Ponderings

No pondering can commence without some acknowledgment of the economy. The gravity is shocking enough to interrupt even the normal wrangling of a presidential campaign. One can only hope that it will interrupt also the endless run of negative commercials.

As the world turns, I wonder how the news of the day intersects with our daily lives. To be sure it makes me cautious about my own financial choices in ways that are new. But thus far the basic balance of life has been largely untouched. We go to work, make our mortgage payment, use our credit cards at the grocery.

Of course we reason that the big guys are the ones who should pay. The obscene wealth of a few at the expense of the many rightly offends us. Appropriately we ask accountability in these current negotiations to minimize the continuation of this injustice. Yet the situation is not so simple and the blame not so neatly placed at the feet of a few. We’ve largely prospered in an economy designed upon greed, where our endless desires push the economy forward.

The search for scapegoats will no doubt also commence soon. In times of economic uncertainty the temptation to point fingers is hard to resist, but we must. This is neither a blue problem nor a red one. This is not about nationalities or creeds. More importantly, solutions to the current challenges will not come from skewering anyone but rather from demanding greater accountability both from ourselves and our leaders.

Perhaps an appropriate response might be one of humility. Impermanence is a spiritual principle not often explored in western Christianity, but perhaps one worthy of our consideration. Impermanence is the perspective that all of life is flux, that constancy is an illusion and change the norm. Embracing impermanence would enable us to loose our grip not only on our stuff but more importantly on our expectations. Freed from the inclination to cling, we are empowered to find life in whatever context unfolds. Focused on matters of the spirit, we will also be less likely to join the hunt for scapegoats.

Clearly we pray for a quick fix to the economy, but more measured attention to our souls may be the order of the day.

When the nights are restless and I begin channeling Goldilocks in search of sleep, I sometimes find myself on the family room couch. Last night was such a night and as I drifted off into long awaited slumber, the dog was nearby making sleeping dog noises in her box. The clink of the metal crate as she shifted in her sleep was the only sound in the otherwise quiet house.

As I consider my dog’s comfortable sleep in a wire cage, I confess confusion. Personally I find dog crates (the euphemism for cages) to be anathema and I had no intention of ever having one of those heartless contraptions in my house.

When our beloved Evie came to live with us several Christmas’ ago, I set up a bed of blankets on the floor beside my own assuming that she would sleep blissfully alongside her new people. Wrong.
As soon as she heard the sounds of her new people sleeping, she explored the bedrooms in search of a place to relieve herself. Not a good first night. When my son awoke on the second morning, it was to the sight of prized toys mangled by Evie’s teething. Our day time hours spent with Evie were so rich we might have been able to overlook the nighttime indiscretions, except that her indiscretions were creeping into the daytime. Any stray toy was an invitation to chew and when she started chewing on my furniture I cried foul.

Even so, when the kids and I trudged through Petsmart looking at crates, Evie in tow, I knew that I was a dog-mother failure.

Despite their claims to the contrary, these contraptions are not very user friendly. Once assembled, we turned our attention to the accompanying DVD, “Crating Your Dog 101”. We were skeptical as the talking heads assured us of how happy our Evie would be in her new ‘home’, but we listened impassively as they described dog nature. We were not convinced that dogs instinctively need the safety of defined perimeters, but our alternatives were few. Stubbornly we listened on. By the end of the video, we realized that we had lost track of Evie and quickly scanned the room. Evie had already crawled into the awaiting crate and fallen asleep.

Clearly Evie knew and wanted the comfort of ‘crate life’. Because she had been an abandoned dog, we knew nothing about her patterns and preferences. All the while we thought we were honoring here with the run of the house, she was needing the security of a box. Our transference of our values came at the cost of her sense of safety.

As I roam the house in the quiet of the night, searching for the perfect sleeping space, am I too searching for the perimeters? Is it a definition, a boundary that I seek?

