Archive for March, 2004

Home from the hills

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 14, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Athletics and Fitness, Politics, Traveling, War and Youth ministry
. 1 Comment

Home from Catalina, where I had a reasonably successful outing in the long run yesterday. I finished exactly an hour slower than my PR in a marathon (run in Pittsburgh in ‘99), but given the brutal hills of the island interior, I am not terribly disappointed in a 4:13. It was a gorgeous, demanding course (rated one of the toughest marathons in America). The sun was hot after the first half, but I can’t blame my slowness on heat alone… One of my friends won her age group, another took second in hers, and I finished thirteenth out of thirty-six men in the 35-39 year-old category.

After we got off the ferry back to the mainland, we drove straight to Children’s Hospital to check in with W., the girl from my youth group who may have lymphoma. (Diagnosis still uncertain, which is a surprise). I gave her my finisher’s medal, met her dad, and rejoiced that she is looking far better than she did on Thursday. Prayers are still needed, as the results of the latest batch of tests are due in tomorrow.

While grieving the dead from the bombings, I am also rejoicing about the triumph of the socialists in Spain. (How I wish that in America, we had a good old fashioned Christian Socialist party, one which married evangelical enthusiasm for Christ with a commitment to creating an equitable, pluralistic, and economically just civil society!) The NY Times reports that the results of the Spanish election are a particular blow to Bush. One can only hope that Blair and Berlusconi (who also supported the Iraq war) will be out soon as well.

Time to nurse the hamstrings, and play with the feisty chinchilla.

Getting ready to run…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 11, 2004
in Athletics and Fitness, Feminism, Teaching, Traveling and Youth ministry
. 3 Comments

This will likely be my last post until Monday; we’re heading off to Catalina Island tomorrow morning and won’t be back until Sunday afternoon. Info on the marathon is here; my results should be up by late Saturday or early Sunday. Given that it will be hot, and given that it is a very hilly and difficult course, I expect to run my slowest time ever. No matter; it is for pleasure and nothing else.

I’m busy grading my first batch of student journals from my women’s history class. They are willing to challenge me, which is nice. As I argue the thesis that “much of modern feminism has its roots in a profound disappointment in men”, they aren’t afraid to fire back. A woman who seems likely to be one of my best students wrote (obviously, I only put excerpts from student journals up in a culture of complete anonymity) that when we first discussed this theory she

“felt hurt, challenged, and angry immediately… I felt as though feminism was being demeaned and downplayed.”

But as she reflected further on the thesis, she got closer to something very important:

“While this may indeed be true (it certainly makes sense), it is definitely not something I am comfortable with. Ironically, I am fairly certain that it is the in fact the angry, bitter, and disappointed part of me that wants so badly for women to hold feminism as our own — completely separate from and undictated by men. Men are already indirectly the root causes of most of my personal issues and choices, so I’d like to hold this (feminism) like a greedy baby — as “mine, all mine”.

That resonates with me. And humbles me. And sharpens me.

After my last class this afternoon, I am off to Children’s Hospital in Hollywood. One of the sophomore girls in my Wednesday night youth group was suddenly diagnosed with a severe case of lymphoma and is starting chemo today. This came utterly out of the blue, and she and her parents are scared beyond words. I can’t wait to see her; I’ve been praying for her without ceasing. I can’t disclose her name in the blogosphere for legal reasons, but if you can send prayers her way, that would be cool.

“Imagine”, Dennis Kucinich, and the Mennonites

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 11, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Music, People, Politics and War
. 1 Comment

Last week, according to the Mennonite Review, my beloved Dennis Kucinich spoke at Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Gainesville, Florida. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Kucinich, D-Ohio, made a campaign stop at Emmanuel Mennonite Church hours before addressing a crowd at the nearby University of Florida. During his talk to about 100 people at the church, Kucinich promoted his plan for a Cabinet-level Department of Peace.

“There’s an emergency in America, and we’ve got to save the American community from war and from poverty,” Kucinich said. “We have to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our society.”

“When we separate from others, that’s when violence occurs,” Kucinich said. “The world is waiting for us to rejoin them. . . . We’re the ones who can break the cycle of violence. We can also help to bring a more powerful rule, and that is the power of love. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

Amid a piano rendition of the John Lennon peace anthem, “Imagine,” Kucinich was welcomed to the church by Pastor Eve MacMaster.

