Archive for February, 2005

Youth group, boys and accountability

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 28, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity, Men and Masculinity, Youth and Youth ministry
. 29 Comments

I’m still mulling over the various points folks have brought up below my two posts on dress and accountability.  I’m aware that in the first post, I focused on the importance of men taking responsibility for their reaction to a woman’s appearance, while in the second, I wrote about my own attempts to exercise good judgment with my body and my clothing.   I may be guilty of leaving the impression that I demand a great deal from men and very little from women.   Some clarification is in order.

I’m a great believer (perhaps too great a believer) in the importance of creating strong, same-sex accountability groups.  Particularly when we are talking about sexual issues, I think it vital that both men and women be willing to be accountable to those of the same gender.  This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have frank and vigorous dialogue with the other sex, it just means that we must be very cautious about calling the "opposite side" to account.

For the past four years, I’ve helped teach our Wednesday night youth group "sex and relationships" curriculum.  For each of those four years, I’ve worked in tandem with a female volunteer.  The "sex unit" is spread out over several weeks, and involves much candid discussion on the physical, emotional, spiritual and ethical dimensions of sexuality.  Most of what we do is done in a mixed setting with boys and girls together.  But we do make certain to spend a considerable amount of time doing single-sex work.  I take the guys off to one room, my colleague goes off with the gals.   There’s an intimacy and a directness that happens when it’s just "Hugo and the boys" that is electric and powerful.  There are things that get shared that none of us would feel comfortable sharing with women around.  (Masturbation is perhaps the most obvious example.)  And we can talk frankly about what it really means to go through adolescence and into adulthood in male flesh, with male biology and acculturation.

I’m willing to challenge my guys, and to challenge them in love.  (For the record, I don’t use words like "acculturation"!)  On the issue at hand, if this year is like years past , when the weather gets warm, we’ll have girls in our youth group who will show up wearing very little indeed.  (We don’t have a dress code at church, and we aren’t likely to create one.)  I do know that my female co-worker has done some talking with the girls about dress and responsibility and sending signals.  I don’t know the content of all those conversations, and frankly, I don’t need to.  I do think young women do need to be aware of how their dress may be interpreted, of course! But my focus is on changing how the boys interpret that dress rather than on getting the girls to cover up.  That’s not because I see boys as having greater responsibility but because I understand my job as a male youth leader to be one that makes me more responsible for mentoring boys than girls.  (Though I do love "my girls" very much and treasure their trust and friendship.)

I don’t shame boys for "lusting".   Desire is human and healthy.  (I may be twenty years removed from adolescence, but I have not forgotten what it felt like.) When we are alone together, I make sure to let the boys talk about who it is that they are attracted to and what they like about her.  I don’t join the fun, but I do let them vent, knowing how important that is for them.    There’s usually lots of nervous laughter.  But I do take the time to make the point that male desire is not some imperious force whose demands must be obeyed at all times.  When a pretty girl comes into youth group in a mini-skirt, I’m not going to expect "my" boys not to look at her.  I am going to challenge them to not let her presence and their arousal divert their attention from what it is that we are doing.  I invite them to consider that they have choices, and that while they may have a purely biological response to her presence, they don’t have to be enslaved by that response.   I am going to make it clear to them that whatever her motives may have been in wearing what she wore, they have no right to make her uncomfortable with a penetrating gaze.  And I always invite them to pray for her, asking them to ask to see her as God sees her, not as they see her.

Does this work?  Well, success in youth work is notoriously difficult to measure.  I do know that I have seen individual boys change over the course of a year or two.  I have seen them become more respectful towards girls and women around them.  I have seen them do a pretty impressive job of taking responsibility for their actions time and again.  And I’ve watched a few of them "avert their eyes" even under considerable provocation.  I’ve been immensely proud of many of them.

When making decisions about clothing, we all must balance many things: our physical comfort, our need for validation, the comfort level of others, and respect for the setting in which we expect to appear.  All of these matter, and they matter to men and women alike.  But I also believe that when I am offended or aroused by someone, the problem (assuming we see arousal as a "problem") is ultimately mine to resolve. 

No moratorium on the Holy Spirit, and a different kind of fasting

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 28, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity and GLBTQ
. 29 Comments

Friday’s two posts about breasts and bodies generated (as of now) 120 comments, for which I am grateful.  Over at Amp’s place, there’s a similar discussion raging in the comments section below this post.   I’m going to take a break from this topic, but I’ll leave the thread open for more comments. 

We watched the Oscars last night.  As last year, this was a disappointingly predictable telecast.  Other than the surprise in the "best song" category, it seemed as if the results were more or less what had been anticipated.  I do have to admit my growing fondness for Clint Eastwood.  It was not always so: I grew up in Eastwood’s adopted home town of Carmel, and my mother and I cast two of the 799 votes his opponent received in the 1986 mayoral election.  We feared he would be a disaster as leader of our small city.  To our amazement (and my chagrin, I confess) he actually did a remarkably good job, and was an exceptionally devoted public servant.  He also has made some pretty terrific films, though I still think last year’s "Mystic River" was a better picture than "Million Dollar Baby."

Anyhow, I wanted to post about the Episcopal Church this morning.  Over at Kendall’s blog, you can read much of the news about last week’s meeting of the primates of the Anglican Communion.  In response to the Episcopal Church USA’s consecration of an openly gay bishop (Gene Robinson) and its increasingly accepted practice of blessing same-sex unions, the primates of the worldwide communion have asked the American church to refrain from sending representatives to high-level international meetings until 2008, when the church will gather again in Lambeth, England, for its huge decennial convention.   The Archbishop of Canterbury, the wonderful Rowan Williams, is trying to find a way to hold traditionalists and progressives together in one great communion, and is finding it an increasingly difficult task.

At All Saints Pasadena, we don’t seem to have much fear of schism.  Yesterday, Susan Russell (who is now on staff at All Saints as well as president of Integrity, the national organization for GLBTQ Episcopalians) preached a splendid sermon on John’s account of the Samaritan woman at the well.  Susan compared the rift between Jews and Samaritans (over issues of the authority of Scripture beyond the Torah and where God ought to be worshiped) to the contemporary struggle over full inclusion for gays and lesbians in the church.   Just as we now see the divisions between Jews and Samaritans as obscure and irrelevant to our contemporary lives, so too we will (perhaps in our grand-children’s lifetimes) see the struggle over blessing same-sex unions as equally odd.  It’s a nice thing to hope for.

