Pacing the Panic Room is one of my favorite places in all of the internets. Ryan Marshall takes amazing photos and makes gorgeous videos set to lovely music tells incredibly honest stories about life with his wife Cole and kids, Tessa and LB. LB has a rare genetic disorder called Smith Magenis Syndrome, and Ryan has rounded up a bunch of awesome artists to help raise awareness about SMS and funds for case studies to help parents and families who are dealing with SMS. These artists have created Do Fun Stuff (Vol. 1) (If you click that you can preview the album and read more about it. I really wanted to put the widget at that link onto my site, but WordPress doesn’t allow iframes, boo hiss), which is a kid’s music CD guaranteed not to suck or make you want to stab your eardrums out with a rusty nail. I don’t have kids, and as such, I’m not forced to listen to crappy kid music on a regular basis. I don’t have to buy kid’s music if I don’t want to. But this album is good stuff, and I don’t hate it. In fact, I like it. A lot. I have a feeling you’ll kinda like it too. So, buy it on iTunes, jam out with your kids or your dogs or your own bad self. Help some kids and their families. Do Fun Stuff.
voices for justice
Last night I went to some of the best church I’ve ever experienced. Except it was in a Music Hall with 2500 other people and led by a handful of famous people. I was at a rally/rockshow in support of the West Memphis 3.
The West Memphis 3 are Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelly, and Jason Baldwin, a group of young men arrested and convicted as teenagers for the murder of three children in West Memphis, AR. Many people, including myself, believe the West Memphis 3 are innocent and wrongly imprisoned. One of them, Damien Echols, is on death row. I encourage you to read about their case and decide for yourself. It blows my mind that we can have people on death row on such shaky evidence. There is no DNA evidence tying any of the Three to the crime scene, although DNA evidence of one of the victims’ stepfather was found at the scene. Instead, the case relied on what was a most-likely coerced and later recanted confession from one of the Three, Jessie Misskelly, who is mentally handicapped and, though he was a teenager, was questioned without a lawyer or a parent present. In addition, the way the investigation was handled, the way the story was told to the public and the media, and notes recovered from the jurors all point to the fact that these three men are wrongly imprisoned and have been for 17 years.
In those 17 years, the Three have found support for their cause all over the state and all over the world. Thanks to a pair of HBO documentaries, they even gained the support of some major celebrities: Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, and Johnny Depp. With Damien Echols’ oral arguments before the State Supreme Court coming up on September 30, their local and celebrity supporters decided it was time to hold a rally to both raise money for the WM3 legal defense fund and to get active in contacting state leaders in support of new trials for the WM3. That led to last night’s Voices for Justice rally.
Of course a rally featuring Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maines, Patti Smith, Ben Harper, Dhanni Harrison, Joseph Arthur, and Bill Carter drew a large crowd– where else are you going to see Eddie Vedder letting Johnny Depp take lead guitar, or both of them playing backup for Patti Smith? Still, I was really disappointed to see that Bobby Ampezzan’s review in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette focused primarily on suggesting that people packed out Robinson for a rock show, not because they care about a cause. To that I ask, Bobby, did you SEE how amped people were when Rev. Thompson Murray from Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church gave a stirring min-sermon about the cause of justice as something Jesus would have supported? The way people cheered during the videos highlighting the miscarriage of justice in this case? The way people gave money as buckets were passed, offering style, around the music hall to collect money for the WM3 legal defense fund? But what does Bobby know? He describes Natalie Maines as having “a shaved head” (she was sporting a cute, short pixie) and rags on her for “[using] cue cards held aloft in the pit for one of her numbers” despite the fact that she barely talked the entire show because she said she was too emotional about a cause she has long-supported for words. It really disappointed me to see that write-up, and I felt like it had an agenda to downplay the real experience of the rally.
