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That’s right, haters, it’s freaking SNOWING in Portland. Well, not today. Yesterday it was snowing. It snowed so much that church was cancelled! Which is to say that it snowed “at all.” Because Oregonians are notorious for shrinking away from the very sight of snow. Lock your doors, bar the windows, for there are flakes falling from the sky, and they are cold and they are sticking to the ground! All one inch of them! Beware, beware!
Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy a little snow now and then. But I am not enjoying this snow day. All the schools are closed, and all my kids are home, and I am not pleased at all with how this day is turning out thusfar. It is not a happy day. I will not comment further on the snow.
I will make some other, random comments.
1) I have decided that it would be worth all kinds of money to me to outsource toilet training for the younger two children. Either my children will be toilet-trained, or I will have the satisfaction of a trained professional admitting to me that my children are IMPOSSIBLE and there is nothing to be done with them.
2) If my children ever are toilet-trained, there is the distinct possibility that I could DIE OF JOY.
3) DIE!
4) OF JOY!
5) There is a “Jesus” Facebook application, where you can send Jesus to your friends and remind them to keep the “Christ” in Christmas. I know because one of my friends sent me Jesus. I accepted Jesus because it seemed wrong not to, but I’m having second thoughts because it seems like every few minutes I get a notification that I have “unlocked more Jesus!” I don’t know how I feel about unlocking more Jesus. What does this mean, from a theological perspective? I’m confused and disoriented, and I suspect that I may be participating in something less than fully tasteful–which wouldn’t be a problem except for Jesus’s involvement. I like to keep my distasteful activities separate from Jesus. My ability to compartmentalize and rationalize my actions is breaking down before my eyes! How do I remove the Jesus application? SAFELY???
6) I am a teensy-little stir crazy for not having left the house since Saturday. It wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem, except that the kids have also not left the house. It is a deadly combination, I fear.
7) Jeremy Northam is so beautiful. So very, very beautiful.
8) I am hungry, but I don’t know what to eat.
9) I have no idea what to give my mother-in-law for Christmas. Neither does my husband, and he’s her son! How am I supposed to figure it out? I think we will end up doing gift cards wrapped in clever envelopes. Or maybe I could unlock her some more Jesus.
10) Does anyone actually celebrate Kwanzaa, or is this a holiday that exists only in theory and in books? Because while my social network isn’t exactly loaded with African-Americans, I have known black people in my time, and none of them did Kwanzaa. I don’t even know any white people who do Kwanzaa out of, like, solidarity. And I live in Oregon, land of white people who would probably enjoy appropriating African-American holidays just to stick it to the Man. So I don’t mean any disrespect here, but I’m sincerely curious. If you celebrate Kwanzaa or know someone who does, please tell me. I WANT TO BELIEVE.
11) There is, seriously, SO MUCH URINE AND FECAL MATTER coming into the house and failing to leave in a timely and efficient manner, I think it is affecting my brain. Which is to say that I am now blaming my brain dysfunction on that, as opposed to premenstrual syndrome or congenital mental illness.
And now I’m off to put on some warm socks. Gentle readers, adieu.
So I took Elvis to get his shots this afternoon, so he can go to kindergarten in the fall–or more precisely, stay in kindergarten come next February–and the visit did not bode well initially. We went into the the doctor’s office, where there was a very long line–unusual for a bright summer day. Apparently the office is transitioning to a new computer system, and they thank us for their patience. I remember when they got the new computer system. That was the day I first called to make this appointment and was told they couldn’t make any appointments that weren’t for that same day until the new computer system was finished installing, in about 24 hours. Which was fine, I was happy to call back 24 hours later. Except that I forgot to call back 24 hours later. I forgot to call back for about 504 hours. Anyway, suffice it to say that the new computer system has been around for several weeks, so it’s not a matter of them getting used to it or working out kinks. It’s a matter of every single patient having to go through an initial really-long-check-in-process. So where was I? Sorry, it was just the most amazingly long line, and it was made even longer, as I shall explain in the next paragraph…
…because SOMEBODY (i.e., Elvis) kept running out of the office and into the lobby and up the stairs and onto the elevator and coming back down again extremely pleased with himself and shouting, “There you are!” This might not have been quite so bad if it weren’t for the fact that this office building boasts the World’s Slowest Elevator. Seriously, it would take a full three minutes for it to travel from floor 2 to floor 1. I’m talking actual travel time, not waiting-for-people-to-get-on-and-off time. No one else was using the elevator, probably because it’s so stinking slow that even people in wheelchairs would rather take their chances with the stairs. What’s going on in that elevator? Is it being controlled by the pediatrician’s new computer system? Anyway, every time Elvis would take one of his magic elevator rides, at least two new parties of patients would come into the doctor’s office and get in line, so I was just not getting ahead, as you can imagine.
Fortunately, at one point a woman who had come in at the exact moment that Elvis was rushing out the door to go up the stairs again saw me come back into the office and let me get in line ahead of her, which was where I would have been if he hadn’t been such a stinking turkey in the first place. God bless that saintly woman. I wish I could have rewarded her with something better than a 50-pound monkey boy flailing around and screaming for me to let him go. “I STUCK! I STUCK!” Yeah, I know, buster. I stuck you there. At one point he even tried to get tricky with me, asking me for hugs, which are easier to wriggle out of than wrestling holds. Fat chance, pal. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 47 times and it’s my foot on your back until the nice lady brings your file up on H.A.L. over here.