One thing is clear.  At All Saints, we have no intention of changing in order to try and placate our conservative brothers and sisters around the world.  "We will not allow a moratorium on the movement of the Holy Spirit", Susan said yesterday from the pulpit.  In other words, we will continue to bless same-sex unions and to work for the consecration of more gay and lesbian bishops.  If the price of unity is closing the doors to gay and lesbian Christians, then we at All Saints clearly consider that price to be too high.   I’ve yet to meet anyone at All Saints Pasadena (and as a former Vestry member, confirmation teacher, and youth volunteer I know a few folks around the place) who would be genuinely heartsick if the Anglican Communion fractured.  It’s not that we don’t honor the important historic ties we have to churches all over the world.  It’s not that we are utterly unconcerned about the feelings of our fellow Anglicans.  I’m sure if we were kicked out of the communion, plenty of folks would feel a bit miffed.  But the fear of being dismissed from the Anglican Communion pales in comparison to the fear of slowing what we believe to be our divinely inspired march towards greater and greater inclusion for all folks, especially women and sexual minorities.  At All Saints, we value ambiguity and tension in many things — but we are not ambivalent about homosexuality.  Though many of us (myself included) get tired of the insistence that gay and lesbian concerns are the pre-eminent social justice issue of our time, our large and growing parish is fairly unanimous in our conviction that the Holy Spirit is calling us to bring open and active gay and lesbian folks into every aspect of church life.  Henri de Navarre said "Paris is worth a mass" when he converted to Catholicism; but the Anglican Communion, for all its interesting and attractive features, is not worth excluding gays and lesbians.  If schism comes, I don’t think we’ll see many tears around All Saints Pasadena.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see some sort of compromise, if that could be achieved without a moratorium on same-sex blessings.  I like what Michael Hopkins (past president of Integrity) suggested two weeks ago in this article.  Drawing a distinction between communion and unity, he suggested that we can have the former without the latter.

What would happen if Anglicans said to the world: "We are mad as hell at each other, and we do not know if we can ultimately stay together. But we are making some room for grace. We will continue to act together, and maybe we will learn again what it means to truly talk and listen to each other."

This is the only way I see to remain in communion (however "impaired") without attempting to create a false unity, which will inevitably be built on the backs of others (be the others gay and lesbian people or so-called traditionalists). I have no illusions as to how difficult it will be to explain this to the world, much less to many of our own people. But isn’t it time some Christian community chose not to go the route of divide and conquer, win and lose?

That seems reasonable to me.  The problem lies in finding areas where we can still "act together".  I’d like to think that tsunami relief and alleviating the ongoing crisis in Africa might be a start.

On a related note, this weekend I’ll be helping to lead our 30-Hour Fast Relief at All Saints.  After four years of participating in World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine, in 2005 we have decided to switch our support to Episcopal Relief and Development.  Though World Vision does great work, it makes more sense to send the money our kids raise to our own denomination’s relief agency.  We are shamelessly borrowing the techniques of 30-Hour Famine (no food for the kids and youth leaders from noon Friday till 6:00PM Saturday), and we are still doing our Saturday morning service projects.  But this year, our efforts will have a more specifically Anglican focus.

UPDATE: I want to make it very clear that when I downplay the threat of schism, I am speaking for myself.  I cannot speak for all of All Saints; there may indeed be those who would be grieved if the Communion founders.  But I just haven’t met them yet.

And John has a ringing battle-cry for traditionalists on the subject.

The male teacher’s body and propriety

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2005
in Body, Clothing and Fashion, Men and Masculinity, Modesty, Pasadena City College, Teaching and Vanity
. 71 Comments

Four new Matilde pictures are in her photo album. 

My post below on propriety and display has me thinking.  More specifically, I’m thinking about a question Tyler had in a comment on Jenell’s blog yesterday:

On the same note I was wondering your opinion on what us men do to
distract the body as well? by that I mean is there something similar,
but gender opposite, that men do to affect men and women from genuine
worship?

My post below was focused entirely on asking men to take ownership of their responses to sexually attractive women and revealing dress.  But though I briefly acknowledged that women are also visual creatures, I didn’t address the flip side, largely because it doesn’t immediately seem to be as consequential a problem.  But it’s worth thinking about. 

Men, in general, underestimate how often women do "look."   We like to assume that women aren’t visual creatures,largely because if we acknowledged just how visual women are, it might make us fellows feel decidedly insecure.  I am not suggesting that all women are equally visual, or that they are visual in the same way as their brothers.  But women do look, they do lust, and presumably, they can get distracted.  Beyond those general remarks, I’m not going to dare and presume any more about my sisters’ libidos.  Perhaps in the comments section below, a few women will volunteer some reflections on how women’s "visual sexuality" is similar to and different from men’s.

I’m going to put myself at tremendous risk of embarrassment here.  (What else is new?)  Judging from my evaluations and "rate my professor" reviews and other remarks, I acknowledge that for whatever reason, I am often regarded as a "hot" professor.  I’m not suggesting that I am magnificently handsome, just that I tend to get more such responses than many of my colleagues.    Presumably, this will begin to be less noticeable as I age.  It certainly has been more embarrassing than flattering.

It’s difficult to write this without first overcoming the fear of
appearing narcissistic!  But all of this talk about women’s bodies and
women’s dress means that it is right and proper that we focus on how
men’s bodies and dress affect those around them.

I know that when we teach, we bring our whole selves into the classroom.  I bring my maleness in, a point I am quick to acknowledge in my gender studies classes.  I bring in my whiteness, I bring in my Christian faith, I bring in many components of my culture and background.  (Of  course, I am always struggling towards that elusive objectivity!)  I also, clearly, bring in my body.   But what I try very hard NOT to bring is sexuality!  All of us who teach (or preach) do our public work as embodied beings.  It is natural that others will consider our bodies just as they consider our words. Sometimes, how our bodies appear may even enhance our words — or distract from our message. 

