Monthly Archives: October 2004

Feminism, food, and pleasure

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My students, particularly but not exclusively my female ones, report a great deal of fantasizing in classes. No, silly, it’s not about their teacher.

It’s about food. In journal after journal, I read about my students’ love/hate relationship with food. Compared to food fantasies, sex comes in a distant second as the subject about which so many young people are preoccupied. And though I’ve touched on this before, I feel compelled at this point in the semester to bring it up again: food is a feminist issue.

A number of feminist writers (Susan Bordo chief among them) have noted that in recent decades, our eating behavior has been increasingly couched in moral terms. Only far-right social conservatives use terms like “decadent” to describe contemporary culture — but we all use it to describe rich, fattening desserts. We speak of “devil’s food” and “tempting tastes.” More basically, my students talk about themselves as “good” and “bad” in terms of their eating behavior. When I hear a girl say “I was so bad today”, I can be almost certain that what will follow is a food-related confession. When I hear another say, “I was good all morning”, I am fairly confident that she will not then relate a story of volunteering at the homeless shelter! Good, in contemporary parlance, means abstinence, self-control, self-denial; bad means indulgence, eating to satiety, pleasure.

Of course, there are always those students of both genders who claim to be blissfully unaffected by our cultural preoccupation with thinness and concomitant food restriction. I suspect that some of them are in denial (the old “refusing to be a victim” bit), while a lucky few may be genuinely untouched by concern about eating. They are fortunate, but they are also rare among American tween, teen, and twenty-something women.

I am a great believer that one of the most important narratives in feminist history is that of women’s struggle to gain the right to pleasure. Broadly speaking, patriarchal culture tells women that their only source of permissable pleasure and happiness is centered on others: one can derive joy from feeding one’s child, but not from feeding oneself; one can derive joy from pleasing one’s husband in bed, but not from masturbation; one can derive joy from putting one’s husband through law school, but not for putting oneself through. And so on. This is what feminists call the “doctrine of contingent happiness” — the old fancy that virtuous women only derive real, enduring joy solely through sharing with others.

As a Christian, I am a profound believer in the importance of self-sacrifice. There are times and places where self-denial is indeed virtuous, particularly when self-indulgence would cause obvious harm to others. But traditional culture makes the mistake of turning self-sacrifice into an idol. Self-denial is blessed when it draws us closer to God or when it benefits others — but it is not blessed in and of itself. Dieting for the sake of beauty is a form of destructive self-denial that follows an old pattern: “good women” repress and control their base, physical desires.

To paint with broad strokes, earlier periods in American culture demonized women’s sexuality. (Certain elements in our culture continue to do so.) But a healthy percentage of American society has, for better or worse, become reluctant to use moral terms to describe their own sexual behavior or that of others. The language of “to each his or her own” has become dominant, and I’m fairly confident that that is something of a good thing. But today, we demonize women’s appetite for food using the same language our forebears used for sex: “sinful”, “decadent”, “bad.” We have stopped condemning one essential human activity and begun to attack another.

Food is our first pleasure, I tell my students. Our first experience of joy as children may be of being fed, of having our hunger satiated. In our old age, when we are too feeble to do much else, one of our final pleasures will be our meals. (I note that my great aunt, 95 this year, has one daily event she anticipates above all else: lunch.) Far more often than sex (presumably), delicious food will bring us delight over and over and over again over the course of our lives. Therefore, any ideology that seeks to limit that pleasure for the sake of beauty or conformity is inherently anti-feminist and anti-human.

I am not advocating over-eating as a feminist act. Eating far more than is healthy is an act of self-loathing, not self-love. But I am arguing against what I see as a “war on pleasure” in our contemporary culture. I want the young women I work with and teach to be unashamed of all of their natural, healthy, appetites. I want them to see that their own desires for food and sex are good in and of themselves. I want them to see their bodies as their own, and I want them to understand that while pleasing others is indeed a source of joy, it ought never be the sole source of delight in their lives.

And so this week, I’m giving them the following optional assignment: While out with friends or family or others whose opinion they value, I want my students to eat as much as they want of something they truly, deeply, crave. And they need to do so without describing themselves as “bad”. (This is a tough one for most of my students, I’ve found.)

Again, I’m absolutely convinced that real liberation comes in the bold assertion of one’s right to pleasure — and pleasure ought never be solely about bringing joy to others. Women’s bodies are not merely for making babies and pleasing husbands (or parents, or peers, or fashion designers): they are gifts of God intended first and foremost for the delight of their occupants! And when we as embodied persons delight in our flesh, we honor the extraordinary gift that is Creation itself.

