Archive for the 'People' Category

George considers the Army: some thoughts on the similarity between pre-marital sex and joining the military

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 13, 2007
in All Saints Pasadena, People, Politics and War
. 28 Comments

I don’t have much time for a post, but this has been on my mind.

About two weeks ago, I had a very polite argument with a fellow All Saints youth leader. One of our boys, a splendid young man nearing graduation from high school, is considering enlisting in the Army. “George” is attracted to the idea of service, he doesn’t feel ready for college, and he likes the financial benefits.

My fellow youth leader came to me and said “Hugo, you’ve got to talk George out of this.” (I have a great relationship with George, probably closer than the other youth pastors do.) I told my colleague that I would talk with George and explore his reasons for considering the military, but I had no intention of automatically discouraging him from Army service.

My classes at Pasadena City College are filled with young men and women who are veterans. I have several students this semester who’ve done time in Iraq. In conversations with a few of them, I know that they hold a widely divergent set of views about American policy over there. But virtually all — Army or Marines, as I rarely get Navy or Air Force vets — view their service as a positive. And while I have no hard evidence to support this theory, I note that my ex-service members (including many who are still in the reserves) have far better work and study habits than their peers of the same age. They aren’t necessarily any brighter, but my goodness, they have considerably more focus and initiative.

I still remain committed to the essential tenets of Christian pacifism. I am not a naturally peaceful person, mind you; my instinctive response to many of the worlds’ grossest injustices is to suggest a swift and violent solution. My heart and my soul are convinced that we are called as individuals and as citizens to “turn the other cheek”; I believe theologically that Jesus’ call to nonviolence is binding on Christians in both their private lives and in their public service. But my head tells me that sometimes violence, while never redemptive, can protect the vulnerable. As someone who teaches the young, and who longs to be a father, that protectiveness butts up against my pacifism more and more these days.

Despite my pacifism, I don’t have a knee-jerk disposition against military service. I’ve only had the chance to have one conversation with George, and I look forward to more. But I am eager to find out more about his reasons for wanting to join the Army, just as I am eager to know why one of his good friends considers UC Riverside a better fit than, say, UC Davis. I am committed to the basic notion that “my kids” are unique individuals with different paths to follow. And though I worship and volunteer in a community that is often reflexiviely anti-military, I am convinced that for some young men and women, the Army may well be the best possible option.

In April 2005, I posted this brief piece about teaching sex ed at All Saints. I took a lot of heat in the comments section, especially from many of my fellow evangelicals, for my reply to one question that the kids asked. One child asked “What do you think about us having sex at our age?” And I answered:

You guys, when I look at you, it isn’t possible for me to see you as a group of generic teenagers. When I look at this room, I don’t just see fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year-olds. I see people whose individual stories I know. Some of you I’ve known just a little while. Some of you I’ve known since you were bratty little sixth-graders five or six years ago. When I look at you (pointing around the room), I see (names changed) Michael, not a sophomore boy. I see Marie, not a senior girl; I see Janae and Brent and Alexa and Rick, not just four random kids sitting on a couch. And though you are all alike in so many countless ways, you’re also fundamentally different people with different needs and different histories. Honestly, the more I work with you, the less I feel comfortable handing out a one-size-fits-all moral agenda with any confidence. In truth, while I think in general it is better to wait before taking on the enormous responsibilities and consequences of sex, I know full well that some of you are simply “readier” than others. I’m not going to name names, of course! But I can’t help but see you as individuals with different desires and different levels of maturity, faith, and emotional preparedness.

Many of my more liberal commenters applauded that sentiment; the conservatives considered it hopelessly wishy-washy.

But my feelings about college versus military service are more or less exactly the same! Just as I am convinced that some kids in high school are more emotionally and spiritually prepared for healthy sexual activity than others, I am equally convinced that not all are called to go directly to a four-year college. For any number of reasons, I think that a stint in the Army might be the absolute best thing for a young man or woman hungry for a very particular kind of public service, hungry to have the fast-forward button pushed on their transition into full adulthood. I’ve seen too many disaffected, directionless young men (and one or two young women) sign up for military service and come back transformed — deeper, more confident, more capable, and to my own very great surprise, more compassionate and committed to others. It’s not for everyone, but it may well be the right choice for a few. And my desire to see my kids grow and transform as individuals is greater than my own pacifist politics; my longing to see them “find themselves” trumps my own very grave misgivings about American military policy.

George hasn’t signed up yet. I hope we’ll have a chance to talk again before he does. But when we do, my thoughts will be first and foremost on what is truly good for George. Yes, I worry about him being sent to Iraq; I worry about his safety. But he’s leaving childhood behind. His parents and youth leaders must accept that part of his growth narrative will be the acceptance of great, even lethal risk. I can pray that God watches over him, as I pray for all the All Saints kids. But I won’t pray that God redirects his heart towards, say, the community college after high school. I don’t get to write the scripts my kids follow. I just get to love them through whatever they choose, and I get to give a little advice and a lot of encouragement.

A few photos…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 20, 2007
in Family, People, Photos, Traveling and Vanity
. 0 Comments

…are up at the Flickr account. I especially like this one from the bedroom balcony in our Paris hotel.