I don’t dress up much for class.  The tie makes a brief appearance the first week and then disappears.  As the semester wears on, I head quickly for the realm of jeans and t-shirts.  I don’t wear my old holey jeans, of course.   And though my jeans are made to fit me (I loathe the baggy look), I am careful not to wear anything absurdly tight that might be construed as flagrantly sexual.  I want to look good because I want to send the message that I take what I am doing seriously enough to be presentable.  But I am aware that like all human beings, I have that unfortunate desire for validation!   I have to be very careful not to allow that desire to affect my clothing choices.   Praise and validation should be a one-way street in the classroom — it’s not their job to respond to my embodied self.  The classroom will be safest when the teacher’s body is acknowledged but does not constitute a distraction.

As I’ve written before, I no longer buy leather belts or shoes.  I still have some old leather belts and shoes I wear to class. When I was younger, I went through a very heavy "designer" phase.  I had my Ralph Lauren year, my Donna Karan year, my Kenneth Cole year, and — naturally — my Hugo Boss year.  (I was single and living in a small apartment and not yet in tithing mode.)  I stopped spending so much on clothes a few years ago for three reasons.  One was financial: as I bought a home and began tithing, my discretionary income for expensive clothes dropped.  Two, I didn’t want to arouse envy — labels have a way of making other folks uncomfortable, and I didn’t consider that I could do that in good conscience.  Three, some of my favorite clothing styles tended to be quite tight and relatively revealing (leading to much speculation about my sexual orientation).  I realized that in the classroom, that distraction was not helpful.

I still care about clothes.  I care a lot, frankly, about the health and fitness (and yes, the appearance) of my body.  I don’t work out six days a week on trail and treadmill, bike and track and weight rack just for my own well-being!   But what I really care about is not using my body to make others uncomfortable.  I don’t want my clothes and my flesh to arouse others, I don’t want them to scare others, I don’t want them to inspire economic envy, and I don’t want them to distract others.  There’s only so much I can do, of course.  As I stressed below, we are all ultimately responsible for our own reactions to others’ bodies.  But we can take reasonable steps to make certain that we don’t cause others to stumble in lust or fear or envy, and I am trying to take those steps today.

 

Propriety, Marie’s boobs, and the myth of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2005
in Body, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Modesty
. 84 Comments

Jenell Paris had a great post this week about propriety, dress and accountability.    In her marvelously playful style, Jenell describes the following incident which she learned of second-hand:

Fifty people have come together for worship, from around the country,
from different Christian traditions, though the organization is
presumably evangelical. Marie leads worship. She is a Liberated West
Coast Feminist Environmental Democratic Hemp-Wearing Christian. She is
in front of the group, arms raised, eyes closed, praising Jesus. She
wears a light white t-shirt with no bra. Her bobbling breasts and
nipples were reportedly more interesting than Jesus. Debby took her
aside and said that she needed to wear a bra with this group,
especially when leading worship. Marie said, "I’m liberated, and Jesus
loves me the way I am. I love my body, and I won’t allow you to bind my
breasts!" She left the event, and reportedly the organization, furious.

What
do you think? Was Marie’s dress inappropriate? Was Debby’s
confrontation inappropriate? Should the people have been able to
worship even in the bold presence of Marie’s boobs?

A fine discussion ensued in the comments section, and as of this morning, Jenell has posted a follow-up with her own thoughts on the matter. 

My own interest is less in defining appropriateness and more in male responses to what they interpret as provocative or arousing dress.  A commenter named Javier wrote:

I don’t know any heterosexual man whose head doesn’t turn when they see nipples. 
They are like kryptonite to men.
A
man could be having a conversation with Billy Graham, the Pope, and the
Dalai Lama about celibacy and some nipples followed by a woman walk by
and the man will forget all that was being discussed. No telling what
the 3 other guys would do…

And Phil said:

Breasts in church. Well, I’m both male and weak, and if I get
distracted by them, I get distracted by them, but that would be
something I would want to clearly mark under the category of "my own
damn problem." Men need to have the kindness to assume that women who
dress in seemingly "provocative" ways are not doing so to provoke and
are not inviting stares, objectification or admonishment.

I like how Phil handles that.  Honestly, I’m very troubled by the common acceptance of the "narrative of male weakness."    When we repeat the canard that men "can’t help looking" and that "we’re hardwired to lust", we reject responsibility for our eyes and our thoughts and place it on to our sisters.  We take, as Phil rightly seems to imply, something that is fundamentally "our" problem and make it "their" issue.  As I’ve written before, this myth of male weakness is misogynist and misandrist simultaneously (a neat trick).  It assumes that men are simply incapable of self-control and focus in the face of sexual arousal, and it assumes that because of that weakness, women have to do the work of making public places "safe" for their brothers.

I am not for a minute suggesting that women ought not to consider the impact of their clothing choices on others.  After all, we are creatures who live in community.  All of our decisions, public and private, influence and affect those around us.  Christians in particular need to be mindful of that, but really, it’s something of which all of us ought to be aware.

Am I holding men to a very high standard here?  In some ways, yes.  I am not unsympathetic to the tremendous power of sexual attraction.  (I’m also aware that we make a mistake when we assume that men are the only ones who respond with arousal to visual stimulation!)  But I know from my own experience and the experience of men I admire that it is quite possible to remain focused and mindful even in the presence of what might be considered am attractive, provocatively dressed woman.   Some of this is just basic common sense.  Sometimes, guys, we just have to make the conscious decision to focus on a woman’s eyes, and only her eyes.   Most of us are "weak" in this area because we’ve never really believed we could develop the strength necessary to resist.  Honestly, if a fellow who had never lifted weights before walked into a gym and looked at a man doing bench-presses and said at once "Oh, I could never do that, I’m weak", what would we say?  We’d say "You may be weak now, but start working out and before you know it, you’ll be stronger than you ever imagined."  Just as we can develop our muscles, we can develop the strength to see women as fully human even when they are sexually alluring.

