There’s nothing that nudges me back to the blogosphere than running into a couple of people I’ve never met who say they read my blog and really enjoyreading it. So, I tip my figurative hat to you two ladies and, alas, here I am.

It’s been an exciting and enjoyable day. I have started week 2 of my fall classes (toward my Counseling Psychology degree). Tuesdays I walk to school (around 6 miles roundtrip) in girly shoes, that is, not Seattle trekking shoes. This inevitably means I start and end the day with blisters that encompass my entire heel. What can I say, I care about fashion over function sometimes.

This year I have a handy-dandy little iPad, which means there is NO excuse to take my laptop. Consequently, I end up filling that hole in my satchel with more library books. Classes were good. Dan Allender is Dan Allender. Go figure. I both appreciate him more and much more easily dismiss him this time around—and I mean that in a good way.

One of the books I used to fill that hole in my bag is called, Glimpses of Grace by Madeleine L’engle. I have hoped to find an e-version of this book, but it doesn’t exist. Yet. My search for this book began with a generic search for a devotional, meditative, or spiritually centering resource for the—how to say it—middle-aged Christian woman? I specifically wanted to avoid (although they can be great and effective for their intended audience) the Christianese books, the over-zealous transcendent abstraction of the spiritual life. I wanted…well, I wanted something almost boring. Not calling me out or up toward some way of being outside of me. Rather, a voice that settles me in my own skin and location—in its quietness and simplicity, draws me into my body, my self, my feet, the ground I’m standing on, the feeling of the keys on my fingertips as I type.

There seems to be very little on the “Inspirational,” or “Christian Inspiration” bookshelves geared toward someone like me—a woman on the verge of 30 who might actually want to be 30 (instead of a perpetual twenty-something). Celtic spirituality refers to this next phase in a woman’s life: the stage of the mother (preceded by the virgin and followed by the crone or widow). (I’ll write more on celtic spirituality as these three stages seem to come to mind often.)

Back to today. L’engle’s “glimpse” for the day was about work, play and presence. A child, she says, works very hard at playing. She’s entirely focused on it, so much so she becomes unabashedly playful. As adults, we split work from play, such that we don’t enjoy our work and we only half-ass our play.

On my walk home from school, I am feeling dehydrated from not drinking any water all day. I’ve been walking through downtown Seattle traffic, breathing in the ever-so-fragrant smog of cars. I’m sweating in very unladylike places. My feet are dry, splitting and blistered in several different places. I have a mile or so left.

And then I see these little fountains of water shooting up out of cement at the South Lake Union urban park. My mind sparkles with the image of running through the fountains. Quickly, I shoot it down. No, I should get back. My feet would be wet and they’d have to dry and then I’m getting hungry too, etc. Still, hmmm… Game time decision, I turn sharply toward the fountains, drop my bag, slip my shoes off (carefully, as not to puncture the enlarged blisters), and sink into the stream of the cool water.

All I know is, a couple minutes later I am aware that my skirt is almost entirely soaked, my shirt has several wet spots, got some drops on my glasses, and I’m wearing a large smile, giggling internally (maybe externally too?).

One of the kids who’d been playing further down has joined me.

Ah, yes, this is play….

When I first saw Portlandia, it was as though someone had pinched me awake from a dream. I had grown so accustomed to Portlandic culture that I had forgotten where I’d come from: Texas. Granted, I am not one to deny that Texas has its own unique culture. (And that, if I’m honest, served as part of the reason I moved to possibly the most opposite place: Seattle.)

It’s really awakening to see the culture you’re immersed in reflected back to you…

This is all merely a grand introduction to the story of Michael and I joining the Saturday Movie Theatre Crowd. Now, this is a thing. The “Saturday Movie Theatre Crowd” spend 2 hours of the 10 months of cold, rainy Saturdays in the movie theatre. This is almost like a competition, an “Amazing Race”. It is “Dog-Eat-Dog”. Of course, Michael and I had nooooo clue what we were getting ourselves into.

Rule 1: There is a timed approach and exit to the box office. Learn the choreography before showing up.

