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Someone Cooler than I

Promises, promises.  I said in this morning’s post that I would lead you to someone cooler than I am in tonight’s post.  I’m late with that, but it’s for a good reason.  I spent the evening in the company of my sisters and their families.  It was worth it.

Anyway, here is a person I think you should track: Brian McLaren.

Back in 2009, I was struggling to make sense of the fundamentalist fog I’d lived in.  I felt as though I had very little spiritual direction, but I could no longer subscribe to much of the theology that had informed my faith for twenty years.  The problem was, I didn’t have anyone at the time who had been through it and came out on the other side.  Nearly everyone I knew still held to all (or almost all) of the things I was ready to leave behind.

And then I read a little book called The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle.  She makes reference to Brian McLaren, among others.  I decided to check out some of the people mentioned in the book.  I quickly discovered that McLaren was the one who interested me most.  He appeared to have gone on a spiritual journey that mirrored mine, and he made reference to C. S. Lewis.  Those two things made him already a kind of kindred spirit in my mind, so I went in search of his books.

Our local library didn’t have a copy of A Generous Orthodoxy, unfortunately, and the one copy in the system was already checked out.  Fortunately, another branch carried some of his titles.  I brought home copies of Everything Must Change and A New Kind of Christian.

My husband quickly devoured Everything Must Change, but I wasn’t quite ready for it.  I started with A New Kind of Christian (ANKoC).  My world was turned upside down from page one.  Before, I had been unable to put words to what I’d been feeling, muddling through and hoping that I would just recapture the faith I thought I’d lost.  Instead, I found someone else who did have the right words.  He named it and embraced it.  I felt as though McLaren himself had stepped into my living room for a chat, reassuring me that I wasn’t crazy and that I wasn’t on the verge of turning into an angry former Christian.

Again and again, McLaren writes with this same conversational style.  I finished the rest of the series that begins with ANKoC (The Story We Find Ourselves In, The Last Word and the Word After That), then went on to read many of his other books.  Two years ago, I read A New Kind of Christianity and learned about the flawed narrative that overlays much of our theology and doctrine.  I listened to his series of podcasts walking through the Bible, while simultaneously listening to the entire Bible on MP3.  Last year, I learned how to pray again by reading Naked Spirituality.  In short, McLaren is my go-to guy when I need to read or hear something spiritually uplifting.

And that sums up what I like about his style—it’s a pick-me-up, gentle and humble in tone.  Although he does make some good points, theologically speaking, it’s never a matter of having to wade through theology-ese.  One doesn’t need to have a PhD in religious studies to make sense of what he says.  Heck, one doesn’t even need to be a Christian.

If you can, check out some of McLaren’s books from the library.  Read his blog.  E-mail him a question (as far as I can tell, he answers all of them).  Even if you end up disagreeing, he is worth checking out.  If you live near me, I will loan you my copies of his ANKoC series, because I believe it’s that important.

I’m looking forward to reading his next book.

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And Now We Even Want to Vote

Bonus post today!  I promise that later, I will thrill you with a post about someone a lot cooler than I am, so you can go read that person’s blog.  Or stalk them on Twitter.  Whatever.  For now, I want to talk about Girl Scouts.

A friend posted this article on Facebook:

In a letter obtained by The Journal-Gazette of Fort Wayne on Monday, Rep. Bob Morris of Fort Wayne said he did some research on the Internet and found allegations that the Girl Scouts are a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood, allow transgender females to join and encourage sex.

“After talking to some well-informed constituents, I did a small amount of web-based research, and what I found is disturbing,” Morris wrote in his letter, which also accused the group of promoting “homosexual lifestyles.”

Oh, Bob.  Bob, Bob, Bob.  What are you thinking?  I’m happy for you that your “web-based research” led you to sites which back up what you apparently already believed.  But I’m unclear on what you think will happen as a result.  Are you suggesting that by joining Girl Scouts, our daughters are going to turn into sexually indiscriminate lesbians?