A very long post about Los Angeles, an Eagles song, nationalism, history, self-reinvention and the “club versus country” debate

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 30, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity, Favorite posts 2007, Memories, People, Politics, Race, Sports and Traveling
. 7 Comments

A week ago Sunday, my buddy Leo and I ran up the El Prieto trail and the Brown Mountain fire road. Though we’re usually part of a larger group, we were alone that day. Leo was recovering from a marathon, and I was feeling well-rested, so I was actually able to keep up with him for a change. (In his late 50s, Leo still regularly runs marathons just above the three hour mark and has finished his share of 50 and 100-mile races).

We talked about books, history, ideas. When I run with some friends, we talk about love and marriage and family; when I run with others, I argue politics or theology. A few friends, like Leo, are interested in all of these topics and more. In an early morning chill, we began by reflecting together on the burden of the past.

Leo was born just after the Second World War into a Polish refugee family. He was raised in West Germany. Much like my late father, a dozen years his senior, Leo has that sense that many war refugees have — a sense of never quite belonging, a sense that perhaps at any moment, he might have to pack his bags and leave again. My father, born in Vienna, raised in rural Berkshire, spent nearly fifty years of his life in California without ever truly feeling at home here. He didn’t feel fully at home in Austria or England either. Leo and my Dad knew each other, and were fond of each other. When I got married a year and a half ago, they spoke German together at our wedding.

But we didn’t just talk about my Dad or about Leo’s similar sense of not quite belonging. We talked about the San Gabriel Mountains we both love so much. As we neared the Brown Mountain summit, I said to Leo “Isn’t it interesting to think we are the only members of our family ever to be here? None of our ancestors ever stood where we are standing right now.”

“Yes”, Leo replied, “it’s liberating.”

And I’ve been thinking about that for nine days now. I’m a historian by trade, of course; I have devoted my scholarly and professional life to the study of the past. I’m a dual national, holding a UK passport, and am a regular visitor to the land that gave my father’s family shelter and the land my brother calls home. I love to visit what some folks call “old places”, filled with a rich sense of history. When I tramp through the hills of Devon, or run through the streets of Vienna, I feel as if I am surrounded by ghosts. Not evil spirits, mind — just an extraordinary cloud of witnesses of all who have lived and died in these places. And when I am in those places where my ancestors lived, I feel the weight of their fears and their hopes and their expectations all around me. It’s not always unpleasant, but it’s always there.

Even when I go home to Northern California, I feel surrounded by a sense of family history. On my mother’s side, my family came to the Bay Area for the Gold Rush more than a century and a half ago. We’ve had a country place in the hills northeast of San Jose since Rutherford Hayes was president; by the standards of this state, that’s some ancient history. My maternal great-grandfathers both went to Berkeley, and when I was a student at Cal nine decades later, I felt them all around me. Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is a wonderful feeling to feel so connected to a place. But at other times, it is exhausting in ways I find difficult to describe.

What makes me a Los Angeleno in my mindset is my fascination with self-reinvention. I love that I am surrounded by hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, who call somewhere else their truest home — but have nonetheless come here, to this basin with its beaches and valleys and hills — in order to start something new. They’ve come here to escape the burdens and obligations of the past, the sort that linger in the old places even after the old people have gone. They’ve come here to escape the “things are the way they are” mindset. They’ve come here to replace the fatalism and superstition of the old places with a relentless optimism about their own potential and the possibility of global transformation. They’ve come here to get away from the ghosts of Holocausts and World Wars and rigid class distinctions. They’ve come here to run on mountain trails upon which their ancestors never set foot.

(I’m listening to the Eagles “The Last Resort” right now on Itunes. Appropriate.)

As I’ve said, I love to visit the old places. My doctorate is in medieval history, for heaven’s sake; I spent many happy hours doing research in the shadow of my favorite building in the western world, Durham Cathedral. But it’s not just the damp and gloom of old Europe that makes me glad I live in this sprawling, metastasizing megalopolis. It’s the sense that I always get in the old places that humans and animals are limited and constrained by the story of the past. (As the Eagles sing in the song to which I’m listening: “where the Old World shadows hang heavy in the air.”) Their sense of themselves is related not only to place, but to the past story of the place. And just below the surface, there often bubbles a raw xenophobic nationalism that I find fascinating but repugnant.

Leo and I talked a lot about nationalism and place and history. We both love soccer, and we both are World Cup fans who go pretty nuts every four years. But especially after this last World Cup, I’ve begun to have some misgivings about “country” based sporting events. In professional football of the world kind, one great conflict that always comes up is the “club” versus “country” debate. When English players are playing for Premiership teams and training for a major international event, it’s hardly feasible for them to be 100% present for both sets of obligations. (Think of how angry folks in Newcastle are over the injury that an overworked and exhausted Michael Owen sustained last summer while playing for England in Germany.) The traditional wisdom is that athletes should put country over club, national pride over transitory professional obligations. I disagree completely.

I watched the England-Portugal World Cup quarterfinal match last summer in a state of grief and rage. My father, whose family had been rescued from Hitler by English generosity, had died days earlier. And England played a piss-poor match that they deserved to lose. But I, a dual national in SoCal, found myself working myself up into a nationalistic frenzy while watching the game. Under my breath, I said several embarrassing things about the entire Portuguese nation; my rage at a certain Cristian Ronaldo turned quickly into a temporary fury at all things Lusitanian. I calmed down within minutes, but from reading the BBC’s message boards after the game, I know that others were not so restrained. The racist bile that flowed last summer was appalling.

