I rollercoaster for you.

To My White Liberal Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 14:52:00 +0000

It's been years since I tried to consolidate my thoughts into a publicly available blog, and even then, I was mostly writing stream of consciousness fun-time nonsense. Am I old enough now to speak as though I know what I'm talking about? I think that was always my embarrassment with blogging, the self-assuredness it requires to speak in public, the inevitable regret afterwards at having attempted to speak authoritatively. I guess I also eventually found it embarrassing to have a pubic record of my blinding confidence in positions I changed months later. Easier to say nothing, right? That's been my policy for some years.

Photo by Joe Raedle, taken from Getty Images

But all this Trump business has got everyone thinking lots of thoughts, and I just can't resist putting mine out into the universe.

The thing is, we progressives thought we were moving forward, that we were going in a good direction, and we saw the alt-right openly racist white uprising happening, but we just thought it's ok, those people are dying out, they're increasingly marginal voices, we can trample them on the way to our progress. Plus there are still so many horrific injustices occurring, even in Obama's America. Mass incarceration, for-profit prisons, extra-judicial executions of black and brown people in the streets, the militarization of our police forces, rubber bullets and hypothermia in North Dakota, and so on, and that's just talking about our justice system and law enforcement. There's also sprawling income inequality, Citizens United, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the erosion of collective bargaining rights, the stripping of workers compensation benefits, sky-rocketing healthcare costs and a for-profit healthcare industry, America spying on its people, state control of female bodies and reproductive choices, entertainment and profit driven media, unprecedented closures of public schools, etc. We already had plenty to worry about without a white uprising, and it's disorienting to realize that at least 63 million Americans are either actively in favor of subverting their own interests or so grossly misinformed that they would vote for the guy who is guaranteed to make all of these problems worse, along with almost certainly weakening America's symbolic power as a force for democratic values, decency, moral leadership, etc.

But it happened. It did, and as Obama said, we lick our wounds, we regroup, we learn our lessons, and we do better next time. But what are our lessons?

I get why so many people feel the lesson is that we need to be more vocal about the white supremacist ties of the men preparing to run the White House, more vigilant in educating our Facebook followers on privilege and the dangers of the leaders they've elected. We would all be better off if everyone understood these things. But the problem we're all beginning to see is that the more fervently we stand with our black and brown and gay and trans and Muslim friends, the more enflamed and angry we sound to the people we're trying to awaken. We're mirroring the invective of the alt-right. Their entire presence on the internet is one giant bait, and we are collectively taking it again and again.

Instead of reacting, why don't we return to our principles? Equality, decency, fact-based analysis. Why don't we take this moment to evaluate what we may have been missing, and before we lose our minds thinking 63 million Americans actively hate all non-WASPs, why don't we sit for a moment and ask ourselves if maybe the picture could be somewhat more complex than we're acknowledging?

For one, a robust equality has to include white people. I mean white people who don't have the benefit of wonderfully articulate, compassionate, patient people of color in their classrooms or social sphere. White people who see their cultural influence waning and are understandably frightened by what feels like a loss of their way of life. White people who don't have the training or intelligence to effectively navigate the maze of the modern media landscape without absorbing more than a few falsehoods. We can dismiss these people as racist and ignorant and wrong, but we can't throw them away, we can't keep them from voting, and if we actually care about kindness and equality and diversity, we shouldn't want to.

A note about privilege: Yes, privilege is real, but it doesn't mean white people are always and everywhere in positions of power. Many white people work for lower and lower wages in hard jobs with unforgiving bosses, many white people hurt all day, feel stomped on all day, and the way they see it, that's life, so they take it and do their best. They can't begin to comprehend the magnitude of difference between the struggles they face and the struggles of systematically disenfranchised peoples. Or maybe I take that back, maybe they too are being systematically disenfranchised, but are just being trained by those in power to see black and brown grievances as categorically different from theirs and illegitimate, so as to keep the bottom 90% of us from banding together and creating a country that actually works for us. Afterall, that has been the strategy of the powerful in this country essentially since its founding. And so the more we try to tell working class white people to just shut up and listen to what people of color have to deal with, we are just feeding into and solidifying that narrative. We leave white people with the sense that none of their difficulties are worth acknowledging and everyone else's difficulties are completely foreign. We're widening the gap, I mean, and this is not the way that positive cultural change happens. It happens through coalition and consensus building, seeing our commonalities and working toward shared goals, appealing to our better selves, not shaming people.

Yes yes I know. It is actually, on the whole, much harder in America for people of color, categorically harder. There are many challenges POC face that white people can't begin to imagine. But I promise you they're never going to try to imagine as long as you're calling them names, and as long as you're not acknowledging and addressing their worries.

At the end of the day, the world is changed by compassion. There must be disruption and righteous anger and critiques of the status quo and radical voices and activism, but the only way anyone ever opens to it is compassion. Compassion compassion compassion. Compassion is the safe space where understanding begins, and understanding gives birth acceptance, and once people feel accepted, then they are free to begin listening. Most people when attacked or accused naturally respond defensively. There is a lot of talk in communities of color about tone-policing and the burden of protecting white feelings, and it makes sense, and it's true that people under attack shouldn't have to worry about responding in a way that doesn't put their oppressors on the defensive. There is a place for anger, and people absolutely need to have space to express those sentiments. But for us white people who have taken on the task of educating our fellow white people, maybe we do need to work a little harder at compassion and understanding. Maybe it is courageous to tell your relative saying Muslims are all terrorists that he is in fact a racist. But maybe it's also courageous to listen to him, to ask him questions, to not try to prove him wrong. It doesn't make any sense, but compassion softens people, and I think we could all use a little softening towards one another this Thanksgiving.

