If you go to Holon-News, it appears (see the colored chart on the right) that I am a blog of very high altitude. I am very blue.
I am a bear of little brain, and I’ve barely had my coffee, but I noted that Holon News has sent me hundreds of hits in the past twelve hours, and I thought I’d try and figure it out. I think I should be complimented. I’m higher than Andrew Sullivan.
…with XRLQ. A Pasadena-area native, he’s in town for a while and dropped me a line, inviting me out. A nice chat across a table — and across a fairly broad partisan divide. It’s always fun meeting in person those whom you’ve known in the blogosphere for many years.
For the record, I tried to pick up the tab. XRLQ was faster on the draw than I. I’ve got next.
I have little to say about the death of Anna Nicole Smith. She and I were exactly the same age, and I suppose all I can say is that while I never paid much attention to her career, I always felt a strange tenderness whenever I saw her face or heard about her. There was a very obvious frailty to her, a kind of vulnerability that I can’t really explain. It’s sad.
A few days ago, Chris Clarke made the difficult decision to put down his beloved dog Zeke. (He had posted last week about steeling himself for that fast-approaching decision). Zeke went peacefully; the not-safe-if-you-don’t-want-to-weep link to that story is here. As always, Chris writes with such clarity that it makes me ache, though I’m not sure if that ache is more from empathy with his grief or envy at the grace with which he writes about it.
Now that Amanda has moved on to serve John Edwards, Chris is writing at Pandagon. And he’s got a fabulous post up today (one in which I am quoted, but without being named). It’s a post about the various things people have written to him in the aftermath of Zeke’s passing. Chris is not much of a theist, but that hasn’t stopped the well-intentioned from assuring him that he and Zeke will be reunited in heaven. (Lots of references to the Rainbow Bridge.)
Chris and Becky don’t believe in the Rainbow Bridge. He writes:
Here’s the thing: I don’t believe in an afterlife. What’s more, in contexts like the one in which I live now, I find the whole concept of an afterlife to be profoundly unhelpful. No, that’s not strong enough. It’s like sticking a fucking corkscrew in my heart and yanking it out. After all, I’m not so completely rational that I don’t succumb to the temptation to stand on his grave and talk to him. After years of indoctrination in Roman Catholic dogma, the reflex of imagining the Pearly Gates dies hard. But it’s false hope, and both the glimmer of reunion and the fleeting thought that he misses us make me feel worse.
And Chris has asked folks to please not persist in foisting what he sees as false, perhaps even cruel reassurances upon him as he grieves his friend. Sadly, that request was ignored. Folks continued to push:
When people respond to a politely worded request to can the heaven stuff by ramping up the heaven stuff, that is an example of religious intolerance. When a person has to take time out from grieving to forgive people who’ve made him feel a lot worse, telling himself that he has to give them slack because they’re upset over the death of his family member, that he has to remember they’re just trying to make him feel better with promises of meeting again despite his express request, that is a symptom of religious intolerance.
Chris and I both love the rolling hills of the San Francisco Bay Area. He hikes them with what seems like reverence; I tend to attack them with hyper tenacity, measuring my fitness on their slopes. We both love animals, and we’ve both lost creatures whom we adored within the past year. And when it comes to the great questions, the ones about life and death and the possibility that our souls endure, sentient and unique, beyond this world — Chris and I have different answers.
And because I know he and I have different answers, I don’t try and comfort him in his vulnerabilty with my answers. Authentic Christian evangelism is not predatory. Authentic Christian evangelism doesn’t see the grief of those who don’t share our faith as a “special opportunity” to do some witnessin’! And far too many of my brothers and sisters in Christ make this obnoxious error.
I use this blog to share my faith, of course. But the best way I can carry out the Great Commission is to lead a good life, a life devoted to justice and compassion, a life that is happy and considerate and brave. And when people see any goodness in me, or ask me where my strength comes from — then heavens to Betsy, I’m gonna share. But to paraphrase what they say in AA, evangelism is about “attraction, not promotion.” It’s about living out our faith in ways that will draw others to it; it’s not about foisting pamphlets on passers-by, and it’s not about saccharine promises to pray for those who have already made it clear that they don’t want to hear it.