I’ve decided I prefer “club” soccer now. Though I am no fan of Manchester United, I love that Wayne Rooney and his nemesis, Ronaldo, play together. I love seeing a Premiership side take the pitch with eleven players with nearly as many passports. In the mercenary act of playing for pay rather than for national pride, these men do more to advance the cause of peace and understanding than they do when they wear their country’s jerseys on a global stage. Even when nation-based matches are played with mutual respect between the players, the fans themselves are often whipped into emotional frenzies in which ancient bigotries suddenly and shockingly reemerge.

I have my allegiances in sports. I “hate” the Dallas Cowboys. I “hate” Arsenal (of the London clubs, I support Spurs). But those aren’t ethnic hatreds. To put it bluntly, there’s a world of difference between cursing “those f-ing Gunners” after another loss in the North London derby, and cursing “those f-ing wogs” after England loses to a nation whose players (for the most part) have much darker skin than those who wear three Lions on their chests. Club rivalries have notoriously led to violence, but not to wars. In a club rivalry, you shout insults at another fan because of what he wears; in national rivalries, you shout insults because of who he is. There’s no question that the latter is more dangerous. (Now, OKOP don’t shout insults. Our disappointment is subdued, masked, drowned behind thin smiles and private tears. NOKOP rage is public, ours is sublimated.)

(Parenthetical aside: One of the things I love about Los Angeles: we don’t have an NFL team. Here’s an American football fan hoping we never get one! How delicious to live in a city where everyone’s allegiances are elsewhere! I get a smug satisfaction from living in a place that doesn’t need a team to call its own, but can rely on quirky whims to select which club to root for. My youth group kids are holding a Super Bowl party; some will root for the Colts and others for the Bears, but their allegiances are based on uniform colors or affection for a particular player rather than a loyalty to place. I like that.)

But even as I write this this morning, I know better than to claim that I live beyond history. My fascination with “personal growth” and transformation, my longing for new beginnings, my personal narrative of starting over — this is part of my own family’s legacy. What prosperity and success we have had comes from good luck (we got here first and stole more), but also from something that may be coded into our DNA: a longing to go further and further west. Pioneers and survivors are in my blood; I am descended from those who were willing to leave rather than stay. (This brings to mind a snippet from a Caedmon’s Call song: “I come from a long line of leavers.”) I am descended from those whose fascination with the new trumped their loyalty to the old. It would be hubris to suggest that I am the first in a long line to want to start over somewhere new, to liberate myself from old rules and old obligations and old animosities.

Leo and I had a good run that Sunday. And yes, we talked about all of this and more.

Hall and Bales: my two current jock-crushes — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 23, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, People and Sports
. 2 Comments

Jock-Crush: The response one feels to an athlete of either sex, in any sport, who just makes your heart sing, if only for a moment.

While I follow major sports like soccer and American football, I also have some other particular passions: I love women’s college basketball, and I love distance running. Though my most enduring jock-crush in the former sport is Katie Feenstra, and in the latter, the sublime Scott Jurek, my current heroes are Alison Bales and Ryan Hall.

Ryan just became the first American to break an hour in the half-marathon. Even though the half-marathon is not an Olympic event, it’s one of my favorite distances to race. My best time was 1:30:00 to the second; I had raced to go under ninety minutes and missed my goal by one second. It’s a great distance in which to mix pure speed and endurance.

Alison is the rockin’ tough center of the #1 Duke Blue Devils. 6′7″ of blockin’-out, in the post-bangin’, free-throw nailin’ goodness. She played an awesome game last night in the Devils’ win over Tennessee; ’twas a thing to watch.

If anyone can get me an autographed picture of Ryan or Alison, that would be cool. In my life, I am frequently unimpressed by those who should impress me, and frequently awed by those who do not always attract the attention of the masses. Such is the nature of the jock-crush.

UPDATE: It is not entirely unnoticed by me that I tend to be drawn to female athletes who are unusually tall and strong. (I’m a huge fan of Serena Williams for example, as well as the aforementioned Feenstra and Bales). My male athletic heroes tend to be small and wiry, like Hall and Jurek and your average international class cyclist. Those who wish to psychoanalyze are free to do so. I am quite clear that there is nothing fetishistic about all this, but it is a pattern I recognize.

Go to Claudette

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 23, 2007
in Books and People
. 0 Comments

I want to start this morning by plugging a wonderful writing teacher: Claudette Sutherland. She and her partner have been tremendously helpful to me, particularly as I go through the process of developing a book proposal, writing sample chapters, and so forth. I am sure it is possible to write well without a writing coach, but from the time I entered high school and began to be nurtured by some wonderful teachers (I miss you, Mr. Rainer and Mr. Lyon), I have relied on wiser, better writers to coax and guide me.

I highly recommend Claudette’s workshops; she has guided many a writer from the terror of the blank page through to a publishing deal. She’s got a weekend workshop coming up this Friday through Sunday, and registration information is here. I won’t be able to make it, but if you’re local to Los Angeles and you’re looking to write your first book, you could do worse than sitting with Claudette and her other students at the table.

A note on Diana and “The Queen”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 27, 2006
in Memories, Movies and People
. 11 Comments

It’s a rainy morning here in Pasadena, I’m behind on a great deal of paperwork (anyone who has been in my cramped, messy office can understand why), and I’m adjusting to posting here at the new blog.