Like I said before, the entire experience, to me, was most akin to some really good church. We started with a sermon and a preacher telling the crowd that Jesus is always on the side of justice, quoting Amos 5:24: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” We had some congregational singing, along with Eddie Vedder as he performed Tom Waits’ “It Rains on Me” and with the entire assembled “band” as they performed “People Have the Power.” We heard the personal testimony of Eddie Vedder, as he described spending a recent evening around a campfire in his back yard with Fistful of Mercy (Ben Harper, Dhanni Harrison, Joseph Arthur), when they stood in a circle saying a kind of prayer that the WM3 could one day join them there, and realized that the answer to their prayer was to get down to Little Rock for the rally. Isn’t that how prayer so often works? Instead of using it to magically give us things, God uses it to remind us that we need to take action. That’s how it usually goes for me.
For me, some of the most powerful moments of the evening were while Natalie Maines was singing. While she has one of the most powerful voices I’ve ever heard, I think I was most stuck by her fiery spirit. I like a woman who refuses to be shut up. She sang a traditional gospel song called “Death’s Got a Warrant,” previously recorded by another favorite of mine, Patty Griffin. The song was obviously aimed at the true murderers, and said “you can’t hide, God’s got your number and he knows where you live. Death’s got a warrant for you.”
To me, the best song of the evening was Maines’ performance of Dan Wilson’s (best known as the lead singer of Semisonic) “Free Life.” The song was very stirring, as it seemed to be about Damien Echols reuniting as a free man with his wife Lorri Davis. Here’s a snippet of the lyrics:
Let’s take a little trip down where we used to go
It’s way beyond the strip, a place they call your soul
We’ll sit down for a while and let the evening rollDon’t worry about the time; we’ll find a place to stay
The people round here seem familiar in some way
Look kind of like we did before we got so coldAnd in the air the questions hang
Will we get to do something?
Who we gonna end up being?
How we gonna end up feeling?
What you gonna spend your free life on? Free life.
It was a good question for all of us. I hope the people in attendance won’t take for granted that we are blessed to have our freedom. I hope that they are moved to support the cause of justice, because when someone can sit on death row for a crime no one can be certain they committed, we are all a little less free.
And you know what? I have enough faith in people, enough faith in what I experienced with 2500 other people last night, to believe that it wasn’t just about Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp. It was also about three innocent men in prison. It was about justice. And there are many ways to help between now and September 30th.
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Dr. Laura & Racism
So, last night Jon and I happened to catch some of Anderson Cooper on CNN and learned about the whole Dr. Laura racism-on-the-radio debacle. If you haven’t heard the scoop, here’s the basics: a woman called into Dr. Laura’s show for advice (if you ask me, anyone who would call that horrible woman for advice is less than bright, but certainly not deserving of what came next). The woman, Jade, said that she’s in an interracial marriage, she’s black and her husband is white, and that she has been hurt by her husband’s friends and family making racist comments, while her husband does nothing about it. Dr. Laura managed to call the woman hypersensitive, dismiss the idea that the comments were racist, make gross generalizations about black people as a monolithic entity, use the N-word many times, and suggest that people who can’t put up with racist comments from friends and family members shouldn’t marry outside their race. While many outlets are simply focusing on Dr. Laura’s use of the N-word, as you can see/hear, the rest of the exchange is really what drips with racism. You can hear the whole audio and read a transcript over at Media Matters.
Before I respond, here’s Jamelle Bouie:
What Dr. Laura said was RACIST.
Dr. Laura asks Jade, the caller, for an example of a racist comment she’s been hearing from her husband’s friends and family, and Jade replies:
CALLER: OK. Last night — good example — we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor — when every time he comes over, it’s always a black comment. It’s, “Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?” And, “Do black people really like doing that?” And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it —
SCHLESSINGER: I don’t think that’s racist.
CALLER: Well, the stereotype —
SCHLESSINGER: I don’t think that’s racist.