Running, confirmation class, and persecuted Episcopalians

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‘Twas a busy weekend. A few notes:

Saturday morning, five of us went out for a twenty-mile trail run. Thanks to last week’s heavy rain, the fire danger in the national forest has disappeared, temporarily at least; the forests have been reopened to runners and hikers and bikes and horses. We had a fine outing, though as soon as we met (we start at the Rose Bowl and then head up to the forest), I laid down the law: no discussion of politics on the run. Period. No exceptions. Our running group on Saturday was made up of three liberal Democrats, one conservative Republican, and one moderate independent (who happens to be married to the Republican). Usually, our most liberal member (not your blogger) and our most conservative member end up verging on nasty clashes over Iraq, abortion, what have you. Twice in the past two months, one or the other has either raced on ahead or dropped back from the pack in frustration. I am happy to report that my edict was honored throughout the entire morning.

Saturday afternoon, after a shower and a nap, I headed over to church for our first overnight retreat with our 2005 confirmation class. One thing about belonging to a liberal church: it’s hard to get some kids and parents to see this kind of spiritual work as really important. Three of our ninth-grade future confirmands did not attend the overning. Two were at their school “homecoming dances”, one was cheering at an afternoon football game and then going to an afterparty. None of the parents of these kids considered confirmation class to be of equal importance with these other activities! Somehow, I suspect that priorities might be clearer at a more evangelical church.

Still, I love our first retreat of the year. At this point, most of the kids (who are all either 14 or 15) don’t know each other well, if at all. They are shy and apprehensive. But we soften them up with games and icebreaker activities, as well as an unending supply of snacks. (Hugo, fresh from his 20-miler, decided to eat somewhere between 25-30 home-made chocolate chip cookies over the course of the afternoon and evening.) My favorite game comes in the evening: “Spin the compliment, spin the web.” It’s a variation on “spin the bottle.” We sit in a circle with an empty bottle in the center; a kid spins the bottle, and then offers a sincere compliment to the person at whom the bottle ends up pointing. (This is done, obviously, after the icebreaking work.) The kids also have a ball of yard, and the complimenter tosses the ball to the complimentee when finished, while holding on to a strand of yarn herself. By the time we’re finished, everyone has been affirmed and has had a chance to affirm, and we are all bound together with yarn in a web of interconnectedness. For the touchy-feely ones among us, this is definitely a favorite. We finished the evening with a movie and discussion. We watched “Saved“, the splendid and gently biting satire of American Christian high schools. (I was reminded again why Jena Malone and Patrick Fugit are two of my favorite young actors.)

The movie led to lots of discussion about what it meant to be a Christian teenager, and to a discussion of the perils of being an openly Episcopalian teen. At least half of our kids reported being harassed or teased at school by more conservative kids because they attend All Saints, a so-called “gay church.” That is a much higher number than in previous years. Invariably, the teasing and ridicule they related centered around issues of homosexuality. Thanks to the current high profile of the Episcopal Church on the issue of homosexuality (and the especially high profile of our parish, the largest progressive Anglican parish west of the Mississippi), our youth are more of a recognizable target. The teasing they reported was predictable, and centered around questioning one of two things about our kids:

1. Our kids were often told “only gay people go to your church, so you must be gay.”

2. “Real Christians don’t believe in gay marriage, so anyone at All Saints isn’t a real Christian.”

As an adult who is instinctively protective of young people, it’s easy for me to get very, very angry when I hear about kids I love being teased, ridiculed, and denounced for their faith (and, just as often, the faith of their parents.) I want to protect them from this sort of thing. Yet of course, there’s another part of me that thinks that this rise in “anti-Episcopalianism” (however mild that form of bigotry may be) is actually good for the kids. Sometimes, our young people need to hear that following Christ (something we at All Saints understand ourselves to be doing) is painful. Sometimes, there is a cost for standing up for the marginalized. And for ninth-graders, obsessed as most of them are with just fitting in, it seems that there are few greater crosses to bear than that of being singled out and made fun of. Indeed, I confess I’m almost grateful that the kids at our progressive, inclusive church get to discover that indeed, there is a “cost of discipleship” for those of us who believe in gay marriage.

Of course, I also have some misgivings about glamorizing this. Sometimes it seems as if everyone in this country is eager to claim the mantle of a persecuted minority! Reading the internet scribblings of religious conservatives in this country, there’s little doubt that the Christian Right has a strong persecution complex. The rhetoric is familiar: “People of faith are an oppressed group, under ever-stronger attack from a rabidly secular culture!” (Sound the klaxons! Blow the shofar! Crank up Third Day, and vote Republican before the ungodly hordes take away our right to worship! You know the drill.) Persecution narratives are flattering to all of us — they make our personal spiritual choices seem brave, counter-cultural, even dangerous. They allow us to cast ourselves and our co-religionists in the pleasantly romantic light of near-martyrdom (and gosh, don’t we all look better that way?) But it’s specious, even offensive, for Christians in this country to characterize themselves as genuine victims of persecution. Last time I checked, the churches are not being driven underground as they are in China and the Sudan; more to the point, no religious conservative kid had been beaten to death (ala Matthew Shepard, who in addition to being gay, was an Episcopalian and former acolyte).

