soothing

after a hard week at work (yes, it's only wednesday) there is nothing i like more than to zone out. i especially like zoning out when the political news of the day gives me gas. so in recognition of the CMOS going online with a subscription, here's their Q&A section, where you can zone out while pondering the correct usage of its.

Chicago Manual of Style - Q&A

(i saw its used three times incorrectly today and it drove me nuts.)

hide that diaphragm, ladies.

i think i just got heartburn.

no longer just a hidden paranoia amongst the pro-choice, the new evangelical 'war' on contraception has finally broken the surface. i knew it would happen.

i love all the space given to the anti-family planning side while the pro-family planning side is given just a few inches toward the end, legitimizing the idea that people (mostly women) shouldn't have the right to use contraception.

Abortion foes' new rallying point | Chicago Tribune

so.
all those married ladies on the pill or using the sponge, diaphragm or IUD? forget it.
all those married guys who don't want to get a vasectomy and so use condoms? too bad.
everyone else who doesn't want to get pregnant (for various reasons) and who don't believe the same as others about the place of sex in a relationship (or out of one)? yeah, too bad.

sex is only for married folks, people. the fundies have said so.
and now they're going to FORCE you to be celibate.

whether you like it or not.
...

update: want some stats on men, the 'male pill' and their usage of contraception? here's something from planned parenthood -

Ask Dr. Cullins: Birth Control

Q: How soon will it be before there's a pill for men?
A: There are still years to go, although there seem to be breakthroughs in the research every once in a while. Finding a safe and effective way to keep a man from producing millions of sperm a day has proven to be more difficult than it is to keep a woman from producing one egg a month.
However long it takes, it will be worthwhile. Men are very willing to take responsibility for birth control, even though there are comparatively few options for them. In fact, men now take responsibility for more than a third of all contraception. More than 20 percent of all couples who use contraception rely on the condom. Nearly 11 percent rely on vasectomy. Three percent rely on withdrawal. And more than two percent rely on periodic abstinence.

for those who know who i am, look for a letter in the Trib this weekend re: the Federal Election Integrity Act.

heh.

(oh, and if the probability of having to BUY a freaking passport to prove your citizenship pisses you off, even though you're already registered and can prove your identity otherwise, and you don't buy the whole straw man argument about this being about voter fraud when this is just really another example of bashing immigrants while there's nothing but anecdotal BS about illegal immigrants committing large scale fraud, and you suspect this is really about suppressing the vote among the poor and the brown, then you really need to call your senator right now to vote NO. really.)

9.11

the Gen X-er in me balks at the maudlin regularity of the tributes, memorials and such but here's a devotion i found in my inbox this morning from my pastor:

Devotions: Monday, September 11, 2006
Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 3:8-12

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called—that you might inherit a blessing. For

“Those who desire life
and desire to see good days,
let them keep their tongues from evil
and their lips from speaking deceit;
let them turn away from evil and do good;
let them seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” (nrsv)

Reflection
Each one of us, I know, will find ourselves reflecting, pondering, wondering, praying today on this anniversary of 9/11. Our faith, our church, our precious traditions have sustained us these past five years. They have continued to deepen our understanding and show us how God is present in every circumstance, even dreadful events, with creative and life-giving love.

Our mothers and fathers in the faith, in the early Christian church, lived with the constant threat of persecution, imprisonment, death. Letters circulated among those separate tiny communities, extending love, encouragement, and hope. The words might have been written to us on September 11: “Have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing.”

As we continue to struggle with how best to respond to what happened to us, may those of us who have staked our lives on One who was and is “light shining in darkness” remember our vocation: to show the world something of God’s purposes--“unity, sympathy, love, tenderness, humility, blessing.”