The subtext of a lot of the discussion about feminine modesty and male weakness is that a woman cannot expect to be both sexy and taken seriously at the same time.  Her body — what sets her apart as a woman — is thus an obstacle to being seen as a fully human person.  She’s told there’s a (false) dichotomy in place:  a woman is  either "looked at"  or "heard", but she bloody well can’t be both at once, because you see, men are too weak to see breasts and hear words simultaneously!  AAAAARGH!  As a man I am infuriated by that all-too-common reasoning.  It assumes that my biology will always trump my faith, my will, and the grace of God.  I know through my own life experience, I know in my bones, that men can transform the ways in which they see women.   An initial awareness of that which is provocative is natural, but lust and distraction are conscious choices.

Let me put this in explicitly religious terms.  (Non-believers might want to skip this paragraph.)  Years ago, a very wise man made an interesting suggestion to me.  When faced with the kind of visual distraction that Jenell recounts, I should consider the possibility that I am being tested.  Something wants me not to focus on the words I am hearing.  It may well be, my old friend said, that Satan himself very much wants me not to see this woman as a real person.  Above all, he doesn’t want me to hear what she has to say.  My job, in the face of that kind of provocation, is not to blame a woman for distracting me, but to understand that it is all the more important that I focus and concentrate on her as a child of God and on what she is trying to share with me.  I was taught, in moments like that, to pray the following prayer:  "Lord, show me your daughter as you see her, not as I see her." Let me offer you, out of my own experience, the assurance that that prayer will be answered!  I am not being willfully ignorant of the power of human sexuality, I am giving testimony to the far greater power of God to transform the way in which we use our eyes.

Jenell’s final question was: Should the people have been able to worship even in the bold presence of Marie’s boobs?

Yes!  A thousand times, yes!  Churches — like schools — cannot always be "safe" places where we are immune from temptation and distraction.  (I do believe we should be protected from overt harassment and assault, of course!) Indeed, almost certainly unwittingly,  Marie was offering the people an opportunity to challenge themselves.  She was offering them an opportunity to confess their weakness to God.  She was inviting them to see past the obvious distraction and to feel the presence of the Spirit.  Indeed, I suspect that those who were forced to concentrate on her words and her message rather than her body might have found themselves closer to Christ as a result.

A very personal post on sentimentality and justice

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 24, 2005
in Animal Rights, Chinchillas and Pacifism
. 17 Comments

Here comes one big fat mea culpa.

I’ve been reflecting a lot this week on the responses to my PETA post.  Ms. B at Volsunga has also gently critiqued my stance.  I’ve been called to account for being so willing to overlook PETA’s massive flaws, including a penchant for cheap publicity stunts that alienate potential sympathizers as well as a troubling tendency to use objectifying, sexualized imagery in order to promote its agenda. 

Frankly, I’ve responded to this criticism with raw emotion rather than reason.  I’ve been an animal lover all my life, though it is only since January 2004 that I’ve been the guardian of a creature whose kind are regularly farmed and pelted.  I’ve watched the videos of how chinchilla pelting is done, and I’ve wept tears of helpless rage.  The idea of someone killing my Matilde for a coat makes me violently angry, so angry that I lose the capacity to have a civilized exchange with those who defend the fur trade.  Honestly, in my heart of hearts, I want to do physical harm to those who pelt.  Like an adolescent boy playing violent video games, blood-filled revenge fantasies run through my head when I think about folks who are involved in the fur trade at any level, from producers to consumers.  My faith is stronger than that primitive rage; prayer and meditation and lots of vigorous exercise tends to take the edge off that anger.  But it’s damned hard to be much of a pacifist when I think about chinchilla pelting.  Still, no one said pacifism wasn’t going to be immensely difficult; to paraphrase Hauerwas, I’m a naturally violent person trying to become like Christ.  That ain’t easy.

But my real flaw, I realize, is that I confuse sentimentality with justice.  Really, it’s rather embarrassing.  I’m 37, almost 38, two decades removed from adolescence, and my ethics are still all too often formed out of emotion alone.   Feelings, of course, are very important.  Our compassion, our sympathy, and especially our empathy ought to inform our morality.   It is axiomatic that a genuinely ethical human being is acutely aware of the reality of human and animal suffering, and in his or her own way takes conscious action to alleviate that hurt.  But there’s a difference between being genuinely compassionate towards all those in pain, and building an entire ethical framework based on one’s own personal sympathies and passions.

Frankly, my sentimentality means I regularly mistake the trees for the forest.  My attachment to animal rights stems from my own intensely emotional response to certain species (dogs, chinchillas) and even a few particularly wonderful relationships I’ve had with pets.  From those immensely important connections I’ve had, I build an entire worldview.  This is problematic, because I end up unable to reconcile the good of an individual animal with the good of a species.  I know that wildlife biologists will have to cull animal populations that exceed their carrying capacity in order that the majority will survive, but I am incapable of bearing the possibility that a single solitary beast will have to be killed.  (This tends to be truest when we are speaking of creatures that I find visually appealing!)  My sentimental attachment to individual beings means that I am not able to think effectively about the greater good.  It’s a huge character flaw, and one I am determined to work on correcting.

And yes, my faith is fundamentally emotional.  What attracted me to the Episcopal church was the mystical nature of the liturgy and the emphasis on welcoming everyone and affirming them constantly.  (It’s nice to be nice!)  What drew me to the Pentecostals was the ecstatic emotion that left me high and giddy and soaked in sweat.  What drew me to the Mennonites was the enchantingly appealing idea of being so amazingly nice that one would never, ever hurt anything at all!   For someone who has read Duns Scotus in the original Latin and once wrote a graduate paper on homoousious versus homoiousious, I’m amazingly adolescent and anti-intellectual in the actual practice of my faith!  No wonder I connect so well with fifteen year-olds.

