Monthly Archives: January 2008

A rambling post about blogging, hubris, narcissism, and the longing to be liked

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This will be my last post for a week. We’re off to the Philippines tomorrow night; I’ve got lectures in Makati City (Manila) next Tuesday and Wednesday. We’ll be home to Pasadena late on Thursday of next week, and then off on another trip as of January 16. I will post about the Kabbalah and Christianity lectures next Friday, deo volente.

(Just as I finished the last sentence, one of the chinchillas in the next room made an “I’m having a dream” call — a series of little grunts signalling not distress but something else. Perhaps just a desire for me to come into the room and make cooing noises to all of them.)

Re: Iowa. Thrilled by the strong turn-out, and deeply moved by Barack Obama’s speech. I said before that if Romney and Edwards were the nominees, we’d have debates between two immensely handsome, articulate men who struggle with slickness. But a debate between Obama and Mike Huckabee would be a thing to behold; two consummate “outsiders”, two men running on two differing visions of hope, two men who have an extraordinary ability to connect with a wide variety of people. The establishment right has underestimated Huck’s political skills. The left better not make the same mistake by assuming he won’t be the GOP nominee, and if he is, that he is unelectable.

Re: blogging. I’m not going to complain about the criticism I’ve received here and elsewhere for yesterday’s post on evangelism, feminism, purists and popularizers. But it reminds me of what I like least about blogging.

I’m an ENFP, and though I enjoy writing, I enjoy conversation more. When I’m talking with someone, I feel so much more confident, so much more at ease. I’m at my best “off-the-cuff”, with as few notes as possible. (I’ve got these two, two-hour lectures next week on a topic I’ve never talked about — and I’ll go up with a few quotes scribbled down and nothing more. I love the thrill of improv, the challenge of constructing a coherent argument extemporaneously. That’s not laziness as much as it is thrill-seeking.) But over the course of a debate or a conversation, there’s so much more opportunity to avoid misunderstanding, to avoid the accidental infliction of hurt. I know others feel the opposite is true, but honestly, I’m more careful with the words I speak than with the words I write, even though I write far more slowly than I speak. Continue reading →

Speaking of anthologies…

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… Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power is now at last available from Amazon and other booksellers. Edited by the wonderful Shira Tarrant, it features essays by some forty pro-feminist men. Some are famous: Robert Jensen, Michael Flood, Michael Kimmel. Others are less so. Heck, there’s even an essay by some guy named Hugo Schwyzer.

I’ll review the whole thing in, well, February. But you should get it now.

Feminism, marketing, evangelism, inclusion: UPDATED

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On the ongoing “Yes Means Yes!” front, Theriomorph has a thoughtful response to my post last week. In the comments section below my December 27 post, I wrote:

…feminist missiology has to operate on multiple levels. We need our radicals and our moderates, our popularizers and our theorists. We need to package our most important ideas for the mass market in a way that the mass market will find palatable.

I’d rather 97% of the people get 3% of feminism than have 3% get 97%, if that makes sense.

Theriomorph responds:

We do, however, live in a world in which a woman political activist who is white, young, economically privileged, and saying something essentially upbeat and dumbed down that is guaranteed not to rock the institutional privilege boat but instead work only on the concerns of the most privileged among us and do so in an extremely circumscribed way can sell mad books.

We live in a world in which the merit of our ideas or talents or ethical constructs is far less important than the marketing behind them, and the same people get marketed saying the same things.

First of all, let me again reject the notion that Jessica Valenti’s writing is “upbeat and dumbed down.” But we’ve been down this road before; what Theriomorph calls “dumbed down” I see as “radically accessible”; what she calls “upbeat” I see as “inspiring.” Evel Knievel on his rocket-powered motorcycle couldn’t leap the gulf in perspective that has opened up over Full Frontal Feminism. That’s disappointing.

But I’d like to expand on my short remarks about “marketing”, and the comparison between Christian evangelism and the feminist mission. In many ways, the feminist community bears a resemblance to the evangelical Christian one. Both are committed to transforming the world. Both are committed to reaching people globally with a message that is life-changing. And both communities have intense, often bitter debates about exactly how to “package the message.” Continue reading →

Thursday Short Poem: Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”

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As we head towards Epiphany, here’s one of the most famous poems about the origin of that feast. It’s a troubled poem from a troubled, wise, conflicted believer. The final line seems so bleak, it’s important to remember the central one a few beats above: And I would do it again.

The Journey of the Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

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Vote for someone named John: primary and caucus endorsements

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Months ago, I predicted that the 2008 general election would be between Mitt Romney and John Edwards, anticipating a celebrated match-up between two talented, articulate, and strikingly good-looking candidates.

I’m not sure if my prediction will hold true, but on this eve of the Iowa caucus, let me be clear once more that I am endorsing John Edwards for the Democratic nomination. Of the top-tier candidates, he has the boldest and most progressive platform. His willingness to talk about the widening gap between rich and poor is refreshing; of all the major candidates, he promises to be the most aggressive in standing up for environmental and economic justice.

On the Republican side, it’s an easier call. John McCain is the class of the field. Unlike most of his fellow GOP candidates, McCain has not given in to the anti-immigrant xenophobia sweeping the party of the elephants. He is the only Republican to acknowledge the reality that global warming is largely a human-made phenomenon, and he has earned the enthusiastic endorsement of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Though far from being progressive in any real sense of the term, McCain’s willingness to buck right-wing orthodoxy and his commitment to the preservation of wild spaces earn him my vote.

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Men, mortality, stewardship, love

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It’s not a conducive time for posting ’round these parts. We leave for the Philippines on Saturday night; we’ll be back on Friday, January 11. I have lectures to prep and packing to do.

My father-in-law died early Sunday morning, and we have been busy with taking care of family and with funeral arrangements. Sunday afternoon, my wife and I spent several hours dealing with the cemetary, the mortuary, and all the minutiae that come with death. I’ve gotten too familiar lately with all the details that survivors cope with in the aftermath of a loved one’s passing.

My Dad died eighteen months ago, at 71. My father-in-law died three days ago at 63. Over and over again, the words “much too young” echo in my head. My father’s father died at only 44 (in a car accident); my mother’s father died at 62. Both of my wife’s grandfathers died relatively young as well. Though the causes were all different, we both come from families where there are plenty of older women — and too few older men. The statisticians tell me that men in America and Europe should live to see at least 72, but for my wife and for me, neither our fathers nor any one of our four grandfathers made it to that age. Meanwhile, all four of our grandmothers made it to at least 80, and most well beyond.

So in addition to the grief over losing a loved one, I’m feeling this week an acute sense of fragility. Some of that is just the reminder — of the sort we always get when we’re confronted with death — of our own mortality. But in my personal experience (and the experience of my family), dying “too young” is a largely male phenomenon. Though some of these deaths were due to poor lifestyle choices, the emotional impression I am left with is that men are somehow more vulnerable than women. Continue reading →