Naturally, when I had to loosen my grip in order to dig through my purse for his insurance card, he escaped yet again, and once again, I had to go after him and wait for the three-minute elevator. I’m sure the people behind me were madly in love with both of us by now. I’m expecting flowers and marriage proposals by the dozens. Anyway, I finally, finally got us checked in, and that’s when the miracles started happening.
First of all, the nurse took his weight. She took his weight, meaning that she told him to step up on the scale, and he did. He even stayed there long enough for her to move the little thingy back and forth so she could get the exact half-poundage. This has never before happened. Then she measured his height. He’s 46 inches. I always suspected, but I never really knew. What good is this information? Who cares? I have it now, and I’ll find a way to use it.
Then we went into the exam room and waited for the doctor, who showed up within three minutes. I know, I was pinching myself! Elvis just lay there on the exam table and let her examine him. She looked in his eyes and up his nose, felt his tummy, even checked that Very Personal Area–and he was fine. Didn’t so much as flinch. Okay, maybe he flinched a little, but it was very brief. Overall, he was the picture of cooperation.
So the doctor pronounced him perfectly healthy and said she’d send the nurse in to do the shots. I asked if they had any restraints, half-jokingly–well, mostly pretending to be half-joking, but in reality quite serious–and she said, no, they didn’t have any, but she’d have them bring “reinforcements.” So two nurses came in, one to hold him still while the other administered the shots. Elvis didn’t like being held still, but that other nurse was so swift, he was half-immunized before he even realized what was happening. It was amazing. He didn’t even cry until the last shot (there were four), but then he got his bandages and they released him, and he just walked off in a daze, like it had all been a crazy dream. I tell you, I came this close to crying. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I walked out to my car, half-expecting to find the Virgin Mary in the fingerprints on my windshield.
You know, this day started out pretty crappy, but now I’m beginning to think that somebody up there doesn’t hate my guts. I don’t know how He or She did it, but…thank you. I needed that.
We went to church with my sister on Sunday. Princess Zurg went to Primary (children’s Sunday School) with her cousins. Princess Zurg has a love-hate relationship with Primary. On the one hand, she finds it a lot less dull than the sacrament service. On the other hand, it is still a little too “churchy” for her tastes. She likes the classroom portion, when they discuss the application of religious principles to real-life situations. She doesn’t enjoy when they read from the scriptures because there aren’t enough girls in them. (She has particular disdain for the Book of Mormon, which is heavy on war stories and mentions only three women by name, one of whom is a harlot of no consequence. That really galls her.) She likes the singing…sometimes, when they’re not singing “annoying” or “childish” songs. In other words, it’s really more of a tolerate-hate relationship.
I feel her pain. I wasn’t too fond of Primary at her age, either. I wasn’t too fond of church, period, and the feeling didn’t become warmer or fuzzier when the teen years hit. I found the church youth programs alternately dull and condescending. Or perhaps both simultaneously. I was probably around thirteen when I decided I just wasn’t going to go to church anymore, because what were my parents going to do, make me? Well, actually, it turned out they could. I think so, anyway. It was a long time ago, and I remember them putting up with my crap for about three weeks, and then the jig was up. I don’t remember exactly what “changed my mind.” I suppose I was just a people pleaser at heart. Anyway, that’s another story. My point is that I sympathize with PZ’s frustration, but at the same time, she’s only ten and not a very responsible ten, and I’m not going to let her just stay home by herself. I don’t think she even wants to stay home by herself. I think she wants us to change religions. That’s not apt to happen. And like I said, we need to take her with us, if only to keep her off the streets.
Historically, PZ has acted out in very loud, very public ways during various portions of the worship service, starting when she was about, oh, two? Two-and-a-half? We were walking into the chapel one day when she suddenly threw herself down on the floor and started screaming, “No! No church! NO JESUS CHRIST!” The incident was all the more remarkable because PZ at that age was more or less non-verbal much of the time. It would take more motivation than I currently have to provide you a laundry list of PZ’s childhood impieties; suffice it to say that the above anecdote is representative of the rest of the iceberg.
We don’t “allow” PZ to disturb other people’s worship–not any more than her school teachers “allow” her to disturb other students’ learning experiences–and in the last couple of years, she’s made great strides in the Appropriate Church Behavior department. In the last several weeks, though, she’s been particularly vocal with her complaints. This Sunday was no exception. Girlfriend was not hip to strange church nurseries, so I was walking the halls with her and happened to pass by the Primary room, where the kids were learning a new song called “Home Is Where the Heart Is.” (Technically, it’s not “new,” but this generation of kids did not know it.) The second verse goes like this:
Home is where there’s Father,
with strength and wisdom true.
Home is where there’s Mother,
and all the children, too.
with strength and wisdom true.
Home is where there’s Mother,
and all the children, too.
