Southern Cross

One More Christmas Story

2012-01-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

One of this blog's readers shared this story by email. I asked if I could re-post. I think it is important for liberal Christians, agnostics, and atheists to know that the conservative church is not a monolithic block -- and it is equally important for conservative Christians to know that they can "let their hearts lead" while staying true to their faith.

Here is her story:

"...my sister is married to a Baptist minister. The church they are currently serving is allied with both the Southern Baptists and The Cooperative Baptists. Recently their son, my nephew came out as gay. He is currently living in the Toronto area with his partner. I have been impressed with the way my sister and her husband have made the difficult transition to accepting this aspect of their son. My sister is coming along faster than my brother-in-law. She lets her heart lead. They just celebrated a wonderful Christmas with their son and his partner and have affirmed their unconditional love for them. Their church is supportive - the leadership knows and they are not making a deal out of it. Just thought I would pass this along. They have come a long way."

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas 2011

Wishing you light in the darkness and shelter from cold. May you find comfort and joy wherever life takes you. Much love. Thanks for reading.

Indie Redneck?

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

"Prejudice against Southerners is generally socially acceptable among people who should know better." - Allan Massie

NPR is an unlikely place to find relevant cultural commentary on the American South, but their review of "Redneck TV" is spot-on. The South of reality television appears to be populated only by stupid white people wearing hats. They hunt. They fish. They talk funny.

The article left me wondering were to find depictions of the other American South -- not Nashville, not NASCAR -- but the strange, half-haunted landscape that I left behind three years ago. Now that director David Gordon Green has moved from George Washington to Pineapple Express, what else is out there? My top picks would include documentaries like Benjamin Smoke and Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, the gentle comic surrealism of Dorne Pentes' The Closest Thing to Heaven, and indie narratives like Winter's Bone. Granted, it's easy to romanticize subcultures birthed from poverty and decades of isolation...far more challenging to render them convincingly.

Rest In Peace, Zondra Douglas

2011-11-15T15:23:00.000-08:00

Zondra Douglas passed away this week from cancer. When I interviewed her six and a half years ago, she was 25 years old. She was young to have so much responsibility: mother of two daughters, single parent, college student, employee at the Chick-fil-A, and a church Elder. She is young to be gone now. Prayers and best wishes for all of her family and loved ones.

We belonged to the same church: Seigle Avenue Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, next to the now-demolished Piedmont Courts Housing Project, where Zondra grew up. She was gracious enough to let me interview her for Southern Cross.

Below are some brief excerpts from that interview:

What would you say to somebody who is from the suburbs and has never really interacted with somebody from a different socioeconomic group?

I think that everybody needs to get out of their environment. However you have to do it. You need to find out what’s going on where somebody else lives. Because then you know what’s going on in the world.

What would you describe as moral values?

Just being honest and real. Like being able to tell people stuff even if it’s not something they want to hear. Like my friends don’t like me, because I say, well, you shouldn’t have called me if you did not want to know the truth. Because I’m gonna tell you, whether you want to hear it or not.

I mean, we just got to be that way. I’ll listen to you whine for a little bit, and I’ll let you get some stuff off your chest that you need to get out, and then I’m gonna tell you, well, why are you still doing that?

I try to be kind when I’m saying stuff.

I’m also asking all my interviews subjects, do you consider yourself an evangelical Christian? Why or why not?

Hmmm. I guess yes, and no. I don’t carry my Bible around and preach to people, in that sort of a way, but I try to treat people the way that I want to be treated. Like I just show how you’re supposed to be.

I don’t go around saying, the Bible says this, the Bible says that, but I really try to be genuine. Like, not hurting people and not doing mean things to them, and just showing them that you need to be godlike, not just preaching to them all the time.

Because even if I’m preaching to them and I’m being mean and hurtful, that’s not going to help them to want to be a Christian. Now I do tell people to go to church all the time! Or I try to invite them to come to church with me. I am definitely an advocate of people going to church, and saying, “You need to get out of bed Sunday, and go to church!”

So I do that, but I don’t go around all the time saying the Bible says this and the Bible says that. I’m just kind of me.

One thing that I’ve noticed about you is that you have a lot of confidence. You’re very clear in what you think and you say things with a lot of conviction. Where do you think you learned that?
Probably my grandma. My mama too. They talk a lot. It’s just kind of, we say what needs to be said. So I got that from them.

one wish

2011-11-01T19:35:00.001-07:00

They say if you name your wish, it won't come true.

I am not sure the same is true of prayers, but why take chances?

This one is important. I hope somebody is listening.

R.I.P. Wangari Maathai

2011-09-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize, passed away on Sunday night. She had been fighting ovarian cancer and was 71 years old.

An excerpt from her obituary:

"Her work with voluntary groups alerted her to the struggles of women in rural Kenya, and it quickly became her life's cause. Noticing how the rapid environmental degradation was affecting women's lives, she encouraged them to plant trees to ensure future supplies of firewood and to protect water sources and crops.

"Maathai's agenda quickly widened as she joined the struggle against the repressive and corrupt regime of Daniel arap Moi. Her efforts to stop powerful politicians grabbing land, especially forests, brought her into conflict with the authorities, and she was beaten and arrested numerous times. Her bravery and defiance made her a hero in Kenya."

What part of Acts 4:32 did you not understand?

2011-09-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

Personally, I am enthusiastically in favor of class warfare, but this is still a pretty good article.

It’s not ‘class warfare,’ it’s Christianity

Washington Post, September 20, 2011
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary

"... the complete breakdown in the United States these days of realistic thinking about how markets and financial systems actually do work has three sources: “homage to financial assets,…market efficiency” and “evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal Christianity, infused with a millennial preoccupation with terrorism, evil, and Islam…” These are the three legs of the stool that caused the “de facto anesthetizing, over the last twenty years, of onetime populist southern and western” regions. It should be noted that these are the same sections of the country that are demographically the regions with the highest Tea Party concentration, especially the South."

The Best Answer I Can Find to Religion

2011-09-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

Many summers ago, as a teenager staying at my grandparents' farm in Suffolk County, Long Island, I read this short story by Ursula K. LeGuin: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

It was just a few pages out of an immense stack of paperback library books, mostly fantasy and science fiction. Looking back, years later, this parable is still probably the best and most concise answer I can find to dilemmas of religion, morality, and ethics.

"These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

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all you need

2011-09-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

You know that tired old saying that you can't love anybody else, unless you also love yourself?

Unfortunately, the reverse is also true.

Prayers for the People of Norway

2011-07-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

I read the news headlines this morning with sadness and dismay: an apparent right-wing fundamentalist Christian in Norway who killed 92 people with a bomb and a shooting spree.

I wonder how many sermons will touch upon the atrocity tomorrow? I wonder what their conclusions will be. It seems fairly trite to say that real Christians do not murder people, any more than real Muslims or real Buddhists do (whoever gets to define "real"). I know almost nothing about the suspect's life or beliefs, or about the sociopolitical backdrop in Norway. It strikes me that people who really are that angry, that despairing, that deranged, will find some excuse to get their guns or their fertilizer and that it is the job of law enforcement to stop them. Mostly.

All I would ask is that for one minute Christians put aside their moral superiority and remember that there is venom in the Bible as well as healing. The venom is mostly what people outside the church see and react to, in fact. Don't let that portion of hate sit alongside the scoop of lovingkindness. You never know whose mind it will poison. You never know what child or bored adolescent might take it to heart. You can't love your neighbor while hating Barack Obama, the government, gays, Muslims, immigrants, you name it. You just can't.

You can't love your neighbor while hating right-wing Christians, either. I am writing this blog entry for the two or three evangelicals who might still be reading this blog, but just as much for the progressive and mainline Christians who cherish their separateness. Complacency and smugness breed contempt. Contempt is another name for hatred.

Would 92 more people in the world still be alive had Anders Behring Breivik encountered a few more Christians who preached decency, respect, and tolerance toward those who believed differently, and a few less who preached hatred and violence? I have no way of knowing but next time around do you really want to take that chance?

No Rapture Story Here

2011-05-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

This story from the New Republic basically sums up how I feel about the whole subject.

Talk about your straw men and your fish in a barrel...

On a different note, I found out yesterday that a high school classmate and an old coworker each passed away very suddenly, under totally different circumstances, within a few hours of each other. I found out through Facebook, which was jarring and dislocating in its own way.

