Progress Report

Almost to midterms. Can I survive? Tune in next week to find out! ;)

So far I think my favorite class is Greek. It's pretty exciting to read the Greek New Testament and (kind of) know what it says! I guess I sort of hate having class at 8 AM thee times a week, and I'm not crazy about taking tests, but oh well, it's worth it.

I'm also really surprised by how much I'm enjoying my Renaissance Romance class-- I expected it to be a little dry and dull, but the teacher is surprisingly funny and the material is much more alive than I'd expected. I'm a fan of Boiardo already! And I'm looking forward to Spencer very much.

My least favorite class is my required class-- Introduction to the Study of Religion, which every first-year has to take. Ugh. The prof is very smart and very helpful but I hate reading Paul Ricouer-- he's impenetrable, really. I'm falling behind in the reading a bit because I just hate slogging through it. Have you ever seen Fantasia? Do you know the Rite of Spring section with the dinosaurs, where the meteor hits and all those dinosaurs get stuck in the tar pits? That's how I feel when I read Ricoeur-- like a poor little stegosaurus stuck in a pool of tar, sinking further and further in. Blech.

I'm looking forward to next month-- Adam's friends are coming to visit, and then Adam and I are traveling to Ohio to see our families for Thanksgiving! It'll be nice to see everyone, especially as we won't be able to visit for Christmas, since Adam works then, obviously. My sister is graduating from college this winter so it'll be nice to talk to her, too. 

Now, let's see if I can't pull myself together and get back to work...

Augustine is a tool.

No, seriously. St. Augustine drives me up a wall.

We're reading (or in my unfortunate case, rereading) the Confessions, and you can tell it's starting to get to me because my notes have moved from normal, factual notations to angrily scribbled blots interspersed by an increasing number of exclamation marks (eleventy!!!11) and I've started muttering things under my breath while I'm reading, like, "Oh, come on," and "You are not even serious, right? You cannot be serious, dude."

I don't understand how he gets away with massive, gaping loopholes in his logic and still gets to be one of the great theological minds of all time. Um, what about his whole moral relativism deal in Book III? He's all, "Oh, true, inward justice is separate from society's ideas about right and wrong, and things change over time--what was wrong or right in the Old Testament may not be wrong or right now. Oh, wait, except sodomy--that's always wrong because I think it's gross." Real mature, Augustine. Real mature. Are you five?

Or what about how he's all like, "I became a Christian and had to quit my job because of God! Because I wanted to sacrifice for God! Except also because I had a medical condition and it hurt to breathe. But mostly because of God!!!" Seriously? Seriously? Can't you just be honest and say that you quit because your ill health made it too difficult to teach? I think that's kind of a glaring coincidence there, buddy.

Ugh, he's just such a whiner. All the tears and the screaming and the tearing out of hair and the beating himself up--what a drama queen. Jesus died on the cross, and you know what? He didn't complain about it. He just f-ing did it. LIKE A BOSS.

I don't understand all Augustine's back-and-forth about being baptized. At the end there it's like he wants to be baptized and he considers himself a Christian and he believes the creed and loves God and completely rejects all that stuff in his past, and yet, he still can't convert, somehow. Because...he likes vagina too much, or something. Except he's totally willing to bang some married vagina, so I'm not sure why that's a big deal. Paul did say you could be a good Christian and still be married, right? So where's the big agonizing dilemma here? And way to totally dump your twelve-year-old virgin bride because you decided you couldn't love God AND a wife at the same time. I bet she totally understood how you found her mere presence to be a slutty, slutty impediment to your relationship with Jesus.

If Augustine were alive today, I don't think we'd be friends.

Updates

Long time no post!

In summary:
-We live in Chicago now. It's pretty awesome. Our apartment is lovely and cozy and slightly less horribly cramped than the one in NYC, and there's a Great Lake pretty close by, which is nice.
-I've started classes; this quarter I'm taking Introduction to the Study of Religion (required class for all firsties), Beginning Koine Greek I, and Renaissance Romance.
-Adam has started work as the Director of Christian Formation for Children and Youth at a church outside the city. He loves it, but it IS only part-time, so we're not out of the financial woods yet.
-Because Adam's job is a million miles away, we bought my parents' Yaris. So we have a car now. So...that happened. I still don't really know if I'm happy about it, but whatever, you do what you gotta do.
-I am still editing part-time, though I'm also looking for a nice work-study job.
-CB and Lenore are still very happy and healthy, and CB may have even put on a little bit of weight! Yay!

And that's it. I'll try to write more often, I swear. Really.

Romney and Ryan: A Farce

Mitt Romney: "Hrm...I have a problem. I have horrible policy ideas and I'm not at all relatable, but I'm not actually a bad guy. This is gonna hurt me with the base! They expect an evil, soulless, unscrupulous jerk like Newt Gingrich or Michelle Bachmann! What should I do?!"

Paul Ryan: "Oh, hey there, Mitt! I was just viciously slashing aid to the poor and so disproportionately affecting the downtrodden in my budget proposals that the Roman Catholic Church has spoken out against me and my callous disregard for the very people Jesus told me to help! What are you up to?"

Mitt Romney (stroking his chin thoughtfully): "Not much, Paul...not much..."

http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/08/11/mitt-romney-chooses-paul-ryan-running-mate/SYa5KjwAikhF92jR2MMmeI/story.html

Freakout!

Stress! I just got my first assignment for my copy editing job, and man, it's HUGE-- I've got 98,000 words of work ahead of me. Between that and my columns and trying to learn German and study for my French reading exam (and school hasn't even started yet!) and orchestrating yet another expensive cross-country move...man, I have no idea how I'm gonna do all this! But then again, I kind of thrive on having too much on my plate. I like to feel very busy and important, I guess.

And as stressful as I find freelance stuff-- I nearly died of stress that year I did nothing but freelance-- it's still fun to go to parties where people ask me, "So, what do you do?" and get to answer back, "Oh, I'm a writer." That's right, bitches: I'm a real, live, honest-to-goodness professional writer. I may be poor as hell, but at least I love what I do.

High-five for growing up and actually becoming what I always wanted to become. :)

Why I Left Pinterest

My husband and I just spent the last three weeks in Florida with my mother and my middle sister, visiting my grandma at her home outside of Tampa. We had a great time, and part of having a great time, obviously, is eating awesome food: Indian food, Greek food (twice!), pizza, seafood (including fried alligator, YUM), and pretty much all the ice cream we could manage to shove down our gullets. We sampled various new Oreo flavors (my personal favorites are the ones with the mint filling) and introduced my grandmother to the wide variety of M&Ms available these days (almond FTW!)

So, naturally, I gained seven pounds.

I want you to read the above sentence and think about how you feel about it.

Now I want you to read that sentence again, this time with the knowledge that I am 5'4" (I used to think I was 5'3", but according to my doctor I was wrong) and that before I gained seven pounds, I weighed 99 lbs exactly.

At that weight, my BMI was exactly 17.0--the "underweight" category begins at 18.5. I was pretty underweight, my friends. And now that I've gained weight, my BMI is 18.2. This means that I am still underweight. I have always been small, and always been very active. I am ineligible to give blood, since the Red Cross required you to weigh 110 pounds in order to donate. Several doctors have actually insisted that I work hard on gaining more weight. I have been told that I must gain at least fifteen more pounds before Adam and I start trying to have a baby, because low maternal weights can contribute to low birth weights for babies. By all possible measures, gaining seven pounds was good for me and good for my body.

And yet, do you know how I feel? I feel guilty.

Because in this country, I am constantly inundated by pressure to lose weight. Always. Every time I watch TV there's a commercial for a weight-loss supplement or a diet plan or a home gym that can give me rock hard abs. Every magazine I read tells me that if I just eat more blueberries/take the stairs more often/try these five easy ab workouts at home, I can lose weight--the assumption being that I should lose weight, that everyone should. The expectation these days is that everyone should want to lose weight, all the time, no matter what. There is no exception for people who are already skinny or already healthy (remember, these are not the same). The cultural impetus to lose weight is universal and impenetrable, no matter how old you are, no matter what nationality you represent, however many kids you've had, however many fabulous things you've accomplished in life.

But beyond media, I get this message from a more influential source: people I know. Interestingly, it's never from people who know me well--my family and my close friends--but it's a pretty constant message from acquaintances. There was the co-worker who berated me for eating avocados because they're "so fattening." There was the Facebook friend who wrote horrible things about fat people on Facebook, and then acted surprised when said fat people were, in fact, deeply hurt and offended.

But there is no worse offender than Pinterest.

I cannot continue to use Pinterest because every other pin my friends (mostly my girlfriends) display is devoted to weight loss. There's "thinspiration" (pictures of super skinny girls--always girls!--and horrific taglines like "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," which is absurd because, um, have you ever even tried a Cadbury Creme Egg?!) and "fitspiration" (pictures of super muscular girls, and horrific taglines about "discipline" and "self-control" and "sacrifice," as though weight loss should be approached with the moral gravitas of, say, feeding the hungry or something) and various other random pins involving The Five Foods That Cut Belly Fat! or How To Lose Weight At Work.