Frankly, in most American high schools outside of liberal urban areas, I’d be willing to bet that “my kids” (who attend a gay-affirming church) would be far more likely to be ridiculed and threatened than teens who belong to a conventionally conservative, evangelical community. Still, there’s no point in letting this post degenerate into a vulgar discussion of “competitive suffering.” In our increasingly polarized and uncivil religious climate, there’s plenty of ugliness on all sides. The job of those of us who work with youth is not to encourage a sense of persecution, but to emphasize that a life of faith does have costs and consequences — as well as extraordinary joy.

Election anxiety…

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I’ll confess it: I’ve been doing a fine job of avoiding the election here on the blog. Though I spend a fair amount of time keeping up with political news, I haven’t mentioned the November 2 vote in a while.

The reason is simple: I am extraordinarily anxious. I am obviously a Kerry supporter. I very much want President Bush out of office. Never have I wanted to win an election as badly as this one, and my political memory of presidential elections goes back to 1976, when as a boy of nine I walked precincts in my native Carmel by-the-Sea, passing out Carter-Mondale fliers. Though I refuse to demonize the incumbent, I can say that for a host of reasons that my fellow progressives have made clear, I do think this election is absolutely vital.

I confess I’m also a pessimist, based on life experience. I’m accustomed to being on the losing end. The very first political campaign I remember was the 1974 Democratic primary for California governor. I was seven. My mother drove us out to the Monterey Airport for a tiny rally to meet her favorite candidate, whose first name I’ve forgotten but whose last name was Roth. I remember balloons, and a straw hat band that really did play “Happy Days are Here Again.” Mr. Roth, whoever he was, shook my hand. He ended up losing the primary election to a man I came to admire very much, Jerry Brown.

A brief review of my political history:

In 1976, we supported Mo Udall for the presidency in the primary. Jimmy Carter won, and we worked for him.

In 1980, we supported Teddy Kennedy in the primary. Carter won, and then was crushed. (My mother voted for the independent in the fall, John Anderson of Illinois).

In 1984, as a high school student still a bit too young to vote, I worked on the Jesse Jackson campaign in the primary (as did many in my family). Mondale won, and then was defeated in a landslide.

In 1986, I worked on Tom Bradley’s gubernatorial campaign — he lost to George Deukmejian.

Also in 1986, I worked for my mother’s friend Charlotte Townsend, mayor of my hometown, who was defeated that spring in a landslide by… Clint Eastwood. I voted for her absentee from Berkeley. I can still remember the exact result: Townsend lost to Eastwood, 2166-799.

In 1988, I again supported Jesse Jackson in the primary — this time, with my vote. But the nomination went to Dukakis, for whom I voted in the general election — and he lost.

In 1992, I voted for Jerry Brown in the primary, but he was beaten by Clinton. I did vote for Clinton that fall, and to my utter delight and astonishment, he won.

In 1996, disgusted with Clinton’s center-right drift, I voted for Ralph Nader in the general election.

In 2000, I voted for Bill Bradley in the primary, but Gore won. I then voted for Ralph Nader in November.

This year, I gave money to and voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primary. And in eleven days, I shall vote for John Kerry.

I come from a long line of the honorably defeated! Still, this is an election unlike any other. (And that vote for Clinton in November ’92 shows that at least once before, I backed the “right horse.”)

I confess I visit Electoral Vote.Com every day to see how things are shaping up. It seems like a good site — and of course, every day the predictions fluctuate madly. And I care a great deal about California propositions as well, especially the success of props 61, 63, 66, and 72. (A near-full list of Hugo endorsements is here.)

Sigh.

Today is a busy day of grading. Four classes took midterms or turned in papers this week; three more do so next week. I will have about 284 papers and tests (all essays) to grade in the coming fortnight, and most will not be returned until after the election! Out of basic decency, I promise not to grade in front of the television on election night. I would not want my students unduly penalized or rewarded by my emotional response to whatever unfolds on November 2.

A quick note on evaluation

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This morning, I spent the better part of an hour in a colleague’s classroom, observing him as part of the "tenured faculty evaluation process."  For those of us who have tenure, once every three years we are required to undergo the TFEP.  Our division dean visits our classroom, our students fill out evaluations (in two classes that we get to pick), and we also have peer evaluators whom we select from the ranks of our fellow tenured professors.

While the student evaluations may not always be accurate or have merit (and in the age of professor rating sites on the net, one wonders), I think there is very little usefulness in peer evaluation.  Most of the time, we tend to select folks reciprocally.  I’ll ask a friend to come to my classroom; I’ll go to his.  The unspoken quid pro quo is obvious: we each write glowing summaries of the other’s teaching.  These are folks with whom I will spend the rest of my career, and I haven’t the slightest intention of putting competence before collegiality.  That sounds irresponsible, but honestly, the irresponsibility is within the system itself. 

