First Sunday of Advent, already?!

I’m not sure how this happened, but it’s the First Sunday of Advent already.

I always loved Advent calendars as a kid, but haven’t found a cardstock version I like for a long time.  These days, I get my kicks from some online versions:

The always-lovely Trinity Wall Street calendar

Beliefnet’s online advent calendar

The BBC’s Bach Advent calendar (have your speakers on!)

(Update 11/30: the Beliefnet link was misbehaving.  Should work now.)

“Possible Answers to Prayer”

My esteemed occasional co-blogger abc41 and I were talking today about her recent discovery of Scott Cairns‘ poetry.  I confessed that I carry around a copy of a Cairns poem I read way back in 2001 in Sojourners magazine, “Possible Answers to Prayer.”  The version that appears in Sojourners is ever-so-slightly different than the one on the Poetry Foundation site (see the last stanza), and is the one I prefer.  No accounting for taste.

Reflect.  Enjoy.

Your petitions—though they continue to bear

just the one signature—have been duly recorded.

Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope, their inadvertent

entertainment value—nonetheless serve

to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath

a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more

conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent care for the sick,

the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes

recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly

righteous indignation toward the many

whose habits and sympathies offend you—

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend

how near I am, with what fervor I adore

even these, the ones who rouse your passions.

Truly, madly, deeply grateful

I haven’t had much time to decompress since passing my oral exam on November 10.  We had company for a week, and I’ve been splitting my work time between a day job and a short-but-intense book-indexing gig for my advisor.  I wasn’t quite ready to dive back into the dissertation-related reading, but for a few minutes most days, I’ve been savoring tidbits from my collection of letters from my grandmother.  She and I had a very lively correspondence over the years, until her vision started to deteriorate and her hands grew more arthritic.  She died in October 2008, just a few weeks shy of her 90th birthday, November 19.  Since she was always one of my biggest – if not THE biggest of – cheerleaders, I’ve been wishing that I could write to her about clearing this hurdle, and tell her about the dissertation plans.

Her letters were priceless.  Some of them were written from the public library, where she’d go to pour over nature magazines or check out a book I’d recommended.  Others were written from a diner, where she liked to take herself out for a meal and a change of scenery.  Or she’d haul out her powder blue portable electric typewriter and type the letter — sometimes on full sheets of paper, sometimes on half, sometimes front and back, always single-spaced…

Now that she’s gone, I’m extra-grateful to have this collection.  I can hear her voice and her laugh on every page.  And she was a terrific writer.  Bear with me, while I share a few outtakes with you…

Here, her wry humor and willingness to get a laugh at her own expense –

This one was written from the Springfield (Ohio) Public Library, where she went to chase down a book by Sarah Hrdy, and an issue (1988?) of Smithsonian magazine I’d recommended, for a moving article by Janis Carter about reintroducing chimpanzees to a protected area in Africa.

This is one of my favorites; it captures Gram to a “t.”  I’ve redacted the name of the place where she was volunteering, and the name of the coworker she was complaining about.

This one refers to the unfortunate tendency of local squirrels to find their way into the transformer boxes on utility poles in my hometown, inevitably meeting their Maker and causing brown-outs for many blocks around.

Her love of butterflies was legend, and stayed with her all her life.  She amassed such an impressive collection of butterfly pins that we handed them out to family members to wear at her funeral last year!  This was a sweet recollection of where that obsession got started.

And this one conveys the kind of enthusiasm and spirit with which Gram approached life, ALL of her life.  “Carol” is my mother.

 

Miss ya, Gram.  *Mwah!*

Still, so much to be thankful for this year.  At crucial and difficult times, amazing friends and family came up with ideas and solutions and moral support that allowed us to plow through the rough spots and stay on track.  We are really and truly blessed.  Words fail me.   Peace and blessings to you all!

The Smithsonian issue I’d recommended was from sometime in 1988, and featured an article by Janis Carter about efforts to reintroduce chimpanzees to a protected area in Africa.