Do I pray for non-Christians? Sure I do. Do I tell them about it, as if I’ve done them a special favor and tucked the spiritual equivalent of a $20 bill in their purse when they weren’t looking? No, I don’t. In his Pandagon post, Chris quotes what I wrote on his blog when I learned of Zeke’s death:
Much love to you and Becky from a man, a woman, and six chinchillas in Pasadena.
That seemed right. Chris doesn’t need to hear that I’m lifting him and Becky up in prayer, and imploring Jesus to soothe their pain. Chris doesn’t need me to tell him that more and more Christians are convinced that we may indeed find animals in the next life. He doesn’t need me to claim that I believe that he and Zeke will hike together again, each in uncorrupted bodies, climbing the true mountain in the undiscovered country that lies beyond the grave. I can write that sort of comforting, sophomoric bullshit very easily. It comes naturally to me. And it’s more than bullshit, I suppose; I not only am certain that there is a heaven, I am pretty danged hopeful that all the beings I have ever loved will be with me there. And there will be no more tears, for the former things have passed away… and so on.
When a fellow Christian asks for my prayers, I promise them that I will storm the very gates of heaven on their behalf. With those who do not believe in prayer, when they tell me of their grief, I share a gentle “I’m so sorry.” I often ask what I can do, which usually is little more than listening. And my prayers are quiet. I might pray just as hard for those who don’t believe as for those who do — but I don’t feel the need to share that tidbit. I often say “I”m sending you love”. I always mean it.
I lost my father last June 22, eleven days after our first chinchilla, the beautiful Matilde, left us without warning. Sometimes, usually in the early mornings, the reality of their deaths hits me with such force that I have to sit for a moment. My chest still gets very tight when I think of my Daddy. And I’ll be honest about what I believe:
I believe my Dad and my Matilde are together somewhere. I believe that Matty died so suddenly because she knew her beloved opa, her abuelo, would need her in the next world and she wanted to get things ready for him. I believe it because I want to believe it, even though my Dad was not a Christian and my own faith is dubious about whether or not animals have souls. So when people told me that I’d see them both again, I was cheered and comforted. Those who reassured me that it was possible to be reunited with those who have gone before knew that I believe in the resurrection; they knew that I do believe that we will all be together on the far side of the Jordan. Those aren’t just pretty words to me — they are certainties as certain in my life as the Pythagorean theorem, the orbit of the moon around the earth, as the pounding of the surf on the rocks of Carmel Point.
On this blog, in this space that is my own (bought and paid for), I will say what I believe as honestly as I can. When I write a note to comfort the grieving, when I reach out to those I know who are in pain, I choose my words carefully. Their journey may not be my journey. They may well be sheep of a different fold, as my shepherd says. And I choose my words carefully, making sure that the only constant is love.
John Edwards not only has great hair, he is my hero today. Contrary to an erroneous report in Salon magazine yesterday, the Edwards campaign has NOT fired Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan as his bloggers. (Thanks should go to Liza at Culture Kitchen for keeping us all updated so well these past few days.) Despite a firestorm of criticism, Edwards stood firm. This statement has just been released :
The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte’s and Melissa McEwan’s posts personally offended me. It’s not how I talk to people, and it’s not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it’s intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I’ve talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word. We’re beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can’t let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.
Bold emphasis mine. Sorry, Dennis Kucinich, you just lost my endorsement. John Edwards, you just got mine — and a credit card donation as well!
I was afraid our lad might cave; it might have been the politically expedient thing to do. This is a gutsy move by an increasingly gutsy man whose views are increasingly progressive.
Thanks, John; hurrah for Amanda, hurrah for Melissa, hurrah, hurrah!
UPDATE: Reading the threads at Pandagon and Feministe, it seems that many are upset with Edwards’ tone. According to some, it wasn’t enough that he didn’t fire them, he ought not to have suggested that he found their language “intolerant.” Well, I adore Amanda (I read Melissa less often), and I can easily see how folks could find some of her posts to be “intolerant.” I find the substance of her views, however, to be very much in synch with my own and with our shared progressive ideals. Edwards did what he needed to do, which was disassociate himself from language that many people did find offensive, while bravely refusing to cave to right-wing pressure to fire these two immensely talented women.
