Monthly Archives: November 2005

Thursday Short Poem: Huff’s “Hymn of a Fat Woman”

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Someone sent me this poem by Joyce Huff a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to put it up.  Huff is both a poet and a professor at Ball State University; her work focuses on images of the body (particularly fat and disability) in literature.  Next time I teach my course on "Beauty, the Body, and the Western Tradition", I’ll make sure to include this poem in the readings:

The Hymn of a Fat Woman

All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

Before the pedants write in, I am sure Huff knows that deity and diet are not from the same Latin root; deity comes from deus (God); diet from dies (day).  It’s a nice conceit anyway.

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I’ll be away…

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…from this blog tomorrow.  Posting will resume Thursday, when I’ll tell you what I was up to Wednesday.  In the meantime, check out some links:

Jill on the anti-feminist elements in the response to the Natalee Holloway case

Jenell on blogging and boundaries

Joe Kort on Tony Orlando and Dawn and "shield heroes"

Judy from Feminist Mormon Housewives on feminism, the church, and soft power

And then the very challenging posts by Nick Kiddle: My Rape Story, a follow-up on victim-blaming, and then this very long and interesting response by Cathy Young. (Hat tip to Brian Timm).

Amuse yourselves.

Fighting the “biology is destiny” myth: a response to Souraaron

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In his comments below my "Jesus told me to grow the *%ck up" post, blogger Souraaron suggests that my conversion/transformation experience is less a result of God’s grace or Hugo’s effort, and more a function of declining sex drive:

You act as though you are the first guy to hit your 30s, have your libido drop, and discover the freedom that is the ability to cease thinking with your schlong (stop looking at porn… please… you stopped because it became boring and stupid, not because of some self-professed new found ability to stop).

Nothing like running with the old "biology is destiny" pack, is there?  And as Breadfish points out, don’t we all know oodles of men over forty still looking at porn?  As more than one young woman I’ve worked with has discovered, there are few things as disturbing as realizing your dad is getting off looking at pictures of girls your age!

First of all, I have no intention of offering a personal refutation of Aaron’s argument.  As I wrote back in March, after Glenn Sacks raised the same point when I was on his radio show, nothing could be more pointless (and potentially embarrassing) than making a stirring declaration as to the enduring strength of my libido!  How can I disprove his implication without blogging about matters far too personal for even this relatively candid forum?  Fear not, I’m not going to discuss my sex drive today and how it compares to my libido ten or twenty years ago.  What good would it do?  I’d end up embarrassing myself and making my readers uncomfortable, and the likes of Aaron would still say "oh, Hugo protests too much!"

But the implications of Aaron’s argument are pernicious.  If men only become more decent and kind as a consequence of losing interest in sex, then it’s clear that a strong and vibrant libido is incompatible with a keen pro-feminist sense of women’s worth.   By this reasoning, it’s fruitless to spend time and energy working on reaching young men, because their colossally strong physical urges will always trump their humanity, their reason, and their self-control.  Better to focus one’s energies on older men, whose libidos have presumably quieted down to the point that they are prepared to listen!

Perhaps here is where I can find common ground with my men’s rights advocate (MRA) opponents! Aren’t MRAs also offended by the "young, dumb, and full of cum" (sorry for the vulgarity) stereotype that sees adolescent and twenty-something fellows as slaves to their libidos?  Don’t all of us who do men’s work, regardless of our politics, have reason to take umbrage at the notion that we are hapless victims of our own biological urges?

To be honest, I’m angry that Souraaron takes what I call "grace" (the power to be a faithful, loving, devoted partner who doesn’t look at porn) and attributes it merely to lowered testosterone.  In this reductionistic world of his, humans only make decisions on account of biology, not in spite of it.  In Aaron’s universe, virtuous self-restraint and a growing sense of empathy are all simply manifestations of aging, not the consequences of either conversion or hard work.  I’m annoyed that in this biological view, there’s precious little room for the notion of spiritual growth independent of physiological changes.

In my comment below Aaron’s comment, I wrote: "The outcome of my conversion was not the diminishing of my libido, thank you; it was the redirecting of my libido."  That’s obviously not something I can prove, nor ought I to try.  Ultimately, the only person (besides myself) to whom that distinction ought to matter is my wife.  She is the primary human being to whom I am accountable, and I need only "prove myself" to her and no one else.  But I can say, with firm conviction, that my ability to love my wife with singular passion is not merely a consequence of hormonal changes within my body; it is a consequence of God’s intervention in my life, and my own willingness to respond to the grace He offers.

