the art of following

I'm not a leader. It took me awhile to figure that out when I was in my twenties and thirties, because back then, we all thought everyone could be whatever they wanted to be. In the 80s, I was all about feminism: women taking back their power and women being just the same as men. In my mind, not being a leader meant being weak and insignificant. In the 90s, I was in one of those women's spirituality groups where we were all supposed to share the leadership equally. Each week, we traded the leadership role. It went as you might predict-- when some women were leading, the meeting went well. When others were leading, the meeting ground down into pettiness. I think I was somewhere in the middle. I can do a decent job of leading a discussion, and I'm pretty good at reading group dynamics. But making decisions, taking responsibility for the direction of the group-- definitely not a skill of mine. And being able to inspire other people to follow, the most valuable leadership skill of all imo, is something I lack entirely. In that particular women's group, we were supposed to keep trading the leadership role around so that all of us could develop our leadership skills, and I do see the point of that. Some things get better with practice, and if that is one of the goals of the group, then it makes a lot of sense. But I also came out of that group thinking that there are some people who will always be better at it than others. And lucky for the rest of us, there are some people who are natural leaders, and we should all be damn grateful for that.

Even now that I understand that about myself, though, I still find myself taking leadership roles sometimes. I was on a committee a couple of years ago where even my limited leadership skills were more than anyone else had. I avoided taking over during our first several meetings because I didn't want to seem like I was... well, taking over, you know? And because I know I'm not the best at it. but eventually I stepped in and took charge, because the meetings were degenerating into pointless, meandering discussions that just went around in circles. We weren't exactly making waves with me in charge, but it was better than before.

So maybe since I've been on both sides of the fence, so to speak, I'm a little more aware of what it takes to be a good follower. There's an art to it, and it's one that is often ignored or devalued. A good follower listens, pays attention, tries to understand, and does his/her best to be supportive of the group and of the leader. You offer your opinion, and then you accept the decision of the group. And the most difficult follower skill of all: you have to be able to figure out for yourself when you need to speak up and when you need to just go along and be supportive, even if you don't agree.

OK, I'm waving my magic wand to come up with a simple example here. Let's say you're on a committee that's planning your child's senior class trip. There are twelve parents on the committee, and fortunately the one who is the chair of the committee is a good leader (which isn't always the case). There will be at least four or five opinions about the destination of the trip. Everyone, including you, expresses their opinion. Then you either vote or someone decides. If it's not the destination you wanted, you let it go and turn your attention to planning for the chosen place. That's easy. They can only go one place, they can't go to all of them.

But what if the group has chosen an activity for the trip that wouldn't be appropriate for all the students? Say, going to see a play that is about mature themes. Your child would be fine with it, but you know your child's best friend would be shocked and offended. So you speak up. We need an alternate activity for the kids who don't want to go to the play, or we need to choose a different play. The other parents downplay the problem and try to move on. Do you stick to your guns, or do you just give in, thinking (as the other parents do) that it will be good for the more sheltered kids to be exposed to some new and different experiences? It would depend-- on the play, the community values of the place where you live, the availability of other options, and how strongly you feel about it.

That to me is the hardest thing about being a good follower. I picked an innocuous example (and it's totally fictitious, by the way, my kids' high school doesn't do a senior trip). But it can actually be quite difficult to figure this out. When do I refuse to give in, because I know that either a) there will be consequences that aren't being taken into consideration, or b) I just won't be able to live with it as it stands? and how far do you push it? and when is it time to just throw in the towel and decide you can't participate anymore?

I'm a follower. I know how difficult it is to be a leader, to be the one that takes responsibility for decisions, and I don't like doing it. So I value someone that does. I admire and respect people who are willing to take that on their shoulders, and I'm willing to be supportive and encouraging. But you have to feel like the leader is understanding and respectful of his/her followers, too. That you're not just being ignored and shunted to the side. At least sometimes, the leader has to be willing to put his/her own interests aside in favor of the best interests of the group.

I'm being vague here and it's intentional. sorry about that. :-) but I still think it's an interesting topic.

AB

I've said before that it's much harder for me to write about the resolution of a conflict than it is to write about the conflict itself. There are a lot of reasons for that. A large part of it is because that's just the way my brain works. I'm better at picking things apart than putting them together. And also, when I do resolve something, once I get there, it seems so obvious that when I write it out it sounds kind of dumb and corny. But to skip over writing out the moments of insight is to come down on the side of despair, and I don't want to do that either.

So I'm behind a bit. Because the stuff I wrote back in --I just looked, and it was November, and I can't believe it's been that long-- has worked itself out for now. As more than one wise person has noted, the spiritual path is never a straight line. It has meanders and dead ends and side steps, but it shakes out roughly into a spiral. You work your way through some difficult places, and then a few months/years/decades later you find yourself circling back to work through the same things again, but in a different place with a different perspective and a different set of experiences to feed into it. So I don't think I'm done with this. But the dissonance I was talking about in November, the dialogue going on between the part of me that believes and the part of me that doesn't, seems to have worked itself out for now. And the seeds of the resolution are in those posts, which is why it seems so obvious now. I needed to let go of my worn-out expectations of what God is like to make room for something bigger and more expansive. You might call it another round of forgiving God for not being what I expected God to be.

When I was in junior high I heard a Christian speaker talk about the meaning of commitment: giving all that you know about yourself to all that you know about God. So that as you find out more about yourself, and as you find out more about God, you have to update your commitment. I might word it a little bit differently now, but I still think about that.

That's probably not very clear, but it's the best I can do at the moment. And as always, interpret the use of the word "God" in this post to mean "what I think of as God."

AB

I almost deleted this whole thing last week. Then over the weekend I was considering just deleting back until last fall sometime. Too much angst in my life right now. But, hey, lighten up, right? To delete it in a fit of self-disgust would only give it more importance than it's worth. Or that's what I'm telling myself anyway.

So I'm fighting a losing battle here on the literary vs. genre fiction and I know it. I just don't want to admit it. but honestly. Here is the last sentence of the Book Shop: "As the train drew out of the station she sat with her head bowed in shame, because the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop." What is that? Is Fitzgerald making fun of her character? It very nearly sounds like it. Or is she really convinced that the actions of a courageous, sensitive person are bound to end in shame and humiliation? Do the turkeys always get us down? I wish I could ignore the whole thing and just work on finding, reading, and writing some sort of hybrid where the whole of human experience is acknowledged and not just the sordid depressing bits. But unfortunately I've chosen to re-enter the academic arena and ignoring it is not exactly possible in an academic setting. Or at least not ignoring it in the way that I mean. They would certainly allow ignoring genre fiction.

And truth be told, I can't entirely blame them. I came up with a list of a dozen genre books worth reading from the ones I read last year, but that leaves out the DOZENS of books that I read that weren't worth reading at all-- more than a few were downright awful. I'd read 20-50 pages and throw them back in the bag to go to the thrift store. Some of them were so bad that you just are embarrassed at the waste of paper and ink.

So I'm done with this topic. I think. I hope. :)

hope is the thing with the feathers. --Emily Dickinson
not exactly related, but I love that line.

AB

prayer

I'm feeling the need to explain how I think about prayer. Twice in the past week, I've told someone that I would pray for them, or keep them in my prayers. And I feel somewhat guilty about this, but not for the reason you might think. Even though I don't really believe in God, I still believe in prayer. I can't explain how it works. But I believe that praying for someone helps them in some way. Is it just that you've told them you're praying for them, so that in itself offers moral support and they feel buoyed? Is it some sort of mental intention, a focusing of attention, that actually does give them a boost of some sort? Is there an actual exchange of personal energy that goes on? Is there a being, supreme or otherwise, that we address when we pray that can distribute help from a vast supply of spiritual/emotional resources? What I think is some sort of combination of those, but I have no idea how it actually works, and certainly no way to prove it. I just know that I don't feel hypocritical when I tell someone that I will pray for them. (And I do pray for them.) The thing that makes me feel a little guilty is that I know when I say it, often it means something to them that it doesn't mean to me, leads them to think that I'm doing something that I'm not.

I know I can't control how other people interpret my words. It would be silly to explain in depth precisely what I mean every time I use words in a way that is different than what other people expect. Silly and unwelcome. But there is a fine line to walk here in terms of personal integrity. I'm OK with this one, after having given it a great deal of thought, because it's a common enough phrase that people use it lightly all the time. I've even heard people with no particular religious views at all say something of the same sort. But obviously there's something that doesn't sit quite right because here I am typing this out.

AB

I've found two new blogs in the last couple of weeks and I am addicted. I don't check them every day (who has time?) but when I do check them, I keep reading till I'm caught up. I'm afraid these are y-chromosome-limited (ie, you're probably not going to enjoy them if you're male). There's this one, because it makes me laugh (sometimes to the point of tears), and then this one, because it makes me think.

Sorry guys. If I come up with some good not-gender-specific ones, I'll let you know.

You know, for reasons that are already escaping me, I signed up for a creative writing class this semester. I think I already mentioned (didn't I?) that I'm not driving to the state unversity this semester, so this is just at our local community college. It (the writing class) is making me a little crazy. Nothing makes me as neurotic as trying to write fiction.

Well, OK, I admit my spouse might be able to come up with a few things that make me more neurotic than that. But we're not going there right now.