Sometimes, I wonder if my entire consistent-life ethic isn’t a sentimental luxury.  I proudly announce that I am a vegetarian who is opposed to capital punishment, war, abortion, and euthanasia.  It makes me happy to think of myself as rigorously ethically consistent.  If one is against all forms of killing, one can maintain a certain smug superiority, and I confess I’ve been all too guilty of considering my position to be fundamentally more moral than those who find room for killing within their own ethical framework.  As many folks have pointed out to me, I can afford to be a vegetarian (even a vegan).   Because I am well-protected from a violent world, I can more easily see violence as utterly unnecessary.  And, to put it bluntly, I’m a man who very much wants to be a  father.  Big confession:  my pro-life stance is all tied up with my own very strong desire for a child.  All these years of activism, of studying and teaching feminist history and theory, of prayer and intellectual debate, and my whole freakin’ position on the great controversial issue of our time is based largely on how I feel right now.  Cripes.

Like almost every believer, I’m fond of Micah 6:8:

"He has told you, o mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God."

My problem is I am really pretty good at loving kindness (or "mercy", as it is often translated.)    Hey, I’m an ENFP/ENFJ.  Feeling comes very easily to me.  But the Lord didn’t say "love justice and do kindness".   That would have been more my speed.  "Doing" justice must mean more than doing those sorts of things that make me feel good about myself.   It must mean more than making moral decisions based upon my own emotions, even if those emotions seem to me to be fundamentally generous and kind. 

My own reliance on emotion means that I fail to see the complete picture.  In the case of the whole PETA issue, my visceral desire to protect every creature that looks like my little Matilde leads me down a slippery slope to the point where I am willing to countenance pointless destructive acts and appalling sexism.  I’m simply blinded by deep attachment to one delightful little creature who makes me feel good about myself.  That’s nice for Matilde (spoiled little princess that she is), but it isn’t helpful to the larger cause of justice in which I claim to be so interested.

I’m not abandoning my consistent-life ethic, mind you.  But I am aware of how often I mistake a relatively self-centered sentimentality for real compassion, and how often I love kindness but fail to do justice.  I’ve got work to do. 

Thanks, blogosphere friends, for calling me to account.

Thursday Short Poem: Szymborska’s Sister

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 24, 2005
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

I am at a bit of a loss this week for my Thursday short poem, so I’ll
just go with a Szymborska favorite:

In Praise of my Sister

My sister doesn’t write poems,
and it’s unlikely that she’ll suddenly start writing poems.
She takes after her mother, who didn’t write poems,
and also her father, who likewise didn’t write poems.
I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof:
my sister’s husband would rather die than write poems.
And, even though this is starting to sound as
repetitive as Peter Piper,
the truth is, none of my relatives write poems.

My sister’s desk drawers don’t hold old poems,
and her handbag doesn’t hold new ones.
When my sister asks me over for lunch,
I know she doesn’t want to read me her poems.
Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives.
Her coffee doesn’t spill on manuscripts.

There are many families in which nobody writes poems,
but once it starts up it’s hard to quarantine.
Sometimes poetry cascades down through the generations,
creating fatal whirlpools where family love may founder.

My sister has tackled oral prose with some success,
but her entire written opus consists of postcards from vacations
whose text is only the same promise every year:
when she gets back, she’ll have
so much
much
much to tell.

Sometimes, when I look at my immensely talented brother and two extraordinarily creative sisters, I feel like Szymborska’s sibling.



							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
Go now and…


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 23, 2005
 
in Blogging, Feminism and Links
.
					18 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
… congratulate Amanda of Mousewords on her well-deserved win of a Koufax Award for Best New Blog.


And I am honored to be mentioned in the same breath as the marvelous Jackson Katz by the boys at Mancoat Forum.  According to the title of the thread, he and I are (I kid you not) equally deserving of being shot.  Here’s the article about Katz (whose work I highly recommend to one and all) that sparked the heated thread.


You know you’re having an impact when the death threats, even in jest, start showing up in the ’sphere.  Seriously, folks, if you want to see a real pro-feminist in action, see Katz’s superb body of work, especially his wonderful video "Tough Guise."  I show it in my men and masculinity classes.


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
NASCAR and whiteness


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 23, 2005
 
in Race and Sports
.
					8 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
After finishing our bike ride this weekend, I watched the final ten laps or so of the Daytona 500 NASCAR race.  True confession:  as a teenager, I loved motorsports.  I followed all sorts of racing, particularly Formula One (I was a huge Niki Lauda fan).  I did watch lots of NASCAR in high school, back before it was as trendy as it is today.  (Favorite drivers of my youth:  Buddy Baker and Cale Yarborough.)


For various reasons, I tired of motorsports in college.  After all, the NCAA does not have stock car racing among its scholarship sports.  My affection slowly switched to a different kind of racing, the kind done with muscle power and will alone, not with a colossal waste of fossil fuels.  


But I still have a vague affection for auto racing, and with nothing else to do after a long and tiring ride, I sat on the living room floor and watched the Daytona 500.  The growing popularity of NASCAR in America is well-documented; it is well on its way to challenging football, basketball, and baseball for dominance in the hearts and minds of American sports fan and television viewers.  Watching the interviews with drivers, it’s not hard to see why.


They’re all white.  They’re clean-cut.  They have average builds.  They are perhaps the only "athletes" (I have a hard time considering a racing driver an athlete, though I am confident some level of fitness is necessary) with whom red-state Americans can identify.   The big three sports (baseball, football, and basketball) are dominated by African-Americans (and in the case of baseball,  increasingly by Latinos).    Hockey is dominated by whites, but the NHL has cancelled its season — and besides, many of hockey’s best players are Canadian and European.    Even golf and tennis have been more successfully "infiltrated" by folks of color than NASCAR.


I’m not suggesting that NASCAR fans are all bigots.  But I am suggesting that they want heroes who look like them.  Cycling and ultramarathoning are also lilly-white, but they are too obscure and too middle-class to appeal to the red state masses. (I’m sorry if that sounds condescending.)   In a world where most sporting heroes are black or brown, the hunger for a sport where virtually every recognizable figure is a white man must be overwhelming.  Though they must have a certain level of fitness and reaction skills, one can more easily imagine oneself as a race car driver than as a football or basketball player.  Some of that may be in the nature of the sport, but some of it may also be due to the color of the players.


Anyhow, it’s at least partly sunny outside, and this guy is off for his run.