Memo to Dr. Laura: that IS racist. Assuming that all people of a certain race think/act alike and expecting an individual from that race/group to be able to speak for/represent the whole group, well, that’s racist. Just like people who think all women are alike and expect any one woman to represent/speak for the entire sex are sexist. Seeing an entire group of people as if they aren’t as diverse and individual as your group of people is racist. Full stop. There’s no hypersensitivity there, and I can see where this woman would feel hurt by her husband’s friends and family constantly making generalizations and stereotypes about her race and expecting her to be the ambassador for all black people.
Then, after stating that generalizations about black people aren’t racist statements, Dr. Laura forges ahead and makes a couple of generalizations about black people, namely that they all voted for Obama simply because he’s black, and that they’re all good at basketball:
A lot of blacks voted for Obama simply ’cause he was half-black. Didn’t matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That’s not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says — we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here — the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, “White men can’t jump; I want you on my team.” That was racist? That was funny.
Nope, Dr. Laura, that entire paragraph is racist. And after that, as if her words are a little racist snowball rolling down the hill, Dr. Laura decides to get something off her chest: how deeply jealous she is that “black guys on HBO” can use the N-word but she, a white person, cannot. She literally says the N-word over and over again. It’s a common racist/sexist tactic to get upset that minority groups take words previously used to oppress and hurt them and turn them into something they use for their own power. It’s not quite the same as the N-word, but it reminds me the way I and some of my favorite blogger friends have reclaimed the word “harpy.” If some man called me a harpy, I’d be downright pissed. But I jokingly call myself a harpy all the time.
After a commercial break, Jade, the caller, makes some very wise observations about race relations in this country. She points out that older white people in this country seem more frightened and emboldened about racism after Obama’s election to the presidency. This isn’t crazy stuff, folks like the Southern Poverty Law center have been pointing this out for over a year now. You only have to look to footage of Tea Party events to know that some racists in this country are flipping out and feeling comfortable expressing very racist ideas in public. But Dr. Laura tells the caller that she obviously has a “chip on your shoulder” and suggests she has “too much sensitivity.”
After a bit of arguing about the N-word, Jade hangs up and Dr. Laura concludes:
SCHLESSINGER: All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can’t have this argument. You know what? If you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor, don’t marry out of your race.
Talk about an epic fail from a professional advice giver!
If Jade had called me for advice, I’d definitely answer differently. I’d validate her feelings that her husband’s family and friends are making racist comments. I’d affirm that yes, expecting one person to represent her entire race, with the belief that the entire race thinks/acts alike, is racist. I’d tell her that whether her husband agrees with her that the comments are racist, it’s her husband’s job as her spouse and as the one with the primary relationship with these people to tell them to cut it out. If your spouse says your friends/family are hurting his/her feelings, you tell them to knock it off. You refuse to tolerate it in your house. You inform them they will not be welcome in your house so long as they continue to say things that hurt your spouse. Period. It’s not that difficult to see that that’s the right answer to that question.
Because Dr. Laura did not take this opportunity to state the obvious, that spouses should have each other’s backs when someone is hurting one of their feelings, I can only conclude that she’s had these feelings of racial resentment, the ones that came bursting through in the exchange, for a while. I’m not saying that Dr. Laura hates black people, or that, as a person, she’s a complete and total racist. But that exchange definitely revealed her racial resentment, and her words were racist.
To top it all off, Dr. Laura’s “apology” is of the “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings”variety rather than the I’m sorry I said what I said variety. She primarily focuses on the use of the N-word. Her use of the N-word wasn’t even the half of it! She needs to do more than apologize for using an abhorrent word, but for the entire hateful exchange. And she needs to examine her issues surrounding race, perhaps with a licensed therapist.
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pet peeves
I often tell people that I have one perfect dog and one very sweet but very crazy dog.
And then yesterday, I had the following exchange on Twitter:
Still thinking about this exchange as Jon and I went to bed, I said, “My friend says that people project their own personalities and issues on their pets. But we have two very different pets! And he says that one of them is probably me, and one of them is probably you. But which is which?”
Very quickly, Jon replied, “I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m the chilled out, obedient one.”
