Celestial Fig Trees

Spiritual Practice

2015-01-18T09:03:00.000-05:00

This week for me has been all about exploring spirituality and building a personal spiritual discipline. I have never found traditional Christian spirituality to work for me, especially daily devotion and prayer. In part I just don't find Christian prayer practice to work for me. The idea of sitting and praying to God feels so one-sided; I don't hear God's voice in my head, so how do I know that God has heard me, that God cares, that God is going to respond?

My theology has also never been orthodox. I face a minimal amount of persecution because my understanding of God is less traditional monotheism and more soft polytheism or panentheism. For me, God has always been and always will be Emanu-El, present in and of the world, though God manifests differently to each person and in multiple ways.

With that in mind, I have been reaching out towards other ways of experiencing God. Over the years I have found myself drawn to different types of spirituality. Especially helpful for me has been the practice of mindfulness, which I first learned as a Buddhist meditative practice, and then discovered in the realm of Western Psychotherapy. Now, I am exploring a Pagan approach to meditation and mindfulness.

My connection to God has always been through nature. I feel very strongly that care for the earth is caring for God, and that it is possible to communicate with God through building relationship with the land and with the various nature spirits that are present within the ecosystem. God is just as present within a tree as God is within a church.

Because of that particular belief of mine, I have always felt a connection to Celtic druidry, which has an even deeper spiritual ancestor within proto-Indo-European religious culture. I have decided to build a relationship with my Celtic and Germanic ancestors by exploring druidry, and working druidic spirituality into my own personal faith.

In the Druid Magic Handbook, John Michael Greer says that a Druid's daily spiritual practice should combine three components: ritual, divination, and meditation. Today, I tried this practice for the first time. I began with a simple ritual influenced by the Druidic Elemental Cross and Circling of Light. I laid out a grid on my dining room table. To the right I placed a small glass of water, to my left a small glass of wine. Directly in front of me I put a piece of homemade rosemary bread, and across from me I lit a candle. In the center of this grid I placed an empty bowl.

I said a quick prayer that I wrote which brought together these elements and asked for spiritual guidance and protection from Adonai Elohim, Sophia, Jesus, El, Asherah, and Mary. In the future I will invoke other names of God.

Then, I consumed the ritual elements in order: water, then bread, then wine. Lastly I blew out the candle and asked that the smoke cleanse the house of negative spirits.

Then, I meditated on the blessing of light and envisioned the blessing I received during the ritual spreading to encompass the whole world. I asked especially that the blessing extend to my family: my mother, my dog, my household, my extended family, and especially my Grandmother Katherine who is suffering from an injury that is having difficulty healing.

Next, I laid out a tarot spread for divination. Although many find tarot dangerous, I think that the danger lies in how you ask the questions and what specifically you ask for. I believe that tarot is one of the ways in which God communicates with us. I used a Druid spread, called the Three Rays of Light, which asks the card to reflect the past, the potential future, and the present. My spread was very good. I had two reversed cards, which made me nervous, but where they laid was actually quite fortuitous. My past was represented by a reversed Ace of Wands. When it is upright, the Ace of Wands represents the creative spark and the energy required to keep projects going. Since it was reversed, I read the card as a representation of the spiritual stagnation I've felt throughout the last few years. For me, the card is a sign that my inertia is coming to an end. My future was represented by a reversed Five of Swords. Usually, the Five of Swords represents conflict, deceit, and chicanery. Since it was reversed, I see it as the dissolution of conflict and the heralding of peace or harmony. Finally, the card that represents my present is the Queen of Pentacles. Pentacles is one of my favorite suits. It represents blessings and the fruits of the earth. The Queen is a representation of Mother Earth herself. She represents the nourishment of daily work and application of oneself to one's tasks. She also represents the flow of finances. I read the Queen of Pentacles as a sign that my new approach to achieving my goals is the right path, and that through dedication and daily work I will be able to achieve the things I want to achieve. And perhaps a financial blessing is coming my way...

Finally, I meditated on the question of how I can learn to be more compassionate to myself. I found my inspiration for this meditation in my Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety, a guided course of self-therapy for learning to deal with anxiety disorders. I had begun this workbook years ago, but had very little follow-through. I decided that using it as my source of meditation inspiration would be beneficial for me both spiritually and mentally. Taking the new path I have chosen for myself is scary and a source of great anxiety, so meditating on my anxiety and better self-care is, I think, a good spiritual discipline.

Finally, earlier this week I made a complex God's Eye, which Mom has hung in our kitchen. I like making things with my hands. For me, it is a representation of the Sun. I'm hoping it will bring a little light into the darkness of winter.

2015: A Year of (Hopeful) Renewal

2015-01-08T01:53:00.001-05:00

I have never liked the concept of New Year's resolutions. They always seem fleeting, and full of good intentions, but it always seems like follow-through is lacking. Nevertheless, the New Year always brings for me the hope of renewal: a symbolic wiping of the slate and the chance to try again this year. I don't want to begin this year full of hope and disappoint myself again, so I'm trying something new.

This year, I want to accomplish concrete, achievable goals.

In the past, my New Year's hopes have been either vague or heavily dependent on my ability to (successfully) build new habits. The problem of vagueness is perhaps evident: how do you know what you've achieved if you don't know what you set out to achieve? The problem of habit-building is perhaps less clear. I am habitually bad at building new habits.

So this year, I've made myself a list of goals: things that I can check off a list and say, hooray, I've done it! And maybe achieving these (not always) small things will help me achieve a larger goal: self-betterment.

Truth is, I have been suffering—mentally, physically, and spiritually—for a long time, and that suffering has shaped the way I view and interact with the world around me. Although I have accomplished great things in the past few years, I feel like I accomplished those things despite myself. I struggled through divinity school; I barely read half of what I was assigned, I took two complete semesters pass/fail (or in div school parlance, credit/no credit), and for several months I was present in name only. Mentally, I was struggling to stay with it. I almost dropped out.

Interestingly, when I graduated, I decided to go on to more school. I believed that I had learned my lesson and would be able to change myself for the better. And in many ways, I did. I read more of what I was assigned, I took classes that created a cohesive course of study, I worked really hard at my thesis. And then I started spring semester, and all of that drive I had in the fall disappeared. Once again I was stuck in that place I had been when I had been at Yale. I barely finished my thesis in time; I took an extension and missed out on walking at graduation. But I did it! I graduated!

Since then, I've felt no relief. I struggle daily with anxiety and depression. My medication doesn't seem to help. I have excellent intentions and no follow-through.

So my goal this year is to achieve that follow-through. I need to get my life back on track with where I want to be. Five years from now? I want to be in a PhD program, studying to be a pastoral/spiritual counselor. My checklist for this year is (hopefully) going to help me with baby steps towards that goal.

I'm writing this here mostly for personal reasons, so I can look back and see where my mind was at the beginning of this year. But I'm also keeping it public for accountability purposes. Maybe with the help of friends and the vast internet community, I can achieve something for myself this year.

Steps I've already taken

Signed up for a 28-day self-love class
Emailed NASW-GA about how I might become a peer counselor

Steps I still need to take

Obtain my health records from Yale Health so that I can prove my qualification for SSDI
Submit my application appeal for SSDI
Make a spiritual commitment to myself

Start going back to church
Start regular personal spiritual practices

Apply to be a volunteer with Skyland Trail, ideally under their pastoral counselor
Apply for CPE
Grow my O2 business

Try for at least 1 Jewelry Bar each month, preferably more

Sign up for a dance, yoga, or martial arts class
Begin planning weekly meals in advance and shopping accordingly

Bear with me, y'all, and keep me in your prayers.