I can't take it anymore. I just can't. I cannot stand being surrounded by five million little nitpicks, five million little reminders of imperfection. And I don't have to. So...I quit.

"But wait a minute," you're saying. "You're thin! You have privilege! You shouldn't be complaining about this!"

Society's extreme obsession with weight loss and appearance, often masked as "concern" over "health" (apparently mental health doesn't count), hurts everyone, skinny people included. Just as sexism hurts men, too--just ask any guy who ever enjoyed home ec or wanted to change his name when he got married or chose to be a stay-at-home dad-- the pressure to lose weight, to constantly be judging oneself and constantly finding oneself wanting, is exhausting to everyone, no matter how much they weigh. Fat people are shamed for being fat; thin people are made to feel as though their weight is the most attractive and important thing about them, and are warned that to lose that "asset" is to lose friendship, love, social approval, even one's life.

And I am done with that--absolutely, irrevocably done. There is so much more to my life than what I weigh. There are so many more important things to be doing than weighing myself. And by cutting out Pinterest (and hiding a few people from my newsfeed, natch) I can at least minimize direct contact with this sick philosophy.

Peace out, Pinterest. I've already planned my wedding, anyway.

The Real Tragedy

Yesterday the General Convention approved liturgies for same-sex blessings. While same-sex blessings have been happening in plenty of dioceses as a "generous pastoral response" by certain Bishops, this is an official liturgy that has been created and authorized for this exact purpose.

So, of course, the usual predictable people freaked out.

Almost every Bishop who voted against the measure (and there were only about 40 or so, so it was pretty easy to read all those responses on Episcopal Cafe) mentioned something about not wanting to piss people off in their statements before the House. Almost all of them said something like, "We don't want to upset the rest of the Communion," or "We can't lose any more friends," or "Some of the other Christians will be mad at us."

You know, perhaps this is going to make me sound young and silly, but I've gotta say it: either marrying same-sex couples is the right thing to do, or it's not. It doesn't matter what other people think. Either it's right, or it's wrong. And the majority of the people in our Church (and perhaps even a number of the people who ended up voting against the blessings) know, deep down in their hearts, that's it's the right thing to do.

I'm struggling to find the part in the Gospels where Jesus says, "Well, this is the right thing to do, but let's not tell anyone else because it'll make them upset." Actually, Jesus was pretty good at pissing people off by doing the right thing.

Let's be more like Jesus, m'kay?

And of course, once the resolution passed, South Carolina got all blustery and left the convention. I guess I was raised differently; where I'm from, taking your ball and going home when other people don't do what you want them to do is childish and irresponsible. It's especially annoying to me when this happens because it seems to me that the majority of the Church actually wants to call these ceremonies marriages; we only used "blessings" as a concession to the anti-gay folks. There was give and take, and ultimately, about 75% of the church said "Yes, we want this." Sorry, but that's how being a member of an organization works. There were concessions, there was slow and deliberate movement, and still, just because they didn't get exactly what they wanted, they're going to go home and pout.

I think that's sad, and if I lived in that diocese, I'd be pretty embarrassed at how my representatives were acting.

And that reminds me of something Gene Robinson was saying when I saw him at convention. He was talking about how sad it made him that a few dioceses in the Episcopal Church had broken away when he was consecrated as the first openly gay Bishop. "The tragedy isn't that we disagree with each other," he told us. "The tragedy is when we leave the table."

If you leave the table, you're not hurting anyone but yourself. You're not silencing anyone's voice but your own. You're only making yourself look petulant. It makes sense when seven-year-olds don't realize this, but grown men and women? Bishops in Christ's holy and apostolic Church?

Now that's a tragedy.

A Young Person's Report From General Convention

Late last week, Adam and I went over to Indianapolis to attend the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. (We only went to convention for a day, but the whole thing lasts about a week, and many people, especially the people who have to be there like the delegates and the Bishops, stay for the entire length of time.)

For those of you who aren't Episcopalians, here's a little explanation: every three years, the entire Episcopal Church gets together and decides stuff. We're not a democratic church, per se, because we still have a pretty hierarchical structure, but we do incorporate democratic principles into our governance. So every three years, the two Houses of the Church meet and discuss/debate/pass/reject changes to Church policy and structure. The House of Bishops is composed of all the Bishops in the Church, both current and retired, and is headed up by the Presiding Bishop (the official head of our Church). The House of Deputies is composed of parties of deputies from each diocese, and each diocese gets the same amount of deputies in the House. (In this way, it's quite different from, say, the US House of Representatives, in which representatives are allocated by population.) Some deputies are ordained; others are laypeople. I've observed that there's usually an equal number of each order represented.

So the deputies and the Bishops and anyone else who's interested all show up at the convention, and they consider drafted resolutions, and they write new resolutions, and they amend previous resolutions, and then they vote on them. Resolutions have to be passed by BOTH houses in exactly the same language in order for them to become Church policy. And pretty much anything can be debated and decided at convention-- from changing the Canons of the Church to reorganizing the structure of certain branches of Church governance to changing or emphasizing certain social priorities to budgeting and passing new economic policies. Also, during most legislative hearings, people are permitted to testify in favor or against the pending resolutions, and pretty much anyone can speak--experts, Bishops, priests, regular people in the pews, whomever. It's all messy and kind of frustrating, and that's pretty much how I think faith in action should be--all over the place and difficult and kind of a pain in the ass. Like, y'know, democracy.

 Adam and I spent all of Friday at convention, and I was pretty much in heaven. Everyone we met kept saying, "Wow, you WANTED to come here? But this stuff is so boring and bureaucratic!" And I just kept thinking, well, yeah, that's why I like it. You're talking to the girl who did Model UN in both high school and college (even going on to the National Model UN in my junior year) and was a delegate to Girls' State and did mock Congress and pretty much gets a contact high from hearing people cite Robert's Rules of Order. I love this shit.

Anyways, we went to Eucharist in the morning, which was interesting and kind of weird, seeing as I don't think I've ever worshiped with two thousand people at once. I dunno how the megachurch folks can stand it! Communion takes forever with that many people. At least they used real bread, like they do at GTS and, y'know, every other church in the world except St. John's (*insert loud throat-clearing here*). And also, you will notice that there was none of that intinction nonsense going on, since again, ONLY ST. JOHN'S DOES THAT. :D

What was cool was that, since the Episcopal Church is worldwide and there were representatives from all the dioceses in the world, parts of each Eucharist every day were done in different languages. That day the included language was Hmong, which was cool to hear; the day before, I've been told, was Spanish. It's too bad we didn't come on the day they did French--I could have said the Lord's Prayer in French!

After Eucharist we sat in on a legislative session in the House of Deputies, which pretty much consisted of people arguing about whether or not the NEXT convention should be paperless, to which I say: that's a great idea, but maybe let's focus on this convention FIRST. ;) We got to see them all voting and stuff, which was cool, because they have a whole system for counting votes. First they just have everyone say "yes" or "no" aloud, and then if it's not a clear majority they make everyone hold up colored cards, green for yes and red for no. If it's not clear from that showing, either, then it's time for a vote tally, and everyone has to vote using an electronic keypad. Then the votes are tallied by machine and the percentages show up on the front screens. It's nifty!

Here's a picture of the "yes" vote:

Then we sat in on a House of Bishops meeting, but it was dreadfully dull since they were pretty much just talking to one another about how much they love each other.

And then we wandered around the exhibition hall for most of the rest of the day. We met lots of new friends and saw lots of old ones, including folks from GTS, the former curate of our home parish, and a friend of mine from high school (!). We got tons of cool buttons, and each of us bought a tee-shirt; Adam got one that says "Blessed Are The Peacemakers" and I got one that says "God is not a boy's name" from the EWC.

I've been pleased with the way the resolutions have gone so far--I was very glad to see that they passed a resolution prohibiting discrimination against transgendered clergy and laypersons, and I was equally glad to see that they refused to authorize The Message as an appropriate translation to be used in church. (Explanation: The Message is a paraphrase of the Bible, not an actual translation. While it's useful for Bible study or personal reflection or Sunday school/youth group lessons, I don't find paraphrase appropriate for actual services. We hear so many paraphrases of Biblical teachings already in our culture--most of them inaccurate-- that I think we should use Sunday services as an opportunity to confront people with as accurate a translation of the original Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic as we can manage to produce.) I'm encouraged by the selling of 815 (the church's main building in NYC) and the relocation of the central offices elsewhere, as well as with many of the other restructuring changes, although I'm skeptical of the Tea Party-esque ethos of many of those advocating restructuring.

I feel kind of torn about the presence of young people at the convention. I was both heartened to see that there were many, many young people there, and disheartened to note that almost none of them were there in an official capacity (as deputies, to deliver testimony, etc.) It seems to me that most of the young people who came just arrived on their own initiative--which is great, because it's nice to know that other people my age care that much about the Church, but also kind of sucks because it means the Church still isn't giving us any authority and still doesn't really care that much about involving us in governance.