Now I’m fond of John Lennon myself, and I don’t think “Imagine” is a repudiation of all forms of faith. But a song which begins with the words Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try… is at best an unfortunate musical choice in a Mennonite church. The problem with Lennon’s song for me was always that it assumed that one could not simultaneously believe in eternal life with Jesus while struggling to build the peaceable kingdom on earth. Heaven and justice are not an “either-or” for me (or for any Mennonite I know); they are a “both-and.” I still dig my boy Dennis, and we’d love to have him at Pasadena Mennonite (though there is that little business of politics and our non-profit status in the tax code) — but if he comes, he’s getting something else to listen to.

Maybe this, my favorite Wesley hymn in my head this morning.

Obesity, poverty, and choice

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2004
in Body, Class, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006 and Food
. 23 Comments

The House today passed The Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act , which may be the most absurdly named piece of legislation to appear this year. Designed to forestall lawsuits against fastfood franchises, the bill was passed just one day after a study revealed that obesity is rapidly becoming a greater health hazard than smoking.

As much as I detest the bill and the spirit behind it, this infuriated me:

Steven C. Anderson, president and CEO of the National Restaurant Assn., said in a statement: “The notion of holding restaurants and food companies legally responsible for choices all of us freely make each day, such as what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat, is absurd.”

Hey, Mr. Anderson do you spend much time in the inner city? Been to South LA lately? How about my own Northwest Pasadena? “Choices” abound for those of us in affluent areas, with supermarkets and health-food stores and disposable incomes. Many folks I know (including some of my students) live in areas where there are no supermarkets; food comes from corner liquor stores and from Jack in the Box, McDonalds, or Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fast food is unhealthy. It is also relatively cheap, it is quick, and it is abundant. The urban poor in my classes don’t have access to sushi and fresh vegetables, they work long hours (and commute still longer on the bus). Many come from single-parent households where the overworked adult has no time to cook. The food available on campus? Overpriced nachos, burgers, and Snickers bars.

To make choices freely, Mr. Anderson, one has to have the income to afford choices. One has to have access to the choices in the neighborhood in which one lives. And one has to have the time to prepare and consume a healthy meal. Big Macs cost less than tofu. Fried chicken wings cost less than a grilled boneless breast of chicken. Obesity is epidemic among the poor in my beloved Los Angeles, Mr. Anderson, not because of poor personal decisions but because of a lack of the very choices you celebrate. Personal responsibility matters, of course. But in order to exercise personal responsibility effectively, ya gotta have access to healthy, low-cost, time-efficient alternatives to fast food. Me? I do. I can pop into Gelson’s and drop $7 on sushi and a Hansen’s soda. I can afford to spend hours a day working out.

I don’t make healthy choices because I am virtuous. I make them because I am fortunate. Period.

End of rant. Off to youth group…

The anxiety of tapering, and some links

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2004
in Athletics and Fitness, Books, Christianity, Fun, Links and Movies
. 9 Comments

“Tapering” is the process of preparing for a marathon or other major race by reducing your training and increasing your eating in the days leading up to the big event. I’m three days out from Saturday’s Catalina Marathon, and I am thoroughly grumpy! As I’ve learned through trial and error, you can’t really rest enough in the week before a marathon. After weeks of running five and six days in a row, I am only running twice this week, for short distances. To make matters worse, I gradually ramp up my carbohydrate intake (a reverse Atkins diet), for four full days before the race. The end result is that on this morning, I feel bloated and sluggish. It’s so counter-intuitive to me to do progressively less “studying” before a big test! I always crammed before exams, but in distance running, cramming invariably leads to disaster. Nothing to do but eat and sit and stretch and wait. If I were more spiritually aware, I would no doubt find some sort of Lenten discipline in tapering, but right now, I just feel like an anxious and slothful little piglet.

Here are a few things I’ve noticed lately:

Kendall Harmon posts what I think is the best review of the Passion of the Christ that I’ve seen so far; it’s written by a Father Leander Harding. Here’s an excerpt:

Both for religious and non -religious people there is a stereotype of the cross as the place where an angry God punishes Jesus instead of us. Many of the critical reviews of the movie castigate the movie for promoting this stereotype.