I’m way behind on my emails. My wife and I were away with my family in Northern California for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I didn’t check my inbox until yesterday afternoon. It will be a while before I get back to everyone who’s written. Thanks for understanding.

I promise a more serious post later today — about race, class, affirmative action, and student essays for college admission — but for now, a note about the film The Queen. We saw it last night and loved it; Helen Mirren was marvelous, of course, but Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair nearly stole the picture. Sheen bears only a slight resemblance to the PM, but he nailed his mannerisms and the inflections in his voice, particularly when stirred up or excited. It’s a marvelous picture. It’s at movies like this that I remember that one of the gifts my late father gave his children was the right to a British passport. My brother, alone among the four of us, chooses to make his home in England, but the rest of us feel at least some attachment to the nation that gave my father’s family refuge in the darkest days of the 1930s. I am Her Majesty’s subject, and have the documents to prove it.

The film, of course, deals with the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana’s death in the late summer of 1997. As luck would have it, I flew into Manchester Airport on the very day Diana died — Sunday, August 31. I was traveling to a medieval history conference at Durham University, and had to drive the several hundred miles from Manchester to Durham in the pouring rain. It was my first experience of driving on the “wrong side” of the road, and to do so in a downpour, jet-lagged, while listening to the BBC coverage of the terrible accident and its aftermath was positively surreal. It was an amazing thing that my life didn’t also end on the same day that Diana’s did!

I was 14 when Diana and Charles married; six years younger than the Princess, I had an almost obligatory crush on her from the time their engagement was announced in February 1981. I was exactly the right age to be mesmerized by her. I followed her story for years and years, and like many, was saddened by the divorce. (The separation from Charles came in the Queen’s annus horribilis of 1992, the same year my first wife and I split up.) And I can say without question that if the 9/11 terrorist attacks are the single most shocking event of my lifetime, Diana’s death in that Paris tunnel ranks a close second. No shuttle explosion, no assassination attempt, no earthquake — no other historic happening is as vivid in my memory as those stunning days in 1997.

I signed two condolence books: one in Durham, and one in Carlisle. In one day, after the conference let out, I drove all over the north of England, seeing everything from the Lake District to Hadrian’s Wall to Fountains Abbey to York. I gave a paper at the conference (it ended up being published here), but I barely remember what the damn thing was about. That week was about Diana and the extraordinary reaction to her death.

“There Never Was a War that Was Not Inward”: a long reflection on Ted Haggard

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 6, 2006
in Christianity, Faith, GLBTQ and People
. 47 Comments

Though many things are percolating in my brain this morning, foremost on my mind is the Ted Haggard story.  By now, surely, almost everyone is familiar with the story; a quick and basic summary is here.

Some folks I know are delighted when stories like these come out.   In a sense, a certain amount of schadenfreude is understandable.  When the very people who condemn sexual sin are themselves brought down by that very sin, it’s hard not to take a certain degree of satisfaction in hypocrisy exposed.  I have friends — mostly secular — who regard hypocrisy as the greatest of all possible sins.  Though it surely is no virtue to live a double life, I am less certain than they that to fall dramatically short of one’s own professed ideals is the worst thing one can do.

Yesterday, in a letter to his congregation, Haggard said something remarkable, something that resonated with me instantly:

There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life.

I nodded with recognition when I heard that line.   Ted Haggard is my brother in Christ; he and I have been washed in the blood of the lamb.  Of course, my views on faith and sexual morality are quite different from the ones that he and his massive New Life Church profess. But I understand what it is to fight an outer war against an inner demon.  That’s the sort of struggle Haggard seems to refer to.

For years and years in my life, I struggled with boundaries.  I had very poor emotional, physical, and sexual boundaries with virtually everyone in my life.  From my teens until I was 31, I didn’t lead a double life — I led a triple or quintuple one: affairs; inappropriate relationships with students; regular patterns of betrayal and deceit; addiction to alcohol and other drugs — and a series of lies that created the most extraordinary house of cards.   God’s grace, a great therapist, a wonderful Twelve Step program, and my own willingness to go to any lengths to turn my life around saved me.  I don’t live as I once did.

But I remember what it was like to live in a world with fluid boundaries. I remember what it was like to have only a passing relationship with the truth. I remember what it was like to spend my days saying to myself, "God, if they (my family, friends, wives, lovers, students, colleagues) only knew the truth, they would all hate me!"  I remember the hypocrisy and the self-loathing very well.  And though I trust my God and I trust in my conversion, I don’t think I am invulnerable to a dramatic, spectacular relapse.   Though I am more relaxed today than I once I was, I am always alert to the signs that I may be slipping back into old behavior.

So yes, I write a lot here on this blog about boundaries.   Writing as a Christian, writing as a man, writing as a pro-feminist, writing as a husband, writing as a former addict, I try and make a compelling case for boundaries.  My writing about older men-younger women relationships, student crushes, pornography, self-mutilation, and so forth is based on a mix of intellectual convictions, spiritual commitments, and painful personal trials.  I write because I recognize a part of me that is cold, cruel, and predatory — what Haggard called "repulsive and dark."  My commitment to being a safe, loving, trustworthy man is in no small part rooted in my clear memory of my years as a dangerous, narcissistic, dishonest, boy.