Prayers for Ed Murratti and Elizabeth Christian Parker, and for their friends and family.

Thanks everyone for tuning in last night!

2011-04-29T06:37:00.000-07:00

Here is the episode archive, in case you missed it:

Listen to internet radio with God Discussion on Blog Talk Radio

(My segment begins about 45 minutes in.)

You can also download the free mp3 podcast at itunes.

Episode title: "World Healing Day and Adventures in the Bible Belt," aired 4/28/11

And thanks to Deborah at The God Discussion, for putting together a phenomenal site and show. Check it out, if you haven't already...

sending prayers

2011-04-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

With over 200 people dead, yesterday "may have been the deadliest single day for tornadoes in the U.S. since April 3, 1974, when 310 people died. " (Bloomberg)

Prayers for everyone affected by the storms and tornadoes this week in the South.

Tonight

2011-04-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Thursday, I'll be a guest on The God Discussion. Show begins at 9 PM EST/ my segment begins at 9:30 pm.

"Tess Gadwa, author of Southern Cross, will take us on a journey along the back roads of the Bible Belt, where we’ll hear true stories of miracles, visions, voodoo, snake handling, civil disobedience and Tess’ search for existential answers.

"With a mesmerizing and colorful writing style, Gadwa chronicles her 10,000 mile road trip that documents the spiritual journeys and struggles of ordinary people in the American South."

Or something like that.

Happy Easter Monday!

2011-04-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

Hope you had a good holiday. I very much did, thanks to an amazing group of friends.

Wanted to let folks know that I will be a guest on a show called The God Discussion this Thursday evening. The interview will be broadcast over Internet radio, starting at 9 PM EST, Thursday, April 28.

Tune in if you can. We will be taking questions...

For Lent this year, I am giving up church.

2011-03-09T14:45:00.001-08:00

I still have a strong faith. This isn't about rebellion or making a statement. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with the church I was going to. I just didn't feel a strong connection to the community there. After two years, I'll take that as a sign.

Instead, I'm working on a new project. The goal is to post something every day for 40 days. Certified 100% dogma-free.

(It's on tumblr and that's as much as I'm saying.)

P.S. You can now order a print copy of Southern Cross. Whoo hoo!

Shallow Social Justice

2011-01-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

My friend Laura Massie forwarded me this article, and it really struck a chord. A commitment to social justice is a wonderful thing -- complacency and self-righteousness considerably less so.

"Daily we read treatises of shallow liberation, trying to fit the causes of the We’s into the model of the Church (us) and the poor (them)...

"And well supported though these missions may be in the our sacred texts, they do not sufficiently answer the cry for liberation that Jesus inspires in the hearts of those who are captive. Lila Watson’s qualification to those outside of her community is the essential invitation we are each faced with in this moment:

"If you have come to help me, go home. If you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let’s work together."

Read article...

At the MLK Monument - June 16, 2007

2011-01-17T08:30:00.001-08:00

Fred Dunham, Eric Wilson, and Nick Clifton (left to right)

At the beginning of my road trip through the Deep South, I stopped in at the Martin Luther King Jr. historic site in Atlanta, Georgia. Here is a brief excerpt from that visit:

The King tomb is made of white marble, surrounded by a long and narrow reflecting pool. After some time has passed, I introduce myself to the three African-American men standing next to me and ask what brought them here.

Fred tells me that he is here with his son and grandson, to pay their respects. He is 62 years old, a retired garment worker and a Vietnam veteran, born and raised in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood. As a teenager he went to Ebenezer Baptist Church and participated in sit-ins at McCrory’s department store.

“He was an articulate man, and he spoke very well,” Fred says of Martin Luther King, Jr. “We had to get someone of intellect, who could speak for us all without a lot of rigmarole. He was the one that was chosen to lead the movement.”

Fred remembers a time when Atlanta public parks were segregated, remembers seeing his mother give up her seat on a public bus when he was nine years old. Tomorrow is Father’s Day and he is hoping to share a little bit of his past with the generations after him. “We’ve come a long way, but we still have not reached his full dream,” he reflects.

A few minutes later, inside Ebenezer Baptist Church, I run into the three of them again. “Something moved in you when Dr. King spoke,” Fred tells me. “It gave you hope. All your fears, all the prejudice and hatred, went out of you when you sat in this sanctuary. It was a place of peace and love. You went out and shared it with other people. So it began to grow.”

He remembers his training in nonviolent protest by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “If you had a quick temper, they wouldn’t take you,” he says. “People was chosen for these tasks. You had to be willing to wait and not hit back, until they got tired of hitting.”

Until now, Fred’s adult grandson Nick has been reserved to the point of hostility. He abruptly announces that the real force for change was corporations realizing the buying power of African-Americans. Altruism had nothing to do it. “People learned that black dollars and white dollars were the same thing...” he insists. “That’s what led to the change, more than anybody having a guilty conscience.”

Fred and I chat for while longer about his experiences in the movement. At the end of the interview, his grandson stops me again. He wants to clarify his earlier comment. Says Nick, “We should never forget the sacrifices of those who have gone before us. We need to respect everything they’ve done to get us here.”

Tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King

Southern Cross: The Remix

2011-01-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

This past December I printed up a small number of manuscript copies as gifts for friends and family. It was a nice opportunity to rearrange the text and experiment with a less chronological narrative.

Several people have asked how they could get their hands on a print copy. This edition is coil bound, on 8 1/2 by 11" paper and contains 13 original pen-and-ink wash illustrations. Click here to purchase.

Merry Christmas and Safe Travels to All

2010-12-25T15:52:00.001-08:00

Christmas in a Bar

2010-12-25T15:10:00.000-08:00

Last night was the first time I had spent Christmas Eve away from family in a long time. Perhaps ever? I ended up going out caroling with a group of friends in town. It was a big group -- maybe 30 adults and children -- although nobody seemed to know any of the second verses. We sang "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph," "Silent Night," and "O Come All Ye Faithful." At our last stop, the people in the lobby of the apartment building we visited came out and sang with us.

After about an hour and a half of tromping through the residential areas of Greenfield, we headed to the Rendezvous, a neighborhood bar in nearby Turner's Falls -- one of those rare places that manages to be both friendly and hip at the same time. One of the organizers of the caroling is a co-owner of the bar, so he closed it down for the evening and we had a potluck feast -- with homemade eggnog (made with the eggs of local chickens). Not to mention flan and samosas! Candles were lit. The Beatles' White Album was playing. The vibe was festive, yet chill. I had planned to stay only a few minutes, yet found it difficult to tear myself away.

I have no idea how many of the participants last night were churchgoers (if any). But I am very sure that Jesus would have felt more at home at this gathering than squeezed into an uncomfortable pew. He probably would have asked for a second helping of eggnog, too.

This is what church should be. Walls optional.

Fresh from the Blogosphere

2010-11-28T13:31:00.000-08:00

We have our first online review! Check us out on Jackie Holness's excellent blog, www.afterthealtarcall.com.

Jackie is a close friend, a talented writer, and one of my favorite bloggers on the web. (Check out the story of how we met in her review.) In her blog posts and magazine articles, she writes about faith, family, pop culture, dating, love, sex, and life in the "A" (aka Atlanta, GA) with freshness, honesty, and humor. Full disclosure: I also designed her blog a few years back...

On a related note: Jackie mentions that the book is available for free online, which is totally true! I am, however, doing a small print run this holiday season, mostly for friends and family. If you are interested in ordering a hard copy, please email me, preferably before Dec. 15.

Thanks all! Hope it's been a good holiday for you and yours.

Illustrations

2010-11-14T14:46:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the illustrations I drew for Southern Cross. Most are based on photographs, although I usually took a sketchbook on the road as well.

Tent Revival, Clarksville, Tennessee

Jay Bakker (right) with Matt Debenedictis, Atlanta, Georgia

Father LeDoux with parishioners, New Orleans, Louisiana

Freedom Rider and Civil Rights Veteran Jerome Smith

St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana

This I Believe

2010-10-28T15:40:00.001-07:00

When I first started this project, my then-agent wanted me to write Southern Cross as a series of 50 short chapters, each beginning with the words "I believe..."

Unauthorized Product Placement

Every chapter would reveal some inspirational, enlightening truth, of the sort known only to 29-year-old freelance writers with time on their hands. The interviews and anecdotes that followed would supply the type of tidy, accessible spiritual answers that could be readily consumed on the treadmill at the gym, or while ingesting a single serving of strawberry yogurt.

