Recent Realizations

Learning about faith

I don't like the word "faith". It is a tainted word for me, like so many from my childhood. I have trouble using words like "accountability" and phrases like "life-change". These things carry so much weight, so much baggage, that though their meanings vary greatly with context, I find myself purging the language from my vocabulary such that it is difficult to communicate concepts to others. I'm censoring myself to avoid the contaminated language of my past. 

That being said, "faith", or what I am forced to quantify and label that way, is changing for me. 

As a Lutheran, I often contemplate social issues, the things that made me cringe or shy away just a few years ago as an evangelical. Things like abortion, homosexuality, war. Rather than thinking or having my own opinions of these things as a teenager and young adult, I chose to ignore, or assume the view of my parents and surroundings. I had no thoughts of my own; I was fed the ideas I was to believe for the rest of my life. 

As a 24-year old who waited until 21 to go through a rebellious stage, I have a new perspective on life. I don't sit down daily for a "devotion" or "quiet time" as I did/pretended to do in high school and college. I don't read the Bible through in a year, trying desperately to glean a deeper meaning from the genealogies of the Old Testament. Nor do I ensure I go to church EVERY Sunday. Like any adult, my faith has evolved. Unlike many in my specific generation, however, I have not 1) continued down the same path I knew as a child nor 2) left the church entirely. The Lutheran church brought me back from the edge of agnosticism, and I greatly appreciate that daily. 

That being said, I sometimes wonder if I'm really all that different, or if you can take the girl out of evangelicalism, but you can't take evangelicalism out of the girl. It is in my nature to shock and surprise others with the choices I make; it is my way of singling myself out in the times when I don't want to hide under camouflage. 

Is it genuine to refuse to return to my roots? Is it legitimate to recoil at the thought of going to a megachurch, even for a visit, and to regret the experiences and teachings I had in my youth group? My incredible marriage is a result of these things; we fled them together. Therefore nothing can be discounted 100%. It was through the fear and repression that we found the means for love and acceptance, and are free to be ourselves in a new social circle where that is welcomed. 

I spent some time talking with my neighbor outside last night over a few beers and cigarettes. She is 31 and just got married to the man she has been with for the last few years. They are planning to "start a family" soon. We had a long discussion about her readiness for this new adventure in her life, and my extreme fear and dislike of children. She insists that at 24, she had no interest in children either, which is comforting, if not for the fact that everyone else in our previous friend group who got married the year we did now has a 1-year-old. The culture we knew as children supports this: one marries young because they must wait until marriage for sex, then a baby is produced within a reasonable time frame of 1-2 years. 

As a 24 and 25-year-old couple, we see no rush into parenthood. It is not a lie or exaggeration when I tell people that I have nightmares about pregnancy and motherhood. That is my reality every few months. We are very happy as two working adults who are advancing our careers and saving for an eventual home purchase. We also enjoy staying up late (or early, depending on perspective), having friends over, and going out to nightclubs to go dancing. We do not want that responsibility, financially, emotionally, or otherwise. It is not right.

Yet those who have made that choice look down on us as immature and irresponsible. 

I explained this to my friend (who, admittedly, had had a few glasses of wine at the time), and she agreed with my perspective that we are in fact MORE responsible and mature for knowing that it isn't the time or place for that choice, and not rushing into the lifelong commitment that is a child. I also explained our desire to wait until we are older to make permanent decisions against having children (ahem) and if we should change our minds later, to adopt. 

These are the types of things that I feel fly in the face of my upbringing, the things that would be frowned upon by the elders (i.e. men of influence, affluence, or otherwise) of our childhood "church home". Likewise my friendships with several gay or transgendered men, and choice of weekend activities. 

All this to say, I'm Lutheran through and through, and if you don't like it, well. 

Women of Faith Conference 2011

This weekend I was invited by the ladies at our church to attend the Women of Faith conference here in Denver. They had extra tickets paid for, and offered one to me a few weeks ago.

I did not want to go. Being that Women of Faith is a Thomas Nelson Publisher-sponsored event, I knew that it would be, well, evangelically flavored. This is something I run from now, having become Lutheran 3 years ago. But, I also enjoy deconstructing the messages propagated from these events, and once I knew that Austin's conference was the same weekend, I had no excuse. I could critique the shit out of it and not pay a cent- plus I could use public transit, leaving me to come and go as I pleased.

The first session I could make it to after work was Friday night. First, the Pepsi Center is huge. I expected big, but not quite 10,000 conservative Christian women big. Second, there was no free swag, a definite bummer for an expensive conference like this one. I'm always uncomfortable being around so many women too, so that didn't help either.

The conference started that night with a short drama- stereotypes of women as supermom, career woman, accountant, sex kitten. The overall message was that women are multiple people at once, and that the household they left behind for the weekend lost 3 people, not one. The message was also that a man is not capable of managing a household, nor capable of being an intelligent adult.

The next two speakers shared stories about their families: children growing up and leaving for college, loss, suffering. As Saturday rolled around, I saw this was a recurring theme: families make trouble and middle age sucks ass. If I were an impressionable teenager, I would be afraid to ever get married and have a family with messages like this. Hell, I don't want to have kids anyway; this helped confirmed it yet again.