When you walk up to the box office (after waiting in a very long line), there is a choreographed approach and departure. People hold their elbows out, so if you miss your cue you’ve caused a 5 person pile up in no time. We began to just stroll away from the box office, but then I saw the look on a woman’s face who was B-lining it to her position. It’s like when you hit a yellow light, but you’re still going pretty fast. Do you speed up and run through the light, or do you hit the breaks and stop a bit suddenly? I hit the breaks and reversed a couple steps, otherwise I might not have any feet today.

Rule 2: When you hit the theatre, SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST reigns. (The stairmaster helps train for this part, as well as night vision goggles.)

We’ve ascended the four flights of stairs (I mean, like a LOT of stairs), and we’re heading into the movie theatre a little out of breath. It’s already a bit dark, we walk up the stairs looking for two seats in the middle of the middle. We’re slowing down a bit, and this guy, out of no where, seriously, sideswipes us, head down with only an abrupt and curt, “Scuse me!” Apparently we were in his way. Mind you, all of the people in these stories are not hot young things with an adolescent’s undeveloped social etiquette. Rather, these are ADULTS! Grey-haired adults, who should know better. (Ah, but I forget, its Porlandia! Where young people go to retire, and where old people never have to mature relationally. My bad.)

Rule 3: You cannot pass people. Period. Best to walk around on a different row and climb down, or just take a seat on the edge.

We spot a couple, but we have to pass a few people to get them….which is pretty normal, right? Well, apparently we were trespassing. We enter the row and hit a family of four. Just as Michael’s about to pass the mom of the group, she holds out her hand, “Stop!” like a bar that lowers and holds its position when trains pass, totally blocking him. She bends over and picks up a bunch of stuff, and with a huff, she raises her arm and lets us by.

Rule 4: Previews suck. They’re there to provoke political backlash and propaganda. *Silence in the movie theatre does not apply in the Northwest. “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.”

After one of the previews, amidst the chatter, a woman yelled out, “Yeah, vote for Ann Gibbard!”. (I don’t remember the name of the actual politician, but it followed a preview for the TV series, Top Shot—the hunter’s version of Top Chef.)

Rule 5: As a Seattlite, you are intellectual and you are a reader. Regardless of whether it means anything to you or not, you stay and read through the entire roll of credits at the end of a movie. Leaving at the “end” of the movie, is just ignorant.

After the movie, we’re in the post-movie aura. Everyone is standing up, putting their coats on, beginning to trickle out. Well, apparently, Michael and I were moving way to slowly or SOMEthing. Because as I was still putting on my coat, the woman of the older couple behind us leaned forward and with both of her arms and hands and fingers, exasperatingly motions (no words) for us move out of her way, so she can read that last bits of the credits. Needless to say, I stretched out my arms putting my coat on as broad and obtrusively as possible. She wiggled around my rebellious act until we finally got out the way.

Oh, Northwest. You certainly feed our narcissism and OCD as North Americans. It looks different in every part of the US, but it’s particularly entertaining here.

I should have suspected that my research into wholeness would challenge my own sense of wholeness (or, as it happens to be, my brokenness).

Today I see again the disharmony within me—between the old me, my memories, my experiences, my regrets and the me today. As I stood washing dishes, my own fear began speaking, threatening that today I am not where I should be, at 28 years old.

Twenty-eight.

(Hmm…seems so young typed out like that.)

I took the washcloth, drying my hands, and moved into the living room. Sit, facing the openness of my living room, and feel so unsettled, so disappointed.

My eyes come into focus and, for the first time, I really see the big circle on my carpet—a visual reflection of the longing in me at this moment. Go figure. Of course, I’d go out and buy a carpet with a circle on it. At the time, it was a little off-putting, a little too geometric for my taste. It’s a fuzzy, symbolic sliver of hope that snuck its way into my home. Oh well, it was there anyway…if I’m honest.

Truth is, I’m afraid. Afraid that (by the world’s standards, by the state-of-everyone-else-my-age standards) I am behind. No, worse…a failure.

(Ug, I shiver that word off of my tongue, shoulders and legs.)

And, well, I very well might be. And probably am…because my life does not match the chronology of a good evangelical Christian woman’s life. I’m not married, I haven’t had any children yet, and I don’t have a ladder-climbing job. I don’t have any pets, I work as a barista (which, I’m convinced, Seattle is the only place that job is actually esteemed).

So, what then?

