two symbolic women in Proverbs, is because they have something deep to teach us about the spiritual dimension of our choices in this world. Their message is needed because it is so easy for the effects of our choices to become unreal to us. Just as Jesus told some of the most important truths about the kingdom in story form, the descriptions of Lady Wisdom and the Harlot are a way for us to realize truths about the power of our choice to love or rebel against God. Sometimes it seems that there are not so many differences between those who love God and the people who hate Him; many writers in Scripture struggled with not having the eyes to see the reality of the mark God leaves on the people who choose Him. They asked why it rained on the righteous and the unrighteous, and prosperity and health came to enemies of God.

Earth is not the place where the full compensation for our choices manifests, but a time is coming when all men will die their appointed death and after that comes the judgment. The effects of our love of God on earth will consume our awareness as His Spirit finishes His work in raising us up into eternal life, and grants the souls who hated God the fruit of their rebellion: self-inflicted separation from Him.

The Bible says that the Harlot, who represents sin, rebellion, and hatred of God, leads to death. Wisdom is a fountain of life, and all who seek her find honor and strength. How you choose life everyday in practical ways, is what this picture in Proverbs can teach you. So realize as we look at these archetypes that their message is not only one for us to speak to the world through who we are, but also a picture of what each of us can become.

Quite Freeing, Actually

2007-07-21T05:46:00.001-04:00

Besides not realizing that the archetype of Lady Wisdom is relevant to women, the second mistake made when looking at Proverbs is concluding that the highest aim of women is not the archetype of Wisdom, but of the Wife/Mother role. Augustine’s pairing of the harlot with the ‘godly’ archetype of wife and mother 1,500 years ago has significantly shaped modern women’s idea of what it means to be godly. It still seems foreign to us that the type of wisdom is directly relevant to us as women doesn’t it? It was actually quite freeing for me to realize that the Bible doesn’t say that the chief achievement of women is her role in the family. (The Catholic Church still officially maintains that motherhood is the pinnacle of womanhood, and many Christians still either believe or are influenced by this misconception.)

It is important to understand that this idea is one that has been passed down from a respected philosopher/theologian and not a strong message that you naturally get from just reading the Bible. It is true that Augustine was a good theologian, and that this idea has been embraced by the church for over a thousand years. But just because someone is wise dos not mean they are infallible, and just because an idea is old does not mean that it is true; there were ancient sects that crept into Christianity before the Bible was even finished, so antiquity cannot be a reason to believe anything.

Essential to all conversations is the ‘so what’ question. Why would it matter that a woman’s pinnacle of meaning isn’t motherhood, but rather the archetypes of the Bride of Christ and of Lady Wisdom? The most obvious reason, is that if woman was primarily made for man, than her identity, purpose, and worth would be intrinsically tied to the male figures in her life. Because of poverty and cultural reasons, this has been the case through most of history, though it is neither Biblical, nor ideal. Women bring glory and joy to the heart of God first- for all things have been created for His glory and renown. Surely if the whole of nature was made for this purpose then women would not be the only excluded creation. Isaiah 43:6-7 says: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory.” And God has said in the chapter before: “I am the LORD, that is my name; I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven images.” (Isaiah 42:8)

Just Throw on Another Gender

2007-07-14T00:00:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately, though the dangers of being a worthless, deceptive, and seductive woman have traditionally been seen as literal threats to what a woman can become, the corresponding Biblical archetype has been often treated in two ways. Firstly, it is deemed merely figurative and irrelevant to what God desires women to be. Wisdom being portrayed in the Bible as a woman is thought of as being about as applicable to a woman’s everyday life as the fact that freedom and fidelity are depicted as women. The images are nice, we put them on coins and make nice statues, but this tendency doesn’t really matter, actually, at all.

But I believe it is also significant that wisdom is personified as a woman; she is a model for women also. Just as the gender of the Harlot would be impossible to disregard without distorting the message, so too Lady Wisdom is intentionally spoken of as a woman. You cannot simply throw on another gender to the literary character. It is not fair to say that the seductress is a warning to women specifically but that Lady Wisdom is only feminine in a figurative sense and is not an example to women. Both are figurative, but they are also a picture the polar opposites of what women can become. No one argues whether the Proverbs 31 woman is a literal woman or not; she is applied to women as a woman. In the same way, the Harlot and Lady Wisdom can be applied as model women, for women.

Plato to Rousseau on the Harlot

2007-07-13T23:59:00.001-04:00

The sinful response to God’s pursuit of us being embodied by a seductive female is familiar to our western culture because the defining writing on women for the last millennium has often depicted women this way. A twisted understanding of the Genesis account was used to endorse the view that all women were temptresses. Many cultures have legends of a tempting seductress who brought evil upon the world at its beginning. Paul’s commands to women, when not rightly contextualized by the culture and the heart of the new covenant also were used to demean women. Though Plato argued for an inclusion of women as equals in The Republic, his student Aristotle rejected these views by the 300’s BC, and argued that a woman is a mutilated and incomplete man. Aristotle believed women to have a lesser and ‘colder’ soul, making them inferior in intelligence, morality, and stature. There are traces of these ideas in Augustine’s The City of God (published in 413 AD) in which he wrote that a woman could be a either a temptress as a part of earthly cities, or a mother and wife in the divine city of God.

By the time Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica in the 1200’s, the church had already established a low view of women. Aquinas, who was influenced by Aristotle, solidified the idea that women were base and inferior; his demeaning views on the nature and function of women were foundational in the western church’s opinions. The tradition of women being unfortunately necessary to procreation, and a hindrance to the genius of men continued with Francis Bacon’s 1612 article “Of Marriage and Single Life,” and Rousseau’s A Discourse on Political Economy. Because of these writers, the archetypes of the harlot/seductress were widely applied to the feminine species. So it is commonly understood that the warnings of Scripture against harlotry are literally for women.

Literal and Figurative

2007-07-12T11:39:00.000-04:00

When it comes to the archetypes of the Harlot and Lady Wisdom, it is important to understand their example in a literal and a figurative sense. Archetypes are, of course, figuratively relevant to the collective human race. As Rob Bell says, “This is often about that.” The example of the harlot we will be speaking of is not only a terrible tendency in women, but something that is true of every human heart. The connection between spiritual idolatry and spiritual adultery makes it clear that every heart rebels against the love of God. Lady Wisdom represents the life we desire to have and the love we grow into as we see God’s worth.

Wisdom’s example is often interpreted in a figurative sense, and because she is applied to mankind in general, we don’t think of her as being a relevant model to women specifically. On the other hand, the harlot is often thought of as a literal warning for women, and the broader warning for all of mankind is missed. But both the Harlot and Lady Wisdom are relevant archetypes for mankind as well as an example of a woman for women. The next several posts will look at each of these tendencies briefly.

I Will Not Be Posting For Some Time

2007-07-12T01:20:00.001-04:00

I will not be posting for a while since I am in Ireland,
And away from a computer.
Happy summer!
-Stephanie