I went to this assuming there would be shitty worship (I was right about this one) and some bad preaching. Problem was, I forgot that this was evangelical women, who don't believe in female pastors (or even educated women) sharing about theology or the faith. So I walked away after hearing depressing stories and lame-ass humor for a few hours. I couldn't take any more of the host who spoke in only syrupy Christianese about each speaker- there was a reason I left 3 years ago.


And yet....



And yet, I wonder this every time I find myself in these situations, these tastes from my evangelical past.

Maybe there is something I'm missing.

Maybe my criticism is too harsh.

Maybe I just need to listen again.

Empty

A few days ago I realized that I'm becoming hollow.

I'm not voraciously reading. I'm not making the new, good friends I hoped I would have by now. I'm not learning.

All I have is my wonderful husband and the piddly, useless job that takes 40 hours of my week. I'm disgruntled and dissatisfied.

The hope I have is that someday I will have job that keeps me busy and paid. That I will get to meet people my age and form deep connections.

I can't write anymore. This job has actually caused me to lose brain power and intelligence. I know it because I can't grasp ideas and form concepts as well as I could when I was still in school. I'm sad that I'm becoming dumber by the day. I want my skills and talents to be respected and, Goddammit, USED for once. College expanded my brain only for it to atrophy only one year later.

I applied for a job at Corporate. It's really my only shot at getting out of this hole. I want to work with genuinely intelligent people again.

I'm selfish when I think of all that I have compared to others, but everyone has their own struggles.

Children

I'm really hurt and angry that all of our "friends" have decided that since we don't have/want children, we aren't a family.

I don't want dogs like they do. I don't want children like they do. They think that having children makes you responsible, and our lack of desire for them means we want to be young and irresponsible. Fuck you.

We're better with our money than most people I know in our age bracket. We'll be out of debt entirely within the next 3 months or so, and we don't buy houses or any other shit we can't afford. We both have jobs. Ones that have benefits. Do they? No.

Marriage

Marriage has always been clearly defined for me. Notice I said "for me". Evangelicals have a very specific, baby boomer friendly, sexist idea of how marriages are "supposed" to be according to God. Because clearly they know exactly what God is thinking. As a result, people my age who have been raised in this segment of the culture, despite being revolutionary 20-somethings in every other aspect of life, have marriages that function the same way their parents' did. Wives are emotionally volatile, unreasonable, selfish brats who get away with treating their husbands like crap. They don't ever say what they really mean, and they don't let their husbands enjoy anything they used to during their bachelor days. Meanwhile, men are passive, trampled, illiterate knuckleheads who can't think for themselves, always have poor hygiene, and spend all day drinking Coors while watching ESPN. They are simple and ignorant. They never understand their wives; women are just too complicated for their puny brains.

Here's my thought: maybe the reason why these women think that there aren't any good men left is because they're too caught in their own emotions and general cattiness to ever attract the good ones. Maybe if they just decided NOT to follow the sexist stereotypes, they'd meet someone decent. Maybe the problem isn't men, but women.

I'm tired of people telling me who I have to be as a wife. Prior to my wedding, when I told people that I expected marriage to be like living with my best friend, I was warned that it wouldn't be easy. Guess who was wrong. My husband is my best friend first, spouse second. How do I know this? We spend hours just talking about life and how we've changed. We don't need to be romantic to show that we care about each other. Sometimes we're friends, sometimes we're romantic and mushy. But we use different languages to differentiate. We've actually formulated different endings to words that are rule-based that only make sense to each other. Being a linguistics major, this is incredibly interesting to me, even though to others it might sound kind of silly and nonsensical. Whatever. It works for us.

During the course of the next few days, I will start a new job. I will make more than my husband. For a lot of husbands, this would cause shame, since men are traditionally seen as heads of household. I think Austin is glad that I'll be the one bringing in more cash; maybe even finds that kind of sexy.

Yesterday, I sewed a purse from a pair of Austin's old cargo shorts that had ripped down the middle from extensive wear. Guess who has claimed the purse for his own? Quote, "I don't think that this purse can get any more feminist. You made it yourself, and you made it out of my PANTS! Of course it's masculine; it's my own frickin' pants! I've found my new weekend bag."

And Injustice for All

The church was probably mainline protestant, but might have been christened Catholic at one time. There were ornate stained-glass windows on both sides of the pews, flanked by elaborate carved wood figures with the occasional covering of gold leaf. The church wasn't full, but it wasn't empty; the pews dotted with silent, bored, elderly members, tired of the pomp and circumstance of every Sunday, but obliged to attend because of their upbringing. It was a rainy windshield in front of a dark gray sky.

When I walked in, I chose to sit on the lefthand side next to two middle-aged, be-sweatered gentlemen. It was closer to the back than the middle, but not far enough that I was in teenage territory. The organ began to bellow behind us, rumbling of psalms and choruses, often sung but usually forgotten. It was an average Sunday, between Epiphany and Lent, and all were prepared for another monotone sermon by the aged pastor, who had been master of the pulpit since 1977.

As the prelude droned, I took stock of those around me. Most were clothed in dark, neutral colors, probably to match the weather of that Sunday. But the two men next to me wore brighter colors in their similar apparel. They were dressed a little too well for church.