Out in the hall, I did my mental Marge Simpson grumble–”Hrmmmm”–and hoped that I had just misheard the lyrics. They didn’t actually set up Father as Mr. Strength and Wisdom whilst lumping Mother in with the rest of the household members who needed his righteous dominion, did they? Well, probably they did, but I was reserving judgment for the time being. Right about then, my sister (who happens to be the Primary president in her ward) came out to the hall and told me that PZ had been quite disturbed that Father got strength and wisdom, while Mother just got stuck with the kids. Yes, we chuckled over it, but I also said, “Good for her.” At least that’s what I was thinking. Inside the Primary room, they were still practicing the song and the music director was telling the kids, “This time, sing it like you mean it.” PZ burst out, “But I don’t mean it!” And at this moment, as much as I wanted her to suck it up and not make a scene or embarrass her cousins, I also couldn’t help but think, “That’s my girl!”
For those of you not up to speed on your Mormon Minutiae, the LDS church has a fully correlated curriculum–it’s a by-product of the David O. McKay era as documented in David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (fascinating read, I assure you)–which means that Primaries all over the world teach their kids the same lessons and the same songs. This “Home Is Where the Heart Is” song is, unfortunately, part of the 2008 Primary program set to take place in October, in every Primary on the face of the earth, including ours. So this was not the last time PZ will have to be affronted by this song, as well she knows. She’s written (and mailed) a letter to the General Primary Board, hoping that the lyrics to this song will be changed by prophetic mandate before the October program. No, we have not yet begun to see the end of PZ angst over this topic. And I have to tell you, this time I’m grateful for my daughter’s utter inability to let stuff go. It may be sad and wrong, but part of me is actually looking forward to her complaining every week about this song. I hope she complains good and loud. It’s nothing new–folks in our Primary are used to PZ’s feminist rants–but it has the potential for something big. Like what? I don’t know. It’s just so rare that I can support my daughter’s righteous anger, and I’d like to relish it, if you don’t mind.
I realize how silly this must sound, making such a big deal out of a little song–really, only a little part of a little song–as though I didn’t belong to a patriarchal church with a treasure trove of gender disparities that are hard to reconcile with my basic sense of justice, not to mention logic. You’re probably wondering, all things considered, if Madhousewife doesn’t have bigger theological fish to fry. Well, yes, ordinarily I do. But this is not a theological fish fry. It is a cultural fish fry. Where the fish are sometimes coated in theological batter. I’m going to abandon this metaphor before it destroys me. Next paragraph, please.
I know I belong to a patriarchal religion. I’ve come to terms with that, in a way. I had to find a way to live with it, so I did. Find a way, I mean. And the fact is, most Mormon women don’t feel oppressed by the church’s patriarchal structure. I don’t feel oppressed by it. It is more an intellectual annoyance than anything–because, in fact, there is much in the religion that is empowering to women. Some Mormon women don’t even find it difficult to reconcile those aspects with the patriarchal ones. I am not one of those women, but that is neither here nor there. The church continues to evolve on gender issues. Some things really have changed; others really haven’t. But the fact remains: back when this “Home” song was written, it was not controversial to assert that men had authority over their wives and children, but these days no one would get up in church and say that without ducking. Today there is an increased emphasis on wives and husbands being equal partners, even while the church refuses to repudiate the patriarchal order.
This is frustrating for most Mormon feminists, who would rather deal with open sexism than this political correctness, but I’ve chosen to take the church at its word. We believe in both patriarchy and equality–fine. It may not make sense, but neither does a lot of other stuff; it’s religion, not rocket science. I can dig that. What I can’t dig–won’t dig–is the notion that this doctrinal paradox mustn’t produce cognitive dissonance. Some folks don’t have the cognitive dissonance; I appreciate that. But they need to understand that their lack of cognitive dissonance is attributable to faith, not reason. Not that reason doesn’t inform faith; it does. But religious mysteries cannot be “solved” by reason alone. That is why they are mysteries. I don’t want to remake church doctrine to suit my personal sensibilities, but I insist on acknowledging the mysteries, so I insist on acknowledging the cognitive dissonance.
This is why I’m happy to have my daughter publicly object to this silly Primary song–not because I think it’s a hill worth dying on, but because I know it’s not a hill the church is willing to die on either. It’s just a tiny thing that niggles at me, and so I niggle back. It’s easy to say, “Well, it’s just a song, and there’s a rhyme scheme and a rhythm to maintain, and it doesn’t mean that Mother doesn’t have ’strength and wisdom true,’ just like Father, but there just wasn’t enough room to say it that way, and for the love of Mike, it’s just a song, what do you want, Madhousewife/Princess Zurg?” But it’s also just as easy to point out this: A hundred little things add up. My daughter hears this song and thinks it diminishes women. I think it infantilizes them. It’s not devastating; it’s not abusive; it’s just annoying–nothing more than annoying, in and of itself. But if the church wants its patriarchy-equality paradox, maybe it should stop teaching my children songs that undermine its professed value of male-female equality. It’s a little thing, precisely. That’s why it’s not too much to ask.
Make no mistake–I labor under no illusion that the church is going to change this song or have it removed from the children’s songbook, nor will I be embittered because of that. I just want other people to think about it, about its implications. Something they won’t be able to help doing when my daughter runs out of the room screaming every time they sing it.