I think the Church often displays the same attitude towards young people as it does towards poor people: it's eager to help them, to provide aid and comfort, to go out and come to them, but it's really very loathe to actually include them, to consider them a valid part and parcel of the Church, to consider them full members rather than just beneficiaries. Does that make sense?

Anyways, we had a great time, and I wish we could have stayed longer. Overall, General Convention made me feel very good about our denomination and the direction in which we're headed. And in light of the Presbyterians' contentious General Assembly last week in Pittsburgh, and in light of our own relatively drama-free meeting, it was nice not to be the "controversial" church group this year! :)

A Possibility

Adam's applying for a full-time youth ministry director position, complete with benefits. I don't usually ask for this sort of thing in this context, but: prayers and good vibes and well-wishes would be appreciated. We need this.

One Ring To Rule Them All

Over a year ago, I lost my wedding ring.

This was no ordinary ring, of course--it was a Kovalick family heirloom. My great-grandmother on my mom's side had worn it her whole life, and then had passed it down to my maternal grandmother, who had kept it in her drawer because her finger wasn't small enough to wear it. My mother and my aunt both had larger fingers, too, but finally I was the Cinderella who came along and fit it perfectly. It was platinum with seven small diamonds, and was pretty much priceless.

I was having my engagement ring cleaned that week, and I never liked to wear my wedding ring without my engagement ring on top of it, since the wedding ring was always a little looser and I was worried about it slipping off. So I put it on a silver chain and wore it around my neck.

And then one day the chain broke, and I didn't notice until it was too late.

I cried for a whole week. I refused to get out of bed unless I had to go to work. I hardly ate. I sobbed in the bathroom at work. And I never saw that ring again.

Finally I just bought a cheap silver ring from Etsy for about $25. I've been wearing it since then, and I love it, but it's not the same.

Then last fall my dad's mother died. She was pretty old (in her late 90s) and pretty depressed and not entirely sure who anyone was at that point. It was sad, but not unexpected.

This week my dad went to visit his dad in Colorado, and came back with a box of rings. Apparently my grandmother left her valuable rings to my sisters and I in her will, and since I'm the eldest, I got her wedding ring.

It's huge.

The ring is actually two rings fused together--my grandma's engagement ring and wedding ring, soldered into one. Between this ring and my engagement ring, I now have seven diamonds on my hand--five small ones and two big ones. The big diamond in the heirloom ring is at least a carat.

I am probably the only homeless unemployed person in the whole world to wear a crown-jewels-worth of diamonds on her left hand.

I haven't decided whether or not I'll wear this new ring all the time, or whether I'll keep my cheap Etsy ring for everyday and bring out the fancy one for special occasions. But no matter what I do, I'm so grateful to have this ring--it feels, somehow, like a second chance.

Thanks, Grandma Walker. I miss you.

We can haz a home!!

Adam and I received our housing offer from the University today, which is pretty exciting. Overall we're pretty pleased with it, although like everything else in the world, it's not perfect. It's a one-bedroom in the northern part of Hyde Park, and it'll cost us $844/month for almost 600 sq. ft.-- which might seem expensive, unless you consider than in NYC we were paying $1200/month for 350 sq. ft. Then it looks positively reasonable. :P

Pros:
-Location, location, location. It's in the safer part of HP (from what I'm told, anyway) and there are about a million bus stops only a block away. It's close to the Metra station, too, in case Adam wants to take that to work. It's not, like, right next to the Div. School or anything, but I kind of prefer that-- I like a good walk in the morning.
-ELEVATOR. Enough said. Also, the service elevator (which we'd use when moving in) is, quite literally, right next door to our place. Yesssssssss.
-We're on the 7th floor, which is the very top, so we can continue our trend of always living in the "penthouse." (In Austintown we lived on the top floor of a three-story building; in NYC we lived on the top floor of a four-story building.) We like living on the top floor because it's quieter and seems a little more private.
-There's bike storage space for Adam's bike.
-It's bigger than our old place-- not by a LOT, but by enough.
-The kitchen has actual counters! And we can both fit in it at the same time! OMFG!
-There's a parking lot. We don't have a car, but it's nice to know that if we did have a car, like in the future or whatever, we'd have a place to park it.
-Three closets. It's a lifetime record for us!
-The building is A-okay with animals.
-We'll have the largest one-bedroom in the whole building, AND a view of the river!
-The building is wired for AT&T internet, so we'll no longer have to use Evil Horrible Time Warner Cable Internet of Death.

Cons:
-No dishwasher. Um, boo.
-Electric isn't included...and the stove is electric. Double boo.
-The bathroom looks kinda weird. Here, look:

Doesn't that toilet sort of look like a repurposed urinal? Maybe? Also, I'm not crazy about a window in the shower right at boob-height.
-No painting the walls in this place. Lame.
-Also, all the other apartments in the building are either one-bedrooms, furnished studios, or furnished two-bedrooms meant to be shared between two students. This means that there won't be many older families and instead we'll have a lot of younger, single grad students. This isn't exactly a con, I guess, since we are younger grad students, but...I just was hoping for more families, since Adam and I aren't partiers and don't really want loud drunken interruptions in the middle of the night. But hey, I've heard that U of C is very non-party-oriented, and it's not like we'll be living with any undergrads, so maybe this is a non-issue.
-No dishwasher. Again. It's so annoying that I had to mention it one more time. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So there you have it: the new McCluskey-Walker abode. Hyde Park, here we come!

Long Time No See

It's been awhile! Adam and I had a great time at his graduation...and then a horrible time with moving, as usual. Gah. I hate packing, carrying, loading, transporting, and unloading all our crap. And the idea that we have to do it all again in August makes me faintly panicked at the moment.

But for now, all our stuff is safely away in a storage unit in Youngstown, and we're staying at our parents' places for the summer. Right now we're spending a lot of time at my parents' house, mostly because my allergies get worse out in the country where Alice and Jim live. This Thursday, though, I'm going to the allergist to get some allergy treatments started, so then we'll be able to spend more time with my in-laws.

Our schedule for the summer is looking busy! Here's what we're doing:

June 19: Adam goes up to Cleveland to meet with the Bishop
July 5-7: We're going to General Convention in Indianapolis!
July 19-Aug. 2: Vacationing in Florida (and visiting my grandma, and attending Adam's friend's ordination) with my mom and my middle sister
Aug. 15-18: Vacationing on Kelley's Island with my parents and both my sisters
Aug. 31: Moving Day!

Expect regular updates, especially about Convention. Obviously, I'll have a lot to say about that. ;)

Also, I'm a columnist this summer for Hipolitics, so check out my writing there!

PICTURES OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

Lookit.

My husband graduates tomorrow!

My husband Adam will be among the 54 new graduates of General Theological Seminary tomorrow. Thanks be to God!

Here's to three years of watching, waiting, praying, hoping, helping, and working with my beloved hubs. And of editing his damn papers, of course.

This is the first graduate school graduation I've ever attended. Hopefully it won't be the last. ;)

What my grandfather taught me.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 John 4:7-21)

Last night, I went to bed thinking about Amendment 1 in North Carolina, and how it was expected to pass, and how sad that made me. I felt sad for gay people in North Carolina, whose daily lives would be darkened by other people's prejudice, and I felt sad for all the people who knew it was unfair and had voted against Amendment 1 and were embarrassed by how backwards it made their home state look, and I even felt sad for the people who voted FOR the amendment, for they knew not what they did, most of them. And then I thought about the passage of gay marriage in New York last year and how joyous that event was, how there was this palpable feeling in the air that things in the US could, and were about to, get better. And I thought about how, when my grandkids are in school, they'll learn about the gay rights movement just like I learned about the black civil rights movement when I was a kid, and about how, just like I did in third grade, they'll marvel at how strange and mean-spirited their grandparents' generation seemed to have been. There will come a time when the idea of treating gay marriages differently will seem just as petty and cruel as making black people and white people use different drinking fountains. My grandkids will live in that world.

I thought about these things as I drifted off to sleep in my husband's arms.

Adam and I have been married for almost four years now, and we still fall asleep every night holding one another. We often shift in our sleep (I'm a particularly wild sleeper), but we always fall asleep clasped together in bed. And when we wake up, we still greet one another with a kiss. Even when I wake up earlier than my husband so I can go to work, I always kiss him softly on the mouth before I walk out of the bedroom and pick up my lunch box and head off on my morning commute.

My husband and I are a happily married heterosexual couple.

It runs in the family, I guess. My parents are still happily married after 35 years together. Both sets of grandparents were happily married until my maternal grandfather's death in 1998 and my paternal grandmother's death late last year. My mom's parents, in particular, served as great models for a healthy, happy marriage. They were so in love, so completely into each other. And last night, as I fell asleep thinking about Amendment 1 and how sad it was, I remembered something my grandfather used to say.