Then the murmuring began. I looked up to find a different man standing at the front of the church, clothed in jeans and a denim button-up, forsaking the traditional white robe and sash. It appeared no one knew who he was, but he took charge as though he'd been doing this for centuries. "Fellow followers of Christ," he said, speaking loudly over the now discussion-filled sanctuary, "Your former "pastor", shall we say, is gone this week. I have been led by the Spirit to speak to you today."

At once everyone quieted at this man's daring authority; authority claimed to have been bestowed upon him by God. He began to preach a characteristically evangelical sermon, inserting comments about the game last night, declarations against the music of the popular culture, and laughing about his daughter's latest news at the family dinner table.

Then the tone changed as he caught sight of the two men seated next to me. "Fornicators!" he said, wrinkling his face in anger, "Faggots! You have been found guilty of the unforgivable sin by the Lord our God!"

I stared back at this newcomer, startled. I quickly looked around to see who else was as confused and flustered as I, but it appeared that time stood still; it was only me and the men seated next to me who heard these words. The congregation was paused mid-movement, mid-sneeze.

When I had seated myself next to these men, I knew that they were a couple. It was obvious by the way they spoke in peaceful, happy voices and looked at each other with love in their eyes. I thought nothing of it; they were welcome in this house of worship by unspoken agreement.

Then I noticed their reaction. Neither one looked angry or opened their mouth to fight back; they merely sat, heads down, silent and sad.

The accuser continued his tirade, "You dare to defy God and His laws! Look at yourselves! You are no longer men; you have traded your masculinity in for the ways of woman! Why do you show your unholy faces in this holy place? Don't you know you have committed yourselves eternally to hell? For the Lord has said, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor HOMOSEXUAL OFFENDERS nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." Do you disagree with Him?!"

As I spoke, I looked to my friends. They nodded, and slowly we began to stand, facing the accuser with tears streaming down our faces. He continued to yell, and it took all that was in me not to yell back. Because that wouldn't help. It wouldn't make him stop. There was nothing we could do but face our accuser and give him what he wanted: the pain that poured silently from our eyes and our hearts.

Eventually, worn out, he began to slow his speech, but began to curse us louder as we turned and slowly walked out of the church into the warm sunshine. I stood with these men, these brothers, and hugged them, begging forgiveness for the accuser, the church, the world.




This was a dream I had 3 nights ago. I'm still learning.

The Role of the Church (Copied from Facebook March 8, 2009)

Obviously, I've switched gears when it comes to church, faith, etc. By some standards, I've become too "liberal" by attending and becoming a member of an ELCA Lutheran church with a woman pastor. But the point is not those church differences that everyone likes to point out. The idea is the community. I like going to a church where there is structure and tradition, based on practices that have been going on for hundreds of years, not shifting based on fads or trends in worship style. I like going to a church where during a lenten meal I talk to a middle-aged gay couple who is open and honest and doesn't have to hide who they are for fear of rejection. We spend so much time in a lot of contemporary churches getting emotionally involved in worship songs just because the key changes stir up feelings and the sermons are fun and encouraging. We go to church to talk to a few people and then go home, lacking community. We spend so much time just "doing God" on our own instead of looking to others. "Quiet times" don't have to be quiet, nor do they have to be done in solitude. Time spent with God can be planting trees in a park with a friend or just rolling around in a field and enjoying the weather. It can be writing a song or sketching a chair. For me, the church service is the tradition, the coming-together of what I believe into a cohesive hour and 15 minutes. But everything else can be unstructured.

But aside from all this, if we really want to get back to the basics, we have to know what the "basics" really are. The basics are the Hebrew people and their history, written and oral, as described in the Old Testament. We have a glimpse into their world that most people skip over because they think the OT is just boring laws that don't apply to us anymore. The NT is a commentary of the OT. How can we understand the NT without the history it is based on?

I got a challenge from my sociology professor to just go out in nature and read the OT out loud, focusing on the oral history of these books and their significance as a study of a people different from our own. It's been awesome so far.

The Hebrews didn't concern themselves with science or accuracy or regiment. They were a passionate people who took God as He appeared to them, without legislating how people should worship. Life was community, and community was worship.

But is that how it is today?
Updated about 11 months ago · Comment ·

The parable of the Good Samaritan was always explained to me the same way. Everyone but the Samaritan was too busy to help a man in need, but he took the time, and that's what we should do for others.

However, in light of my new knowledge of Jewish law, that's not really how it went down. The priest and the Levite, both from the same group of religious adherents, passed by the man on the side of the road not because they were busy, but because they were afraid he was dead.

If these men, according to the law, had touched a dead body, they would no longer be ceremonially clean and therefore could not lead religious ceremonies or enter the temple until they had purified themselves (a process usually requiring several days apart from others and often animal sacrifices).

There existed three groups of people during this time: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Samaritans. Pharisees and Sadducees weren't too fond of each other, but got along better than with the Samaritans, who both groups hated a lot. The Levite and the priest were both Sadducees. This meant that they didn't believe in the Oral Torah, the spoken laws, like the Pharisees did. The Samaritans didn't believe in the Oral Torah either, but also didn't believe that Moses got the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai.

The reason the actions of the Levite and priest are so significant is that Levites (remember, one and the same with the priest in our story) were the only ones allowed to become priests (still true). If those men were unclean, everyone who they ministered to would not have a ceremony to attend. Basically, no pastor for the service that Sunday.