Others may find his statement paternalistic or passive, but given the political realities of our era, keeping Melissa and Amanda on staff was, to me, very courageous.
UPDATE II: Here’s David Broder in the New York Times. Could this story be on the front of the paper of record?
On Tuesday, I posted this very short note about my frustration with those who walk too slowly; the thread turned out to be rather fun.
Reading the comments, it occurs to me I’ve never posted about one of my future plans: to create a company that offers running tours of major historical sites. Not just running tours of famous cities, but of museums, cathedrals, temples, and so forth. You combine my natural hyperactivity, my inattentiveness, my love of running, my love of travel, and an unfortunate tendency to be a cultural philistine, and voila! A brand new way to see the world!
When I spent a semester teaching in a study abroad program in Italy, I mastered getting in and out of museums while still seeing all that needed to be seen. The Uffizi? Twenty minutes. The Doge’s Palace? Fifteen minutes. The Bargello? Seventeen. The Vatican museum took forty, but that was due to crowds that slowed down my steaming pace, not to any great desire to linger. And during my few months in Italy, I got an idea: create running tours of museums.
We’d need to rent out museums early in the morning, when runners like to work out and before the crowds come. We’d have to wear special racing flats that wouldn’t scuff the floors of the glorious galleries. Gathering before dawn, I’d work in conjunction with some athletic art historians, and we’d lead a pack of similarly-minded folks through a whirl-wind tour of the great galleries, palaces, and museums. We’d see everything, if not on a dead run, at least at a steady jog. Ten seconds with Botticelli, five with Donatello, three quick circuits around the feet of David in the Accademia. We’d run through all the rooms at Versailles; we’d climb the Eiffel Tower; we’d race through Schoenbrunn, do fartlek in the Tate, and sprint the Hermitage. Folks who needed to linger would be allowed to do so for a minute or two, and then catch up with our merry band composed of the spandex-clad and the Asics-hooved.
As the day wore on, this happy, sweaty group would move outside into the dawn (this tour will work best in spring or summer). We’d find the coffee shops, slurp down the local stimulating beverage, and then head off to the parks. In Dublin, we’d cavort in Phoenix Park; in London, run with the squirrels in Hyde Park; in Madrid, we might do intervals in the Jardin Botanico.
You get the idea.
At the very least, I’d like to go to Europe with a camera crew. I could be miked to lecture as I ran, and offer breezy, light-footed commentary as I jogged through the cities. I’d show visiting runners the best routes, and I’d conduct guest interviews with athletic locals; there’s always some expert in the antiquities about who also likes to lace up the trainers and break a sweat. Our conversations would be conducted at a pace rapid enough for a workout, slow enough for us to chat easily. We’d do a series of half-hour episodes, and air them on some happy mix of the History Channel and ESPN.
I’m fortunate to have run in many different cities. Some cities around the world are marvelous to run in, of course. Running the shoreline in Chicago, running Central Park, running the Mall in our nation’s capital, running Hayward field in Eugene: these are sublime experiences for the tourist. Europe offers its glorious parks and boulevards. When I spent those many months in Florence, I ran the Cascine every day; when I visit family in Devon, I run for miles along the banks of the lugubrious river Exe. Not all places are easy to run: Hong Kong is very, very crowded! I made a sincere effort to run through Central at midday, and it didn’t go well until I gave up and jogged up the Peak Road. Bogota is, well, not very safe for this little white boy; it’s the one city I’ve ever visited where I’ve felt compelled to confine my running to the treadmill in the hotel gym.
I remember trying to run in John O’Groats in northern Scotland in the wind and the rain. That was tough. I tried to run up the side of Table Mountain in Cape Town, got winded, and had to break it off to my considerable shame. And when it comes to cities that are unfriendly to runners, Venice is the greatest challenge. I managed to do a few runs through the streets between the train station and San Marco, but after I knocked over a couple of slow-moving tourists and a postcard stand, I surrendered to the elements and gave up.