My grandpa was a man's man--born into a poor Catholic immigrant family, one of eight kids, he dropped out of school during the Great Depression, lied about his age, and joined the CCC. The government shipped him to Idaho to dig ditches, and he successfully sent money to his folks for three whole months before someone at the dig site figured out that he was still a kid and sent him back to finish high school. As soon as he was done with school, my grandpa signed up for the Navy in World War II and saw several battles in the Pacific. He married my grandma when they were both only twenty, he went to college on the GI Bill, and then he taught high school science classes for awhile, although I suspect that was mostly an excuse to coach football. Then he went and got his Masters and built rockets for Martin Marietta (which later became Lockheed Martin), including the ones that took the Space Shuttles into orbit. He had a big tattoo of his Navy ship on his arm, and he played college football, and he loved yelling at umpires. He ate everything and was known as "Garbage Pail Kovalick" for the way he'd always finish off everyone else's leftovers. He smoked like a chimney until his first heart attack.

And he was the biggest feminist.

He was a member of NOW, he helped stand guard at Planned Parenthood clinics, he worked as a volunteer deputy sheriff on the domestic violence squad. And I remember, when I was little, he had an answer for the guys who used to ask him, "Mike, why do you care so much about that women's rights stuff?"  

"I'm not a woman," he would say. "But I have a wife. I have two daughters. I have a mom, and a grandma, and sisters, and aunts, and cousins. You go ahead and tell me they don't deserve the same rights as men. You go ahead and tell my wife and daughters that. Just try."

This needs to be said, because I don't think we say it as baldly and honestly as we should: there is no decent biblical argument against letting gay people get married. Of course, in a country with a pretty solid wall between church and state, the civil argument should be sufficient. (If you'd like to argue something about the Founding Fathers' faith, go right ahead. They were mostly A) deists, or B) Anglicans like me, so I don't really think that's an argument you'd like to pursue, unless you'd like to start seeing Anglican values, like caring for the poor and letting people have control over their own bodies, enshrined in national law.) But apparently some people think the argument that everyone should be treated the same under the law is not good enough, so, being a theologian, I am well acquainted with "Christian" arguments against gay marriage, and I am here to tell you that they don't work, at all, on any level.

The Bible doesn't actually say anything about gay marriage. It says a heck of a lot about love, of course, so if you've missed that part, you might want to go back and read the whole thing over again. Or once, really. It's a pretty integral part, so if you missed it, you can't have been paying that much attention, anyway.

To enshrine discrimination under the guise of Christian values is to practice Christianity without Christ. To believe that the Bible condemns marriage between two consenting adults of the same sex who love one another and want to build a life together is to completely miss out on the message of the entire last third of Scripture.

And to claim that "biblical marriage" is something we want to emulate today is to be completely ignorant of the way marriage worked in biblical times. Marriage back then had nothing to do with love. It was an economic arrangement, one that served to bind clans together, not to bind two hearts into one. There's a reason Paul preached against marriage (yes, against HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE)-- because it bore little to no resemblance to our marriages today. Marriage has become something beautiful and sacred BECAUSE it has evolved--it has moved beyond a bartering system, a way to turn a herd of cows into a woman to breed your children, into something far holier and more dignified.

 I am a straight woman. I'm young and Christian and happily married to a man (and future priest) who is the love of my life. I was born in the South, raised in the Midwest, go to church many times a week. I'm not gay.

But my close friends are gay.

My husband's close friends are gay.

My colleagues are gay.

And my sister is gay.

You go ahead and tell me they don't deserve the same rights as I have. You go ahead and tell me that they don't deserve to nestle into their soulmate's arms every night, to fall asleep in that envelope of love and safety, to wake each day to a kiss and a smile and the promise of a long life together.  

Just try.

Optimism.

Here are some things I will enjoy about not living here anymore:

-Living in a place that is not a constant contruction zone
-Relative quiet
-Fewer crowds
-Not having to steel myself to fake-smile at people on the Close if I've just had a bad day and want to dissolve into tears
-More than 350 sq. ft. of living space
-Possibly having a bathroom that is not directly next to my kitchen (i.e., possibly having actual empty space between my toilet and my food preparation area)
-Paying a LOT less in rent
-Fewer cars
-Less dog crap
-Bodies of water without rotting trash everywhere
-Once again being in the religious minority (it's kinda fun to answer the age-old question: "Episco-WHAT?!")
-Not working a desk job
-BEING IN SCHOOL
-Actual winters
-Actual snow
-Having a landlord who actually acts like a damn landlord and doesn't pretend like the fact that my husband is going to be a priest is a reason why we should be treated like crap and be forced to act okay with it
-More room for my cats
-Spending less than six hours at the DMV
-Streets that don't smell like pee

The Unbearable Lightness of Katharine

Last night, for the first time ever, I was disappointed in the Presiding Bishop.

Let me just say first that I have always been the current Presiding Bishop's biggest fan--Katharine Jefferts Schori has been my hero since she was elected in 2005. I think she's been an excellent leader, a holy example of Christ's love and witness in the church, and an inspiration to millions of Episcopalians.

Which was why I was surprised to find myself in a room with about fifty other people, looking up at the Presiding Bishop and feeling a sinking sense of sadness.

She was visiting the seminary to give us the rare treat of a live Q&A session with her, which was a wonderful thing, and for the first few questions everything was going swimmingly. But then Keith, one of my husband's classmates, asked her about student debt, and her answer left me...hungry. Unsatisfied.

Keith pointed out that, as a result of both his undergrad and seminary debt, he had about 100K in educational loans, and it was keeping him awake at night. He wondered how Episcopal seminary students, most of whom must finance their educations with loans, could possibly hope to pay off all their debt if the Episcopal priesthood is moving towards more part-time and bi-vocational jobs. How was the church going to keep itself out of what amounts to an impending student debt crisis among its clergypeople?

The response the PB gave pretty much amounted to this, when summed up:

1. Things shouldn't get to that point;
2. Bishops shouldn't let people who already have educational debt go to seminary; and
3. Well, there ARE still some full-time jobs with benefits. Not many, and not enough for everyone, but they exist. Somewhere.

While I'm sure the answer would have played out well in front of the House of Bishops, it was a distinctly UN-pastoral response to a person who was sharing his very real, very frightening pain in a very public setting and who was not even expecting easy or instant answers in return. It was also a response that seemed very un-Anglican in its disregard for the working class and the less fortunate. If you refuse to let people who already have undergrad debt go to seminary, know what you're gonna get? A priesthood entirely made up of older white people from upper-class backgrounds. Which, y'know, we already sort of have an overabundance of them, anyways, so maybe we shouldn’t make it worse, eh?

And how does "well, you shouldn't have gone to seminary" help the people who are already here?

And how can we limit people's callings to their financial situations? How can we say, well, if God really wanted you to be a priest, he would have given you more money?!

The reality is this: Episcopal seminary is expensive. Episcopal seminarians are coming out of seminary with massive amounts of debt. This is a problem that is systemic and institutional, not the result of poor financial planning on the part of two or three individuals. This is something that is going to impoverish the priesthood and further the breakdown of the institutional church and drain the coffers of smaller parishes and confuse and frustrate the heck out of the laity, and it's not going to bite us in the ass some fifty years from now or a hundred years from now, but ten or five or even two years from now. There’s a storm coming and we’re refusing to evacuate because we think the weatherman should have told us about it three days ago, but that doesn't change the fact that we are going to drown if we don't figure out a plan, rapidly.

This is also a problem that we just aren't seeing in many other denominations. My friends who have husbands in seminary programs in other denominations (most notably Lutherans) are always aghast when I explain that we are expected to go into debt for an MDiv here. That sort of thing is inconceivable to them because their churches take responsibility for the entire postulancy process. Their mission isn't just to guide seminary students spiritually-- it's a financial responsibility, too. Which, y'know, is how it should be.

There are very real, very concrete changes that we must make at the multi-national level-- and yes, at the NATIONAL LEVEL, TOO. This IS something that is mostly happening in the American Church, so it IS something that should be addressed, not just at the diocesan level or the worldwide level, but by the Protestant Episcopal Church USA, by American Bishops and American clergy and American laypeople and the American Presiding Bishop. I understand the impulse to say "we're not just a national church, we're a worldwide church," but really, THIS IS VERY MUCH AN AMERICAN PROBLEM. It's the American educational system that is feeding and abetting this oncoming freight train of a disaster, so we need to come to terms with that and work with it.

Last night, I was disappointed with what the Presiding Bishop had to say. I hope it’ll be the last time I have to say that. I don’t think it will be, but…I can hope.

I hate everyone. But mostly the DMV.

After four hours at the DMV and $65, I now have a temporary New York State Driver's License.

And it says Sex: M.

*headdesk*

Back to the DMV tomorrow, looks like.

Fifty Shades of Snark, Part 3

They go outside, and somehow Christian saves Ana from being hit by a bike or something, which is just a pretext for her to end up in his arms trying to use mind-control to get him to kiss her. He doesn't. He's clearly all "I want you but I'm daaaaaangerous!" which Ana interprets to mean he doesn't want her. She leaves, she cries, she catalogues her "faults" in true Bella fashion. (Oh, no, she's too pale! Too skinny! How horrible it must be to be so thin and white! And with such large Japanamation eyes! How awful!)