I am happy to say that I don’t lead a double life today.   Follow me around with a camera; listen to my phone conversations; track my website visits; chart my spending habits.  What I say I do I generally do and what I say I don’t do I don’t do.   Does this make me more virtuous than, say, a Ted Haggard?  No.  Ted is in the midst of a spectacular public fall.  My fall — which ended with a 1998 suicide attempt and hospitalization — was far less public.  It’s only as a consequence of my humiliation and near-death experience that I am as committed to accountability as I now am.

And of course, accountability is a hugely important tool.  I check in a lot with a lot of people.  I make sure I get asked questions regularly about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.  I recommend, for example, the Covenant Eyes program, which is installed on both my work and home computers.  I have people in my life who monitor me — not out of hostility but out of love.  They respect my transformation but know that a certain amount of darkness is always present inside of me, and as a result,to paraphrase Reagan, they "trust but verify."  Sometimes being held accountable feels intrusive.  But I know that giving up a certain amount of my privacy to loved ones and mentors is a small price to pay.  Today, I enjoy freedom from that crushing sense that I am leading multiple lives. I don’t worry about what lies I told to whom.  And I don’t wonder "What would they say if they knew?", because I know that all who ought to know, know.

Do I think Ted Haggard sinned?  Of course.  He betrayed his wife and family and congregation.  The guilt must be devastating for him; the pain enormous for his loved ones.  But if he and I are at all alike, I suspect that in the midst of his hurt and shame, there is an undercurrent of elation.  To finally have it all come out, have the secrets revealed, have the light shine in — as awful as it is, when it happened to me it left me feeling giddy with relief.    I hope that on the next stage of his journey, Ted Haggard feels some of that giddiness along with his hurt.  I hope that he remembers the shame, too, and allows that memory to encourage him to surrender his pride and accept strict accountability measures.

Ted Haggard preached about the evils of homosexuality.  Perhaps, on his recovery journey, he will realize how dangerous it is to confuse one’s own self-loathing with a political agenda.  Even now, as my MRA critics point out, I too can veer dangerously to confusing my personal narrative of transformation with a lack of sympathy for men who have not reached the conclusions I have reached.   My commitment to seeing men change is, I note, not solely rooted in my own story! It would be pop-psychology and reductionism at its most superficial to suggest that those of us who are passionate about any given issue are only acting to resolve inner emotional conflicts.  There is such a thing as a genuine conviction that is separate from one’s own peculiar pathologies, and I am convinced that both my faith and my feminism fall into that category.  But there is no question that for many of us, our own private pain and our public politics are often tied together.

Marianne Moore famously wrote that

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.

To put it far less eloquently, if we are going to be truly effective evangelists and teachers and politicians and activists, we must wage an inner battle as well as an outer one.  This is not a recipe for self-involved navel gazing at the expense of public service.  It’s a recognition that it is in our nature to hate what we are, to rage against the very things we fear most about ourselves.   Ted Haggard admitted as much yesterday, and I am reminded I must regularly do the same.  I must fight — we all must fight — till we have conquered in ourselves what causes all the wars, big and small.

Justice! Good news about Yves Magloe!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 6, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, Pasadena City College, People and Teaching
. 2 Comments

Though the details are still sketchy, I am told by reliable sources this morning that Pasadena City College has agreed to reinstate Yves Magloe, my colleague who was fired last year after a mental breakdown.   My understanding is that he will receive back pay as well.  Apparently, when confronted with the likelihood of losing in court — and losing badly — the administration came to its senses and reinstated Yves.

Background here and here.

More news soon.

Celebrating Katharine Schori

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 19, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity, Faith, Feminism and People
. 51 Comments

Like many Episcopalians, I am rejoicing at the news that Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada has been elected the new presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, USA.   A relatively young (54) progressive, Schori is the first woman to lead a province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.   My friend and pastor Susan Russell wrote last night:

And so the very idea that the bishops of the Episcopal Church could elect a woman to lead them … and the House of Deputies concur OVERWHELMING to that election with barely a murmur of dissent is so overwhelming I’m almost afraid to go to bed tonight lest I wake up and find out it was all a dream.

I am so proud of this church I could just burst.

Proud that we were ready, willing and able to put everything else aside and select the person the Holy Spirit anointed to lead us with grace, with concord and with great joy.

Proud that through the many dangers, toils and snares we have come over the divisive issue of the ordination of women we have emerged on the other side of those challenges stronger, bolder and more open to God’s Holy Spirit.

Amen, Susan.  (To continue my bad but exuberant habit of name-dropping, church scuttlebutt suggests that the bishop of Los Angeles, my old friend Jon Bruno, played a vital — perhaps even the key — role in advocating for Bishop Schori.  That thought pleases me greatly.)

As a progressive evangelical Episcopalian, I’m thrilled by the choice of Schori.  She’s a strong supporter of same-sex blessings, and was an early backer of Gene Robinson, the bishop of New Hampshire whose election in 2003 led to the current crisis in the Anglican Communion.   Of course, both her sex and her theological views will engender (sorry) significant opposition.

Now this presents an interesting problem for conservative traditionalists in the church.  Some conservatives in the national church are open to female leadership, but not to acceptance of homosexuality.  Others, farther right, are opposed to both same-sex blessings and women priests (not to mention female presiding bishops!)   When they express concerns about Katherine Schori, smart traditionalists will need to differentiate between their objections to women in leadership and their quarrels with her progressive theology.  If they don’t, I can be fairly confident that my fellow liberals will deftly play the "sexist troglodyte" card against them!