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
Busy


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 23, 2005
 
in Chinchillas and Christianity
.
					3 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
It’s a hectic morning. I’m behind in my work. At home, we’re having most of the interior of the house painted. This means shuttling Matilde from room to room, so she can be in a paint-free environment with a closed door during the day. Today, she is in our study. She’s a very good girl about being moved about so much, as I know that chinchillas, like most pets, thrive under predictability. 


I do have time to note that Sheelzebub is handing out ministries. She’s made herself president for life, you see, and the good ones are going fast. Me, I’m asking to be named Minister for Ecumenical Dialogue, Rodent Protection, and Endurance Athletics. Like the old department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I intend to mix many tasks in my ministry.  Hurry, the good ones are going fast.


More when I’ve got time.


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
Uneasy coalitions


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 22, 2005
 
in Animal Rights, Christianity, Feminism, Politics and Vanity
.
					19 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
Ever since I was a child, I’ve enjoyed playing peacemaker.  I confess my nature leads me to the Rodney King school of conflict resolution ("Can’t we all just get along?), even when I know that a good old fashioned argument might do much to clear the air.  This quality has served me well, as it has helped me make friends across religious and ideological spectrums.  It’s also a quality that has infuriated many of my friends, who wonder how I can call myself an "X" while going to lunch with "anti-xers", or who wonder how I can call myself a sincere evangelical while worshiping in a progressive Episcopal church and hanging out at the Kabbalah Centre.


But this is not a post about how Hugo resolves his own apparent internal contradictions.   (I know, I know, you’re all devastated.)


Rather, I’ve been thinking about the many excellent comments below this morning’s "PETA" post.  More specifically, I’ve been thinking about how we build alliances more effectively to fight for various justice issues.   Some of my fellow bloggers are perhaps comfortable identifying themselves with certain organizations that they believe more or less reflect their worldviews, but I think others of us find that our beliefs are too nuanced, too multi-sided, too qualified and too complex to allow us to be easily compartmentalized.  We may hold passionate opinions that align us with one particular group, but our opinions on other issues may be diametrically opposed to the group’s professed stance on that subject.  The obvious example in my case is being a anti-porn pro-lifer who strongly supports almost all other elements of what is usually called the progressive feminist agenda.  Or, as with PETA, being someone who shares PETA’s opposition to fur and all forms of factory farming while decrying that organization’s sexually objectifying ad strategies.


As I wrote in the comments this morning:


Ultimately, if I only supported those organizations that met all my criteria, I’d be the sole member of the Hugo Schwyzer fan club and not much else.


When it comes to where I give my time and money, I’m not going to waste energy searching for an outfit to which I can give my own "100% aligned with Hugo" seal of approval.  I care about teens, I care about the Gospel, I care about establishing a stronger public and private social safety net, I care about animals, I care about women’s rights, I care about young men at risk, I care about the environment.  My cares and prayers are many, but my resources are finite.  I prioritize.  I work with the youth at All Saints even when I think we preach only half the Gospel.  I advise Campus Crusade (they asked me back this year) even though I think their theology is a bit narrower than my own.  I have given to mainstream feminist organizations (those that focus on issues beyond reproductive rights) even as I disagree with their stance on abortion.  Last year, I gave to John Kerry several times over the summer, despite many disagreements with his positions.  And yes, I support PETA’s goals even as I wince at their tactics.  And heck, even though I think the folks at Pet Homes for Ranchies are the real salts of the earth, I am sure I could find something on their website with which I disagree.


When I was younger, I sought a comprehensive worldview into which I could fit myself.  I wanted it to be all-consuming, so I could say "I’m a socialist" or "I"m a feminist" or "I’m a Pentecostal" and just go along with whatever it meant to be those things.  Of course, socialism and feminism and Pentecostalism have their own subdivisions and compartments and bitter internal disagreements, and I soon discovered that, like most folks, I didn’t fit easily into one particular box.  But on the other hand, living aloof, away from community, was far too lonely an existence.  I need — I think we all need — to live and work with other like-minded folks, to share with them, to be challenged by them, even as we openly acknowledge that legitimate, serious, and enduring differences may exist.


All successful movements are born of uneasy coalitions.  President Bush brought together economic libertarians, cultural conservatives, and many folks uneasy about terrorism and forged an effective reelection campaign.  I don’t like the fact that he won, but I honor the tactic of bringing together those who might not otherwise agree (fundamentalists and country-clubbers and safety moms).  I think progressives and feminists and others have to be similarly willing to form alliances with those who are opposed to certain aspects of our agendas.  I’ll march with Wahhabi Muslims against the war, even though I find their positions on women and homosexuality appalling; I’ll work with right-wing conservatives against porn, even as I question their motives for seeking to limit its spread.  And  I’ll work with pro-choice feminists to get progressives elected, even as I long for the day when abortion is unthinkable.  


But surely there are limits on how far we ought to go in forging coalitions.  I suspect mine are more flexible than some of my readers’.  How far would you go?  With whom would you absolutely not work?


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
PETA, sex, and the means to an end


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 22, 2005
 
in Animal Rights and Feminism
.
					66 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
Sometimes my own peculiar brand of social conservatism and consistent-life ethic socialism puts me into some difficult positions.  For example: I am a strong supporter of PETA, particularly their dramatic, confrontational, and brave anti-fur campaigns.  I have no problem with civil disobedience in the struggle against the fur industry.  (Frankly, though I do not generally condone the destruction of property, I won’t utter a single word of criticism against those who choose more direct action against the producers and purveyors of animal coats.  Of course, causing physical injury to another human or an animal is an unacceptable tactic.)


In a comment last week below this post, Col Steve points out something that I have chosen to ignore for a while: PETA uses sex to promote its anti-fur cause.  One of their ads, featuring "Lolita" star Dominique Swain, is here; she’s one of several celebrities who have joined PETA’s "Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" campaign.  Dennis Rodman is the latest to join, and the first man.  (Given the disgusting popularity of fur — particularly chinchilla — among today’s hip-hop artists, I am glad to see a black male athlete joining this campaign).