So, anyway, I am feeling the need to apologize for obsessing about this genre fiction vs. literary fiction argument that I keep coming back to, because I know that I'm the only one that's interested in it (well, and maybe cheery-O occasionally). But I can't help it. Because I have to hash it out to figure out how to write. My writing style isn't like genre fiction writing. And I don't necessarily mean that my writing style is "better"-- I can only dream of being able to write like P.D. James, for example. I just don't write that way. But I really really don't want to write boring depressing stuff, which is what literary fiction often is. So I'm having to duke this out in my own brain, which is why I keep writing about it here. And I guess that tells you everything you need to know about me: that my brain considers the distinction between literary and genre fiction something that needs to be duked out.

The good news is that I'm discovering that the distinction between the two is less prominent in reality than as it exists in my head. The class I'm taking has a definite bias toward literary fiction, and we read a story last week that could have been a sort of off-beat romance story if it had had a happily ever after ending. And I read bits of an article about Raymond Carver that said his editor had to be always on the watch to make sure he didn't succumb to creeping sentimentalism. RAYMOND CARVER. That practically made my jaw drop--it's like saying Picasso had to watch to make sure he wasn't letting photorealism into his work.

the bad news is that in the academic world, it has become almost an article of religious faith to eschew genre fiction. It seems far more pronounced to me than it did twenty years ago, when it was bad enough. From my limited viewpoint, anyway.

so. unfortunately I don't think I'm done with this, but I'll try to post about other stuff, too.

AB

reading report - Jan 2010

I'm only about ten pages into the book I'm reading right now, so it will have to wait till next month. So I might as well go ahead and post this.

My Life In France, Julia Child. I'll admit I never would have read this if I hadn't seen the movie Julie and Julia. The movie was good, but I thought the Meryl Streep bit was way more interesting than the Amy Adams bit. So I decided to read My Life in France, which was the basis for much of the Julia Child thread of the movie. The book is fascinating, and kept me absorbed all the way to the end. It is based in large part on letters that Child wrote while she was living in France. It must have been a hoot to get her letters, she is so infectiously enthusiastic (is infectiously a word?). I was so interested in the proess of writing their famous cookbook that I subsequently ordered it, too (Mastering the Art of French Cooking), but I don't think I'm a dedicated enough cook to use it much. It is interesting reading, though. A-

Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher. I've read a couple of Fisher's novels, and while they weren't great lit, they were witty and entertaining. This one, a memoir, is not only not great lit, it is almost never witty and only occasionally entertaining. It reads like a transcript of her talking off-the-cuff into a tape recorder, which is possibly what it is. There is one really funny story for those of us who are Star Wars fanatics (the original trilogy), and if you're a fan of Fisher's anyway (which I am), there's some interesting bits about her life, but otherwise I'd say don't bother. C

The Book Shop, Penelope Fitzgerald. The college where I took classes last semester is offering a seminar this semester on Penelope Fitzgerald. I'd never heard of her before, so I thought I'd try reading one of her books since I can't take the class. The Book Shop is the story of a widow who takes her life's savings and invests it in opening a book shop in a small town in rural England. It is initially successful, but eventually it fails. The story is beautifully written, and it's very British. So if you're an Anglophile, as I am, you will enjoy it. But it has that quality of literary fiction that has almost completely turned me off of reading literary fiction, which is an underlying sense of dark despair. In the world of literary fiction, the best intentions of the brave, intelligent few will always be undermined by the small-minded, petty majority. I knew about two-thirds of the way through that it was going to end in misery, but there was this tiny little part of me that was hoping, hoping, that the characters that you love in this story would not necessarily live happily ever after, but might at least find a comfortable niche for themselves. But it was not to be. Predictably enough, it ends in almost complete ruin for the widow, who is a lovely character, a thoughtful and courageous woman. If you like literary fiction, or if you haven't read enough of it to find it monotonous, you'll love it. A+. But somewhat to my surprise, I find that I am not quite that much of a pessimist. It just seemed like another in a long line of beautifully written, self-pitying literary novels to me. Oh, us poor intelligent, sensitive people are always being railroaded by the ignorant masses. But it still gets a B for the lovely prose and meticulous plotting, and a great cast of characters who deserved a better end.

Tell No One, Harlan Coben (suspense). This one is hard to categorize. It's a one-off, not part of his Myron Bolitar series. Its best characteristic is that you can't put it down. It ends, practically on the very last page, with a bombshell of a plot twist, which is kind of fun. It is perfect for a day of travel when you will be sitting in airports and airplanes with nothing to do. But the more you think about it after you put it down, the less sure you are that it's a good book. There are several improbable happenings, to put it mildly. It stretches credulity to the limits, although it's completely within the bounds of similar books. So if you can read a thriller and not think about it much, I'd give it an A-. But if you, like me, start wondering after you've put it down, "Well, what are they going to do now? how are they going to live, knowing that?" it will sort of leave a bad taste in your mouth. And in that case, it gets a B-.

Since I'm on the subject of Harlan Coben here, I'll say something about Fade Away, which is the third book in his Myron Bolitar series. It was on my list of books worth reading for 2009, and I'll tell you why. The first two books in the series are just fun, especially if you're a bit of a sports fan. Myron is an agent for professional athletes, but since he has some past ties to some investigative agency (the FBI? I can't remember), he sometimes is asked to investigate various unsavory situations involving sports stars. He (Myron) is the king of roll-your-eyes lame jokes, but after you get used to it, they start being pretty funny. (I love books that make me laugh.) And there is the usual cast of interesting sidekicks. It's a typical wise-cracking PI-type series, although better written than many.

So when you start Fade Away, that's all you're expecting. And for the first half of the book, that's all you get. But then about halfway through, the story takes a 90-degree left turn and adds a whole new level of interest. Instead of the usual clues and plot twists that lead quickly to the denouement, you figure out that Coben is dealing with some pretty serious stuff: loss and regret, missed chances, revenge and forgiveness. I kept thinking about it for days after I finished it. I still think about one particular scene, which I can't describe without spoiling it. It's a great example of what genre fiction can be. No one's going to mistake it for literary fiction (and maybe you won't be surprised to hear that I'm grateful for that), but it goes well beyond the expected conventions of a thriller. And that's why it was on the "worth reading" list for last year.

AB

I'm reading Pema Chodron again. Her thoughts on the idea of renunciation, an important Buddhist concept:

[Renunciation] has to do with letting go of holding back. What one is renouncing is closing down and shutting off from life. ... renunciation is seeing clearly how we hold back, how we pull away, how we shut down, how we close off, and then learning how to open. It's about saying yes to whatever is put on your plate, whatever knocks on your door, whatever calls you up on your telephone. ....The journey of awakening--the classical journey of the mythical hero or heroine--is one of continually coming up against big challenges [the things that make you freeze up] and then learning how to soften and open. In other words, the paralyzed quality seems to be hardening and refusing, and the letting go or the renunciation of that attitude is simply feeling the whole thing in your heart, letting it touch your heart. You soften and feel compassion for your predicament and for the whole human condition.
(from The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 51-53)

AB

Well, I'm posting more, but at the same time having a horrible crisis of confidence about it. I try to avoid posting ad naseum about my neuroses about writing, and about writing publicly, even though those are things I deal with all the time. So enough already. It's a problem, but it's a boring problem.

You might have noticed that I got a little obsessed with Michael Chabon last year (here and here, for example). I spent about a month late last spring reading his stuff and his website (which for someone so verbose is a model of understatement), and his wife's stuff and her blog. Also read some criticism and many reviews. Enough to take the shine off, honestly. One of my least favorite qualities is a penchant for controversy, and the two of them don't seem to feel any need to avoid it, I must say. And I'm even on the same side of the political fence as they are (more or less). I imagine if you were on the other side you would find them unbearable in the extreme.

But I still love his writing. I've already talked about Maps and Legends, and Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which was probably the best book I read last year (wait, what am I saying? with the list of books I read last year, that's not even a compliment). I didn't talk about Wonder Boys, which I also read, which was also wonderful, although it didn't make the list of books worth reading.... well, now that I think of it, maybe it should have. It was definitely worth reading, if only to see how Chabon pulls it off. The protagonist is so awful that the only reason I kept going was to see if he was going to be able to make this total ass into a sympathetic character. And he does. It's a remarkable feat. But it's a difficult book to recommend because it's so unpleasant to read, at least at times.

An aside. There was one thing about the book that fascinated me. But I still haven't had a theory class, so I'm afraid I won't be able to talk about it intelligently, which I hate. (those neuroses, remember? one of them is a complete panic at the thought of sounding stupid.) But I'm trying to learn to throw caution to the wind at least once a day--lighten up--so I'll say this anyway. The thing that fascinated me about Wonder Boys was the tuba. The main character is a washed-up writer named Grady. He's made such a thorough mess of his life that you can hardly stand to read it--he's been working on the same novel for years (and if you know a bit of the history of Chabon's second novel, it's worth the read just for some of the snidely hilarious commentary that goes on there); his answer to most problems is pot; his marriage is a mess; he's having an affair with a woman who gets pregnant and he basically blows her off because he doesn't know what to do. He's a mess. But through an odd combination of events, he ends up with someone else's tuba, and it sort of follows him around--not in an animated way, it just happens that wherever he is, the tuba shows up.