But this is not the story of the cross that Gibson is telling. In the beginning of the film when Jesus is tempted in the garden by the Satan figure, the temptation is “that one man can not bear the sins of the world.” The burden that Jesus bears in the film is not the burden of the Father’s anger but the weight of sin, the piling up of human hatred and evil, from the banal calculating evil of Pilate and Caiaphas to the stupid, intoxicated blood lust of the Roman soldiers… The Cross is not the apotheosis of the Father’s anger but the measure of His love and of the lengths He goes to transform and redeem. That is the familiar Christian story that I believe the filmmaker is trying to tell.

I don’t normally link to quizzes, but this one was particularly brief and fun (thanks to Annika, Lorie, and Candied Ginger); take the Book Quiz at Blue Pyramid. I ended up being “100 Years of Solitude” by Marquez. I’m not sure I identify with the reasons why:

Lonely and struggling, you’ve been around for a very long time.
Conflict has filled most of your life and torn apart nearly everyone you know. Yet there
is something majestic and even epic about your presence in the world. You love life all
the more for having seen its decimation. After all, it takes a village.

Hmmm.

And here is a link to the sermon that my friend Scott Richardson (dean of the cathedral in San Diego) preached last Sunday. At length, Scott quotes from Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. In one part of that famous story, an aged Spanish cardinal confronts Jesus, who has returned unexpectedly to 16th century Seville:

(The cardinal) sees everything (Christ’s miraculous works of healing and love) and commands his guard to arrest Jesus immediately. In the middle of the night the prelate comes to visit the prisoner. Why, he asks, do you come to hinder us? You have no right to add anything to what you have said in the past. Tomorrow I will condemn you and burn you at the stake as the worst of heretics.

You come to set people free. That is not what people want; freedom is a curse for most humans, a terrible burden. We relieve them of that burden and carry it ourselves. You were once offered three temptations by the wise and mighty spirit in the wilderness. You rejected them all in the name of freedom. Instead of taking possession of human freedom, you increased it and thereby burdened the spiritual kingdom of humanity with suffering forever. In place of rigid laws, you gave them free hearts to decide right from wrong, having only your image before them as a guide. It is too much and it has taken us all these years to rectify your tragic error. You once scattered the flock; we have gathered it – weak, rebellious, fearful incomplete creatures created in jest. We save them from the terrible anxiety and great agony they endure in making a free decision for themselves. We will not allow you to so burden them ever again.

Reflecting on both this passage from Dostoevsky and on Mel Gibson’s movie, Scott concludes his sermon this way:

My question now, as I come to the end of this offering, is not: Who killed Jesus? It is, rather: Who uses their gift of freedom to choose to come to the aid of the suffering Christ, and all whom he loves, in the present moment? Who has discovered the truth of the old adage; in choosing service we find our perfect freedom? Who freely chooses to wipe the brow and carry the cross even now? And, most important; is this - active love freely chosen and freely offered - the narrow door that Jesus speaks of…?

Follow up on Bloom, Wolf, and the responsibility to be safe

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 9, 2004
in Feminism, Older Men & Younger Women, Sexual harassment, Sexuality, Student crushes and Teaching
. 7 Comments

The post right below on Naomi Wolf, Harold Bloom, and sexual harassment drew an interesting response from my good friend John in New Zealand. I’m pulling what he said up out of the comments (forgive me John, but blog etiquette allows the publication of any public correspondence!). Referring to the details of the 1983 encounter between Wolf and Bloom (details are in the linked story below), John wrote:

Sorry, but when she (Wolf) cooks a candle-lit dinner with alcohol for a professor, and invites him (Bloom) to discuss poetry on the couch, don’t you think that’s rather a mixed signal? From what I gather, he put his hand on her thigh, she jumped up and vomited (!) (How about just “No!”), and he did the gentlemanly thing and left immediately, with apologies. Where is the problem here? It’s not the ancient Professor Bloom, in my opinion.