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 17:02:00 +0000

i just need to acknowledge that i have the most insanely kind and beautiful friends. i am just waking up to this, i had forgotten it. i knew it before, but then i spent a year in the woods and some of those relationships got a little dusty and i thought maybe the world would just keep getting colder and colder forever. it turns out, though, that all these connections spring to life at these times when i find myself down in a hole, precisely the times i am least capable of being a kind friend myself.

i am realizing how i have never quite let myself fall into friendship or family or love of whatever kind, i try to only place on you what i think you can handle and i hold the rest inside. and i am realizing that this holding - intended to preserve my relationships, to avoid crushing them with neediness - this is exactly the thing that keeps my relationships from becoming real. lately, the weight of what i've been holding is bringing that sinking sinking, and i thought maybe it would just go ahead and swallow me. but then these people surrounded me and they say HEY. they said "you are welcome here," they said "everything you feel is ok," they said "i am with you in this." and i thought "that is very kind of you, what a kind friend you are," i thought "you are being such a good person that i couldn't possibly burden you with this pound of lead in my chest." but they were patient and persistent, and in the end i couldn't help but really pour out all my depths, really empty the barrel. i looked up and i said do you still love me? and they all miraculously said yes. people from all across my history. it is an unthinkable blessing.

i was so much smarter when i was younger. i watched very closely, i knew exactly how life worked, i gave so much advice, and i was really right a lot of the time. i just didn't have to worry about living it myself. knowing yourself is subtler and more painful, closer to the bone, but it is real. i am living my real life now. it hurts a lot of the time, but it's the only story i get. i want to make it a pretty one.

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 14:11:00 +0000

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing wayer, speak: I am.

-Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29

Geez

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 12:21:00 +0000

This laboring of ours with all that remains undone,

as if still bound to it,

is like the lumbering gait of the swan.

And then our dying - releasing ourselves

from the very ground on which we stood -

is like the way he hesitantly lowers himself

into the water. It gently receives him,

and, gladly yielding, flows back beneath him,

as wave follows wave,

while he, now wholly serene and sure,

with regal composure,

allows himself to glide.

-Rilke, "The Swan," from New Poems

THE WHITSONIAN QUADRILATERAL

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 18:33:00 +0000

Guys, have I told you about my 4-FOLD GUIDE TO HAPPINESS? Have I told you about how I write in all caps when I feel completely ridiculous saying what I'm saying?

I am living every day trying to figure out how a single adult can live meaningfully, contentedly, not just following convention, but finding things that actually leave me with the sense that my life matters. I do this because it is a question my life continues to raise, since I don't feel myself remotely drawn to conventional standards of success, things like a cool sounding career or lots of money or stability. I'm sure married people with children could ask the same questions, but I assume that devoting your entire life to loving a person and forming/nurturing little human beings are self-evidently the most important/valuable things one could ever accomplish, no matter how much difficulty they entail.

Anyway. I have been living with these 4 things for the past year or so, and I feel like they have held up, whenever I feel a little blue or empty or aimless, I return to my little quadrilateral and go about regaining whichever elements I'm missing, and they put me back on track. Are you ready? Here is the quadrilateral:

1) Beauty - I need beauty in my life to feel happy. It inspires me, it feeds my creative energy, it seems to be the point of everything. This includes any assortment of the following: seeing beautiful places, taking pretty pictures, reading poetry, good music, or even going out for a wild night and talking to strangers, by which I mean living a poetic night. not being afraid to shamelessly love beauty and poetry, no matter how uncool it seems to love a thing, to be excited about life, to read the world poetically, seeing patterns in my life or friends' lives across time, taking the time to observe the stories lived around me, the ways people are becoming and living into sweetness. If you were going to make this point into a verb it would be: to look, observe. Not only to surround yourself with obviously beautiful things, but to actively observe the beauty that is hiding around us, and in our histories.

2) Learning - This is obvious, yes? to be constantly learning, collecting information about the universe, not just through books (although yes through books), but through engaging the world each day like a new thing, like a teacher, engaging everyone and everything like a teacher, my difficulties and griefs, my nemeses, my annoyances, my good friends, trees, butterflies, and so on, all are teachers. I am not always good at this one, but it's a thing I want to reach for, to be always willing to change, to let new information reorient my life, it is so easy to become stale and solid and assume the things you know are right. I want to always be humble enough to be proved wrong, and I want to be always always accumulating wisdom. This is also tricky, because as we accumulate more knowing, it becomes harder to entertain new opinions, to let ourselves be undone by an idea that never occurred to us, because it makes all our accumulated knowing feel like a waste. This leads us to insist that we are right!, that we know the world!, and that our knowing has made us better. The truth is that it has made us better, but we are all always in various stages of becoming, and as soon as we stop becoming, our story stops, and we become insufferable to be around. Of course, discerning which things really have something new to teach you - and what that something is - is an important part of the equation, but I want to be always listening carefully to the world and the things.

3) Love - By which I mean both connection and adoration. I have worried at times that my life is lacking in love, because I go through phases of having less people around, or of having only the lightest relationships, full of fun but no depth, and of course, because I don't have a spouse or baby around to pour love into all day everyday. But then I read this line in Rilke, it said something like "I want to love the things as no one has ever thought to love them," and it occurred to me that I always have the capacity to love, that this, like finding beauty, is an active ability that I can develop, and that even if it feels like a meager consolation, loving the things is enriching in the same way as romantic loving, it makes me focus outward, it opens my life to beauty, it softens and enlivens me. The point is that I want to engage everything and everyone with love, and I'm not going to wait around for a date before I get busy loving. Of course, even saying all that, it also means I want to be always looking for connection, and if I feel myself in a dry spell for very long, I know it's time to venture out and find a place to connect, volunteer with a church, start a book club, join the peace corp, whatever.

