"Gender Battles on the Sidewalk"

Scenario:

Sara is walking carefully on the right side of the sidewalk, keeping to herself and showing (outward) respect for humanity. All of a sudden, she spots a Duke undergraduate walking in the opposite direction as her, walking very carefully on the left side of the sidewalk. [This means that Sara and the man were heading directly toward one another and would soon dramatically collide.] The undergraduate is wearing hip shades and a t-shirt that bears the word "Capital" with an arrow pointing to his penis. Sara walks dramatically on. Capital-penis undergraduate walks dramatically on. Tension grew. WHO WAS GOING TO MOVE? It was becoming a serious issue. Sara and the undergraduate were just very much about to dramatically collide. 5 steps away from collision. 4 steps away from collision. 3 steps. Sara thinks to herself calmly, but with increasing concern: "Why is he not moving? It strikes me that if I am walking on the right side of the sidewalk, then I should not have to move." 2 steps. The undergraduate with the offensive t-shirt will not budge. He will win this battle. He will not lose. Sara will lose. Dramatic collision only seconds away, Sara makes a tricky little turn with the direction of her body and heads toward the left side of the sidewalk. She has lost the battle. He has won the battle. As the undergraduate's t-shirt had made known, it was he who had the biggest penis. Sara thinks: "I hate you penis-man. I hate you. I hate every man. I hate every person. God, please forgive me for hating that man and for hating every person." End scene.

Later, Sara had a chance to interview the undergraduate about this experience that they had shared; their conversation is recorded here:

Sara: "I'm glad we are able to come together for a time of reconciliation. I'm sorry, though, I don't know your name. What is your name?"

Undergraduate: "You have not earned the right to know my name. You are wearing a hoodie and jeans, and as such, I neither want to sleep with you nor tell you my name. What I will tell you is that I am entitled to a lot, and I don't respect you."

Sara: "Very well, then. Can you talk for awhile about the significance of your t-shirt? Why is it that your shirt has the word 'capital' and an arrow pointing to your penis?"

Undergraduate: "I don't know why I'm talking to you. I am very powerful, you see. Largely, my t-shirt is an indicator that you have no right to speak with me. If I choose to walk on a particular side of the sidewalk, then you should no longer find yourself welcome on that side. I am powerful and rich. Why are you commenting on my t-shirt and not my sunglasses? My sunglasses were very expensive, and you should know many things about me just by looking at them."

Sara: "That is my mistake. I am incorrigible, am I not? Is there anything else you would like to say?"

Undergraduate: "Yes, I am a Son of Entitlement, and I do not understand why you feel like you deserve a place on the sidewalk. You think that you deserve to at least be walking on the right side because it is proper to do so, but let me tell you that if I decide that women do not belong on the sidewalk, then they don't belong."

Sara: "Truly, your logic is impeccable. Anything else?"

Undergraduate: "Yes, you are the inferior gender, and my penis is still very large."

Sara: "Thank you. May the road rise to meet you and the sun be always at your back."

Acknowledgements: To the young man who would not allow me to keep my place on the sidewalk, many thanks.

"Saying No to Neuroticism"

Saying no to neuroticism is not something that I do frequently.

For instance, back in the day when I was either more crazy or less crazy (it's hard to tell), I so badly wanted to be a TA for the Greek class at Northwestern that I composed a list of all the people the professor might pick for the job instead of me, and I gave reasons for why he should not pick any of those persons and should instead pick me.

His emailed response read as follows:

"Yes, your unbridled neuroticism and raving paranoia make it very clear that you are truly the SENSIBLE choice."

I will have you know that he did, in fact, pick me.

However, his description of my neuroticism as "unbridled" often tends to be more true than not.

It is for this reason that I do not belong in the academy.

It is for this reason that I want to instead do the following:

I want to live in a house that is accessed by means of a gravel road.

I want to hang my clothes on a clothesline and attend to the water level in the bird bath.

I want to become really, really good at folding sheets.

I want to cook things in a slow cooker.

I want to buy suet from a butcher and hang it from a tree branch.

I want to spend full weeks vigorously canning pickles and dilly beans.

I want to play gin rummy while drinking gin and rum.

I want to eat oatmeal for breakfast; I want to eat breakfast, period.

I want to keep the Sabbath.

I want to read a novel.

I want to make cookies and watch Love Actually and Titanic.

I want someone to care for me.

I want a backyard,

and I want to belong.

I want life to be the best thing ever.

The heart wants what it wants. At least, that's what I told myself when I just went and bought a diet mountain dew.

Best,

Sara

This blog has gotten far too optimistic lately.

Allow me to reiterate that I still find people to be the worst thing in the world.