This is not to say I don’t ever criticize my colleagues.   I once had a student approach me about a faculty member whom she felt was harassing her; I did indeed go and have a sit-down talk with him at once.   Where student safety is concerned, I’m not afraid to get in anyone’s face.  But when it comes to teaching methodologies, lecture strategies, and syllabi choices — I prefer to "let my colleagues be" because, by gum, I want them to "let me be" in return.

Even our division dean is part of this.  After all, division deans are faculty members too, selected from within the department.  If they anger tenured faculty, they are removed from administration rather rapidly.  Though they can afford to be candid with adjuncts and the untenured, wise administrators ignore all but the most flagrant cases of incompetence in the ranks of the permanently employed.

That being said, in the end I suppose that student evaluations (informally on the ‘net or formally in the classroom) are more likely to be honest reflections of teacher performance than any other instrument. 

Sexual ethics and a history lesson

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I realize my often rather breezy posts tend to exasperate some readers. I am indeed fond of sweeping generalizations and rhetorical flourish; I tend to be less fond of carefully reasoned argument. Honestly, it’s the after-effect of all of those years of grad school. I find it remarkably liberating to NOT feel compelled to defend absolutely everything I write and back it up with copious evidence. I know that tends to annoy. My half-hearted apologies!

That being said, I have been thinking about Christian sexual ethics. More specifically, I was thinking about the reason why I first came to All Saints Pasadena five and a half years ago. I first heard of All Saints back in 1991, when our former rector, George Regas, blessed what I still believe to be the first same-sex union in the worldwide Anglican Communion. I also remember being given a copy of this sermon that he had preached, outlining his reasons for taking this bold and historic step. I had the copy for a while, and then lost it. Of course, by the late 90s and the age of the Internet, it was easy to find once again.

This sermon, from October 1990, is one I often return to when I am reflecting on what it means to have a progressive Christian sexual ethic. Here are some excerpts:

At conscious and unconscious levels our spirituality and our sexuality are very much intertwined.

By spirituality, I mean all of the external, ritualistic forms that help to connect us to God, the creator. I mean also the informal ways we forge a union between our own spirit and the divine spirit, and live in God, the lover. It is a journey into God who is the ultimate power and meaning in our lives. It is the recognition that it is God in whom we live and move and have our existence. In part, that is what spirituality means.

By sexuality I do mean erotic arousal and genital expressions of love. But I mean much more. Sexuality is a basic dimension of human existence. It affects all of our thoughts and feelings and actions. Sexuality is our way of being in the world as female and male persons, and living as bodied persons with the capacity of sensuousness and touch and communion. It is our way of being in the world with certain sexual and affectional orientations. In short, sexuality is our way of being in the world by God’s design and creation—created in such a marvelous way that we can be drawn into intimacy and touch and communion. Our sexuality is all of that.

I remember reading that, and saying to myself, “Hallelujah!”

Regas goes on, turning to homosexuality:

Homosexuality in the vast majority of cases is a condition that is given and not chosen. From my own reading and personal experience with gay and lesbian persons, I am convinced that at least ninety per cent of homosexuals do not have anything remotely close to a choice in their sexual orientation. I recognize that a few say they do. Some believe they have freely chosen to be homosexuals and live out that sexual orientation. I respect that position—and honor those people.

What do we know about the causes of homosexuality? The exact causes are unknown—but it is increasingly clear that the more we know about heterosexuality the more we will understand homosexuality. It is a continuum. I don’t believe a person is absolutely straight or absolutely gay.

To deny or repress or hide one’s sexuality is bad theology and bad psychology. The only healthy thing to do is accept oneself and affirm one’s sexuality.

Bold emphasis is mine. Can you see why I ended up at All Saints? And then, this — it made me cry the first time I read it, and it still gives me chills:

At the core of the Christian faith is the simple and profound assertion: God loves you just as you are. In the Gospel the first and last word is grace. Grace means you don’t have to become something before you are loved by God. It is offered free. You can’t buy it or earn it or deserve it. All you can do is receive it. That unconditional love and generous acceptance are not marginal to our religion. They are central to our belief.

This radical acceptance is of the total person—body, mind and spirit. James Nelson says that once we allow this radical grace to penetrate and we accept the body as loved by God—we begin to reclaim the lost sexual dimensions of ourselves.

Grace is total acceptance. Our body’s feelings, our body’s erogenous dimensions, our fantasies, our masculinity and femininity, our heterosexuality, our homosexuality, our sexual irresponsibilities as well as our yearnings for sexual integrity—all of this is graciously accepted by divine love.

But what about living out our sexuality in action? Regas goes on:

(Many conservatives have recently) reiterated the Church’s belief in the traditional values that say genital expressions of love are permitted only for heterosexual couples within the bonds of marriage.

I strongly reject these positions of my Church.

Yes, celibacy is an option to be honored when voluntarily chosen for positive reasons. Often celibacy is chosen not because genital love is intrinsically wrong but rather because celibacy is for this person the best way to express a vocational commitment or the best path into sexual integrity. I know many people who have chosen celibacy in whom this commitment is a beautiful quality. It should be supported.