She goes home, where Kate notices she's been crying. Ana chalks up the tears to the fact that she was "nearly knocked over by a cyclist," which everyone in this book seems to find appalling but which pretty much happens to me on a regular basis in Manhattan. They bicker about whether or not Christian likes her or whatever. Yawn. I feel like, by the time I'd reached college, I'd already gotten past the whole agonizing-over-whether-a-guy-likes-me-for-hours thing. Maybe it's just me.

We cut to Ana finishing her final exam, about which she's understandably very happy. She muses that she might get drunk in celebration, since apparently she's never been drunk before. Really? You're a senior in college and you've never been just a little drunk before? I'm just...highly skeptical, I guess. I was a goody-two-shoes English major, too, but I'd totally been drunk before my senior year ended.

She and Kate head back to their apartment to get a little crazy, but there's a package for Ana. It's three volumes of the first edition of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, from Christian Grey, duh. Ana figures out that he's trying to warn her away from him. She resolves to send them back with a cryptic, sarcastic note. Bet that doesn't happen, Ana, you drip.

They go to a bar and, lo and behold, actually do get drunk. Ana drunk-dials Christian, who is all, "Where are you? I NEED TO PROTECT YOU!" Okay, dad. She hangs up without telling him where she is. He calls back and claims he's coming to get her, even though she hasn't told him what bar she's visiting. She goes outside and José-- ahhhhh, José totally tries to date rape her, but Christian saves her! Just like when Edward saves Bella from the menacing gang-rape scenario in Port Angeles! THINGS ARE THE SAAAAAAME!

Christian holds her hair while she vomits, which is nice. Then he lectures her:

“We’ve all been here, perhaps not quite as dramatically as you,” he says dryly. “It’s
about knowing your limits, Anastasia. I mean, I’m all for pushing limits, but really this is
beyond the pale. Do you make a habit of this kind of behavior?”

Dude, aren't you only, like, six years older than her? Seriously, this whole father act is creeping me out. Also, apparently he tracked her phone to find out where she was. If it turns out he's been sneaking into her house and watching her sleep, he will officially be Edward Cullen.

He takes her inside and makes her drink some water. Then apparently he decides to dance with her? Because that's just what a girl wants to do after she's been vomiting for twenty minutes. But oh, wait, it's just so they can find Kate, who is pretty much openly salivating after Christian's brother, Elliot. Then Ana passes out.

She wakes up in a hotel room, in her tee shirt and underwear. Holy crap, how is she not freaking out about this? Christian comes in and asks her how she's feeling, and she answers "Better than I deserve," which makes me feel icky for reasons I don't quite understand. Apparently they didn't have sex, but he thought it was acceptable to take her pants off while she was unconscious. Again, I dunno exactly why this makes me so squirmy, but it totally does.

She's sort of like, "Dude, I didn't ask you to come and get me," and he's basically like, "Yeah, but you should be THANKING ME, because if I hadn't come along you'd have been totally RAPED, BITCH." Ugh. And then he refers to himself as a "Dark Knight." Sounds like someone's been reading a little too much Byron, if you ask me.

And then we have, so far, the most disturbing sentence in the book so far:

"Well, if you were mine, you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week after the stunt you pulled yesterday."

*shudder*

Followed almost immediately by this:

"He’s the only man who has ever set my blood racing around my body. Yet, he’s so antagonizing too; he’s difficult, complicated, and confusing. One minute he rebuffs me, the next he sends me fourteen-thousand-dollar books, then he tracks me like a stalker. And for all that, I have spent the night in his hotel suite, and I feel safe. Protected. He cares enough to come and rescue me from some mistakenly perceived danger. He’s not a dark knight at all, but a white knight in shining, dazzling armor – a classic romantic hero – Sir Gawain or Lancelot."

*eyeroll*

I think I must have been the only girl in the world who has never fantasized about a white knight coming to rescue me. Sure, I've been drawn to the dark and moody guys in my day, but I don't think I ever dreamed of someone coming to save me like in a fairy tale. Because, y'know, I like to save others, instead. I guess I'm the one with the savior complex.

And then, while she's in the shower, Ana has to go through the whole litany of "OMG, does he like me or not??" all over again. Gah. Really? Apparently the fact that he didn't violate her unconscious body means he couldn't really want her. What?

I kind of get the appeal of the "reluctant romantic" archetype, now that I really think about it. I think the reason this "gentlemanly" type-- the Edward, the Christian, the guy who wants you but doesn't make a move because he wants to protect you from himself-- is appealing to women precisely because we are so very used to being objectified. When I walk to work in the morning, I always wear headphones, even if I'm not even listening to anything on my iPod. Why? Because if I don't, I get cat-called, whistled at, propositioned. Women are constantly expected to be fending off advances from guys they don't want. So I totally understand the appeal of a guy who is sexy and who likes you and finds you attractive-- but who doesn't come on to you all the damn time, who hangs back, who isn't constantly coming forward. I can see the appeal there, actually.

Christian's dogsbody has brought Ana some new clothes, including, of course, ridiculous sexy underwear. Oh, geez. She goes out and has breakfast with him. He scolds her for having damp hair (???) and then admits that he totally wants to sex her up, but not romantically, just sexually. She's confused, and he says he'll "acquaint [her] with the facts" and obtain her "written consent" to sex her up tonight. She's like, "Yeah, totes, let's do it." He's all, "Hey, did you know I like to fly helicopters? Since I'm rich and all."

She brushes her teeth with his toothbrush in secret. And thinks it's hot. Okay, now Ana's the weirdo.

They get into the elevator and have a quick make-out sesh, and then Christian drives her home. Ana doesn't know who Thomas Tallis is, which means she obviously hasn't seen The Tudors yet. Talk about hot, debauched sex! They return to Ana's place to find Kate in a good mood, since she shagged Christian's seemingly nicer adopted brother the night before. The boys leave, the girls gossip. Ana goes to work and wonders--YET AGAIN--what he could possibly see in her, what with all that horrid thinness and paleness and all.

Y'know that friend you had in high school or college--the one who all the boys liked, who was skinny and lovely and flirtatious and shapely and totally cool, and knew it, but constantly complained about how her pores were huge or her eyes were too blue or some shit, because she loved to fish for compliments? That's who Ana reminds me of.

After work, Christian is waiting for her in an Audi. WTF is it with this book (and Twilight, for that matter) being so weirdly specific about car makes and models? Like, a car is never just a car-- it's a Mercedes, a BMW, an Audi, a Rolls Royce. Seriously? Who the hell cares? I don't know the difference. I feel like I get more complete descriptions of the cars than I do of the people. It's like, hey, Christian Grey drives a 2012 Audi A5 with leather interior and moon roof and heated massage seats, and oh, also, he has hair of some color or whatever. (By the way, I had to Google "Audi" just now to find out what the model names were. Because us priests' wives are not exactly experts on luxury anything vehicles.)

Christian has had a long day of hiking with his brother. How does someone who had built a multi-billion dollar corporation by the age of 27 have time for all this hiking and dancing and coffee and meeting with random college student newspaper journalists for interviews and photo shoots? I dunno, it's a mystery. They take off in his fancy helicopter, because of course he's a helicopter pilot, too, which I'm sure he learned to do in his inexplicably vast amounts of spare time. Ana compliments him by calling him "competent," which seems like a pretty tepid compliment to me. She keeps thinking about how she's in over her head, out of her depth, blah blah blah. They go to his gleaming white palatial apartment and have some wine. Ana asks him why he gave her Tess of the D'Urbervilles as a gift. He replies: "It seemed appropriate. I could hold you to some impossibly high ideal like Angel Clare or debase you completely like Alec D’Urberville." I don't really think Tess is a literary heroine whose relationships I'd like to echo in my own life. Talk about a Madonna/whore dichotomy here. Yuck.

Then he makes her sign a non-disclosure agreement before they have sex, which she doesn't even read before she signs it.

And with that, this book crosses way beyond creepy into outright alarming.

Fifty Shades of Snark, Part 2

Apparently, Ana's been gone for much longer than she was supposed to be, despite the fact that the interview as it was written can't have taken more than a half hour, at best. Kate meets her at the door and badgers her. Like Bella, her alter-ego, Ana is an amazing cook, so she asks if Kate has eaten her soup, like a good girl. Kate apologizes for leaving her hanging.

Ana goes to her job at a hardware store, even though she's "crap at any DIY" and leaves "all that to [her] dad." Remember: WIMMENS COOK, NOT BUILD. This is a pointless paragraph that serves only to reinforce the idea that Ana is perfect at everything womanly and not at anything non-womanly.

She goes home again. The Greatest Investigative Journalist Ever is on the couch, transcribing the interview. She asks Ana about Christian and Ana is clearly flustered. Kate is shocked. "You, fascinated by a man? That's a first," she tells her. Obviously, because remember, Ana has never felt this way about any man in all her, y'know, three or so years of dating experience.