Featured at Postcolonial Networks

2012-12-16T18:59:00.002-05:00

Just thought I'd put a note up here letting you know I've been featured at the Postcolonial Networks blog, Plural Space, talking about the postmodern/postcolonial concept of hybridity in identity.

Check it out!

Invisibility and Silence - my article!
Plural Space
Postcolonial Networks

Spiritual Friendship

2012-10-26T14:55:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to draw your attention to an amazing blog on the topic of queerness, sexuality and theology: Spiritual Friendship. Check it out!

Let's talk about X, baby

2012-10-02T15:34:00.000-04:00

A little more than a month ago, Mother Jones ran an article titled "The Problem with Men Explaining Things." Although I do not want to go into too much detail here, the article deals with the issue of "mansplaining," a lovely Portmanteau coined to describe the social phenomena in which a man presumes that a woman does not know anything about some particular subject and then proceeds to explain it to her. In the article, a man unknowingly lectured a woman about a book that she had authored:

Here, let me just say that my life is well sprinkled with lovely men, with a long succession of editors who have, since I was young, listened and encouraged and published me, with my infinitely generous younger brother, with splendid friends of whom it could be said—like the Clerk in The Canterbury Tales I still remember from Mr. Pelen's class on Chaucer—"gladly would he learn and gladly teach." Still, there are these other men, too. So, Mr. Very Important was going on smugly about this book I should have known when Sallie interrupted him to say, "That's her book." Or tried to interrupt him anyway.

But he just continued on his way. She had to say "That's her book" three or four times before he finally took it in. And then, as if in a 19th-century novel, he went ashen. That I was indeed the author of the very important book it turned out he hadn't read, just read about in the New York Times Book Review a few months earlier, so confused the neat categories into which his world was sorted that he was stunned speechless—for a moment, before he began holding forth again. Being women, we were politely out of earshot before we started laughing, and we've never really stopped.

I often hate to post topics like this because, inevitably, I end up with well-meaning comments about how this only happens every once in a while, and really women are considered equally, anyway. I have to quash my eyeroll reflex. But I find myself concerned with the phenomena because my lovely friend Jordan had this happen to her last week at a sports bar while she was watching the Texas football game. Not only did said person try to explain the football game to her, he patted her shoulder and asked her what she thought about Erin Andrews' shoes. To quote Amy Poehler, "REALLY?!"

Most of us women have learned to deal with these occasional slights to our intelligence by employing a well-placed comment that signifies our literacy in the subject, or by ignoring them entirely (though for me, this is the road-less-traveled). The more problematic edge to these phenomena, however, is more subversive, and one that I find that I encounter on a regular basis. This occurs when a woman who makes an intellectual claim about a topic in a field in which she has excellent credentials (and not merely knowledge—although the knowledge should be enough), and is automatically disbelieved or presumed not knowledgeable enough about the subject. And this is where it's really damaging.

If you are at all acquainted with me via facebook, you are probably aware that I have strong opinions on many controversial topics. This means that I often end up in debates where, unfortunately, I first have to legitimate my voice before I can successfully contribute to the topic. If I make a claim about a particular topic, I often have responses from others participated in the debate where the responders checked my facebook profile to find out where I went to school and what I majored in before evaluating whether my knowledge on the subject is relevant to the conversation. Even after I establish that I do have a sufficient knowledge base, I find my arguments picked apart based on everything from my vocabulary choices to the presumed tone with which I responded—a particularly frustrating argument since tone cannot be effectively communicated via text-based methods—rather than responding to the content of what I say.

I recently ended up in a surprisingly pleasant debate with a 16-year-old boy, a junior in high school, who kept trying to explain to me why my particular approach to a subject was wrong. While trying to explain my viewpoint and why I thought the way I did, we were interrupted by another male who informed me that my explanations were unpleasant, that I had bad people skills, and that he couldn't believe I wanted to be a pastor. He told me it was not my place to "teach" and that I needed to learn to be "harmless, not helpful." There was no critique of the 16-year-old who kept telling me I was wrong.

I write this post not because I have an answer to the question of what to do in situations like these, but because I want to draw attention to them. What should we, as women, do in response to situations like these? How can we prevent them from happening? Can we even do so?

All I know is I'm tired of the fight to defend my voice.

Triumph?

2012-09-21T00:23:00.003-04:00

Today I threw away the mask that I have kept for 13 years as a symbol of Dad's triumph over cancer. Because radiation treatment requires extreme precision and my dad's skin cancer manifested in the lymph node in his throat, his doctors had to mold a mask that would hold his head still during the treatment. A plastic mesh was heated and stretched over his face until it cooled. Once the form was made, it could be reused daily for as long as the treatment continued.

Dad had two masks made because the doctors made a mistake with the first one. Rather than just throwing it out or melting the plastic down to be recycled, they gave us the mask to keep. My mom and I have always collected interesting scraps for craft projects, and this one had the potential for really interesting projects.

When dad was declared cancer-free, I instead chose to keep the mask as a sort of trophy, something that said "Look at this horrible thing that my dad triumphed over!" When we moved away from Big Bend, the mask ended up pressed against a hot car window, and the nose was smushed, but the resemblance was still there. In my new room, it adorned the top of my bookcase. Certain friends of mine thought it was creepy.

The night that Dad died, I couldn't look at his face on top of my bookcase, even if it was just a plastic mesh simulacrum. I picked up the mask and took it into the other room so I wouldn't have to see it while I tried to fall asleep. After 13 years, the plastic was brittle, and the mere act of lifting it caused it to crack and break into multiple pieces.

Today, while I was cleaning house, I decided the broken pieces needed to be thrown out. The plastic was too fragile to try to put it back together, and eventually you run out of places to keep every memento. I was trying to be practical.

It's amazing how the tiniest thing can mean so much. The pieces of plastic no longer looked like my dad, but I knew that they did once. Throwing out the pieces felt like throwing out a memory. His triumph over cancer didn't prevent him from coming down with pneumonia. Keeping the mask didn't mean I got to keep my dad.

Reflections on September 11th

2012-09-11T13:50:00.003-04:00

Today marks the 11^th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, and I must confess that this is the first year the anniversary has meant something to me. Throughout these 11 years, I have often felt that my emotional response to the attacks was not what it should have been, especially considering my role as a white, middle-class American. But the truth is that the way the world changed on September 11, 2001, did not have direct consequences for my life. I had never lived through wartime, and thus did not comprehend what such an attack might mean for the everyday citizen. I knew no one who had been in New York on that day; I knew no one who had worked in those buildings; I knew no one in the military who faced being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan when Congress and the President declared war on the Middle East. The ramifications of the PATRIOT Act, which were so shocking to others, did not concern me as perhaps they should have—as I look back, I recognize the violations of privacy condoned by the act were obtrusive and mostly unnecessary. I had developed for myself an ethic of free information exchange, so I was not concerned about what might be discovered of me. The aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center interceded in my life at a glacial pace, mostly changing the way I used language and engaged in political rhetoric. I found myself growing numb to the remembrances, days of silence, and mentions of the tragedy. I cared insomuch as the reaction of the United States led us on a path towards perdition; a path which slowly destroyed the sanctity of the ideals for which the country was founded.