The way the narrative is structured, I think Chabon wants you to think that Grady is saved by the love of a good woman. Literally--she gives him CPR at one point--and figuratively. But it seemed to me that what saves him is the tuba: the tuba as a representative of the absurdity of life, the weird, off-beat strangeness that pervades our existence and that is essentially and exuberantly unpredictable. Grady keeps spiraling down further and further into black despair. But in real life there is always something random going on, and the randomness can just as easily be positive as negative. When the tuba appears in one of the final scenes, you can't help but burst out laughing, and isn't that the way life is? Sometimes the absurdity of it, the flat-out weirdness, is what lets you know you're alive. I want to be able to say something intelligent about what the author intends vs. what the reader experiences, but that's where I'll stop for now. Maybe after I've taken the class I will have more to say.

Well, that was going to be an aside, but it got so long that now my original point will sound like an aside. I was going to say that even though sadly I've gotten past the point of hero worship with Mr. Chabon, I still love his writing. When we went on vacation last summer, I had his 3rd book with me (Kavalier and Clay), and I was utterly spellbound by the first ten pages. Then my husband stole it from me and read it, and by the time he finished it, I had moved on to other things. But now my husband is also a fan, so I got him Chabon's new book of essays for Christmas. I stole it from him this morning, which was only just, and read three essays picked at random. Chabon is still amazing. The one on being his younger brother's hero moved me nearly to tears. And I'm not even a brother. Heck, I'm not even a guy, and the name of the book is Manhood for Amateurs.

So, I'm still a fan. He can be as out-there as he wants in his regular life if he'll just keep on writing. I still haven't read Kavelier and Clay, but it's not very far down on my stack, so maybe soon.

AB

One of the best things about being back in class last semester was not necessarily the subject matter (although that was pretty excellent), but the asides: the offhand remarks, the meanders, and the digressions that probably drove some students nuts, but for me were like tossing Godiva chocolates to someone who's been on the Atkins diet. My Bible as Lit professor was particularly good at this. One day he brought in a poem by A. R. Ammons, of whom I was unaware, that was essentially fifteen lines of subordinate clause that eventually turn on the final phrase: "...fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise." It's a wonderful poem-- "City Limits" -- which you can find by googling if you are so inclined.

Which led me to further reading of Ammons, which led to these lines, which are my new epigraph for this blog:

...well, I learn a lot of useless stuff, meant
to be ignored: like when the sun sinking in the
west glares a plane invisible, I think how much

revelation concealment necessitates: and then I
think of the ocean, multiple to a blinding
oneness and realize that only total expression

expresses hiding: I'll have to say everything
to take on the roundness and withdrawal of the deep dark:
less than total is a bucketful of radiant toys.

from "Cut the Grass" - A. R. Ammons

AB

new year's not-resolution

I don't usually do New Year's resolutions, mostly because I never keep them, which can be depressing. I've tried variations on the theme recommended by friends, but I've never found something that worked. But every year I think about resolutions because everyone else is talking about theirs. This year when I was thinking about what my new year's resolutions would be if I did them, which I don't, an odd thought came to mind, which was: "lighten up." And it keeps coming back. Here it is the 18th of January, and I'm still thinking about all the different ways that phrase resonates for me. So I guess I do have a new year's resolution this year, and that's it. Except it's not really a resolution, so it's my new year's not-resolution.

Years ago a therapist told me something that has had a pretty profound influence on me. It keeps popping up in different contexts and different layers of meaning, although the idea is a simple one. She told me that I tend to take responsibilty for things I'm not responsible for (my children's happiness, world peace) and then not take responsibility for the things I AM responsible for (my own happiness, my own thoughts, my own little realm of chaos).

That little gem has had so many different ways of playing out since I heard it that I think maybe I should have it tattooed on the back of my hand to remind myself. I've been known to worry about what other people think more than making sure I'm comfortable with who I am. Or worrying about the number on the scale more than taking responsibility for eating healthy food. Or thinking about the grade instead of the paper.

"Lighten up" seems to me to be one more layer of this same idea. I think I've been taking myself a little too seriously-- hence, "lighten up." While in other ways, I've not taken myself seriously enough. If that makes any sense. I'm not sure I can explain it any better than that. At first it seemed mainly to apply to a couple of projects I'm taking on (about one of which: more later), but in another way it applies to this blog. When I was really wrestling with my religious upbringing, I needed to write about it. I mean "needed" literally. I seem to work things out by writing about them. I post my writings publicly here for some reason that makes almost no sense to me, but the reason I write it is for me. But now even though I'm not wrestling day-to-day with that stuff anymore, I still have this lingering sense that that's what I should post about. As if posts on other, less serious issues don't belong here. It hasn't always been that way-- I used to have a much wider range of topics. So, who knows what I will post about, but I think I'm going to broaden the field again.

Lighten up, Aunt BeaN.

Here's to a 2010 full of light.

AB

For the past couple of years I've posted a list of books I read during the previous year that were worth reading. I almost didn't do it this year because, as you probably already know, 2009 was my year of reading genre fiction, and it doesn't do much for my reputation as an intelligent person to post a list of genre books. But what the heck. It's what I read, and some of them really were good reads. I did, of course, read a few literary fiction books and a few non-fiction, but when I went over the list, other than the Michael Chabon books, I couldn't really remember them. So why bother?

I've discovered that with genre fiction it is often pointless to recommend particular books, since people (including me) can be turned off by some little thing that another reader won't even notice (like Charlie All-Night has a weird bit about medical marijuana in it that didn't bother me a bit but thoroughly turned off one of my friends). So I usually just recommend authors. But what is the point of a "books worth reading" list if you're not going to list books? So I've picked books, but in some cases it was really tempting to say "anything by this author."

here 'tis, books I read in 2009 that were worth reading (in no particular order):

The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan (Young Adult)
Fade Away, Harlan Coben (Mystery/Thriller)
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (Young Adult)
Miss Wonderful, Loretta Chase (Romance)
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman (SciFi/Fantasy)
Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon (non-fiction)
Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon (literary fiction)
The Serpent Prince, Elizabeth Hoyt (Historical Romance)
Charlie All-Night, Jennifer Crusie (Romance)
Fast Women, Crusie (Romance)
Unnatural Causes, P.D. James (Mystery)
The Devil Went Down to Austin, Rick Riordan (Mystery)

An even dozen. Honorable mention to Crazy Wild by Tara Janzen, whose "Crazy" series I have decided is the the female equivalent of a guy pouring over the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue-- pure female fantasy.

AB

So of course I am feeling ambivalent about posting that bit about atheism. For one thing, I only have about a dozen regular readers and I don't want to lose any of you. But also because it has caused a fair amount of dissonance within me. I've come very close to deleting it several times, not because I didn't mean it, but because I don't think I quite said what I meant to say. So here is a brief second attempt.

In some way that I can't quite articulate, at this particular moment in my life, acknowledging my atheist thoughts has become a necessary part of being a believer. The tension between the two of ways of thinking (believing and not) feels like two sides of the same coin. They arise organically out of each other. I find some comfort in various OT stories: Jacob is blessed by God after wrestling with him all night; David is perhaps more beloved by God than any other character, yet he sins egregiously and repents from the bottom of his heart (Ps 51); Job shouts defiance at heaven, and yet in the end, God is pleased with him and blesses him. It occurs to me that all of those times in the prophets where God says (through the prophet) that it isn't empty sacrifices that he wants, it is human beings' hearts-- all of those times may be a reflection of something very simple: God wants honesty from us, even if that honestly involves speaking thoughts that aren't orthodox.

This is coming very close to me sounding like I'm patting myself on the back for having heretical thoughts and that's not what I mean to do at all. So maybe I should just stop. It's just that some days it feels like an act of faith to stand before God, courage in both hands, and say "I don't believe in you."

AB

fear redux

of course I'm still dealing with fear. That should be obvious from the end of that last one. I've talked about fear before (here and here that I can remember, there are probably more, too), and it still comes up. The classes I'm taking this semester haven't helped any. There's nothing to bring up the fear of eternal damnation like reading a 3,500-line poem about a journey through Hell (Dante's Inferno). And then in my other class, we were reading the Old Testament, with all those rules to follow, and the God who is occasionally quite wrathful when the rules are not followed. The thing that strikes me about fear this time is how irrational it is. Because even at the height of my Evangelicalism, those are not things that I should have been afraid of. The Inferno is Catholic, not protestant, and even my most conservative relatives would be able to brush it off on that basis. The Old Testament is the "old law." Paul, in his letters to the early church, spends a great deal of energy explaining why Christians are no longer required to keep the law. Therefore, even based on my history as an Evangelical, there is no rational reason why either of those readings should bother me. But they did. Proving (to me, anyway) that my fears are more about what is going on in my own head than about anything real.