I don’t take the daily paper anymore, so I’m not up on the comic page controversies. Apparently there was a mild kerfuffle when Scott Adams introduced a new character named Jesus (pronounced “Hay-Soos) in his Dilbert strip the week before the Holy Week. I say “mild kerfuffle” because it was apparently a genuine controversy among a certain segment of the population, but I would never have known about it if I hadn’t followed a link on a sidebar of a Mormon blog that told me that the Daily Universe, BYU’s student newspaper, had opted not to run the strips. Apparently some students were horrified that the Daily Universe would censor a comic strip. Personally, I was horrified at some of the grammar in the DU’s editorial explaining its position, but that’s neither here nor there. All of this reminds me of a story.
I didn’t get my higher education at BYU. I went to a small Baptist college in southern Virginia that no one has ever heard of unless they live in that town and/or attended that school themselves. (Don’t bother guessing which school it is, because you’ll only guess some school somebody’s heard of, and you’ll be wrong.) It’s a good little school, and I enjoyed my four years there. It was not Baptist school in the same sense that BYU is a Mormon school. It was affiliated with the Virginia Baptist General Board, which I believe gave it some of its funding, or at least provided scholarships, or something–really, I didn’t and don’t know the particulars, but it sufficeth me to say that the affiliation was mostly a historical one. Baptists being what Baptists are, the school enjoyed much more sovereignty than BYU ever has.
However, the trappings of its religious affiliation were still present. They held (non-compulsory) chapel services and six credits of religion classes (including one on the Old or New Testament–quelle horreur!) were required for graduation. All dorms were single-sex, and no one of the opposite sex was allowed in the dorm after 11:30 p.m. (2 a.m. on weekends). It was also a dry campus (absolutely no alcohol allowed on the premises). Lots of students, unfamiliar with the meaning of the term ”private school,” complained about the religion requirement and the draconian visiting hours (hey, they never said you couldn’t have sex in your dorm room, just not after 11:30 p.m., 2 a.m. on weekends). But mostly they complained about the no-alcohol policy. Ostensibly there was this Puritan vibe emanating from the trustees’ office or something, but in practice, aside from the alcohol thing, the students had the freedom to engage in a fair amount of debauchery, so long as the old ladies from the alumni association didn’t find out about it. And there was academic freedom on a scale that BYU professors can only dream of. But more on that later.
I think it was my sophomore year that Residence Life began sponsoring Movie Night on Fridays (maybe to make up for the fact that there was nothing to do in town and also no alcohol to drink). Among the first movies they decided to show was Henry & June, which you might recall was a NC-17-rated romp for people who wanted to pretend they’d read Anais Nin (or Henry Miller, for that matter). Anyway, they had posters for it up all over campus and the dorms, until one student, who happened to be majoring in religion so she could go on to study at a seminary, complained that this film didn’t strike her as consistent with the school’s Christian mission. Bottom line: Henry & June was summarily cancelled. I think they replaced it with The Lion King. I don’t really recall.
This was a disappointing turn of events. (Damn straight my friends and I were planning on going–what did you think?) But oh well, what are you going to do, right? Wrong. A bunch of students rose up and swore they were not going to take it. They put up posters about free speech and censorship and blah blah de blah, and there was a story in the student newspaper, which quoted some English professors saying it was really so silly, as they discussed things in classes that were much more shocking and revolutionary than Henry & June and that this whole incident made the school look like a Mickey Mouse organization–or something. One professor–the History department chair, actually–was so distressed by the school’s Gestapo tactics that he walked into class with a TV and VCR and showed the offending movie to his Western Civ class, just to “prove a point.”
When I heard about this, I thought a couple things. First, it wasn’t really fair to those students who paid their tuition on the assumption that they would be learning about Western Civ in their Western Civ class. Sure, a bunch of them probably thought, “Excellent! No Greeks and Romans today!” But others may not have been pleased that they hauled themselves down to the lecture hall just to get an eyeful of Anais Nin’s goodies. (And not even the real Anais Nin, but someone pretending to be Anais Nin. And who was Anais Nin, anyway?) The second thing I thought was, if we regularly discussed shocking and revolutionary things in class, why was it such a big deal that we show Henry & June, which was, after all, so much less consequential than the shocking and revolutionary things we ordinarily preoccupied ourselves with? It wasn’t as though Henry Miller or Anais Nin appeared anywhere on any of our professors’ syllabi, so how important could it have been for us to know them intimately?
In other words, I thought it was a whole bunch of silly. And the silliest part was that these kids were crying “censorship!” when they had no idea how easy they had it. I confess I waxed a little Grumpy Old Man and told them that this was nothing compared to the oppression my people suffered at BYU, where watching Henry & June in the privacy of your own apartment (which must be university-approved) would probably get you called up on an Honor Code violation–and I never even got to the part where BYU students weren’t allowed to drink ANYWHERE, EVER. Their heads might have exploded.
See, I think censorship sucks and all, but what frosts my cupcakes is when people waste moral outrage on issues that are essentially trivial. If you wanted to go to a college where Residence Life would sponsor screenings of arty sex flicks, maybe you should have gone to a non-religious school. That you are entitled to watch a particular movie–any movie–as part of your educational experience makes about as much sense as being entitled to play ice hockey in P.E. Nothing against ice hockey, but did your college have ice hockey and if not, did you protest? Even if you went to school in Florida?