This year, though, I am slowly starting to grasp the emotional significance of the event. In some ways, it is because today is the one-month anniversary of my father's death, and I am still dealing with the very real confusion, grief, and heartbreak of that loss. I think about what I am going through, and then I think about how many people faced this same loss because of one unexpected event, how many people lost a father or a mother or a sister or a brother or an aunt, uncle, grandfather, grandmother, cousin, second cousin, friend, enemy, colleague... it is still outrageous that some entity could be so filled with hatred at an idea—in this case, "the American dream"—that he or she or they would choose to cause so much grief and loss.

I mourn those people who died on 2001, and I mourn all those who have died since in the defense of freedom. I mourn that part of the American spirit that the World Trade Center attacks destroyed: an ideal of freedom of differences and the rightness of diversity. We are all of us loved, and not one of us deserves such loss.

On the Enfleshed Word

2012-08-31T09:09:00.000-04:00

God-as-Christ,
We are your body; you know our fleshly pain and our fleshly rapture.
Bring to us new vitality,
that we may live as Christ lived,
wholly with the assurance of faith in God,
We ask these things in the name of God-Enfleshed, Jesus our Christ.
Amen.

What does it mean when we say that Christ is the incarnate Word, the Word "made flesh"?

There are multiple aspects of a "word" that can be considered. There is, first of all, the spoken word, the combination of sounds that when spoken together convey a particular meaning. With the spoken word, there is not only meaning conveyed through the choice of word, but also through the tone of voice used. In a way, a word becomes "enfleshed" when it is spoken; the speaking emerges from a combination of muscular contractions, passages of air, and obstacles created by the tongue. The body is needed for the message to be conveyed.

But a word may also be an abstract idea, the concept represented by our language of symbols. Is Christ an idea?

And when a word is written down, it is again embodied. A word that is written with graphite, or ink—or even wax and pigment—is made using the "flesh" of creation, the "body" of the world. Could it even be said that this earthly flesh is the body of God? For it was non-existent until God birthed it, and even humankind was made flesh from dirt.

My God, How Great Thou Art

2012-08-08T16:55:00.000-04:00

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made,
I see the stars; I hear the roaring thunder:
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Refrain
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!

When through the woods and forest glades I wander,
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when I look down from lofty mountain’s grandeur
and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze;

Refrain

And when I think that God, his son not sparing,
sent him to die, I scarce can take it in;
that on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
he bled and died to take away my sin;

Refrain

When Christ shall come with shouts of acclamation
and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art!

Refrain

I wrote this sermon back in February for my course on Congregational Song as a Resource for Preaching and Worship. While my father has been in ICU these past few weeks, this hymn and sermon have been on my mind regularly. I offer the words here as a sign of peace for all of us as we struggle through difficult times.

How Great Thou Art

When my grandfather died in 1998 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, this beautiful hymn, How Great Thou Art, was chosen for his funeral. Grandpa JB requested this hymn years previously while planning for his funeral, before his mind had started to fade too much. He chose the hymn because it represented one of his happiest memories. When my father was a young boy taking singing lessons, he would sing this hymn to my grandfather for hours on end, trying his hardest to achieve the perfect sound.

Although I was not there, and have only the vaguest memories of my grandfather, I can just picture how absolutely blissful these moments were for him. Before my father suffered from throat cancer and lost his saliva glands, he had one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard, with the perfect husky quality to it that made the hymns he sang so perfectly soulful that you could just feel the emotions portrayed by the text. And my grandfather JB was such a perfectly God-loving man that he has been my inspiration as I walk along this spiritual journey of mine. To listen to his son, with his soulfully formed notes, sing a hymn of such eloquent praise to God, I can only imagine that my grandfather could not have been prouder.

For me, the hymn is heartbreaking. It reminds me of times before my father’s voice was diminished by radiation treatments, and before my grandfather’s mind withered away as a result of the disease eating away at him. The sharp contrast between who these two people used to be, and who they became as they struggled with illness, causes me to question the message the hymn delivers. Rather than a proclamation of awe, the refrain becomes a question for me: My God, How great art thou? How can you send your son to die on a cross to save the rest of the world from sin, yet leave my father and my grandfather to suffer through the burdens of their dysfunctional human bodies?

As I was preparing to write this sermon, I researched the origins of this hymn, and found a compelling story about the author’s inspiration for writing it. The hymn was written in 1885 by a Swedish poet named Carl Gustav Boberg, and was set to the tune of a traditional Swedish folk song. Boberg wrote the hymn after walking home from church near Kronobäck, Sweden. As he returned home to Mönsterås,

“a thundercloud appeared on the horizon, and soon sharp lightning flashed across the sky. Strong winds swept over the meadows and billowing fields of grain. The thunder pealed in loud claps. Then rain came in cool fresh showers. In a little while the storm was over, and a rainbow appeared.”

When Boberg finally arrived home, he opened the window and saw the bay of Mönsterås, and heard the song of a thrush and the peal of the church bells in the quiet evening air, and was inspired by this series of sights, sounds, and experiences to write the hymn.

I cannot help but translate the actual experience of surviving a sudden thunderstorm into the experience of surviving the metaphorical storm that illness wreaks upon one’s family life. As the hymn gradually shows, and as Boberg celebrates, the thunderstorm is an inevitable trial of life, but God’s greatness is shown in the fact that all thunderstorms end, just as all of our trials and suffering end because of the grace of Christ’s death on the cross.

There is a verse of this hymn that is rarely found in hymnbooks or sung in churches, and I would like to offer it as a prayer:

“When burdens press, and seem beyond endurance,
bowed down with grief, to God I lift my face;
and then in love God brings me sweet assurance:
‘My child, for thee sufficient is my grace!’
Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!”
Friends,
let us remember God’s sweet assurance,
and let our souls sing out with joy
in even the most difficult of times.
Amen.

On Love

2012-07-29T03:57:00.002-04:00

"[Love is] a human emotion." "No. It is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies." ^‡

A wise friend once told me that love is not an emotion, but a decision that one makes about one's relationship with another individual. I would perhaps expand upon this definition: love is an ethic which guides one's actions with regard to other individuals.

This is not to say that there is not an emotion which occurs frequently in conjunction with this guiding ethic and which may be referred to as "love;" in truth, the emotion makes it easier to act ethically towards the individual upon whom one feels such an emotion. However, the presence of this emotion, which is a purely chemical phenomenon comprised primarily of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, in destructive relationships, and the ability to feel this emotion towards inanimate objects with which it is impossible to enter into relationship (such as depicted in scientific studies that claim it is possible to fall "in love" with chocolate; the same chemical reaction is produced by THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana) demonstrates that the emotion does not necessarily correspond to the virtuous qualities with which we associate the word "love."

Another good friend of mine argues that love is something which must be recognized by the person^† or individual^† that is loved; love requires the possibility, if not the actuality, of reciprocation. From a biological standpoint, I find this definition difficult to work with because it excludes sentient individuals who are biologically recognized as incapable of experiencing love. My primary example of such an individual is a child born with a brain stem (which is necessary for life) but without a cerebrum or cerebellum (which is necessary for higher-level functioning such as emotion, morality or ethic). Biologically speaking, the child is incapable of reciprocating love in any way, but is capable of being loved.

So what does this mean in terms of the Christian notion of love?

There is a popular Bible passage oft-quoted at weddings which defines the qualities of love. Interestingly, this passage (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) sets forth a description of love which is rarely fulfilled completely by human persons. As a whole, humanity is guilty of failing to love fully in the way that this text describes.

I remember reading once a meme which took 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and replaced each instance of the word "love" with the name of God, resulting in a complete picture of God's eternal and unchanging love.