There's nothing wrong with accessibility, but that approach didn't really appeal to me -- I was much more interested in the views and ideas of the people I was interviewing than in rehashing my own. Since then, I have had a number of readers of the manuscript ask why I didn't share more of my own beliefs in the text. It's a topic I've blogged about in the past, and I talk about it some in the book's epilogue.

I will say this much about my own beliefs:

I believe that God is conscious and compassionate.
I believe that Christianity is a system of social and psychological control.

I also believe that if anybody starts telling you, "God wants you to do this," or "God wants you to do that," you should probably duck and run out of the room! Unless of course, I happen to agree with them, in which case, I'll probably turn a blind eye.

I'm not here to tell you what to believe. Go and ask your neighbor. Better yet, ask two or three of them... pay attention to where they disagree.

Go and Do Likewise

2010-10-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, I ran into Canadian academic and activist Leigh Brownhill at a party. She kindly offered me a copy of her book, Land, Food, Freedom, in exchange for a review on my blog. Brownhill traveled to Africa to record the stories of a movement that spanned generations and involved hundreds of thousands of Kenyan peasant women. How could I resist?

Leigh Brownhill reads from her book

The result is a fascinating read, if academic at times. These women fought for their right to reclaim their land and determine their own destinies. They endured concentration camps, rape, and torture during the 1950s Mau Mau War against the British, followed by the "housewifeization" campaigns of the new post-colonial government, designed to impose European standards of beauty, dress, diet, and submissive feminine behavior in the 1960s.

What impressed me was how practical and successful they were in reaching their goals -- perhaps because women did not take their cues from a single political party or charismatic leader, but from a network of social groups organized for resource sharing and mutual support. During the general strikes of the early 1950s, they created an alternative food distribution system that served thousands of strikers. Flash-forward to the 1990s and see Mau Mau veteran Ruth Wangari launch a successful hunger strike and year-long vigil involving more than 10,000 people at "Freedom Corner" to release 52 political prisoners - one of the events that led to the downfall of dictator Daniel Arap Moi. Or recall Wangari Maathai, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her work in founding the Green Belt Movement for tree planting and soil conservation across Africa.

The historical person known as Jesus came from a country under occupation, full of dispossessed farmers expelled from their land by the Romans. Christianity is one of the earliest examples of a nonviolent social protest movement that worked. We need more examples.

May Day 2010 - Holyoke, MA

Photos by Peter Palmobella.
Visit Leigh Brownhill's website at http://www.lbrownhill.com.

It Gets Better

2010-10-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time over the last few months to post a lot in this blog, but this was one topic I couldn't overlook.

If you are a conservative anti-gay Christian, please watch this video. It could change the way you think.

If you are a gay, lesbian, or transgendered teen or young adult struggling with thoughts of suicide - in part because you are being told by the religion you grew up in that being who you are is wrong and sinful - please watch this video - and more from Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project. It could save your life.

Full disclosure: my little sister is gay. This is not an issue I can be neutral about. If you put her down, I am going to want to kick your ass. Apologies if that is not a very Christian sentiment.

Living in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal and honestly, Not That Big a Deal, it is easy to forget what it's like to live surrounded by institutional church-sponsored homophobia. It's easy to write off all bigots as stupid and ignorant, and thus assume they would have no power over somebody able to think for themselves. Except when those bigots are your parents, your youth group leader, your teacher, or your therapist, they have a tremendous amount of power.

I heard plenty of horror stories while researching Southern Cross, and if I hadn't found a faith community with the opposite set of values, there is no way I could have stayed a Christian in the South. By grace and luck, I found Christians who were warm, empathic, tolerant, welcoming -- and eager to welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered folk as full and honored members of their community.

Off to church now...

RIP, Nahani, "She Who Shines"

2010-08-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

Wanted to include link for the memorial page for my dog, Nahani. Today marks the one-month anniversary of her passing from a pulmonary embolism. Still miss her a lot...

http://nahanidog.wordpress.com

It Takes a Village to Stay Married

2010-06-29T11:22:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday night I attended my first wedding ceremony since my own marriage ended in 2007. Man, that was a doozy... I realized that I had never before in my adult life attended a wedding without being part of a couple.

There is a lot you can say about marriage as an institution, both pro and con. Speaking from my own experience, I think marriage is a dang good idea for the raising of kids, somewhat optional otherwise. But if you're going down that road, remember that marriage is a connection to a larger community, its standards and its expectations. That's a whole lot bigger than two people.

If you are invited to a wedding, as part of the ceremony you will probably be asked to pledge your support to the couple getting married. All I ask you to do is to take those vows seriously. If a friend seems to be struggling, take the time to listen. Don't feel like you need to give advice, immediately take sides, or rush to judgment. Just ask one simple question:

"What can I do to help?"

Not all marriages can be saved. But any marriage in trouble contains two people struggling through different degrees of hurt, fear, anger, guilt and confusion. They are probably feeling more alone than ever before in their lives. If you came to their wedding, if you danced and ate their cake, they deserve your compassion and support.

Two more weddings this summer. Wish me luck...

Proud to be an Episcopalian!

2010-05-16T05:14:00.000-07:00

U.S. Episcopal Church consecrates lesbian bishop
(Reuters, Los Angeles)

This has not been an easy or a popular stance for the denomination I was born and raised in, but we are on the right side of history. Of this much I am very, very sure.

That's all for now. Got to get ready to read the lesson at today's 10 AM service...

The Difference

2010-05-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day, y'all.

I wasn't planning to do a blog entry today, and then I ran across this post. I think it encapsulates the essential difference between fundamentalists (not all of whom are religious) and everybody else:

"After Glenn Beck said “social justice is a perversion of the gospel” and a “code” for Marxism, communism, and Nazism, I invited him to a public dialogue to discuss the true meaning of social justice, which I said was at the heart of the gospel and integral to biblical faith.

In response, Beck promised on his radio show that “the hammer” would be coming down on me and my organization, and that he would devote a week of his television show to bringing me down. I took that as a “no” to dialogue.

But I would still like to have this discussion with Beck..."

Jim Wallis is willing to debate; Glenn Beck is not.

To me, it matters a lot less whether you are "right" or "wrong" on a given issue, than whether you are willing to have a conversation about it. None of us has a lock on absolute truth or righteousness, but we all have a choice in whether to respect and engage with other points of view. Some people might see this as weakness. I see it as an opportunity to learn.

Beyond Intelligent Design

2010-03-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: I get pretty frustrated by this entire debate. Perhaps because I grew up with a mother who is both an ecologist and a committed Christian, it always seemed self-evident that God could work through the process of evolution to generate the beauty and splendor of our natural world. I really don't see why Darwin's Theory of Evolution should be any more controversial to Christians than Newton's Law of Gravity.

Chris Carlisle, M. Div. gave the following half-hour talk at my home parish, St. James Episcopal Church, in Greenfield, MA on March 8, 2010. This lecture is a "must" for anyone willing to leave their preconceptions behind and open up dialogue between the religious and scientific communities.

Chaplain at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of The C omplete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design Carlisle has strong ties to academia as well as to organized religion. He quickly moves beyond the usual stale debate and offers fresh insight into the nature of God and the presence of God in nature.

Who Dat?

2010-02-08T10:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I don't claim to be any kind of sports fan, but New Orleans winning the Superbowl last night makes me really happy.

Photo credit: AMY KIRK DUVOISIN, Times-Picayune

Geaux Saints!!!!!

Daily Life in Haiti

2010-01-13T07:55:00.000-08:00

My friend Peter Daniel made this short video during the year that he spent teaching in rural Haiti:

Even before the quake, most images I had seen of Haiti showed only devastation and extreme poverty. These scenes of baking bread and playing soccer, a funeral procession and a new baby, reveal a different Haiti, one where life is hard (it is common in this village not to eat one day out of the week) but suffering has not extinguished hope.

Thankfully, the village of Bayonnais was not badly affected by the quake, although two students studying in Port-au-Prince are missing. For more earthquake updates and information on how you can help, visit Peter's blog at http://peterbdaniel.wordpress.com/

Please keep the people of Haiti in your thoughts and prayers.

Peace Rising in Charlotte, NC

2010-01-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

If you live in or near the Queen's City, check out this event... wish I could be there myself.