The priest's role was to teach the Torah to the common people. But he didn't teach the Oral Torah and its laws. Thus the Pharisees had an entirely different set of laws that they operated by, sometimes laws that conflicted with the written law. The Oral Torah would have said that if someone was hurt and needed help, it didn't matter what the written law was, you need to help them. Since the Sadducees didn't believe in the Oral Torah, the only thing the priest and Levite were concerned about was following the laws that kept them ceremonially clean.

It should be mentioned here that Jesus was most likely a Pharisee and believed in the Oral Torah. Thus, the point He was making in telling this parable was telling the Sadducees that they didn't fully understand the Torah because they didn't know the Oral law and were too concerned about their rituals. He was teaching that regardless of what written law says, you are obligated to help those in need. His job was to promote peace among these dueling groups by saying that it doesn't matter who were talking about (the identity and affiliation of the hurt man is never specified), you need to know the needs of your neighbor and do the best you can to meet those needs.

In light of all this, what are we to do with this parable? Does it have a modern application? I'm not really sure what that might be, but I'm working to find that out.

Christmas Party

I went to a Christmas party last Saturday. I don't always love these, but the host couple was people we don't see much, so we were kind of obligated to attend. Upon arriving at the party, we found that due to some Christian university rules, we couldn't have alcohol, and we'd stopped along the way for a bottle of wine.

We knew going in that this party wouldn't consist of people we usually spent time with, and weren't sure who was showing up anyway. The instant I walked in the door, I felt judged. The other wives, including the hostess, didn't try to engage me in much conversation and sat in the corner, whispering and giggling. Austin and I, though both extroverts, get scared at parties, and usually take the spot in the kitchen, pouring drinks and serving food. It's what we do at our house, why not make life easier for the host? But Charlie kept pushing me, "I can introduce you to anyone here, Holly. Who do you want to meet? Go spend time with the girls!" Oh but Charlie, I have a phobia of girls. Have had it since I was 15. This reminds me too much of feeling left out in my high school cafeteria. Please don't make me talk to the types of girls who have shunned me (and who I, admittedly, shunned back) since my teens. "I'll just stay and help my husband, thanks."

As the evening progressed and we worked our way through the white elephant gift exchange, I felt more and more annoyed. Some of "our people" eventually showed up and that helped considerably, but I still felt like I was ignored because we're so far below the poverty line and because my husband is so easily excitable and loud (that annoys some people I guess).

Why should I feel so left out? Everyone there was the same age as us, the married folks had only been married just a few months before us (much to our chagrin), and we were all raised in evangelical protestant homes. But I think that was just it. We're "rogues" now. We left evangelical protestantism and became "mainliners", or as they would mistakenly call us, "liberal christians". As a result, we think some swearing, drinking of alcohol, and honesty is ok. We don't think emotionalizing our relationship with God is. That makes us outcasts now, along with the fact that everyone else came from wealthy homes and are making decent salaries. I don't think any other couple there would be able to survive on what we have (we barely do!). I guess that makes me proud, but I sure wish we had just $600 more per month. If we had that, I think we'd feel like we were living as kings.

On the drive home with another one of our "rogue" friends (an evangelical protestant, but one who was recently accused of being "emergent", who is 30 and has served in the military for over 10 years), we talked about what made that party so unwelcoming. We had all grown apart from that and would never return. We were bound to lose those friendships anyway; they were too "busy" to spend time with people anymore, least of all us.

I didn't lose friends when I first became Lutheran. But now we are.

I've always been passionate about this topic, but I think now I'm going to spend more time on it. After reading Forbidden Fruit by Mark Regnerus this summer and concluding a more in-depth study of it this afternoon, I've decided it's time to put my thoughts on paper about the problems with the treatment of sex in the church today.

I'm not going to write another Christian abstinence book, nor am I going to conduct a study on whether teens care about what the church says, as that has all been done before me, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. My aim is to figure out why so many of the girls I went to high school youth group with are now single mothers and what can be done to ensure this isn't a continuing trend.

I've always been frustrated with how the church talks about sex, especially with teen girls. It seems most often they aren't given the same amount of attention as the boys. We're told simply to "guard our hearts" and wait for our husbands to sweep us off our feet and give us the best marital sex in the world. Well, I know personally that it doesn't always work that way. Those who wait often end up wildly disappointed when their idealized notions of sex end up being wrong and those who don't wait often end up pregnant, infected, or misused.

I also want to look into the education of married adults about sex and what their ideas are doing to the institution of marriage. With so much emphasis on abstinence, Christians are left with no real information about what sex and marriage are supposed to look like. Or that they are even good. But how can we change this? Is there any one effective means?

This is just a starting point. But I'm so passionate about this that it is stupid to sit on the sidelines and let other people express the same ideas in disjointed form.

It's been over a year since I looked at this, yet I feel as though it is time to return, if only once.

I don't know if a year ago I thought I would be where I am now. Sure, I realized that at this point I'd be a college graduate and married, but did I think that my entire view of life and God would change so much? What happened to thinking? When did it become barely getting by, accepting what happened rather than trying to improve? When did I stop learning and start sitting?