Let me get a book or two out, and then I’m pitching this “run the great heritage sites of the world” idea to the Discovery channel. Don’t go scooping me, now!
If Robinson Jeffers was the greatest poet ever to live and write in the Monterey Bay area — where I grew up (and where I will retire) — then George Lober is one of the best living writers making his home on that glorious peninsula.
I like this poem of his. Yes, it’s viscerally male; one could say it reeks of macho posturing and paternalism. But even though I’m not a Dad, I care for many young ones who are dear to me, and I know how angry I get when their hearts get broken. And for whatever reason, I like this one today.
Maybe I’ll dedicate it to John Edwards.
For The Liar Who Broke My Daughter’s Heart
May we meet one night in Fresno,
at the party of a friend who does not know.
May we find each other by pure chance
in a corner of the yard,
as you stand guarding the keg,
your tan smile lifting the leaves like wind,
and may I look into your eyes and smile,
and I shake your hand,
gripping your palm in both of mine,
and squeezing it until the first bone breaks
(and we both know we both know).
May I hold your hand until every
small bone snaps like kindling,
and the warm flesh gives way,
until your blood seeps between my fingers
and spatters the summer ground,
until your smile disappears
as your mouth is erased.
May I hold it until your knuckles grind
in my palm like soft stones,
and your blonde Southern wife,
noticing your lipless face,
the stump of your hand,
looks at me that night across the yard
with the most gracious of smiles.
Thanks to Rudy C., I found this interesting thread on men, faith, and regret at Anthony Bradley’s blog. (It’s hosted by World Magazine, not normally what I link to.)
Regrets. What are men supposed to do with them? The older I get, it seems, the more regrets I pile on my mountain of dirt. They are haunting, heavy, daunting, ever-present. My deepest regrets were lived out of in response to the intense pain of years 0-18 that have had devastating, permanent, long-term effects. Prayer does not make them go away. It just doesn’t. Sorry.
First off, I always rejoice when I read honesty like that from a fellow Christian. So many of us in the evangelical world have been taught the lie that “to be a good Christian is to wear the happy face all the time”. Especially for those of us in leadership positions as Christians, who serve as youth ministers or pastors or authors, we’re called on to show people just how exciting and wonderful and fulfilling it is to live a life in Christ. We’re allowed to talk about our problems, of course, but only when we can say “But Christ healed me of this, and the Lord took care of that.” We’re allowed to tell our wild, self-destructive stories — but only when they are stories of how we once were, not how we continue to be. It’s okay to have been the prodigal son, as long as you finish your narrative by telling how you came home to your Father’s arms and lived happily ever after.
And danged if I ain’t guilty of exactly this sort of insipidness here on this blog. Time and time again, I allude to a colorful past; I drop hints about drugs and divorces; about addiction, adultery, and anorexia. And then I tie it all up neatly in a bow and say “But it’s all different now since my conversion.” And of course, in terms of the actual behavior, it is all different. I really don’t do what I used to do, and I do credit that to God’s work in my life, as well as to my own will, some great therapists, wonderful health insurance, some loving family members, and the amazing woman who is now my life.
But reading Anthony’s short post about regrets — where he too alludes to “acting out” in response to early childhood trauma — I’m struck by how rarely I am willing to cop to my own regrets. For someone whose profession involves the study of the past, I’m remarkably quick, both on this blog and in my public persona, to dismiss the idea that I still struggle with regret. I spent years and years in a Twelve Step program, and whenever I hear the term “regret” I think of a section of the AA Big Book called “the promises”. Referring to what will happen in our lives as a result of our spiritual work, the Book says:
We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it.
And more than anything in Scripture itself, that line from AA has stuck in my head for years and years. I’ve used it as a yardstick to measure my own growth. In my head, I’ve developed a formula: the absence of regret proves that my faith is strong and that Christ is working in my life. The presence of regret proves that I am flagging in my faith, and need to redouble my efforts. And I’m realizing this morning that that formula doesn’t get it right.