In the Christian tradition, God sets the ethic with which we are supposed to live, yet it is in our human nature to fail. We are impatient; we are unkind; we are envious, boastful, arrogant, rude. We insist on our own way (the one and only way); we are irritable and resentful.

In some ways, we expect these failures. We prepare ourselves for the failure of others to live fully into God's example of love. What would the world look like if we loved as God loves?

† I use the word "person" here to indicate a specific member of the species Homo sapiens, whereas I include members of other species under the nomenclature "individual;" as a panentheist, I recognize sapience, sentience, and emotion across species.

‡ The focusing quote of this essay comes from Matrix: Revolutions. I worried that citing the source at the beginning of this post would undermine the seriousness with which I approach the subject. I find in my own moral philosophy that wisdom and revelation can come from the most unlikely sources, though I understand that some may not share my philosophy. Thusly, I wished to approach this subject without the burden of revealing my source as a third-rate sci-fi flick.

The issue of Women in Refrigerators

2012-06-08T13:38:00.000-04:00

This post continues a conversation started earlier on this blog on the status of women in comic books. Anita Sarkeesian over at Feminist Frequency is a pop culture media critic who produces an ongoing video series in collaboration with Bitch Magazine regarding tropes in popular media that marginalize and trivialize women. The second part of this series deals with the Women in Refrigerators trope that occurs quite frequently in comic books and across popular media:

When [Gail] Simone released her list [of over 90 comics that featured female superheroes who suffered a loss of super powers, brutal violation or an untimely, gruesome death] in 1999 there was an instant backlash from some comic book fans who thought it was unfair that they were singling out female characters. This criticism happens whenever we point out tropes specifically about women. In this case, comic book fans criticized the Women in Refrigerators by saying that male heroes get killed and tortured too so what’s the big deal? The people who run the Women in Refrigerators website responded to this by creating another trope (how much do I love fans!) called Dead Men Defrosting. Comic fan John Bartol explains, “In cases where males heroes have been altered or appear to die they usually come back even better than before, either power-wise or in terms of character development/relevancy to the reader."

This video is quite enlightening. For more information check out these related links:

Tropes vs. Women: #2 Women in Refrigerators - the original blog post at Feminist Frequency
Women in Refrigerators - the official Women in Refrigerators (WiR) website, including Gail Simone's original letter, an ever-expanding list of comic book characters, and responses from other comic book fans
Dead Men Defrosting by John Bartol
The Cold Shoulder: Saving Superheroines from Comic-book Violence by Shannon Cochran at Bitch Media
Women in Refrigerators: Alexandra DeWitt - an article critiquing the original WiR comic for which the trope was named
A Woman's Place is Not in the Refrigerator by Marie Brennan at Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists

Homemade Frappuccinos!

2012-06-07T16:57:00.001-04:00

I've been contemplating how to make my own homemade Frappuccinos for some time now. After a few orders at Starbucks, where I asked for a non-sweetened Frappuccino and thoroughly confused the baristas, I discovered that the coffee Starbucks uses for their Frappuccinos is pre-sweetened (in both real sugar and sugar-free varieties). This was confirmed when I discovered that The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf sells a pre-packaged coffee base for their Iced Blendeds (their equally delicious version of a Frappuccino).

Using this information, I determined that my previous attempts at making homemade Frappuccinos had failed because I used plain coffee, which resulted in a drink that was slightly too watery and didn't pack the punch of the drinks I ordered at national chains.

So last night I went on a mission to develop my own coffee base. Using what I know about brewing tea, I determined that the coffee I brewed for my base would need to be twice as strong as what I would normally drink. So I doubled the number of scoops of grounds per cup compared to what I would normally brew. Once the coffee finished brewing I dissolved two cups of sugar in the brew, and set it to chill in the fridge.

This afternoon I put together a Frappuccino based on what I had figured out by watching baristas make my drinks for years now. I filled the cup of my compact blender (I use the Cuisinart CPB-300 SmartPower model, but my parents use the Cooks 5-in-1 Rocket, and they're both excellent) with an inch of the coffee base, then filled it the rest of the way with ice. I finished by pouring in enough milk to cover the ice and blended my drink! The result was about the same flavor and consistency as the Starbucks variety, although I would prefer it slightly less sweet and with a thicker milk (I used nonfat milk, and prefer 2% or 4% milkfat).

I wish I had pictures to share with you, but I promise the drink is delicious! I added some caramel syrup to mine to recreate the caramel-flavored Frappuccino, which is my favorite, but with an at-home recipe you can blend it any way you want!

Teaching Boys Feminism

2012-06-01T21:12:00.003-04:00

Ileana Jiménez over at The Feminist Teacher wrote an excellent post last March about teaching young boys feminism and how it affects their lives. Read the excerpt below, then check out the full post here.

I’ve read many horror stories about women’s studies professors being heckled by male students who are just there to make a sexist scene. In the high school setting where I teach, I have never had that experience. Instead, the boys in my classes are curious about how feminism might connect to their lives. They want to know if feminism can help them become better versions of themselves in a world that tells them only one version is acceptable.

The boys in my feminism course have taught me that it is essential that we teach them about the various global feminisms so that we can finally reach gender, racial, and economic justice together as fully realized men and women. They have taught me that it is crucial that we bring a feminist lens to not only high school classrooms but middle and elementary schools as well.

The Last Name Project

2012-05-22T22:30:00.001-04:00

My contribution to The Last Name Project has been featured over at The Feminist Mystique! Check it out here, or read my write-up below:

In this new series co-hosted by from two to one and The Feminist Mystique, we will be profiling an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry. The goal is to explore how individuals make decisions about their last name, and to highlight the many possibilities. We will be posting profiles periodically and encourage you to stay connected via Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. If you would like to participate in this series, email Danielle at danielle [at] fromtwotoone [dot] com or Shannon at hill [dot] shannonp [at] gmail [dot] com.

Although I am not married, I have spent years thinking about whether I am going to keep my name when I do get married. For most of my life, aesthetic has been the primary deciding point for me; does the name flow off the tongue appropriately? I remember that when I was about five years old, I just knew that I was going to marry my best friend Joshua one day. I also remember deciding that—since he was of Polish descent, and his name was much too difficult to spell—he was going to have to take my name if I would agree to the marriage at all. A practical decision, perhaps, had I not eventually learned how to spell his name (really, Polish spelling isn't that hard!).

Of course, my friendship with Joshua didn't last after my family moved away, but the notion of keeping a practical name stuck with me. Ease of spelling grew less important, since I have the privilege of a mother with two difficult to spell names (Ouida Juanette), and an aunt whose name features a letter not in the English character set (Aïda). It was not until I got together with my current boyfriend, Marc, that I really started considering the possibility of keeping my name. I was not looking forward to having an alliterative name (since his last name is Kashiwagi), but that wasn't what decided things for me. Instead, it was meeting his mother, an early-second-wave feminist who kept her last name when she got married. Her reasoning behind keeping her own name was that since she had been published and received several degrees in her name, it made no sense to change it because of custom. She also handles having a different name from her husband and son with grace. I admire her strength of character; after marrying Marc's father the two of them immediately moved to Saudi Arabia where she faced the difficulties of being a feminist in a country with a history of oppression of women.

The practical points she made about keeping a name that had been linked to her in published work (an important consideration for me as a sometime-published writer) resonated with me, and reminded me about my own beliefs about names. I believe that my family names are a part of who I am, and changing my name would remove a certain part of my identity. I want to preserve my family heritage, and I claim my grandmothers' family names with as much pride as my grandfathers'.