My feminism is troubled by the sexualization of bodies (male or female)  in the service of any cause, be it commercial or charitable.   I especially don’t like it as part of an anti-fur campaign.  The wearing of fur for fashion is an inherently selfish act. It involves the extreme exploitation of another living thing for one’s own pleasure.  Sexually explicit imagery is similarly problematic, in that it encourages lust for another living being’s skin without a concomitant emotional connection with and responsibility for that being.  Of course, models in PETA ads are enthusiastic volunteers; slaughtered chinnies are not.  But I think a radical Christian feminist consistent-life ethic (what a mouthful) insists that we treat all life, and all bodies, as sacred.   The problem with using sexuality to make a political point is that it reinforces the notion that the body is a commodity designed not for our own delight and for sharing pleasure with another, but for selling a product or an idea.   When we commodify the bodies of living things — young women or animals — we see them as existing for our own use and we lose sight of their immense value as part of God’s complex and unique creation.   Though the animal world is indeed violent, we humans do have the free will and the means to change our diet, change our habits, and change the way in which we interact with our fellow creatures.  This means moving towards a cruelty-free life, and also, I think, towards a life where human and animal bodies are seen as precious and worthy of protection, not exploitation and commercialization.




Stars like Dominique Swain are not necessarily being exploited, but they are encouraging the viewers of the ads to focus on their flesh rather than on their entire person.  PETA knows full well, as we all do, that sex sells better than virtually anything else.  In the struggle to end fur farming and save animals, the leadership has made a decision to use the base instincts of the marketplace to attract attention to a noble cause.  On the one hand, in my eagerness to end fur farming, I’m willing to condone any legal tactic.  On the other hand, I believe that the means we use to accomplish a long-term goal must be consistent with the goal itself.  I don’t know that many other animal-rights folks have a consistent-life ethic, of course.  But I do think that many of them share a commitment to building a world where all creation is valued and protected.  And the soft-core pornography of the "Rather Go Naked" campaign is, I think, inconsistent with that long-term commitment.


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
Running in the hail


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 21, 2005
 
in Athletics and Fitness
.
					1 Comment
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
I just got home from a President’s Day  run in the hills around the Rose Bowl.  The terrible weather that has slammed all of Southern California  has wreaked havoc with my training schedule.  Saturday, I ran for an hour on the treadmill at the gym, and was reminded that the treadmill began its life as an instrument of torture.  (Sometimes, I think that if our medieval ancestors could see us today, they would find the fact that we pay so much money in order to sweat to be the single most astonishing thing about our culture.)  Yesterday, I confess that we played hookey from church to squeeze in a forty-mile bike ride between storms.  We had about six dry hours Sunday, and we spent half of them on our bikes.   This Solvang 100-miler is three weeks away, and I’ve been spending too little time in the saddle.


I put off running  today until this afternoon in hopes of a break in the weather.  At three o’clock, things looked promising and I headed out for a quick seven miles.  Things started out dry.  Fifteen minutes in, however, the thunder pealed and the heavens opened up and down it all came.  First the blinding rain, then the hail.  Now, running in torrential hail is a bit dicey; the little ice pellets sting when they hit and they make the ground very treacherous.  Heading along Woodbury Avenue, I saw cars pulling over; it was almost impossible to see.  I tried ducking under a very small and inadequate tree, and that was no protection, so I laughed at myself and headed back into the street.  What I like about running when I am soaked to the bone is that I no longer worry about getting wet — instead, on days like today I shake my fist at the sky and ask, "Is that it?  You can do better than that!"


Another 25 minutes later, and the rain stopped and the sun appeared; a rainbow briefly popped up over the southern edge of the Arroyo Seco.  I wasn’t exactly dry by the time I reached my car, but I wasn’t uncomfortable.  A quick and artful change (like all distance athletes, surfers, and the like, I know how to get undressed and redressed very quickly and modestly while sitting in my car) and I was warm and cozy and on my way home.


When I was a sedentary sort, as a teenager, I watched folks run in thunderstorms and I thought they were mad.  I still do think they’re mad; I just now know the pleasures of the particular form of insanity known as endorphin addiction.


Time for some tea, some playtime with Matilde, and then off to the gym to torture myself with pec flys and tricep extensions.


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
NIV, TNIV, and Ephesians 5


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 21, 2005
 
in Books and Christianity
.
					105 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
Lauryn at Feministing draws our attention to this article in the Saturday Washington Post about Zondervan’s scheduled publication of the complete Today’s New International Version of Holy Scripture.  (The New Testament version appeared three years ago, and was created with much hue and cry by some conservatives for its embrace of gender-neutral language.)


The favorite bible of American Christian conservatives seems to be the New International Version, or NIV.  (I know, for those who don’t spend a lot of ime around the various translations, the acronyms can be overwhelming.  Lots of talk about KJV, NKJV, NLT, NASB, NEB, NRSV, and so forth.  It makes seminary students sound like traders on the NASDAQ.)    When I go to college bible studies with Intervarsity or Campus Crusade kids, their favorite translation is almost always the NIV, and they all love the red-letter study version.  I have a copy as well, though I regularly consult the King James (of course), and the old favorite of Episcopalians and other mainlines, the New Revised Standard Version.


If you want to compare all these without running off to a bookstore, use Bible Gateway; it’s a great tool.  Of course, it leans right, and thus excludes the NRSV.  The NRSV online can be found here.


But gosh, the NIV promotes a conservative understanding of marriage in some remarkably indefensible ways.  My favorite example is from Ephesians chapter 5.  Here it is in the NIV version.  Note the heading "Husbands and Wives" between verses 21 and 22.  As any New Testament scholar will tell you, these subject headings are not in the original texts!  If you read the radical egalitarianism of verse 21, you can see how desperate social conservatives might be to separate it from the subsequent verses.    "Submit to one another" seems to have far more to do with the verses following it than with those preceding it.  Yet taken seriously, it would place the subsequent verses into a very different light indeed.  Thus the NIV (and other conservative translations) created an artificial separation to avoid the suggestion that husbands might have to practice mutual submission with their wives.


If the heading "Husbands and Wives" belongs anywhere, it bloody well belongs one verse earlier than it appears in the NIV.  Its placement after verse 5:21 is a none-too-subtle attempt to twist Paul into what he certainly isn’t: a defender of hierarchical, patriarchal marriage.  