Best,

Sara

"My Friend has an Uncle who is a Monk, and We Call Him Her 'Monkle'"

Dear friends,

Fall break was last week, and it was more or less the greatest week of my life. A previous post on this blog recalls that last year at this time, I spent fall break reading Augustine's Confessions and nurturing the festering pneumonia that would soon ravage my body and general well-being as a human. That, as I now think about it, was not the greatest week of my life.

Instead, that prize goes to this year's fall break, in which I divided my time between a beach house and a Trappist monastery. First of all, who knew that "going to the beach" actually means going to the ocean? No one knows that. I'm sure glad I know that now. One of my roommates had to go to Myrtle Beach, SC, and a random person let us stay in her beach house. Did any of you know that beach houses are amazing? No one knows that. I'm sure glad I know that now. I spent my days reading about Dorothy Day's life of voluntary poverty and my nights feasting at the banquet of vacation luxury. Mmmm....conviction.

Highlights of this trip include: the ocean.

I then drove to Mepkin Abbey in Monck's Corner, SC. http://www.mepkinabbey.org/

I was able to stay for several days, observing monastic life and trying my own hand at monastic life. It was a transformative experience in many ways, some of which I recognize, and some of which I'll come to recognize in time.

If you feel as though you know me well, then I probably don't want to talk to you about the experience. If you don't know me well, then I'd love to tell you everything.

The following is a piece that I wrote in class today about my time at the monastery; I hope it gives you the slightest glimpse of my experience:

I did not know that monks eat candy bars. They do, though. They eat candy bars and they wear zip-up fleece jackets when it is cold and they spread Smart Balance butter on bagels toasted in their Cuisinart toaster.

Monks eat squash, too--observing a vegetarian diet and fixing their eyes upon a stick figure Jesus while spooning down stringy, brown-sugared squash. Several hours after the squash-Jesus-combo for lunch that day, I happened upon Father Joe in the gift shop. "I need something more than that squash," he mumbled as he passed by me and selected a Crunch bar. I was delighted. A monk eating a candy bar is like Jesus watching a reality show on Hulu. "Monks like chocolate, too," I marveled. "Maybe a monk is like a real human being."

Of course, a monk is a holy man. A monk's vocation is contemplation--contemplating the things of God and communing with the being who is God. It is such abstract language that we lapse into, though, when speaking of communion with God. It is language at which you must persistently prod if you hope to break through and see God on the couch with his people.

Monks, I think, do not commune abstractly and perfectly with God. They are, in fact, real human beings who eat butter and get cold. They are real human beings who sing several times each day: "Lord, make haste to help me." They are real human beings, who before receiving the body and blood of their Lord, recite together: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive but only say the word, and I will be healed."

The monks do not spend their days standing before the throne of God, picking at stains on their robes and reminding one another to behave. Rather, the monks spend their days sitting on the basement couch with God. Spike TV is on in the background, and they are telling God that just two minutes ago they had wished not to be a people of God. They had faltered--wandered aloud if all this genuflecting and chanting and reading beautiful words to a fake God was really just a cover for the fact that they didn't want a desk job.

The monks are on the couch with God, as though they are friends watching a ball game. One still owns a timeshare on the beach. Another read the whole Harry Potter series while he could have been reading Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers From Prison. And one is recently divorced and misses the weekends that were free for hunting. One is a father. One is a gardener. One is a man who gets tired.

They continually show up before God, though. Even when they are tired or angry or arrogant or existential, they are God's people. They are God's people, and so they will come before God in praise and obedience, and so they will come before God with great joy. Sometimes, of course, they will trudge in their coming. Sometimes, they will come with the day's work on their minds. Sometimes they will not come in joy at all. This will not matter, though. They are God's people, and so before God they will come. Whether it be 3 AM or whether it be sleeting or whether it be while their mother is in town, they will come. They will come because they know God not to be an abstract being who may be placated with formulas, but rather because they know God as the one who took his God-hands and fashioned each one of them into existence.

They are God's people who are not worthy to receive, and for that reason, they will come.

"An Open Letter"

Dear Cynicism,

I am writing to tell you that I am leaving you. I am moving on. I am moving out of our one-bedroom apartment that has neither a sunny windowsill on which a mint plant can grow nor a sunny room in which imagination can be cultivated. The reasons are as follows: you smother innocence and beauty and emotion, and I find this to be oppressive. As such, I am moving on--severing ties--casting you aide. All the best to you. Godspeed.

You scoff, of course. You're always so quick to scoff. Truly, these castigations are not news to you, both because you revel in your smothering and because I have told you these things before. I may have substituted fennel in the place of mint and emotion in the place of imagination, but my sentiments were the same. I was moving on. Setting sail. Hopping ship to Tarshish. Leaving you. I began to tell my friends that I was trying to "transcend Cynicism." "Who says that?" you jeered, appropriately. No one should say that. No one ought to tell another that she is transcending anything. It is both too enlightened and too pretentious for another--for even me--to swallow.