Do you know what my daughter learns at her troop meetings?  She learns how to make crafts out of things in our recycle bin.  She learns how to care for animals by protecting their environment.  Last year, she and the other girls made an indoor garden, which they watered and tended.  They were allowed to eat the food they had grown.  This year, my daughter improved her reading skills by reading aloud to her fellow scouts and parents.  She has learned how to speak up for herself and she’s learned self-confidence.

Not once has she learned about anything remotely resembling sex education.

I was a Girl Scout for nine years.  I went camping, I sold cookies, I made friends, and I took a trip to Alaska (yes, really).  I didn’t “turn into” a lesbian.  I didn’t learn about sex or abortions.  I didn’t receive free condoms or pamphlets on safer sex.  There is no badge for sex education and sexuality.

You know what?  Rep. Morris is right.  GSA does indeed accept transgendered, lesbian, and bisexual youth, as well as adults as volunteers and leaders.  Girls and adults are not included or excluded based on their religion (or lack thereof).  In fact, they have a stated non-discrimination policy.  (It’s not perfect, but it is very good.)  But where Rep. Morris is confused is how that will affect our daughters or our society.

The fact that Boy Scouts actually does have a policy (whether individual packs/dens choose to follow it or not) which discriminates against gays and atheists hasn’t necessarily made our society better.  The fact that Girl Scouts is non-discriminatory hasn’t made it any worse.

Rep. Morris seems blissfully unaware of just how he comes across.  His case against GSA is actually a straw-man argument.  He is really targeting Planned Parenthood, using his perceived connection with GSA.  He, and others like him, seem not to see how this is connected to the way that women’s health care and sexuality have been undermined.  By going after GSA, he is trying to take down one of the best organizations for young women—one which encourages girls to find their voices and use them.

My daughter, through her experiences in GSA, is already learning how to channel her energy into positive leadership skills.  I hope and pray that she grows into the kind of women who won’t let men like Rep. Morris bully her or any other woman.

Long live GSA.

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A Work of Art

This week, my daughter and I have been studying art history and styles.  On Thursday, the theme was sculpture.  We read a book about famous sculptures around the world.  For the most part, the book was very good.  In fact, I only had one problem with the book.

The photo of Michelangelo’s David.

Apparently, this book was written by people who think that children are going to be ruined for life if they see naked people.  Although the book showed every other sculpture in its entirety (and the ornate Shrine of the Three Kings in great detail), David was shown only in parts, like so:

Why?

It’s not that there wasn’t room, or even that it was more important to show the details of the sculpture.  The other works were shown in full, with individual parts highlighted.  Why didn’t this, possibly the most famous sculpture in Western art, receive the same treatment?

Are we that afraid that our kids are going to see a penis?  What do we think might happen if they do?

This is art.  Michelangelo didn’t create this piece for the purpose of creating sexual arousal.  The human body is extraordinarily beautiful, something captured fully in this wonderful sculpture.  I am not worried that my children will be damaged by admiring it.  I’m not even worried that their curiosity about the human form might be piqued, or that they might giggle a little and point out that David’s private parts aren’t covered up.  It provides an opportunity to talk to them.  Seeing a naked statue doesn’t offend me.

Refusing to acknowledge it does.

We live in a world where the human form has become so sexualized that women are told to cover up when they breastfeed in public and David is shown in pieces to avoid revealing his naughty bits. Modesty has been reduced to a list of inappropriate clothing items.  We have to do a better job!  We need to make a better distinction between what is done for the purpose of inducing sexual arousal and that which is done for the purpose of nurturing a child, creating a work of great art, or expressing one’s unique self.  The former is known as pornography; the latter is not.

Next time I check out a book on sculpture for my kids, I’m going to make sure that David is shown in all his magnificent beauty.

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Motherhood: A Visual

Saw this on some friends’ Facebook pages:

Let’s break this down by picture, shall we?