Of course it’s a mixed signal. Young female college students send mixed signals to male professors all the time. Whether they are at Yale or a community college, young women come to academic environments already painfully aware of the power (or lack thereof) attached to their sexuality. Everywhere around them (in the media and among their peers) they are reminded that for young women, sexuality is the best tool in their arsenal. They are so consistently disempowered in every other respect, that it is little wonder that many of them do “use” their sexuality to get the attention and validation that they (like all young people) want so badly. Many of them do get crushes on their profs too, but often those crushes are less about a real attraction to the one particular man, and more about the romanticization of their own hopes and dreams for themselves. Other times, it is simply a manifestation of the truth that for many women, power and knowledge are themselves deeply sexually attractive.

Those of us who teach have a moral obligation to recognize all of those factors. While legal adults, students in their late teens and even early twenties are still far more vulnerable than they will be in later years. College professors must remember that that vulnerability and that uncertainty is always there, even in students who appear outwardly mature, confident, and sexually aggressive. A good professor respects his students’ strengths and weaknesses, and he understands the erotic nature of the pedagogical transaction. Equipped with that understanding and respect, he doesn’t exploit his students’ vulnerabilities. Wolf may well have come on to Bloom (she certainly did send a mixed signal), but that is beside the point: Harold Bloom, if the story is true, blew it. I think he blew it because he was not capable of doing what he was morally called to do, which was to respect and protect his student from the consequences of her own mixed signals!

The professoriate is not merely an academic vocation, it is a moral calling. The reward of tenure brings with it unparalleled benefits and job security, but it also carries a heavy ethical burden. Slowly but surely I have come to embrace that burden, even as I recognize that my ability to live up to that weighty responsibility has more to do with God’s grace than with my own will. And I have come to see my students of both genders as deserving of intellectual stimulation, but also — despite their legal and physical adulthood — of my care, my nurturing, and my protection. Before anything else, in the end, I have the obligation to be intellectually provocative and emotionally safe.

Off to the noon meeting of Campus Crusade!

UPDATE THREE HOURS LATER: You know, one of the perils of the instant post is that there is no time for revision. This whole post reeks of self-righteousness. I’m really not as humorless as this entry reads… I mean, I believe everything I said and all, but sometimes I need to say to myself: Hugo, my brutha, you need to chill out.

Naomi Wolf, Howard Bloom, victimhood, responsibility, and power

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2004
in Feminism, People, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexual harassment and Teaching
. 2 Comments

I know, it’s Monday, and so I am blogging a lot. Four posts in one day is not the norm, and it won’t happen again for a while — not with student papers rolling in on schedule this week!

For a couple of semesters several years ago, I assigned Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth in my women’s studies classes. It began to feel dated and a bit shrill (I know, hot-button word, that one), and I dropped it. I still follow Wolf’s career, however,and like many folks in the gender studies world, got a bit of a shock when she revealed in New York magazine last week that in 1983, when she was a twenty year-old undergrad at Yale, she was on the receiving end of an unwanted sexual advance from the legendary Shakespeare professor, Harold Bloom. (My brother is more of a literary scholar than I; I am not qualified to comment on Bloom’s importance in the field, save to say that no other modern writer has sold more books about the Bard than he.)

Wolf only told her truth after 20 years of silence. (Bloom has not, to my knowledge, issued any statement on the matter.) In the article, Wolf recounts the details of her encounter with Bloom, and of her double sense of betrayal, both at the hands of a professor whom she looked up to and at the university which trivialized her concerns. I don’t always have a lot of time for Wolf and her shallow “fight fire with fire feminism”, but I did like a few points she made, especially this one in her conclusion:

Is Harold Bloom a bad man? No. Harold Bloom’s demons are no more demonic than those of any other complex human being’s. Does this complex, brilliant man’s one bad choice make him a monster? No, of course not; nor does this one experience make me a “victim.” But the current discourse of accused and accuser, aggressor and victim is more damaging than constructive.

Here is a more helpful reading: This man did something, at least once, that was self-centered and harmful. But his harmful impulse would not have entered his or my real life—then or now—if Yale made the consequences of such behavior both clear and real.
All the women who have come forward want only to fix what is broken. Critics of sexual-harassment standards argue that you can’t legislate passions; true enough. But you can legislate what to do about people who act on them improperly…

There is something terribly wrong with the way the current sexual-harassment discussion is framed. Since damages for sexual misconduct are decided under tort law—tort means harm or wrong—those bringing complaints have had to prove that they have been harmed emotionally. Their lawyers must bring out any distress they may have suffered, such as nightmares, sexual dysfunction, trauma, and so on. Thus, it is the woman and her “frailties” under scrutiny, instead of the institution and its frailties. This victim construct in the law is one reason that women are often reluctant to go public.