My mind wanders back to the image in front of me: that damn circle. The circle that’s kept me running, kept me hoping, seeking, moving for it’s sake. I want wholeness, I want balance, I want harmony. And my journey into those things have taken me off the “college, marriage, kids by the age of 30″ path.

I certainly feel the longing for those things in my life, not as superimposed undetected cultural expectations living in my psyche, but as my true desires for my life.

Mirrors don’t work when you’re looking into someone else’s life to understand yours. Measuring your life by someone else’s choices, things inevitably don’t add up and one or the other of you get deemed the failure.

What if my journey…was my journey…

Can I not glory in the person I am, inviting all of my past into me, to inhabit every cell of my body and speak into my presence now, today, as I stare at this circle…

And even when that effort fails, can I remember, then, who I am a part of…of someone holy, of someone kind, of someone whole and good, of a creation that is called, “My Beloved…”

I don’t know. Some days that seems like a lot to believe.

And when that fails, maybe ts okay that all I can do today is stand up, go back to the sink, turn the water on, and finish washing the dishes.

There are places held within—remembered spaces in time known to my body, my mind.

I close my eyes and I see a hill. It is the highest point around. The blue sky, electric and vast, reaches far into the horizon on all sides of me. My tears, my prayers, my agony, my words—all part of its history, grown into its side.

We share this history. We met in time, the soil of that hill and its hospitable trees. The earth had given way to my knees as I knelt, pleading to a God I could not find. The weight of my body, the weight of my heartache was folded into its form.

{six years later}

I can see it in my mind, and I remember its care—a simple, unspoken empathy. We groaned for God together.

How it felt sitting on that hill kept returning to my chest—a quiet, deep calling (to a kind of) home. I found it on the map, “Queeny Park”. As I drove up the long driveway, my body quieted and began listening. Listening in the sense that the Eden who visited that hill several years back began to emerge. Her softness, her unabashed desire for God, for connection, for life (in all its forms).

The side of the hill I used to walk up was overgrown, and I could feel sadness well up in me. Grasshoppers were everywhere, jumping and squeaking from my feet as I walked up the hill. At a certain point I couldn’t go any further. Weeds had grown thick and tall as I am through the whole park. The hilltop was inaccessible. My heart sunk. My eyes brimmed with tears.

God, why would you bring me back…to show me this? To see that this land, my land, me…to see the heartache I felt years ago manifested on this land?

So, I walked along the periphery of the hilltop, gazing longingly at the trees I had known, unable to reach them and join them.

I continued walking and came upon a sign staked in the ground. The sign explained that this hilltop had been planted with wildflowers (not weeds) and they had been allowed to grow wild and free.

I started crying. Though it had been several weeks since they had all blossomed, I could see it. The stretch of color. And I was relieved, for we had both found our answers. We had both grown into ourselves over the years. Looking out onto that field, I could see it smiling back at me. We had both struggled and we had both been blessed.

Yes, I see now, that I had hoped to return and be here in this space in my present skin. I wanted to assure the land who offered me sympathy and the God I had loved that I was okay. That I would be okay. I wanted to recognize a long-awaited redemption, of sorts. I wanted to return to the skies that held the echoes of my groans, my skepticism of God’s love, and bore my anguish and resentment. All this, suspended in the skies, in time, waiting for a response, waiting, waiting…

“When that day comes,” says the Lord,
“you will call me ‘my husband’
instead of ‘master.’

O Israel, I will wipe the many names of Baal from your lips,
and you will never mention them again.
On that day I will make a covenant
with all the wild animals and the birds of the sky
and the animals that scurry along the ground
so they will not harm you.
I will remove all weapons of war from the land,
all swords and bows,
so you can live unafraid
in peace and safety.
I will make you my wife forever,
showing you righteousness and justice,
unfailing love and compassion.
I will be faithful to you and make you mind,
and you will finally know as the Lord.

“In that day, I will answer,”
says the Lord.
“I will answer the sky as it pleads for clouds.
And the sky will answer the earth with rain.
Then the earth will answer the thirsty cries
of the grain, the grapevines, and the olive trees.
And they in turn will answer,
‘Jezreel,’—’God plants!’
At that time I will plant a crop of Israelites
and raise them for myself.
I will show love to those I called, ‘Not loved.’
And to those I called ‘Not my people,’
I will say, ‘Now you are my people.’
And they will reply, ‘You are our God!’