Around the same time that I first met Marc's mother, I took a class in Spanish culture, and learned that the Spanish have an interesting approach to naming, and one that I wish the United States legal system would honor. In Spanish culture, each person has two last names: their father's family name and their mother's family name. Upon marriage, a woman does not change her name, and she does not take on a part of her husband's name. Instead, their marriage is recognized in the names of their children, who take their father's family name and their mother's family name. If my family used this system, my name would not be Katelyn Celeste Willis, but it would be Katelyn Celeste Willis Bales, and my mother's name would be Ouida Juanette Bales Riddick, and my father's name Gerald Kenneth Willis Barden. My children, were I to have any with my current boyfriend, would take the last names Kashiwagi Willis, not hyphenated.

What I like about the Spanish system is its elegance; it preserves the matrilineal heritage while allowing women to keep their own names. It solves the problem of trying to decide which name the children should take. And it would make researching family trees so much easier! In an ideal world, my family would use this system of naming. Feminism, to me, is about cherishing one's identity and having the right to be who you are. How can you do that without honoring and acknowledging all of your names?

Summer

2012-05-15T01:23:00.000-04:00

Now that it is starting to (finally) feel like this semester's over, it is time for me to make a summer to-do list. Since I will be between programs, I want to spend the summer trying to pick up a few new hobbies that I can hope to integrate into my schedule when my new program starts. These are activities I have always wanted to try to pick up but never have felt like I had the time to build the habit while I've been in school. So here are some goals I have for the summer:

Take up yoga

I have flirted with yoga through the years, taking a few classes here and there, but I have not been able to satisfactorily fit it into my routine. This is in part because I am not a morning person, and the few yoga classes I have had access to as a student have been early morning. I've been looking at a few yoga studios around Decatur, hoping to find something within my student budget that will be near Emory and also near where my mom works; yoga's more fun with your mom! Maybe this summer I can check out a few of the classes ahead of time and see if they'll work for me.

Take up gardening

As part of my education in 5-8 grades, I worked in a greenhouse growing plants native to the Chihuahuan Desert as part of an ecological project within the National Park system. I absolutely loved the hands-on experience, and getting to play in dirt was an added bonus (fun fact: I find dirt absolutely fascinating, and was super-disappointed that I missed the dirt exhibit at the Smithsonian when I was in DC for the inauguration). Since I moved away from Big Bend, however, I haven't enjoyed the pleasures of working with dirt to grow beautiful things.

One particular goal I have in mind is trying to plant a labyrinth somewhere in my parents' yard. I've always loved the spiritual practice of walking a labyrinth, and I recently read about labyrinths being used for physical therapy. I would love to have a semi-permanent labyrinth in our yard both for its meditative benefits but also as an activity to do with my dad.

I have also recently become fascinated with vertical gardens, and would love to try building one. Home Depot recently released a PDF of instructions for how to build your own, so I'm thinking about trying to take up the project over the summer. I can just picture how much I would enjoy "painting" with living plants.

Take up biking

When I was younger, mom and I would bike everywhere. One of our favorite things to do in Big Bend was take scenic bike rides; we would have dad drop us off at a certain location with our bikes, and then tell him to meet us at an agreed-upon destination. Big Bend had a lot of beautiful scenery and challenging landscapes for biking, and it was so fulfilling at the end of the day to say that we had biked for 20 miles just to see the beautiful landscapes.

The bike I would love to be riding

I would really like to get into the habit of biking more frequently and using my car less often. Georgia will be hard to get used to biking in--especially after not biking for so many years--since there are so many hills, but with the right bike and a lot of practice, I think I'll be fine.

Organize closets, cabinets, and other storage spaces

My friend Kim over at The Gracious Gaze has some really handy tips on building and maintaining an ideal (simple) closet. And what I discovered from reading her posts is that I own way too much stuff. Part of my moving out process has been going through and seeing what I have that I don't need and throwing it out or donating it, and I am perhaps being overly ambitious in deciding I want to go through the closets, cabinets, bookshelves, etc once I arrive home. I get so much joy out of a neatly organized space.

And maybe I'll be able to talk my mom into letting me repaint their kitchen like I want to do.

Write a paper

And this is the part of my checklist that reveals exactly how much I am cut out for academics. You'd think that after leaving a three-year Master's program that required lots of paper-writing and before entering a Master's program in which I will be expected to write a thesis, I would want to take a break from paper-writing for just one summer. But the truth is, I love the idea of getting to do research and write a paper just for me. I get to read the things I am interested in and write about the things I am interested in. And if I do it right, maybe I can use it as a writing sample for PhD applications (!).

...and, finally

I want to post more frequently on this blog. I love being able to write on a regular basis about whatever I'm thinking. If you're lucky, I'll start blogging about all of my fun recipes and gardening projects. Or maybe I'll update you with some of my random creative writing projects. The point is, I want to post more, and hopefully it will be entertaining and meaningful for you as well!

On "cunt," "bitch," and other bad words

2012-05-09T16:44:00.000-04:00

I should have been a Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major in undergrad.

The other night, I got into a (rather exhausting and time-consuming) debate with a friend of mine on Skype. Although my (white, male, Catholic) friend, whom I will refer to henceforth as Mr X, tried to make many arguments to the point of "why people should not be offended by the language I use and the [racist and sexist] jokes I make," the real debate centered around whether or not "cunt" was an insult. While there is an obvious answer to this question (It's an insult if it's used like an insult!), the ethicist, linguist, and advocate inside of me attempted to tease out the subtleties of privilege and misogyny in the use of such a word.

One of Mr X's favorite points, and one I see bandied about quite a bit on the internet, is the fact that "cunt" refers to female genitalia, much in the same way that "dick" refers to male genitalia and therefore, "cunt" is no more insulting than "dick." What Mr X understood to be important was how the word was intended, and not how it was understood by the interlocutor. This argument sets up a false understanding of the dichotomy of insults. Melissa McEwan, who runs a blog series called Feminism 101 over at Shakesville, summarizes the counterpoint beautifully in her article "On 'Bitch' and Other Misogynistic Language":

Intent: If you're turning part of a woman's body into a slur to insult someone, the implication is necessarily that cunts are bad, nasty, less than, in some way something that a person wouldn't want to be or be associated with. That's how insults work. When cunt is used as a slur, it is dependent on construing a woman's body part negatively—and it thusly misogynistic, because it inexorably insults women in the process. Specifically using a misogynistic slur against a man can't be anything but intentionally misogynistic. If you don't intend to demean women, then don't use misogynistic slurs. It's really as simple as that.

While Melissa's reasoning might suggest that calling a man a "dick" implies that dicks are bad, nasty, less than, and in some way something that a person would not want to be or to be associated with, calling a man a dick is not demeaning. Calling a man a dick is not demeaning because a dick is not understood to be an unfavorable possession; having a dick is a sign of male privilege. In minority studies, privilege means that opportunities and status are awarded to a group of people on the basis of normalcy. Privilege is socially constructed, and an individual may have privilege or not have privilege depending on the society he or she is in. Unfortunately, men are almost universally recipients of privilege, and women are not. Because of this power relationship, using an insult that demeans a man does not carry the same weight as one that demeans a woman because of the history of oppression that is linked to demeaning and marginalizing women (and other minority groups who suffer). The argument can be applied to slurs against other minority groups as well.