Hilariously enough, Ana's working on an essay on Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Seriously, this chick is Bella Swan. Let's see if she has any pearls of wisdom about Wuthering Heights, while we're at it. And apparently her mother is flighty and gets married all the time, just like Bella's mom. I'm pretty sure the author of this book just used the Find and Replace feature in Word to change all the names from Bella to Ana and Edward to Christian, and didn't bother changing the characterization, like, at all.

And here comes the token Hispanic character, José, who is Kate and Ana's best friend but who, of course, is in love with Ana secretly, because just like Bella, all the boys are super in love with her and her freesia scent Japanamation eyes. Ana doesn't reciprocate this feeling, though, because although José is cute and funny, he's like a brother to her. And also he's not rich.

"Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps I’ve spent too long
in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high." Ana, honey, I don't think it's that your expectations are too HIGH. I think it's that they are romance novel expectations. If you're taking relationship cues from eighteenth-century English novels, you're not ready for a real adult romance. Sorry.

Now we're back to Ana's day job. She's working the counter when Christian Grey shows up and gives her a massive coronary attack. Of course, he's looking pretty much like an Abercrombie model, only maybe even richer and more bourgie. Ana's heart is "pounding a frantic tattoo," to which I say, "editors, where the hell were you during the prepublication phase? WTF?"

Christian is the "epitome of male beauty," etc. He's looking for cable ties. And masking tape. And rope. All of which is supposed to be mysterious and sexy, I think, but it just creeps me out a little. Ana suddenly develops a split personality and begins arguing with herself about whether or not he came to Portland for her. No wonder she found his arrogance attractive.

He flirts. She blushes "the color of the communist manifesto," which, I would think, would be gray and paper-colored. Does the author realize that the Little Red Book and the Communist Manifesto are two completely different texts? You'd think someone who seems to be so interested in literature would be aware of this.

Ana gets him to agree to a photo shoot so her roommate can have a photo for her article. Then Ana's friend Paul comes over and gives her a hug, and this suddenly makes Christian cold and distant. Because, as we've learned from Twilight, WIMMENS CAN'T HAVE MALE FRIENDS.

Kate is thrilled about the photo shoot. She also seems to think Christian likes Ana. “The richest, most elusive, most enigmatic bachelor in Washington State, just gave you his cell phone number,” Kate tells Ana, disregarding the fact that what he actually did was give her a business card so she could contact him about taking a photo for a newspaper article, which is something that normal people do. They decide to make José do the photo shoot, because absolutely nothing could go wrong having the guy who loves Ana photograph the wealthy "Adonis" with whom she's become obsessed. NOTHING WHATSOEVER. Oh, and also, add Paul to the list of Guys Who Have A Crush On Mary Sue Ana Steele.

Ana calls Christian to set up the shoot. Naturally, she is "gushing and breathy – like a child, not a grown
woman who can vote and drink legally in the State of Washington." Methinks I detect a whiff of the classic "I'm soooooo mature for my age."

They all go to some Portland hotel to do the shoot, although really, I would have just asked him to send in a stock headshot and called it a day. And here we have an interesting little blip, as Kate meets Christian for the first time:

"She shakes his hand firmly without batting an eyelid. I remind myself that Kate has been to the best private schools in Washington. Her family has money, and she’s grown up confident and sure of her place in the world. She doesn’t take any crap. I am in awe of her."

Here I'm getting the sense that some, if not much, of what makes Christian so very--dare I say it?--dazzling to Ana is that he's wealthy. His well-groomed features, his intimidating confidence, his fancy clothes-- those are what make this small-town girl from Georgia feel so flustered. The poor boys who love her--José, the first-generation college student with an Army dad, and Paul, the son of hardware store owners-- don't have a chance, because what really makes Ana's head swim is wealth. Kate, who is born to this sort of existence--who doesn't have to worry about money any more than Christian does--isn't nearly as attracted to him.

The more I think about this, the more I see a strong undercurrent of conspicuous consumption and economic aspiration here. Part of the romance "fantasy" into which the reader steps involves wealth-- living in a sweet apartment with your rich best friend while paying "peanuts" for rent and borrowing her Mercedes at will? Being wooed by a man who has money to burn, who worked for it and earned it fair and square but conveniently isn't much older than you are, and oh, by the way, he wants to feed the poor? What struggling working class (or even middle class) woman wouldn't want to imagine that? And really, this strain is equally present in Twilight. Oh, my boyfriend is ridiculously wealthy and owns fourteen thousand luxury cars and, oh, did I mention we're honeymooning on his private island?

I wonder how these stories would be different without the money. I wonder if women would find Christian Grey as sexy without his billions of dollars. Or if they'd feel so swept-away by Edward if he drove a beat-up station wagon instead of a BWM.

ANYWAYS, the photo shoot wraps up, and Christian asks Ana out for coffee. She apparently has to switch vehicles with her roommate, which makes no sense b/c we've already established that Ana's car is SMALLER than Kate's, but...I dunno, I've stopped expecting this book to follow the rules of physics anymore.

Kate is suddenly very worried, because she thinks Christian is "dangerous" (Edward, is that you?), especially for an "innocent" like Bella Ana. But even though Ana hates coffee, she'll be damned if she's not going to suck down some of the awful stuff with Christian. They get into an elevator and he holds her hand and she freaks out about it, and now I'm gonna have "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in my head all damn day. Gah.

They go to a coffee house, and Ana has tea, which she likes "black and weak." Seriously, she should have been like, "I like my tea like I like my men-- incredibly expensive and fairly bland." That would have been more truthful, anyway.

He asks her if she's dating either José or Paul, and observes that she's nervous around men, which he seems to like, creepily enough. He asks her about her family, and she rambles about her mother's flightiness. Apparently she thinks the fact that her mother has been married four times means she's an "incurable romantic," and not that she just has terrible taste in men.

Perhaps it's a genetic trait.

Fifty Shades of Snark, Part 1

Okay, here goes.

After the dull-looking cover (hey, you know what makes interesting cover art? A picture of a gray tie. That'll reel 'em in!), we find an "About the Author" page that informs us that EL James is a "TV executive, wife, and mother of two" who "dreamt of writing stories that readers would fall in love with, but put those dreams on hold to focus on her family and her career." Apparently this novel represents her first attempt to "[pluck] up the courage to put pen to paper," which is confusing to me since I didn't think writing stories took a lot of courage. Sharing stories takes courage, of course. Letting other people read what you write can be gut-wrenching. But actually writing stories, ones that you can keep to yourself if they don't turn out well? I don't think that's particularly brave. I'm a writer, and I don't think I have to "pluck up the courage" to write-- I just have to do it. It can be hard work, of course, but it's not really that intimidating to write stuff for your own pleasure.

Anyways.

We meet our narrator and heroine, Ana, a college student who, in the grand tradition of Mary Sues, happens to be pale and have humungous Japanamation eyes and conform to all modern beauty standards and yet simultaneously thinks she's just a mess, a total mess. She's flustered because her roommate Kate is sick and now she has to take over Kate's interview with an "enigmatic CEO" and university donor for the school newspaper. I don't really get why this is her job-- shouldn't, I dunno, another student from the paper be doing this?-- but whatever.

Kate is, of course, "gamine and gorgeous," with strawberry-blonde hair and green eyes. Ooooh, threesome maybe?

Ana muses that Kate will make a wonderful journalist, as she is "articulate, strong, persuasive, argumentative, [and] beautiful." Because physical beauty is the key to being a newspaper reporter, obvs.

Ana "gather[s] her satchel," like a good British--I mean, American--girl, and borrows her roommate's Mercedes for the drive to Portland. (Side note: Why do all trashy romance novels seem to take place in the Pacific Northwest? Seriously.) Here the author actually uses the phrase "floor the pedal to the medal." I just read that phrase in an actual published novel. That just happened. My brain just exploded and I'm only on page 8.

Ana gets to this guy's office, which is made of steel and stone and is imposing and cold and blah blah blah. She's greeted by yet another attractive woman, and thank God, because what would literature be if we started writing about women who weren't attractive?

And OMG, Ana's full name is Anastasia Steele. I think I've just decided that she's Rayford Steele's long-lost sister.

Ana signs in at the front desk, blathers on about how she clearly doesn't belong there in her one brown skirt and messy hair, and refers to herself as looking "smart," which I'm pretty sure American college students wouldn't say. She is whisked upwards in an elevator at "terminal velocity," which makes me think, in an Inigo Montoya voice, "That phrase...I do not think it means what you think it means." She refers to herself as "Steele" in her inner monologue, which makes me wince a bit. Apparently the brilliant journalist roommate is such a brilliant journalist that she didn't even equip her randomly chosen replacement with a brief biography of the interview subject. Ana freaks out a little about her lack of basic preparation, as well she should.

Cue the next series of beautiful blonde women (Ana remarks that it's "like Stepford here," which makes me both laugh and involuntarily gag at the same time), who get her water and usher her in to see Mr. Grey. (Ha ha, get it? Fifty Shades of Grey? The guy's name is Grey? Oh, how very clever.)