I’m fond of quoting Walter Wink’s famous line: “Christians have never dealt well with the inner darkness of the redeemed.” (I used it last summer in defense of Mel Gibson.) We don’t deal with the reality that our conversions are often lifetime processes, not single events. The hour we first believed might be sweet, but grace doesn’t obliterate all of our past, all of our shortcomings, all of the hurts we’ve inflicted. Grace gives us the strength to change, to reach out for help, to ask for forgiveness. But it’s not a magic bullet that erases consequences, and it doesn’t instantly alleviate regret, guilt, and heartache. Too often, in our exuberant singing and our public pronouncements, we Christians — especially we evangelicals — ignore the reality of this “inner darkness.”
Do I believe God has forgiven me for the things I’ve done — and the things I continue to do? Yes. Does that mean everyone else has forgiven me, or that I’ve forgiven myself? Hardly.
Even now, I know that some members of my family worry about me. I caused them so much heartache and fear; my parents and siblings spent several years fearing that I would not live much longer. I can still see that anxiety in my mother’s eyes from time to time; every once in a while, I catch it in my brother’s voice. And when I see it or hear it, I get overwhelmed by regret, regret that my recklessness, my addictiveness, and my destructiveness inflicted such deep wounds on those who loved me longest and best. The fact that my conversion is real and lasting means that I won’t ever go back to the places I went in those terrible years, but my conversion didn’t offer instant relief and comfort to those I hurt. I would be not only myopic and narcisisstic, I would be inhuman if I didn’t acknowledge that!
And some people may never fully trust me. There are people I hurt so badly that they have made it clear that they cannot forgive me. I have been told more than once in recent years that my “conversion” is a sham, that underneath this facade of a new life in Christ I am still the same old slick Hugo, self-indulgent and perhaps even sociopathic. They’re waiting, they tell me, for me to fall, to fuck up, to slip. I do not exaggerate or flatter myself unduly when I say that there are a number of people who would experience considerable schadenfreude if I were to be revealed as a charlatan and a fraud! I have earned some of that enmity through some really nasty behavior; the passage of time, my professions of redemption, and sincere attempts to make amends have not caused all whom I injured to forgive me.
I know that a lot of people love me. Even more are indifferent to me. Some dislike me for no apparent reason. And a small number really loathe me, and they do so with justifiable cause. Most of the time, I don’t think about this last group — but sometimes, in my darker moments, I do. And sometimes, I feel a wave of regret and sadness breaking over me. It hurts.
Becoming a Christian didn’t make me any less human. It made me more so. But the walls I built up over my first three decades of life didn’t all crumble the first moment I accepted Christ as my savior. Christ’s love has proved not to be a wrecking ball to those walls, but a slow drill that relentlessly bores through my defenses. Whole sections of the ramparts have crumbled, but some still stand. Sometimes, I climb up on the walls that remain, survey the wreckage of what was, and I get struck dumb by grief and remorse.
And ya know, that’s okay.
If you ask me what I think would be the most compelling national ticket for the Democrats next year, I’m torn. I have reason to like — and to worry about — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. About the only thing I’m sure of is that whichever one of them does win ought to pick Bill Richardson to be veep.
With Rudy Giuiliani now coming in, I have to admit that he’s the Republican who scares me most. As many conservatives (including Annika) point out, he could do the unthinkable — put some northeastern states back in play for the GOP. New York, like California, is a sine qua non state for us; we lose either, it won’t matter if we pick up Ohio.
And if Giuliani picked a social conservative (say, Brownback or Huckabee) to be his running mate — that would be truly formidable. If he can overcome his pro-choice albatross, Giuliani could win the GOP nomination. He might not be the first choice for the hard right, but he’s vastly preferable to a Democrat.
So, call me crazy, but I’m predicting Giuliani-Huckabee up against Edwards-Richardson. If it happens, you read it here first. I am increasingly convinced Edwards and Giuliani are best positioned to win their party’s respective nominations.
… but most people walk too damn slowly. On this campus in particular, the number who amble aimlessly is epidemic. I ought to teach a class called “Purposeful Striding 1A.”