Heather is a good friend and has pulled together this event largely out of her own initiative, passion, and vision. On Saturday, Heather and Sean are opening their home for a full-day workshop. Catherine Cadden and Jesse Wiens of the Center for Nonviolent Communication in Chapel Hill, NC will speak at both the film and the workshop.

Visit Heather's blog to rsvp or learn more...

Evangelizing Hate

2010-01-04T08:54:00.000-08:00

The line between religiously justified bigotry and state-sponsored violence is whisper-thin.

U.S. Evangelicals’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push

Photo Credit: Marc Hofer

People like Nikki Mawanda may soon face the death penalty in Uganda, due in part to the words and actions of American evangelical missionaries.

Read article.

Christmas Song

2009-12-24T12:15:00.000-08:00

Sometime in the past few years I lost my taste for nearly all holiday music. But this spare and haunting arrangement by Amherst's own Tim Eriksen is worth sharing:

"Lo How a Rose..."

Wishing everyone who reads this blog safe travels and a few days of blessed peace and rest.

God's Teeth

2009-12-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

Saw the Coen Brothers' latest, A Serious Man, over the holiday weekend. It's not as funny as Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski, not as dark as No Country for Old Men or Barton Fink. This seems to be the directors' nod toward naturalism, of sorts -- and autobiography. Set in the suburban Jewish community of 1960s Minneapolis, the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnick, a physics professor whose life quickly unravels, in a manner not entirely dissimilar from that of the Biblical protagonist, Job.

I have always had a fondness for the Job story, probably because it never really lets God off the hook. But when you make a movie about it, the really interesting part is not so much the questions, but people's reactions to them. As Professor Larry Gopnik, standing in front of a blackboard filled with an incomprehensible swarm of equations, tells his baffled students, "Even if you don't understand the material, you're still going to be responsible for it."

Throughout the movie, the only character who attempts much in the way of responsibility is Larry, in his own meek and largely ineffective way. But the events of the film beg a larger question -- can God be held responsible? At a certain point in the movie, Larry begins to believe he has been cursed by God. This of course, requires a belief in something other than random chance and rationalism.

The film walks an artful line. Is the strange old man in the prologue a dybbuk or an innocent murder victim? Is the ghost of Larry's wife's dead lover who keeps appearing a hallucination or a supernatural apparition?

Most tantalizing of all is the story related by a rabbi about a Jewish dentist in his congregation. The dentist had come to the rabbi after discovering that the back sides of the teeth of one of his gentile patients contained a mysterious message inscribed in Hebrew characters:

"Help me."

The dentist struggled with the meaning of this revelation, pondered, and sought guidance. Finding no answers, he went back to his ordinary life.

Like most of the events in the movie, the story is open to multiple interpretations. I doubt this is what the filmmakers had in mind, but my first reaction was this -- what if it meant just what it said? What if God were trapped and in need of help, crying out to humanity for rescue?

Note: the above photo is not the original film still, but Aroid on Flickr does a pretty decent job of getting the idea across.

Mailing List for Survivors of Spiritual Abuse

2009-12-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

Posting this on behalf of my friend Renee: http://lists.ianua.org/listinfo.cgi/sass-ianua.org

Check out her blog at http://www.ianua.org.

Live Blogging from WriteAngles24

2009-11-21T08:42:00.000-08:00

Just a very brief post from the WriteAngles writers' conference on the Mt. Holyoke campus in South Hadley, MA. Panels are a good balance between marketplace and craft and I have already run across one speaker (Bob Flaherty) whose work I simply have to check out. Really glad I was able to attend this year.

http://www.writeanglesconference.org

Civility: The Next Big Thing?

2009-09-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

"Civility and conformity are not the same thing. Civility is what makes genuine diversity possible."

With all the talk about Kanye West and Joe Wilson this week, and the emergence of civility as a public aspiration, I thought I would exhume an article I wrote for Charlotte Magazine this past spring...

"Red State Refugee"

Some of it already reads as dated (did they even have the Internet six months ago?) but some of it is still kind of relevant. Even if civility was not the apparent buzzword of the week, the concept has a lot to do with why I got started writing this book, way back when.

One of the reasons I find the South so intriguing is that it actually contains, within a few hundred square miles, more extreme viewpoints than the rest of the country put together. Maybe that's why good manners are so prized. Of course there are exceptions (Wilson's "outburst" among them) but by and large, people try to get along.

Also, you never know who might be carrying a concealed weapon...

Where I'm At

2009-08-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this isn't a real blog post.

It's more sort of a placeholder blog post...

I've actually had several ideas for things I have wanted to write about about over the last few months (everything from the Jon and Kate fiasco to Karen Armstrong's excellent memoir about her life as an ex-nun, The Spiral Staircase) but I simply have not had the time.

The reason is that my web design business has been keeping me quite busy -- which is a very good thing! In a few more months, I hope to be able to again take time to focus on revising and rewriting Southern Cross. But aside from work constraints, I think it's a good thing for me to take some time before returning to the project. I moved to Massachusetts from North Carolina a year ago, and my life has been in transition for the better part of two years. The dust is only just now beginning to settle -- from the move, from the divorce, from the economic downturn, from a serious illness, from everything else.

When I tried revising the book this spring, it was simply too early. It felt raw and painful. More importantly, I didn't know yet what I wanted to say. I am closer now, but not all the way there.

I will get, there, though -- I am too dang stubborn to give up. In the meantime, please email me if you would like to read a copy of the manuscript -- I welcome feedback and would post the whole thing up on the Internet if that didn't put my copyright in danger.

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog for your encouragement, comments, and support.

Mother's Day and Star Trek

2009-05-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

I was going to write something like a standard Mother's Day post, maybe with a few references to the Divine Feminine thrown in.

But then I went to see Star Trek on Friday night. Where is the connection, you may ask?

Now, the movie is stacking up so much critical acclaim you would think it was a Bollywood-crossover hit in Oscar season, and I won't deny Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are easy on the eyes. But that's not what caught my attention about the movie...

** SPOILER ALERT **

What really struck me was the central role that birth, mothers, and motherhood played in the movie. Just think about the opening sequence, where Jim Kirk's mother gives birth in a shuttle, under attack from enemy spacecraft -- when was the last time you saw that in a science fiction blockbuster?

Amanda Grayson, Spock's doomed mother (played by Winona Ryder) gets mega screentime. Via flashback, we even see the pregnant wife of the villainous Romulan spaceship captain.

Birth and pregnancy are common motifs for director J.J. Abrams, as anyone knows who has even casually followed the television show Lost. He must be aware that these are themes with immense emotional resonance, that have been largely ignored by traditional male modes of storytelling.

A small number of action films, such as the Terminator and Kill Bill movies, feature mothers as lead role ass-kickers. But I cannot think of another action movie where protecting or avenging the hero's mother is important to the plot. Compare to Inigo ("You killed my father") Montoya in the Princess Bride, not to mention the genre's other sacred text -- I mean, really, how can Luke go through nearly two entire Star Wars movies all hot and bothered about Darth Vader killing his father without it occuring to him that he killed his mother too? Adding insult to injury, the only dialogue about Luke's mother gets relegated to a scene in the third movie, in the sucky Ewok Village, of all places.

By contrast, in the current Star Trek movie, Spock's relationship with his mother is the emotional core of his character, at least as much so as his nascent friendship with Kirk. Spock only loses control of his emotions when his human mother is involved -- from schoolyard taunts to the anger and grief he finds impossible to contain after her death. By the end of the movie, Spock argues for leaving a defeated foe to die, rather than rescue him. His emotions have propelled him from cool Vulcan logic almost to a Romulan code of vengeance.

Could we finally be at a point in time where our storytellers value mothers as much as fathers? If so, that time has arrived not a moment too soon. The way in which the current Star Trek feature conflates the death of Spock's mother with the catastrophic implosion of her adopted planet is surely not accidental.

Tiamat was murdered. Eve was framed.

If we can conceive of a new and different set of myths, then perhaps our planet has a fighting chance to survive.

Postscript: Mad props to my mother and grandma and all the other amazing moms I know (including my friend Crystal, with whom I saw the movie) -- you carry out a truly heroic mission every day with courage, perseverance, love, and grace.

Happy Easter from an Egg Thief

2009-04-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

Ok... so Easter Sunday 2009 didn't get off to such a great start.