But sexual encroachment in an educational context or a workplace is, most seriously, a corruption of meritocracy; it is in this sense parallel to bribery. I was not traumatized personally, but my educational experience was corrupted.

In yesterday’s LA Times, Linda Mills (a social work professor at NYU) has a brief and biting critique of Wolf’s New York magazine piece. Recounting her own long-ago tale of an unwanted sexual advance from a prof, Mills says:

In the 27 years since that incident, I’ve come to recognize the power of my sexuality, and the ways I use it to my advantage. Even accounting for the power disparity between my professor and me, there was sexual energy between us. With time I’ve learned that sexual dynamics are never one-sided and that seeing my role in those dynamics gives me control, not only over myself but also over the men who’ve desired me. “Sex and the City” captures this sentiment perfectly — it is the reason it appeals to so many women. It reminds us just how far we’ve come in 20 years.

Indeed, it is time to stop blaming others for the uncomfortable sexual dynamics we as women often find ourselves in, and recognize that we contribute to them.

In both articles, the bold emphases are mine. If nothing else, all good food for thought!

Chinchillas and abortion…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2004
in Abortion, Blogging and Chinchillas
. 3 Comments

…are two subjects that I would never, ever, want to put together. Yet someone in Turkey did a Google search with those three keywords, and found me. It makes me very sad that someone would ever, ever, ever do such a thing.

Men, women, marathoning

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2004
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Sports
. 2 Comments

Given the unseasonably warm conditions, I am indeed grateful that I chose to focus on the Catalina Marathon on Saturday rather than yesterday’s LA Marathon. This year, as many know, there was a challenge: elite women runners received a 20-minute head start over their male counterparts, with a race to determine who would be the first overall finisher. A woman won, and of the top ten finishers, five were women and five were men.

I’m happy a woman won, especially a 49 year-old. But I am troubled as well. It is the same sense of angst I felt when Annika Sorenstam played on the PGA tour last year. Why do we feel that women need to legitimate their triumphs by competing against men? It’s not that I question women’s ability to succeed. It’s that I don’t like the unspoken assumption that lies behind these staged challenges, the assumption that women have something to prove or to gain through competition with men that they can’t get through competition with women. I don’t like using male achievement as a yardstick. That seems to enforce some negative notions as well.

For the record, I am a huge fan of women’s sports. (On Saturday night, I watched my own Pasadena City College Lancers’ women’s b-ball team make it to the state final four; my girl and I cheered our lungs out.) My favorite athlete in the world is the sublimely good (and drug-free) Englishwoman, Paula Radcliffe, who holds the woman’s world marathon record of 2:15:25. But I also recognize that men and women have different bodies, with different abilities. Women’s basketball is a different game than men’s; I recognize them as different games in terms of strategy and style.

Women runners have different strengths. (Trust me, no 49 year-old man will ever win a marathon in an open race; women’s bodies age more gracefully and retain endurance longer). In the ultra-marathons, women sometimes do win races outright, without a handicap (witness Pam Reed’s back-to-back triumphs at Badwater, the 135-mile race from Death Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney. She’s my #2 hero behind Paula).

My point is, I distrust the “gimmick” of the LA Marathon challenge; I don’t think it serves either gender well. In the sports where there are clearly discernible differences, we need to focus on devoting equal time and attention and resources to both sexes, all while allowing them to be fundamentally different. Where there are no such differences (as in ultra-marathons and in equestrian events), we can celebrate each individual’s triumph regardless of gender. Or maybe I’m wrong…

Deb at Deblog has a post on just this subject as well.