Maybe I have dumbed down my life, or maybe I just realize now that being an intellectual doesn't get you food on the table in the real world. School is a fantasy, a land where what goes on in your head produces tangible results. Now it's just about performing tasks in time and decently well enough so that you end up with a check. I've stopped being a child; I'm now an adult. And I hate it.

Adults have always been boring to me. I always thought it was because they didn't "have any fun". I suppose that's a part, but I think the real reason adults seem to have no passion is because they've ignored the fact that stopping the constant, forced, learning process that everyone hopes to complete actually just takes the life fire right out of you. With no employment or hope of worthwhile, challenging employment on the horizon, I can see how the cubicle turns you into a zombie. Everything I thought would be good about being done with school is in reality what has made me currently disappointed with myself. I'm lazy. I don't think for myself or form any ambitions. My dreams are dead...or were there any to begin with? Where do I go now? Applying for grad school with our empty pocketbook seems the best way to earn money and escape the disappointment of not earning my keep in our marriage. Sure I can clean house and do laundry, but that isn't enough. I was never meant to be a housewife, so this isn't satisfying. And increasingly more, I can't say I was meant to be a mother either, since at the moment the thought of being pregnant is the stuff of literal nightmares.

This may be the stupidest thing I say here (or not), but we are more happily married than I have ever seen a couple in my entire life. It's so normal for us to never fight and think the same thoughts that when I hear of our neighbors arguing about grocery expenditures or fighting about wanting children, I have to count my blessings. This isn't to say that we never exchange harsh words, but everything is so quickly and easily resolved with apologies and a bit of cuddling. It's amazing how physical touch can solve so many issues with us. I wonder sometimes if this is something that would have been equally as helpful had we been dating in the same city the whole time. Maybe not. Either way, it doesn't matter much. We don't ever have to try hard to get along, and with me being unemployed, we're around each other a whole lot. That's a blessing, but also a curse.

Did I ever think I would become Lutheran? If you'd asked me that when I was about 11, I would have told you that there was no way. Today, it seems to fit. After experiencing and reading about the problems with conservative Evangelical Protestantism, I'd rather take the problems with the ELCA. Everything is so different still; I find myself realizing that as a new Lutheran, I'm so lost. After spending years serving the church based on age instead of gifts, I don't know what God has equipped me with. In a church where Austin and I are the only young adults, I am forced to find something new to do. There is no college, no singles, no young-marrieds group. Everyone is together, and most are at least 30 years older than me. But the thing most striking to me is that people are HONEST. As an evangelical it seemed that being truly honest about yourself and your faith was taboo. That it wasn't ok to admit that you have doubts about your faith and questions about God's existence. In my first adult Sunday School class at St. Philip, I realized that the Christian facade I had been forced to put up wasn't necessary here. I didn't have to be afraid of admitting that I've read all the Twilight books and liked them or that I think most Christian music is poorly written. I can talk with the pastors like they're real people, not that they are up on a pedestal and highly revered. They have lives and problems and aren't scared to admit that.

This process has also taught me that I really am not the kind of person who can benefit from a large church. Our mid-week advent service only had about 20 people this week. We sat in the sanctuary in a few chairs in a circle with candles lit and acoustic music. And some people thought it was boring and admitted that. Wow. I've learned that it is more noble to come to God as you are, even if you don't give a hoot about anything He says, than to lie and pretend that you really do believe the words to popular Christian songs and follow them every day.

God's taught me that a private "quiet time" is dangerous. I am more likely to think God is out to get me when I'm sitting and praying alone than when I'm discussing theology with others. I have to be in communication with others in order to communicate with God. When left alone I will fail and I will get frustrated, lost in my own imperfect thoughts and unreliable emotions. When I took the false emotionality out of my faith as I left evangelical protestantism and became a mainliner, I found myself freer as a believer than ever before. No more pretending. No more lying. No more beating myself up. Only God and the me who hadn't ever seen the sun, barren of the clown disguise I hid myself behind. God can take me as I am, with all of my imperfections laid out on the ground like a yard sale.

I may be wrong. Someday I may change my mind. But as I've always hoped and prayed for, even before this transformation, I want to be genuine. Not the false sense now, but truly. Purely. And without fear.

Something that is NOT victorian literature

Victorian literature is over, and a new school year has started. I can't say as I really wanted to stop blogging at the end of the class, but it just kind of happened. I ran out of inspiration (graded assignments), and the ideas stopped flowing. But I would like to get started again, as it is therapeutic.

Lockwood Kipling

RDB: Beast and Man in India

Most people don’t walk what they talk at least in some facet of their life. Kipling makes this observation several times in his book Beast and Man in India. Hindus are known to worship cows and cattle, and the Hindu canon promotes ahimsa, nonviolence, but yet there is still animal cruelty occurring among Hindu believers. Kipling says that, “The Hindu worships the cow, and as a rule is reluctant to take the life of any animal except in sacrifice. But that does not preserve the ox, the horse, and the ass from being unmercifully beaten, over-driven, over-laden, under-fed, and worked with sores under their harness…”.[1] People don’t like following rules, even ones that they elect to follow. It is so easy for humans to underscore the importance of rules and justify breaking them from time to time. Take your average diet for instance. The Atkins diet prescribes a decreased use of carbs and higher protein intake. But when it’s Aunt Susie’s birthday and she’s having ice cream cake, maybe the idea of less carbs doesn’t sound so good.