1. My friends who don’t have kids sometimes don’t understand why I want to stay home.  But they have never, ever imagined that my home is a war zone.  They know me and they know my kids.

2. My mother is no longer living.  However, I am sure she would not have imagined me as a June Cleaver wannabe.  She was a stay-at-home mom herself, so I’m sure she knows the realities.  My mother-in-law, who is around the age my mother would have been, was not a stay-at-home mom.  As far as I know, she doesn’t imagine me enjoying housework.  Or wearing that to do it in.

3. I can guarantee with 100% certainty that my husband does not believe I watch television all day.  I’m glad I married him.

4. What, exactly, does being a stay-at-home mom have to do with co-sleeping?  I know plenty of families, with all sorts of work/stay home configurations, in which co-sleeping was part of parenting.  I doubt that “society” associates the two.  Also, those kids look pretty happy to me.  If society thinks that staying home with the kids is one way to create a loving, happy family, then I’m not complaining.

5. I have no delusions of grandeur.

6. Aaaaand…nope.  My days are, and always have been, a lot more boring than that.  My eight-year-old multitasks better than I do.  Huh, I guess according to that, he’s going to make one heck of a stay-at-home mom.

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What to do…what to do…

I am fully convinced that a lot of Christians have no idea what to do with lesbians.

No, really.

Every time I hear a sermon or message or read something that came out of a church publication, it’s always about what “caused” men to “turn gay.”  It’s all about having an overbearing mother, or daddy issues, or having been sexually abused, or whatever.  It’s also usually followed by some ranting which involves the typical stereotypes of gay men.  Nothing about lesbians, though.

So I wondered: Do these people even know any lesbians?

The only thing I ever hear about gay women is usually something along the lines of needing the right man to come along.  By that logic, I could become a lesbian if the right woman came along.  Well, as much as I’m sure that I’m God’s gift to lesbians everywhere*, that’s just not going to happen.

I can relate.  I used to be one of those people.  But at some point, I started to think that it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  If having an “overbearing” mother turns men gay, then does the opposite work on women?  Or does the helicopter mother cause some weird desire in women to be dominated by another woman?  How come the absentee daddy thing makes men want each other, but makes women hate men**?  I kept thinking I must be missing something.

What’s missing is that this is all from the vantage point of straight men.  Of course I can’t relate to it or understand it.  All this time, I thought maybe it had to do with not knowing enough gay people, not knowing enough real stories of people’s histories and experiences.  But I’m pretty sure that’s not it.

Whoever started all the “theories” was/is threatened by gay men.  I’m not saying everyone who repeats the stupidity is feeling threatened (though it wouldn’t surprise me).  But the person or people who came up with those ideas in the first place almost certainly was.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that some men seem to have an unnatural fear that their masculinity is at risk somehow.  The reason that lesbians don’t fit into that narrow mindset is that they aren’t perceived as a threat.  After all, they must just need a man to change their minds.  (Not to mention how often two women getting it on is featured in erotica for men.)  The reason women aren’t bothered is that we don’t see our femininity as being in danger because another woman wants to wear flannel or eschew make-up or sleep with other women.

If I’m honest, I suspect that the reason this stuff gets recycled by the church is not because of a need for hypermasculinity.  It’s because many people want a social reason to back up what they read in Scripture.  Many Christians feel like they are fighting a losing battle, holding onto a belief in the sinfulness of homosexuality in a world perceived as embracing it.  So the need to defend the position grows, and the need to have reasons beyond the Bible with it.  This is especially true given the number of young people coming out, and the age at which many people discover their sexual orientation.  If Christians can reach into the family atmosphere to explain things, then they can prove it’s not innate.

Repeating unproven theories developed by men with an emasculation complex isn’t useful.  Reciting tired bullet points from other people’s sermons effectively stops the dialogue.  It’s a great way to put our fingers in our ears and sing, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you” when LGBT folks try to speak.  It’s also a good way to deny the existence or needs of gay women.  We need to do a lot more listening and a lot less theorizing.