Moreover, it was not possible to escape the irony of the fact that cancelling Henry & June–which, I reiterate, was a movie sponsored by Residence Life as a recreational activity–at the request of a student (on the basis of it being an inappropriate event for a nice Baptist college to sponsor) resulted in this huge uproar, but when the college incurred the wrath of the VBGB for sponsoring a female minister’s lecture on God and gender, there were crickets chirping. Probably because she didn’t use any pictures in her presentation. But also because academic freedom doesn’t inspire the same passion as recreational license.
Now, probably the BYU students who were upset about missing their Dilbert that week also get upset about some other, consequential stuff that goes on at BYU–stuff actually related to the quality of their educations. At the same time, lots of people go to BYU so they can live and learn in a Mormon environment and not be bombarded with stuff that offends their religious sensibilities. These students have a hard enough time with Nietzche and Faulkner. How crucial is it that they pick up a paper to relax with the news of the day and have their eyeballs seared by a Dilbert Jesus cartoon?
Perhaps I’m just sympathetic to the editors of the Daily Universe, as I used to work for a newspaper, where my job description entailed fielding calls from readers irate about something they’d read in the funnies. Those calls were unpleasant and frustrating. People have strong feelings about the comics. Also crossword puzzles. And don’t you dare take away their bridge column. Oh, no–but I digress. My point is that I understand why the DU folks decided to just pre-empt the whole controversy, even if they did follow up with a self-serving editorial justifying their decision. (Hey, I do self-serving stuff myself all the time, so who am I to throw stones?)
On the other hand, talking about my newspaper experience reminds me that we had a janitor there named Jesus. Yes, it was pronounced “Hay-Soos,” but let’s be honest–who doesn’t see the name Jesus and read it as “Jesus (not Hay-Soos)”? Not me. Which is why it used to amuse me to no end when we’d get messages on the network computers telling us that Jesus would be cleaning the bathrooms between 4 and 5 p.m. Because that was comedy gold. I like to think Jesus himself would have appreciated it. (Either of them.) But then, I look at these Dilbert comics and I don’t see what the big deal is. I imagine if Jesus were to pick up the Daily Universe and see these comics, he wouldn’t just stand there somberly with a tear rolling down his face. He might chuckle at a couple of them, even–in a “heh heh, very well, Scott Adams, touche” kind of way. But no outright guffawing because eh, they’re just not that funny. Definitely not worth protesting over, in any respect.
Disagreeing with Mormon doctrines does not make you a bigot.
Disagreeing with mischaracterized and distorted Mormon “doctrines” doesn’t make you a bigot, either. That’s good news, isn’t it? The bad news is that it does make you preoccupied with issues that have no relevance to reality. It’s sad when that happens.
Most Mormons I know don’t subscribe to “Mormonism” as you’ve defined it. I certainly don’t. You don’t like me calling myself “Christian” when I don’t accept every jot and tittle of the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed, so I assume you don’t want me to call myself “Mormon” if I don’t believe that there are alien Jesuses on other planets and that my husband’s going to grow up to be his own Jesus someday. I don’t want to misrepresent myself, so what descriptor am I allowed to use? I’m not Christian, I’m not Mormon, I’m not Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Sikh or Hindu or Unitarian, so what am I?
Oh, dear–am I godless? Crap. I’m godless, aren’t I? They told me if I voted Republican, this would never happen!
I’m pissed.
In other religious-diversity news…
My son’s preschool teachers gave him a Christmas present. Which wouldn’t bother me, except that it’s an Oregon Beavers puzzle. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except for the small matter of us being DUCKS fans.
Some people are so insensitive.
So last Friday’s Featured Question on the Xanga was “Should religion be taught in public schools?”–which is an interesting question, because if I read it one way, my answer is “Of course not,” but if I read it another way, my answer is “Good heavens, no!” but for entirely different reasons.
In my opinion, it’s clearly unconstitutional to “teach religion in public school” in the sense of indoctrinating students with religious doctrines. As in, Teacher stands up in class and informs students that Jesus died for their sins and they have to accept him as their personal savior in order to avoid eternal damnation.* (Or, alternatively, Teacher gets up and informs students that, I dunno, if they do bad stuff they’ll get bad karma and be reincarnated with a crappy life. My Hinduism is, um, sketchy. My apologies.) Unconstitutional, inappropriate and rather a waste of time on top of that. Whether particular expressions of a religious nature, e.g. student-led prayer, extra-curricular Bible clubs, etc., are unconstitutional is not something I wish to explore here (because I’m on a schedule, okay?).
*When I was in the sixth grade, a substitute teacher performed an impromptu passion play during a language arts lesson. Everyone was really uncomfortable. Which, if I recall correctly, was the gist of his message: Crucifixion ≠ Comfortable.