Brothers, sisters, kitchens, vacuuming, and sexual justice

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2004
in Christianity, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Vanity
. 2 Comments

Thinkin’ (once again) about feminism and the church this Monday morning. I just found this archived piece from Jen Lemen, which has the wonderful title “No One’s Called to Vacuuming“. Here’s an excerpt I liked a lot:

what will it take to bring true change to the church? when are our marriages going to reflect the liberation that the kingdom brings? when will it be the norm for christ followers male and female alike to share in the nurture of children and to share the power and time necessary to fulfill the call put on each one of our lives? what does it mean to share power in a way that inspires the world to set aside competition and embrace cooperation, not only in our workplace, but in our homes?

i wonder about these things, and i feel sad that my people and keepers of my tradition of faith, still struggle so desperately and feel so threatened by the idea of men and women being true partners in the call of the kingdom. everything is so sexually charged that we don’t know how to be brothers and sisters anymore. we don’t know how to grant one another access–free and clear–to the realms assigned to us by the church of long ago. the realm of nurture, the realm of change-making, the realm of caregiving, the realm of power. in this new day, we have to share our whole lives, somehow, and be the people who trust one another as true partners. and not that bizarre form of partnership where one of us keeps the homefires burning while the other lights up the world…

The bold emphasis is mine. Jen’s post is from last month, but I just discovered it today. It’s got me thinking. I believe in egalitarianism even as I acknowledge (and celebrate) difference, but I recognize that for all my words, I still have a long, long way to go to becoming the feminist Christian man I aspire to be. My own sexism is still appalling to me at times! Last Friday night, my small group’s “Passion” discussion took place at the home of a very young (early 20s) newly married couple who are temporarily house-sitting a large place near the Rose Bowl. While making small talk, I turned to the wife and said (yes, it did come out this way): “What a great kitchen. You must just love having so much space to work with.” She was gracious about it, noting gently that her husband was far more “into” cooking than she was, but yes, it was a nice kitchen. I made some embarrassed remark to catch myself, and she gave me a smile that was designed to ease my discomfiture, but the memory lingers this Monday morning. A big deal? No. A reflection of the fact that I still have miles to go on my journey to justice? Heck yeah.

I’ve taught women’s studies here at the college for almost a decade, as well as classes in masculinity, gay and lesbian history, and “body studies”. Off campus I’ve been privileged to lead workshops on issues of sexual misconduct in the church (including one at Fuller for PCUSA seminarians). But despite all of this training and experience, I know I am still very vulnerable to sexist slips, and in my human brokenness, probably always will be. And like most of my brothers (and more than a few of my sisters), my thoughts are not always as pure as I would like them to be.

One thing I do notice about my brothers in the church, and to a lesser extent, younger men in general: So many of us are trying to do this task of enlightening ourselves and transforming our behavior in the absence of role models for how to do it! It’s easy to assent intellectually to egalitarian principles when one is in the classroom, or even in the pew. But to walk the walk in the private sphere is hard when so few older men are available to show how it is to be done. I do not intend to be self-pitying (something I am prone to do when challenged), merely to point out one aspect of the problem. But thanks be to God, despite these challenges, I see quite a few young (and not-so-young) men in and out of the church who are striving with some success to “share the power and time necessary to fulfill the call put on each one of our lives.” Two Sundays ago at church, the preacher was a woman and the head child care volunteer was a man. We’re gettin’ there.

Chosen suffering and the life of an amateur athlete

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 6, 2004
in Athletics and Fitness, Class and Vanity
. Closed

I’ve been reflecting on the Passion a bit more this morning, and thinking as well about my life as a distance runner. I won’t be doing the LA Marathon tomorrow, as I am doing the Catalina Marathon one week from today. (I’ve done LA three times, and feel that from the perspective of veteran runners, the race is both over-priced and poorly designed). I would much rather run long distances on trails than in cities anyway.

Marathoners and ultra-runners are proud of our ability to endure pain. We boast of our injuries, of our aches, of our cramps. Over time, most of us build up a terrific capacity to bear physical discomfort. I am proudest of the long races I finished in pain, including one memorable race (Silicon Valley Marathon 1999). where I literally collapsed in tears at the end. For that event, I trained for six months to run a Boston Marathon qualifying time, only to fall apart in the final miles. I remember great physical pain mixed with disappointment — but I also remember tremendous exhilaration and pride.