Yes, it took me until my fourth marriage to finally grasp some essential truths.  But the real reasons why it took me so long to transform have nothing to do with sex drive, and everything to do with obstinacy, pride, and fear.  And those three evils can be found as easily in the old as in the young.

A long post about sex, feminism, and silencing the audience

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This will be long.  Hugo has had lots and lots of Dayquil to get through the day, and the drugs may be affecting what I write…

In my women’s history class, we talked at length last week about the idea of the "internalized audience."  The conversation evolved out of a discussion we were having about Lynn Phillips’ Flirting with Danger, which I am using in class for the first time this semester.

Phillips talks about the problem so many young women struggle with: separating their own desires from those of their families, friends, and the broader culture.  For many of the women Phillips interviewed, the internalized audience is omnipresent, but never more so than when engaging in sexual activity.   The make-up of the audience varies little from young woman to young woman: mothers and fathers, friends and family members, teachers and pastors and peers.  Each member of the audience has his or her own set of expectations for how the girl ought to behave, and gradually, those expectations have crawled deep into the psyche.  Raised to be acutely sensitive to the wishes and values of others, most young women "internalize the audience" by adolescence if not before.  (Mom really can be everywhere!) And of course, once young women begin to interact sexually with others, the "audiences" begin to make conflicting demands. Writing of the college-aged subjects of her study, Phillips notes:

Often women became so consumed with the conflicting expectations of various outside audiences (families versus boyfriends, college friends versus neighborhood friends) about gender-appropriate and developmentally appropriate behavior, that the notion of their own needs and sexual desires was all but erased from consideration.

As I suggested to my students, while Phillips discusses the notion of the internalized audience primarily in sexual terms, it’s possible to see the problem of the audience in other areas as well.  For example, it’s clear that many women subordinate their own needs and desires around food in order to be pleasing to those around them. A "good girl" has a muted appetite for both sex and food; a carefully cultivated thinness and an absence of sexual subjectivity are both ways to "please the audience."

Some of my more conservative students argue that the internalized audience serves a healthy social function for young women.   Those  "all-seeing eyes" and those "voices in the head" help hold girls and young women back from making poor decisions (lie pre-marital sex, the big "no-no" for my traditionalists).  But of course, waiting for marriage doesn’t guarantee a woman will be free from that sense of the internalized audience!  Many married women who did "wait" have reported that they too struggle with sexual guilt, even as they make love with their own husbands.  And some married women may still find it difficult to think clearly about their own desires, having been raised and conditioned that their sexuality exists to provide joy and delight for another.  "Waiting" is not the panacea its proponents crack it up to be.

Thus I’m convinced that one of the most important feminist tasks is helping young — and not so young — women to quiet that internalized audience.  Quieting, mind you, is not the same as dismissing.  All of us, at times, can be comforted and strengthened by the memory of what some loved one or respected person has told us.  On occasion, it’s appropriate to ask:  "What would so-and-so say if they could see me now?  What advice would they give?"  We ought on occasion to consider the wishes and beliefs of our culture, our faith (if we have one) and our parents.  But though these ought to be factors in our decision-making about food, sex,and pleasure, they ought not to be the decisive ones.  Helping young women listen to their own desires, separate from those of the large and loud audience, is a key feminist goal.

To put it another way, I often argue that feminism is about helping young women to find both their authentic "yes" and their authentic "no".  By authentic, I mean that it is congruent with their deepest desires.   And wherever they may ultimately lie, we know this: these "deepest desires" lie beneath the surface longing to please parents and partners.   To put it crudely: many young women will encounter many young men who very much want them to say "yes."  Many of these young women will come from backgrounds where their cultural obligation is to say "no".   So whether she says "yes" or "no", her own desires may well have already been silenced by the overwhelming pressure to please one faction or another in the audience.  She will find it very difficult, it not impossible, to please everyone.