I was just getting ready to go to church when a neighbor came up and knocked on my door to tell me that my dog had pulled her trolley loose. The hook had held for eight months, screwed into my back door frame, and it had to come loose today. Still have no idea how I'm going to fix it.

Luckily, my dog was ok, so after giving her a brief walk, I drove over to St. James Episcopal Church in Greenfield. After I parked my car, I saw a grey-haired woman with a cane walking toward me on the sidewalk. In the true Easter spirit of things, I decided to smile and wish her a hearty "Good morning!"

She gave me the finger.

Not deterred, oozing with Christian charity, I tried talking to her a second time. "I hope your day gets better from here."

"Piss off!" she yelled, flipping me the dirty bird once more.

I don't think she was headed to church anywhere. I imagined her frustrated with all the smug, smiling families going to church in their Easter hats and dresses. Come to think of it, I could empathize. Still never know quite which side I'm on.

A few steps later, I found a painted egg on the ground in front of somebody's house. It was a blown egg, meaning that the insides had been sucked out and it would last indefinitely. I didn't see any more like it, and concluded it must have been dropped or overlooked in an earlier egg hunt. I liked it for its colors (different from the normal Easter pastels) and the way that the blowhole resembled a tiny eye. I suppose the proper thing would have been to let it lie where it was, or else give it to some cute child after the service, but that's not what I did.

Morality and religion, these are open to debate. Beauty is worth stealing when you find it.

Not Knowing

2009-04-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

It is one of the oldest stories we have.

The man rides in to the city, triumphant, greeted by adoring throngs. A few days later those same crowds turn on him, prompted by an elite who do not wish the current order disturbed. Things go badly. The man is captured. His followers disburse. He is mocked and tortured. He dies in agony and shame.

This is the part where I am supposed to skip to the Easter Narrative and talk about the promise of resurrection--how life follows death, joy follows sorrow.

Except that we're not there yet. I would rather spend a little more time where we are right now, today, on Good Friday.

Who exactly did Jesus think he was? How did he conceive his mission? It's an interesting question, whether you are talking about the historical person, the literary character, or the religious symbol. Whether he saw himself primarily as military messiah, social reformer, or divine savior, he must have had doubts along the way. In those final hours, did he wonder whether he had deluded himself? Whether his death had any meaning or purpose, after all?

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabacthani?" "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34)

These are the dying words of Jesus on the cross. These are words of hurt and confusion. These are the words of someone abandoned by the very same God to whom he has given everything. This would feel like betrayal--an even worse betrayal than the famous kiss of Judas.

God must have a place for those of us who doubt, who feel used and betrayed, who cry out to the heavens in anger, bewilderment, and pain. After all, at the very end, Jesus himself was one of us.

On Being Tagged as the "Good Little Church Girl"

2009-03-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

By now, if you have any kind of Facebook presence at all, you have probably seen a certain cartoon photo album making the rounds: you can tag it to show which of your friends is "The Grumpy One," "The Jock," "The Drama Queen," etc. (It's about time. All those "15 Things About Me" spinoffs were getting kind of old...)

A few days ago, I got tagged as "The Good Little Church Girl. " I think this was a joke. (Hi Rachael!) But it did get me thinking. A lot of people have made certain assumptions based on the fact that I was writing this book--like, that I would be shocked by the use of profanity or (far more disturbing) that I blandly approved and endorsed all forms and functions of institutional Christianity. This amused me, at first, but like all stereotypes, it wears a little thin.

I could try to lose the Good Girl rep by talking about my tattoos, my leather miniskirt, or the albums I have by Fugazi and the Sex Pistols. Except that nothing is sadder than Christian bloggers trying to prove that they are "hip," "edgy," and "relevant." (Just be yourselves, ok?) Plus, somebody might confuse me with the Barlow Girls:

Revolution is not to be confused with its trappings. Rock n' roll is the health of the state.

Here's the thing about religion. It's not nearly as safe as people think it is.

For the most part, religious institutions prop up the existing social order, but the same ideas have the latent power to transform (or destroy) that social order.

Take Jesus, for instance. He was executed because he represented a threat to the status quo of first century Palestine. Re-read the Sermon on the Mount and you may begin to get a sense of why. Flash forward to Joan of Arc, George Fox, John Brown, or Martin Luther King Jr. All were able to move and mobilize for social change, precisely because they stood for something more than the existing social, economic, and military power structures of their time.

We don't have to talk about exclusively Christian movements, either. Gandhi or the Dalai Lama, anyone?

We don't even have to talk about movements whose politics or principles I agree with. The Ayatollah Khomeini was one heck of a revolutionary. At least initially, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran had huge popular support.

Religion is dangerous. For this good little church girl, that may be part of the appeal.

Ashes

2009-02-25T12:08:00.001-08:00

I wasn't going to do an Ash Wednesday post. Spiritual musings that follow a liturgical calendar nearly always feel forced to me -- much like those newspaper columns you see about Thanksgiving recipes and Christmas memories from years past. But as a lapsed Episcopalian (how the hell did I manage that?) the day still holds some pull. These days I am skeptical of any message coming from organized religion telling us to Feel More Guilt -- smacks of atonement theology to me. Still, I find the ritual of Ash Wednesday beautiful.

"From dust you came, and to dust you shall return," the priest intones, as he or she daubs each person's forehead with a cross of ashes (made from the remains of last year's Palm Sunday palms.)

I have always been moved by that honesty, that starkness. Whether devout Christian or atheist, death is one thing we can all agree on. We are going to die. Our time is limited.

We don't get a do-over. Our choices matter.

Whether or not you believe there is a life after this one, let's make what time we have count...

It's Time

2009-02-19T18:43:00.001-08:00

It's been a little over a year since I finished the fist draft of the manuscript. Since then, the project has mostly lain dormant. Sure, I've sent out a handful of queries to agents and publishers, but nothing like the degree of effort I put into actually researching and writing the book.

Part of that is because I have been going through major life change (divorce, career change, move to a different state) but a lot of it was because I just wasn't ready to face the project again. Among other things, I was angry at God -- more on that another time.

This past year was an experience like no other. I think I am through the worst of it. But I guess we never know. All I know for sure is that I right now have the opportunity to return to Southern Cross and make it better, and I am not sure when the next such opportunity will arise. So I'm going to take it and run...

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

2009-01-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

I am generally skeptical of authors who claim to find scientific proof for the existence of God. Whether New Age or Intelligent Design, they tend to oversimplify, if not actively mislead.

David Bohm is a little bit different. For one thing, he's oldschool -- died in 1992, worked with Einstein and Oppenheimer. Bohm posited the "non-local" hidden variable theory, an interpretation of quantum mechanics that requires that all particles in the universe be able to instantaneously exchange information with all others. This theory has not been disproven and was still the subject of active investigation as recently as 2007. (Nature 446, 871-875)

So what does all this have to with God? In his later writings, Bohm argues that our universe is better viewed as a living organism than as a mechanistic, deterministic system. What we experience as reality is actually a hologram-like projection of information from an immense multidimensional ground. Consciousness plays a rather special role. The interesting thing is that he has math to back it up.

I don't have the technical skills to evaluate that core tenets of his thesis, but I do like the way that he presents it. Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980, Routledge) does not tell people what to do or how to act. Rather he shares a somewhat dry series of equations and analogies exploring what he freely acknowledges is a "necessarily sketchy treatment."

Bohm admits that his findings are not authoritative, but does not hesitate to ask the very biggest of big questions. That's my kind of belief system.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T12:05:00.001-08:00

And to all a good night...

Inauguration Blues

2008-12-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

So, fingers crossed, it looks like I may actually get press credentials to cover Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony, thanks to my editor back at Charlotte Magazine.

Little did I know when I applied that Rick Warren, evangelical pastor of Saddleback Church, author of The Purpose Driven Life, and vocal supporter of California's Proposition 8, would be chosen to deliver the invocation at the ceremony. Never mind that the preacher giving the benediction, renowned civil rights leader Reverend Joseph Lowery, supports gay marriage, or that Obama himself opposes gay marriage (as presumably do a fair number of the people reading this blog). Warren is not a Dobson or a Fred Phelps--he supports civil domestic partnership rights and he's a Melissa Etheridge fan... Saturday night they both appeared on stage at a Muslim Public Affairs event, and she even agreed to autograph her Christmas album for him. Warren champions an admirable range of global antipoverty initiatives, and the friendship between the two public figures seems genuine. (Back in 2002, Obama asked Warren to review the chapter on faith for his book, The Audacity of Hope.)