Prayer
Dear God, I bring to you all that is in my heart today: all the anguish and anger, all the fear, all the love for my country and my hope for the future. I commend to your eternal love all the victims and to your care their families and friends. I pray for our leaders, for the women and men of our armed forces, and for all the people of the world. I pray for peace: the peace of the world, peace in my nation, and peace in my heart. O God, help me this day to know and to demonstrate something of your presence, your love and your intent for a world characterized by sympathy, tenderness, humility, and blessing. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Written by John Buchanan, Pastor

what's a girl to wear?

so as the weather cools out, a girl's thoughts naturally turn to Fall fashion. i love this time of year - back to 'school', tights, pumps, sweaters and jackets, smooth hair, plum lipstick. last year i went with Sexy Librarian.

this year it has been recommended that i go with The Tailored Tomboy.

or, as i like to put it: The Sexy Librarian's Sexy Butch Cousin.

it's a recommendation that comes just in time for the new boy - uh, man - who's suddenly appeared on the Ding scene. heh.

(i need a name for him...something that conveys HunkyTallStrappingBroadArtyCrunchyGranolaFurnitureMaker Man. something like Paul Bunyan but less...rustic.)

The Mothers Movement Online: mommies of the world unite!

so i won't have to bury this piece down there in comments, here's something on the limitations of the mommy wars and how we really need to start talking about more important things - like, how our culture needs to change so that *all* mommies can do what they need to do.

from the article: "Maybe we can quit beating the dead mommy wars horse, and start talking about how family and work can fit together in the twenty-first century." [emphasis mine]

it's a fascinating site that's pro-mommy and pro-social change. it all goes to show: not all mommies are cut from the same mold.

The Mothers Movement Online

politics of the boob: nursing at work

this is fascinating. who knew that breastfeeding at work could hold such political implications?

from the article:

For those with autonomy in their jobs — generally, well-paid professionals — breast-feeding, and the pumping it requires, is a matter of choice. It is usually an inconvenience, and it may be an embarrassing comedy of manners, involving leaky bottles tucked into briefcases and brown paper bags in the office refrigerator. But for lower-income mothers — including many who work in restaurants, factories, call centers and the military — pumping at work is close to impossible, causing many women to decline to breast-feed at all, and others to quit after a short time.

It is a particularly literal case of how well-being tends to beget further well-being, and disadvantage tends to create disadvantage — passed down in a mother’s milk, or lack thereof.

[emphasis mine]

why is this interesting to me, since these boobs of mine will never fill with milk? because it's a great example of how class privilege gets expressed (heh) in our culture. it's more than an academic exercise; it's two different realities for women who are in similar nursing situations. these women all have breasts, milk, children and need but only one set has access to the equipment, the time, the privacy. and because of this difference, based on class, there are health care implications for both of these sets of children (and their mothers.)

it's all linked, when you look at it closely.

i wonder what would happen in that law firm mentioned in the article if one of the assistants used the lactation room provided for the lawyers. would she be forbidden? and are the women with privilege even aware that there's this dichotomy? or do they even care? i'd care. a lot.

read the article here: On the Job, Nursing Mothers Find a 2-Class System - New York Times

oh, GACK!

this just in from US Rep. Katherine Harris:

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris said.

well. guess i just found my topic for this week's blog post over at christian alliance...

CNN.com - Rep. Harris: Church-state separation 'a lie' - Aug 28, 2006

[thanks, feministing.]

women, don't marry a jackass

so, apparently, while i was gone, Forbes magazine published a craptacular article from one of their editors called "Don't Marry a Career Woman."

a furor ensued (as well it should in the face of such bad writing and even poorer thinking, ironic or not) and Forbes took down the piece, then repackaged it as a craptacular debate when its own female employees expressed some, uh, anger.

(and the editor might have some anger issues of his own; a previous videogame reviewer for Wired, read: dork, and his credits include an article positing men shouldn't marry when they can buy a whore! niiice. maybe he and joe francis can move in together.)

Feministing has a very nice timeline of events, links to commentary and, through it all, you should get a real nice view of how neanderthalic some people (cough - men) still are about women in the workplace.

get. over. it.

about 5 years ago i lost my mother. it was devastating.

and now, my best friend/roomie has lost hers. it's also devastating.
i'll be taking the next few days off to be with her and some of our friends who are flying out to join A- and her family for the services.

each parental loss i and my friends experience tells us how finite family is; our friends become our family.

(love you, dad.)

Guys Gone Wild: War, Nation-making and Boobies

My mind is a soup, so bear with me.