To which I replied, “Are you saying I’m the cracked out crazy one in constant need of attention and affection and snuggles?”
His silence said all I needed to know.
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i love you cheezeburgherz
I am addicted to the internet. I’m active on Twitter and in the local TweetUp community, I’m a blogger, I’m a prolific blog reader, I’m an active commenter on several major blogs, and I have a long history on message boards. Sometimes, my husband gives me a hard time about my internet addiction, but lately he’s been forced to change his tune.
Little Rock, Arkansas, while not exactly a major metropolis, is home to an awesome network of bloggers and Tweeps (what we Twitter addicts call fellow Twitterers). Monthly TweetUps are just the most visible manifestation of an engaged and enthusiastic online community of local folk, sharing their lives 140 characters at a time. As I’ve written, I connected with the LR online community before we moved out here, and I even used Twitter to find a house (I put the word out about what we were looking for, and it turned out one of my tweeps was moving out of a great house that we subsequently moved into). But more importantly, I’ve used the local internet community to find My People.
We had/have many wonderful close friends in Charleston, but none of them were “mine.” What I mean is, almost everyone I knew there, I had met through my husband or his work. I was always, to some degree, Jon’s wife, Sarah, not Sarah, Jon’s wife. While I wouldn’t trade those friends for anything, after all, we survived the wild and crazy world of residency together, I needed to find My People. I have found them.
This week, I had the pleasure of being invited to a local gathering of fabulous women bloggers. It’s called CheeseburgHer, and it’s a spinoff of the big BlogHer national conference that just took place this week in New York. What started as an impromptu gathering there led, a few years hence, to satellite parties in various cities, and Little Rock, with its somewhat-surprisingly active blogging community, was selected to host such an event, largely thanks to the very talented Kyran, who has a BOOK coming out next year, because she’s a rockstar. She knows how to throw a party!
Anyway, I got an Evite encouraging me to come to a swanky downtown address to party on the 18th floor with fellow bloggers, looking fabulous, sipping wine (courtesy of Middle Sister), eating McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and wearing a bag on my head. I was really excited to go, and as I was telling a friend about my Saturday night plans, my husband kind of ragged on me a bit about it. I asked why he couldn’t be a bit more supportive, and he said he was just messing around– “after all, no one can knock the awesome community that you’ve found.”
He was right. What an awesome community of talented, funny, fabulous women! I arrived at the swanky address wearing one of my favorite dresses, I hugged “old” (being that I’ve been here, what, a month?) friends and met new ones, and, stereotypes of internet nerds be damned, we clicked! I had an amazing time, and I laughed my head off.
These were My People. People who feel the urge to share their stories with the Interwebz. People who know what it means to have friends you’ve never met in person, though you’ve watched videos of their kids and read their life stories. People who don’t bat an eye if you pull out your camera to document the party, or whip out a smartphone to check in to Gowalla or send out a quick tweet. While we may be very different– some of us are childless, others are stay-at-home-moms, others are juggling work and home life, some of us are young, and others think some of us are still babies– we all are very much alike in many ways. Unlike my experience with the Bible study group, where I felt like no one knew me, no one liked me, and no one would like me if they really knew me, I felt at home with this group of women. It was a raucous, joyous evening, and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it. There’s something very powerful about a gathering of women who have a voice and aren’t afraid to use it!
I’ll end with some images of the event:
This one is snatched from the lovely Audreya:
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sweating it
Before I got married, my last name was a certain word synonymous with perspiration (which is why, despite my feminist tendencies, I wasn’t so keen on keeping it). I’ve been living up to that name this week in more ways than one.