I’ve been reflecting about what I wrote in April about sex education at All Saints.  I was asked then, by one of the kids: "What do you really think about us having sex at our age?"  And I replied:

"You guys, when I look at you, it isn’t possible for me to see you as a group of generic teenagers.   When I look at this room, I don’t just see fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year-olds.  I see people whose individual stories I know.  Some of you I’ve known just a little while.  Some of you I’ve known since you were bratty little sixth-graders five or six years ago.  When I look at you (pointing around the room), I see (names changed) Michael, not a sophomore boy.  I see Marie, not a senior girl; I see Janae and Brent and Alexa and Rick, not just four random kids sitting on a couch.  And though you are all alike in so many countless ways, you’re also fundamentally different people with different needs and different histories.  Honestly, the more I work with you, the less I feel comfortable handing out a one-size-fits-all moral agenda with any confidence.  In truth, while I think in general it is better to wait before taking on the enormous responsibilities and consequences of sex, I know full well that some of you are simply "readier" than others.  I’m not going to name names, of course!  But I can’t help but see you as individuals with different desires and different levels of maturity, faith, and emotional preparedness."

I took a huge amount of criticism for this.  Six months later, I stand firmly by what I said, and I think it bears on what I’ve been writing about in this post.  Where good feminist work and progressive sexual education intersect is around this issue of "yes", "no", and quieting the "peanut gallery" of the internalized audience.  My goal is not to get all of my kids in youth group, or my students at Pasadena City College, to say "yes" or "no" to sex!  My goal is to help them arrive at an authentic, heartfelt, unambiguous "yes" — or an equally authentic, heartfelt, and unambiguous "no" — when it comes to the opportunity for sexual connection with another human being or with themselves.   Encouraging young people of either sex, but particularly young women, to discover their own desires is not easy; and frankly, it isn’t an easy thing for young people to do, either. 

One thing I have my students in women’s studies class do — and I’ve had my youth group kids do as well — is write and reflect about their "internalized audiences."  I ask them "Who is in your audience?  What do they want for you?  What do they want from you?  Why do you think they want it?"  What I find is that most kids, once they start thinking seriously, find that they need a good-sized auditorium to seat their audiences!  I ask them to reflect on whether or not they find it easy to please the audience, and whether or not trying to please different factions has led either to conflict or to the muting of their own wants and needs.

The paradox in this is obvious: by emphatically insisting that the internalized audience ought to be quieted (if not muted), I’m not-so-subtly placing myself among the crowd of voices offering suggestions as to what "my young people" should do.   Like all teachers, I risk imposing myself, becoming an "inner Hugo" that my students and teens carry around with them.  Sometimes, I imagine that I am inside of some of them,  haranguing them about the importance of ignoring me and everyone else!  Talk about your contradictions! (And talk about your hubris… sheesh.)

Yet I’m convinced I’m on the right track in, at the least, encouraging young people to think critically about who the "audience" is. Furthermore, I think those of us who do feminist work are also right to encourage young women to do the difficult work of distinguishing their own wants and needs (sexual or otherwise) from the expectations of their families, their culture, their partners and their peers.  This does not mean advocating for a radical selfishness where one doesn’t think at all about others.  It does mean helping young women to develop the confidence to say "yes" when that "yes" reflects their reality and empowering them to say "no" when that "no" comes from their true core.

My faith tells me that at its best, sex has more than one purpose: while it unites two people together in joy and delight, it also provides us, as individuals, with the exquisite opportunity to rejoice in ourselves as created, corporeal beings. It is for us, it is for the other, and, for those of us who are people of faith, ultimately for God.  The specifics of what we, at our deepest cores, want to say "yes" and "no" to will, I do believe, vary from person to person.   But we all do better, I am convinced, when we can ask that great internal Greek chorus to take an extended break and leave us alone to listen to that voice inside that is uniquely ours.

One more on All Saints

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It’s Monday morning, and I’m in the office, fighting a bad cold.  Saturday morning, I made the mistake of running a 10K with my friends in San Gabriel, despite the fact that I already felt weak and under-the-weather.  I was fine during the run itself, but deteriorated rapidly thereafter.   Still, I’m starting to get faster again; I ran a 45:25, which is six and a half minutes slower than my 1999 PR, but the best time I’ve done this year.