Lately, two articles have become linked in my head: one, the recent LA Times Magazine article about the sleazy Girls Gone Wild mogul, Joe Francis, who has issues with coercing/forcing young women into sex and exhibitionism and two, the continuing narrative about the American soldiers who gang raped a girl, killed her, set her body on fire and killed three other members of her family to cover their rape/murder (which I describe in stark terms because they are stark actions. Let’s not be squeamish when we’re talking about these things.)

(And if you Google ‘Steven D. Green’ you can read the news stories on this case.)

On the surface, these stories bear no relation to one another: one is a slightly distasteful domestic story of an entrepreneur who seizes his capitalist moment and cashes in on our culture’s desire for celebrity and sex. The other is at the center of a larger global narrative of nation-making, democracy, terror, and military might. But if we scrape the surface, we’ll see these stories are not so different, after all. Both highlight masculine aggression, the ideological equation of libidinal release with cultural/capital supremacy, and both see such supremacy happening at the expense of women and their bodies. In these narratives, women are not merely objects, they are channels through which our men establish their identities. Female bodies are what predatory men need to fix their hypermasculine identities.

What does it take to create a Joe Francis or Private Steven D. Green? The acceptance of aggression as within suitable boundaries of human behavior. The LA Times piece opens with Francis assaulting the reporter over the hood of a car, her hands crushed behind her, her body pinned underneath Francis while surrounded by an acquiescent crowd of his bodyguards, male onlookers and armed law enforcement who realize too late that what they’re looking at isn’t a joke. Later, in addition to Francis’ own verbal and physical abuse of the reporter, Hoffman relates incidents of Francis verbally, physically and legally forcing women to his will. (That’s what his videos are all about: the moment a young girl must have her will bent to that of Francis, his camera man and to the implicit threat of the inevitable circle of drunk, aggressive men demanding to see her breasts.) And in Iraq, you have a group of men in a high combat area, all of them heavily armed, who’ve been fighting and see no end to the fighting; you have Private Green who’s on record saying “I want to kill and hurt a lot of Iraqis.”

You also need a cultural mindset that justifies whatever feeds a sense of supremacy, of over-weening masculine Privilege. Francis actually says it:

“I hate to get too deep and philosophical here, but only the guys with the
greatest sexual appetites are the ones who are the most driven and most
successful.”

This ‘drive to succeed’ will inevitably permit him to create a world that’s saturated with his view of sex and commercial exchange. The soldier’s success is a little more complicated; while there is individual motivation to avenge fellow soldiers’ deaths (the reports concentrate on testimony of the unit taking on heavy casualties and members of the unit being under combat stress, leading to Green’s confessed desire to kill Iraqis), there is a national motivation to ‘stay the course’, to be resolved in the face of any brutality, either inflicted or endured. At stake is national pride. Our vision of the world is so monumental, we cannot flinch; we cannot relent. In our national discourse, our soldiers are like gladiators, the ones carrying democracy at the point of a gun. ‘My country, right or wrong.’ Isn’t that the phrase?

But we also see what happens in such an atmosphere of masculine privilege: the brutality at Guantanamo Bay and the cruelty at Abu Ghraib (whose events were also highly sexualized.) And what is war but a nation giving itself permission to be its most brutal, its most desensitized? We saw what happened in Cambodia during covert operations during the Vietnam war, what happened in the central part of Africa during the tribal purges, what happened in Bosnia and Serbia – nationalist fervor manifesting itself in the systematic rape of women.

And so, to finish creating a Joe Francis and a Private Green, you need the body of a woman. It’s helpful if the woman is rendered helpless, by alcohol, by her age, by the fact our country has invaded hers. It’s also useful if she’s seen as Other (gendered Other, racially Other, nationally Other, politically Other). For Francis, what’s important is that the young woman is merely a tool for his own gratification. (Women who approach him to appear in his videos ‘sadden’ him.) She has no agency, no right to her own body; she’s just a pair of breasts. She’s worth nothing more than a t-shirt or baseball cap, though her image makes him a mogul. For Private Green and his fellow soldiers, the 14-yr old Abeer Qasim Hamza was just an Iraqi. Worthless. An object. This girl was a receptacle for their rage, fear and hatred that, through their act of violating her, allows them to become a picture of American manhood.