On the other hand, it’s not unconstitutional to teach about religion in public school, and Stephen Prothero of Boston University thinks our society would be better off if our citizens were more religiously literate. He says that it would improve public discourse. He wrote a book about all this. (You can take his religious literacy quiz, if this blog starts to bore you and you need something else to do.) His is a compelling argument. I can tell you that I thought many times, whilst in college, that various works of literature and many historical events-slash-trends were easier to understand in light of the religious cultural context. (At this time I also went to church with a woman who taught English in the public schools, and she said she found it very difficult to teach Paradise Lost without bringing up religion. And I thought, “You people teach Paradise Lost in high school?” Aside from Shakespeare and Beowulf, my high school teachers didn’t show us anything that was written in English prior to the The Scarlet Letter. But that may have been a California thing.)
However, as noble and constitutional as Professor Prothero’s (try saying that three times fast–on second thought, try saying it once, at all) proposed religious literacy curriculum is, when I think of how such classes would “work” in real life, with real public school teachers and real public school students, I can only say, “Good luck with that.”
Number one: There’s no unringing that no-religion-in-public-school bell that was sounded back in the twentieth century. My generation, at least, has been successfully trained to faint at the mere mention of God in a non-private setting. Even persons of faith have been known to squirm at the sight of the Ten Commandments on display, just out there for anyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, to see. (Shocking!)* It would probably take neurosurgery to cure us of this response.
(*Note: Not that I contend that posting the Ten Commandments is a politically neutral issue, but I do think people tend to get hysterical when protesting such displays. Seriously, is this what most offends you about your environment? If so, you’re either extremely lucky or extremely unobservant. I wish I had such indignation to spare.)
Number two: Can you imagine trying to teach a course in the Bible to teenagers, who think they know everything? Everyone, regardless of his or her religious upbringing or background, will have a chip on his or her shoulder. And if you’re unlucky enough to have both evangelical Christian and Mormon students in your class, just run for the flipping hills. That is not a dynamic you want to engage. I haven’t even gotten to the part where every kid feels persecuted and put-upon, and their parents threaten to sue you in case you haven’t already rotted in hell. Seriously, just hand them a bunch of sticks and let them start beating each other. It would be just as educational.
I’m in kind of a cynical mood today. Maybe not the best time to ask me about religion in public life. Hm.
As long as I’m on the subject, though, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has said that Mormonism is the “fourth Abrahamic religion,” the first three being Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This strikes some as being less offensive than the usual characterization of Mormonism as a dangerous cult, but it tends to rub Mormons the wrong way because we just can’t seem to let go of this idea that everyone should accept us as “real” Christians. I used to feel that way. It’s a recipe for perpetual disappointment. My husband gave up calling himself a Christian years ago. These days I’m mostly agnostic on the subject, but I’m not sure I prefer the dignity of “fourth Abrahamic religion” to the kitschy flash of “cult.” Actually, I like to think of Mormonism as the “bastard child of Christianity,” but I don’t think that one’s going to catch on, with Mormons, Baptists or the press.
This reminds me of when I was growing up in the church and use of the word “Mormon” (to describe ourselves) was somewhat discouraged. Someone got the idea that if we never referred to ourselves as Mormons but always said that we belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, people might start to believe that we were Christians. Which was nothing more than wishful thinking, but that’s beside the point. I’ve never liked using the church’s official name, mostly because it’s way too long. Seriously, maybe they had time to carry around that cumbersome moniker in the nineteenth century, but no one has time to listen to a name like that anymore, let alone speak it. If someone asks you what religion you are and you respond with “I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the reaction you’re most likely to get is either, “Mormons, eh?” or alternatively, “Huh-wha?”–in which case you’ll eventually end up telling them you’re Mormon anyway, because that religion people have heard of.
And I’ve never thought that “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” sounded any less culty than “Mormon.” Actually, it sounds more culty, because if you need that many words to describe your organization, it’s got to mean that you’re hiding something. Maybe that’s why self-referring as “Mormon” came back into vogue in the church a few years ago.*
*COJCOLDS President Gordon B. Hinckley said that “Mormon” should mean “more good.” I say “Mormon” should mean “Mo Betta,” but again, no one’s asking me to write the AP Stylebook.
As long as I’m being totally random, I read a news article the other day about the use of tribal names for sports teams. Dennis Prager was discussing this once on his radio show, and a caller who found the practice offensive asked Dennis how he would feel if a team wanted to call itself the Fighting Jews. I think Dennis’s reply was something like, after the last 3,000 years he’d be overjoyed to learn that the Jews had fans. Which is funny, ha ha, but it got me to thinking, what if there were a team called the Mormons? (No qualifier necessary, as the mere specter of those clean-cut boys in white shirts and ties is enough to strike fear in the heart of any opponent, except maybe those Fighting Amish.) I’ve never understood why BYU’s team was called the “Cougars.” What is that, a “mountain” thing, I guess? Seems kind of lame to me.
Which reminds me:
It’s been a while since I’ve told you all how much I adore my mother-in-law. I do very much love and appreciate my mother-in-law. She is wonderful, and we have a great relationship. Sugar Daddy thinks she likes me better than she likes him. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m just putting it out there for you all to understand that I heart my mother-in-law. She should never be confused with my step-mother, whom I also love but who more frequently bugs the living crap out of me (bless her soul).