Lots of coverage of the All Saints/IRS controversy in the paper.  Our rector, Ed Bacon, preached a very well-received sermon yesterday; camera crews from several local television stations were on hand.  (An account is in today’s Times here.)  Yesterday’s paper also had a long article on the history of All Saints Pasadena, noting that our reputation as LA’s "cathedral of social justice" goes back at least as far as World War Two, when the church took a strong stance against the internment of Japanese-Americans.  The article notes that at times, some with conservative views have been made to feel unwelcome in the congregation:

…what Raymond Kreisel saw as "overt politicization and radicalization" in 2002 and 2003 led the Glendora resident and his wife, Amy, to leave All Saints.

Kreisel, 38, said he and his wife loved the church when they became active in 1995. They were married there in 1997, and the first of their two children, Liam, now 4, was baptized at All Saints.

Kreisel praised the church’s "wonderful sense of community" and its architecture. In that hushed, incense-scented church, with the light streaming through the windows, "you feel like you’re back in a mid-sized, 300-year-old church in England," he said.

But when Bacon began preaching against the coming war in Iraq, Kreisel, who then believed the war was justified, began to feel hectored.

"We were made to feel that if we weren’t sharing his views, we weren’t participating fully in the church," he said. "They weren’t saying, ‘Don’t come to church.’ But walls were being built, and we were in the out group."

I’m sorry that the Kreisels left.  My own experience of being in disagreement with our rector, Ed Bacon, has been very positive.  In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, Ed preached a sermon urging the United States not to bomb Afghanistan indiscriminately, calling instead for a multilateral "police action" to capture Osama Bin Laden and his command structure.   In the aftermath of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, I had been reading lots of John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and other pacifists.  I was a new member of the Vestry (the governing body of the church), and in both emails and private conversation, I challenged Ed not from his right but from his left.  I argued that even police actions would inevitably involve violence; I argued that true fidelity to the gospel meant more than opposing large-scale attacks, it meant the total repudiation of the use of lethal force in all instances, even self-defense. 

In November 2001,  this article about the All Saints anti-war movement appeared in the LA Weekly.  At the time, our Senior Warden (the chief lay person in the parish government) was a delightful man named Charlie McBride — who, among other things, was a Republican.  (Yes, Virginia, there were and are Republicans at All Saints.)  Charlie felt strongly that the attack on Afghanistan met the criteria for a just war, and disagreed with Ed on the subject.   Several forums were held on Sunday mornings, and a variety of views were presented.  At no time were those who were "pro-war" silenced or heckled; Charlie remained as senior warden.  The fact that in the aftermath of 9/11, high-ranking figures in the parish could publicly disagree about the gospel and violence was a sign of the true open-mindednesss of the All Saints community.

In response to the Weekly article, I wrote a letter to the editor (scroll down about three-quarters of the way); I suggested that All Saints had not gone far enough in condemning all forms of violence.   Though at the time the letter was published I was on the Vestry, I got nothing but positive feedback from the All Saints leadership.   I was arguing for a consistent-life ethic (the "seamless garment"); most of my fellow Vestry members and parishioners were not willing to go there with me.  But they were willing to engage me, challenge me, and urge me to continue to participate in the life of the church despite my disagreements.   That’s the All Saints I know.

Authentic liberalism — as opposed to doctrinaire socialism — cherishes inclusion as among the very highest of "goods."  What I love about All Saints is that we work so hard to practice that inclusion, and that means welcoming those whose views are considerably more conservative (or occasionally, even more progressive) than our own.  True liberalism must mean always considering the possibility that one’s critics have a point; true liberalism means embracing those who are uncomfortable with the direction in which the church is moving.  It doesn’t mean pandering to one’s critics, mind you; it doesn’t mean dodging controversy.  But it does mean sometimes bending over backwards to embrace the very people who are convinced that you are in serious error.  We must break bread with the very people who don’t want to break bread with us.

I’ve been very public, probably too public, in my criticisms of All Saints.  I made it very clear a year ago that I did not like the tone of the very George Regas sermon that attracted the attention of the IRS.  But though George’s sermon bothered me, I believe his right to preach it without fear of IRS retribution was and is inviolate.  I would say the same thing about a sermon preached by John MacArthur or Jerry Falwell.  I’ve never been prouder of my church community than I am in this hour.

Saturday halftime note on Cal and the JDL

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I’m at home, grimly watching the USC-Cal football game, which is at halftime.  The last three meetings in this series have been immensely entertaining; my Golden Bears were the last team to beat the Trojans, back in September 2003.  Today we trail 21-3 at the break, largely thanks to the superb play of the Trojan offense and, I’m sorry to say, the dreadful decision-making of our quarterback.  I won’t criticize a college athlete any further than that, however; even a high-profile athlete on scholarship is still a student, a work-in-progress, and he doesn’t need my vituperation.  He does need to be benched, however, and soon.