But celibacy is not the only valid homosexual lifestyle for Christians. Every human being has a God-given right to sexual love and intimacy—a right to be lived out in a way that is compatible with the spirit of Christ.

Regas concluded the sermon with his first public announcement of his intention to bless a same-sex union.

I’ll be the first to admit that I appear to others as a bundle of contradictions. It seems an act of hubris, or stupidity, or sinful willfulness to proclaim an evangelical belief in Christ as Lord and Savior and best friend on the one hand, and to advocate the sexual ethics that Regas so beautifully articulates on the other. Sometimes kindly, sometimes not so kindly, my judgment and reason and faith are questioned. That is the right of commenters, and I welcome it. But as I’ve grown as a man and as a Christian, I’ve gained an ever-deepening respect for mystery, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Sexuality is one of God’s most sacred and impenetrable mysteries, and yet, as I grow up, I am increasingly clear on one thing: authentic and holy sexuality is characterized by generosity and radical acceptance, and sinful sexuality by a desire to exploit another for one’s own comfort, pleasure, and satisfaction. Beyond that, I cannot go.

Thursday short poem: Wright’s Envoi

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I first discovered Charles Wright in the late 1990s, after he won a Pulitzer Prize. I confess I find him a difficult and challenging poet – but this one of his I love, for all my usual reasons for loving poems. Once again, the poet finds comfort, of a kind, in the natural world, while still embracing the human burden:

Envoi

What we once liked, we no longer like.
What we used to delight in settles like fine ash on our tongues.
What we once embraced embraces us.

Things have destinies, of course,
on-lines and downloads mysterious as the language of clouds.
My life has become like that,

Half uninterpretable, half new geography,
Landscapes stilled and adumbrated, memory unratcheting,
Its voice-over not my own.

Meanwhile, the mole goes on with its subterranean daydreams,
The dogs lie around like rugs,
Birds nitpick their pinfeathers, insects slick down their shells.

No horizon-honing here, no angst in the anthill.
What happens is what happens,
And what happened to happen never existed to start with.

Still, who wants a life like that,
No next and no before, no yesterday, no today,
Tomorrow a moment no one will ever live in?

As for me, I’ll take whatever wanes,
The loosening traffic on the straightaway, the dark and such,
The wandering stars, wherever they come from now, wherever
they go.

I’ll take whatever breaks down beneath its own sad weight-
The paintings of Albert Pinkham Ryder, for instance,
Language, the weather, the word of God.

I’ll take as icon and testament
The daytime metaphysics of the natural world,
Sun on tie post, rock on rock.

I like the whole thing, but this bit is my favorite:

My life has become like that,
Half uninterpretable, half new geography…

In a way I can’t fully articulate, I know what he means…

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Abstinence, gay marriage, and the loving consistency of both

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One of the brightest young minds in my women’s studies class is a woman who, for the sake of anonymity, I will call Louisa. Louisa is, among other things, active in her Catholic parish, and recently came to see me to tell me that she had been asked by the youth director at her church to develop and teach an “abstinence” program for high school students. She was thrilled. But when I got back from Austin, I found this email from her. With her permission, I’m posting an edited version:

Dear Hugo,

I can’t do the abstinence program…i just can’t. and it’s not because I have little faith in myself. I literally can’t do the abstinence program anymore. I had talked to C (our youth director) about it last thursday, and I said “yes.” Of course, he was extremely esctatic, and so was I. i couldn’t wait to get started — I had all of these ideas and plans for the organization. he told me all I needed was to prepare an outline of exactly what I would be teaching, he’ll present it to the priests, and I should have the program running by next week….

But on Sunday, something happened… I was talking to some people from my choir about it, and a lot of them thought it was so great that I would be starting this. One of the girls my age, S, even offered to help me out with a couple of things. But then after mass, she approached me, and told me about this rally she wanted me to go to at CSU Fullerton, against homosexuals. I interrupted, and said, “wait, S —I’m not teaching the kids about homosexuality, why do we have to go to this rally?” S said: “But you must! You’re going to be talking about love and marriage, and you need to tell these kids how important it is that we ban these gay marriages.” Well…my mouth got me into a lot of trouble, because, I didn’t know that I was talking to a future nun. and I exclaimed, “well, I’m not against gay marriages!” sequoia looked at me as if I were the devil. She asked, “How can you call yourself a catholic, if you believe in gay marriages?”

I would call myself a pretty devoted Catholic. So of course, when S asked me this, I was hurt, angry and shocked that she would question my faith.

By this time, our youth director had overheard the conversation. We were in still in the church, and i guess we were pretty loud. I was getting extremely frustrated. So he approached us, and before I could even get a word out of my mouth, S starts accusing me of being incapable of teaching this course, because I believe this, and I believe that! He asked me if it was true-and what could I say? iI didn’t want to lie. The youth director and I talked, and he feels (for the church’s safety), that I should really reconsider taking this position.