Another point made by Mr X is that "cunt" cannot be an insult because women use it themselves to describe themselves (or similarly, Chris Rock makes fun of black people; why can't I?). The problem here is that a woman using the word in a reclamatory fashion is fundamentally different from a man using it as an insult. Not recognizing that there is a difference is what August Pollack calls a fabricated belief. The fact that women feel the need to reclaim the words "cunt" and "bitch" is proof enough of their derogatory nature; they would not need to be reclaimed if they were not an insult from the beginning. Or, as Derailing for Dummies puts it:

What this enables you to ignore is the reality of the power dynamic involved. Language reclaimation is a means by which Marginalised People™ gain back some power they are traditionally denied by taking control of words used to demean and discriminate against them. When these words come from Privileged People®, there is a long and very serious negative history behind them that cannot be divorced from the words themselves. Thus, when Privileged People® employ these words, they are perpetuating that history and the psychology behind the word. They are exercising oppressive power that have become inherent to those words - a power Marginalised People™ seek to subvert and dismantle when they use them.

This is why I refuse to listen if I hear someone referring to others by hateful language. Don't be calling other people "cunt" and "bitch" while I'm around, even if you "don't mean it that way." Using misogynist language and attempting to divorce it from its context perpetuates the problem of gender inequality, and I won't stand for it.

And no, I'm not being oversensitive.

Women and sexuality in comic books

2012-05-08T18:18:00.002-04:00

Since the Avengers movie was released, an image has been circling the various social networks depicting how the male Avengers would look had they been posed the same way that women in comic books are almost universally drawn. Although this is topic that comes up quite frequently in girl geek communities, the inevitable male response is usually "Men are idealized in comics, too," or, somewhat less frequently, "I like my lady superheroes sexy." And while there is truth to the statement that men are idealized in comics as well, the way they are idealized is different. David Willis, the author/artist of the webcomic Shortpacked , summarizes the difference in this wonderful comic strip (click to enlarge):

While I have a lot of thoughts on the subject of the depiction of women in comics (and their movie counterparts), my good friend Keith has compiled a wonderful collection of blog posts regarding the matter, which are entirely more eloquent than I am:

Dressed to Kill
Men in Skintight Leotards
What if male superheroes posed like Wonder Woman on the David Finch Justice League cover?

These in no way explore the depth of the problem, but they are a good introduction!

Shaving: A rite of passage for women too?

2012-05-07T23:45:00.000-04:00

Thanks to a thoughtful post over at Vagenda Mag, I recently started thinking about how hair (or the lack thereof) has played a big role in my gender identity.

When I was a little girl, I never really thought about gender very much. I liked to wear dresses and play with stuffed animals, sure, but I also played with Legos and Omagles. I really liked swimming. I remember how excited I was when my parents got me a baseball bat and glove. I also remember how incredibly satisfying it was to be able to kick a soccer ball as far as the boys in the older grades could. I remained blissfully unaware of gender until the 3rd grade, when my secondary sex characteristics started developing. Or, to put it simply, I got boobs and started growing armpit hair. My mom would no longer let me run around outside shirtless like I did when I was younger, and my school principal made me start wearing a bra. But even so, I still didn't really think about gender much. All I knew was that my body had a certain shape, and it meant something, but I couldn't really be bothered to care what it meant. Just that my body was different from my peers.

Over time I came to realize that my body wasn't just different; its difference was important. The school principal wouldn't let me help with the heavy lifting. The boys started paying attention to and making fun of my boobs. When I got my period, I had to become more private; letting people know that I was menstruating was shameful. I wore sports bras to try and press my boobs flat so they wouldn't garner people's attention, and I stored bags of feminine hygiene products in my teacher's desk. I felt enormous amounts of pressure about how I had to act as a female. I had to start sitting a certain way, start dressing a certain way, start talking a certain way. I became aware of how people looked at and talked about my body, and learned how to keep others from feeling uncomfortable about me.

As my body changed and grew and developed, my mother helped me adjust as best she could, but I was never allowed to shave. I wore short shorts and short skirts to show off my well-toned dancer's legs, and I soon gained the affectionate nickname "Gorilla Legs." The hairs in my armpits would collect lint and become inky pits of despair. And perhaps the worst of all were the stray hairs that would escape from my bikini and mar my inner thighs. My mom took pity, and let me start shaving my armpits, and eventually my upper thighs as well, but it took years of trying to convince her that I should be allowed to shave my legs. I finally convinced her near the end of 8th grade. The next day in school I proudly showed off my new legs to anyone whose attention I could catch. And my nickname became "No-Longer-Gorilla Legs."

When I think back over the way I came to understand my gender and its role in my life, I consider the moment I convinced my mother to let me shave my legs as one of the first moments when I really thought to myself, "Hey, I'm a girl." Up until that point, the way I experienced my gender was as a hindrance; I was forced to be and act a certain way because of how I was born. I had to wear an itchy, uncomfortable bra, I was expected to wear dresses, and I was understood as too weak to help with lifting heavy things. Even getting my period was an annoyance because it arrived when I really wanted to go swimming. But shaving my legs was different. I was claiming something about myself. Learning to shave became an empowering act, not something that I was forced to do because of my gender, but something I wanted to do.

Even now, after a decade or more of shaving, I still get a small amount of glee when the razor blades run across my skin.

Triduum

2012-04-05T17:45:00.008-04:00

I.
You died 12 years ago tomorrow.
I thought that I would never stop grieving.
I remember looking for you—
in poetry;
in music.
I burned a CD for your sister
with songs that made me remember you.
Looking back now,
I wonder if giving it to her was cruel.
Did I cause more pain by showing how little I really knew you?

II.
It seems unjust that the anniversary of your death is on Good Friday this year.
There is nothing good about grieving for one you love[d].
We revel in knowing that 3 days hence Christ will rise again,
but my Easter will be bitter.
I am stuck in Saturday,
that mournful milieu where I am trapped between your death and
God’s eventual resurrection.
When will God fulfill his promise?

III.
I confess that I’ve been to your grave
only twice
in the past twelve years.
Last time I could barely remember where your body rested.
“They” say that time heals all wounds,
and I’m scared that these words are true.
Although I don’t want the pain,
I don’t want to forget you.
Can you forgive my neglect?
Can you forgive my forgetting?

IV.
I rest in the hope that there is somewhere else,
some time when I will see you again—
a place where you will be full of life,
of fiery passion—
where I will finally forget the memory
of the icy body they buried in the ground,
clutching a single bloom.
Will you remember me then?

V.
In my heart I planted a flower for you.
Lamprocapnos spectabilis—
an “old-fashioned bleeding heart.”
When we meet again,
I will place it on your grave and never look back.

by Katelyn Willis

composed in memory of Carla Drinkard, d. April 6 2000

Annunciation

2012-03-21T23:29:00.004-04:00

Annunciation Sunday is coming up this weekend, and in celebration I offer this empowering poem by Sylvia Kantaris written from the perspective of Mary.

It seems I must have been more fertile than most
to have taken that wind-blown
thistledown softly-spoken word
into my body and grown big-bellied with it.
Nor was I the first: there had been
rumours of such goings-on before my turn
came—tales of swansdown. Mine
had no wings of feathers actually
but it was hopeless trying to convince them.
They like to think it was a mystical
encounter, although they must know
I am not of that fibre—and to say I was
‘trouble’ is laughable.
What I do remember is a great rejoicing,
my body’s arch and flow, the awe,
and the ringing and singing in my ears—
and then the world stopped for a little while.
But still they will keep on about the Word,
which is their name for it, even though I’ve
told them that is definitely
not how I would put it.
I should have known they’d try to take
possession of my ecstasy and
swaddle it in their portentous terminology.
I should have kept it hidden in the dark
web of my veins...
Though this child grows in me—
not unwanted certainly, but
not intended on my part; the risk
did not concern me at the time, naturally.
I must be simple to have told them anything.
Just because I stressed the miracle of it
they’ve rumoured it about the place that I’m
immaculate—but then they always were afraid
of female sexuality.
I’ve pondered these things lately in my mind.
If they should canonize me
(setting me up as chaste and meek and mild)
God only knows what nonsense
they’ll visit on the child.