As I mentioned yesterday, we had a terrific time with the All Saints kids during our fasting fund-raiser on Friday and Saturday. Another night for Hugo in his sleeping bag on the floor, surrounded by snoring and wheezing boys. (Here’s my dilemma: I find it much easier to sleep on retreats when I have both ear plugs and one of those little night shades to cover my eyes; I have a nice pair from a British Airways amenity kit. But is it safe, given what teens get up to, for the youth leaders to be unable to hear a darned thing? Should I always sleep with one ear open, as it were? I go back and forth on the matter.)
Our confirmation class this year has a very skewed sex ratio. We have 16 girls and 3 boys, which is the most lopsided it has been in my seven years of serving as an instructor and mentor for the confirmation program. On Saturday, I was chatting with a parent as we were finishing things up, and this parent (whose child was in a previous confirmation class) lamented “We really need more boys. I’m so worried that all the young men are missing.”
I’ve heard a lot of this public anxiety about “missing boys” this year. I’ve heard it nationally, as the mainstream media frets that bright and talented young women are somehow driving young men off of college campuses. And I’ve heard it at All Saints, where for any number of reasons, we have a very small number of boys in our 2007 “Seekers” confirmation class. (I am happy to say that in terms of overall numbers, the trend in the raw number of confirmands is going up in our parish.) In the past, we’ve always had a few more girls than boys, say with a 10-8 split in favor of the females. But never as stark as the 16-3 ratio we’ve got at the moment, a ratio that is particularly obvious when we divide the teens for overnight sleeping arrangements.
Let me be clear that I’d like to see more boys involved in our youth program. But I’m growing a bit frustrated with the hand-wringing over their absence. The three boys we do have this year are bright, sweet, fun lads; the girls we’ve got are equally wonderful. As always, once I get to know them well, I find myself starting to fall in love with the whole danged pack of them. (In this paranoid age, let me be clear that this is a pure and uncomplicated passion!) And I’m worried that it is all too easy to become so concerned about the “missing boys” that we ignore the equally important needs of the girls who are seeking out confirmation and committing to our eight-month program. We are in danger of focusing too much on who isn’t with us, and why they aren’t, and too little on the precious, magnificent young people who are right in front of us.
As a male professor and youth leader, I take my job as a role model very seriously. I know that I have a role to play in the lives of both young men and young women. The fact that I am male doesn’t mean that the boys are any more or less important to me than are their sisters. But to some extent, adult males are particularly important for boys because they can model an alternative vision of what it means to be masculine. Teenage boys want very much to know how to live as adult men, and it is considerably easier for a grown man to show that in his actions as well as his words. This doesn’t mean that adult women can’t mentor boys, and adult men can’t mentor girls; it just means that we often learn differently from same and other-sexed role models. So I get that I have a special task when it comes to the boys.
The reasons why our confirmation classes have such a skewed gender ratio are hardly unique to All Saints. Like many liberal churches, relatively few of our prospective confirmands have been forced by their parents to be in the program; if it were compulsory, we would expect a more even number of boys and girls. And all things being equal, more girls than boys seem interested in exploring their faith and spending time in service. I’ve heard a variety of suggestions floated to make the program more attractive to boys (less talking, more outdoor activities), but most of those ideas, if implemented, would gut the program as it exists. It would also mean ignoring the generally positive responses of the few boys whom we do have in the program. And it would mean we were showing more concern for men than for women, more concern for those absent than for those present.
The current obsession in education is a hyper-anxiety about the well-being of boys, and an almost misogynistic fear that our current pedagogical structures favor girls. After all, if more girls than boys are showing up and being successful, this must be attributed to an anti-male bias rather than to a greater interest and effort on the part of the girls themselves! Too many girls and well-behaved boys have been ignored for too long by teachers and youth leaders who devote too much attention to coping with the few “problem boys” (chronic troublemakers, overly medicated hyperactives, etcetera).
Am I upset that we’ve got 16 girls and 3 boys? Heck no. Would I be upset if we had 16 boys and 3 girls? Nope. Jesus calls us to feed His lambs, and we feed the lambs who come for food. What point is there in searching endlessly after those who aren’t showing up, if the end result is that those who have come to be fed are ignored?