But even irrational fears are still scary. (wait. are all fears irrational? no, of course not. But probably the scariest ones are.) All of this reminds me of an experience from childhood, when I was probably about ten. We were at a bible conference that was being held at a university, and my family and I were staying in one of the dorms. I took a nap one afternoon. When I went to sleep, the door to our room was open, and there were lots of people around, walking up and down the hallways, talking, etc. When I woke up, there was no one and it was utterly silent. Our room was deserted, the hallway was deserted. I remember walking down the hall and then down the stairs and not seeing anyone anywhere. I finally decided that the Rapture must have occurred and I'd been left behind. I was one part terrified, but another part resigned. I had finally been called to account, I figured; I had always suspected I wasn't quite good enough to qualify for salvation. But then my parents came back from wherever they were, and everybody else showed up, and life went on. I forgot about it for years, but it came to mind recently. I still remember that stark feeling: this is it.

The Rapture, for those of you who weren't raised with it, is the apocalyptic moment when Christ returns with a blast of trumpets, and those who are saved will be caught up in the air to be with Him and taken to Heaven forever, while those who are unsaved are left behind-- what happens to them is a matter of great theological debate, which I will spare you. Just let it be said that depending on whether you are pre-mill, post-mill, or a-mill, you will have a different opinion.

Oh, the joys of theology.

AB
(who is feeling a bit queasy at the moment)

I've been trying off and on for a year and a half now to write a post about letting go of expectations about what God "should" be like. It's a difficult task for those of us who were raised with very specific ideas. It was going to be called "forgiving God," because in spite of the blasphemous sound of that phrase, that is often what it feels like. But that post isn't going anywhere, in spite of my long-term efforts. So maybe that's all I need to say about it, or maybe more will come up later. So... moving on.

What I've been thinking about recently is atheism. The word has such a slanted, loaded meaning in our culture, especially because of the very vocal appearance of a number of prominent atheists in the last few years (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc). In some circles it seems to mean the same thing as being un-American, immoral, and a devil worshipper, which is absurd, of course.

But honestly, their take on it is not particularly appealing to me-- in part because while their stated ideas are provocative and often convincing, their motivation on a personal level often seems to be something like an inability to forgive God for not being what they expect him to be, and perhaps more obviously, an inability to forgive believers for believing in God anyway. I'll confess that's a pretty biased statement about their work that is based on a very limited reading of their books, and hearing a few interviews. But read the first chapter of God is Not Great and see if you don't find that the prevailing sentiment is not so much the freedom of letting go of religious ideas but anger--even bitterness--at the (perceived) stupidity of people who complacently accept meaningless ideas about God. They seem both angry and gleeful to point out the ways in which God cannot possibly be like what is advertised by the religious establishment, but at the same time they are unwilling to acknowledge that God might be something entirely other than that. In the end, I find them unconvincing. Trumpeting that the God of Sunday School piety doesn't exist is so self-evident as to be boring, if you ask me.

But it doesn't change the fact that atheism has become a viable alternative for me in the past few months. I don't think I mean the term in the same way that they do, because when they use it, it seems to have an automatic pejorative meaning toward religion and spirituality, and I don't feel that. I still can't deny my own experiences with spirituality-- both in the past and present. But neither can I deny the part of me that just doesn't think there's anything out there, and certainly not anyone.

It's almost like two separate compartments in my brain: the part of me that believes implicitly in the spiritual experiences I've had, and the part of me that thinks it's all utter nonsense. I'm going to assign this to right brain and left brain, respectively, just because I need something to assign it to, not because I have any proof that's really what it is. It's just what it feels like. When I'm thinking with my right brain, spirituality and connectedness and a wholistic approach to my experience feels completely and utterly right and natural. When I'm thinking with my left brain, that right brain thinking seems absurd. Even silly. Which is one of the reasons I've had a hard time posting recently. It is becoming more and more difficult to overcome that "This is DUMB" feeling.

But I wrote a paper a couple of weeks ago for my Bible as Lit class about the Book of Job. I argued that the reason why God approves of Job at the end of the story is because Job refused to stop asking questions until he was satisfied. He held onto the contradictions until he felt them resolve. Like a Zen koan. And God was pleased with him.

So I'm trying to do the same, and my right brain is trying to trust that God (or What I Think of as God) will be OK with that, because he/she/it was OK with it when Job did it. while my left brain wrestles this out.

AB
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being... (Psalm 51.6, NASV)

link to shane claiborne column

just like riding a bicycle, right?

It's been so long since I posted that I'm feeling a little intimidated by sitting here in front of a blank screen. But I'm by myself in a hotel room, and I purposely didn't bring a book to read so that I would have to study, so I don't have anything else to do. But I don't want to study. So this is a good excuse, right? Usually I love staying in a hotel room by myself. It feels so decadent-- a whole room to myself, all clean and shiny, and I don't have to make the bed or do any laundry or feel compelled to do any of the dozens of things I feel guilty about not doing when I'm at home. But for some reason, it's not quite working tonight. I'm feeling a bit blue and lonely and wishing someone else was here. And I really, really don't want to work on the paper I should be working on.

So I've got my i-Pod plugged in and I'm listening to mellow music and thinking of all the things I've halfway wanted to blog about in the past couple of months but just never quite got around to posting. I know I have two new readers this week, so I'll say one thing that I've been meaning to say: please don't subscribe to this blog. Not because I don't want anyone to read it, but because of my really nasty habit of editing posts over and over again, sometimes a dozen times or more. If you subscribe, you'll get each and every version of each and every post--and sometimes it's just a matter of fixing typos or re-wording a sentence. Yuck. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not someone who is kind enough to want to read my blog.

So... let's see, what else. I guess there is something I could get out of the way and that is to fill in the background of what's been going on since school started. (start up cheesy elevator music and cue voice-over: "When last we saw our plucky heroine...."). Well, OK, I'm not plucky. but anyway. So you knew I was headed back to school. They still haven't admitted me to grad school, but they're letting me take a couple of classes, I think just because I was so obnoxious that they didn't know how else to get rid of me. But by the time I got all that worked out, the classes that I wanted to take were full. So I ended up taking two classes that I would never have dreamed of taking otherwise: "Dante" (yup, the 14th century Italian guy), and "The Bible as Literature." Can you believe it? But I have to admit, they are both fascinating, with interesting professors whom I like very much. And even better, they are fascinating to take together. The overlap is amazing, and sometimes a little eerie. For example. In the Dante class, we started the semester reading 13th century Provencal and Italian troubadour love poetry. Today, the Bible as Lit prof went off on a digression about 13C Italian love poetry and its influence on the Western idea of romantic love. Another time they both talked about Zoroastrianism on the same day.  So I'm happy. It has been a great experience, except for writing papers, which I always hated and probably always will. Let me just say for the record, though, that when you haven't written a paper in 25 years and you were and are a bit of a perfectionist about them, it is not a pretty picture. If you haven't done it, I don't think it's possible to describe how absolutely terrifying it is to turn in a paper when you haven't written one in more than two decades.

OK, so now I'm caught up, I think, so maybe now I will start posting again and maybe the next one will be more interesting. Because (of course) both these classes have brought up lots of things to think about. The lack of posts has definitely not been due to a lack of things to post about!

AB

As has happened before, I typed a setup post and then found myself with nothing to say. Maybe later.

WITOAG

Before I go off on my next idea, here's a bit of housekeeping, a defining of terms. I want to be able to use the word "God," but of course, when I use that word it may mean something entirely different to me than what it means to you, leading to some confusion. It certainly means something different to me now than it did when I blithely told a young Jewish man I met at an icebreaker in college how happy I was that God was my best friend. (Yes, I really did do that and it gives me shudders down to my toes to think about it now).

I didn’t use the word “God” at all for a long time—I avoided it even in my head when I was just thinking. What the heck does it mean? I’ve said this before, but is “God” some kind of sentient, all-knowing, all-seeing Being in the Sky? Is it a cluster of ideas shared by a community that takes on a life of its own in the collective mind of the group? Is it something individual to each one of us? Is God, as the new age folks used to tell me, within me? And what the heck would that mean? Is God a Higher Self, a Divine Source, a Deity Within? I don’t know. I really, really don’t know. Further, I don't think it's possible to know. But I sort of tentatively decided about a year ago that I had been at this long enough that I could go back to using the word God to describe a certain force in my life for which I have no other name. I don’t really understand what that force is, (ouch, I just remembered Star Wars and The Force and that’s not what I mean here, but how else am I going to say it?) but it is convenient to have a name for it whatever it is, and God works as well as anything else and also conveniently fits into a number of other ideas. It also enables me to have conversations with other believers without endlessly saying “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Although in that instance, it may unfortunately give them the idea that I agree with them about the nature of God when in fact I probably don’t. How could I, since I don’t really know what God is?

The point that I’m so convolutedly trying to make here is that when I use the word “God,” what I really mean is “What-I-think-of-as-God.” But it would be entirely tiresome to type that out every time I want to refer to “What-I-think-of-as-God.” I did briefly consider using a cutesy acronym (WITOAG) but thankfully I gave that up quickly. So, that’s all I'm saying. Just don’t take the word “God” too literally-- here, or anywhere else, come to think of it. And I'm still capitalizing it. I considered not doing that, but it just didn't seem right.

AB

prepping for school

Lo these many years ago when I was in graduate school—we’re not saying how many years, but over twenty anyway—you had a choice of taking “History of Literary Criticism” (LitCrit) or linguistics. I had taken linguistics my senior year of undergrad, and the syllabus was so nearly identical to the class that was being taught at my grad school that they waived the requirement. I didn’t get any credit hours for it, but they checked off the box that said I had taken either linguistics or LitCrit. So I have no idea what was covered in LitCrit. My impression was that we were going to read Aristotle, Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold, all of which I had read in courses covering the relevant era, so I didn’t think it was a big deal to skip it.