A letter to my future daughter

2012-02-27T15:38:00.003-05:00

Beloved,

The world is not a nice place. I wish I could tell you that people will always love you for who you are, but I would be lying to you if I did. The truth is that no matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, how successful you are, how nice you are, or how important you become, there will always be someone trying to tear you down. You will meet people who will judge you, who will hate you before they know you, and who will tell you that you're ugly and that you're worthless. Because you are a woman, people will think they have the right to judge you for how you look, how you dress, how you talk, and how you act. Your opinions will be considered less important, your feelings will be considered less important, your work will be considered less important. People will think that they have the right to touch you without your permission and govern your body without your input. People will make you feel unworthy of basic human rights. People will try to take away your dignity.

But I want you to remember always, that no matter who you are or who you become, you are always worthy of love, respect, and dignity. Never forget this, and never forget that I love you.

Love,
Your mother

Body-positive music videos?

2011-11-15T20:52:00.004-05:00

From time to time I find myself browsing music videos on youtube. Usually it happens because I've heard a particular song on the radio that's stuck in my head, so I find my way to youtube to watch the related video, and then end up clicking the recommended links along the side of the page. I started out last night by finding the fantastic video for Rihanna's "We Found Love," which if you haven't seen or heard is definitely worth checking out. The video explores the complex emotions of being in and ending a harmful relationship, recognizing the validity of being in love with the person who is causing hurt, and the pain of letting them go even when you know it's right for you.

But soon after watching this video (which has gotten a lot of press on certain feminist blogs I read), I randomly clicked on to LMFAO's video for "Sexy and I Know It," which I find to be perhaps more worthy of discussion. A recent Jezebel article called attention to an increase in male obsession with body image, a topic which is frequently overlooked in conversations about sexual and mental health. This is in part because it is a newly-developing trend, but the truth of the matter is that it is much overshadowed by media conversations around representation of the female body. While there is a lot to be concerned about with how the media portrays women, there is also a lot to be concerned about with how the media portrays men. Yes, I've said it. Even though the media is PERHAPS more accepting of different body types for men, there are still certain body types that can be sexualized, and other body types which become comical if there is any attempt to sexualize them whatsoever (for example, the Vanity Fair cover featuring Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Jonah Hill).

While at first glance, the video for "Sexy and I Know It" (FAIR WARNING: although technically this video is SFW, it may be frowned upon by stodgier coworkers) seems to run along similar lines: the male body, if not well-muscled and perfectly formed, is hilarious when sexualized. But the video itself seems to subvert this idea. Brazenly sexualizing themselves by wearing skimpy Speedos and thrusting about on the beach and at a bar, the men in this video (including cameos by Ron Jeremy and Wilmer Valderama!) confidently expose their bodies and ARE NOT ASHAMED OF HOW THEY LOOK. In fact, by revealing their own confidence in themselves, the men in the video manage to incite other men and women to confidently strut their stuff down a makeshift catwalk in the middle of the bar. These men and women represent all body types from the skinny woman wearing skinny faux leather pants to the obese gentleman performing what can only be described as the Truffle Shuffle. And you know what? Not a single one of them is ashamed of his or her body. Although it may have never been the intent, I can only give the creative director for this video kudos for producing such a body-positive music video.

Tell me in the comments! Do you know of other music videos that share a similar body-positive message? (And please don't link me Christina Aguilera's wonderful but overused "Beautiful"!)

Questioning Movember

2011-11-14T11:40:00.005-05:00

No, that's not a typo in my title. If you haven't already heard about the Movember movement, I encourage you to check out the official website (http://us.movember.com/about). Every November, the movement encourages men everywhere to grow a moustache in order to raise awareness of prostate cancer and other men's health issues. While I love the idea behind the cause, I have to wonder whether the movement reinforces gender stereotypes that may alienate or harm.

My first concern is for men who cannot grow facial hair despite their best efforts. The ability to grow facial hair can be genetic, and is often affected by biological race. Does the movement suggest that the inability to grow facial hair make one less of a man? This perception can influence racial and ethnic stereotypes by associating a certain racial background with effeminacy.

A second concern that I have is for transgendered persons, both M-to-F and F-to-M, who may be affected by prostate cancer. Unlike breast cancer, which can be experienced by all biological sexes and is therefore not limited to biological sex, prostate cancer only affects those persons who actually have a prostate. What this means in terms of transgendered patients is that some females can develop prostate cancer, whereas some males cannot. It is also a disease which can affect intersexed persons. By encouraging all men to grow moustaches in order to promote the awareness of prostate cancer, the Movember movement may run the risk of ignoring certain sectors of the population that may be affected.

A final concern is how the movement may affect those who actually have prostate cancer. Various treatment measures for prostate cancer, including hormone therapy and chemotherapy, actually affect the patient's facial hair growth. A person who is unable to grow facial hair because of his (or her) treatment may find themselves in a place of woundedness when seeing seeing persons growing facial hair to raise awareness of the disease. The same would be true for patients who experience excessive unwanted hair growth because of their treatment.

I find fault with the Movember movement for the same reason I find fault with many "awareness" campaigns. The focus is on raising awareness of the disease, but in many cases that is all that happens. People are made aware of the fact that the disease exists, but remain uneducated in how to monitor their own health in order to prevent or reduce the likelihood of developing the disease. In that vein, I recommend anyone who is reading this blog post to check out this article on prostate cancer for an overview of what it is and how it affects your body (WARNING: link includes graphic images of a medical nature that may be considered NSFW). Early detection and prevention are what we should strive for, not "awareness!"

On a final note, blueberries, besides being a superfood, are very important for prostate health. I encourage anyone and everyone to incorporate more fresh or frozen blueberries into your diet!

EDIT: I have had comments suggesting that I am too critical with the Movember campaign without offering viable alternatives. This is a wonderful critique, partly because I have not given enough thought to alternative approaches. My main frustration with the movement is that it does little to provide knowledge about detection and prevention of prostate cancer. I merely wonder about the other implications of growing moustaches as a way to promote men's health issues... there is an inevitable subliminal message that says that growing moustaches is something a man does, and I worry about that message. I myself am totally in support of raising awareness in terms of men's health issues, especially with regards to detection and prevention, but I can't grow a moustache! So I am looking into alternatives. My two main thoughts are to invest in a moustache-shaped lapel pin that I can wear, or perhaps using indelible ink to draw my own moustache on! If you have other thoughts with how to help the movement, please share in the comments section!

MS Initiative 26

2011-11-08T22:08:00.001-05:00

Choosing to be theologically pro-choice was not a difficult decision for me. To me, it seemed self-evident. There are really two lives that must be considered when it comes to the issue of abortion: the life of the woman who is already living and breathing and working in the world, and the potential life of a child not yet born. Although my position is typically referred to as “pro-choice” rather than “pro-life,” I claim the title of pro-life. I am not anti-life. Instead, I argue for the life of the woman whose body has become a moral battleground. I argue for the life of the victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault. I argue for the life of the woman suffering from an ectopic pregnancy. I argue for the life of the woman who cannot afford the expenses associated with child-bearing and who refuses to bring a child into a world of poverty and suffering.