My lovely state has been on the news lately as the HOTTEST PLACE IN THE WORLD. In case you don’t believe me, this was our forecast this week (apologies for the weird alt text in my screenshot):
Last night, at 9 pm, the heat index was still in the HIGH 90s. Just walking outside from the car into a building is enough to work up a good sweat. My poor air conditioner has been chugging away non-stop all week in a valiant effort to keep the interior of our house a frosty 80 degrees. It probably doesn’t help that we have furniture covering almost all the vents, to which I ask, why, God, why, are all our vents also in the most logical places to put furniture? Our couch has now been pulled 6 inches out from the wall to expose the vent. It looks kind of silly, but damn if it isn’t cooler in here.
In addition to this heat wave, this week my husband signed me up for a membership at the gym at his work and has invited me to come work out with him. Something to know about me: I’m basically allergic to physical activity. As a kid, I spent one season on a softball team and spent the entirety of it making daisy chains in the outfield. My parents signed me up for tennis lessons, where it was discovered that I had a knack for hitting myself in the head when I tossed the ball to serve. I routinely flunked the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, but even this socialist would like to know why it’s any of the president’s business how many sit-ups I can do, anyway. Pretty much the only exercise I’ve ever loved was yoga, but classes haven’t started up at our gym yet.
And still, I know I need to get some exercise. I don’t need to lose weight, but I do need to get some cardiovascular activity in for the sake of my heart. I’m skinny but I’m not in shape. And the gym is chock full of the one and only exercise machine I’m willing to touch: the elliptical. I’m not sure what it is about the elliptical that makes it the least repellent form of exercise to me, but I don’t abjectly hate it, which is a big deal. It feels like walking on the moon. I can moonwalk for 30 minutes 3 times a week, right?
Well, huffing and puffing, I moonwalked for 30 minutes on Monday. I’d like to attribute some of that huffing and puffing to the fact that I made the mistake of hopping on a machine in front of a TV playing Fox News. Yesterday, my legs felt like jelly, so I didn’t go to the gym. Today, my sports-loving man messaged me that he was off work early, and did I want to meet him in the gym?
Something else to know about me: I’m great at guilt tripping myself. I think maybe my mother just did such a good job of it that now I just do it on autopilot. I know Jon isn’t thinking this, but I project my own guilt onto him: “What a lazyass, home in your pjs at noon on a weekday! You never work out! You should go to the gym!” I put on my workout clothes and hopped into the car and headed to the gym. Jon had already done 20 minutes of weights when we met up at the cardio machines, him on a bike and me on the elliptical. About 15 minutes in, huffing and puffing harder than before, I told him I wasn’t sure I’d make it 30 minutes.
Something to know about Jon: he’s the most encouraging person ever, and he knows how I operate. Occasionally he tries to teach me tennis, and he’s learned that I just do not respond to negative feedback. I need a LOT of cheerleading. As he pedaled away on his bike set to some insane incline, he assured me that I could definitely survive 20 minutes on that machine. Then my stubbornness kicked in, and I became determined to keep moving until the time ticked down.
Now, an hour later, I think I might have finally stopped sweating. For a minute there I thought I might puke. Yep, 20 minutes on an elliptical machine and I’m sweating like a pig and thinking I might puke. THIS is why I need to work out.
Now I just have to decide if it’s even worth it to bother showering when it’s a million degrees outside and I’ll just be sweaty again in 10 minutes.
Are you a gym nut? Do you love to work out? Or are you like me, and frankly hate it? How do you make yourself exercise? What’s your favorite machine?
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when i grow up
In the bio to this blog, I say that I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Most days I still don’t. My husband has long maintained that I’m destined to be an English professor, whether I accept it or not. These days, I think he’s probably right. In my last job in Charleston, I worked at a college and had the opportunity to take a few English grad classes as a non-degree student. I loved every minute of them. I think there may be nothing I enjoy quite so much as reading, writing about, and talking about literature. So, having still failed to receive a burning bush or singing telegram to tell me my future, I’m taking a step in that direction. Today, I submitted my application to join the English Lit MA program at the University of Central Arkansas, and, if everything works out, I’ll be starting classes this fall. As in, weeks from now. And I actually have some surety that I’m doing the right thing for a change.