Before the NYTimes changed the headline to ‘GI Tells Why He Testified in Rape-Murder Inquiry’ it read ‘Iraq Incident was Fueled by Whiskey, GI Says.’ What a cop out. Whiskey may have given the soldiers dutch courage, but that narrative is not about boys getting a little bit out of control, like their frat went on a pantie raid. Let's readjust our lens a little bit. I see the guys who surround Joe Francis – the cameramen, the club owners, the bodyguards, the cops, the bystanders, the producers, the guys who buy the fracking tapes – then I see the soldiers who went on that raid on that Iraqi house and I cannot help but see them in the same way: predators.

boys will be boys? or war is hell?

i don't know how many people are following this but it's a story that turns my stomach: a disturbed GI takes it into his head to 'kill Iraqis' and so gets guys from his platoon to gang rape and kill a young girl, setting her body on fire to conceal their crime - and kill her entire family besides.

Iraq Incident Was Fueled by Whiskey, G.I. Says - New York Times

what are we doing there?

our hubris has turned us into (there's no other word for it) savages.

it's sunday afternoon, a rare day that i've been able to enjoy without 'running errands' or otherwise being outside in a heatwave.

i've stumbled across two articles today in the 'paper' that are sort of like bookends to one another; one looks at the declining number of men without college educations marrying and the other looks at women, with educations, entering financial services and what they encounter - as well as the adjustments some firms are having to make because of them:

Facing Middle Age With No Degree, and No Wife - New York Times

Wall Street's Women Face A Fork in the Road - New York Times

what's interesting to me about both these articles is how they avoid the tone of a fake 'crisis' (unlike the Times' previous shoddy Opt Out articles, for which one of these is a tonic) and they show how the idea of what's 'traditional' is changing because people (men and women alike) are saying up front 'this isn't working for me.' and their rejection is saying something about the way our worlds, social and corporate worlds, are organized.

when looking at the low trends of young women entering financial services it's offered that 'Generation Y cares less about money if it comes at too high a price, ...throwing a wrench into Wall Street’s past assurance that it could demand cultlike devotion from employees in return for fatter paychecks than any other profession.' instead, younger men and women (even those who'd like to return) are demanding something less insane than working around the clock to the detriment of their personal/family lives.

and the guys featured in the marriage piece - they seem ok with their status, whatever their reasons for remaining single (financial stbility, fear of divorce, can't commit.) to the pressure of marriage, the effort and expense of it - they're saying no. while the article makes a lot of the stats showing how the pool of available women has shrunk for these men, their own personal stories tell a different story - they just don't want to marry. it's working for them.

of course it makes me think what life will look like down the line when most folk in my generation will be living as roommates, unmarried and pretty well happy about it. it'll be unlike life as we've known it (or heard about from our parents and grandparents). my friends and i joke about it: we're through with lovers and husbands (or maybe not), we're living in some hip elderly commune somewhere, getting all nostalgic about U2 or Wilco.

that'll be sort of interesting.

i'll believe it when i see it: the 'oops' plan

dead horse, beaten.

if unintended pregnancies and abortions are to be avoided, then a full range of contraception is necessary for a woman's sexual and reproductive health.

Soon no prescription for morning-after pill?

a doozy:

"You might have an 18-year-old girl who decides that rather than practice safe sex and plan responsibly, 'I no longer have to worry about it. I can just go to the pharmacy,' " said state Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Troy), a Downstate pharmacist for 31 years.
Stephens, who is morally opposed to the morning-after pill and refuses to fill such prescriptions, said selling Plan B over-the-counter compromises patient safety by "taking the doctor and the pharmacist out of the equation."

love how the majority of adult women are held hostage to this hypothetical dumbass 18-yr old AND love how now Rep Stephens is blathering about 'taking the doctor out' of the process when he and his pals think it's just fine for doctors and pharmacists to refuse to dispense plain old birth control.

which is it, doc? you WANT women to have access to prescribed birth control or you DON'T?