—Hosea 2:14–23

Yes, I wanted to kneel on this hill and, at long last, say together, “You are our God, our Husband. And you have answered our cries.”

And so we did.

I sat, at peace and in joy, with this land. When I had to leave, I teared up. I dug my hands into the ground and prayed, “Come with me.”

And what we heard/felt in response was this,

I am with you.
I am Immanuel (God-with-us).
Come with me.”

As I begin to think around my thesis for a year-long paper on human wholeness, I feel within myself great resistance to addressing the human being as a being, three in one: mind, body, and spirit. In continuing to address these three categories as such, I feel I only perpetuate the language of a divided self even if my intentions are just the opposite. We are quite competent at acknowledging the three, but we fall short in integrating them together into one—the human being (male/female).

In one of my recent classes which happens to revolve around everything food, we found a few words that continued to fall to the forefront of our conversations: desire, practice and reflection.

Or rather more aptly,

Desire  {Reflection}  Practice

If I could draw arrows going from desire to practice and practice back to desire, I would. In other words, these (desire and practice) I see as symbiotically related through the process of reflection (or lack of reflection). In thinking further about these realities of life, I see potential in these as avenues into which we may nurture and engage human beings towards wholeness and maturity. In lieu of the traditionally platonic categories of mind, body and soul, I wonder how we might engage each other in terms of desire, practice and reflection.

Not that these would become new categories of a human being, but that these might provide a new language through which we consider the human being and a collective humanity. Asking about desire and practices invites the whole being to respond—not just one of the three, but the three in one.

Can this be a way of conceiving human wholeness?

The way of desire, practice and reflection. Becoming human beings with whom our practices align with our desires (our “subtle, inner pleasures”) through our own reflection. And, collectively, can we be a society who is actively participating in an ethos (practices) that aligns with collectively acknowledged desires. The reflection piece is crucial individually and collectively because without reflection we remain in an adolescent or infantile state in which desires are more like cravings and practices are done because our “father” told us to. Without reflection, there is either free reign of cravings and superficial desires and/or there is a robotic,  participation in a system that has lost all meaning. What I’m describing here is the infant/adolescent stage in life.

Maturity calls us to something more. It calls us to know (feel, experience, articulate) the deeper desires within us. It also calls us to live (consciously act) in a manner in which we honor these desires. Maturity also recognizes other human beings and creation at large, considering not only one’s own individual desires/practices but engaging the desires/practices of the whole of creation.

More thoughts to come regarding wholeness, and, as always, your thoughts are welcome.

Image {Nicolai Larin, Getty Images}

]]> http://feminoggles.com/2010/09/28/displacing-platonic-divisions-of-body-mind-and-soul/feed/ 1 Eden Screen shot 2010-09-28 at 2.59.28 PM http://feminoggles.com/2010/09/22/eco-v-ego/ http://feminoggles.com/2010/09/22/eco-v-ego/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2010 01:02:51 +0000 Eden http://feminoggles.com/?p=262 ]]>

A few years ago, a friend gave me a book. It was so dense with material, good material—that I could only read it a few pages at a time. The book was Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ best seller, Women Who Run with the Wolves. To this day, I am about half-way through as other books have flashed their pretty covers and diverted my attention. However, the spirit of the book has stayed with me and continues to sway me towards an embodied theology for Christian communities today.  This need seems to also parallel the (need for a) movement, or “Great Turning,” of industrial society towards a more ecocentric philosophy (not to be misread as egocentric).

I was ecstatic when I found this book, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating wholeness and community in a fragmented world by psychologist and ecologist Bill Plotkin. The book revolves around the thesis that the world is at a turning point and we can either walk the path of death (for the earth and its beings) or turn towards a path of life. The path of life, Plotkin likens to a wheel, a circle, an arc. He speaks to the interconnectedness of our lack of developmental, psychological maturity as human beings and the rapid rate at which our planet and its beings are wasting away. Plotkin proposes that an understanding of the development and maturation of humans which integrates connection to the earth and the human soul promises to point us in the direction of life. Of course, not only an understanding is necessary, but the nurturing of a generation of human beings such that they may experience and bring forth a reconciliation within creation. (And I might add, as Plotkin is not a Christian, an inevitable shift in relationship between creation and Creator.) This nurturing works towards the wholeness of being—of the individual and communal mind, body, and soul.