Atkins Diet[2]

Kipling also comments that ”The topsy-turvy morality of the East would give a higher place to the…Hindu, who would die sooner than eat flesh, but who would also rather die than touch or help a dying man of a low caste near his door, than to the English lady whose life is spent in active beneficence, but who is defiled by eating beef and approaching the dead body of a pig.”[3] As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I find it much more important to value human life as opposed to animal life if there is a choice, and it seems Kipling may agree with me here. I would imagine the Hindu to have the same response as the priest or Levite in the story of The Good Samaritan. If the hurt man in the story was of a low caste, the Hindu wouldn’t stop to help him because it would violate his dignity. This is not to say that he might actually help, or that any of us wouldn’t do the same thing as the priest of Levite, but I find Kipling’s observation quite interesting.

The Good Samaritan[4]

Like most things, what appears on the surface is often more inviting than what lies below. For example, Kipling cites the animal hospitals of India as being an example of mercy to many people, but in actuality, there is more cruelty going on to animals than if they were left to die on their own. The hospital rational is as follows: “Ritual reverence for life does not include the performance of acts of mercy. It is enough to save the animal from immediate death, and to place food within its reach. So you see there creatures with unset broken limbs, with hoofs eighteen inches long, and monstrous wens.”[5] No doubt there is also neglect in hospitals for humans as well, but it is important to practice what you preach. It seems their idea of nonviolence should encompass animals in pain, but it unfortunately does not, and this is definitely a cause for concern.

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[1] John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 3.

[2] The Atkins Approved Diet, http://www.best-diet-4-life.com/atkins.gif

[3] Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 10.

[4] The Good Samaritan, http://www.saintmarymagdalene.org.uk/images/module1/Window_Good_SamaritanDscn4816.jpg

[5] Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 11.

Kim 1

Kim reminds me of “Aladdin”. Aladdin is just a little urchin like Kim, but is found by Jafar (Mahbub) and has to do his bidding—stealing a lamp from a cave.

Aladdin in the Cave of Wonders[1]

So far, Kim seems to be a classic story of deception. Kimball O’Hara can choose between pursuing the River of the Arrow with his lama as a chela or live a life of danger mixed up with Mahbub and his schemes.

Ghats at Benares circa 1900[2]

Either way, he is lying about his identity. When he is with the lama in Umballa, he enjoys lying about the amount of information he knows about the war, “Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he pretended to know more than he knew. But now he was playing for larger things—the sheer excitement and the sense of power.”[3] He also has to deceive and be crafty in order to be

part of Mahbub’s crew. After he gives the message from Mahbub to the Englishman, “…Kim took up the money; but for all his training, he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of any game. What he desired was the visible effect of action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and wormed nearer to the house.”[4]

Despite Kim’s torn desires, he still seems to care about the lama more than deception. On his way to the school, he meets up with him and expresses his desire to remain with him still, “ ‘I am all alone in this land; I know not where I go nor what shall befall me. My heart was in that letter I sent thee. Except for Mahbub Ali…I have no friend save thee, Holy One.”[5] Since Kim has no living parents, the lama must serve as his caretaker. Despite all that Kim learns from Mahbub, he wants to learn the ways of the lama as well. The lama is home base to him; a place of safety.

A Tibetan Lama[6]

Sometimes I feel this way too. Though I don’t spend my time deceiving people, nor do I care to do so, it is hard to not have torn desires as a college student. In some ways, I want to learn things on my own or learn how to run my life from my friends, even if they aren’t always wise (Like Kim’s learning from Mahbub). At the same time, however, I also want to learn from my parents who know so much more about life than I do. Kim is very open to learning new things and experiencing everything that he can, but I wonder how much trouble this will get him into later in the novel.

Our society promotes the idea of living on the edge and being free and open to everything all at the same time. We’ve got more opportunities than we used to, this much is obvious, but by being open are we really closing ourselves off? Can we no longer specialize? We talked earlier in the semester about the liberal arts degree. We said that it is good to have a broad education because it makes us more valuable, but will this later keep us from having people who are actually educated in and proficient at what they do? If we become too universal, we’ll have to make up our minds and pick something someday when we are in dire straits.

“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.”- Aneurin Bevan.[7]

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[1] Aladdin- Cave of Wonders, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDZVqaHQt3E

[2] Ghats at Benares, http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3320628.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=86F19F6C94FCC84FC9FD8BB0CB926FCAA55A1E4F32AD3138

[3] Rudyard Kipling, Kim (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002), 43.

[4] Kipling, Kim, 34.

[5] Ibid, 104.

[6] Old Lama, http://www.reincarnations.co.uk/images/old-lama.jpg

[7] Indecision Quotes, http://www.paralumun.com/quotesindecision.htm

Jashan 2008

On Friday night I went to the Jashan festival on the South Mall with my roommate. We had a great time! The Festival featured dancing and singing as well as several informational booths about different aspects of India. The most interesting booth I found was the booth about travel. The pamphlet the volunteers handed out detailed important tips on traveling to India that I didn’t know about such as buying a local SIM card for your cell phone while in India so you can call people back home. Another suggestion was to meet a friend in India through a website called couchsurfing.com. It allows people to meet others around the world so that when you travel, you know someone in that country who can help you out.