(if people just want other people to stop having sex outside of christian monogamous marriage, you've had millions of years to nail it and it still hasn't worked. congrats.)

modern life

now i know why maureen dowd writes those crazy, dreadful, 'men don't want to date me because i'm a feminist' columns every so often.

trying to be all profound week after week can blow, especially when you have a real-life job that's important to you, your sister and brother in law are coming into town this weekend, you still haven't cleaned your room, you have to pay the housecleaner (with something), buy some beer, and you have NO idea how you're going to entertain houseguests for three days.

it's hard to muster the intellectual energy to think of something sharp or funny or snarky to say about the modern state of religion in our culture when you also have to figure out when you're going to return the phone calls of a friend with whom you may stay in new york next month during a trip with your father, the calls of an irate pseudo-ex who doesn't want to be an ex anymore, the calls from friends wondering where you are and when you all can hang out. (we can hang out when i can find some time on my calendar!)

it's also hard to get up any gumption when things in the middle east resemble a crusty pie imploding from the inside, when things over here sort of look like one of those pleasure cruises slowly taking in water, when things all over kind of make you feel like you want to say, 'dear jesus, just send that flaming meteorite anytime at all. really. stick a fork in us, we're done.'

i can't help writing what i'm about to write next, as churchy and 'devotional' as it sounds: i keep going back in my head to that moment in church on sunday, listening to that small group of ordinary men up in the choir loft sing the holst/mcdonald piece, watching their quiet pleasure in it, listening to their worship and feeling full of something. and whatever it was, it stayed with me all week - while i crossed the bridge at wacker and michigan, rumbling on the crowded rush hour bus, it was with me, giving me pause.

even now, while i watch the clock and know that i have to get up in 6 hours to run an early morning meeting and i'm so busy my head hurts to think about it, even now i'm taking just a little rest from all that to think about the hymn again:

'with my heart i'll ever worhip you; my voice will sing your praise for your everlasting mercy and grace for every day.'

i guess when international peace is elusive, we take what we can get.

deacon on duty

a glorious chicago morning.
the sky above michigan avenue is the blue of a robin's egg. the breeze from the lake brushes my face. i'm rushing across the avenue, the yellow cabs at the red light impatient to speed southward, through the front door, fussing with my magnetic deacon's badge, the click of my heels snapping across the flagstones. the usher at the narthex door smiles, handing me my program. her eyes flick to my nametag and she says my name.

through the door, a brisk walk down the center aisle. no hiding off to the side and back for me. other deacons at their stations give little waves. i stop to say to the deacon board co-moderators, two nice guys (who seem to live at the church), and then i slip into my row, hoping i don't get boxed in when i have to leave early to get to my church tour position at the narthex when service ends.

the organ begins to tune. then, bach.
...
we're in the middle of our responsive psalm reading. (i'm still amazed that they have to print the page numbers of bible books in the program. who doesn't know where to find psalms?)
one of the pastors from the presbytery is reading swiftly. we read just as swiftly.

he reads, "For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand."
then he stops.
a long silence ensues: congregation waiting patiently for visiting pastor to realize he has half a verse more. pastor just as patiently wondering why the congregation has fallen silent. congregation now stubbornly determined to wait out the pastor. pastor still befuddled. the silence grows uncomfortably long. i'm fascinated at the standoff.

then the men's choir up above softly prompt, "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness" and we, the congregation, gratefully read our part. the service rolls serenely on.
...
the lights are dim as the guest pastor gives the installation sermon for our new associate pastor A-. we've all finally deciphered his twangy tennessee accent. (like how it takes a few minutes to unravel a northern england accent in a film.) he's in the middle of an anecdote about successful pastors who engage the heart and mind.

a man writes a letter to john wesley saying, 'dear dr. wesley, God don't need your book-learnin'.' to which john wesley writes: 'my dear sir, God may have no need of my book-learning, but neither does he need your ignorance.'

i am the only one to laugh out loud.
...
the offetory hymn, a slow, swelling, majestic song, is one of my favorites ('sovereign lord, creator, righteous one', gustave holst, arr. mary mcdonald). the men's choir sways gently, stretching their mouths to sing the words; some of them have their eyes closed and there is pleasure on their faces. just as it ends, the asian man on the bottom row looks up at the grizzled tenor standing above him and they exchange a nod and smile proudly.

i want them to sing it again. then instantly think i want this sung either at my wedding or my funeral, whichever comes first. then think, what wedding??
...
all the ordained officers huddle at the chancel laying our hands on our new associate pastor A-. the man's suited shoulder in front of me is padded. whoever is touching mine is weaving just slightly on their feet and every so often they firm up their grip on my shoulder to steady themselves.

i drift in and out of the prayer aware that i need to pull up my pants.
...
leading the church tour, trying frantically to remember the names of the figures on the stained glass, what the frog represents on the chancel, and who makes the tapestries for the sanctuary.

but i get the japanese story right. one day i'll remember what the frog means.

who says the rapture can't be funny?