Although Plotkin refrains from any allusion to Christ as the ultimate answer, as a Christian, I can’t help but hear the possibility for transformation made accessible to humanity through Christ in all this talk of wholeness, interconnectedness, soul-centered lifestyle and human (spiritual, psychological, intellectual) maturity. Maybe there is something in the very body of Christ—the “I’ve got cellulite on my thighs, scars on my knees, and hair growing in my armpit” kind of body—that can speak into the “great turning” we are in need of and possibly at the cusp of.

How does the defilement of the body of Christ in the crucifixion relate to our defilement of the earth? Of our own bodies? And, potentially more importantly, how does the resurrection of such a brutalized, damaged body make real the promise of creation’s resurrection?

How does the promise of salvation meet a mother of two suffering from an eating disorder? Does Christ stand before her, his body thin and emaciated unto death. Christ reaches out to touch her hand, staring into her eyes and whispers softly with kindness and deep grief, “……enough……”

This passage comes to mind, Deuteronomy 30:15–19

¹⁵ “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. ¹⁶ For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.

¹⁷ “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, ¹⁸ then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

¹⁹ “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! ²⁰ You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This^[b] is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

O God, my God

the all of life
embodied fullness,
embodied whole,

with a faith unknown, unearned,
unearthed,
our breaths, our lungs—
the heart which beats in a rhythm you appoint,
anointed One,
sweetness of self settled into Self, a One,
the mystery of mysteries persuade
my being, its singular cadence,
formed into the song
of creation/Creator.

all glory to you
(to me)
(to us)
(to you),

my Love.

I’ve run across these two commercials recently and my ambivalence heightens as I’m watching them. Watch these commercials and then think about these two things:

1. How do you feel after the commercial?

2. Finish the sentence. “I can…” and “I will…”

Weight Watcher’s enabled Jennifer Hudson to say “I can.” (Click Play on “Check out my TV Ads”)

…and just to throw this in for a contrast*…

Now, I’m going to be honest. After the watching the Weight Watchers commercial, I feel empowered. I feel as though I have the power to change. Yeah, I can. I can (what?). I can look good. I can be thinner. I can be skinny. I can lose weight. I can sing like Jennifer Hudson. I can be a kick-ass black female singer. I can lose weight on Weight Watchers and be everything I’ve ever wanted to be???

Okay, let’s move on. Under Armour. After watching the woman’s version, I feel a sense of determination, strength, power, self-reliance, independence, resilience. I will…protect this house. And what does that mean? Protect this house, stand my ground, fight for my self, not lose.

The men’s version is entirely off-putting, except for the man called  “Cheese” who walks up. That’s just funny.

What do these commercials say about femininity? Masculinity? Success? Power? Body? And let’s remember what they’re selling: Under Armour sportswear and Weight Watchers weight loss services/products.

It seems important to be able to break down a commercial because there are so many voices out there telling me who I am supposed to be. More than that, what success looks and feels like. I’m drawn into these two pictures: one, because of her confidence and success in life, and two, because of the determination and strength demonstrated. All are attributes I struggle to have at times. And although they stir those feelings in me, the underlying message is I am not enough.

I am not enough, as I am. And that I can (should) overcome that. This is the feeling that much of our economy relies upon: as long as we feel inadequate we will keep buying things (like sportswear or weight loss products) that make us, for a moment, feel a little less inferior.

How is that workin for you?

Me? I’m exhausted.

*I did want to address the allusions to domestic violence this ad evokes. It is here that a clear line needs to be drawn between fantasy and reality, competition and real life.  Do most commercials prey on our fantasies? If so, that’s an important thing to be aware of.

Well, well, well, so we meet again. And again. And again. Two inextricable aspects of humanity and requirements for our survival: food and sex. We, however, face a whole new layer of options regarding food and sex than our ancestors.

¹⁶ Then he said to the woman,

“I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
and in pain you will give birth.
And you will desire to control your husband,
but he will rule over you.^[c]”

¹⁷ And to the man he said,

“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
¹⁸ It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return.”