4) Creation - Creation is the fruit of all these other things. I think it's obvious that human beings have a drive to create, that it's an essential part of happiness, to have a work of some sort. Craig calls it "the compulsion to reenact the creation myth," but he goes to Harvard. I think when people talk about having a career, they are pointing to their desire to create, but the problem is that careers also involve money-making and prestige and these sorts of things, which are distractions I think. The most important thing to me is that we continue to find ways to create, whether we're making babies or painting pictures or writing songs or building libraries in Africa or even just crafting a full and meaningful life, it can be tiny project after tiny project, or we can make our lives into one grand project, or we can string the tiny projects into a grand project, there are lots of configurations. Creating is the one that's hardest for me, because it takes such work, and consuming is so much easier. It's hardest, but I suspect it may also be the most important, and I have felt its absence in the past year or two. I have no excuses, but I keep trying to thrust myself into working at some form of creation, writing songs or stories, and I plan to keep trying until it works.

Anyway, here is another thesis statement of my life, these 4 things. Here is where I am now, here is how I see thangs. I just wanted to say.

from deep dark wells

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:51:00 +0000

from deep dark wells
comes pure clean water
and the ice will melt
as the day gets hotter
and the night grows old
as the sun climbs into the sky

when now is then
and tomorrow's coming
and "where you been"
starts meaning something
as long as you can
just keep stumbling ahead

as long as you're not finished
you can start all over again
you can start all over again

joe pug says a guy named harvey thomas young wrote this on a postcard to his brother who was in prison, and just before he dropped it in the mail, his friends convinced him to make it into a song. he said there are many songs by harvey thomas young that will change your life, but this is the one that did it for joe.

i have been listening to it this morning. letting it sink in. waiting for it to change my life. i think i am close.

here is the song.

can't stop listening to this

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:40:00 +0000

What I know about living
Is the pain is never just ours, every time I hurt,
I know the wound is an echo, so I keep listening
For the moment when the grief
Becomes a window, when I can see
What I couldn’t see before through the glass
Of my most battered dream.

I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind,
And when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds,
So the next time I tell you
How easily I come out of my skin,
Don’t try to put me back in. Just say
Here we are, together at the window aching
For it to all get better, but knowing there is a chance
Our hearts may have only just skinned their knees,
Knowing there is a chance
The worst day might still be coming.

Let me say right now for the record,
I am still gonna be here,
Asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping
On my holy feet, you,
You stay here with me, ok?
You stay here with me,
Raising your bite against the bitter dark, your
Bright longing, your brilliant fists of loss,

Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
My God that is plenty,
My God that is enough,
My God that is so so much for the light to give,
Each of us at each other’s backs,
Whispering over and over and over:
Live. Live. Live.

-Andrea Gibson

pessimism

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 13:46:00 +0000

i was reading this book called pessimism, a tour of a lot of supposedly sad philosophers, schopenhauer and freud and rousseau and camus and so on. it was supposed to be surprisingly liberating, but it was excruciating to read. i stepped away from it for a few weeks and have noticed that it's been seeping into my brain and leaving me with these impressions that life is meaningless and empty and futile. this morning, i stumbled on this thing i wrote while i was in the thick of it, and feel better now. i am posting it, so i don't forget again:

i want to sit and talk about why pessimism drives me so crazy, but i would rather sit here and tell you about why simon and garfunkel give me tingles, i wonder if schopenhauer ever heard of music.

the thing is, if all these philosophers were in a room with me trying to explain why happiness is impossible, i would know there is something fundamentally dysfunctional with their outlooks and i would spring to action trying to show them the beauty of life. i have been conditioned to respond in this way when people start moaning about their lemons, because that is what a good friend does, because no one wants life to be fundamentally miserable. and that's the thing dammit, this is all a matter of perspective and where you guys see sadness and injustice, i see limits. limits aren't the end of the world, they just put boundaries on what's possible, and i'm wanting to know - who told you to expect limitless freedom and possibility, who told you that if every little one of your desires isn't satisfied, that means happiness is unattainable? are you saying this expectation is instinctive to human nature? it may be instinctive to you white people who own the world, but there are plenty of people who live and die without that idea ever occurring to them and they are not savages, they are just better adapted to existence than you.

i think it's weird how you assume optimism is synonymous with naivete. you talk like you know something the rest of us don't, when really, you have made the mistake of assuming the badness has the final word. but there is no final word, life is a dance between misery and rapture, and optimism is just a resolution to say yes to the whole of it. as if there were another option? you ultimately say yes too, or else you'd kill yourself, you ultimately find a reason to keep trudging on, and this is your clue that your insides don't hate living as much as your brain thinks they do.

let me tell you. not everything is possible. sigmund, if you were hoping to sex every girl you've ever taken a second glance at, if you want to kill every sonofabitch who's ever crossed you, well then no, that is not allowed and maybe not possible. do what you can and release the rest, that is how you get happy. jean-jacques, if you love your cat, or your wife, or your flat screen tv more than gawd and believe you should be able to hold onto them for all eternity, well i am sorry but that is not possible either. everything perishes, it's called "impermanence," and everything is in flux, these are the facts. what you can do though, is treasure them while you hold them and then mourn them when they pass and tell stories about them around the campfire, sing songs about your memories, make something pretty out of them. if these things are not satisfactory to you, then you bind yourself in a prison of your own demands of existence. i'm saying, you can refuse to let these things quench you, but that doesn't mean you're right. it means you're choosing emptiness.