Today, while the Flaming Bag of Poo called 'work' flamed on, I enjoyed a brief email exchange with friends:

Friend -
I have an interview on Monday and am looking for volunteers to practice with me...it's been ten years. Any takers?

Okay, while I know neither of you are conservative Christian right wing republicans I was hoping you may know how long I (who am I kidding - "we") will have to wait for the second coming?

This is the order, right? WWIII, then a Jesus party, then suffering on earth, then the second Jesus party? So how long is that suffering part? I just think I need to plan...

Ding -
Though I'm no longer a fundamentalist, I know exactly this timeline - I even took a class in it.

Rapture Agenda:
1. Trumpet
2. Jesus in the clouds
3. Rapture
4. Worldwide confusion
5. Anti-christ (also heralded by rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem and the resumption of sacrifices)
6. Tribulation of remaining folks, most likely Lutherans, UCC, Episcopalians and Presbyterians (approx 40 years or so, during which we get that dreaded 'mark' or die)
7. Jesus again
8. Judgment
9. Fiery ball of destruction

I think steps 8/9 are interchangeable. So I think you've got some time, there.
Work is kicking my ass all over the place but I'm willing to ask questions like 'where do you see yourself in ten years'? That won't be depressing at all.

Friend -
Thanks for the detailed timeline...now I can actually answer the ten year question with 'rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem.'

You Better Work it!*

*[am I the only one who remembers RuPaul’s dance floor classic?]

Let’s talk about work. (Since this week at the office has exploded all over me like a flaming bag of poo, I thought Work would be an appropriate subject for this go-round.) And let’s think about the work that doesn’t get done when we try to say that ‘values’ and ‘faith’ is the same thing. The two aren’t interchangeable, though they are related; this is the problem I have with the way these two terms are used in our public political discourse because I think that while Faith and Values are good in themselves they may not be the best way to create social change or solve a problem. Rather, I think the solution rests in Work.

When I say Work, I mean the difficult labor of making change. It is the process (be it small or large, on a local or national level) through which a discernible difference can be made in someone’s material circumstance. Does this mean that a person’s spiritual change can't also manifest in social change? Brian McLaren doesn't think so; he posits that Christ’s gospel is really so revolutionary, it has immediate and radical implications for both private and public life – a truth that has been tamed in our church tradition so that the Gospel resembles nothing more than nicey-nice verses telling us all to love one another.

(Full disclosure: I’m only on page 40 of McLaren’s book. Sigh. I keep putting it aside to read my new serial killer thriller.)

Let’s back up. Last week I posted about Obama’s speech on the Democrats' need to engage more people of faith in an authentic way and not to shy away from issues of faith. While I agreed faintly, I disagreed, strongly, that we should be concentrating on Faith as Electoral Strategy. Instead, I wanted us to start looking at their Work, not as an Electoral Strategy (which puts a box around progressive work), but because it’s what has to happen.

Lately, the ‘religious left’ story has popped up in all sorts of places. Here , here , and here . And, even here . Adele Stan, in the American Prospect piece, writes:

At the root of all of the great faiths are fundamental beliefs in compassion, justice, love, and charity. We have the right -- dare I say the duty? -- to express ourselves as moral agents without the imprimatur of ecclesiastical authority.

Spoken the right way, arguments for the embodiment of these values in our civic life can ring with the divine provenance granted to them by believers. And indeed, religious activists -- especially our ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams -- are vital to our movement. But to expect them alone to create a moral counterforce to the destructive fear mongering of the right is not only unrealistic, it’s an expectation rooted in abdication of our own role as moral agents.