But still. Warren did compare gay marriage to polygamy and incest. (Side note: I wish religious leaders would stop making that polygamy argument. It's irrelevant, since the Bible, not to mention Islam, actually sanctions polygamy. Marriage has not always been between one man and one woman, and in many parts of the world, it's still not.)

This isn't just any prayer breakfast or round table discussion. These are the opening moments of a historic presidency. I understand what Obama is trying to do with this big tent strategy. I applaud him for trying to find common ground with groups that did not vote for him, and honestly, are not very likely to vote for him the next time around. I don't think it's about short-term politics. I think it's about trying to get the entire country behind him, FDR-style, in a time of economic crisis.

And yeah, I agree that being "diverse and noisy and opinionated" is what makes this country great. That same impulse to create dialogue between people who normally don't speak to each other was what got me started on Southern Cross.

Except then I think of my younger sister, Anne, and her partner, Julia, and the photo album that they sent me commemorating Election Day 2008. The pictures show them standing in line at the polls and rejoicing that night with their friends at home in Minneapolis.

"We get to vote for this guy!" reads one caption.

They were so excited, so optimistic, so filled with trust in their candidate. Of course, that trust was bound to be let down. This is politics, after all.

But did it have to be on Inauguration Day?

Admitting We Were Wrong

2008-11-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

So this is what history looks like.

Visit my friend Jackie's blog for an eyewitness account of the mood last night at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church (where Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor).

As for me, I ended up watching the Election Night coverage at Paradise City Tavern, the local Democratic hangout. The place was packed to its fire code capacity before the first state results were even called. I didn't see anyone I knew there, but it didn't matter--we all had a common bond. I even scored an invitation to visit the United House of Prayer for All People in Springfield! People started counting as we got close to 11 PM. When NBC announced Obama as the projected winner, the entire room started cheering and chanting "Yes we can." This being a hippie town, somebody had brought along a djemba along and started drumming in time to the celebration.

I have seen Barack Obama in person twice--once in the fall of 2007, before a crowd of a few hundred at a South Carolina high school, and then again this spring, at a much larger rally in Charlotte. Both times he struck me as somebody who was for real--not in the political game for ego or power. I think he'll be a good president, quite likely a great one. Most of a U.S. president's job involves just two things--picking talented people and expressing a powerful, overarching vision. Obama's track record from the campaign demonstrates his ability in both of those areas.

Plenty has been said about how Obama ran on a platform of change, which is the obvious thing to run on when the economy and national morale are as low as they are right now. But this particular Democratic victory represents something larger than standard party politics.

It represents about as close to a 180 degree shift from the politics and ideology of George W. Bush as our two-party system, with its checks and balances, will permit. I would hope that people from the rest of the world, scanning the day's headlines, would discover this subtext, among others: "Sorry. We were wrong."

So many things irked me about Bush, but none more than his inability, during a debate with John Kerry, to recall a single mistake he had made during his presidency. If you can't learn from your mistakes, how can you possibly expect to govern?

To be sure, many Americans (including most of my friends and family) opposed George W. Bush from the start. But the size of Obama's victory margin and his success in red states like Indiana and Virginia makes clear that more than a few voters switched sides.

I think it's fair to say that our country has collectively acknowledged an error in judgment. This is only the first step to repairing the damage, at home and abroad, but it's a necessary beginning.

But the shift goes deeper than that.

In 1961, the year that Obama was born, blacks lacked the right to vote throughout much of the South. Not only was the election of a biracial president unthinkable--his parents' marriage was illegal in 17 states.

The nation and the world changed within a single generation.

We have all heard commentators observe that the election fulfills the promise of Martin Luther King Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech from 1963. Now here's what I think is interesting. This week presents strong evidence that our constitutional democracy is a self-correcting system--and that language is the medium.

Barack Obama was probably mocked by his opponents for his eloquent speeches more often than he was praised, but I don't think it's accidental that he excelled in this forum.

In a nation with no common ethnic heritage on which to form its identity, rhetoric takes on a special significance. The "I Have a Dream" speech is just one part of a linguistic tradition that stretches back to the founding of this country--including the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. (Obama's campaign was pretty clearly trying to place him within this canon after he gave his famous speech on race in Philadelphia.) Technology has amplified the power of rhetoric and accelerated the pace of change--think about the role of television during the Civil Rights Era or YouTube during the last five years.

It took 232 years to expand the implications of "All men are created equal" to the point where the majority of the nation was willing to hand over the reigns of power to somebody with a different skin color. That's a long time. When you think about how much of this country's history was built on racial violence and oppression--and how firmly that regime was entrenched in the legal system--it's amazing that it happened at all. The only comparable event I can think of in U.S. presidential history is Nixon's resignation after the Watergate scandal--very different circumstances, but both examples of power yielding to the the moral authority of a democratic government based on a written constitution.

So what made us keep the "We the People" concept from the Constitution and throw out the part that counted each non-voting slave as three fifths of a person? Why is Jim Crow no longer on the books? Hint: it wasn't a bunch of political philosophers debating linguistic subtleties.

These words and ideals have meaning because they proved more compelling, more persuasive, than the language of greed and fear and life-as-usual. They embody what our nation aspires to be.

These words and ideals have meaning because men and women put their lives on the line to make them mean something. Many, although not all, took strength and comfort from a faith grounded in principles of liberation and justice. I was lucky enough to interview a few Civil Rights veterans during my book research. The term "hero" is perhaps an understatement.

Power concedes nothing. Every victory must be hard-fought. Every inch of ground gained must be defended. There will always be new battles, and that won't stop on January 20.

Rock beats scissors. Scissors beats paper. Words and ideals beat guns and money. It just takes some time, is all.

In the words of our next president,

"Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. That's the true genius of America: that America can change."

Update

2008-11-02T13:44:00.001-08:00

I am here in Madison with Joleen, and she is doing much better. Today is my birthday, so we are going to meet up with another friend who lives in the area and celebrate at an Ethiopian restaurant downtown.

This isn't where I expected to be spending my birthday this year, but that's quite all right by me. The extra hour from the end of Daylight Savings Time doesn't hurt either... : )

For Those of You Who Believe in Prayer

2008-10-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

I would like to ask prayers for my friend Joleen, who is in the hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. I will be flying out to visit her a few days from now.

DivorceCare

2008-10-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

DivorceCare. The name sounds like an HMO--one you never, ever want to go to.

I went to my first-ever divorce support group meeting tonight. I was pretty skeptical beforehand. The website for DivorceCare suggests a very traditional view of marriage and gender roles, and the church hosting the group is a conservative one. Still, it's the only group of its kind that I know of within a half-hour driving radius.

For the first 45 minutes of the meeting we watched a video. This was not so great. I wanted to strangle the portly, white-haired video presenter--he looked so smug in his bowtie with his faint British accent, as he cheerfully listed off the symptoms of depression. All the women in the video had big hair and wore too much lipstick and foundation, and their narratives usually went something like this... "I knew I had hit bottom because I was going out in broad daylight without any makeup on! "

But listening to the other people at the meeting actually helped. More than a littlle actually. Divorce is still a taboo topic amongst most of my friends and relatives. I'm used to people looking uncomfortable and then changing the subject. Perhaps they think it is contagious?

I was still the only one at the support group without kids, but I'm used to that with married people too. At least nobody preached at me or tried to convert me. (Maybe that comes later?) One of the leaders did ask if I had found a church yet, and when I told her I was working on starting a house church, everybody seemed to respect this as a valid option.

Northerners, as we all know, are not by and large a friendly bunch. This group of strangers showed more hospitality and genuine warmth than any secular organization I have yet encountered. I guess that's what makes me not give up entirely on Christianity, for all its flaws.

The Expectations Game

2008-10-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

A few posts back, I kinda sorta maybe implied that God was looking out for me, and that provided justification for my continued faith.

Ha! I'm starting to wonder if that tempted fate. Or perhaps until now I had just been taking for granted all the good luck that accompanied the bad. I won't go into detail, except to say that this fall had some rough spots. Knowing that there are many, many people way worse off than me... well, that wasn't exactly a cheerful thought either.