—New Living Translation, Genesis 3:16–19

Ask a farmer today and you’re guaranteed that he or she will be familiar at least somewhat with the sweat and struggle of nurturing and harvesting out of the ground. Ask almost anybody else and the sweat and struggle they might think you’re referring to is the traffic on the way to the grocery store. Or waiting in line at a fast food drive-thru.

With the industrialization of eating, we have an abundance at our disposal all the time. Let me say that again: we have an abundance at our disposal, at all times. It’s almost hard to believe, if you really think about it. So much of the cuisines of various places have evolved as a result of the (only) food that was available. Now, I can live in Seattle and make an Indian dish with all the appropriate foods and spices to taste authentic. But more than authenticity, there is a movement to consider the food we eat with more thoughtfulness, awareness of its origins—of the sweat and the struggle. A heightened awareness of the sweat and struggle, then suggests a need for a kind of food ethic that honors and respects and protects the gift (miracle) that it is.

Almost the complete reverse has occurred with sex. Sex, once constrained by a conservative culturally accepted morality, has been culturally “liberated”. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to think. The sexual revolution accomplished all these great things, right?

I asked a friend of mine heading to Burning Man, “Are you gonna do the naked lady bike ride again?” “Uh, no. That was just more awkward than anything else. It’s supposed to be freeing, but the men are all lined up watching as we ride by. I still felt objectified.” Hmm, I’m beginning to think the sexual revolution was a (necessary?) disassociation from the shame and objectification—to make a point. Either way, I think we’ve swung too far—such that our continued dissociation as a culture has actually contributed to the exploitation of the beauty and fragility of sex that the morality attempted to protect.

We have seen indulgence and we have seen starvation with food and sex. Look at the programming on television—our American culture is obsessed. Losing it with Jillian, The Biggest Loser, Huge, Too Fat for Fifteen, Sixteen and Pregnant, Sex and the City, this list goes on and only grows with each new season.

Additionally, the advertising world has eroticized eating for men and not eating for women. Anorexic women appear on billboards as the sexy woman every man (and woman) desires. The extremely muscular and broad-shouldered man is featured as the sexy man every woman desires. This only further distorts and complicates our relationship to our desires, our bodies, our appetites—whether sexual or nutritional.

Humans have instinctual desires for both food and sex, as with any other animal. Culture, economics, and the accepted morality of a certain place (ie. religion, belief systems) all impact how desire (and its very crafty counterpart, shame) is dealt with and which desires are indulged, which are starved. The industrialization of eating and birth control have both triggered and enabled this shift in morality regarding both food and sex.

Jesus asked three of his disciples when they started following him, “What are you looking for?” As with anything that we over-indulge in (excess in abundance or withholding), we lose sight of the true desire and what its fulfillment feels like. And this has everything to do with the body—connection, integration, sensitivity to bodily needs and their fulfillment.

We have, by an initially well-intentioned but now violent disassociation, lost our bodies. The body’s voice is often very subtle and we are constantly surrounded with the clamoring of life—like trying to hear a pin drop under the clanging of cymbals. An ethic of food, an ethic of sex will arise out of an intentional choice to return to our own bodies. And return in repentance—asking forgiveness from our own selves. And then a waiting.

1. I went on a camping trip this weekend. In the mornings, I’d wake up first and in my restlessness and out of respect for my boyfriend’s sleepiness, I’d make the awkward exit from the tent. Zip the tent back up. And attend to making a fire. It’s such a small thing, but making a fire almost always gets deferred to the males. I should also say, the men usually take on that task (as well as putting up a tent) and the women tend to the food, the kids, setting up, making a home. At least, this is how I remember camping trips growing up with my family, extended family, or friends. So, I took a special delight in making the fires in the morning, or at least starting them. It was almost as though it was my time with myself, allowing my intuition and intellect speak into the process and acting out of them in confidence. (I also want to add that if I could I’d just start with the big logs on the fire and skip the collecting twigs, etc. I stick newspaper in there, set it on fire, and then start layering on the big logs. Well, ladies, fellas, fire doesn’t work that way. Michael has a much softer hand when it comes to making a fire and building it up from nothing. He has much more patience and I’m grateful for that because then we can trade off on fire duty.)