because don't tell me this is all about metaphysics, about the fundamental deep down nature of the universe. it's about EXPERIENCE and how you choose to engage it. talking about happiness and suffering and flux, these are fundamentals of experience, they're not platonic ideas. and when we're talking about experience, you are unhappy because you refuse to accept all that the universe has to offer. when we're talking about experience, you cry at your mother's funeral, but then you go back to the house and someone has made you some very nice cheese straws and roast beef sandwiches, and then someone will tell a story, and you'll forget you're supposed to be moping and will start laughing and pretty soon you'll be on to some new project and you'll remember your mom, but the patches of pain will be as fleeting as the moments of elation, life will go on. life is fragile, delicate and so precious, the earth is always trembling on the edge of tears, but we laugh and share some beers and look clear-eyed into the uncertain future, holding lightly the few precious moments we've been given. life is light, whizzing by, we are entrusted with the miracle of consciousness for the blink of an eye, and i want to use my blink to live enormously, courageously, the heights and the depths and the monotonous in-betweens, live live live, experience, risk it all because it's so light, live enormously. of course it's sad, sadness is the other side of the coin of MIRACLE, but don't let the darkness eat you up, live dammit.

i am not opposed to pessimism in general, i would label kurt vonnegut as a pessimist, but look at kurt, he's not wandering around moping, he is resigned to it, he is eat-drink-and-be-merrying and laughing at the whole thing. i just mean you are making everything so HEAVY, you make it sound all futile, and it is of course, but not in this dreary way you're painting it.

one time nate asked me why i would want to go on living when life includes so much misery, and i said "because to me, to be alive is thrilling." he didn't get it, he thought life only matters if it's good. i say life matters because it's life, and all i want is to know it, to know it deep down, every corner of experience, i want to know.

when we last talked
we were lying on our backs
looking at the sky
looking through the ceiling
i used to lie like that alone
out on the driveway
trying to read the greek upon the stars
the alphabet of feeling

do you see, do you see how beautiful? i'm saying, i want to know everything, i don't know why, but maybe because then i will finally understand what all these other people were saying, or maybe because some humans are just born with an innate desire to observe and understand.

ask any mystic and they'll tell you, when they find themselves face to face with ultimate reality (and these are people that make a practice of touching the deep down heart of Everything, spend their lives devoted to it), what they feel is not despair or emptiness, but a deep abiding sense of love and overwhelming contentment, they feel reassured that it's ALL ALRIGHT. yeah we'll die, everything will die, but it's alright, the spirit of the universe will endure, life will continue for the foreseeable future, and if it doesn't, then we're all the more lucky to have been here for it.

been thinking about

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:33:00 +0000

this is for the possibility that guides us
and for the possibilities still waiting to sing
and spread their wings inside us
cause tonight saturn is on his knees
proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that whatever song we’ve been singing we sing even more
the world needs us right now more than it ever has before
pull all your strings
play every chord
if you’re writing letters to the prisoners
start tearing down the bars
if you’re handing our flashlights in the dark
start handing our stars

WE ARE BEYONCE

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:06:00 +0000

do you know why i love beyonce? someone asked me about this today. here is why. for one, she is flawless. FLAWLESS. she kills every performance, if you have ever heard someone say one of her performances was "pitchy," you'll know they've been watching too much american idol and want to impress you with their critical ear but are actually musically illiterate. every one of her performances is FLAWLESS. sometimes she will hit a note and you'll think "mm, this may not work out," and then she will save it with a run or trill or whatever and you will worship her. her dancing is surprising and creative and sexy and quick, and all that in stilettos, she basically marched out of the womb in stilettos, she is about sexiness and ladiness but also power and achievement, she always gets it right, she lives up to every performance. can you imagine how much pressure it would be to sing at the presidential inauguration and the superbowl within a matter of weeks? but it's not too much for beyonce, she can handle the pressure, she thrives under pressure, she delivers fucking gold and then you know that anything is possible, that beyonce can do it so you can do it. we are beyonce.

beyonce fights childhood obesity. she doesn't sponsor billboards with sad fat kids trying to guilt parents into being ashamed of their fat kids, instead she puts out a dance video for michelle obama filmed in a school cafeteria that is so irresistibly fun, you can't watch it without dancing. obesity: fixed. or maybe it's not fixed yet, but you don't even care anymore because you're dancing with beyonce so what else matters? beyonce is all about positivity, about harnessing your creative energy and making something better than anyone has ever seen, but also having a good time and celebrating you, move your little hips vamonos vamonos.

beyonce is a regular everyday person, she's reflective about fame, she knows that being 1/2 of the most successful couple in music doesn't make you exempt from pain or difficulty or doing the dishes, any time you think the fame's about to go to her head, she will come up with a song about being scared or having a miscarriage and it humanizes her again, she uses this mega-persona of flawlessness to channel real human emotions and it's beautiful. honestly, and don't hate me for saying this, but it is just so fucking brave.

because that's the thing. you see her being flawless and you think uggggh why isn't my life easy and flawless like beyonce, but you don't get that level of fame without a lot of hard work and a lot of taking chances and putting yourself out there. plus, being a megastar isn't a sure bet, you can flop at any second, and sustaining mega fame and popular acceptance for so many years doesn't just happen. people make it happen because they're determined and creative and smart and brilliant and ruthlessly devoted to art and taking risks and so on. you gotta admire when someone's able to do it, you gotta cheer em on.

i'm just saying. you look at every album she's done, you look at every step in your career and you think, could it possibly have been done better? nope.

people say beyonce is full of herself, a "fame whore." i say you bite your tongue. i say fame is a fact of beyonce's life, she recognizes it and thinks about it and uses it to inspire people to love themselves and their lives more, but she doesn't let it go to her head and she doesn't take it for granted and it's not what drives her. beyonce is about being the best, and who wouldn't be the best if they could?