My mother-in-law is actually planning to move to Portland next year–to our very neighborhood, if possible–so that she can be closer to the grandkids. I don’t think she has any other reason to move here, as she is not fond of Oregon in any other regard that I know of. But that is neither here nor there. She is planning to move up here, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Mostly I will enjoy having her around. Especially when it involves free babysitting. Did I say that out loud? Anyway, the main reason I am looking forward to it is because I love her and like having her around. Unlike my step-mother, her I can stand having around for more than, say, a day. (Oh, that is so unfair. My step-mother is a lovely person. I can really stand her for up to three days, under ordinary circumstances.) But there is one tiny part of me that is looking forward to having her close by because of the ever-so-slim possibility that it will cut down on the amount of e-mail she sends me.
I’m not talking about chatty, hey-how-are-ya e-mail, or even those crappy forwards that test your IQ or read your mind or inform you that friendship is important. She sends those occasionally, but mostly she just sends links to random news stories and advertisements. Once she sent a link to an article about tree frogs. Nothing wrong with tree frogs. It was a nice article. Just random. The other day she sent us an image of the publicity poster for Prince Caspian. I mean, I guess we’re going to see Prince Caspian. Mister Bubby will want to see it, probably. I don’t imagine Mister Bubby would be terribly excited to look at a picture of some pretty boy wearing chain mail and long hair flowing in the wind. Just random. She also sends us stories about the weather here. Get Fuzzy comics even though she knows we don’t like Get Fuzzy. (Yeah, we don’t like Get Fuzzy, so sue us.) That sort of thing.
I don’t know why it should bother me so much, why I can’t just say, oh well, that’s Mom and she’s just random that way–for the record, no, I don’t suspect that she’s suffering from dementia–but it got to the point that I felt compelled to abandon our primary e-mail account and just let it become a Mom Spam folder. I redirected all other personal and business correspondence to a secondary e-mail account under my name. Was that wrong? Well, whatever. I’ve been happily ignoring-for-the-most-part that other account and only occasionally checking it in case something important slipped in there, or if Mom told me she’d e-mailed me something of (actual) interest. But apparently she is now hip to my game because this morning I opened up my “real” e-mail and found a link to the Murray School of Irish Dance in Beaverton. I dunno, kids. I guess the jig is up.
Also on the short list of random annoyances:
1. The house we’re renting has, like, 400 light switches. The average number of light switches per room is four, and in some rooms there are six or eight. It’s insane. All these light switches, and yet I still can’t turn on all the lights in the kitchen. What the freak are all these light switches about?
2. Also, the house we’re renting has a very heavy screen/storm door that opens the opposite way of the real door, which, I dunno, I guess that’s fairly standard, but it makes it very difficult to keep the screen door open while trying to close the real door and not have the screen door come crashing in on your leg or face or whatever. Our real house doesn’t have a screen/storm door. It just has a double door that is very difficult to lock, and it’s attached to a house with a burnt-up bathroom and no electrical power, so whatever. I’ll just shut up now.
3. Our school district doesn’t provide bus transportation to students who live less than one mile from their neighborhood school. Our real house is 0.9 miles away from the neighborhood school. It does not get bus service. Our rental house is 0.6 miles from the neighborhood school. It gets bus service. I am somewhat miffed and confused. Mostly miffed.
4. My baby slipped and hit her head on the hardwood floor yesterday. She’s okay, but she has a major goose egg between her eyesbrows, which makes her look like a little Star Trek alien baby. Which is annoying because I always thought Star Trek’s alien make-up was pretty weak.
Not annoying, but random:
I was at the Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe on Wednesday, and the [Portland Suburb] Atheists Meet-Up Group was having a gathering. I’m not sure why this struck me as amusing. Bible study groups meet at the Moonstruck, why shouldn’t the Portland-Suburb Atheists have a shindig there? Atheists need the fellowship of other atheists, I suppose. I think what I found amusing, in a surreal way, was that they had put out a table with various brochures against religion and against evangelism specifically. Not to overstate the irony, but it’s just not something you see every day.
Actually, I found it somewhat heartwarming to see all these people of various ages, races and walks of life being able to bond over their common embrace of rationality. Or is was heartwarming, until one of them came up to me and asked if I wanted a free picture of Richard Dawkins. Then I said, “Get the #$*& away from me, you freak!” and suddenly milkshakes and mocha lattes were flying everywhere. Just kidding. None of that happened. They took no notice of me. I’m very quiet.
I guess that’s it for now. Have an awesome weekend, kids!
The other day we were reading the Bible with our children, and we got to that part where Jesus tells us to love our enemies, bless those that curse us, do good to those who despitefully use us, etc., and it got me to thinking about the fact that I really don’t have any enemies anymore. Not personal enemies. I mean, I suppose terrorists are my enemies, but they’re everyone’s enemies. Whether or not we’re required to love murderers or folks like that, I will leave it to the philosophers. I think it’s easy to theoretically “love” or “bless” those enemies who have never harmed you personally and most likely never will. (It’s even easier to hate them on behalf of the people they have harmed, but that’s beside the point.) It’s the people who hurt you personally, especially those who do it on an ongoing basis–those people are really hard to love. Or bless. With some will power you can do good to them, but even that is no picnic. They’re hard to love because they’re in our lives being destructive, for real, and it’s impossible to have feelings or positions that are merely theoretical.