I also visited a booth where you could try on Indian clothes. Most Indian women are a lot shorter than me, so most of what they had was too small, but I did manage to put an outfit together. I felt kind of insensitive and tourist-y while dressing up, but I guess that is the point.

Me "blending in"

In addition to dressing up and travel, there were booths that featured Indian games such as cricket and hoopla (both very fun), architecture, performing arts, community service, language, henna, Bollywood, and of course, food. The performing arts booth featured a man playing a sitar and another man playing a set of drums. I’d never seen a sitar in real life before, so that was definitely a treat for me.

The dancers on stage were also very fun to watch. I was able to see three different groups perform and each had a slightly different style. The first group was a bit more contemporary, but the third group was very traditional. There were moments I wanted to get up and dance too! Something about dancing and music really brings people together, from people who don’t know hardly anything about a culture to people who have been raised in that culture their entire lives.

Facts about Indian Architecture

My favorite part by far would have to be the food. Though I didn’t purchase dinner, my roommate and I enjoyed a drink called Mango Lassi. We had had this before at an Indian restaurant on Guadalupe past MLK called The Clay Pit and knew how tasty it is. The drink is mostly straight up mango juice (something Conrad would love, of course) with milk and sugar; like a smoothie, but with more ice. Hopefully I’ll learn to replicate this for the future.

I gathered that the point of us going to this event as extra credit was to experience another culture and to feel out of place. I definitely felt that way. There were other people at the event besides UT students: mostly older Indian community members. I didn’t feel unwelcome there because I am white, but I did feel like I was intruding a bit into another culture and their traditions. I didn’t want to make the “adults” think I was being disrespectful by being there. This is something I have felt before, even earlier this year. My roommate goes to a church that is comprised of mostly Chinese-Americans and I visited a few times. The people were friendly, but my lack of knowledge of Asian culture definitely was apparent and I was worried about making a faux pas. I think the unique challenge to me in visiting events from other cultures is my height: I’m usually taller than most women and in the case of Vietnamese and Chinese-Americans, I’m taller than the men as well. This makes me feel more conspicuous, but I think visiting things like Jashan is a good way to get over this feeling.

The Light of Asia

In the note on Sir Edwin Arnold, I came across a quote that reminded me of a book I read last year: “Thenceforward his soul was seized with just one consuming passion: to communicate to his countrymen in England, in the language native to them, the vision he had seen of India,… It was this vision he pledged himself to convey, be it in song or speech or story, ‘for England; O Our India! As dear to me as She.’ “[1]

A Beautiful Indian Landscape[2]

Last spring I read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri after reading her short stories book in an English course.

A movie based on the book The Namesake. I haven’t seen it but I’ve heard it is pretty good.[3]

I really enjoy her writing because she does what Sir Edwin Arnold does in his poem: she brings out the beauty of India. I don’t remember the plot very well now, but the story really inspired me to want to travel to India someday. Even though I still don’t know much about India or Buddhism, I want to learn more so that when I do visit, I know more about the culture of the people there.

Like Nhuy, I also found connections between The Light of Asia and Christianity. The story about Siddartha and the swan reminds me of a story in the Bible in 1 Kings. Two prostitutes came to see King Solomon. Each woman had a baby, but one of the babies

died during the night. The woman whose baby died traded her baby for the other and placed the dead baby with the other woman. Now there is a fight about whose baby is still alive and the women argue before the king. Solomon says that he will cut the baby in half and give half to each woman. The true mother argued against this, saying that it would be better to spare the life of the child and give him to the other woman than to kill him. The other woman said that it was best to kill him so that neither woman would have him. Solomon then gave the baby to the woman who said not to kill him because she was the true mother.[4]

The Judgment of Solomon[5]

Likewise in the poem, an unknown priest makes nearly the same verdict: “ ‘If life be aught, the savior of a life/ Owns more the living thing than he can own/ Who sought to slay—the slayer spoils and wastes,/ The cherisher sustains, give him the bird:’.”[6] This also sounds a lot like the Jain principle of ahimsa- nonviolence. It was best to minimize violence than to obey the laws of ownership.

I haven’t decided quite yet how I feel about Jainism and Buddhism. I understand how they work, but not how they fit with what I believe. Perhaps it will take more research. But learning about the two has definitely made me more conscious of the differences in world beliefs and also the similarities in the ideals they promote.

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[1] Sir Edwin Arnold, The Light of India (New Delhi: Crest Publishing House, 1879), 7.

[2] Beauty of India, http://www.johansentravel.com/images/Beauty%20of%20India%20(37).jpg

[3] The Namesake Preview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOaA-4Y8tI

[4] The Bible, I Kings 3: 16-28. Also available: http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=I+Kings+3%3A+16-28&passage2=&passage3=&passage4=&passage5=&version1=31&version2=0&version3=0&version4=0&version5=0&Submit.x=0&Submit.y=0

[5] The Judgment of Solomon, http://guardiansatlaw.org/solomon.htm

[6] Arnold, The Light of India, 19.