the post where i name all my disagreements with christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:52:00 +0000

i'm just being honest here. i could care less about sacrificial love. unless you're caring for a small child, the idea of sacrificial love presupposes a world in which people abuse or mistreat each other. if all adults actually treated each other well, like the kingdom of god requires, we would never have need for a love that risks death, or love that risks battering, or love that makes us exhausted and empty. someone who loved you would never ask you to sacrifice for her. of course kindness matters, of course it is the only thing that matters, of course i want to buy you a hamburger when you have no money, of course i will sit by your side and lather your lips in chapstick every half hour when you are immobilized in a hospital bed, but not because it's a sacrifice. i do it because i love the shit out of you. because you're a human being, and you matter so much, and i hate to see you suffer, and i love to see you happy. real love is no sacrifice at all, real love is an overflow of the heart. when you do something sacrificial for me, not just one something but a neverending stream of somethings, you are not making my life better, you are not filling me with love, all you are doing is saying see what a good person i am, how tirelessly i serve others, and that just makes me feel like a selfish loser. if you find yourself giving and giving and never getting from me, i don't want you to pick up my slack, i want you to tell me dammit, because if that is the case, then i am not loving you as you deserve. sometimes i will listen to you when i don't feel like listening, and sometimes i will clean up the kitchen even though it is your turn and even though it irritates me, because these are the little sacrifices that make life together work, that make a relationship real, but they are not by any means the pinnacle of moral fortitude. we should not be striving to sacrifice ourselves more. we should be striving to value each other so much that mutual care is nothing but a joyful exercise.

you say that if god does not punish my sins, then injustice runs rampant, you say that at the cross justice and mercy kiss, at the cross god found a way to exact justice for every tiny little thing i've ever done wrong, while still showing me nothing but grace. this is another place where you say love without sacrifice is dead, god's love is a costly love, it doesn't cover a multitude of sins like grace would do, it sees failure and misguided self-preservation and all those other things you call "sin," and it says there will be blood, and only after, and then there will be grace. and see, you had me until the blood part. number 1, how does innocent suffering of a lamb or a jesus ever right any wrongs? why can't you see that more innocent suffering leaves us more guilty, not less? this setup has the exact same result as "sacrificial love" between humans; i never feel any consequence for my failures, or my evils, so i have no motivation to stop doing them, so i continue to take advantage of you. two, why does god find it so hard to forgive the sorts of things i find so easy to forgive? and/or the things he commands me to forgive seventy times seven? is it because he is "holy" and "just?" if so, you have just made god's holiness into a handicap. and three, what if the desire for justice is rooted in cruelty? because i think it is, i think it is the desire to make suffer those who have made us suffer, which is to dehumanize them, to care nothing for their pain, to repay evil with evil. it's a natural desire, but it is also the opposite of love, no? what if jesus' death was meant not to give us an example of supreme sacrifice, but to shock us into recognizing that the system of retributive justice leads to death? and that we can only fight evil by standing against that cycle of violence? reconciliation, repentance, love, these things come not from retributive justice, but from right understanding. we mistreat each other because we don't understand how much life matters. or because we had good intentions and didn't understand the consequences of our actions, or maybe, even, because we wanted someone else to suffer as we have suffered. if we confront these misunderstandings at their roots, we're a lot more likely to bring about reconciliation and repentance than if we load them onto jesus' innocent shoulders.

i have so much in common with christianity, i have wandered back into the fold and am so happy to be here, but whenever this understanding of jesus comes up, which is sort of the core understanding of christianity for most people, i feel myself disengaging. what can ya do. i know that the framework of me being hopelessly sinful and jesus being endlessly loving is worn out for me, it doesn't work. but that doesn't mean i don't share with christians a common desire for the kingdom of god that jesus talked about in his stories.

anyway. none of this was an issue in the least until today, when my christian wanderings led me to think it was a good idea to visit a pca church with a friend. most other christian groups i participate in don't seem to notice much of anything different about me, but those presbyterians sure love to talk about "the basics." i am glad, though, i think it's fun to revisit these questions. i am also hoping these presbies can redeem traditional theology for me a little, because they care about it so much, know it inside and out, but they practice it so beautifully, they seem like such sweethearts. we will see.

Music Time

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:27:00 +0000

Due to my excitement over the items I’ve just placed in my music sidebar, I think it is time for another MUSIC REVIEW.

Dancing On My Own, Robyn – omg ROBYN. I first heard of Robyn from my brother, who was obsessed with her song, “Call Your Girlfriend,” which is basically a summary of how he got into his current relationship, which is adorable. I found “Dancing On My Own” by soundhounding the ending dance scene of episode 3 of Girls, which spawned a serious downloading session of all of her biggest hits. This song is probably the most danceable song I have ever heard, and is a perfect mix of big lonely feelings and big bouncy beats and painful echoing harmonies. I can’t get enough of this song.

Sweet Amelia, Sandra McCracken – If you were wondering, Sandra McCracken keeps getting better and better and better. Her shows have remained pretty consistently acoustic and delightful over the years, but she had a few disappointing albums when she first ventured into the world of electric guitars. She found a new studio sound with her album Red Balloon and has been perfecting it ever since. This is my favorite song from her new album, Desire Like Dynamite, which is my favorite album to date. Sweet Amelia is a love song about adoption, written to a child from somewhere across an ocean, and each line is carefully stuffed with straightforward longing and sincerity, right from the start: “Sweet Amelia, how long our restless arms have ached for you / Here on the ocean’s edge I wait…I want to take you home.” They are sentiments that may seem over the top in any other love song, but are completely believable here. This song makes me want to be Amelia.

Atlantic City, Mumford & Sons and Friends – I was pretty whelmed by Mumford’s new album, but have become a little obsessed with their latest session on Daytrotter. It’s a lot folksier, even bordering on twangy in parts, and is lyrically a lot more interesting than anything I’ve heard them do before. This is my favorite song from that collection, although Angel Band is a close second.