On this Shabbat, I realize that I’ve forgotten to blog at all about the murder in prison of Earl Krugel of the radical Jewish Defense League.  He and the late JDL chairman Irv Rubin were arrested and charged after conspiring to bomb a mosque and the offices of California congressman Darrell Issa. Rubin committed suicide three years to the day before Krugel was murdered; he was in prison awaiting trial at the time.  The JDL still survives, but barely; here’s their website.

I knew Irv Rubin; his son went to Pasadena City College and Irv himself helped start a tremendous controversy at PCC.  Some background:  my first five years at the college, I taught in a team course called the "Humanities Block".  Six different professors (from English, Philosophy, History, and Sociology) took a group of 120 students through the history of modern Europe from the Enlightenment to the present. It was a terrific interdisciplinary experience. 

In 1999, one of my colleagues, a non-Jewish friend of Irv Rubin’s, invited the JDL chairman to speak to our students about the Holocaust.  (The Holocaust was always a major topic in the Block course).  I confess I hadn’t known anything about the JDL before, but mentioned Rubin to a PCC colleague and close friend of mine, Marc Dollinger. Marc (who now teaches at San Francisco State) is a fellow Cal grad with a UCLA Ph.D; he’s an expert in modern Jewish history, and a devoutly religious man.  As a scholar and a Jew, Marc was horrified that we would bring in someone from the JDL to speak on the Holocaust and the Jewish experience.

Together, Marc and I asked my colleagues to rescind the invitation to Rubin.   Marc and I were deeply concerned that Rubin’s appearance would have a profound effect on the Block students, very few of whom were Jewish.  When we asked how many of our kids had ever even heard a Jewish leader speak, fewer than ten percent raised their hands.  Marc and I were worried that Irv Rubin, a man long associated with violence and extremism, would create a false impression in the minds of our students of what it meant to be Jewish.  (Long before their arrests in 2001, Rubin and Krugel had been often implicated in, but never charged with, the 1985 murder of an Orange County Arab-American activist.)  At a bitter meeting, the other professors in the Humanities Block (none of whom were Jewish) insisted on honoring the invite.   Some of my colleagues suggested Rubin would be "good theater" because of his extremism, and expressed disappointment that Marc and I didn’t appreciate that aspect.

Irv Rubin not only appeared, he condemned Marc in his speech to the class as a "self-hating Jew."  And he went further, attacking my colleague on the JDL website.  Amazingly, the link is still up.  Irv refers to an open letter Marc Dollinger wrote that is no longer available through the website, but Irv’s response, printed in our campus paper still is.  (Guess who the "primary lackey" Rubin refers to is!)  After Irv’s letter appeared in the campus paper, I wrote a letter of my own, defending Marc.  Rubin wrote a nasty reply, that also appears at the link above.

It’s too complex an issue to delve into on this blog,and after all, Irv Rubin is long dead.  But I have to admit that in light of his attacks on me and my colleague, I was a bit shaken when he and Earl Krugel were arrested for planning to bomb their enemies!   I am not suggesting that I considered myself also worthy of a plot against my life, but to be publicly excoriated by a man later charged with a terror conspiracy is at least an interesting story.

I’m happy to say that no one from the JDL has spoken at PCC since.  I have no problem with free speech on the campus quad, but I have no sympathy for those colleagues of mine who seem to have no qualms about opening up the classroom to hate speech.

A final election note –UPDATED

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Not that I’m inviting flaming, but I am struck that my two most heart-felt posts on men and growing up have been largely ignored by my MRA critics. Not that I need you fellas to comment on everything I write, but the silence is nearly deafening.

One last special election note:  listening to right-wing talk radio, I hear over and over again that the outcome of Tuesday’s balloting can be explained by low voter turn-out by Republicans and conservatives.  I hear this especially about the failure of Proposition 73, the parental notification measure.  As is so often the case in defeat, the losing side continues to insist that a silent, non-voting majority really supports their side of things.  But the numbers don’t back that view.