Perhaps at the heart of our cultures wars is a yearning for definition, for boundary. Buried beneath the bitter words about abortion, homosexuality, and even our war making is a rusty crate that once defined our culture. Patriarchy was the frame by which we understood ourselves in relationship, though at times limiting it also offered a measure of comfort. Patriarchy provided definitions of gender roles and gave structure to what we call nuclear families but its influence far exceeded our individual lives. Patriarchy helped to define hierarchies among groups of people and even the created world, with animals and the earth itself. In its crudest sense, patriarchy offers the domino scenario where the angry man grumbles at wife who yells at child who hits the dog. The more sinister embodiments of patriarchy lead us through the living hells of the Salem Witch Trials of Colonial America and the Middle Passage of the 19th century, and land us in the modern era of gay bashing finally brought to light in the tragic murder of Matthew Sheppard. Despite the ugly underbelly, however, patriarchy functioned to provide structure and thereby comfort for centuries of western humanity.

In this new millennium we are witnessing a profound challenge to patriarchy and the result is loud saber rattling. Our children and now theirs are simply refusing to accept the definitions of gender and orientation and race that enabled us to identify the perimeters of our world order. Androgyny is a norm and the ethnic boxes on our forms have become irrelevant. Although we certainly share archetypal features with our canine friends, among them our innate desire for definition, humanity can no longer so neatly collapse into the categories and boxes upon which we once depended.

Inasmuch as our culture wars reveal the death rattle of patriarchy, perhaps we can celebrate even the sharp edges. For out of the ashes, new life will rise. In the meantime, we can rejoice that our crates are no longer locked.

Fifteen years ago I sat in the doctor’s office hearing the results of a blood test.

I was an otherwise euphoric pregnant woman with one toddler in tow and a congregation eager to embrace our growing family. I vividly remember the utter delight I felt when the pregnancy test turned pink, the delight of my community upon hearing the news, the ease in which I once again set aside my blue jeans and donned the flowing maternity clothes. Getting pregnant wasn’t as easy as my mother warned, but being pregnant had been a blissful enterprise. That is until Dr. Ebner shared the news of “possible abnormalities” and words like Downs syndrome and chromosome charged through the air.

Given that medical professionals were the ones to share the news, the possible responses offered were likewise medical. I was given the names and numbers for further genetic testing and an amniocentesis at the hospital an hour from our home. The answers I craved, I was assured, would be given as soon as I met with the next team of doctors.

Between my encounters with medical professionals was a period of deep soul searching. At least I expected it would be so. Although my perspectives around abortion have become more nuanced over the years, I was not morally opposed to abortion, for myself or for others. Yet the suggestion that further testing of the fetus was necessary to determine if my baby should be brought into this world was anathema. It was not a fetus that had captured my heart, it was a baby. Already the mother barracuda instinct was in full alert.

A friend had miscarried after an amniocentesis and I wasn’t willing to knowingly put my baby in harms way. My partner and I did visit with the genetic counselors but took a pass on the amniocentesis. The counselors were genuinely confused, but I don’t remember feeling a need to explain. We went home and cuddled with our toddler while we prepared the nursery for whatever child we would be lucky enough to bring home.

After the birth of a healthy baby, Dr. Ebner asked if my position on choice had changed. It was my turn to be confused. My choice to refuse the tests and thereby the option of terminating the pregnancy was an immensely personal one. Neither the medical establishment, nor the legal statutes, nor the political posturing could steal away the enormity of my choice. In fact my choice was not the one that my family expected, not the one that even I would have anticipated. All the more I was aware of the importance of choice.

My choice was certainly informed by faith, though not bludgeoned by dogma. Long before the blood test, several karma filled buses had long since obliterated my dogma. As pastor in a small town parish, I had seen plenty of scenarios where divergent choices were equally faith-filled. My only theological clarity as I made my choice was the inescapable love of God for both myself and my unborn child. Whether the child lived or died, whether my choice was to embrace the complexity within or to run the either way, still God would find us, claim us, and love us.

Admittedly the passionate rhetoric about choice and life in this election cycle is personal for me as it is for many women. I was deeply offended that Obama’s response to Rick Warren’s question about abortion (Saddleback, August 2008) was ridiculed by the pundits for its nuance. If a discussion about abortion doesn’t deserve our most careful consideration and, yes, nuance, I don’t know what would. Likewise I am offended that Palin’s choice to bear a child, a baby with Downs Syndrome, is considered to be politically significant. I applaud both Obama’s nuance and Palin’s right to choose.