Can’t Hardly Stand It, Cary Ann Hearst & Michael Trent – These folks are hands down my favorite musical discovery of the year. They now go by the name Shovels & Rope, but this song is from their first release together, when they were still both solo artists. I saw them back in October at a sold out show in a sweaty bar full of adoring fans who screamed and swayed along with every song, and left more obsessed than ever. Apparently, their style is called “swampy tonk,” which sums it up pretty well. This song is spooky, punctuated by stomps and crunching chains, and ends with some soul shattering harmonies that make my heart want to explode every single time.

Empathy – Alanis Morissette – Alanis is BACK IN ACTION. I am pretty embarrassed to admit that not only do I still completely fucking love Alanis Morissette, but am now old and square enough to like her “new stuff,” and think it is some of her “best stuff yet.” She continues to spin self-help life lessons and gender-based cultural criticism into wailing feel-good choruses, and I kind of can’t get enough. This song is about how parts of our selves get neglected or hidden, as we grow into the familiarity of a relationship, and how refreshing it is when someone calls out the parts of ourselves that we hide from them. It’s a recurring thought I’ve had for a long time, and to hear sweet Alanis pinpoint it so insightfully was really satisfying for me. If you are an open and generally optimistic person, I highly recommend getting this new Alanis album and giving it a good long listen. But be sure you do it alone, to avoid the embarrassment of how much you enjoy it.

Honorable Mention:
Beat Control, Tilly and the Wall
Nonfiction Love Song, Jillian Edwards
Living of Love, Avett Brothers
The King Knows How, Over the Rhine
Codeine, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

one time i wrote this

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:27:00 +0000

Things get wild late at night. It is just what happens. You get old enough and forget, you think it is the alcohol or some other substance that makes you bare your soul and embarrass yourself with warm confessions, but if you think back to when you were 14, you find this quality of nightness is still present. The world expands, the spaces in our hearts open up and love seeps in, flows out, if you wait just long enough for the darkness to ripen, the opening comes like clockwork. It is a sweet treat to share with another soul, the nighttime, it is a juicy pear and our fingers stick to each other with the sweetness.

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 16:58:00 +0000

and then they went on to say
that the pearly gates
had some eloquent graffiti
like "we'll meet again"
and "fuck the man"
and "tell my mother not to worry"

words by iron & wine, art on israel/palestine wall by banksy

can you find the three antelope?

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Here’s a riddle. While leaving a house I hated for the last time, I noticed a few items I had left behind: a broom and dust pan, a trash can, and a vase my mother bought. The vase was marooned in some desolate corner of the house, stuffed behind piles and piles of furniture, but I thought - It’s Mom’s; I can’t leave it. I walked out, contentedly gripping this piece of my mother, making it into an heirloom just by insisting to hang onto it for so long, even though she had only bought it as filler for a guestroom 15 years before. A few steps from my car, I stepped on a manhole cover (or whatever these are called when they cover the innards of a house's water and electricity systems), which I have done innumerable times before, only this time, it collapsed underneath me and I fell into a hole. Not knowing how deep the hole would go, I struggled to catch myself and the vase slipped from my hands and shattered across the street. My heart cracked. The sinking stopped; I was knee deep. My heirloom, this tender piece of my past, shattered across the house that nearly sucked all the sap out of my self, and me, knee deep in a hole. I sat bewildered. I thought, “I must clean it up,” and then realized I had exactly what I needed right with me: broom, dust pan, trash can. I laughed. As I stood to clean it up, I noticed the fall had left me with two wounds: one, a bruise pounded into the home of several old wounds, the knee that bore 3 consecutive falls during my childhood, leaving me with a nasty scar. Two, a puncture wound, bleeding right in the middle of my right palm, just like Jesus Christ. The bleeding wouldn’t stop, so I returned to the house to retrieve a paper towel. I smushed it into my hand, applying pressure. I threw the tiny blue chips into the trash can, one by one, laboriously, taking care to clean the mess completely, lest one of my former roommates damage her foot or tire on my nostalgic mess. I drove away. I turned on my iPod, which played a haunting rendition of Auld Lang Syne. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot in days of auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, we’ll tak a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.” Then, a Radiohead song, a repetitive mumbling chorus, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.” Nearing my new home, a car turned in front of me with a license plate that read “Try Amen.” I puzzled over it, trying to comprehend why in the world such a thing would be inscribed on a license plate, except as a direct message to me from Gawd himself for just that particular moment. Then I tried it. Amen. Amen. Amen.

i don't know, here is something.

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:32:00 +0000

I remember you waiting in the car in the sunshine. It was my 3rd birthday party and you were afraid of the magician my parents had hired, and I was so sad you wouldn’t come in, because we were big in each other’s lives. I don’t remember anything else, like how we got big in each other’s lives, whether we played baseball together or went to preschool together, I don’t remember a single thing except that moment, receiving the news that you would not be able to come in for my birthday, and how cute I thought it was that you were afraid of magicians. We didn’t speak again until we both won Most Talented senior year and took a single picture together, smiling and holding toy guitars, and then went our separate ways.

And for thousands of days, I haven’t thought of you once, completely forgot you existed, but I think of that moment and it warms me, I want to reach out and reminisce about the magician and all the other moments I don’t remember, when we were small. I want to know what the hell you have been up to all these years. I wonder how people who were once close and warm and familiar could ever become strangers, or I wonder if we are still familiar and I just have to appeal to our shared distant history, not worrying whether you will think I’m pathetically grasping for the past. I walk along the seashore collecting shells, collecting connections, becoming familiar, adding friendly faces to my collection, but the further down the line I go, the old faces fade or fall off the shelf, and it makes me wonder why I bother working on things that will only drift away one day.

Most days I pretend to be indifferent, but other days I break through, I say “remember the time,” and then I hold my breath waiting for what you will say next.

PS Uggggh

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:46:00 +0000

I am in love with Adele.