Here are the voter turn-out percentages in five "liberal counties" that voted down 73:

Los Angeles: 41%
Monterey: 37.5%
Alameda: 44.6%
San Francisco: 41.1%
Santa Barbara: 42.5%

And five conservative counties that easily passed 73:

Placer: 52.7%
Orange: 41.5%
Fresno: 45%
Amador: 65% (highest in the state)
Kern: 41%

Looks about the same to me; the statewide average was a relatively high (for a special election) 43.1%; thus the liberal heartlands of Los Angeles and San Francisco were below the average, not well-above it! The only place conservatives had a poor showing was in the Inland Empire Southern California counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, but even those counties were heavily influenced by a growing Latino electorate, which was willing to support abortion restrictions but far more leery of the rest of the governor’s props.

Sorry, my GOP friends.  This wasn’t about turn-out — this election, even the vote on 73, seems to me to be a fairly accurate reflection of the center-left impulses of most Californians.

UPDATE:  One last last election note.  One newcomer who won election to the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees (the folks for whom, in some sense, I work) is Hilary Bradbury-Huang.   I knew she was backed by our union, and I was pleased she beat her Republican opponent, who had been on the PCC board since (believe it or not) 1977.  But what I didn’t know is that she’s a registered Green.   That makes me very, very happy.  When I first started teaching here, Republicans held all but one of the seats on the Board of Trustees; now they are in the minority.  Sweet.

“Jesus told me to grow the *%ck up”: a response to the Countess

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In a comment below my Monday post about men and childishness, the Countess asked:

Hugo, I know you’re changing your habits. I’d like you know, if you don’t mind my asking, how you’ve changed in relation to your latest marriage compared to your past marriages. Lots of people, both male and female, can understand what you mean by doing things around the house you should be doing anyway as "chores". How did you change your point of view on that? For instance, I understand your view of chores. I used to hate food shopping because I saw it as a chore. That has changed since I’ve learned that I like to cook. Rather than seeing food shopping as a chore now, I see it as preparation for what I know will be a great meal on my part. I see the end product. Hence, my view of shopping as a "chore" has changed. I’d like to hear how you’ve changed your point of view. You seemed to have changed quite a bit over the years, and I’m sure that will enhance your marriage. I hope I’m not being too forward or personal. If I am, I apologize. I really am curious to see how you’ve changed now as opposed to the way you used to be. I’m sure a lot of people can learn from that.

The short answer is, "Jesus told me to ‘grow the fuck up’!"  That sounds incredibly flip and profane, but it’s the pithiest way I can summarize it.  At least the lion’s share of this transformation has been linked to my conversion experience.

But there’s much more to it than that, of course.  When I was in my earlier marriages, I often felt like a "guest in my own house."  I ceded responsibility for virtually everything to my wives.  I remember the rock-bottom moment in my second marriage, when I walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and asked Sara: "Is it okay if I have a Sprite before dinner?"  This was about 1995; I was twenty-eight and already a full-time professor, and I was asking my wife for permission to have a soda!  Yes, she had her part to play in the dynamic we created  — I’m not letting her off the hook.  But I was an architect of my own adversity if there ever was one, creating a paradigm where I, a grown man (the sole earner in the household at the time, interestingly) felt the need to ask if a Sprite would spoil his dinner.

And part of that paradigm of the "guest in one’s own house" was the feeling that I was "doing chores."  I swept floors (badly), did laundry (mixing colors and temperatures) and ran errands (and forgot things).  And indeed, in my head it was much more about pleasing my wife (or, as I would have put it then, "getting her off my case") than it was about partnership.  I would do these chores, thinking about how I was only doing these things because she wanted me to. I thought about how if I were single, I wouldn’t have to do these things.  I wallowed in passive-aggressive self-pity.  Frankly, it was pathetic.

What changed between my third and fourth marriages was the recognition that I do, in fact, have a choice about everything I do.  I tended to think of myself for years as a creature of duty and a victim of circumstance.  As I put it once, petulantly, "I’m overwhelmed by all the ‘have-tos’!" And I externalized those "have-tos" (which ranged from not looking at porn to picking up my socks to sorting laundry), blaming my wife for limiting my freedom and treating me like a child.  What I came to realize, through prayer, reading, and a hell of a lot of good (and expensive) therapy, is that I was in love with my own victim mentality.  There’s a lot of public discussion about how women see themselves as victims, but less about men — and yet a lot of us do see ourselves as victims of our mothers and our marriages to women whom we choose to place in the role of our mothers.