I want to concentrate on the word ‘movement.’ It’s a political word. It’s a word that brings to mind force, power (both of the people behind it and that which it is battling), and largeness – the largeness of the idea behind the movement and the largeness of the goal of the movement. For me, it’s a much more relevant and piercing call than one to Faith and Values. Yes, I have faith in Christ and through Him all things are possible; yes, I want to evangelize an ideology (which is what ‘values’ are) of equality, tolerance and grace. But to what end and do I really believe all that?

I am reminded of a church song that says “They will know us by our love.” For me, being progressive has always been about the fundamentals of love writ large. There is grace for everyone. We care for our fellow man, our fellow worker, our fellow struggler because they matter. They are not insignificant and they are not here simply as chaff for the fiery destruction of the world – nor are they meant to be soulless fodder for a corporate war machine.

But I’m suspicious of Faith and Values language because I don’t tend to believe the person who’s using it. The conservatives use it to hide their power and the left is using it to hide our rage. So let’s use a different language. Let’s use a language that was just fading from use when I was born – the language of a revolutionary love. Let’s start getting real about identifying who has power in this society, and who doesn’t. Let’s start being real honest about whose interests are behind which policies and who’s getting screwed by those policies – and how all of that must change. Let’s start thinking about a movement that’s less ‘Can’t we all get along?’ and more James Cone (as quoted in Sharlet’s piece in The Revealer):

‘authentic love is not ‘help’ — not giving Christmas baskets — but working for political, social, and economic justice, which always means a redistribution of power. It is a kind of power which enables [the oppressed] to fight their own battles and thus keep their dignity.’ [emphasis mine]

But since redistributing power means that those with privilege – class, race, and gender privilege - must confront it and then willfully step away from it, (thus personifying the whole ‘first shall be last’ thing in the Beatitudes), I have little hope such justice will occur any time soon.

We of the left seem to have forgotten that the personal is political – and that all politics are local. Instead let's forget electoral strategies. We already know that nothing trickles down, least of all change. Let’s get mucky on the bottom, on the street, in those grassroots we theoretically love. Understanding and evangelizing the ideological behind the ordinary is how we must affect change; it is how we must create a cultural shift. It’s not trendy, clean, or easy. It’s fracking hard. It means actually penetrating the communities we want to change; it means actually educating people about and implementing real, tangible, meaningful social change while transcending shallow election tactics that are only relevant every four years. It means ORGANIZING.

I do not accept the answer ‘it’s too much work’. It’s not Work when you mean it.

what making an effort will give you

my new year's resolution was to Make an Effort. i thought it would be a good way to end complacency, laziness and get my life in order. who knew that Making an Effort would be quite so effective?

i look at my calendar now and whimper. my free and open spaces are beginning to disappear with the alacrity of conservatives reacting to michael moore.

my current boy situation aside (which actually isn't that big a deal since expectations were so low - in short, he didn't want to meet my friends and act like a normal grown up), this week is going to give me a stroke.

work has, to put a fine point on it, exploded all over me like a flaming bag of poo. i stepped into my new position officially last week and, man, is the learning curve fast and steep. our government affairs contact said to me, as she handed me her copy of the IL general assembly directory, 'don't worry. in a year, you'll be great. flashcards are useful.'

holy crap. flashcards. and - a year?!

i have to learn names, committees, titles, interest areas - for city, county, state, and federal level officials (elected and appointed).

what the hell. those past 7 years of frolicking were nice. who needs friends, family and boys? not me.

i have the illinois general assemby and the cook county board to keep me warm.

(of course, i'm secretly thrilled. it's like i'm in my own personal episode of 'west wing.' love it.)

i'm over here!: christian alliance for progressives

yay!

every thursday (or thereabouts) i'll be posting over at the christian alliance for progressives blog. check it out here.

my first post is up (which i cross-posted below somewhere); the discussion soon veers off into abortion land. notice how i actually manage to keep my temper! do go and visit. (especially if you're a progressive woman. i think it's a bunch of guys - not that there's anything wrong with that, but come on! where are the women?!)

Mainstream Baptist posts there every week, as well as Faithful Progressive, Jesus Politics and De Sententia.

they're a great bunch of folks over there - faithful, learned and progressive.

(i know. and then there's me. already i got called vulgar and blasphemous!)