Frankly, Cynicism, I scoffed as well. I will admit freely to you that I was skeptical of my capacity to shed my crunchy coating and become, at will, a person who has hopes and dreams and beliefs and passions. I was skeptical of my capacity to evaluate the religiously observant in a positive manner. I was especially skeptical of my capacity to experience emotion during worship.

More than all this, though, and I only tell you this because I will soon have left you forever, I think I was scared. I was scared that upon abandoning you, I would find myself doing the two-handed surrender while sweetly singing "I'm forgiven, because you were forsaken; I am accepted, you were condemned." If I left you, I might turn into one of "them." If I allowed myself to experience emotion during worship, I may just as soon be wearing a "Got Jesus?" t-shirt and believing that the dinosaurs fit on the ark because they were teenaged dinosaurs. How I feared believing in teenaged dinosaurs. And so I continued to cling to you for your protection.

I should make it clear, Cynicism, that you did play a role in my life for which I am glad. After meeting your eyes during a discussion of epistemology my freshman year, I knew you were the one for me. I knew I wanted you always at my side. I wanted to put you in my pocket and keep you there, and so I did. That day in freshman philosophy, Cynicism, I tucked you into the left pocket of my purple t-shirt and carried on with my day. Carried on with my life.

But now, Cynicism, I am taking you out of my pocket and I am moving out of our apartment and I am shutting the garden gate on you and I am moving on. It is true--both you and I know that it is true--that I will walk haltingly away and will sometimes fiddle with the latch on the gate. Sometimes, I will even invite you back up to the apartment for a nightcap and a spot of dialogue. Most times, I will continue to cross my arms obstinately during worship or prayer (God forbid we be singing "Blessed be the Name" or "How Great is Our God.") and direct close-lipped stares at my fellow worshipers so that they might truly see that I am not one of "them." Most times, although I have given you a side-hug and have told you "Goodbye Forever," I will forget that I have ever done this at all.

However, I hope for the good days. Now that you are gone, it is okay to hope for the good days and know that they are coming. Even though my leaving you has by no means been successful or sudden, I need to tell you that I am already finding that I do not delight in you so readily these days. Your presence does not make my eyes gleam or my mind burst with delirious self-righteousness as easily as it used to. I am sorry to tell you all of this so candidly, but it is true. And because it is true, I am happy.

This is goodbye, then. I don't want you to try to contact me. I have changed my phone number and I am wearing a hat and I am speaking in an accent and I do not want you to look for me. I do not want you to call. I do not want you to write. I do not want you to think of "us" as living in the subjunctive mood. There will never be an "us" again. And if you see me someday, Cynicism, and I am doing the two-handed surrender or singing "Blessed be the Name" (or God forbid, doing both at once), then I will have you know that perhaps transcending cynicism is possible.

It is, at least, my intention to try.

Goodbye forever,

Sara

"The Enduring Truths of Christian Radio"

Dear friends,

Today, I learned how to cook meth and how to render a genitive absolute with a concessive function. Today, I learned that tuna does not come from dolphins, and I learned that slavery in North America was born not in racism, but in greed. Today I pet a rat on my kitchen table and learned that the process of importing Africans into North America brought about the death of the African gods.

Today, I spent my day at divinity school.

Roughly 5 years ago, I sat in a green-backed chair and drank a cup of coffee brewed from concentrated-coffee-water and told my AP that it sure would be nice to be a biblical scholar. Then I ate the rest of my english muffin and made small talk about Rob Bell.

If you are unfamiliar with contemporary Christian parlance, an AP is an Accountability Partner. APs go out for coffee and talk about lust. Or just sin and failure in general. Contemporary Christians LOVE this because they are given an opportunity to sit around and say things like: "Last night, the Accuser threw a real thorn in my path."

As a freshman at a Christian college, I loved this, too. I had no frame of reference for what it meant to talk about the Israelites (until someone recommended that I watch the Prince of Egypt), and I'd never heard of Ananias and Sapphira, and I didn't know that the Gospels were written after Paul's epistles, but I had a vague sense that it was important for me to read my Good News Bible and to heed the verses that I had double-underlined. I also had a vague idea that my biblical knowledge was lacking, so I remarked flippantly: "It'd sure be nice to be a biblical scholar. It sure would be nice to know the answers to all these questions."

And later that day, I slept through chapel.