Passed!

I passed my oral defense!  Next up, dissertation proposal!  Sorry for the sudden silence again.  The day after my defense, we had a houseguest arriving to stay for the week.  Blogging seemed rude.  NaBloPoMo is a lost cause for me, now, but my friend Austen is still on a roll over at Basil and Butterflies!  Also, frequent guest-poster Cristina White has moved her blog and has a great review of the Michael Jackson movie, “This Is It,” up at her new site.

Breathing (out, in, out, in)

Big week.  Tuesday is my “oral defense” of a set of three exams I’ve written this year.  I’m terrified, and yet so tired of being anxious about it that I’d do it tomorrow if I had the option.  If I pass, I will tackle my dissertation proposal.  If I fail, I’m going to be quite bitter about the student loans I’ve taken out. :-\  In any event, I am trying – with spotty success – to visualize positive outcomes, stay calm, etc.  When I saw this image in a recent Stylus article about the calligraphy of “Ian K.,” I printed it out and posted it above my desk, where I occasionally look up and think, “oh, yeah…”

(And yes, I justed outed myself as a penophile.)

 

Not dead, yet

Three years ago I mulled over the state of the religious left – as seen by media figures who were just beginning to notice there WAS such a thing, political observers who doubted its viability, and conservative figures eager to demean and undermine it.   Two recent studies show that the religious left is very much alive and kicking.  A study from the University of Florida reports that the religious left “is closing the so-called ‘god gap” (the theory that white religious Christians are inevitably conservative and Republican) and is likely to have increasing electoral visibility and influence during the Obama administration.  The 2009 Religious Activist Surveys (by the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics) finds “strikingly different religious profiles” (in terms of issue positions and priorities… would it be impolite to say “duh”?) between the religious left and right, but finds that at the same time activists in both camps are “deeply religious,” cite faith as a factor in their voting, and are equally engaged (albeit in slightly different ways) in political activism.

Charlotte Allen wrote her LA Times rant about the impending death of liberal Christianity in 2006.  (The direct link to her article seems to be broken, but my old blog entry has some excerpts, as does this link.)  ‘Course she didn’t say exactly when we’d meet our demise, and as we approach the end of 2009, Kenneth Wald, one of the authors of the University of Florida study, is declaring “we’re in an age where we’re likely to see a flowering of the religious left.”  But other observers think the religious left will lose relevance by being too quick to compromise on core positions, in order to curry favor with a religious right that never gives an inch.  Here’s Peter Laarman:

Health care reform provides a good case in point. A significant part of the conservative community is determined to insert a hard prohibition on federal abortion funding into the final reform legislation—a provision that will remove existing access to abortion services from the insurance plans of millions of women. Conservatives unhesitatingly frame this as an issue of fundamental conscience. In response, many good liberals bite their tongues and go along for the sake of the supposed greater good of achieving universal coverage.

The silencing of a progressive religious voice for the sake of creating an imaginary common ground is also evident in the informal agreement to remove entire issues—marriage equality, for example—from the table. Whereas abortion can be admitted to the conversation on the right’s terms, equal rights for sexual minorities cannot be admitted at all. The religious right’s position, “we’re not even going to discuss this,” becomes tacitly accepted by everyone else.

When the left compromises, the “goalpost” moves rightward:

…some notably sex-phobic evangelical and Roman Catholic individuals and entities have been rebranded as the progressive forces watch, while actual progressives (solidly feminist and pro-LGBTQ religious leaders) have disappeared from view.

Interesting point.  Are religious lefties more open to compromise?  (Is it that difference in neural wiring, again?)  Are we fatally attracted to it?  Will it be our undoing?

Just thought I’d toss this stuff in the mix, while co-blogger abc41 has us thinking about what religious progressives believe.

(Updated to fix my co-blogger’s tag.)