Predictably, Mr. Grey is tall and attractive with--guess what?--gray eyes. His office is "way too big for just one man." (That's what she said!) She's awkward, he's handsome. She approves of his art, remarking that the paintings in the office are "raising the ordinary to the extraordinary." This proves that she indeed does not know what many words in the English language mean. Perhaps she should rethink this whole English Lit major thing. Mr. Grey "couldn't agree more" with her statement, which proves that he isn't actually paying attention to a damn thing that comes out of her mouth.

She refers to him as an "Adonis." How very Bella Swan of her.

She's still awkward, he's still cold and handsome and aloof. He uses the word "incentivize," which makes me want to strangle someone. She interviews him about his success, and he starts spouting arrogant bullcrap. She's understandably annoyed, and calls him a control freak, and he's pretty much like, Hellz yeah, bitch! She's disgusted by his arrogance, of course.

She does get him to admit that he invests in farming technologies because he wants to help feed starving people, or something. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless he's investing in farming technologies in East Africa, but okay, I'll just go with it. He goes off on a spiel about wanting to "possess things" and how he's the "ultimate consumer." Gee, can you tell a TV exec wrote this?

He figures out, using his super-duper investigative powers, that Ana is only there because she happens to be friends with the girl who was supposed to do the interview, not because she's an actual journalist or anything. As a result, he decides he gets to ask her questions about her personal life now. Suddenly, and for pretty much no reason at all, he's all offering her an internship at his company and shit. She's incredibly freaked out by this, which makes sense since he's basically offering her a job based on her appearance and not her actual qualifications. She hightails it out of there ASAP.

As soon as she's outside, she tries to figure out why "no man has ever affected [her] the way Christian Grey has." She wonders if it's his wealth, power, or "civility." I think it's probably because she's all of 21 years old, so really, how many men can have "affected" her at this point?

On the drive home, she muses endlessly about why she found him so uber-sexy. She seems to believe that he has a "right" to be arrogant because he's made a lot of money or whatever. Really? Bah.

Fifty Shades of Snark- Introduction

[From here on out, I'm gonna assume that every reader is familiar with Cleolinda's Twilight Recaps and the Slacktivist's witty and fascinating serial Left Behind critiques. If you're not...become so, posthaste. You'll thank me later.]

If you've never heard of the book Fifty Shades of Grey, you have been missing out, because, dude, this shit is ridiculous. What happened was that a woman wrote a Twilight fanfiction piece and posted it on the internet, and then somehow decided that she ought to change the names and publish this stuff as an e-book. Then all these New York stay-at-home-moms became obsessed with it and then other ladies also became obsessed with it and now it's, like, an actual bestselling series. Oh, and it's an erotic novel about a BDSM relationship between a college student and a businessman. Yes, that really happened. No, I am not making this up.

I've had some friends express curiosity, interested disgust, and mild amusement at the prospect of reading this book, but few of them have actually been brave enough to jump in, considering the terrible reviews and the mountains of violently purple prose into which they would have to wade. So you know what? I'm gonna take the bullet for us all. I will sacrifice myself so that you, dear reader, can take pleasure from the horribleness of pseudo-Twilight-fanfiction-masquerading-as-actual-fiction without being forced to support the twisted literary machine that decided this shit was acceptable in the first place.

In the grand tradition of reading terrible literature and making fun of it on the internet, I've decided that I will be reading Fifty Shades of Grey and recapping it here. This way you don't have to spend money buying the books, or waste time going to the library, or kill any more of your brain cells than you absolutely must. (Although, in all fairness, you'll still lose a few. I'm not a very good writer, either.)

Aren’t you glad I’m spending my summer reading trashy fiction and complaining about it to you instead of making money to support myself? You’re welcome.

Birthday Girl

I'm 27 years old today, which isn't really a "milestone" birthday. My husband will be 30 in July, which is a much bigger deal.

But I'm still pretty stoked about my birthday. Adam took me out for my Birthday Breakfast (which is always what I want for my birthday gift--breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and Adam always takes me to Le Pain Quotidien for bread and coffee), and my parents sent me a card with some birthday money, and it's a beautiful day today, although it's going to be hot as the dickens.

I never really get why people are so upset about being older, especially in their 20s and 30s. I mean, I guess it sucks to be closer to death, but it's also awesome to have had so many cool experiences. And there are more to be had!

I'm excited to head towards 30. I'm excited to move, to learn, to grow with my husband. I'm excited for all the adventures that await us.

One thing I'm deeply grateful for is that I've actually become the person I always wanted to grow up to be. So really, no matter what comes next, I'll still be that person...just stronger, smarter, and hopefully more financially stable in the years to come. ;)

Weekend Notes

This is all gonna be kind of a jumble. Sorry, I'm kind of jumbled up in general right now.

We're having a pretty awesome weekend, I must say. Adam and I spent the day enjoying the sunshine--we went to Trader Joe's, strolled to Washington Square Park to enjoy the musical stylings of a wandering grand piano player, and then enjoyed a BBQ at the seminary with some friends. There were awesome foodstuffs, great people, and delicious mint juleps! Now we've just finished the first two episodes of Game of Thrones, which was pretty durn good; I didn't think I'd be into it, but I'm pretty much already hooked.

Tomorrow I'm skipping church (HORRORS!) to finish up a writing audition for a new freelance job I'm hoping to get--they liked my resume, so now I'm hoping they'll like my writing style, too. It'd be nice to have some form of income after I quit my job, so I'm looking to keep myself busy with smaller writing projects. And tomorrow evening Adam and I are going to see a production of Julius Caesar at Baruch, which should be pretty awesome. You really can't go wrong with Shakespeare, and I was lucky enough to marry a man who enjoys that sort of thing, so long as there is plenty of murder and revenge involved.

Two more weeks of full-time employment. Only a month until Adam's graduation, and then we'll move a week later.

I'll be 27 on Monday.

Life is moving pretty fast these days.

Virgin Mary, College Student

I was on Facebook this morning and saw a sidebar ad that, bizarrely, made my day:



I love imagining the Virgin Mary nursing Jesus as she completes her MBA from the University of Phoenix.

Let's stop beating each other up, shall we?

This morning I read a fabulous piece by Ashley Judd in the Daily Beast. I think you should read it, too.

Here's the short version, in case you're feeling lazy: Ashley Judd appeared on TV a few weeks back with a seemingly puffy face. Instantly, everyone in the universe freaked out, including actual news stations, who spent far more time than they needed to spend (read: any time at all) analyzing what was "wrong" with her. People accused her of having "work" done, and of using facial injections (i.e., Botox). In reality, the actress had been suffering from a serious sinus infection and had been taking antibiotics, and had consequently gained a small amount of weight.

In her essay, Judd attacks "the assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification" that lead to the freak-out about her face. She does an excellent job of dissecting the media circus that erupted around her appearance, with various "experts" commenting on the supposed plastic surgery they "concluded" she must have had.

But she does a particularly good job calling out other women for fueling such viciousness:

"That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women."

Women are often active participants in reinforcing patriarchal norms. I caught myself being just as vicious last week, when Samantha Brick's infamous article "Why women hate me for being beautiful" went viral and began clogging up my newsfeed. In it, the author-- a sensationalist columnist known for her ridiculous, inflammatory remarks-- claims that other women hate her, ignore her, unfriend her, and distrust her because of her looks. And like many women I know, my first reaction was not to think, "Gee, what a nasty attitude," or "Man, she seems full of it," but rather to look at her photo and think, "Ugh, she's not pretty at all!"

Despite the fact that this woman has clearly been the victim of emotional domestic abuse (see here, here, and here), many of us had no pity for her. And many more of us felt instinctually, not interest in her high self-esteem or discomfort at her arrogance, but disgust that she dared to call herself beautiful when we felt she was really quite ordinary.

Your appearance is not your worth. Your weight, your youth, your zits, your makeup, your clothes-- those aren't who you are. You aren't a number on a scale. You aren't a certain candle count on a birthday cake. You aren't a size 2 dress or a perfect shade of red or your fine lines or your wrinkles or the bags under your eyes.

You are not your fucking khakis.

Triduum

This year was the first time I've ever been able to go to Good Friday services at Stiggy's. Usually I have to work and all, but this year I finally took my discretionary holiday and stayed home. So for the first time, I'll be able to go to all three Triduum services-- Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil.

I hate Lent as a general rule, but the Triduum makes it totally worth it. And the Vigil is one of my three favorite services (the other two being Christmas Eve and Blessing of the Animals), even though I'm exhausted by the time it rolls around.

I've learned a lot at Stiggy's, even though (or maybe because) it's so different from my home church and my family's traditions. And beyond what I've learned about Anglo-Catholicism and orthodoxy, I've also learned things about myself, clarified what I believe and why I worship the way I do. Part of that has come from constantly negotiating compromises between the Anglo-Catholic traditions and my own, more Protestant, theology (I'll kneel for the Eucharistic prayers but not for the Creed; I'll genuflect before the altar but with a curtsy, not a full-blown kneel; I'll venerate the cross on Good Friday with the triple genuflection and prostrate myself before it, but I don't kiss it; etc.), and part of it comes from being exposed to new ways of worshiping and thinking about God. I certainly enjoy all the Latin, that's for sure.