Today, however, I did not sleep through chapel. I sat in chapel and analyzed the planning of the worship service and the efficacy of the sermon delivered. Today, I spent the second Thursday of my second year mastering divinity. I sat amongst Christians and made small talk not about Rob Bell or lust or my personal devotions, but rather used words like 'pejorative' and phrases like 'adjectival use of the participle,' and at times I even pretended I was doing the work of a biblical scholar. That is, until I went home and watched a television show about drugs and thugs.

Why am I pondering this progression of events?

Probably because I am an arrogant son-of-a-bitch. And pretentious to boot. Only a graduate student would spend their time narcissistically reflecting on the second Thursday of her second year of mastering divinity. [For a derogatory but humorous representation of grad students, click here-->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0.]

But beyond these endearing qualities of mine, I am reflecting on this progression of events because I have been trying to take the providence of God seriously these days. I have been trying to really believe that God has and does take a divine hand in my life.

I was listening to Christian radio in my car today, as is my habit (I am repeatedly drawn toward bad movies, bad books, and bad radio), and the announcer told one of those cute, silly stories about kids that is supposed to convince you that God is real and good and true for everyone. Apparently her son was playing on the playground equipment in Chick-Fil-A and while in a green, plastic tunnel, he started yelling, "WHERE ARE YOU, GOD? WHERE ARE YOU, GOD? WHERE ARE YOU?" The mother-turned-radio-announcer stepped out of the backdrop of the other moms, who probably just wanted to tell the kid that God was dead and he'd better just shut up and eat his nuggets, and she yelled, "GOD'S IN THE TUNNEL WITH YOU, BUDDY! HE'S IN THERE! GOD IS EVERYWHERE!"

If I had been in that Chick-Fil-A, this exchange probably would have been the highlight of my month. It would have been like Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul had just occurred while I had sat there eating my waffle fries.

But I was not there. And besides being a little repulsed by the evangelical-ness of it all, I think that the happy-Christian-mother-and-son-duo embody some of the most basic realities of a Christian's existence.

We cry out to God.

"Please, God, I do not want to work at the Chinese or the Dutch restaurant again. Please give me a future. Where are you, God?"

"Please, God, give me a spirit of prayer and a heart for you. Where are you, God?"

"Please, God, I enjoy none of this, where are you, God?"

Maybe we just feel a little too alone inside the green, plastic tunnel. And we forget that we need not blindly grope about for a God who has toes and plans and veins and love because this God who has toes and love is all the while groping about for us. We get a little panicky, wanting to touch this God and know this God to be there. We forget that "God's in the tunnel with you, buddy."

I imagine that although this all sounds a little magical and dumb and over-the-top--although it smacks a little of all these things--this simple idea is also profoundly true for those who are and who are to be ushered into the fold of salvation.

God is everywhere. God is in our kicking off of the sheets and God is in our flipping off of terrible drivers and God is in our baking of banana muffins and God is in our everything. We crawl around and we yell and we murmur and we pray, and God swirls us around in providence.

I am in divinity school because God is everywhere and because God has toes and love and is in my everything.

Best,

Sara

"Inspirations from Charles"

Dear friends,

I often forget that I have an eyebrow ring until someone reminds me. Like Charles, the liver-spotted, elderly man in my church this summer who, while grasping me in a prolonged side hug, said: "You're an ugly, ugly girl. You're so ugly. You'd be a beautiful girl if you took that out," he said, pointing to my piercing, "but until then you're an ugly girl."

Or others, after knowing me for 3 or 4 weeks, point their finger toward my forehead and ask: "does that hurt?"

"Yes, I have been in constant pain for 5 years," I tell them. "No, you dumbass, it doesn't hurt." They always ask this question, and I always fail to understand why they are asking it.

In my church this summer, however, I tended to avoid calling the parishioners dumbasses. I would say something sweet or expected and then go home on Sunday evenings with a headache and angst I could sometimes taste in my throat about how I was not being myself. This angst mushroomed into private, melodramatic writhings as I tossed and turned in bed, just so incredibly perturbed that not everyone in the world thinks the exact same things as I do.

I err on the side of melodrama. I do not think this has to do with my eyebrow ring, though. Really, I just got the eyebrow ring because that girl in Model UN my freshman and sophomore years had one, and I thought it neat. An eyebrow ring and a plaid skirt, debating the policies of the world, now that sounds like an identity. I would like to have a defined identity. I'm sure that when someone tries to describe me to someone else, there are familiar words that usually arise. But I do not know what they are or if I would like them. Sometimes I do learn from a stranger-turned-friend that he or she formerly knew me as the girl with the eyebrow ring. Behind the counter of the coffee shop or in the front row of the pre-calculus classroom, that is who I am. But I hope that I am more, and I hope that that "more" is not an ugly, ugly girl.