How do I know I’m doing the right thing? Well, while entertaining the possibility that I might start grad school this spring, I tried to tally up how much the degree would cost. When my total came up $30,000, I burst into disappointed tears, convinced I’d never get to go. As he attempted to calm down the crazy, Jon pointed out that if I was so sad to think I wouldn’t get to go, it surely must be the thing I need to do. Then, knowing my math skill level, he double checked my calculations and discovered that my total was way off. The real cost is somewhere in the neighborhood of $9,000, provided I could get in-state tuition. This, folks, is why he does the bill paying around here.
At this point, I was still thinking I’d have to start school in the spring, and not sure I’d qualify for in-state tuition. Though I’m from Arkansas, born and raised, I’ve spent the last 3 years in South Carolina. I emailed the graduate school office and was surprised to learn that all they ask for is my current address, which is in Arkansas, so I’m in-state. I was also concerned that I haven’t taken the GRE, but it turns out I don’t need it to start classes this fall– I get a term to submit a score and become a full graduate student eligible for financial aid and assistantships. So, everything seems to be falling into place!
I still need to find a part-time job, and I still need to take the GRE so I can be eligible for teaching assistantships come springtime, but I’m really, really excited. Guess I need to go shopping for some school supplies!
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Not everyone is cut out for ‘radical homemaking,’ not even me
Folks, the backlash against “radical homemaking” (also known as ‘new agrarianism’ or ‘locavorism’ or ‘those damn hipsters going on about their Etsy and ramps and baking and whatnot’) has begun. I remember reading a piece about “The Femivore’s Dilemma” on Jezebel back in March. Then, a couple of weeks ago, KJ Dell’Antonia wrote “Radical Homemaking is More Fun when it’s Optional” at DoubleX. And today, via Salon, I see this: “I am a Radical Homemaking Failure” by Madeline Holler (it turns out that the Holler piece was posted around the same time as the DoubleX piece, which responds to it, but I missed it back in my days before we got internet turned on at our house).
Dell’Antonia really hits the nail on the head in her piece. Holler moves to the midwest so her husband can follow his academia dreams on $36k per year with a couple of kids in tow. She becomes a “radical homemaker” just to make ends meet on that low salary, and she discovers she sorta hates the drudgery. And Dell’Antonia points out what should be obvious to anyone who’s even heard of “The Feminine Mystique”: drudgery is not so fun when it’s mandatory, actually. (Though, I’d point out that Holler’s husband *chose* to leave a more lucrative field, and he had the privilege to choose a more lucrative field by the end of the piece, as well. Many people have no before and no after– “radical homemaking” as a way of making ends meet is just reality, period.)
Here’s the thing: if you’re reading my blog, you know I buy into a lot of the “radical homemaking” stuff. I don’t make our clothes or even my own yogurt, but I’m really committed to local, natural, homemade food. And in addition to my ethical choices about food, I straight up enjoy cooking, most of the time. But here’s a secret: the minute I start feeling like I’m the only person in my house who cares about what’s going onto our plates? The minute I start to feel like cooking our food is more my job than my choice? That’s when I start to resent my kitchen.
I think a major reason so many people roll their eyes when they read yet another essay by an upper middle class white lady who has found God in free range chicken farming and home meat curing and knitting is that so rarely do the writers recognize their own privilege. For one thing, they’re doing all this stuff for funzies, and for another, so many people are doing these things because they have to, even though they’d rather not. So here’s my revelation: yes, I think eating local, organic, homemade food is a good choice for our planet and our bodies. BUT: I realize that my choices are not for everyone. In fact, they’re not even always for me!
That said, I really have to take issue with this part of Holler’s piece:
Even baking all of my own bread sounded dreadful. For me, kneading dough was the physical manifestation of pushing and pressing all of life’s ambitions into one yeasty ball of carbs.