But it appears in the years intervening that either the study of literary criticism has entirely changed, or I was dead wrong about what it was. Literary Theory, as it is now called (and apparently it is more accurately called simply “Theory” since it is a multidisciplinary approach), is a complex and nearly infinite field of study which involves calling into question every assumption you ever had about opening the pages of a book. Does it matter what the author intended? Does it matter what kind of attention the reader pays to the work? (which reminds one vaguely of Schrodinger's poor cat, alas.) Does the historical context matter? Can you assume certain things about the nature of gender, race, or social class, and/or is it even possible to speak objectively about these topics? What exactly is literature, and how is it different than any other printed matter? All this and more awaits if you enter the exciting world of Theory. I started with a brief 130-page introduction aptly called “A Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory” by Jonathan Culler and all I can tell you so far is: it's a mind bender. I’ve always thought of myself as an intelligent reader, but apparently I’m just one of the masses of the literary ignorant. I love it when I learn new stuff that totally turns my previous ideas on their oblivious little heads, but I have to say I’m a little worried this time. If I keep reading this stuff, will I get to the point that I can’t just sit down and enjoy reading a novel? Will my head be so filled with reader response theory and intertextuality and foregrounding that I can’t get sucked in to the latest Tres Navarre? Because that would be a real problem for me. I’m not sure I want to go there, but if I’m off to grad school (they still haven’t let me in), that’s what’s ahead.

We were on a long hike this past weekend, and there was plenty of time to talk about all kinds of things. I mentioned that I was re-reading the sixth Harry Potter (which does get considerably better after the first 100 pages, btw), and as it turns out, everyone who was in earshot--none of whom were under the age of 18--had read them. It quickly became apparent that I was the only one who had been disappointed with the seventh book. So, since I haven't read it in two years, I am eating my hat. I'll reserve judgment until I've read it again-- but since my summer reading list is chock full and I'm only about a third of the way through it, that will be at least a month or so.

I thought about some good stuff while hiking (one of the best reasons to hike is that it provides excellent thinking time), but my son and I are leaving to go out of town in a couple of days so I doubt I'll get to type it out before I leave. Maybe later.

AB
(who dearly loves summer)

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile that I am a fan of genre fiction. ("Genre" fiction being novels which fall into one of the genres--science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, etc-- as opposed to "literary" fiction, which I am in no position to define, but is generally regarding as being of higher quality and greater literary value than genre fiction.) I love all of it. In spite of being impossibly geeky, I survived junior high relatively unscathed because what was happening between the covers of the books I was reading was more important to me than what was happening at school. And the books I was reading were science fiction--Asimov, Bradbury, Andre Norton, Ben Bova. I devoured them, sometimes reading a new one every day. And I've had a lifelong fascination with fantasy, starting with the fairy tales of childhood and continuing on with Narnia, Ursula LeGuin and Edward Eager in grade school, Stephen Donaldson in college, and Guy Gavriel Kay and Tolkein in grad school. I spent nearly two years after the birth of my son reading nothing but mystery novels, in spite of having read barely a handful of mysteries before. And I've already confessed to my sudden obsession with romance novels last summer.

I like to think it's because I enjoy stories, and genre fiction tends to have good stories. Of course I've read dozens of literary novels that were terrifically good, but I've also read more than a few where nothing ever happens. Those books tend to be all about the writing, the Art, the construction of beautiful prose, but I keep waiting for a plot. At its best, literary fiction gives you that moment of recognition, that feeling of "I've had exactly that experience" but here it is so beautifully worded that it is both uplifting and appeals to one's inner sense of beauty, of things done/said exactly right. (And might I add that my own power of words --such as it is-- is escaping me as I'm trying to describe the experience.) But at its worst, it's downright boring.

Sometimes I just want to escape from my own boring life, or to be entertained, and if escape is what I'm after, I want a really good story in which to lose myself. One where you're turning the pages to find out what happens. I don't necessarily think that having a good story precludes good writing, or realism in the details of character development and experience. But the tidy endings and neat resolutions of most genre fiction are perhaps something that not many of us experience in real life, and maybe that's exactly what I enjoy, especially when I'm just reading for fun.

The book I read on our last vacation-- Maps and Legends, which is non-fiction-- has a number of essays in it that amount to a defense of genre fiction, so I've been thinking about this a fair amount recently. It seems to me that there are two levels of really good genre fiction: books that are the "best of" their genre but that probably still wouldn't appeal to anyone who isn't a fan of the genre, and then a very few that transcend their genre, that are just flat out good novels. In the "best of" category, it's easy to just list my favorite authors. In mysteries, P.D. James, Rick Riordan and Martha Grimes come to mind; in science fiction, the authors mentioned above plus Dan Simmons and Neal Stephenson; in romance, Jennifer Crusie, Loretta Chase, Elizabeth Hoyt and her alter ego Julia Harper. I should say here by way of apology that though I love genre fiction, I haven't read it very widely, and there are almost certainly other authors that should be on this list that I've never tried (particularly in mysteries).

But the list of genre novels that "transcend" their genre is really short, if you ask me. Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons' masterpiece (published as two separate novels but really one book), would absolutely be in that category. I remember thinking at the end of one of Grimes' Richard Jury novels, "wow, that was just a good book," although I can't remember which one it was at the moment-- probably the fourth or fifth in the series (which seems to be where all series peak and where nearly all of them begin to fall off, if you ask me, although maybe that should be a separate post). And after months of reading romance novels, I've read only one that comes anywhere close to that level, Crusie's Fast Women, which reads like one of the British comedies of manners (Oliver Goldsmith, maybe? or even Oscar Wilde? It's been so long since I've read any of them I'm not sure which one is apt) with its witty dialogue, elements of farce, and snide, complex commentary on the manners and mores of the age. Though based on the reviews on Amazon, I'm not certain many other readers would agree--it has one of the least likable heroines of any romance novel I've read.

I've also started to think that young adult fiction (YA) is really its own genre, which brings me around to what prompted me to write out all these ideas after having them knock around in my head for several months now. I've been re-reading the 6th Harry Potter book before the movie comes out in a couple of weeks, and finding it somewhat disappointing. Of course, I'm only about a hundred pages into it at the moment, and it is well over 600 pages long, so maybe I'm just being impatient. But previously I would have included the Harry Potter novels in the list of books that transcend their genre-- books that could be read and enjoyed by anyone with enough of an open mind to give them a try. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe they are just good examples of the genre, but still unlikely to be appreciated by someone who isn't already a fan of YA lit. When we were reading and re-reading the series as they came out, I think I was at least partly enthralled by the ongoing mystery of what was going to happen, how all the little details were going to work out. Now that the 7th book is out and has been for some time, that bit of magic is no longer part of the equation, and I'm finding the series is a little flat. Partly because I found the 7th book to be a little disappointing-- it did a more than adequate job of tying up all the loose ends, but what can you say about a seven-novel denouement where the two main participants spend several pages circling each other and explaining in detail the magical theory behind what is happening? shouldn't we already know that? (I should definitely save this for another post, after I've read the 7th one more recently, which should be later in the summer.)

So what would I consider to be YA books that transcend the genre? "Best of" but not transcend is easy-- Tiffany Aching, Percy Jackson, and Harry, among recently published books. Of course there are dozens if you're going back over the years. Transcend?? I'll have to think about it, but I'm not sure Harry makes it.

AB

So I listened to an interview with Bart Ehrman last week. I've mentioned him before, he wrote Misquoting Jesus, among other books, and I've listened to several interviews of his now. We have a lot in common. He, too, is a former Evangelical. When I read Misquoting Jesus, I believe he still considered himself a Christian, although no longer an Evangelical. But he has subsequently published another book, God's Problem, and is now an agnostic. The parallels are obvious, so of course I find him interesting. I haven't read his most recent book, but I listened to a podcast of him on Fresh Air where he discusses it thoroughly enough that now I feel like I don't need to. ;)

Ehrman's point of departure from Christianity is over the problem of suffering. He discusses it so well that I won't bother. Listen to the podcast, or read the book. It interests me the things that provide that break, that point of departure, for different people. As I've said before, for me it was prayer, and the inconsistencies in the theology of prayer and my experience of it. For him it was the problem of suffering. Doubtless someone will come along and write an eloquent defense of why what Ehrman calls "God's problem" isn't really a problem at all (as Timothy Paul Jones did with Misquoting Jesus), but I don't think being able to prove or disprove your point is the point, if you'll forgive (as usual) my convoluted grammar. The point is that at some point (sorry), if you are open to it, Evangelical theology breaks down as it bumps up against your experience of the world. As any theology would, no theology is perfect. And you either accept that, put it behind you and keep believing anyway, or you can't ignore it, and you leave your old belief system behind (sometimes slowly). Ehrman and I and a few others I know of are in the latter category. It's a pretty small group, and I'm grateful every time I find someone else who has made similar decisions.