Trayvon

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 02:39:00 +0000

These kids I just talked to genuinely think Trayvon got killed because he was wearing a hoodie. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. They say a white kid wearing a hoodie would have appeared just as suspect as a black kid. They say if they saw anyone walking with their head down and a hoodie on, they would be suspicious. I had no idea. I own about 6 hoodies. According to this guy, it was raining and 63 degrees that night in Sanford, FL. George Zimmerman described it as "fucking cold." Do you really think it's suspicious to put your hood on and walk quickly in cold rain?

My standard line on this whole thing is that comparing it to Emmett Till both makes no sense and makes a whole lot of sense. There could be no question that Emmett Till's murder was motivated by pure racist hatred, whereas it would be quite a stretch to say the same about Trayvon's killing. Emmett's death was also magnitudes more gruesome. I think, though, that in addition to being essentially ignored (and therefore legitimized) by law enforcement, both murders encapsulate the racial attitudes and anxieties of their respective times. The racist hatred that got Emmett killed was in a lot of ways representative of larger white America's hatred and devaluing of black people. Things these days are a lot more subtle. It's certainly not fashionable any longer to hate black people, and no one would suggest that black people are intellectually inferior to white people or somehow less human, but plenty of white (and apparently hispanic) people get nervous when they encounter a black man on the streets late at night, especially if he is wearing anything besides a suit. This kind of fear of blackness surely has a lot of complicated causes (such as the perceived prevalence of crime and violence in black neighborhoods, a fact that fractures into a million more issues), but the lesson of Trayvon's case is that sometimes this fear can be deadly. It should shake us awake. And it should challenge us to face our fears and move past them.

TEAM WHO GIVES A FUCK

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:24:00 +0000

When I got to the theatre for the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games, there were two boys there, one with a shirt that said "I'M GAY FOR GALE," and the other, "I'M GAY FOR PEETA." I loved this, of course, as I always love people being gay for someone. The next day, though, I regrettably started seeing facebook professions of one's being on TEAM GALE or TEAM PEETA, and started getting a little worried. I know that probably 90% of people that like these books just like them because it's the latest teen series, and process them as though they were about as meaningful as fecking Twilight, but I hate to see something so good ruined by that kind of thoughtlessness. One of the first people I talked to about these books said she was disappointed by them because Katniss didn't end up with the guy she wanted her to, and I was a little amazed that after reading this series, anyone could walk away thinking it was ultimately about a girl's finding this or that boy.

I love Twilight. It is sexually repressed, but still a little sexy, all the actors are beautiful, and the soundtracks are perfectly teenage hipster. It is the definition of a guilty pleasure. But it's also the story of a girl whose entire life is defined by which boy she will marry. She will completely lose her self and relationships and identity either way, she falls in love with a gentleman who insists they wait until marriage to get it on, she refuses to have an abortion even though her pregnancy would likely kill her. It's a giant advertisement for Mormon/Christian sexual ethics and reinforces all kinds of awful gender norms. It should never for a moment be taken seriously.

The Hunger Games, on the other hand (SPOILER ALERT), is the story of a strong girl opposing soul-crushing systems of violence, resisting its corrupting influence, and doing her best to protect the innocent people she loves. There are men in her life. She cares for both of them, but is ambivalent about romance. She finds herself interacting with her culture's worship of a good love story, and plays off of it when she needs to in order to survive, but finds it almost as manipulative and abhorrent as being forced to fight 23 children to the death. She may end up forming some genuine feelings even under the watchful gaze of a culture that is begging her to, and that is sweet and a miracle, but it is certainly not the prevailing narrative of these books. This is human vs. society. It's about resistance, beating impossible odds, sparking social movements, and also inequality, fame and reality tv, the costs and causes of progress, etc. I was really impressed when I read it that someone actually trusted teenagers to engage with this kind of material, and found a way to put it in terms they could understand, relate to, and find entertaining. But of course, what teenagers may actually be mature enough to engage thoughtfully, the media machine turns into a cartoon.

All that to say, if I see one more post about Team Peeta or Team Gale, I think I may barf.

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:11:00 +0000

The wisteria bloomed last night. Just like that.

Picture from here.

Rosies

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:35:00 +0000

I wanted to write about Rosie Thomas, because seeing her was different than you would think, and I have been snuggling up to her funny way of being in the world ever since I witnessed it. She has been out of commission with a thyroid condition for the past 5 years, and only released a new album last month, so I think she is still irrepressibly giddy to be back out in the world singing her songs. She finished each sweet tender song with a resounding "YEAH!" and then started applauding herself before the audience had a chance to. Sometimes she would say "Can you believe that? I wrote that song! Amazing." Everything about her, from her smocked dress to her comically tiny speaking voice, reads like a 7 year old girl, which makes her enthusiasm for her own performing seem less like arrogance and more like a kid showing her new drawing to mommy. She stopped in the middle of her performance to sit on a piano bench and share with us the things she had learned, because she felt they could help us. Her lessons were that everything will be alright, and you are just wonderful and so valuable and loved loved loved, by her if no one else, and that your contribution to the world does not have to be enormous in order to be grand. She talked about her years scooting around the living room in pajamas waiting for her voice to recover, and she asked a friend "Will I ever feel like myself again?" and he said "One day, Rosie, one day it will just happen," and that's exactly what happened, she said one day the birds were singing and it was alright.

What was just darling about her was that she wanted you to know that you matter, she wanted it so much that she was willing to make a complete clown of herself, to break a laundry list of social rules, just so you could know, and I think that is sweet, you don't see something like that so thoroughly carried out too often. She puts it out there, and she chances looking like a sappy idiot, but she also chances speaking to someone's heart, and the people who are supposed to feel it will feel it. I felt it, of course.

Other things I love about her.