2. Mad Men this Sunday touched upon territory I wasn’t prepared for. It was a bold move and it was done in a different way to probe thinking about it in a different way. The “it” here is masturbation. The scene shows Don Draper’s daughter (9-11 years old) watching TV with her friend asleep next to her and she’s focusing in on this male character. We only see her face and her hands move up her dress, but we know, upon the gasp of the woman who soon walks in, what she’s doing.

Now I’ve seen several scenes in movies where the mother walks in on her son masturbating. The boy is mortified and the mother pretends it never happened. But I have never seen a scene about a young girl masturbating. In it, the response of the mother to her daughter here is angry, mortified, violent, confrontational. The responses alone in these two situations communicate different things to each sex, thus shaping gendered psyches around sexuality. Boys are expected to be sexual, girls cannot be sexual until they’re married (thus, even then, their sexuality is grounded in the man’s sexuality).

Obviously there is a lot that comes up personally and culturally around masturbation, sexuality. Watch Mad Men Season 4 Episode 5. And notice what comes up in you, what thoughts of desire and pleasure (relief). To feel desire, to realize the power to satisfy your self, and to feel the relief and pleasure of satisfaction. We make sexuality a purely physical act, and in the church, we make it sinful until marriage and then it is (poof) a blessing. This splitting is unnatural, detrimental, not to mention psychologically and developmentally stunting.

How have your parents, your community responded to your sexuality? How would you respond in that situation? It’s a tough one. It’s an important one—important to see in its fullness, not through one’s own shame.

3. Along similar lines, this weekend we were surrounded by families: ie. tons of kids up at 7AM riding their tricycles down the gravel road running adjacent to your tent. Yay! Well there are two situations I want to mention.

The first occurred as we were driving up to our camping site. We passed by the boys (7 years old) riding their bikes down the road. When they saw us coming they moved to the side of the road. One of the boys, poor thing, was watching us as he walked over and pretty much did a somersault over his bike and landed on his face with his legs in the air flailing against the bike. (Pause) Now, it was pretty funny. You know, cute-and-embarrassing funny? I gasped and laughed at the same time. I lowered my window and asked if he was okay, masking a chuckle. He untangled himself, stood up and said he was fine. As we slowly drove past, I heard the other boy sincerely say, “I didn’t laugh. I didn’t laugh.”

It was a striking confession for a young boy. He was obviously aware of the other boy’s shame (probably because he had felt it before). Instead of exacerbating the shame by laughing and teasing, the boy stayed in touch with his own shame, knew the response he would hope for in a similar situation and offered a thoughtful, caring response to his friend. His softness allowed his friend to stay soft—not turn to violence, self-violence, or repression.

The second situation, my boyfriend brought up as a question: “That little girl was being chased by her brother. She kept saying, ‘No, stop chasing me. Don’t!’ But when he stopped she would chase after him, still saying, ‘No, stop it. Stop chasing me.’ That’s so interesting. I wonder why that happens, what that’s about.”

My first thought was Disney (this little girl was maybe 4 and her brother 1o or 11). My second was that she’s not allowed to have desire. I figured I was on to something, but I had to talk myself up to my conclusion. It was like my mind was thinking faster than I could process. We talked about how boys are allowed to have desire, and girls are allowed to be the object of (their) desire. However, girls are often not taught that its okay to have a desire of their own, but that they must always be the object of desire. Thus, when her brother was chasing her she was the object of his desire. But once he actually stopped (which is what she was saying with her words), she ran after him still saying the same thing. To say that she simply wanted to keep playing was too much, so she did it so she could preserve her own self-objectification.

And, good Lord, don’t we see this today in relationships between men and women? In my own relationship? We can’t articulate the actual desire because we have to be the object (and are more comfortable there than being the one explicitly desiring). So, when I say something it’s a kind of reversed desire. My actions say one thing and my words say another…sound familiar fellas? Of course, its not always this way, but I saw myself perfectly in this little girl. There is so much brainwashing we have to undo regarding gender.

We see this even in the Mad Men example from above. The boy is allowed to desire, but the girl is not allowed to desire. She has to be asexual. She has to be the object of his desire. With all of my schooling, my abilities, my knowledge, my intellectual accomplishment, I still have a hard time discerning my desire and articulating that. How can we interact with people in such a way that acknowledges desire (and its vulnerability) instead of going immediately to shame?

Any thoughts? Responses? Personal experiences?

Eden