I lead a remarkably pain-free life. My relative affluence and tenured teaching position guarantee me a life of material and physical comfort. Unlike billions on this planet, most of the pain I experience on a week to week basis is freely chosen. Most of my fellow marathoners and ultra-runners (at least in this country) come from similarly privileged backgrounds. We have medical care, and medicine, and physically undemanding jobs. Our wealth insulates us against many of what Shakespeare calls the “natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” But something within us cries out, demanding that we forego at least some of our unearned comforts and take to the streets at dawn or the hills at dusk….

Heck yes, I am proud of my training regimen, proud of what I have done to my body, proud of my physical capacities! But I am increasingly haunted by the realization that I get to choose this life of discipline and (temporary) discomfort and endurance. My survival, and that of my family, does not hinge on the pain I create for myself in my running. In watching the Passion last night, I thought of how deeply and profoundly meaningful Jesus’ suffering was for the world. His death — in all of its horrific agony — is the Great Gift of my life (and, I believe, the source of redemption for all others as well). I thought of His reminder that we must be ready as His followers to take up our own cross, and endure suffering for His sake. And I thought about my running, and I wondered if perhaps the tremendous time and energy I expend on training is preventing me from seeking out more meaningful opportunities for constructive suffering.

And yet the only way I — with my mercurial and high strung personality — am able to devote the energy and love I do to my church, my students, my youth group, my family and my girlfriend is because I am able to spend those hours on the roads, lost in the rhythm of my own footfalls and the sounds of my own breathing. I am blessed beyond all measure, and humbled again when I realize how truly fortunate I am to be able to choose freely this life of an athlete. An athlete’s pain may not have any redemptive meaning for the world, but after a morning of inflicting suffering upon myself, this athlete is surely a nicer man to be around!

Reflecting on the Passion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 5, 2004
in Christianity and Movies
. 7 Comments

Well, I finally saw “The Passion” with my small group from Pasadena Mennonite. We saw a 4:10 matinee here in town before heading over to the home of a younger married couple in our group for light supper (the traditional Mennonite repast of hummus and pita, minestrone soup, strawberry jello, girl scout cookies and vanilla ice cream). Over this splendid dinner, we had discussion. Opinions, predictably, differed.

I was exceptionally moved by the film. I expected to be, and I was. The violence was as horrific as advertised. I left the theater wondering how non-believers could sit through the two hours of genuinely gruesome brutality. If in my heart I did not believe that Jesus made a necessary sacrifice for me and for the world on the cross, I don’t know that I could have borne the ugliness and cruelty of what was inflicted upon Him (or more accurately, upon the actor who portrayed Him so well).

The women in our group were especially moved by the actress who played Mary. For at least one of us, her portrayal made the entire film work.

I had a variety of quibbles with minor historical points (the pronunciation of the Latin was a long way from classical, the portrayal of Herod reflected Gibson’s now-customary homophobia), but those concerns were hardly deal-breakers. The portrayal of Pilate, on the other hand, matched much of the material I read as a graduate student in early Christian history. As a moviegoer, I was moderately impressed but also somewhat alienated by the violence. As a Christian, I wept with emotion and gratitude. Yes, it’s only a work of art, not the gospel. But for the better part of 2000 years, Christians have used art to represent the wonder and the terror and the joy of Christ’s sacrifice for us; this film is just one more (particularly effective and stirring) contribution to that tradition.

3 strikes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 5, 2004
in Money, Politics and Race
. 5 Comments

The Times this morning has this devastating assessment of the impact of the “Three Strikes” law on California. Entitled “Three Strikes Law Has Little Effect”, the article opines:

A decade after it was enacted, California’s three-strikes sentencing law has had little impact on violent crime while costing taxpayers $8 billion to imprison tens of thousands of felons, most of them for nonviolent offenses, according to a study released today.

The report by the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute also found that blacks have been imprisoned under the three-strikes law at 10 times the rate of whites, while the rate for Hispanics has been almost 80% greater than for whites.

That $8 billion sure could come in handy these days. One of the scandals in this state is that law and order conservatives fail to admit that their demands for more and more prisons and more draconian sentences are a significant (perhaps the significant) cause of what Gov. Schwarzenegger calls our state’s “spending problem.”