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*I hope everyone knows I’m kidding.
**I don’t actually know any lesbians who hate men.

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Victimized or Attention-Seeking?

After the Epic Grammy Fail of allowing Chris Brown to “redeem” himself by performing, there was an understandable amount of backlash.  What I didn’t quite follow was why some people still wanted to blame the victim.

I saw several comments about how Rihanna is a “drama queen,” that she was milking it, and that she tends to attract this sort of thing.  My question is, does that make it okay for Chris Brown to bash her face in?  Seriously?  On what planet, regardless of a person’s propensity for the bizarre, is it okay—ever—for a significant other to send them to the hospital?  No, really, I want to know.

The worst part is, this attitude is far from being a few nutcases on the fringe.  Otherwise normal, reasonable people still want to blame the victim, especially in partner violence.  Some people think it’s their right to wonder what the victim did to provoke it, what they could have done to stop it, or what they should do in the future to prevent it.

It happens with rape, too.  I took a “violence prevention course” back in college.  I recall thinking even then that the class had the feel of blaming the victim.  If one of us had been violated, would it really have been our fault that we didn’t carry our keys in hand and remember to poo on the attacker to deter him?

If there is any question about whether or not Chris Brown is a) sorry and b) still a girlfriend-beating a-hole, then let me put it to rest.  Here are his two tweets after the controversy.  Note that neither is any attempt at remorse or apology:

HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY Now! That’s the ultimate F**** OFF!

IM BACK SO WATCH MY BaCK as I walk away from all this negativity #teambreezygrammy.

Really, Chris Brown?  That’s your best shot?  How about, “I was wrong and I’m sorry.  I’m trying to be a different person.  It’s not okay to hurt others.”

Message for everyone who still thinks that Rihanna “deserved” it somehow, or at least benefited from it:  Shut up.

Message for people who have lived through abuse from a significant other:  It’s not your fault.  You didn’t deserve it.  Talking about it isn’t shameful, it helps others who are living through it too.  It’s not your fault.  People who think asking for help and sharing your story mean you love drama are not worth your time.  No, really, it’s not your fault.  You’re not a bad person if you returned to that relationship.  It’s not your fault.

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A Valentine Worth Following

I’m not a huge fan of Hallmark-induced holidays.  But I am a fan of love, marriage, sex, and my husband, all things worthy of celebration on Valentine’s Day.  Because I adore him, today’s “follow me” post is about—you guessed it—my husband.

I could tell you all the things I love about my husband, and why you should love him too.  But I think I may be a bit biased, so don’t just take my word for it.

Even though I’m the one who writes, my husband does keep a blog.  It’s highly specific, and not everyone’s cup of tea.  He’s not all about his personal journey or his life experiences or finding new asinine things said by Mark Driscoll.  He leaves that up to me.

Instead, Hubby is taking a 9-year trip through the Bible, dashing off his thoughts as he reads.  He took a brief break in 2010 to lead our church through the Bible in one year, but returned to regular updates last year.  He is currently at the midpoint of the read-through.

If what you want is a daily chunk of Scripture and a thought or two to go along with it, then join my husband for the back half of his reading.  If you prefer to start at the beginning, you can find all his posts archived on his blog.

You can check it all out here: Nine Year Bible (the link is also in my blogroll). ♥

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Sunshine, Happiness and Gum*

The youth at our church are going through a series called “Happy,” on the Beatitudes.  In yesterday’s message, the youth pastor asked what culture says they should chase after to find happiness.  The answers weren’t surprising: Looks, relationships, money, popularity, possessions.

Not much changes between adolescence and adulthood.

It set me thinking about a couple of things.  First, it occurred to me that we don’t just tell people that they will be happy once they beautify themselves skinny, meet Mr./Ms Right, and settle down in their McMansion with their 2.4 children.  We also tell them that if they don’t have all that and a side salad of career power, they should actually be unhappy.  It goes beyond conveying the message that having it all makes your life good, but that your life simply cannot be good unless and until you do.