I don't know where we'll end up, liturgically speaking. Adam did his field work within very high church traditions, and he likes them, but I think he's ready for a change. I think I am, too. I guess it'll all depend on where he gets a job, and what kinds of churches we find in Chicago.

Let the church-hunting begin, I guess!

In Defense of Open Table

It's Maundy Thursday. What better time to reflect upon the practice of communion?

Recently, a lot of my seminarian friends on Facebook have been posting articles opposing the practice of Open Table in the Episcopal Church. For those of you who don't know what that means, Open Table is the practice of permitting everyone--even the unbaptized-- to receive the Eucharist, instead of restricting communion only to baptized persons. Currently, the canons on the Episcopal Church reserve communion for the baptized, so practicing Open Table communion is currently not sanctioned by the church. However, it is being considered at General Convention this year, and there is a chance that we may strike the sentence in the canons that prevents the unbaptized from receiving the body and blood of Christ Jesus.

I have, I must confess, been a fan of this idea from the get-go, and so has my home parish. My initial acceptance was pretty knee-jerk: Jesus practiced radical hospitality, so therefore we must practice radical hospitality. In fact (and here I think I can reveal to you a not-so-secret, since the priest who performed our ceremony retired immediately afterwards and isn't in any danger of getting into trouble), Open Table was practiced at our wedding, nearly four years ago. I didn't even request it-- our priest, a dear friend and excellent pastor, was just responding to the situation as he saw it, which was that the vast majority of the people present at the service were not Episcopalians, and that most were not even Christians. He saw that these people, most of whom had not be baptized, felt moved by the sight of two Christian people being joined together by the Holy Spirit and wanted to be a part of that sacred moment. It was a good response, I think-- not just pastorally, but theologically.

I have read the theological arguments against Open Table (or, as most opponants call it, "Communion Without Baptism"), and I do appreciate and respect a lot of the thinking behind it. And I agree that, even though I think priests need to feel free to respond to certain situations accordingly (just like at our wedding), Open Table should not be made a part of the canons until we've mulled it over for awhile. I'm not sure, even as a supporter, that we're ready to move here quite yet. I guess I'm a typical Episcopalian in that I think we need a few more commissions, committees, and studies on the subject before we even propose to make such drastic changes.

But even though I respect many of the arguments put forth by the opponants of Open Table, I simply don't agree with most of them. I agree with a few, but I prioritize certain values over others, and quite frankly, I prioritize the values put forth by pro-OT arguments more than I prioritize those expressed in anti-OT arguments. As with most heated religious issues, both sides are, to an extent, correct. Each side simply holds different things dear. Everyone has to decide which correct statements are more important.

I believe that the value inherent in practicing Open Table is more important than the value inherent in restricting communion to the unbaptized.

Baptism as a Prerequisite For Understanding Communion

One of the anti-OT arguments I find most frustrating is that of baptism as a prerequisite for understanding communion. The argument, put forth by James Farwell in the Anglican Theologican Review and by Derek Olsen in his incredibly condescending post on Episcopal Cafe, is that baptism must come before communion because without baptism, we cannot understand the Eucharist. Eucharist without baptism is "grace without cost," Olsen insists, and then even more dramatically: "It represents the offer of intimacy without commitment, love without cost and that, right there, is the crime--for the cost is Christ."

Okay, fine--we'll go with that, for a moment. If you believe that baptism is the "context" of communion, so to speak--if you believe that one cannot come to the Eucharistic table without having been "warned...what awaits [you] at the table," as Olsen says, then we have a lot of work to do.

Because we obviously can't have young children taking communion anymore. I think Kathryn Tanner's rebuttal in the ATR says it best:

"Moreover, while baptism before eucharist, and eucharist as empowering mission, broadly conform with long established church practice, [this] particular understanding of the logic of participation is hard to square with the realities of church life and practice. The idea that only the informed and the committed should participate in the eucharist conflicts with the current practice of allowing infants to take communion. Are babies sufficiently informed and committed by virtue of their baptism?...[this] logic of participation in the eucharist is also in danger of wildly overestimating the degree to which baptized Christians—in any period of church history—are committed and informed…the idea that you “already” know what the Christian life is all about before you get to the table…oddly suggests that baptism somehow completely or finishes the catechetical process. And it completely downplays the capacity of the eucharist to inform and shape the character of Christian life through participation in it."

I'm sorry, but I think, if we want to work under such assumptions, we need to eliminate infant baptism. You can't seriously believe that a five-month-old baby is more committed to the Christian life than a 55-year-old man who began exploring his faith five months ago. That's just...ridiculous.

If you prefer, we could go in the other direction and make confirmation a requirement for Eucharist. That would make more sense. But of course, then we can't let kids have communion, which is not going to please a lot of parents, lemme tell you. If you want a fun PR moment, let someone catch a priest denying communion to their cherubic seven-year-old son. And that still doesn't solve the problem of what to do when baptized Christians from other denominations--ones that don't do confirmation--come to visit. Do we deny them communion, too? What about people with severe mental handicaps, who can't fully understand the theology behind the Eucharist? What about people with severe Alzheimer's, who understood it once but remember nothing now?

Eucharist and the Last Supper

James Farwell argues in the ATR that we must reject the assertion made by scholars of the Jesus Seminar that "the synoptic accounts of the eucharistic meal and the account of 1 Corinthians are retrojections of later ecclesiastical practice into the earliest period," and I do agree with him here. (How could I not, when he's quoting John Koenig? I mean really.) I don't think it's impossible that our Gospel accounts of the Last Supper might be historically accurate--and even if they're not, they still might be theologically reasonable. As Farwell says, "Given his practice of preaching and symbolizing his hope for an inbreaking kingdom of God through meal images and practices, it is not unreasonable to imagine that [Jesus] might have gathered with his disciples in the last hour, under the shadow of the impending culmination of his conflict with temple leaders, for an intimate meal that focused, in symbolic words and actions, the vision of his hoped-for kingdom."

I think that's fair. What I don't understand is the leap from "meal with the disciples" to "meal that is intended ONLY for the disciples, even if non-disciples happen to be there."

Farwell explains that, in light of the Last Supper and the fact that Jesus ate it with his "initiated" friends, "...it is reasonable for us today about who participates in that meal and whether they have committed themselves to the vision that animated Jesus. Such a practice is not inhospitable, but simply focused for a certain 'audience.'" But to my mind, that parallel between the disciples at the Last Supper and the baptized Christians in the "audience" of the church doesn't work because at the Last Supper, there weren't any non-disciples present, either. We don't know how Jesus would have reacted to a non-disciple who wanted to partake.

I don't really see how the Last Supper indicates that Jesus wanted this meal to be a symbolic service only for the baptized. According to my lexicon here, the word "disciple" in Greek is "mathetes," which means "learner" or "pupil." It does not mean "initiate." It does not mean "official member." It means "learner." It means one who is learning, who is in transition. A disciple is not necessarily one who is marked and set apart by the one he/she follows; it is one who simply begins following.

Since we don't have any evidence that there were non-disciples hanging around at the Last Supper, and even if there were, there isn't any evidence that Jesus turned them away from the table or warned them not to participate, I don't think we can conclude that communion as a reenactment of the last supper pressuposes the exclusion of the unbaptized just because the people who were there were probably all baptized. I mean, really, all the disciples (at least the Twelve) were men; do we then pressuppose that the Eucharist is meant to be shared only with men? From what we know of Jesus, if one of his disciples had his kid brother tag along, wouldn't Jesus have shared the meal with him, too? I'm having trouble imagining Jesus looking into the face of a disciple's unbaptized friend or cousin or son and saying, "Nope, sorry, come back when you're baptized."

John 15:15 has Jesus telling his disciples: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." He says this after communion, not before. It was sharing the meal and listening to his words that made the disciples Jesus' friends, not their baptism.

One of the reasons I have always loved the Episcopal Church is because it is liturgically intentional. The pomp and circumstance actually all means something; we don't do it because it's pretty, we do it because it is meaningful to us.

But at a certain point, I think we sometimes forget that theory is much less important than reality. It's fine to think we mean one thing, but if the message that is being sent is an entirely different message than we mean to send, we need to re-evaluate what we're doing, period. The bottom line is that, for me, attempting to imbue a ritual with a particular specific meaning is less important than changing people's lives through Christ. And the fact of the matter is that not everyone's path to Christ is the same. Not everyone's journey with God begins with baptism. Everyone's life is different; we need to be visionary enough to recognize that, just as some babies are born breech, some people may just come into the Christian life backwards, as it were.

The whole point of "radical hospitality" is that IT IS RADICAL. It's hard to be radical when you're always just following the rules, when you keeping doing things one way because that's the way things have always been done. The whole point of radical hospitality is that it challenges assumptions about who is "in the know," about who "belongs." Open Table does that. And no matter what we decide to do, I'm glad and grateful that we've at least taken the time to think hard about what these things mean to us, about what baptism and communion and community are in the Episcopal Church.