Ehrman no longer attends church. He stopped when he realized that he could no longer say the creeds, and he began to feel that his continued attendance was almost a slap in the face to those who are true believers. I've felt this before, but I still go to church. This may be partly because of the nature of the church I attend. I don't talk about my beliefs very often: I don't enjoy controversy and I have no desire to stir it up. But it comes up occasionally and I don't lie when it does (although I do word things carefully). And no matter how outrageous the things I say, no matter how surly I become about (what I perceive as) people's complacency about the contradictions of Christian theology, the people of our church still seem to accept me and want me to be there. I've said things in my women's group that I thought would get me tossed out on my ear, but they still seem to like me. And miss me when I'm not there. It's remarkable. And humbling.

AB

I have several things that I want to write about, but I'm not sure exactly where to start, so I'm going to sidetrack briefly and post something unrelated, that I've been meaning to post for over a year now. It's nothing spectacular, just my two favorite stories. Or parables. Or "illustrations," as we used to call them when we were "helping" my dad with his sermons. which I believe I will relay with no comment.

A Baptist preacher is sitting on the roof of a house during a flood. It's quite a flood, and the water is rising rapidly. The preacher is praying loudly in a voice meant to carry, "Oh, great and loving God, look down on me, a poor sinner, and have mercy! Save me from the terrible waters of this flood!" A man in a canoe comes by, and stops to pick him up. But the preacher waves him off. "Don't worry about me, God will save me!" the preacher shouts. A few hours later, the water has reached the roofline. A woman in a motor boat comes by and stops to pick him up. But he waves her off, crying loudly, "Don't worry about me, God will save me!" The water continues to rise, until finally it is lapping at his feet. About this time the Coast Guard comes by, and stops to pick up him up, but the preacher waves them off. "Don't worry, God will save me!" he calls after them as the boat motors away. And he continues to pray loudly as the water inches up. Finally, he drowns. When he gets to heaven, he stands at the pearly gates with his hands on his hips and says to St. Peter, "What happened? My faith was strong! I prayed! Why didn't God save me?" And St. Peter says, "What were you waiting for? we sent a guy in a canoe! we sent a woman in a motor boat! we sent the Coast Guard!"

The other story is, I believe, Hindu, and probably everyone has heard it. But it's worth repeating.

Three blind men stand before an elephant. They have never been near an elephant before, although they have heard it is a fearsome beast. The first man touches the elephant's tusk. It is smooth and hard and cold. And curved. The man thinks, "Ahh, an elephant must be solid, and long and smooth and as hard as a diamond!" The second man reaches out and touches the elephant's hide. It seems to be tough material, pebbled and rough, and is warm to the touch. "Ahh, an elephant must be made out of armor, hard and leathery! He must be nearly invincible!" The third man reaches out and touches the end of the elephant's tail. "Ahh," he thinks to himself, "The elephant is not big and tough at all! He is soft and feathery! He is like a brush!" Were any of the blind men entirely right? were any of them entirely wrong?

So, to pick up a story that I barely started a few weeks ago and then let lapse..... I was so taken with Michael Chabon's book of essays Maps and Legends that when we returned from our vacation, I decided I would try to read some of his other stuff. I confess I've tried before. Years ago, I read approximately the first chapter each of Summerland and The Final Solution, but neither convinced me to keep going. But (obviously) I never really gave either of them a chance, so I was willing to give him another shot. generous of me, yes? I also wanted to find books by his wife, Ayelet Waldman. Somehow I knew from before that his wife was a lawyer turned mystery-writer, although I can't remember how. I think I might have read an interview with her in some magazine. I had thought the pair of them intriguing at the time, and since she is mentioned several times in Maps and Legends in ways that intrigued me further, I decided to check her books out as well.

So at our local library, they had on the shelf Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and a more recent one which is something along the lines of The Yiddish Policeman's Union. So I came home with those, plus The Jungle Book, so I could read that before reading Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book in context (more about that in another post). They didn't have any of Waldman's mysteries checked in, although they did have her more recent literary fiction novel (the name of which is escaping me, but it's about a mother dealing with the death of her child), which I decided to pass on since it sounded too depressing.

But I was still taking classes, and time was at a premium, so the books just sat there for a couple of weeks. Then, through a series of odd coincidences which are at the same time quite bizarre but utterly uninteresting, I found myself the winner of a Facebook drawing to receive a free copy of Waldman's new book of essays, The Bad Mother. Waldman has created a bit of a stir with her bracing honesty about her experiences as the mother of four children. So my autographed copy of the book arrived on Tuesday of the week when I had a take-home exam due on Wed, another one due on Thurs, and a gazillion other things to do. I left it out on the counter, as my reward for making it through the week. When I woke up disturbingly early on Saturday morning, finally done with school and (of course) unable to sleep, I started reading--about 6:30 a.m.

And by 11:30 I had finished it. Waldman is amazing. First of all there are her refreshingly candid stories about being a mom, wrapped in none of the cotton candy that most maternal stories are, and yet still managing to convey her utter devotion to her children. Even though I haven't had an abortion and I'm not bipolar (yet), her experiences more closely match up with mine than any other mom-lit I've read (possible exception: Anne Lamott). And on top of that, she's a terrific writer. Or at least, the kind of writer of non-fiction essays that I enjoy reading: funny, sympathetic, argumentative in a garrulous sort of way, occasionally snarky, always intelligent. I loved the book. Of course I had to send her an e-mail thanking her for the autographed copy of the book, in which I was entirely too gush-y, and to which she replied quite kindly and graciously. So, I will be finding more of her books as well. Maybe I will even attempt the depressing one.

But none of that prepared me for starting The Mysteries of Pittsburgh last Thursday. It was a revelation. I haven't read many good novels recently, so maybe this isn't saying much, but it is the best contemporary novel I've read in years. How had I never heard of it? I knew about Kavalier and Clay, and the Wonder Boys, and I'd seen the Yiddish one, but until I saw Pittsburgh on the shelf at the library, I didn't even know it existed. It's the story of a summer told from the point of view of a young man who has just graduated from college. Much of the novel is taken up with his sexual coming of age, but that makes it sound more lurid than it reads. You ache for the narrator, a sweet, somewhat naive Jewish boy, who is at the same time a brilliantly verbose storyteller and an oddly laconic keeper of secrets (do laconic and lacunae come from the same root? I tried to fit both in here but couldn't pull it off). Chabon has the most amazing facility with language. On nearly every page, there was some turn of phrase, or some image, or some extended metaphor that had me shaking my head in awe. It's not a perfect novel; it's uneven, for one thing. And it loses momentum toward the end. I immediately started reading it again, and on second reading, already what sounded original and fresh the first time through was sounding a bit over the top and self-conscious. But it's still astonishingly good, especially considering that it was his first novel and he was barely out of college himself. I'll put a few excerpts in a comment, but they don't do it justice. You'll just have to read it. And re-read it. There are certain details that just aren't apparent the first time through (e.g: toward the beginning, he describes a picture of his girlfriend; toward the end, he mentions taking the picture. I didn't catch it the first time through but it's a lovely single moment with a gap--lacunae!--in between).

geek nirvana

Star Trek and I go way back. I'm not quite SO old that I saw it when it first aired in prime time, but when I was in the 10-12 year old range, we would come home from school and turn on the TV and watch reruns. We'd catch the last ten or fifteen minutes of the Flintstones, then the Brady Bunch, then Gilligan's Island, and then Star Trek. And if Springsteen's "Glory Days" is playing in the back of your head right now, you're in the same age range as me. (although of course that song didn't come out until the 80s).

I loved Star Trek. The tribbles, and Joan Collins dying in soft focus, and the Vulcan wise woman saying in her croaky voice, "Sometimes having is not so good a thing as wanting" while bells chinked in the background (my spouse and I can actually do a pretty good team imitation of that scene)(it cracks us up, even though no one else is laughing). In fact, ten years later when my spouse and I met during our junior year of college, one of the things we bonded over was watching Star Trek reruns at five o'clock every night in the lobby of the row house where we lived. We slogged our way through all the movies (and still joke about things--like Star Trek movies and children-- that are better in even-numbered years than odd), made our peace with the Next Gen after boycotting it during the first two seaons (then watched it just as avidly as the original version), watched some of DS9, and then sort of petered out, although we did see a few of the last series.... which I can't remember the name of at the moment.

So we were pretty excited to go see the new Star Trek movie last night, and for once, it did not disappoint. We had four boys ages 10-12 with us, and they liked it, which is remarkable since with one exception, none of us Trekker parents have ever been able to get our kids hooked on the show. But those boys weren't in Trek nirvana like the four of us forty-something classic Trekkers were. I admit to even getting a little misty eyed when they played the classic theme at the end. It was great. And didn't you just know the guy in the red jumpsuit was gonna die? I'd say it's easily the best Trek movie ever, but that 's not saying much since the movies have never been very good. Sure it had some improbable plot twists, but what Trek tradition is more time-honored than that? I loved it, and I'm hoping that (in another time honored Trek tradition) sequels will abound.

I got over my grad-school-application-induced panic attack after just a couple of days, and now feel like I have interesting things to say again. Well, moderately interesting. But unfortunately my teachers have forgotten to leave me enough time to write interesting blog posts, so I don't think anything will actually get posted until the semester is over next week.