Progressive Christianity, first in a series

A while back, co-blogger abc41 mentioned she was reading “What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?,” a recent book by the late Delwin Brown.  I gently encouraged her to contribute her impressions here, and the result is posted below.  Your comments are desired!

What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?  On seeing this title, and from the perspective of a fairly new member of a so-called progressive Christian congregation, my initial response was something like, “not much.”  But that would be giving in to my inner smart-alec.  In fact, the more I read, the greater was my appreciation for what Delwin Brown has attempted to accomplish in this slender volume:  the rudiments of a progressive Christian theology, as he says, “for ordinary people, not specialists.”  As an unusually ordinary person, I will share my responses to his efforts in this and succeeding posts.  Here I consider the preface and opening chapter.

 For readers who might not know, Brown, a layperson, was dean of the Pacific School of Religion and taught Christian theology for many years at Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist-related seminary in Denver.  He died this past September.  By all accounts, he was well regarded for his clarity of thought and irenic disposition, both of which are reflected in this particular writing.  I didn’t know him, but I wish I had.

In the book’s preface, Brown properly decries the silence of the progressive Christian voice in the U.S. public square.  “For the sake of our nation as well as the Church, we must be able to say what we believe, and why, and to say so effectively.” (p. xii)  So far, so good.  I’ve believed forever, from the earliest of the denominational squabbles over human sexuality beginning in the 1970s, that we liberals/progressives/lefties/whatever-label-you-want-to-use have allowed others to define the field and set the rules of the discourse.  So I dig the idea that we actually have to do our own constructive theological work, rather than deconstructing (or just dissing) what we don’t like or don’t agree with.

 BUT:  The first chapter, entitled “What Progressive Christianity is Not,” seems to me to be indicative of the dilemma that Brown so ably articulates.  If the aim is to say what we believe, etc., why spend more than 10% of the space, right off the bat, on “what we’re not”?  I confess to a lot of impatience with the negative approach.  For one thing, as George Lakoff has shown us, it concedes the frame to that which is being opposed.  We all remember the example, “Don’t think of an elephant.”  So, section headings like, we’re not the religious right, we’re not liberal Christianity, etc. just evoke those frames.  For another, it’s a defensive posture that is unappealing and unattractive. Tell me who you are, not who you’re not.   If I’d been Brown’s editor, that first chapter would have been taken up in each of the succeeding essays as examples of differentiation rather than simply negation.

Nevertheless, some gems are to be found within the negations, and in particular I found the following (p. 9) to be absolutely compelling:

 “The mind is not all of human nature by any means, but it is part of and essential to a healthy humanity.  Similarly, a full and credible theology is essential to a healthy Christianity.  Hence a progressive Christian movement, if it is to be more than a fad, must be resolutely theological as well as active in the pursuit of justice.”

Interestingly this passage was embedded in a discussion of the history of the Princeton fundamentalists.  Brown is asking progressive Christians to emulate, at least in some respects, the approach of these 19th-century evangelicals.  Oh, the shock!  Might Gandhi have been correct in his assertion that everyone (even an evangelical or a fundamentalist) has a piece of the truth?

In my admittedly brief experience in a “progressive Christian” congregation, I’ve observed a reluctance to engage in any sustained theological reflection.  Indeed, I’ve been told, “We don’t do theology here,” a statement I find quite astounding.  Elsewhere (p. xii) Brown stresses the urgent need for progressive Christians to “become articulate about the transforming faith that is within them.”  Do we fear that in the process, if we look too closely at ourselves, we won’t find that transforming faith?  So I applaud Brown’s commitment to the theological task, even if it took a while to get there. 

 Future posts will take up the subjects of the remaining chapters:  Bible, Christ, God, Humanity, Sin, Salvation, Church.  Hmm:  sounds like systematic theology to me.  Maybe there’s even (yikes) a creed in there somewhere.  Stay tuned.

The “affair” is back on

Credit where credit is due, and I suspect it’s not due to my break-up letter.   But the good news from Shakespeare’s Sister is that Emma Thompson has reconsidered her position re: Polanski and is asking that her name be removed from the petition protesting his arrest!