As my babies headed to high school this week, I’m struck that one’s qualifications for leadership are distinct from one’s ability to procreate. Giving birth to our babies is perhaps the easy part. After their first squeal in the cold light of day, the choices we parent’s face quickly become more difficult. In the complex world of parenting, nuance is one of the few life lines we have. I’m keeping it.

If confession is good for the soul, we should be keeping the priests cloistered in the confessionals. Except that I’m not catholic. Without a compelling ritual to release my sins, save a perfunctory weekly prayer of confession, I find myself sharing my confession at the keyboard.

I confess that I wanted Obama to pick a woman. Given the rancor of the primaries, I wasn’t too keen on the Hillary choice; I couldn’t wrap my mind around how they could authentically lead together after so much bad blood. I was intrigued with Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas. With these the only two female Democrats in the conversation, I found myself wondering why there are only two qualified women in all of America. Surely there are more liberal leaning women that would be clean enough, smart enough, and experienced enough for the job.

I confess that I was disappointed, extremely so, with Obama’s choice of Joe Biden. Not that Biden isn’t a decent fellow, by all accounts he is. But at the end of the day, he is another white man. And I’m tired of white men in the white house. I am hungry for our highest office in the land to be reflective of the diversity that is America. I wanted a woman.

Far from feeling sheepish about this desire, I have assumed that every respectable feminist (female and male) share this bias. After all, 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling are impressive but not a break through. Like most American’s, I am truly proud that we crossed a historic threshold as Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee for President. But a black man is not a woman.

Historically there are some tensions between white women struggling for freedom alongside black men in the struggle. Elizabeth Cady Stanton threw her incredible network of support to Frederick Douglass in the quest to end the holocaust in this country in the late 19th century, but she took frustration to her grave. Frustration was born of what she understood to be broken promises, promises that once black men secured the vote they would use the influence they had gained to secure the same rights for women, white and black. Conversely, when Affirmative Action was embodied (albeit halfheartedly) a century later, black men saw white women coming away with the paycheck while they continued to sit in the unemployment lines.

Nominating a not white man is historic and good, but it is not synonymous with choosing a woman. Hence I feel unabashed in naming my disappointment with Obama’s choice of Biden. Clearly McCain has the pulse of women’s frustration as he announced his choice for V.P., Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.

As the world blinked in disbelief, most of us meeting Sarah Palin for the first time, I was faced with a reality check that is at disconcerting. While it is clear the Maverick has chosen a maverick, one wonders at the logic. Unquestionably Palin brings youth to McCain’s age, but the only state she’s strategically positioned to deliver is Alaska with its 3 electoral votes. I have huge respect for her choice to bear a fifth child, as Governor of Alaska, knowing that the child would be born with Downs Syndrome, yet her dogmatic stance against abortion is not in keeping with most American’s more nuanced view. Quite frankly, aside from her good looks and gender, McCain’s choice is at best quixotic. Although she may have remarkable instincts and prove to be a strong leader, no one is even pretending to suggest that she has the education or the experience for the job itself.

Which brings me back to the troubling nature of the choice. The choice was to find a woman, any woman, preferable a decent intelligent one. Sarah Palin appears to be a fine person, a woman of sincere faith committed to overcoming gridlock and improving the communities where we live. The choice to find a woman rather than a qualified candidate is affirmative action in its most grotesque distortion. Choosing a woman rather than a qualified candidate is objectification, treating a person as a thing, the process of reducing personhood to object status. In this case it is the process of reducing the search for a Vice Presidential candidate to a gender match. When a candidate’s sexual attributes are held apart from the full personhood of skills, talents, and experiences it is sexual objectification. More simply put, it is demeaning.

To point an accusatory finger at McCain is, I’m painfully aware, to point one at myself. To fuss with McCain’s pandering to women is to acknowledge the objectification inherent in all of the public cry for a woman. Quite frankly, neither of us should be let off the hook on this one.

Candidates for President (and Vice President) of this or any nation should be chosen on the ability to lead not based upon their gender or any other object of their identity. After prayerful consideration and educated inquiry, our call as people of faith is to look beyond objectifications like gender and race in order to select the candidate with the ability to lead our nation. Only then will the dream become realized.