I’m not sure why all the anti-homemakers have to go after bread baking, but YOU NEED TO LAY OFF THE BREAD BAKING, Y’ALL. I bake my own bread. Even when I had a full-time day job, I baked my own bread. The combining of ingredients into the bowl of my stand mixer (privilege alert: I have a stand mixer, received as a wedding gift) takes all of 5 minutes, and the mixer does the work. 6-24 hours later, I preheat the oven, put the bread into a pot, and I bake it for 30 minutes. Then I take the lid off and bake it for 15 more minutes. Then I take it out of the pan. It’s hardly a soul-crushing commitment, and it’s cheaper, tastier, and healthier than most of the bread available at the store. Even I have my limits, but when there are entire cookbooks dedicated to Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes Per Day, maybe you should be picking a more onerous task to target with your ire, like, I don’t know, those crazies who use washrags instead of toilet paper. (I use the crappy recycled toilet paper, but I have toilet paper, dammit.)
The bottom line: they call it “radical” for a reason. Just because you’re not willing to go whole-hog into the pioneer program doesn’t mean you can’t make a few changes that might be better for you and the planet. BUT, always, it’s worth remembering that just having the ability to choose these choices is an immense privilege, and even things others consider hobbies can be drudgery to people who have no choice. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have a hunk of my soul-crushing homemade bread.
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eating, praying, and loving myself
One of the new and exciting developments in my new life in Little Rock is that I’ve joined a book club. I’ve wanted to join a book club for years, and I’m so excited to have finally found one. As I discovered taking my free grad classes in English while working at The College, I believe sitting around talking about books is one of my most favorite activities in all the world.
The first book I’m reading with this book club is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. To be honest, I did not expect to like this book. I’m not even really sure why, because, as you can tell by the subject matter I most often write about, Eating and Prayer (or God) are two of my favorite things to think about, talk about, and write about. I think I maybe expected Elizabeth Gilbert to be more insufferable? I mean, someone who gets paid an advance to travel around the world eating amazing food in Italy and studying Yoga in India has to be a little insufferable, right?
But, just like my discovery with Julie and Julia, namely, that I AM Julie, I’m finding I really identify with Elizabeth Gilbert. I feel like her neuroses are my neuroses, like her passions are my passions, like her search is my search. And then I got to Chapter 64, and I literally read the whole thing out loud to Jon, asking him if, perhaps, it sounded familiar to him.
Gilbert, like many writers, is a talker. And at this point in the story, several weeks into her time studying Yoga at an Ashram in India, she’s decided that maybe she should try to be That Quiet Girl, because obviously, the truly spiritual and devout are the mystically silent types.
Oh boy, oh boy, have I been here. In the beginning of my time in Charleston, I found myself part of a Christian Bible study group made up of women married to doctors and residents and medical students. And, with a few exceptions, I did NOT fit in with these women. For one thing, they were all a good 5 years older than I, and most were stay-at-home moms with multiple children whom they often got together for play-groups. Even if I hadn’t had a day-job, what was I going to do, bring my dog and have her lick their children in the face? How was I ever going to make it to their book club on weekday afternoons, either?
For another, they were Good Christian Wives of the Proverbs 31 Woman variety. I, on the other hand, am clearly a crazed Feminist harpy who must, to their minds, make her man miserable. I remember quite vividly one exchange, in which another member of the group confessed that her husband had taken to making strange statements like, “You know, WE should really clean these floors” or “You know, WE should really clean up the kitchen.” This young wife was worried about these statements, and unsure of what to do. The general consensus from the rest of the group was that, obviously, she should clean the floors and tidy up the kitchen, because these things were bothering her husband, and she should serve him by taking care of these things. My response? “Have you asked him what he means when he says these things? Does he know where you keep the broom? Did you hide the cleaning supplies? This all sounds awfully passive aggressive of him and you should tell him so! If the floor really bugs him, maybe he should clean it!” They looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. Apparently, my usual approach of asking my husband what he means when he says strange things and then sharing with him how those things make me feel is considered un-Proverbs-31 or something.