But I thought I sounded a little too pathetic in my last post to just leave it hanging. Apologies for perhaps being a bit too "all-roads-lead-to-Rome" here, but it did occur to me that my fundamentalist background might have something to do with how easy it is too intimidate me into feeling like my opinions aren't worth expressing. more on this later. I think. Right now I have to get back to programming Battleship. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But it's surprisingly complicated.

AB

I don't have much to say, this is just my excuse for why I haven't written the post about Maps and Legends. I can't remember if I talked about my abortive attempt at grad school in this blog or if it was in the first iteration of Aunt BeaN's blog. But the short version is: it wasn't a very good experience. Not to mention that it was a very long time ago, and in a state on the other side of the country. But for some reason, a couple of weeks ago I got the idea to finally finish my master's in English. It seemed like the perfect thing. I might actually be able to get a job teaching at our community college-- and wouldn't it be one of the greatest imaginable ironies, if I could get a job using my English degree when I can't get one using all my computer skills?

So I started e-mailing the extremely nice and extremely helpful people at our state university, and quickly became overwhelmed by how out of the loop I am. I still love to read, and I still love to read criticism, which I think is something that not many people can say. But I had forgotten about academia. Just reading the course descriptions for the graduate seminars was making my stomach hurt. Do they write those things specifically to make you feel intimidated? Because if so, it was working. I'm now feeling like one of the world's six dumbest people. But I haven't given up yet. If they'll let me in, I'm going to at least give it a shot. It's going to take me six months to a year just to get my application together, because so much of what they require is no longer available to me. If any of my grad school professors are still alive, would they be willing to write a letter of recommendation for someone they barely knew more than 20 years ago? I think not. And a ten-page sample of critical writing? I think my four posts on reading Lolita are not quite going to do the trick.

So I'm no longer feeling competent to comment on Mr. Chabon's Maps and Legends (I did find out how to pronounce his name, though: SHAY-bon. I was sort of hoping for something down in your throat like Chaim, but that's not it). I really enjoyed reading it. It was the perfect travelling companion for some reason that I'm not sure I can explain. I always have a terrible time with jetlag, so I have many hours awake in the middle of the night-- so I usually make sure I have a stack of interesting books, a flashlight and a lot of batteries. This one book, even though it is quite slim, kept me happy through a whole week of sleepless nights-- it was practically a page turner. "The Receipe for Life," one of the essays toward the end, was like finding a kindred spirit at 3 a.m. Beijing time a world away from home. It's such an odd thing to find someone who can articulate so clearly an experience similar to your own, and yet they don't have the faintest idea who you are or that you even exist on the planet. But that's one of the cool things about reading, yes? Maybe I will revisit it later, but that's all for now. Well worth reading, if you enjoy reading about books and writing.

I really wish I were a good travel writer, but I'm not. I'm not very visual, and that's a lot of what makes for good travel writing-- being able to convey what you see. This isn't the first time I've noticed this; I've been on half a dozen really wonderful trips in my life, and I've never been satisfied with my ability to convey the experience. That is my excuse for why I wrote all that setup in the previous post and haven't written anything since. I would love to be able to type out something that would give you an idea of what China was like, because it was an amazing, amazing experience. I wish we could have stayed much longer. But there's just no way I will be able to do it justice.

But there are a few things to say before I move on (in the next post, which I hope will be soon) to the Michael Chabon book I read while we were gone, Maps and Legends. Sometimes you just want to pick up the phone and thank someone for writing something, and that's the way I felt while reading several of his essays. And that's saying something, because I hate talking on the phone and I almost never want to pick up the phone and call someone. But that's another post.

So back to the topic at hand, which is the trip to China. A friend once told me her approach to vacations: rather than expecting the whole time to be a mountain top experience and inevitably being disappointed, try to be on the lookout for particular moments that are good. It's an approach that has worked well for me. So in that spirit, I'll describe a few moments from our trip.

There was climbing on the Great Wall, of course, which happened the first full day we were there. It was far steeper than I was expecting, so it was a lot of work, and since I was with my husband and my son, of course we had to go up the steep side. I sent them on ahead and kept toiling along by myself, but there was no way I was going to stop until I got to the top. My quads were quivering, my knees were aching, my heart was pounding, and since it was quite warm, I was, um..., glowing, as they say. Not exactly the time to expect any great spiritual insights. But about three-quarters of the way up, I sat down on one of the (ramparts? I'm not sure the right word to use) to catch my breath, and got sucked right into one. Not an enlightenment type thing, I won't make any claims to that, but a moment of complete, utter peace. It was lovely. And that was just the first day. :-)

The third day we flew to Shanghai, and then drove to a town called Suzhou. After lunch we visited a former Buddhist temple turned public park called Tiger Hill. It was the only time on our entire trip that I was able to find a spot to be alone while we were out and about. (There are an amazing number of people in China!) I found a low wall to sit on in an out-of-the-way corner and watched the breeze move through the bamboo for about fifteen minutes (we didn't get to stay anywhere very long on this trip). And the same thing happened. As I sat and stilled myself, I was met by a vast sense of peace and deep silence. I wanted to stay right there for a very long time.

That deep sense of peacefulness was something I sensed several times on our trip, and I'm not sure how to explain it. My sense was that it was something to do with China-- the land and the Chinese culture. But I'm not sure. It could also have been as simple as being away from all the everyday chaos and stress of my usual life. But whatever it was, it was lovely. Delicious, even. I would be willing to pay the money over again just to go back and see if it would happen again. But I would want to stay longer next time.

On the downside, the trip was pretty well scripted. It was never outright stated, but it seemed clear that the trip had been subsidized by the Chinese government. They are unabashedly trying to improve the image of China in the world's eyes, as you could tell during the Olympics. So they've arranged these trips jointly with American Chambers of Commerce, and apparently thousands of people have visited China this way. It's not the kind of travel we usually do, but given the difficulties of travelling in China, we figured it was the only way we'd ever go.

My spouse and I had a very interesting conversation with our tour guide about human rights during the tedium of a long bus ride. He is 34, and has been a tour guide for about ten years. He seemed exasperated by the insistence of the foreign press on human rights. "Human rights, human rights, human rights, it's all we hear from them," he said at one point. "But we don't feel like we don't have human rights." His voice seemed honestly frustrated. He was very clear that he didn't like the way his government controls information, but he seemed to think that the human rights issue wasn't as big as all of us wanted to make it. There were more than a few very pointed questions from members of our group about Tibet, Tian'nanmen Square, etc, and he answered them all with what felt like a fair amount of openness, although it was clear that he was wording things carefully on occasion. It was very interesting, and thought provoking. He also spoke with a great deal of pride about the people of China, and how proud they are of how far their country has come. I had a brief but distinct picture of an ancient people with a long, long history, to whom the current government is simply another flash in the pan. They aren't all that disturbed by it, they are just waiting it out. (I got a bit of the same sense when my Chinese teacher told us that he feels many of the government's more repressive policies will change once the two remaining, elderly hardline party members pass away; no one wants to change any of their policies while they're still alive out of respect for them)(which is bizarre by American standards, but makes some sense when you understand a bit about the Chinese respect for tradition, their ancestors, and their elders.).

When I've tried to talk to people about this since we got back, there's been a fair amount of gently disdainful disbelief, as if we had naively succumbed to the propaganda of the Chinese government. And maybe we did. But I did come away from it thinking that the situation was, as seems always to be the case, far more complicated than we would like it to be. We want to believe that a Communist government is necessarily bad, and ignores human rights, and that's that. But like I said, having been there, it seems more complicated than that.

Anyway. I think that's all I have to say that I can put into words. It was a great trip. I knew I would be interested, even fascinated, by the different culture, but I didn't know I would fall in love, if it is possible to fall in love with a country. There is a warmth, a loveliness, that underlies the surface that draws you in, makes you want more. There's also a great deal of cruelty, both in the current government and their past history, but we'd be hypocritical indeed to hold that against them given our own record. I hope I get to go again, and next time stay several weeks.

I have some catching up to do. We went on our spring vacation last week, and I was hoping before I left to write some background as to what we were doing, but it didn't happen. And to explain that requires going back even further, to last fall. I mentioned during November that I was taking classes at our local community college. I finally gave up on finding a good job-- not only are good jobs hard to find in this area, but since I don't really have to work, in the current job market it seemed frivolous to take a good job away from someone who needs to feed their family. So I decided instead to go back to school, which would serve the dual purpose of staving off boredom and also possibly picking up some skills that might come in useful at a later date.

So last fall I decided to take a programming class and a foreign language. The programming class made sense in terms of possible later usefulness-- although I was an English major, my first job out of school was as a technical editor, and when I showed an aptitude for computers, I was quickly adopted by the IT staff. I've done database programming, SAS programming, CAD, desktop publishing, manned the help desk, done phone support, all sorts of technical stuff. But I'd never actually done real programming, and I'd never taken a computer science class-- most of my technical education occurred on the job.

The foreign language was just because I wanted to challenge myself. Up until the night before I registered, I was trying to decide between Russian and Chinese. Russian made more sense because there is a sizeable Russian population in the area where we live and it could have actually come in handy-- schools and the hospital are always looking for volunteer Russian interpreters. But I was intrigued by the idea of learning Chinese, and Russian was only offered at night (which is difficult if you have a family), so I found myself standing in line last August registering for the first semester of Programming in Java and Elementary Chinese.