As a pro-feminist Episcopalian (and dues-paying member of the evangelical, egalitarian Christians for Biblical Equality)  I’m obviously enthusiastic about the Schori election.  But even I struggled for years with the idea of women priests!  As I’ve written before, I began my Christian journey with a conversion to Roman Catholicism in college.  I seriously considered becoming a Dominican and giving my life to the church.  Though at university I worshiped with liberal Paulists, I became comfortable with an all-male priesthood.  It wasn’t a theological objection to women preaching or consecrating the host, it was simply an issue of familiarity.

I remember the first time I saw a woman preside at an Episcopal Eucharist.  It was about a decade or so ago; I was estranged from Christ and His church and in the midst of a long and troubled peregrination on the "dark side".  A friend of mine invited me to All Saints Pasadena (for the first time), and I came.  Our current rector, Ed Bacon, had just joined the staff, but the bread and wine were consecrated by a woman I (quite accidentally) already knew well, Mary June Nestler.  Mary June, a priest and now dean of the Episcopal seminary out at Claremont, had been a classmate of mine in grad school at UCLA where we both got our Ph.Ds in medieval Christian history.  Back in 1991 (1992?) we sat together in a very interesting seminar on early Irish canon law.  (See, I was an intellectual, once; I wrote a paper, still lurking somewhere, on the office of the episcopos as conceived in the Collection Canonum Hibernensis. Fun!) 

Anyhow, I recognized Mary June and was startled.  I had known two woman priests at UCLA: Mary June and  the philosopher Marilyn Adams, now at Oxford and in the early ’90s, on my dissertation committee.  But it’s one thing to know that a professor or a schoolmate is a priest, and another to see them "on the job"!  And let me admit this embarrassing truth: as I watched Mary Jane say the Eucharistic blessing, I felt scandalized — and guilt-ridden for feeling that way. Intellectually and theologically, I was more than prepared to embrace women in leadership.  Heck, by the time I showed up at All Saints that spring day ten years ago, I hardly considered myself a Christian anymore, so I didn’t feel I had much say in who ought to say mass in the church!   Yet my few but intense years as a Catholic had so conditioned me to an all-male priesthood that I felt distinctly uncomfortable throughout the remainder of the service. 

Obviously, once I finally did come "home" to Christ a few years later, I quickly became completely accepting of women in church leadership.  I was helped in this by a brief sojourn with some hardcore Pentecostals, who combined charismatic faith with a belief that all spiritual gifts were equally open to women.  Today, I’m glad to worship in a church where most of the ordained staff is female; I haven’t had even a flash of discomfort with a woman preaching or consecrating in years and years.  But I haven’t forgotten that embarrassing and shocking moment many years ago, as I watched a former classmate pronounce words that I had hitherto only heard from the lips of men.  I’m thus quite sympathetic to those who are initially squeamish at the notion of female priests; I know (as they will know, if they don’t run away screaming) that that discomfort vanishes with familiarity.

So, a big "hurrah" for Katharine Schori, our new presiding bishop, and for all of those women who came before her to open the priesthood to all.

A second post on Yves Magloe: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 8, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, People and Teaching
. 12 Comments

I spent some time on the phone yesterday with Rob Capriccioso, a reporter who works for Inside Higher Education.  Thanks to Ralph Luker from Cliopatria, Inside Higher Ed had gotten wind of my blog post on Monday about my colleague Yves Magloe.  Capriccioso’s story runs in today’s Inside Higher Ed: Mentally Untenured.

As soon as I have an update on the situation, I will share it here on the blog.  I can say that I am comfortable with my decision to share publicly of my own battles with mental illness.  There is a dreadful myth that those who battle various mental illnesses cannot hold down regular jobs, particularly in a profession such as mine.  This myth is persistent;  Joel Sax linked to my Monday post and got this anonymous comment from someone who called himself HR Guy:

I’m with a K-12 school district. Teachers with mental health problems are not just “inconvenient”, they can be dangerous to themselves and to the students. As a school HR person, we definitely want to get these individuals out of the classroom. Ninety percent of the time, they’re not good teachers anyway.

Well, I suppose a paranoid schizophrenic in a full-blown episode could present a potential danger.  But the vast majority of those of us who deal with things like bipolar and unipolar depression, serious personality disorders, and so forth are capable — with professional help — of functioning effectively and safely.  And of course, I take umbrage at the suggestion that 90% of the time, those of us who have a history of mental illness make lousy teachers!  No, I’m not "fishing for compliments".  I’m quite confident in my abilities, thanks, and I am grateful to God and to this institution that I am allowed daily to do something I love and at which I believe I am pretty damn good.

I’m sadly certain that the attitude of that anonymous HR guy on Joel’s blog isn’t all that different from the attitude of those who chose to terminate Yves Magloe. 

I’d also like to point out a couple of key differences between myself and Yves.  Yves is, according to the accounts of mutual acquaintances, a shy man.  I’m an ENFP.  Yves is a native of West Africa, and at the time that he fell ill, had no family in the United States.  I’m a sixth-generation Californian with a large extended family. Each time that I fell ill, dozens of family members and friends rallied to my side.  Even at the darkest moment of my struggles, I had zealous advocates standing with me, running interference for me, and making sure that I got the best possible care.  Yves — whose temperament is more withdrawn and whose background less well connected — did not have access to those resources.