I found myself second-guessing my own decisions and wondering what lesson I was supposed to be absorbing.

I saw several choices:

1. I could be angry at God for not delivering the usual goods and services.
2. I could wonder what I did wrong and why I was being "punished."
3. I could continue resolutely to have faith that prosperity and love and happiness will soon come my way again, for being such a good and devoted servant.

All of these attitudes strike me as faintly arrogant. I mean, who am I to deserve special treatment? Why should I be assured rewards when so many other soldiers in the war, good people like Esmin Green and Viola Liuzzo, ended their lives without them?

I guess where I am is that I am trying to walk away from the expectations game. We'll call this approach Door Number Four.

I still have faith--that I am loved, that existence has meaning and purpose. But I am trying to leave behind the mentality of carrot and stick. I believe that every experience contains opportunity for learning and growth, even if many of those lessons are not ones I would choose to learn.

Do I think that maybe all this luck (good and bad) was random? That maybe Things Don't Happen for a Reason?

All the time, all the time.

What if I had just had a little more sense and a little less idealism, and chosen to have babies five years ago instead of writing a book? Would I still be living in a fancy Plaza-Midwood custom home, the wife of a corporate lawyer, enjoying all the comforts and perks that upper middle class society can confer?

There's no way to know. But there is no going back to that life. Even if I could, I know I would still be restless, haunted by what might have been.

There may not be any meaning to existence except what I impart to it. I realize that. But I will take insight and hope wherever I can find them, consume every crumb greedily and hungrily, then look around for some more.

A Few Words about the Words of David Foster Wallace

2008-09-30T15:04:00.001-07:00

My cousin gave me a copy of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest as a Christmas present sometime during college. Intimidated by the sheer size of the book (weighing in at over 1000 pages) it sat unread on various dorm room shelves for several years while serving to impress other undergraduates whose literary aspirations, like mine, exceeded our resources of time and attention span.

Finally, the summer after graduation, I cracked the book open. I don't know what stream of frenzied superlatives could truly do that experience justice. For anyone who has ever felt uncomfortable in their skin, who has wished they could turn off the constant stream of metanarrative generated within their skulls, yearned to reach out and find companionship and kinship, found themselves with too many words and no easy way to express themselves... let's just say it might resonate. The characters are deep and real and likeable--a truly bold and experimental move for postmodern fiction. Not only that, it's fun to read. The language, the humor, the familiar-yet-strange future world in which the novel takes place all kept me eagerly turning pages. I was dismayed when the novel abruptly came to the end--it was sort of like when you get given a giant bag of candy for a holiday, and you munch and you think it will last forever and then there is no more.

I learned of David Foster Wallace's passing on cable television, of all places, through one of the text bumpers on Adult Swim. (This was during the week when I had no Internet.) He seems to have battled depression as well as anybody could--years of medication, ECT treatments, and enlisting the aid of close family members. See Salon's respectful, detailed account of the weeks leading up to his suicide.

Even casual acquaintances speak of somebody who was courteous, kind, and thoughtful to an unusual degree.We sort of expect artistic geniuses to be volatile, difficult, and egotistical, but Wallace appeared the exception to the rule. Being a global literary superstar never went to his head.

Harper's Magazine has posted a free online archive containing many of David Foster Wallace's best essays in memory of his recent passing. If you're not familiar with the author, this is a good place to start.

This is a writer whose words and ideas stay with you. When I visited the Franklin County Fair a few weeks ago, Wallace's essay on the Illinois State Fair kept popping into my mind. A friend and I impulsively discussed taking a cruise for the first time in our lives, and I knew immediately that I would be riffing on "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" throughout the entire excursion. Footnotes are his signature stylistic device, but they are really there just to contain an overflow of tangential brilliance. I have read entire novels with less substance than some of those pagelong footnotes.

Wallace's death is a tragedy, but he leaves one hell of a legacy. Give it a read.

Gasping for Air

2008-09-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

Today is the first time in a week when I've been able to wake up to the comfortable certainty of checking my email and the news from a working Internet connection in my own home. A few days ago, I got the computer virus infection equivalent of spinal meningitis--completely disabling, but if you're lucky, you live through it. (Helpful hint: if you suspect that a piece of malware has silently disabled your antivirus software, run don't walk to a skilled technician, because once the gates are down, all sorts of other spyware and malicious software will come flooding through). That same week, I had to send back the work laptop I had been using due to the end of a business engagement. Not only did I not have a way of accessing the Net, while my PC was in the shop I didn't even have a computer in my own home--or any way of working productively or accessing all the data I had stored on my hard drive, or on backups.

So, I'm through that week. I got my PC restored to health--thank you Beneficent Providence! : ) and I got a sexy new Macbook Pro to replace my client's loaner laptop. Still, all in all, it was a rather surreal experience. I don't consider myself any great technogeek, and I am far from the most wired person I know, but when I stopped to think about it, this was probably the longest time since my freshman year of college that I was without a regular way to connect to the Net from my own living space. During the times when I have been away from things electronic (on backpacking trips, etc.) I have typically been surrounded by people--this week made me realize how much of my community is virtual, and brought to my attention that I still need to work on forming more flesh-and-blood relationships here in my new hometown.

It also made me realize how much of what we know, and our confidence in the shape that the world takes, comes from our ability to Google, Wiki, or look up the latest story on CNN. I had no idea how bad last week's Wall Street crash was until many days later. I still couldn't tell you who's ahead or behind in the presidential race... a set of stories I had been following closely. It gives me new insight into the lives of folks on the other side of the Digital Divide--and it reminds me how much our experience of reality is shaped by access to a continuous supply of information (much as we access air, light, power, water, and the contents of our bank accounts).

The Right Place at the Right Time

2008-09-12T14:18:00.003-07:00

Ok, so one of the things I am most hesitant to do on this forum is to name or categorize my beliefs. Partly that's because they're a bit of a moving target, but the main reason is because the whole point of Southern Cross is to share conversations with people holding radically opposing views.

I'd rather leave readers free to draw their own conclusions. Bias is inevitable, but I try to fight against it.

I will say this. I believe in belief. This year has put me through some incredible ups and downs. And I don't think that's going to stop, as much as I feel at home and at rest here in Greenfield. This past week was a rough one, though I won't go into details here.

I have found that having faith that some protective force is looking out for me is incredibly liberating. I've had some spectacularly bad luck, and some spectacularly good luck. Me finding this house, for instance, was a classic instance of being in the right place at the right time.

Does that prove that a Higher Power was looking out for me? Of course not. But it certainly doesn't disprove it. So, faced with two equal and opposing alternatives, I choose to tip the balance toward optimism and against fear.

Amy Goodman Jailed at RNC

2008-09-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

Amy Goodman was one of the few national journalists to follow the Saint Augustine Catholic Church takeover by students and local residents in New Orleans, spring 2006. I never met her, but we interviewed a lot of the same people.

I guess it's not too surprising that she and three other journalists would get arrested and roughed up at the Republican National Convention, but it's still more than a bit chilling. Essentially, they were arrested for covering the protests.

Coming Out as Divorced (Well, Divorcing)

2008-08-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

The divorce won't be official until November. But since I moved away from Charlotte at the beginning of this month, it has felt very final.

One of the risks of writing memoir based on the recent past is that your life can change in unexpected ways. I made the decision about two years into this project to make Southern Cross a personal narrative, rather than dry objective journalism. I don't want to go back from that format, but I also don't want to invade anybody's privacy or use words as a weapon for settling scores.

It's not easy, figuring out what to include and what to leave out. During my travels, I had interviewees tell me that I would soon discover that my true calling was to be a wife and mother. I had other people criticize me for putting "career ahead of family."

The marriage did not end of my own choosing, and I tried everything I knew to keep it together. It's only since moving back North that I'm beginning to feel okay again, and even have a little bit of distance to reflect.

Please remember that I really, really want people to read this book who disagree with me. That was kind of the whole point of going out and talking to the Justice Sunday crowd, the ultra-Republicans, the strict Biblical literalists. I tried to examine my own preconceptions and approach those conversations with an open mind.

And I think it worked, sort of. Some of my most enthusiastic readers have been evangelical, ex-evangelical, and post-evangelical Christians. Would I alienate that audience by showing something other than a picture-perfect marriage?