The second thing I realized is that Christians are just as guilty of this.**  We like to tell ourselves we aren’t.  After all, aren’t we so counter-culture in our insistence that life isn’t about money, sex, and power?  We’re all about Jesus!  And Love!  And Following God!  I don’t even mean that in a self-righteous way.  I mean in the sense that we define ourselves by being people who have relationship with the Living God, and what could be better than that?

It’s certainly noble.  The problem is, we make the opposite mistake from “the world.”  We assume that people who are “far from God” are the most unhappy, miserable people who do nothing but run after all the wrong things.  We assume that people of other religions are unhappy because they are too busy making sure they follow all the rules.  We assume atheists are sad because they have no hope.  We assume that people who tick the “none of the above” box on the census are miserable because they have no morals.  We assume that anyone who doesn’t follow Jesus is desperate to have his or her life turned around from the wicked ways of lusting after earthly pleasures.

Not quite.

I don’t know about you, but I know plenty of joy-filled, content non-Christians.  I also know an awful lot of Christians who are unhappy, and it isn’t because they don’t have enough faith or because they are still caught up in pursuit of cultural happiness.  Religion that dictates whether or not we should be happy with our lives is religion gone bad.  It diminishes the real joy and the real pain that people experience.

I see why it happens.  People are reluctant to frighten their friends and neighbors by telling them they will go to Hell if they don’t convert.  (Not that this is bad; scaring people into faith is pretty sick.)  So what can we do, if we don’t just want to turn everyone off to Christ with our fire and brimstone?  Aha!  We can remind them how hopeless and tragic this life is unless they know Jesus.  Unfortunately, that isn’t an improvement.

We need better ways to communicate the Gospel without reducing it to a set of before-and-after pictures (either the Hell kind or the happiness kind).  I suggest we start by living the way Jesus taught, pursuing love, peace, and justice.  The rest will come.

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*For the morbidly curious, the title of this post is a line from a Phineas and Ferb song.
**This isn’t meant as a criticism of the message the youth heard in church on Sunday.

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What Boys Can’t Do

This morning, S and I took a break from school to just read together.  We cuddled up in what the kids call the “hot corner” in our living room.  (It’s a space between our sofa and love seat where the heating vent is.  The kids have it set up with a blanket and a large floor pillow.)  We read one of the American Girl books, the first one I’ve read to her.  She picked the one about the girl living during the Great Depression.

I have to admit, I think I enjoyed the story as much as she did.  We talked about how Kit, the main character, is a bit of a tomboy.  She doesn’t like anything pink or frilly, and she loves sports.  S told me about the things she has in common with Kit and the ways she is different.  We also had the chance to talk about the history, what it was like for many families in the 1930s.

It was such an engaging story that I wanted to find out if there was anything similar for boys.  J has read the My America books, but there are only two boy characters, and the stories cover a limited time period.  The American Girl books span most of United States history.  Sadly, there isn’t anything else like the AG books for boys.

As I pondered what I should do, I realized that I was doing exactly what I’ve said I wouldn’t do.  I was creating a literary box for my kids, and placing them in it.  I had decided that J needed “boy” books, as he couldn’t possibly read books about girls.  Right then, I made a decision.

I said, screw this.

Just why, again, can’t a boy read the AG series?  They aren’t especially girly, they just feature female lead characters.  But even if they were, why can’t boys enjoy them?

We don’t bat an eye at girls who want to read about Tom Sawyer or Jim Hawkins or Harry Potter or Frodo Baggins.  I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and all the Bunnicula books with both my kids, and didn’t concern myself with whether my daughter could relate to the male characters.  I even read the Ramona books with J, and we’ve enjoyed other books with strong female characters.  The other day, J was looking with interest at The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I told him we could read the series, but if he wanted to, he could read that one.  They don’t have to be read in order.

How are the AG books any different?  Why shouldn’t J read them?

I can’t think of even one reason not to let him.