Featured at Postcolonial Networks

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

Check it out!

Invisibility and Silence - my article!
Plural Space
Postcolonial Networks

Spiritual Friendship

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

Let's talk about X, baby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Triumph?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections on September 11th

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

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

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

On the Enfleshed Word

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

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

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

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

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

My God, How Great Thou Art

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

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

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

Refrain

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

Refrain

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

Refrain

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

How Great Thou Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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