Victorians in Asia

The most striking comment that I found in this article was this: “The difficulty at present is that for the most part we have developed in the world’s religions certain ethical prohibitions regarding homicide and restraints concerning genocide and suicide, but none for biocide or geocide.”[i] I can’t say that I would find Jainism to be the answer to addressing this, but I think that other religions can do more than they are to help maintain or improve the environment. Scientologists (at least L. Ron Hubbard) proclaim one of the steps to happiness to be to “safeguard and improve one’s environment”.[ii] I can agree with this statement. But I don’t think that guilt-tripping people into helping the environment through silly youtube videos will do anything except incite emotions, like the Earthlings movie some of us watched a few weeks ago or An Inconvenient Truth.[iii]

The best way to help the environment is really just to be practical, not coat earth-saving techniques in religious jargon. As the author mentions, this doesn’t really work, “It should be noted…that this…has not prevented environmental degradation”.[iv] One practical thing I personally do to help the environment as well as just be a good citizen is to go to the Waller Creek Clean-Up each semester. This allows me to do at least something small that is beneficial to the earth, even if it has to be done often.

Waller Creek Clean-Up[v]

Cleaning up the earth isn’t about doing it for show: either for showing off piety, compassion, or trendiness. It is about keeping the world clean. This seems obvious, but our new ideas about “living green” blind us into believing that “saving the earth” is just a passing fad, and that it is something that is only available to the rich. The “green” products cost more than the non-green ones, which seems really counter-intuitive. I would definitely support being “green” if it didn’t cost so much green.

To sum up, the Jains have a good idea. But I think it is a bit extreme. As per my own beliefs, I believe that God created all plants for food, as He says in Genesis 1:29: “Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;”.[vi]

Fruits bearing Seed[vii]

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[i] Lawrence E. Sullivan, Preface in Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life, ed. Christopher Key Chapple (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), xxv.

[ii] L. Ron Hubbard, “The Way to Happiness” brochure

[iii] An Inconvenient Truth Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XMn_Ry3z6M

[iv] Sullivan, Jainism and Ecology, xxiv.

[v] Waller Creek, http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/sponsored_sites/waller/

[vi] Genesis 1:29, also available http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=Genesis+1&version=49.

[vii] Fruitful, http://www.pathlights.com/theselastdays/images/fruitful.jpg

Hopkins: Eye vs. Ear

The statement Hopkins makes in the beginning of our reading is what I can agree with, “Poetry was originally meant for either singing or reciting; a record was kept of it; the record could be, was, read, and that in time by one reader, alone, to himself, with his eyes only.”[1] As a writer of poetry myself, I often despise letting other people read my work. I have long wondered why this is the case, and I can only assume it is because others cannot perform it the same way I did when I wrote it. Thus, I cannot agree with Hopkins’s later statement that, “This is not the true nature of poetry . . . till it is spoken it is not performed, it does not perform, it is not itself.. . .”[2] I cannot even speak my own poetry the way it is written, and thus I feel that trying to do so with the writing of others is a way to grossly misinterpret the meaning of the author. But surely, the author knows this himself when he publishes his work.

Gerard Manley Hopkins[3]

As such, I did not find the musical interpretations of the poetry to be very satisfying, particularly the renditions of Spring and The Windhover. The music didn’t suit the poem and I felt that no meaning (or deeper meaning) could be obtained from listening to the singers recite the words. It seemed only to be a way for the singers to make up a song without having to write lyrics. On the flip side, I did enjoy the renditions of God’s Grandeur and Inversnaid, but since I have no author to tell me what he meant, I cannot say whether or not the renditions were “accurate”; they were merely entertaining.

The musicality of poetry brings up an interesting point. I agree that poetry is meant to be musical; I frequently have set my own writing to music (even though the music itself is just made up in my head). The Bible does this consistently in the Psalms, an example being Psalm 8, written by David:

Psalm 8

For the director of music. According to gittith

A psalm of David.

¹ O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

² From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

³ When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

⁵ You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

⁶ You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:

⁷ all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,

⁸ the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth![4]

Psalm 8: Man in the Universe[5]

An interpretation of Psalm 8[6]

Perhaps in David’s day it was easy to know how this should be sung; oral tradition had passed it down and David himself could convey it perfectly. Even then, the oral tradition didn’t survive long enough to make it into our day, and we have no idea how this would have been sung long ago. The musical term, selah, appears frequently in the Bible, particularly in Psalms, but we don’t know what this means. According to Wikipedia, selah “may be the most difficult word in the Hebrew Bible to translate.”[7] As a holy and ancient text, I have to form my own ideas of meaning. I don’t claim to be the authority on whether poems are meant to be sung to others or merely read to be enjoyed by others, but for me I’d rather silently glean my own interpretation than butcher it for others to hear and misinterpret the author.

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[1] Hopkins’s Letter to his Brother

[2] Ibid.

[3] Gerard Manley Hopkins, http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/images1/hopkins_gm1_sm.jpg.

[4]The Bible, New International Version, Psalms 8 http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults2.php?passage1=Psalm8&book_id=23&version1=31&tp=150&c=8

[5] Psalm 8: Man in the Universe, http://z.about.com/d/judaism/1/0/V/4/psalm8_july.gif.

[6] Psalm 8, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm8BVF1NPfE.

[7] Selah, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selah.