I guess I’m too liberal for catholicism. I’m not saying I’m leaving my religion-I would never do that. My religion is one of the most important things in my life. But (though I believe in abstinence until marriage), I can’t escape the fact that i’m pro-gay marriage, and pro-contraception (after marriage).

So I’ve been thinking a lot, since it happened…and I’ve decided to hand the reins over to somebody else. I guess I was so excited about this being my first teaching experience, that I pushed the obstacles I knew I would face, out of the way… Ihope that the abstinence program will still happen, though. Maybe I could even convince C to make me a teacher’s aide, and then we can find another teacher, who would be willing to do this…

The bold emphasis is Hugo’s.

(Louisa’s letter reminds me of why I left the Catholic Church, of course, and why, despite occasional pangs of affection for Rome, I’m much happier with Canterbury!)

Because I know that Louisa will see this post, I’d ask folks to direct their criticisms towards me and away from her. The reason I wanted to post about this is because I think that Louisa’s views on sexuality are representative of a remarkable number of young people. I also don’t think that folks like her get acknowledged as often as they should. How often do we hear from the pro-abstinence, pro-gay marriage crowd in the media? It’s easy to dismiss young people like Louisa as being poorly informed theologically, but that would be profoundly inaccurate and unfair. Rather, Louisa’s thoughtful position represents a marvelous balancing of fidelity and Christian love.

I have many problems with most abstinence programs myself. It’s not that I think abstinence is always unrealistic (I have friends who did “wait” until marriage, and I honor their sacrifice and their faithfulness), it’s that abstinence programs frequently build up post-marital sex to undue proportions. The message seems to be “the less experienced both partners are on their wedding night, the better married sex will be”. I have a number of friends who waited until marriage, and the results, to put it mildly, are mixed. Some say they have ecstatic sex lives — but others report the same frustrations and difficulties that those who chose more secular sexual lifestyles struggle with. Virginity until marriage is not a panacea, nor is it a guarantee of marital bliss. Obviously, it prevents a variety of problems — and to the extent that a young person wishes to avoid those problems, I think abstinence is a valid and commendable option.

But Louisa’s commitment to abstinence is rooted in a valuing of herself and a valuing of other young people’s bodies and lives. For her and others like her, abstinence is not just rigid adherence to church teaching — it is a loving, self-and God-honoring act. Indeed, one could make a feminist case for abstinence: in a society where the bodies of young women are highly sexualized commodities for male “consumption”, remaining chaste is radically counter-cultural and perhaps even subversive. Being proudly and publicly abstinent is a way of demanding attention for one’s mind rather than for one’s potential sexual favors. In that sense, abstinence can be seen as a tool for building young women’s intellectual, emotional and physical autonomy — all worthy goals for the feminist movement.

In order to be compelling, however, an abstinence message must be rooted as much in a desire to honor the self as in obedience to church teaching. And here is where it is intellectually consistent to teach abstinence and support gay marriage. If one believes, as Louisa seems to and as I certainly do, that same-sex attraction is usually a core part of our very identity, then it is sensible to long for those folks to find the fulfillment that they too are seeking. Gay marriage is an important civil rights issue because the desire to bond publicly and eternally with one other person is deeply ingrained in most of us. Though it may not always be so, one’s sexual desire is usually a fine indicator of one’s identity. (Oh, I know the theological conservatives will have conniptions with that one.) And it makes sense to want to honor the desires of those around us who are longing for lasting, monogamous, fulfillment. Waiting until marriage is right for Louisa because it is what Louisa wants, not merely what her family or her church wants for her. In this context, an “ethics of desire” can support both gay marriage and abstinence education.

In our discussions about abstinence, Louisa has made it clear that she does not condemn those who do not choose to wait. Rather, she wants to reach young teens with a counter-cultural message that offers them a true choice as to when and how and where they first become sexual with another human being. She wants to offer real options. Knowing her and knowing youth groups, I can sense she would have done a terrific job with the kids in her church community. I honor Louisa’s commitment to God, to herself, and to justice. Prayerfully and thoughtfully, she has found a way to hold obedience, love, and justice in tension. I am proud of her and others like her.

Christian college kids and apologizing Anglicans

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First off, Jenell Paris has yet another moving post up in her corner of our blogosphere. Here’s a lengthy excerpt:

…it was my 10-year college reunion last weekend. I could have attended, seeing as I work at the college and live 5 minutes away, but I didn’t. I’m not comfortable seeing relative strangers and talking about my life- I’d just sweat and cry and leave early. Yesterday I received the ‘memory book’, about 100 pages of people writing about their lives on a form that asks for name/address/are you married/do you have kids/where do you work/what do you remember from college. It was so frustrating that I ranted to my night class (freshmen) about it.