When those who love the NIV get riled up about the inclusiveness of the TNIV, they are ignoring the logs in their own eyes.  Though our favorite translations often say more about our politics than our faith, it’s fairly clear that all of us — left and right alike — are guilty of attempting to use Scripture to support our own social agendas.  None of us — particularly those of us who can’t read the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek — can say we "know" what Bible "really" says.  It would behoove all of us to stop our "proof-texting" (quoting Scripture out of context) and stop dropping in misleading subject headings and encourage better understanding of the original languages.


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
Oscars done


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 21, 2005
 
in Movies
.
					6 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
As always, I’m grateful for the thoughtfulness and the insight of my commenters; there’s some very good stuff below my previous post.


As of last night, my  beloved and I have completed our task of seeing all of the Oscar-nominated films prior to the handing out of the Academy Awards.  (For the record, until I moved to Los Angeles, I wasn’t nearly as interested in such things.)  Not that it’s of interest to anyone else necessarily, of the five films nominated for best picture, here’s how I’d rank them:


1.  "Sideways" (Like last year’s Lost in Translation, a film with dialogue so accurate about the male soul it took my breath away)
2.  "Finding Neverland" (Glorious and moving.  Of course, I’m  a very biased Johnny Depp fanatic).
3.  "The Aviator"(I didn’t want to like it, but I did)
4.  "Million Dollar Baby" (Good, but somehow I just didn’t buy it)
5.  "Ray"  (I loved the acting, but found the film much too long and utterly unengaging)


And I’d very much like to see Annette Bening and Johnny Depp win the Best Actor and Actress Oscars, and Sophie Okonedo and Thomas Haden Church take home the Supporting awards.   No dramatic physical transformations, no evidence of extreme use of the Method, just pure craft.


							
 

		
 

	
		
		

			

				
All Saints and the offspring of the baby boomers


				

					Published 
by 
Hugo Schwyzer
 
on February 18, 2005
 
in Age, All Saints Pasadena and Youth ministry
.
					40 Comments
					
									
 
			
 

			

				
I’m in the office at school on a holiday Friday.  (We have a four-day weekend thanks to the Lincoln and Washington birthday observances.)   There are a few bewildered students wandering about, wondering why no one else is around.  I’ve sent several home already…


Wednesday night’s youth group session was particularly good.  The topic was parents, and the kids had quite a bit to share.  When one works with teenagers, there is sometimes a temptation to encourage them to complain about how tough their lives are.  After all, so many adolescents do feel overwhelmed and even persecuted, and providing a forum for them to share their hurts is important.  But it is also important, especially in a church setting, that they be reminded of the need for gratitude as well.  So my first question on Wednesday night was:  "What was one thing your parents did right?"


We got some very interesting responses.   Our kids come from a moderately diverse range of backgrounds.  Most, but not all, are white.  Most of the non-white kids are adopted (with one or more white parents).  As is common in an upper-middle class area, most of the parents of the teens are in their forties and fifties, not in their thirties.  Around All Saints Pasadena, it’s a rare woman who becomes a mother before 30, and the number of newborns born to (or adopted by) forty-somethings is striking.  Very few kids have more than one sibling; more of our youth are "only" children than members of families with three or more kids.  (Off the top of my head, I believe only one of our twenty-one youth groupers this week said that she had more than one sibling, while five or six were "onlys" and the rest came in pairs.)  At least three of the kids have one or more gay parents.


Of course, as one might expect statistically, about half the kids are children of divorce.   Though it would be wrong to say that our teens who came from "intact" homes were uniformly better adjusted than those from divorced families, within our group it’s fairly clear that these break-ups have negatively affected the kids.  I’d get into details, but I know a few of my teens have found my blog, and I want to very careful to not even come close to compromising their privacy and their trust in us.


Here’s the point I’m heading for:  almost all of the teens I work with are children of baby boomers (parents born between 1946-1964).  And though I know and love many of these parents, at times I am struck by the self-centeredness of their life stories — a self-absorption considered characteristic of their generation.  At times, listening to the kids talk about their parents’ divorces, one can’t help but get the impression that children have come, second, third, and sometimes twenty-third on their parents’ priority lists.    Many grew up in day care.  Many grew up shuttling back and forth between two — or more — parents.  Many have blended families with half- and step-siblings of very different ages.


Our kids also have grown up with considerable freedom.  According to our informal poll all but one of the kids this year has been allowed to date by their sophomore year of high school (though their curfews vary); some have had "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" since junior high school.  Even allowing for adolescent exaggeration, I’m well aware that this is a group that is coming of age with both the benefits and costs of considerable personal autonomy.


Once we had talked about what their parents did right, we turned to discussing what they wished their parents had done differently.  When asked to name just one thing, the majority picked the obvious, heartbreaking one: they wished their parents had spent more time with them.  Though they were remarkably understanding of the pressures their parents faced, their wistfulness and their hurt was real and tangible.  In some cases, the lack of time that their parents had had for them was a clear consequence of economic pressures — but in many cases, it was clear that self-absorption was the real culprit.  By the time we closed the meeting in prayer, there were plenty of red eyes and sniffles.


I’m not a father, yet.  I’m not posting this musing to cast aspersions on all those who parent the kids I work with.  (A great many of these parents are my dear friends, and I am grateful for the trust they have placed in me.)  But I wonder: do liberal, non-demanding progressive Christian communities tend to attract a disproportionate number of narcissistic adults?  At All Saints, we do a splendid job of preaching acceptance and tolerance, but we don’t preach discipleship and sacrifice (except around stewardship time).   The parents who are drawn to that message of inclusion — and cheap grace — may well be those who don’t want their lifestyle choices challenged.  And I suspect — indeed, I’m coming to know — that their teenagers are paying a high price for that.


I have no intention of leaving All Saints Pasadena. I already left, once, for my year-long sabbatical with the Mennonites.  Though my theology and my ethics are more conservative than those of most progressive Episcopalians, I have a real heart for the kids of our parish community.  I’ve seen the excesses of fundamentalism, and am well aware of the damage it does to young spirits and minds.  But I’ve seen the excesses of vacuous liberal tolerance and selfishness as well, and the damage it wreaks on the children is, it seems, just as serious.