I’m not even sure what it was that caused me to leave Bible Study in tears another night and come home and sob to Jon about how maybe I was just the wrong kind of person for that group. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with another member of the group riding me really hard about wanting to reschedule an event when I’d just lost my job that week. But I did, I came home and sobbed and told Jon how I felt like none of these women liked me, and how I felt like I couldn’t be myself around them, and how I felt like I was constantly judged. I asked him if he thought I needed to be some sort of Good Christian Wife. He hugged me and held me and assured me that I am loved for who I am, and that he’d really be upset if I turned into some sort of subservient wifebot.
Later, I confessed to a fellow member of the group that I was thinking of leaving the group because I just didn’t fit in. She invited me over to her house for lunch. Little did I know that this lunch was a pretext for giving me a speech about how Jesus wanted to make me a quieter, gentler, meeker, more wifely sort of person. Basically, she thought Jesus wanted to give me a lobotomy. I’m pretty sure I was quiet and meek that day, but it’s because I was stunned into silence. Here I was hoping this woman had invited me over to let me know I am liked for who I am, and she basically tells me I need to completely change my personality in order to really be a Christian. I didn’t go back to the group after that.
So, back to Elizabeth Gilbert in India—she’s decided that she needs to try to become That Quiet Girl, but on the very day she makes this decision, she receives a new assignment at her Ashram to be a kind of hostess for visiting groups, a job that actually requires her to be a regular Chatty Cathy. In fact, she realizes, her personality is basically required for this job. Gilbert writes:
“If there is one holy truth of this Yoga [it is that] God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are. God isn’t interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality…To know God, you need only to renounce one thing—your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.” (192)
Yes! My personality is not some sort of flaw. Neither is yours! God, if God’s creation is any indication, is a fan of variety. I can only imagine that there are so many species of birds and plants and animals and even varieties of people because our creative God delighted in creating them. God desires an intimate relationship with ME, as I was made to be, not as I imagine God might like me better, because the truth is, God couldn’t love me any deeper. And rather than break my back (and my heart) trying to conform to some narrow idea of what a godly woman looks like, I should instead look for ways my unique traits can be used in the service and blessing of others and the world, just like Gilbert found a role as a hostess at the Ashram.
Still, Gilbert does point out that there are ways to grow into a better, more spiritual person while still being accepting of who she was created to be. Part of it rang especially true to me:
“Or here’s a radical concept—maybe I can stop interrupting others when they are speaking. Because no matter how creatively I try to look at my habit of interrupting, I can’t find another way to see it than this: ‘I believe that what I am saying is more important than what you are saying.’ And I can’t find another way to see that than: ‘I believe that I am more important than you.’ And that must end.” (193)
Not interrupting others is something I’ve been working on for a while. It’s something I’ll likely be working on for a long while to come. It’s a way I can hone the shape of me while still respecting the basic outlines of my design. It’s like sanding my rougher edges without obliterating the sculpture altogether, because I’m a work of divine art.
I look forward to finishing Gilbert’s book, and I can’t wait to discuss it in book club next week. Here’s hoping they like me the way I am. I’ll do my best not to interrupt anyone during the discussion.
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I’m back! Sorta!
As you notice below: I’m posting to this blog again!
We’ve moved from South Carolina to Little Rock, Arkansas. We’re starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel of boxes. Jon’s already working. The dogs are finding new napping spots and interesting things to bark at, including the elderly basset hound next door and the cat who seems to belong to the neighborhood– we hear her name is Princess– and the Highland Cow hide our neighbor has hanging over our fence, looking like the pelt of Chewbacca.
Posting may still not be regular, as the internet won’t be hooked up at our house until the 12th and for some reason, all of our neighbors have password-protected networks. Right now I’m posting from a Starbucks. I came here for the free wi-fi to apply for a job with a very cool nonprofit (fingers crossed), and decided to post that rambling thing below about Independence Day, which I wrote sort of for myself this morning but decided to go ahead and publish.
I’ve missed you, Internets!
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