Like I said in the beginning, I really don’t have any enemies at this stage of my life. The last time someone really hurt my feelings, I got disproportionately upset, so it’s not like I’m some kind of saint or Switzerland–but still, I got over it once the right phase of my menstrual cycle hit, and I don’t feel any worse for wear now. I have an occasionally annoying family member, but no one that approaches Enemy status. I feel most fortunate in that regard. The strongest feeling I have toward my least-loved relatives is indifference. Which is also a fault, but it’s manageable. No one is intruding into my life on a regular basis and making me miserable. (Except for the kids, of course, but they don’t count.)
I think these are the reasons why I don’t have any enemies:
1) I don’t work for the Man. If I had to go into an office and navigate all the office-politics ugliness that exists therein, I’m sure I’d make a few enemies. Or they’d make themselves for me. However that works. I mostly got along with the people I worked with, while I was working, but there were a few, here and there, whom I could have easily punched in the nose if I’d let my lower nature rule me. Fortunately, I never had to work with any of them for very long.
2) I’m no longer in middle school.
3) My relatives all live far away.
4) Most of my relatives are a harmless brand of crazy, as opposed to the psycho kind.
5) When it comes to others’ opinions of me, I try to practice active ignorance.
6) My husband hasn’t put his dirty socks in my kitchen sink for several years now.
7) The only road rage I experience is when my kids start arguing with me from the back seat. And again, the kids don’t count.
8) I’m a freaking pushover.
It feels good to have no enemies. But I worry about my children. They have the most enemy-filled years of their lives still in front of them. Princess Zurg thinks she already has enemies, but being only 8 and 11/12, she ain’t seen nothing yet. And when my children start getting enemies, that’s when I’ll have enemies again, too. Because no matter how many tantrums they throw at the Target because I wouldn’t buy them popcorn or how many times they leave their dirty dishes on the couch or how much back-talking lip they give me, I am on their side. I mean, I certainly hope that in those instances where they are in the wrong, I will be able to steer them toward ethical solutions for their diplomatic issues. But what about when the biggest problem is that someone else is just being an effing jerk? I suppose I will have to say, “You know, some people are just jerks. [I will leave out the effing, most likely.] All you can do is be civil/ignore them/leave the country.” I don’t know if I will have the nerve to bring up the matter of loving the SOB’s. I will be too busy struggling with it myself.
Today Elvis threw up in church.
Theoretically we should have foreseen this. Last night he crawled into bed with us, as he often does in the middle of the night, and at one point I heard his stomach gurgling and I said, “I think he’s going to throw up.”
If you’ll forgive the tangent, I think it bears noting here that ordinarily Sugar Daddy doesn’t register much of what I tell him in the middle of the night. He requires a few minutes to process information given verbally. Once he understands what I’ve said, it takes him some additional time to get his bearings so that he may act on said information, if necessary. For example, if I were to say, “Would you go tend to the baby/Elvis/some other kid who’s screaming in the night?” he will lie there for a couple minutes and finally mumble, “Yeah. Give me a sec.” Then he proceeds to move not a muscle for the next 10-15 minutes and may in fact fall back asleep if he is not properly motivated to stay on task. He is not a night person. Which is okay. Vive le difference, I always say. However, last night when I said, “I think he’s going to throw up,” SD immediately jumped out of bed, quicker than you can say “Jack Robinson.” (Who is Jack Robinson? I don’t know.) Anyway, I don’t believe any additional commentary is necessary. Just one of those curious incidents that merits documentation. And now back to our story.
So after I said, “I think he’s going to throw up,” Elvis gagged a whole bunch but never produced the vomit-fest we expected, and we all went back to sleep. A few hours later Elvis woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and started jumping on the bed and yelling, as is his wont. So it was as if the whole nighttime throwing-up thing had never even happened. Indeed, I believe it left my consciousness and SD’s consciousness altogether. So we all got up, got dressed and went to church.
Everything was hunky-dory at first. A few minutes into the meeting, I had to leave to nurse the baby. After nursing the baby, I went to sit in the foyer because the sacrament hymn was starting. And sometime during the sacrament hymn, SD came out holding the spewing Elvis. And the rest is not very interesting or appetizing. Suffice it to say that once Elvis got cleaned up, he felt fit as a fiddle, but since it is technically bad form to keep a child in church when he just threw up ten minutes ago, I took him and the baby out to the parking lot so we could get in the car and go home, and while buckling the baby into her carseat, Elvis took off and I spent the next several minutes looking for him. He’d gone back into the building and was dancing merrily down the hallway. Regardless of that, we decided to go home and commune with God in front of the TV set this afternoon anyway. I reckon no one’s going to want to sit by us in church again for a very long time–but then, when have they ever?
Actually, the true miracle was that the vomit was as well-contained as it was. Usually when one of my children has to throw up, they start running around the room so they can splatter the stuff on everyone and everything in a twenty-foot radius. By contrast, none of our fellow congregants was molested by vomit today. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Consider the lilies of the field, kiddos. His eye is on the sparrow and all that jazz.
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