There is a powerful cultural norm at Bethel that is unspoken by professors or administrators, yet it is carried on year by year by the student culture and the broader evangelical culture. The ideal life path, judging by these entries, is to graduate from college, marry a person of the same race before you are 24, man works in ministry or a corporation, woman works in nursing, education or music ministry, have kids before age 27, woman works part-time or stay-at-home, be church members, live in Minnesota or Colorado, and have the woman fill out forms that need to be mailed in. Women seem to feel ambivalent about the stay-at-home part, though. One wrote “I’m a teacher, but I’m on a five year ‘leave of absence’ while my kids are young.” Another wrote “Job: Mommy”, Workplace: “The Harris Household.”

Notably, only 100 out of about 500 class members sent the form in. Only three single women contributed, and one wrote a long message about how she has become Gods’ bride, so really, she is sort of married. One single man wrote in. A few divorced people wrote in, but obscured that fact on their form (I knew it from other lines of gossip). I received the form in June or July, and wrote on it, “My Bethel education and my Christian faith have not made my life work out great. My three babies died this year, and my life is really hard right now. I hope God is present with you, too, in your struggles.”

This is what I said to my class last night. “Class, this is my memory book from 1994. The only people I remember from college are my friends, men I dated, and men I hoped to date. I don’t remember any of these other people in the slightest. What that means for you is that you need to get a good education while you’re here and be assertive about asking questions and learning in class. Don’t be pressured into stupidity by your classmates, and don’t care what anyone thinks of you. Just live your life and do what you want to do, keeping in mind that all these people who seem so important to you right now won’t be in a few years.”

I also said that they should feel free to live however they want, even if they don’t end up with a minister-pianist power-marriage for Jesus, or with three kids named Dakota, Madison, and Cody. There’s not much point in even saying that, tho, because my voice is just a cry in the wilderness compared to the pressure toward getting married and having three conventionally-named children. There’s such pressure for women to be passive and silent in class, and apparently there’s pressure for men to sit in the back row, wear baseball caps, and tell jokes to each other. It’s wrong to pay $25,000 a year to experience anti-educational peer pressure. It’s wrong to pay a Christian college $100,000 just to reinforce Christian cultural norms that you could have learned for free at church. Demand more!

The cage isn’t real, and as we become ourselves, we’re sometimes surprised to find that the freedom was there all along.

The Churches disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by refusing to think and following along like a lemming. Let the churches tremble at a student revolution. The students have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Students of all Christian colleges, unite!

I would have loved it even without the hat-tip to Karl in the final paragraph. When I was first becoming a believer, I often wondered if there were any “cool Christians.” I don’t mean cool in the slick, pop culture sense — I mean Christians who don’t think a relationship with Christ precludes rage and discomfort and sensual delight. Jenell is the epitome — nay, the zenith — of Christian coolness in my book.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading the Windsor Report some more. Father Jake has a nice summary from the progressive point of view here.

I’m disappointed that the Report calls on American Episcopalians to, as Father Jake puts it, declare the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, the lovely Gene Robinson, an “untouchable”:

We accept and respect the position taken up by the Archbishop of Canterbury in relation to the current incumbent of the See of New Hampshire In view of the widespread unacceptability of his ministry in other provinces of the Communion, we urge the proposed Council of Advice to keep the matter of his acceptability under close review. We also urge the Archbishop, unless and until the Council of Advice (or, if the Council should not come into being, the Primates’ Meeting) indicate to the contrary, to exercise very considerable caution in inviting or admitting him to the councils of the Communion.

Well, we’ll have him back at All Saints soon enough. If Lambeth doesn’t want him, Pasadena does.

On the other hand, a nice slap at traditionalist bishops who are interfering in places like the Los Angeles Diocese:

We call upon those bishops who believe it is their conscientious duty to intervene in provinces, dioceses and parishes other than their own:
* to express regret for the consequences of their actions
* to affirm their desire to remain in the Communion, and
* to effect a moratorium on any further interventions.
We also call upon these archbishops and bishops to seek an accommodation with the bishops of the dioceses whose parishes they have taken into their own care.
We further call upon those diocesan bishops of the Episcopal Church (USA) who have refused to countenance the proposals set out by their House of Bishops to reconsider their own stance on this matter. If they refuse to do so, in our view, they will be making a profoundly dismissive statement about their adherence to the polity of their own church

Rounding up reaction, it seems that the liberals are a bit miffed, but the right wing is apopletic. I liked this bit from the comments section here, written by a self-styled repentant liberal:

This is the most shameful sell out since Munich.I agree that we appear to have nothing. Express regret my foot! The committee should express regret for wasting everyones time. Take a good look, you just saw a small bunch of immature twits destroy a church over 400 years old. Poof- it is gone up in smoke.

I’ll be the first to admit it: in the world of Anglican blogging, I often only know whether something is “good news” or not based upon the responses of the cyber-savvy traditionalists. If they are unhappy, then there must be reason to rejoice. I don’t mean that nastily, mind you! I simply have found that in most cases, the American Anglican Council is a lot like Focus on the Family: knowing what they oppose allows me to be clear on what I support. In this age of information overload, it’s really rather helpful.