It was the usual routine, register for your classes first, then go to the financial office and pay up (which at our small community college means walking about fifteen feet across the hall). As I was paying, the woman who was taking my surprisingly hefty tuition check said casually, "So, are you going to go on the trip to China next April?" Which I knew nothing about at that point. "It's an incredible deal," she continued, "Less than $2,000 for an eight-day tour all-inclusive." All inclusive?? Yup, airfare, meals, hotels, bus, and entrance fees at various different attractions. Even my fiscally conservative spouse agreed that it was too good a deal to pass up. So we signed up-- me, my spouse, and my eleven-year-old son. It was such an incredible opportunity that I couldn't quite believe we were doing it.

But (to take things in sequence), I had to get through fall semester first. Both classes were a great experience, even though (or maybe because?) I was the only student over the age of about 21 in either class, not to mention being older than either of my teachers. I felt like the den mother. In fact, it was so much fun that in January I signed up for the second semester of each class, plus Discrete Math, better known as math for computer science majors. I hadn't taken a math class since I took calculus in my freshman year in college (and you've heard me harangue enough about how old I am to know how long ago THAT was), so it was pretty intimidating. But it had occurred to me that it might be useful to actually have a degree in computer science, and Discrete Math is a requirement, so it made an odd sort of sense as well.

And at our community college, once you get up to a certain number of credits, the next four are free, so I figured what the heck? I might as well sign up for something else as well, since it would be free. Who needs free time? So I signed up for a one semester class in C++ programming. It was nuts. I was busy enough before I took any classes at all, and here I was with my usual life plus 17 credits. Which is why the night before we left for our long awaited trip, I was up until 3:30 a.m. finishing a take-home test for my math class (well, and packing, too) and was unable to write all this out before I left so you, my loyal readers, would know what was up. In fact, things were so nuts that I ended up dropping the C++ class, even though I really like C++. Better than Java, in a lot of ways, but it didn't make sense to drop the second semester of a two-semester sequence. I might be able to pick up C++ again some other time, I suppose. And (hallelujah!) I didn't have to take the C++ test which was scheduled for about 16 hours before we were supposed to leave.

to be continued.....

in honor of a friend's fiftieth birthday

Several years ago, our pastor said something in a sermon that has stuck with me for a long time. I don't remember what the sermon was about, and I don't really remember precisely how he phrased it, but at one point he said that there are two attitudes toward our existence: we can choose life, or we can choose death. We can choose to nurture and sustain ourselves with things that are life-giving, or we can choose to self-destruct in whatever ways work for us. I've thought about this off and on since he said it, sometimes pretty intensely. It's become a good touchstone for me in making certain kinds of decisions, large and small.

In context, if I remember right, he was making the point that to choose Christianity, to choose Jesus, is to choose life. I know him (our pastor) pretty well, and I know that is true for him. But in my past, Christianity was not about life, it was about dying inside, a little at a time, every time someone cut me off, ignored my questions, acted in a way that was patently not "Christian" and yet confidently claimed the label "Christian" for what they were doing.

I don't think choosing life is always exactly what we expect. Sometimes it depends on the situation. Sometimes choosing life might mean ending something-- a relationship, a job, a commitment-- which is a death of sorts. I can imagine a time when choosing life would mean rebelling against repressive authority with a blaze of anger, but another time when that same act would be destructive and deathlike. Maybe sometimes choosing life would mean eating healthy foods that promote physical well-being; other times, choosing life might mean eating a big slice of flourless chocolate cake drenched with real whipped cream and raspberry sauce. (not that I'm prone to do that sort of thing, of course). Sometimes it depends on your personality. Maybe for one person choosing life would mean dropping everything and travelling the world, where for another person, choosing life would mean deepening one's ties with the people where you are, choosing to commit to actions that renew your current situation.

And in a way, I think you can apply "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends," here. Sometimes you choose a "death" of some sort in order to help or support the people you love, which renews your commitment to life.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently in connection with getting older. My friends and I are all approaching 50. Some of us will reach it sooner than others, but we're all getting there at exactly the same speed: one day at a time. There's no doubt here: you lose a lot as you get older. Your knees start to go, or your back, or whatever. Your stamina disappears. Taking care of your skin goes from 30 seconds of slathering on some moisturizer after your shower to a twenty-minute routine that still doesn't do enough.

But the thing that has bothered me most has been the loss of potential. When you're twenty, you can go in any direction. Almost all paths are open to you. But by the time you're in your late forties, the number of paths you can still choose has dwindled to a very few. It has been very hard for me to let go of some of those paths, to realize with contentment that this is it, this is how I've chosen to live my life and many of those other paths are no longer available.

But there are also some things that you gain. When I was in my twenties, and even for the better part of my thirties, I didn't really know how to choose life. I didn't know myself well enough or the world around me. But now I do. I'm still learning, of course, but I have a pretty good idea of what things will feel life-giving to me, what situations will nurture my soul. It's a good feeling. I can't exactly claim that it makes up for not being able to do the treadmill without aching knees, but it comes pretty close.

I typed this last weekend while out of internet range, using notepad. You can tell. on re-reading, it sounds a bit disjointed and lacking in coherent thought. But I'm posting it anyway since it's been awhile.

p.s. Whatever choosing life means, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't have much to do with abortion. I can imagine a situation in which choosing to complete an unwanted pregnancy would mean choosing life, but I can also imagine situations where there are no good alternatives where choosing life would mean ending a pregnancy. just thought I should say that to clarify since the phrase "choose life" is so often bandied about in that context.

The problem with leaving a post in the middle is that when I get around to finishing it, I can't remember why I thought it was going to be interesting. This is not an interesting topic. So here is a quick list of what I was going to say and then I'm done. Here's what I miss: the sense of a shared purpose; the sense that the universe is explicable, that things ultimately make sense (I can't tell you how often I used to think to myself, "when I get to heaven, I can ask God why things are like...insert dilemma here ... and then I will understand")(including wanting to know if Shakespeare really wrote all those plays); and I miss worship. That will sound like the dumbest thing in the world if you've never fully experienced corporate worship (worshipping God with a group of people, preferably a really large group of people), but it is a sensation that I've been unable to reproduce without the requisite belief in God. And I miss it. It's a beautiful feeling. Sometimes I can let go of my cynicism enough to let it flow again (see my posts on going to the Creation music festival last summer) but it is rare. Sheri Tepper has a fascinating novel called Raising the Stones that posits a race of beings whose reason for existence is to be "god" for a given culture, with the corresponding idea that other beings have evolved a need to have a god, and that acknowledging and worshipping that god fills a need that is innate. Sort of an evolutionary extension of the god-shaped hole, yes? (is that Pascal? that's what came up when I googled it, and that sounds right... pensees, right? I have no idea how to do an accent aigu). It's interesting. All of her novels are interesting.

AB

I read an article awhile back about a theory advanced by some prominent sociologist about why people are attracted to fundamentalist religions. His theory is that people are drawn to conservative religions because of the value of the goods and services offered. Fundamentalist religions tend to create close-knit communities where people provide services for each other: covered dishes when someone is sick, help with childcare, I don't know what all else. It's been several months since I read it.

My first thought was that the guy was nuts. Did he even talk to anyone, a single person, and ask them why they go to church? Because my guess is that if you surveyed 100 Evangelicals and asked them that question, less than five of them would mention some service that the church provides. And I'm only saying that many because there are always outliers. Really, I can't imagine anyone would say that. "Oh, yes, I go to church so that when my wife is sick someone will bring me a tuna casserole." Right.

But, on second thought, it does make a kind of sense. If you're an atheist, on the outside (so to speak) looking at the fundamentalist phenomenon, and you've never had any kind of spiritual experience, of course you would look for some kind of answer that makes sense to you. And to someone who doesn't have a spiritual bent, an exchange of goods and services makes more sense than anything else.

Oh, there are so many different directions to go with this, it's hard to know where to start. I'm tempted to get off on the tangent about how people are wired, how some people have a spiritual bent and others don't. But I guess I'll stick with what I was intending to write about when I sat down.

It seems to have not occurred to this guy that someone might go to church because that feeling of connecting with something larger than yourself can be so sublime as to be practically addictive. Or because the lessons learned at church are in many ways the basic lessons of becoming fully human, i.e., a sort of self-improvement program--learning to become more loving, more joyful, more peaceful (and yes, those are the first three fruits of the Holy Spirit, not being anti-choice, anti-gay, and Republican, as some would have you believe)(see Galatians 5:22). And that's not even counting reasons like habit, comfort, honoring your cultural heritage, seeing your friends, and "forsaking not the gathering of yourselves together." None of which has a thing to do with ham loaf or lasagna. Sheesh.

So, it occurred to me that a slanted way of getting at the same question might be to ask, what do I miss about being an Evangelical? maybe that would be a backward way of asking the same thing, if that makes any sense. I've typed plenty about what I don't miss, about what infuriates me and makes me so, so entirely happy that I've left that way of thinking behind. But I don't think I've said much about what I miss. And there is a surprising amount (surprising to me, anyway). There are moments when I'm with my family (practically all of whom are still dedicated Evangelicals) when I'm overcome with sadness about what I've lost.

(more to come, have to go to my son's basketball game)