And I am still teaching, with tenure — and Yves is fighting to get his job back, as well as to get this institution to recognize the real nature of mental illness.  He is in my prayers, and I ask all of you who can do so to continue to contact those in power here at the college on his behalf.

You can email the college president, James Kossler, here.

You can email the head of human resources, Jorge Aguiniga, here.

Contact the board of trustees by going here.

UPDATE:  The Board of Trustees declined last night to consider rehiring Yves.  I assume the next step is litigation.   I’m also told that mental illness will be a topic for general discussion at the next board meeting on June 21.

Harvey’s birthday too

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 22, 2006
in GLBTQ, Movies, People and Politics
. 5 Comments

May 22 is my birthday, but of course I share it with plenty of famous folks (Lawrence Olivier, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and so forth).  But one person with whom I am particularly proud to share it is the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in America.   Had he not been assassinated in 1978, Harvey would be 76 today.

Next to Star Wars (which I saw countless times as a kid), the film I have seen more often than any other (at least thirty times) is The Times of Harvey Milk, which won the 1984 Academy Award for Best Documentary.  I always show it in my gay and lesbian history class, and of course, I showed the first part of it this afternoon — the first time I’ve managed to do so on Milk’s birthday. 

Only three students in the class had even heard of Harvey Milk before my lecture on him last week and the showing of the documentary today.  Every movement has its martyrs, but while almost all students know the names Malcolm and Martin, far too few young queer students even know the name (much less the story) of this extraordinarily important figure. The Time magazine profile is here. 

Movements need heroes, and kids need to know the names of their heroes.  This is why I am so strongly supportive of SB 1437, currently in the California state assembly, to require the mention of gay and lesbian history in the public schools and in state textbooks.   All of us need to know who Martin was, who Malcolm was, who Cesar Chavez was; all of us need to learn about Susan B. Anthony.  But we also need to learn about Harvey.   Gay and lesbian students need heroes, and the rest of us need to understand that Queer History is a vital part of the American story. 

Names like Karl Ulrichs, Henry Gerber, Donald Webster Cory, Harry Hay, Phyllis Lyon, Barbara Gittings, Del Martin, Evelyn Hooker, Frank Kameny, Elaine Nobel are entirely ignored by our textbooks.   How many readers know even three of these names?   Even one of them? All are vital figures in gay and lesbian history, and their stories are virtually unknown.

I may have seen the Times of Harvey Milk thirty-plus times, but showing it today, I teared up again as I always do.  For Harvey’s sake, let’s get this bill through.

Losing money, feeling good

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 2, 2006
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Links, People and Sexuality
. 4 Comments

In the file called "People whom I alternately loathe and admire" is the irrepressible Dov Charney, the CEO of American Apparel.  His reckless personal behavior and the over-sexualized ad campaigns for his company have long troubled me; his commitment to social justice and to decent working conditions for his employees have been inspiring.  Some of us are complicated people, after all — and in the case of Dov Charney, I won’t let the good he does obscure the tawdry details of his all-too-public personal behavior in the workplace, and I won’t let the reality of his transgresssions obscure his tremendously positive example to other garment manufacturers.  I like my villains to have a heroic side, and my heroes to have a nasty underbelly.

Dov Charney lost $400,000 yesterday, and couldn’t be happier about it. The Times story is here.

Otis Chandler

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 27, 2006
in People
. 3 Comments

The deaths they do keep coming…

Otis Chandler, whose family played a huge role in building Los Angeles, and who himself single-handedly transformed the Los Angeles Times from a fourth-rate right-wing rag into a world class paper, has died.  A very long obituary (much of it obviously written some time ago) is here on the Times website.

The LA Times is not what it was a few years ago.   Otis Chandler made it a great paper, and his chosen successor as publisher, Tom Johnson, made it a better one.   In the 1980s and 90s, the paper had a series of excellent editors-in-chief, including a very fine man to whom I was once very close, Shelby Coffey III.  Since Shelby’s departure in late 1997, the paper has gradually gotten thinner — literally and figuratively.  Owned today by the Chicago Tribune, there is little sign that the paper’s recovery is imminent.  I still read it daily, but supplement it more and more with online visits to the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Those interested in the Times — or in Los Angeles history — would do well to read the whole obit.

PCC loses one of its finest — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 27, 2006
in Pasadena City College and People
. 5 Comments

Third post of the morning already, but this is a sad and important one.  One of Pasadena City College’s most famous alumnae has died: Octavia Butler was only 58.  She won the Hugo and Nebula awards, and in the white male dominated world of science fiction, Butler (an African-American lesbian) was an extraordinary figure.  The college at which I teach has produced some fine and famous figures (Eddie Van Halen, Nick Nolte, Jerry Tarkanian, Jackie Robinson), but Butler was a unique and important writer, and she’s been lost much too soon. 

Do read this memorable interview with her, and this outstanding bit of advice she offered to aspiring young writers:

I  have to be careful what I say to younger people, because every now and then someone will come up to me and say–"Oh, this touches on reading, but is not just reading." "What should I major in at college to become a writer?" I have to stop myself from saying that it’s not so much what you major in at college or even that you go to college. It’s that you read. I’m more likely to say, "What you should major in is something like history. Maybe you should take a good look at psychology and anthropology and sociology. Learn about people. Learn about different people. When I say history, I don’t mean to tell you just to study the kings and queens and generals and wars. Learn how people live and learn the kinds of things that motivate people. Learn the kinds of things that we unfortunate human beings do over and over again. We don’t really learn from history, because from one generation to the next we do tend to reproduce our errors. There are cycles in history. Even look into things like evolutionary biology; that goes back further, for instance, than history, further back than cultural anthropology would go. Learn all you can about the way we work, the way we tick.