Seriously, though, I like any report that calls folks back from the brink of schism. More than anything else, what I read here is a rebuke to self-righteous certainty, whether that hubris appears from the right or from the left. I like that.

101.58 miles

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We are home safely from Austin.

First, the ride:

I bought my first real bicycle less than three months ago (July 23, to be precise). It took more than a month for me to learn how to ride it, change gears and cranks, and learn how to use those darned clip-in pedals. So, you can say I’m very much still a novice.

In training for this year’s “Ride for the Roses” in Austin, my fiancee and I did not do any rides farther than 35 miles. The “Ride for the Roses” offers several distances; bikers can go 6, 25, 40, 75, or 100 miles. We had signed up for the 40-mile ride, well within our training. (It should be noted that my beloved is an experienced biker and triathlete.)

But then, Saturday night in Austin, we heard Lance Armstrong speak to several thousand fans at the convention center. It was, as one might expect, deeply moving. (It occurs to me, parenthetically, that Lance Armstrong is one of only two men younger than myself whom I deeply admire — the other is my brother.) By the time we left his talk, which included a fine Q&A session with many cancer survivors, my fiancee and I had made a typically impulsive decision: we were going to ride the full 100 mile distance the following day.

And that is what we did. According to most folks, the route we took was actually over 100 miles — 101.58 seemed to be the consensus of those with accurate computers on their bikes. The ride was made tougher by hot and humid conditions, and by a terrible headwind that we battled for most of the last forty miles. (The sort that is so powerful that it forces one to pedal downhill). I made it tougher on myself by refusing to ride in any “pacelines”. I get scared when others are too close to me, so I battled the winds all by my lonesome most of the way. (I can see this is a fear I need to get over quickly). Many riders dropped out due to the heat and the wind, and many more of us were infuriated by the fact that two of the aid stations ran out of water — in the middle of Texas Hill Country, miles from any store.

My body held up remarkably well. I can report that riding 100 miles is very similar to running a marathon, except that one recovers much faster from the former than the latter. At the end, there is that same sense of exhaustion, agony, and frustration; the final miles seem to take so very, very long to complete. As soon as I finished the ride, I laid the bike in the grass and curled up in the fetal position next to it, dry-heaving away. (Many solicitous types gave me water and bananas, and soon, all was well.)

Still, to be able to finish a 100-miler in relative comfort (save for tiredness and foot cramps, of all things) is a sign that my fitness level is reasonable. It was almost three times as far as my longest previous ride, and was much more than I expected to do just eleven weeks after buying my first bicycle and seven weeks after first learning to use pedal clips. I’m quite pleased, especially with the fact that I have no soreness today.

Now, on Texas:

Austin was magnificent. I know I have several readers who are Austinites (or is it Austinians). (Amanda, Michelle, Elizabeth — I hope I’m not leaving anyone out!) Y’all have a beautiful, friendly, humid city! It was our first-ever visit to Texas, and my fiancee thinks we ought to start looking for places to live out there. (I’m not quite so swept.) The highlights of our trip were watching the bats fly out from the Congress Street bridge, and having a wonderful, post-ride romantic dinner at the superb Mansion on Judges Hill. I recommend both experiences.

The rural country through which we rode was also impressive. (I noted we visited, at various times, the following counties during the ride: Travis, Bastrop, Milam, Lee, and Williamson — the very names conjure up all sorts of cowboy images.) I saw political signs everywhere, but very few referring to the presidential race (which is likely not much of a contest in rural Texas). Instead, folks in these small counties seemed very interested indeed in elections for judges, commissioners, and constables — signs with the names of candidates for those offices were ubiquitous, even on small back roads. I found that heartening — I like a place where local races are seen as more vital than national ones!

With two weeks out to the national election, there is much else about which to blog. I’m swamped with work, but hope to weigh in with a few thoughts on the Windsor Commission Report and the crisis in the Episcopal Church soon. My initial reaction as a liberal is one of cautious relief, but I need to read more.

Off to Texas

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It has been the sort of week that makes me happy and proud to be a teacher and a youth leader; I’ve had some great experiences in and out of the classroom. Let’s see if I can have that same spirit a week from now, when midterms roll in!

No blogging until Tuesday. Tomorrow morning, my fiancee and I are off for Austin, Texas, to (among other things) participate in the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s Peloton Project. We’re not sure how many miles we’re going to ride yet. I’m just over five weeks out from my next marathon, and this will be a nice break in my training. It’s our first-ever visit to Texas.

It will be also be our anniversary weekend — two years together!

And may I say, the process of dismantling a bike and preparing it for airplane travel is more work than I had anticipated! Fortunately, “Timmy” (the name I’ve bestowed on my new Trek 5000) is at last safely stowed in his massive hard plastic case, ready for his first plane ride tomorrow.

Wishing a weekend of civil discussion of politics to all…