A time and place for all things

Ecclesiastes 3:1- There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

There is, in fact, a time for everything under heaven.

i went to see the Vagina Monologues tonight at Union. They were held on campus, in the chapel, Watts chapel.

i went, firstly, because i felt the need to be informed, as i have never been, despite numerous opportunities. i also went, principally, to support my friends who were performing in the production. Several of my friends whom i love and respect were involved, including the professor i respect most of all my seminary teachers.

i can say they did a truly spectacular job. They performed extraordinarily well and delivered a great show. It also caused me to think, reflect, learn, laugh, and almost cry. i also think they are to be commended for their sincere efforts to stop violence toward women and girls in all parts of the world by donating proceeds to worthy causes. All that being said, seeing the play made me all the more certain that it had no business being in the Chapel of our seminary.

The play discussed many instances of abuse and force that threatened and hurt women. It discussed the ideas directly and indirectly that sex has a time and place and that it should not be forced. Sex in the wrong place or time, such as at a young age, or without consent, like date rape or family incest or systematic torture in war are wrong.

My point? Why is the use of a sacred worship space which is not only important to the performers and the audience, but hundreds, nay thousands, of Alumni who may have approved or disapproved of this use of this sacred worship space any different from, well, a woman's body?

There is a time to yell. It's not around sleeping babies. There is a time to discuss your sex life with your spouse. This is probably not around your 6 year old child or someone else's. There is a time to be intimate with that spouse. It's not on the sidelines of your 17 year old's soccer game. There is a time for adults to discuss the rights and the joys and the sorrows and the humor of female anatomy, but it is NOT in a chapel.

Why? It's not just my chapel or the Presbyterian chapel, but God's chapel, and it is a special place of worship of many of God's children. i fielded a phone call from a very unhappy Alumni about the use of our campus space for this (and she didn't even know it was the chapel). She cannot have been the only one, and despite popular opinion, i am by far not the most conservative person on campus or among the Alumni. Like discussed in the play, this was in the wrong time and place, and it was forced. i don't know for sure if hey pooled any or many older alumni to see if they found this an appropriate use of Watts chapel, but i know i was not asked as a current student how i felt about the space i worship, pray, and preach in being used this way or how it might reflect on us as a body of believers and how i will be associated with this seminary when i am looking for a call this summer.

At a time when the seminary is desperately struggling to find money and bring people together, this is a horrible time to do something so controversial. There is a time and purpose for all things, and this was NOT it.

Struggles...

So, in the past 7 or 8 years, i've struggled with certain topics and terminology and whatnot. Some are merely semantic issues. Others could be written off as personal preference or political correctness. Still others are deeply culturally routed. i have had varying degrees of success. Here are some of those things...


Things i've become very intentional about and MATTER to me (in no particular order of importance):

i try very hard not to call dreadlocks, "dreads." i call them dreadlocks or locks if i can remember. My buddy from a YAV discernment weekend had locks and reminded me that they got their name from slave drivers who thought they looked DREADFUL. Since most of them i have seen make me envious, i try to be culturally sensitive and reflect that.

i haven't used the word "gay" to refer to anything dumb since probably 9th grade. My youth group had a mantra, "gay doesn't mean stupid." We had to say it a lot to one of my good friends. i'm kinda of proud of my youth group for this.

i won't say, "i love you, but..." i read an article in Reader's Digest in college in which a man wrote that the 3 most beautiful words in the English language were "i love you," and the 4 most hurtful were, "i love you, but..." i believe this is true. i won't do it.

i rarely, if ever say "your mom" or "your mama" to anyone about anything. i do occassionally slip up since it was prevelant on my hall in college. It was a common cutdown and putdown since i was in grade school. However, too many people have tenuous relationships with parents or have lost parents and it's just not a good idea. "That's what she said," is pretty darn funny though.

Speaking of mama's, i won't ask a woman about her baby or pregnancy unless she herself has told me she IS pregnant. So much trouble to be had there. DON'T DO IT!

i almost NEVER tell jokes any more about women or blondes, even though in the past i told jokes about men and brunettes to balance it out. And i will NEVER tell a race joke, despite my non-belief in race, or maybe because of it. There are too many barriers to unity and harmony already without my speed bumps added to the mix. i will still tell my one Irish joke and i make no apologies. i'm Irish, i love Ireland and it's people (i'm even wearing my Made in Ireland shirt as i write this), it's not that bad, and it's mostly very true. So there. Deal.


Things i still struggle with:

i can't get behind ethnic or racial labels. At all. i have trouble with keeping up with labels of different races because race is a human construction, and as long as we keep labeling it and pointing it out and holding meetings exclusive to one or the other and put it on standardized tests and census forms and driver's licenses and applications and talk about the culture of various skin tones, we perpetuate a divisive myth.

i also struggle with names like Indians or Native Americans or First Peoples. i mean, none are very accurate. 'Indians' is inacurate because it's a holdover from Columbus' mistake. 'Native' is absurd since most scientist recognize they emigrated here on land mass, rather than by boat. 'First People' is rather confusing if you consider they weren't the first people, just the first people on this continent, and that's too long a name. Thus: struggle.

i've also been struggling for the past few years about Biblical authority on various topics. For instance, i've never held myself to kosher eating habits because i read post-Gospel books as repealing those requirements. But i also ignore things like wearing two different kinds of threads in one shirt and i don't blow a big horn every month or wear white all the time or fringe on my shirts, etc which are all Biblical mandates that i never see repealed. So what then do i do with passages forbidding homosexual behavior? Do i decide that's important and should be considered sinful and condemn gay friends or do i lump it into archaic culturally significant requests like women not speaking in church or wearing bonnets? i'm not willing to do that, to simply dismiss anything Biblical. So, i continue to struggle, read, discern, pray and ask for God's guidance and the Holy Spirit to be present each time i read the Bible, and of course, listen to people whom i love and respect.