Today, everything I do is a choice.  If I want to, I can cancel class, buy a six-pack, and go to the beach and get drunk. If I choose to, I can go to a strip club rather than youth group on Wednesday nights.  If I choose to, I can give money to the Republican party.  If I don’t do these things, it’s because I’ve chosen not to.  All choices have consequences, and only a small child demands the right to make choices without enduring consequences.  But I have set up my life professionally, emotionally, spiritually and maritally as a result of deliberate choices.  I did not choose my mother. I chose my wife, and I get to choose how I interact with her in relationship.  I can choose to cede the decision-making over the house to her, or I can choose to take an active role. 

When it comes to dishes, for example, I recognize that I still have choices. I can leave them in the sink and choose to burden her with them.  I can choose to do them, and resent her for not doing them.  I can choose to do them, and think wistfully back on my bachelor days when I ate out of a can standing over the sink and had no dishes to do.  Or I can do what I do, which is choose to see doing the dishes as a choice that gives me a clean kitchen that I too can enjoy, and something that I offer as a choice in partnership with my wife who has made her own set of choices to offer her own set of gifts to the household.

I don’t know that I "chose" God.  I think He called me, and I felt compelled to answer.  To paraphrase the Calvinists, it was "irresistible grace."  But that irresistible grace has empowered me to see my life as a series of choices over which I am ultimately master. I can choose to honor my marriage vows or not, choose to teach with passion or not, choose to match my language and my life or not.  I have the memory of the "nots" fresh in my consciousness; I spent years and years thinking of myself as a victim of powerful forces (alcohol and women, chief among them) over which I had no control.  God gave me the gift of liberating me from the self-concept of a victim, and from the self-concept of the naughty perpetual child.  It’s not my mother’s job any longer to help me make the right choice, it’s not my wife’s job to insist that I do so, or to threaten me with consequences if I don’t.  Every day, many times a day, I face choices small and large.  I get to weigh the repercussions, and then I get to choose — and always, always, I take responsibility for how it plays out.

I’m not sure this makes any sense at all.  Typically, having written this in twenty-five furious minutes, I’m going to publish it without editing.  Countess, just consider this my first attempt at answering your question.

More on the election aftermath, All Saints girls, and the IRS opportunity

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Several things.

1.  It’s a morning of continued good news; AP reports:

A solid phalanx of Republican moderates drove House GOP leaders to drop a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wilderness area to oil drilling as a sweeping budget bill headed toward a vote Thursday.

A plan to allow states to lift a moratorium on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts was also axed.

While the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling plan could still be restored in conference, this is at least a temporary win for environmentalists, and we’ve had precious few of those lately.  Coming on the heels of Tuesday’s results here in the Golden State, I’m feeling more optimistic about my fellow citizens than I have in a while!  Who knew there were any GOP moderates left?  Calloo callay!

2.  Speaking of those who aren’t moderates, I spent some time yesterday afternoon listening to the Paul McGuire radio program.  McGuire is a very conservative, evangelical AM radio talk show host. He and his listeners were frustrated and upset over the special election results Tuesday, particularly the defeat of the parental notification initiative.  Many of his callers bemoaned the "ultra-liberal" electorate, comparing us to the ancient residents of Sodom and Gomorrah (a tired but still-effective rhetorical twist.)  Others were angry that more Christian conservatives hadn’t gone to the polls.  This raises an interesting question — one would think that Prop 73, the abortion initiative, would galvanize religious conservatives and send them to the polls in droves!  So what happened?  Did they not show up, despite the presence of 73 on the ballot?  Or did they show up, but still get walloped by a slightly larger progressive majority?  I am not sure I know the answer yet.

Yes, let’s be honest: sometimes, human nature being what it is, there is pleasure in "gloating"; it’s a rare person decent enough not to take some joy in listening to the discomfiture of one’s political opponents!  But as I listened, I did my best to do so prayerfully, as a fellow Christian — albeit one of a different theology — and to be sympathetic towards those who did not rejoice as I did in Tuesday’s results.  I listen a lot to shows like Paul McGuire’s; I figure it helps me keep a sense of what my far-more-conservative brothers and sisters are thinking.  Besides, Paul regularly leads his listeners in prayer, and I like that — and always, even though I share little if any of his agenda — I join in those prayers.