However, I can understand the perspectives and values of persons who claim a more orthodox pro-life stance on the abortion debate. Abortion is always a difficult decision, and never to be taken lightly. The truth is, most women who have abortions are not JUST having an abortion. It is not a minor chore for them in between washing the dishes and doing a load of laundry. No, abortion is a Big Deal. We want women to be thinking long and hard before choosing to have an abortion. It is a hard decision. But once that decision is made, we want women to have the freedom to pursue their choice without being made to feel even worse.

At this point, you have probably heard about the amendment being voted on right now in the state of Mississippi, titled Initiative 26. This initiative proposes adding a new section under Article III of the State Constitution, which is the Bill of Rights, defining “personhood.” The text of the amendment reads:

SECTION 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.

The implications of this seemingly innocuous definition are significant. The intent, as advertised by the “Yes on 26” campaign (http://www.yeson26.net), is to outlaw abortions. However, this is not the only outcome of this bill. Birth control, in vitro fertilization methods, and cryogenics may be affected, not to mention any number of other more complicated and possibly absurd implications (is a woman who miscarries guilty of involuntary manslaughter?).

The debate right now seems to center on the issue of moral law, but almost inevitably includes a tangential debate about the authority of the Bible and God in the “law of the land.” As a person of faith, I find this particular debate to be both frustrating and harmful, if not primarily because the Bible has absolutely nothing to say regarding abortion. Misinterpretation of the Bible aside, the question of religiosity influencing constitutional law within a country founded on the idea of separation of church and state is much more troubling.

The problem comes when the argument for banning abortion is founded on religious “truth.” The assumption made by such an argument is that there is a dominant religious view regarding the issue, and that particular religious view has the authority to govern the lives of people who may or may not agree with the particular issue at hand. Outlawing abortion because of religious zeal becomes a statement against any faith or non-faith that disagrees with that viewpoint. Being anti-abortion does not mean that you have to make it illegal to have abortions. Instead, you can choose to not have an abortion yourself, or you can choose to talk openly and honestly with a woman who may need help. Understand that your personal beliefs may not be shared by all.

The particularly troubling thing about Initiative 26 is that it’s only the first of several similar amendments. Six more states are already preparing similar amendments to go on the ballot in 2012. If Initiative 26 passes, it will be only the beginning in the fight against a woman’s right to choose. As a person of faith and a future minister, at this point I can only pray that Initiative 26 does not pass, and if it does, I will pray that it does not ignite a fire that spreads across the nation. Mother God, protect your daughters from the tide of hateful anti-abortion fervor, and welcome them into the safety of your loving embrace.

My faith journey

2011-09-08T16:48:00.003-04:00

For my practicum class, we were asked to write a "faith timeline" which chronicled the way our spiritual faith developed. Here is what I shared:

"I was born in Houston Texas in 1988 while Ronald Reagan was still President, just before George H.W. Bush was elected.

"Although I have very little memory of my life during that time period, I know that there were two things that were very important to me: one was my dance career, which began when I was three years old; the other was church, which my mother and I attended every Sunday. I started my life as a Baptist, attending Nassau Bay Baptist Church in Houston Texas. What I really remember most about that church was that my Sunday School teachers were horrified to discover that I could not color within the lines. Interestingly, this habit has turned into quite the metaphor for my own life of faith: I still refuse to color inside the lines.

"My life changed abruptly in 1992 when the company my father worked for was forced to go out of business. PoFolks restaurants across the country closed down, and my father was forced to look for new work. At the same time, the neighborhood my family lived in was declared an unsafe place to live thanks to illegal toxic dumping, so my family was left with no choice but to move.

"My father found work in what I consider to be one of the most beautiful places in America, which also turned out to be a very unique place to grow up. We moved across the state of Texas to Big Bend National Park, which is situated right on the border of Mexico, about 300 miles South by Southeast of El Paso, and 120 miles away from the closest grocery store. My father worked as an Assistant Manager at the resort and restaurant situated in the middle of the Chisos Mountains, and eventually my mother became an Interpretative Ranger. My neighborhood there was very small, and I was the only child in the particular subdivision where I lived. My school was 10 miles away, and during my entire time living in Big Bend, its maximum enrollment was 22 students in kindergarten through 8th grade.

"What did this new and unique location mean for spiritual life? Well, for one thing, the closest church was approximately 36 miles away, too far to drive on a Sunday morning. For my first few years in the park, a unique ministry organization called Christian Ministry in the National Parks sent seminary students and volunteers to run church services on Sundays for park visitors, and I managed to attend them until the organization stopped sending volunteers. Church services were held in an outdoor amphitheatre, so our altar was a mountain face. In my mind, God became indelibly linked to the eternal forces of nature. God was in the mountains and the wind and the trees, and God was in the river that slowly and patiently cut its path across the dry desert landscape. This idea of God that I developed while I lived in Big Bend is probably the strongest influence on my current faith.

"In 1998, my father was diagnosed with a type of skin cancer that affected his lymph nodes. A great tumor swelled on the side of his neck, and we were offered the opportunity to take unconditional sick leave until his cancer was under control. This was during my 5th-grade year, and we spent the second half of my second semester staying with my grandmother in Atlanta Georgia while my father sought oncological care. I transferred to an elementary school in Atlanta, and started attending my grandmother's church there. It was during my time there that I chose to be baptized, although it wasn't until a year later that I finally was. Then I was baptized in a good old Baptist fashion, dunked fully under water to the point that it felt like I was drowning, and when I was lifted up again my life was changed.

"Water became important to my understanding of God as well. Baptism is understood in many traditions as life-giving, but in the desert landscape where I grew up, water really WAS life-giving. Since my mother was a park ranger, I memorized her lecture on the dangers of dehydration: did you know that a 2% decrease in water in your body results in a 10% decrease in brain functionality? And rain was always a blessing, whether it was accompanied by raging thunderstorms and flash floods, or a slow gentle rain that was absorbed into the dry soil and nurtured the flora and fauna found there.

"My life faced a great upheaval again at the end of my 8th-grade year in 2001, when my father's company was absorbed into a larger corporation, and my dad was laid off and we were once again forced to move. This time, though, there was not much choice in our decision of where to live; my paternal grandmother was growing old, and we moved in with her in Atlanta Georgia to ensure that she received proper care and treatment. We started attending my mother's childhood church, which was United Methodist, and I was confirmed and sought refuge there most Sundays. But it wasn't the polity and doctrine that I found so welcoming and wonderful about this particular church; it was the people, and when I went away to college I found that the Methodist Church no longer held the appeal that it used to for me. I returned to my own self-enforced religion: God was in the world around me and I could find him there without the church.

"I still held certain church rituals sacred; most specifically, I embraced the wonder and mystery of the Eucharist. This may be in part because of my study of ancient Gnostic sects, some of which chose to take the Eucharist every day, and others which rejected the Eucharist entirely, and many others which fell somewhere in between. It is clear through the history of Christianity that there is something powerful about this particular ritual, and I find the same emotion fills me when I partake of God's cup.

"So what do I believe? I describe myself to non-believers as an agnostic Christian. My strongest belief is that there is very little that we can truly KNOW, but there is quite a bit that we can accept on faith, and I CHOOSE to accept the story of Christ. At the same time, I feel that God is in the world; the glory of creation is made up of God's own being, but God transcends all of it. There is innate holiness in our bodies and our minds and in the world we walk in, but God is above all of us; he transcends creation. There is something sacred in water and baptism, and again something sacred about the Eucharist."