I still don't know how much I am going to share in the book, but I wanted to come clean in this blog, at the very least. The conversations and experiences I had on the road stayed with me long after I returned to Charlotte. Ultimately, they gave me the tools to help get methrough a terrible, terrible year.

Finding myself single again at age 31 has been educational, to say the least. I never realized how much status still accrues from having a husband--until I lost mine. Marriage insulated me from a lot of fairly disturbing societal attitudes about women and sex.

And where does so much of that cultural baggage come from? Could it maybe have something to do with organized religion? Gee, you think?

I don't intend to write a "divorce memoir." Ultimately, how much (if at all) I write about the divorce in Southern Cross will be driven by the needs of the story itself. But these questions are on my mind, and I know I will be writing about them in the future, whether they find their way into this project or the next.

Peter Daniel Goes to Haiti

2008-08-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Peter is a talented artist and recent Davidson College graduate who has spent much of the past year teaching school as a volunteer in Haiti. Stumbled across his blog yesterday and found much of interest.

Imagine being asked to preach a sermon on the great question of "Why Human Suffering?" Now imagine having to preach that same sermon in Creole French...

God is Good, God is Great

Remembering Esmin Green

2008-07-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the West Coast. Read some interesting books, and had some great conversations with old friends. Maybe I'll post about that later.

What is on my mind the most right now is a news story I ran across while traveling: the shocking death of Esmin Green, age 49, in the county hospital in Brooklyn, NY. She collapsed and died on June 19, 2008, after spending nearly 24 hours in the hospital waiting room. Hospital workers did nothing to help her as she lay on the floor for over an hour. Eventually, a staff worker walked over and poked her prone body with her foot!

The lack of respect and compassion evident in this facility is deplorable but it should not be surprising in a public mental hospital. There is a huge degree of institutionalized racism and discrimination against persons with mental illness throughout the American health system.

What saddened me was the role of Ms. Green's church.

Ms. Green had recently lost her job as a day-care worker and subsequently, her apartment. She was sending money back to her six children in her native country, Jamaica. She was active in her church, singing in the choir and running children's activities.

She had been having problems with anxiety and appears to have suffered some kind of psychotic break. According to CNN, Esmin's pastor made the decision to call 911--"a decision that haunts her." I don't fault her pastor for making that call, but I do wonder why no one stayed with her all that time in the ER. What if someone had been there to get her food or water? To summon help? She might still be alive today.

If the pastor was not available, could not a lay person have been found? If the church truly forms a family, how can it abandon one of its members at the gates of hell and hope that everything will be all right? I am sure that everyone involved meant well, but I think there is a lesson here for church communities. We simply cannot wash our hands and trust that the "proper authorities" will take care of those in the most acute need.

Because, honestly where else do people have to go?

New Chapter Online

2008-06-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

I decided to post the New Orleans chapter from my book. Even though it's out of chronological order, the story is fairly self-contained. Click here to download.

You can also view photos from the same trip (six months after Hurricane Katrina) on my Flickr account.

"God is information."

2008-05-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

I skipped church today to read Valis, by Philip K. Dick.

I've seen several movies based on the Dick's novels (Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly), but I had never known whether the author could actually write or not. Turns out he can.

Valis is fascinating. Highly autobiographical, full of theology, references to Gnostic Christianity, and questions about the nature of reality, it manages to hit a lot of my personal obsessions. The narrator (Horselover Fat) is portrayed as mostly insane, but because Fat is aware of his mental condition and constantly challenging and questioning his own experiences, it actually adds to the depth and intrigue of the story.

If anything, Valis reminds me not so much of Heinlein or Clarke or other 1960s and 1970s science fiction writers, but of Dostoevsky in the 19th century.

Far out.

Gravity and Grace

2008-04-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Not sure yet if I can get to this documentary tomorrow night, but I really want to.

Unoccupied Zone:
The Impossible Life of Simone Weil
"Simone Weil was one of the most compelling and contradictory spiritual thinkers of our times. A pacifist who fought in the Spanish Civil War, a former Marxist who discovered the value in religion, a Jew and a Christian who refused to be baptized..."

by Cathy Crane

Tuesday,
April 15, 2008
7PM

Knight Gallery
Tickets at the door
$5/TLF members
$7/non-members

I first read about the life of Simone Weil in Hermenaut several years ago. Hers is a fascinating story... really points out the tragic dimensions of trying to live out the courage of your convictions.

Inspiration/Perspiration

2008-04-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

It strikes me that I have used this blog to write more about cultural connections to religion and spirituality (and in particular, those that magnify doubt and dissent) than about my own personal experiences.

I guess this has something to do with my own comfort level, with a desire not to sound fake or deliver answers that sound easy or trite. I wrote more in this vein for the book manuscript, and it was dang hard!

Maybe in time, I'll find the inspiration to take my posts in a different direction. Or maybe that's not what this blog is supposed to be about at all.

Purple State

2008-03-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this I definitely want to see...
Purple State of Mind

It's a conversation between two old friends, college roommates at Davidson in the 80s, one of whom gradually embraced Christianity, while the other eventually came to reject it.

From the Christianity Today review:

"For Marks [the atheist], embracing hell, should it exist, is a moral choice. When asked about his reaction to the judgment seat, he says, 'Why in hell should I allow you, who have been the head of a church that has persecuted and killed untold numbers of people, make me answer that question? The only moral choice I have, based upon what your son taught, is to say no, I will not believe. You, the God of this story, do not have the right to ask that question of me.'

Marks's vitriol is not based on liberal texts or atheist playbooks. While working as a reporter in the Balkans, he witnessed firsthand the atrocities of which humankind is capable. He saw with his own eyes a situation in which a religious war of words became a war of all-too-real bullets and bombs."

Screening in Charlotte in NoDa next Thursday, 3/27. Discussion with the filmmaker to follow.

In the beginning was the Word... or was it?

2008-03-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

Haven't had the chance to post for a while. Been busy selling my house and working and stuff.

I've been reading a fascinating book called The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. Author Leonard Shlain argues that some four thousand years ago, the invention of written language drastically rewired the human brain. The effect was to elevate men's status and the status of rational, abstract thought--while devaluing women, the emotions, and intuitive ways of knowing. According to Shlain, this was also the time period when God began to be perceived a Great Father rather than a Great Mother.

I'm only halfway through I can't yet judge how well the author proves his thesis. But even the most speculative claims are still provocative and food for further thought. Shlain, a surgeon by training, writes beautifully and fluently. Plus he quotes William Blake, which gives him instant street cred as far as I am concerned.

As somebody who has always been torn between the world of image and the world of text, a serious investigation of that opposition (which shows up as Number Three in the Ten Commandments) and its implications for the course of human history, religion, and culture is right up my alley. While I was growing up, it certainly seemed that the written word held higher status (we had language arts class every day, but visual art was an elective once a week). In the age of multimedia, the web, and graphic novels, image may have gained back some ground. However, I suspect that the power of numbers (in the form of statistics, demographics, economics, and the almighty dollar) still trumps both word and image for most members of our society.

When sending good karma on Facebook isn't enough...

2008-02-21T18:54:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine built an online ritual for the website of the Campaign for Love & Forgiveness. Pretty neat. Check it out...

http://www.loveandforgive.org/letting_go.php

Actually, there wasn't much blood.

2008-02-17T16:37:00.000-08:00

Just saw P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood over the weekend. It's an intense movie--scripted more like a play than a typical sweeping historical epic. I won't make this into a review or detailed plot discussion, but I did find the film's treatment of religion complex and fascinating.

Organized religion and godless capitalism are each skewered mercilessly, but the story pays more attention to human personality than to large impersonal systems. Both the young Pentecostal preacher and the oil baron protagonist appear sympathetic at times, but in time both are consumed by anger, greed, and pride. I'm not sure if the message is that the two systems are equally bankrupt, or simply that people are more more fragile and corruptible than their belief systems.

I am also not sure if the director is positing a universe with God in it (mind you, this is a vengeful God who curses oil drills) or a universe of meaningless chaos. I think we're supposed to be left on the fence. Sort of like real life.

Book Excerpt Is Up

2008-02-10T17:34:00.000-08:00

So I finished the manuscript in early January...

I am going through the usual channels (query letters, etc) in search of a publisher, but in the meantime, I thought I'd put up the first chapter on the web for anybody who is interested.

Let me know what you think.

http://www.tessgadwa.com/southerncross/SouthernCrossBookExcerpt.pdf