3.  On a related front, we had youth group last night.  Of course, there was some discussion of Proposition 73.  Several of our teen girls had been sporting "No on 73" buttons or stickers in previous weeks; last night I heard many fervent expressions of thanksgiving and relief for the prop’s narrow defeat.   Most of these girls are the daughters of All Saints members, of course; most All Saints members are in alignment with the church’s publicly pro-choice stance.   But even as the daughters of generally progressive parents, it’s clear that many of them were terrified at the prospect of being compelled to notify mom or dad before receiving an abortion.  These are young women whose parents would, I’m fairly certain, prefer that their daughters choose abortion rather than another option.  Even so, these girls were adamant that they ought to enjoy, even as minors, a right to reproductive privacy.  One girl expressed frank amazement that the measure had lost, saying "I can’t believe that many people really think the way we do; I’m so excited."  I chuckled, and made the usual gentle noises about how much I hoped that most of "my girls" would never be put in the position where they would need to exercise this particular right.  And of course, I stressed once again that if they didn’t feel comfortable talking to their parents, they could reach out to me or another youth minister.  Frankly, talking with these girls last night reminded me of why I had been right to overcome my reservations and vote "no" on 73.

4.  We also talked, not surprisingly, about the whole All Saints/IRS story.  Our rector, Ed Bacon, and our former rector, George Regas, have been on national news programs many times this week; the story of the confrontation between our parish and the Revenue Service over perceived partisanship in a Regas sermon has spread far and wide.  Of course, though all of our kids had some idea of what was going on, not everyone understood the whole idea of non-profit exemptions.  One of our staff members gave a very nice overview of the law, and I’m happy to say I learned a few things I didn’t know.  (For example, I had not realized that tax-exempt churches could take positions on propositions, just not on candidates.)   Once the kids had a fairly solid idea of how the law worked, we moved into discussion.

Many kids were intensely proud of the high profile of All Saints.  I suppose it’s true that we all have a little bit of a martyr complex, especially when our "martyrdom" doesn’t really hurt!  Some kids mentioned that their teachers or classmates had given them grief about belonging to such a liberal church; they told these stories with understandable pride.  But we wanted to do more than just give the kids a chance to say how proud they were of All Saints and how foolish they thought the IRS was.  We wanted them to reflect on many things, ranging from the sometimes high cost of discipleship (we emphasized the risks to All Saints are very real, especially since we have now refused the IRS settlement offer) to the new opportunities this presents.

We talked, of all things, about Ted Haggard and the National Association of Evangelicals.  Both publicly and privately, the conservative NAE has been very supportive of liberal All Saints.  Ted Haggard, president of the nation’s largest conservative Christian organization, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as expressing support for us:

When Ted Haggard, head of the 30-million-member National Assn. of Evangelicals, heard about the All Saints case Monday, he told his staff to contact the National Council of Churches, a more liberal group.

Haggard said he personally supports the war in Iraq and probably would not agree with much in the Rev. George Regas’ 2004 sermon at All Saints, which was cited by the IRS as the basis for its investigation. But Haggard said he wants to work with the council of churches "in doing whatever it takes to get the IRS to stop" such actions.

"It is a violation of the Constitution for the IRS to threaten that church. It may not be a violation of IRS regulations, but IRS regulations have been wrong," said Haggard, who is pastor of the 12,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

The point we wanted to make to the kids was that they had something in common with their fellow Christians in other churches.  Too often, our All Saints kids grow up believing that more conservative churches are filled with intolerant bigots with whom we share little or nothing.  But we emphasized last night that these folks were reaching out to us, standing with us in our time of need, forming a united front of faith against government intrusion.  Our lead senior high minister asked, "If these churches have reached out to us, how can we reach out to them?" 

One of my long-term goals has been more interaction between "liberal" All Saints kids and the teens at youth groups in much more evangelical churches.  A joint service project followed by a time for friendly dialogue seems like the most promising avenue.  We’ve bandied about the idea of doing this for a long while, but perhaps this new kerfuffle with the IRS (and the national attention it has brought to us) will be the catalyst to get up off our duffs and do something.  I have some contacts in youth ministry at some fairly conservative places ’round town; you know who you are (some of you read my blog.)  Expect a phone call.