Bad to the bone?

The Better Half and I failed miserably at our plan to eat two vegan meals a day last week, World Go Vegan Week.  We’ve been “talking about” going vegan for two years, now, and just keep backing away from taking the plunge.  World Go Vegan Week seemed like a good time to transition.  We decided on two meals/day because we had some open dairy products in the ‘fridge – eggs and yogurt, primarily.  So we figured we’d make smoothies or scrambled eggs in the morning, and then have vegan lunches and dinners.

But I was frantically trying to finish a paper, and she was working some odd shifts, and we simply got lazy.  It was so much easier to reach for dairy protein than to plan balanced vegan meals.  So I’ve been trying to think about veganism differently – as a “practice” to adopt.  Perhaps that will sharpen my resolve and intentionality: make me plan ahead, put some care and time into meal-planning and meal-preparation.  We’ve gotten into some terrible habits in this hectic household: we eat primarily to keep from fainting, often standing up, and doing so many other things at the same time it’s a wonder we even taste the food.  Maybe we don’t?

One evening I read the October issue of Harvard’s Women’s Health Watch as I ate.  It includes a feature on “becoming vegetarian,” and summarizes some studies about the health effects of vegetarianism and veganism.  Here’s what froze my fork in mid-air: “In the EPIC-Oxford study, 75% of vegans got less than the recommended daily amount of calcium, and vegans in general had a relatively high rate of fractures.  But vegans who consumed at least 525 milligrams of calcium per day were not especially vulnerable to fractures.”   I’ve read up on the importance of getting alternative sources of calcium in a vegan diet, but that study has pretty solid evidence that not enough vegans do.  And the Women’s Health Watch article has another fun fact about dietary calcium: “Spinach and Swiss chard, which also contain calcium, are not such good choices, because along with the calcium they have oxalates, which make it harder for the body to absorb calcium.”   Bone health being an issue for women “of a certain age” (an age I’m getting closer to) in any event, this points to an even greater need for care and intentionality in a vegan diet – for gratitude AND fortitude!  I’ve been relying on Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina’s Becoming Vegan.  Vegan Action is a great web resource.  If any you have good tips/recipes/etc. for making a healthy vegan transition, I’d sure love to hear them.  (And if you need some good health reasons to buttress the good environmental and compassion-reasons for going vegan, here’s a list.)

(Dang it.  I saved the first draft of this at 12:00 a.m. and missed the Nov. 3 dateline, so I’ve already broken my NaBloPoMo “streak.”)

No pain, no problem

A Thinking Reed links to a Mother Jones article on the livestock industry’s plan to pre-empt humane farming regulations in Ohio.  That article is disturbing enough, but an item on the MoJo sidebar also caught my eye.  “Guilt-free meat?” is about the prospect of genetically engineering cows and pigs, e.g., so that they will not experience pain, thus reducing the overall amount of suffering caused by factory farming.  It cites an article by Adam Shriver, “Knocking out pain in livestock: can technology succeed where morality has stalled?” which you can download from the journal Neuroethics (click on the PDF icon; as of now, the full-text article is free).  Shriver seems to think that factory farms are the only way to keep up with increasing per capita meat consumption, and that one way to address the primary ethical complaint against factory farms – that they inflict unnecessary suffering on animals – is to “replace current livestock with genetically engineered animals who lack the affective dimension of pain” (the dimension we experience as “suffering”), thus reducing overall suffering.  Problem solved!  And as an added bonus to meat eaters, “creating animals who do not suffer as much would result in higher quality meat” (because stress decreases meat quality, and reducing suffering will reduce stress).  Well, this is just a win-win, isn’t it?  Unless you get all hung up in that stuff about animals having inherent value, being subjects-of-a-life, each having its own dignity, etc.

I have to keep this short tonight, but you can bet I’ll come back to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Gotta love Google Images; what a find, huh?)