Everything about her is homemade. She finished the show acapella holding a giant felt heart up to the sky, and then she threw it out in the crowd when she was done.
She looks just like a child, but her singing voice is all grown up, real grown up, and I wonder how she decided on it, how it came out of her little kid self. It takes her innocence and sweetness and makes it sound mature and wise, like the president reading a child's letter to God.

dead fingers

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:53:00 +0000

well it might not be much
but at least i'm doing something
even blowing down the road
keep my engine from getting cold
i keep blowing i keep blowing
down the road

Like a Sunday Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Are we in agreement that the best, purest, most innocent iteration of a religion is the initial one? Not your initial one, but the religion's founding moment, when a person feels themselves blindsided by what feels like a completely new revelation, feels themselves drawn up in a mystical experience that seems to clarify everything, and sets about trying to articulate all the ways in which the world is now different? Before institutionalization and power and dogmatism have pounded out all the innocence and excitement, dulling its freshness, drawing all the wrong conclusions, harnessing its energy to frighten the youth and control the adults?

Because if so, it seems important to note that the conditions that allow such revelations to happen are quite different and often in direct conflict with just about every religious tradition as it eventually comes to be practiced. The foundation of a religion and the practice of a religion are dramatically different, even though practitioners often go to great pains to mimic the lives of their faith's founders, not realizing that this drive to mimic is precisely the problem. What needs to be mimicked is not this or that action or belief, forever pulling one into the past, but an orientation towards the Ultimate, here in the present, an openness to being ever corrected by it, a willingness to diligently and humbly learn from your own tradition, but to respectfully and boldly disagree when the Ultimate points beyond. Which it always will, since no tradition can ever capture it.

It is endlessly puzzling to me how far a religion, or an idea, can stray from its initial intention, once it cools and swirls into a tradition. and how impossible it is to bottle up and preserve for future generations that thing the initial person wanted to convey, the thing they believe we must know in order to live well. No matter how many principles one embeds in the foundations to prevent this from happening, it never stops happening.

This orientation, this openness and seeking of the Ultimate - that is holiness. It can't be taught by any single tradition, is often actively opposed by so many traditions, and yet it grows out of all of them, in spite of them.

If you want, I could also write a rebuttal of this post, affirming the beauty and creative power of tradition, pointing out how American and 21st century I am for worshiping newness and excitement over tradition and commitment, contrasting the arrogance of believing one has found the only truth with the humility of listening to those who have gone before. But lately, I am trying to articulate my thoughts as one coherent picture, no matter how much yes and no I am feeling inside, because the thoughts seem to disintegrate as soon as I try and weave the yes and no together. Because in the end, while I do respect and often find comfort in tradition, I am one who is taken by that initial moment, who wants to find it for herself, not so that I can start something new, but so that I can truly understand what those founders understood. I have a suspicion that what they knew can never be transmitted with words, but can only be seen with one's own eyes, immediately. But this is just a suspicion.

Back to the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:12:00 +0000

Do you think Martin Buber would mind if I call him Marty Boobies? Because I do. Every time.

There is nothing quite like sitting on the porch drinking with your best friend over the phone. I guess the closest thing would be drinking on the porch with your friend actually present, but it is a special kind of fun when they are not there, a sort of creative resistance to the limits of physical space, fuck you thousand miles, we're drinking together and there's nothing you can do about it. It is becoming a sort of ritual, I see your name on my phone, I answer, I step into the car to go buy some ciggies.

I was wrong about everything. By which I mean, the progress of technology and the inevitable alienation of the modern age, I was wrong about it. It is awesome, we will become cyborgs, integrated, machines tattooed to our foreheads but still human, still able to watch the sunrise, like the Terminator, except I don't think he was human. The internet is so world wide, and so nice and comfy and easy and pretty, it can create illusory connections but can also sustain real ones. Maybe even create them? We will see. My first internet boyfriend was in the 10th grade. I forget his name, I think it was Claudio, he was 32, I sent him a picture of me in my Punkin' Donuts shirt, I eventually ended it because he was not a Christian. These are the days of our lives.

One thing I liked about The Hunger Games, and also Super Sad True Love Story, is that whenever I think about the future, I think about Back to the Future, pink flying hoverboards, self operated cars, but in these stories technological innovation doesn't eliminate poverty and politics and human emotions, it's not all bright and glimmery, there is dust. And I don't like poverty, but I am saying it seems true that humanness will continue, the physical world will continue, no matter how automated we become, it is just a matter of learning how to adapt to it, to continue to integrate.

Anyway, all of this is prompting me to buy an iPad. Because maybe every new solution creates new problems, but it also creates new possibilities, and we will roll with them.

Egg News

noreply@blogger.com (Jen) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:13:00 +0000

The Egg tells every story with maximum enthusiasm and cheeriness, knowing you're going to soak up every word he says, as though it were the best story you've ever heard, no matter how lame the story actually is, nor how many times he has told it to you. I am not capable of this sort of uncritical enthusiasm, nor do I possess such a complete absence of self-awareness that I can never recognize I told a real dumb story, but really, it is a good strategy, and also confirms my theory that he was made to be a stand-up comedian. Presentation goes a long way. He asserts he is awesome, refuses to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, you would probably have to commit to a 30 minute conversation to prove something he said was actually boring or dumb or just wrong, I have never seen it done. And so he wins every time.

He has also absolutely mastered the art of over-the-top eager-to-please customer service. He makes sure to find out where callers live, so he can discuss weather and local football. He takes pains at every turn to explain how he is doing this or that to make sure that you are taken care of to the max, instead of simply taking care of you to the max. It is positively sickening. I am always extremely disappointed to see how well it works. My no-nonsense, get-the-job-done, girl-you-can-count-on reliability seems to be very much appreciated by most clients, but it doesn't lead to the floods of wordy praise that The Egg is able to reel in, which he makes sure to announce to each member of the team individually, even though we can all hear every word he says.

The Egg The Egg. All Day Every Day.