The Body Project

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2004
in Body, Books, Feminism, Sexuality, Teaching and Youth
. 8 Comments

For the past four years, I’ve used Joan Jacob Brumberg’s marvelous The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls in my women’s history classes.

I posted last week about what I (and others) see in contemporary feminism as “a shift away from an earlier era’s obsession with individual autonomy.” In this early 21st-century world where young women’s bodies are relentlessly on display in virtually every cultural venue, a 1970s feminist ideal of maximizing personal freedom seems both dated and insensitive. Brumberg, a secular feminist historian whose work on anorexia is legendary, makes the following point that is a perfect summary of the problem:

“Although I applaud the social freedom and economic opportunities enjoyed by the current cohort of high school and college girls, their autonomy seems to me to be oversold, if not illusory. Many young women, particularly those under twenty, do not have the emotional resources to be truly autonomous or to withstand outside pressures from peers and boyfriends, whom they desperately want to please. They are also locked into a commercially driven television culture that exploits female bodies in unprecedented and, increasingly, violent ways. By their own admission, this environment of slick images and quick seductions shapes their desires, and their sense of self, even if they try to resist. As we consider ways to respond to the predicament of our girls, we need to acknowledge these facts: teenagers do not always understand their own self-interest.”

And she goes on:

“Girls who do not feel good about themselves need the affirmation of others, and that need, unfortunately, almost always empowers male desire”.

Look, I am not unaware that it is problematic — almost dangerous — to have a Christian man teaching young women in a secular college that they (most are teenagers) don’t “always understand their own self-interest”! (It’s why I let Brumberg, whose feminist credentials are impeccable, make the point for me.) But I can speak from my own experience as a man as to how male desire is empowered both by young women’s low self-esteem and by the cultural message that “big girls should be able to make decisions for themselves”. I’m not for a moment excusing male predatory behavior, a behavior that I — by God’s grace — abandoned years ago. But I am saying to both my high school youth group and my college students (albeit in different ways) that we need to begin to focus on restoring what Brumberg calls the “protective umbrella” of an earlier era, an era in which society as a whole saw young women as deserving of non-sexual attention, nurturing and care. Above all, we need to be able to teach an ethic that places a premium on “helping young women develop a sense of what is a fair, pleasurable, and responsible use of their bodies.” The culture certainly isn’t doing that. Their peers aren’t doing that. Young predatory men DEFINITELY aren’t doing that. So some of us are trying to do just that.

I know this sounds terribly self-congratulatory, and I apologize for that. But this is an issue about which I have deep feelings as a feminist man, a teacher, a youth leader and a Christian, rooted in my theology, my academic training, and my own experience.

Rant over. I think another cup of coffee is in order before class!

Corinthians and “I love you”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2004
in Christianity, Divorce and Youth ministry
. 2 Comments

Youth group last night was cool. We had only 16 kids instead of our usual 25, but that was nice and gave it a more intimate feel. We spent the evening on 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, a passage that even biblically illiterate Episcopalians can’t help but know. (One of the girls shrieked with delight when we turned to it, “Hey, this was in the movie A Walk to Remember. Well, whatever works).

We spent some time going through it line by line, talking about what came easily to us and what was harder. The heartbreaking thing for me was that for several of them, the hardest thing about love is believing “Love never fails”. Most of these kids are children of divorce; two of the girls in the group have had their parents divorce within the past year. They’ve seen human love fail time and time again. They’ve heard — vaguely — that marriage represents the union of Christ with His church. (They aren’t really clear on the theology). And their trust that any kind of love “never fails” is low indeed.

So we had some tears and a few laughs, and some gentle reminders from the youth leaders that God’s love is different indeed than any other love that they have known. And in the end, we closed in a prayer circle, and on the spur of the moment, I had each kid (and adult) say his or her name. “My name is Debbie”, the first person said; each person in the circle then repeated, one by one, “I love you, Debbie.” We did that for each of us. I’m sure it’s done elsewhere, but it came as a flash of inspiration to me, and it was more powerful than I had realized. Several more kids were in tears at the end, saying that they had never heard those words said to them with such genuine feeling and by so many people. A cheap sentimental exercise? Maybe. But it worked, and it left me feeling incredibly blessed and grateful that I am allowed, in a small but significant way, to be part of so many young lives.