One no one cares about:

i will NOT buy Girl Scout cookies from a parent of a Girl Scout. Not in a tree, not with a flea. Not in a house, not with a mouse. i WILL buy from ANY GIRL Scout who asks me (much to my poor wife's chagrin). However, i'm pretty isolated from that in my current state of life, so i got away with only buying 2 boxes this year. (this policy may change in protest if the boxes keep going up in price)

**Picture by a friend, Emilie Fingado. She's a rockin' great artist.**

How old are we?

In the wake of recent (last 5 years) news of the epidemic of idiots who act immaturely or inappropriately and then make it widely known on the internet, this news is almost surprising, but not quite. Anyone remember what WWW stands for? Well, as no shock to me, President Obama's 27 year old speech writer has been making the news for this photo.

As a 25 year old male, i think can speak to the maturity a 27 year old should have reached, especially one who is aware of the public spotlight he is under. This article is worth the read, as it is by a democrat and one of the few who seems to be holding this guy to any kind of accountability.

Profound insight...

In responding to my cousin's blog today about her todler, i came to deeply reflect on my personal preferences. i dislike bubbles. i always have. Anyone who knows me very well at all, knows this.

Now, i often assumed it was simply because i don't like soap on me and everything else if it's not soon going to be rinsed off. i would not, for instance, run around the living room or backyard squirting people, flora, fauna and furniture with a bottle of thick runny dish soap, so why bubbles which are slow and harder to aim?

It occurred to me a year or two ago that maybe i also hate bubbles because i dislike polka dots immensely and what could be worse than three dimensional moving polka dots? But now something else occurs to me. Maybe i dislike polka dots in part due to my general dislike for polka music. Something to this?

A shoe in...

Friday night, we had the first of our Cine-meducation nights at Union. We started a group to watch culturally significant films and discuss them informally, at the movie and during the week. Many of the films will be fairly controversial and quite intense. We'll be trying to alternate these with fun, or at least slightly less intense, films.

This week, we watched Birth of a Nation. It was intense. Besides, a 3 hour movie from 1915 with no dialogue or narration is hard to take. i made the comment about 2 hours in, "i've hit my quota of silent productions for the next 10 years."

i forgot that ballets are silent. We went to see Cinderella last night. It was good. The music was excellent. It was pretty hard though with no dialogue or narration for the second night in a row.

By far, the best part was when Cinderella turned into Star Wars for a few minutes in the second act. The "clock dwarfs" came out with Father Time. They were tiny dancers in hooded brown robes. i nearly shouted, "Look, JAWAS!" And right then, they all began turning on their glowing red lights. They looked just like Jawas! The husband in the couple next to us said the same thing during the intermission and we were both clearly more excited for act 3.

A blog i read occasionally got me thinking about presidents and the good and bad legacies they leave. This blogger is no Bush fan, not by a long stretch, but he found 3 major contributions of George W Bush in his 8 years...

1. Faith-based initiatives. John DiIulio, the first director of Pres. Bush' Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, says rightly that George Bush deserves credit for making government-religious organization partnerships a viable option. Religious organizations have always served the public. Government in America has always had partnerships with church-sponsored agencies. Since the Second World War, though, government has been very circumspect about tax money being used for a clearly religious purpose. If a church taught people to read, for example, they could get government money; if they taught people to read the Bible and believe it, they could not.

Some problems, though, respond best to life-changing faith. Getting addicts to change their lives is very hard, and nothing works all the time. Still, approaches that get people to rely on a "higher power" have the best track record. Many people in social services had come to recognize this fact in the 1980s and '90s, even secular activists. If the government was serious about changing the lives of the most troubled and dangerous people, they needed to let God in, and pay the expenses. George W. Bush was the man who turned this once-taboo idea into a real government program. Indeed, Pres. Obama embraced the idea early and enthusiastically, though he plans to expand it beyond Pres. Bush's initiative. Faith-based programs are now part of the bipartisan base of government.

2. Fighting AIDS in Africa. This is a faith-based initiative, and much more. Frankly, I have been surprised that Pres. Bush made this commitment early, stuck to it, and put some real money inton it. It doesn't fit with the rest of the foreign policy of his administration. It produces no immediate benefit for the interests of the U.S. government or major U.S. businesses. I think this one comes right from Pres. Bush's heart.

3. The week of September 11, 2001. The high point of the Bush presidency. He rallied the country. He said clearly that Islam was not the enemy, and opposed all efforts to demonize Muslims here or abroad. An imam was included in the national prayer service for the first time. He went to Ground Zero and praised the emergency responders. The world stood with the U.S. as never before.

i hope i can make a similar list after the next several presidents. i'm waiting...

Because i don't care who is in office...

HYPOCRISY is my biggest beef. Always...

Obama’s Oval Office Hypocrisy
By Steven Milloy

The New York Times reported on Thursday, January 29 that:

“…the capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Could this be the same Barack Obama who said last May that:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say ‘OK.’ … That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”

And could this be the same Barack Obama who is looking to sign a stimulus bill that would spend billions of dollars installing millions of “smart meters” that would enable your power company to prevent you from being as comfortable as he is on hot and cold days?

While our new president is warm-and-toasty in the Oval Office, is he considering the plight of Michigan’s Marvin Schur, a 93-year World War II veteran, who was recently found frozen to death courtesy of a malfunctioning electricity “limiter” device installed by his power company?

Change has come to Washington. Elitism is dead. Long live elitism.