Read all kinds of fiction. In school you’re going to be assigned to read classics, and that’s good, that’s useful. A lot of it is good writing and will help you with your writing. But a lot of it is archaic good writing that won’t necessarily help you with what you are doing now. So read the current best sellers; read something that is maybe going to spark a new interest in you.

Bold emphasis mine.  Amen, sister Octavia, amen.

From a feminist perspective, it’s been a hard past month — far too many significant figures (Wasserstein, Friedan, King, Butler)  dying far too young.

UPDATE:  Here’s a remembrance sent to me by an outstanding former student of mine, Liza Anulao:

I just found out the news about Octavia Butler’s death earlier this morning, and was totally blue. It’s strange, because it was just last night, before I had heard the news, that I was reading a quote she had written. I had cut out her quote from the paper 10 years ago and had glued it into my ancient organizer. Below the newspaper clipping she had signed her autograph when I had met her at one of her several readings. This is what she said:

"There are three things to forget about…First, talent. I used to worry that I had no talent, and it compelled me to work harder. Second, inspiration. Habit will serve you a lot better. And third, imagination. Don’t worry, you have it."

I recall having the privilege of driving her from the Burbank airport to her Pasadena hotel when she came to speak at Pasadena City College for A.W.A.R.E., the feminist organization I was a member of. I was so nervous, because she has been one of my favorite science fiction writers ever since I read her book, Kindred, in high school. She was eager to find a supermarket so she could find foods that had no meat products in them. I was struck by her strength, simplicity, stature, and dangling earrings. She encouraged me to practice everydayness in writing.

I am happy to have been touched by her writing and wish her spirit a fine journey.

A brief reflection on Betty Friedan

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 6, 2006
in Feminism and People
. 22 Comments

As everyone has been saying, the icons of another era are fast leaving us.  The latest, of course, is Betty Friedan, who died Saturday at 85.  Almost everyone in the feminist blogosphere has written about her passing, and there is much that is good and interesting to read.

I wrote yesterday that I had mixed feelings about Friedan’s legacy.  On the one hand, there is no question that she deserves tremendous credit for helping launch the revival of the feminist movement in the 1960s, first with the extraordinary Feminine Mystique of 1963 and then with her pivotal role in founding the National Organization for Women three years later.  It’s impossible to imagine the modern feminist movement without her.  As so many others have said, Friedan gave voice to an entire generation of women who had been told the greatest of lies, the lie that says that happiness is ultimately only found in a life lived for husbands and children.  She exposed that lie beautifully, and helped millions of American women realize "Wait, I’m not the only one who feels this way."  Plenty of women of my mother’s generation still remember how amazed they were when they first read the Feminine Mystique, and realized that what they had thought of as their own personal dissatisfaction was, in fact, damn near universal.

But even in a time of tributes and accolades, we can’t forget the "lavender menace", a term that Friedan infamously coined in 1969.   Friedan, like a number of conservative feminists, saw her movement as calling for a reconfiguring of heterosexual relationships along more egalitarian lines.  But throughout her life, she seemed bewildered by those women who shared her political commitments but did not share her romantic and sexual interest in men.  Rather than build feminist solidarity between lesbians and straight women, Friedan sought to purge NOW of lesbians.  She feared for the future of the movement, but she also — according to those who knew her — seemed genuinely and persistently unnerved by queer folks.

Friedan also quarreled with most of the later leaders of the feminist movement, like Gloria Steinem and Patricia Ireland.   Her 1981 manifesto, The Second Stage, was a startling statement of essentialism (the notion that women are, biologically speaking, more inclined to be nurturing and relational than men).  A long excerpt from that book is here.    She wanted the movement to de-emphasize sexual issues, for fear that they were inflaming the right. She wrote: …the sexual politics that dis-torted the sense of priorities of the women’s movement during the 1970’s made it easy for the so-called Moral Majority to lump E.R.A. with homosexual rights and abortion into one explosive package of licentious, family-threatening sex.

To be fair, it was written right after the election of Ronald Reagan, and Friedan was trying to reconfigure her movement to be successful in a more conservative era.   From a political standpoint, she made some wise suggestions, but she also managed to alienate an exceptional number of young feminists, particularly those who did not share her color, her affluence, and her sexual identity.

In the end, I can’t help but think about the death just ten months ago of Andrea Dworkin, another — very different — icon of the feminist movement.  Dworkin, like Friedan, quarreled with and horrified a number of erstwhile allies.  Indeed, Andrea was almost a mirror image of Betty Friedan: almost everything Friedan embraced, Andrea rejected.  Dworkin was so eager to include the marginalized and the wounded that she frightened folks with her powerful rhetoric; Friedan was so eager not to frighten middle America that she tried, time and again, to purge the feminist movement of its more radical voices.  In different but oddly similar ways, both women ended up on the outs with most of the contemporary leadership of the women’s movement.  And yet the feminist movement was better for their work, their writing, and, perhaps, even their passionate, devoted and often curmudgeonly criticism from the sidelines.