I've had two occasions in the last twenty-four hours that have been honestly challenging my sense of myself as a tolerant person. (Maybe the trick is that I'm not really tolerant--I just imagine myself to be so).
I have been thinking a lot lately about some of the things said in the General Conference broadcast for my church: specifically, the idea that we need to be more invested in service and the concomitant idea that we are all equal. And not just in a lip-servicey idea of equality or equal rights, but the sense that every person has equal value before God. Sometimes it's hard for me to wrap my mind around that idea; the world spends so much time and energy trying to put people into their respective places (popular culture, economics, etc. all try to sort us into hierarchies of value) that it's sometimes hard to see outside of that. And I think I'm as guilty of anyone of wanting to feel *special*--somehow better, or more gifted, than other people. I don't think I have a lot of forms of prejudice, but I do have to confess to something like academic snobbery: I don't think I'm necessarily more beautiful, or morally superior, to a lot of people, but sometimes (and I'm almost hesitant to post this openly, except that I know only a handful of people read this), sometimes I do think I'm smarter than people. I try to fight this--honestly I do--but reminding myself that a) that's only a specific kind of intelligence--it doesn't include emotional or social intelligence (both of which I'm not so blessed in) and b) even if I am smarter on some kind of empirical scale, that doesn't make me more valuable.
Even so, it's still frustrating to me when I'm in a situation that invites me to be judgmental--and worse, when I accept the invitation. Last night I had the opportunity to go to a book group meeting where Ally Condie (author of YA novel Matched) was our guest speaker. She was an amazing person, and that aspect of the event was great. But. But. Some of the other guests honestly drove me crazy with some of the questions and comments that they made, some of which revealed a kind of insular thinking. I really struggled (and, yes, largely failed) not to be judgmental of them. For instance, one girl commented on the love triangle in Matched and, bringing up Twilight (Condie's agent also represents Stephenie Meyer), came to the bizarre conclusion that love triangles must be some kind of Mormon thing. Um, hello? Have you any other YA literature? Another guest, when Ally mentioned that she doesn't read reviews of her work (unless her agent sends them to her), agreed that it would be difficult, especially since some of the people who review books don't have the same standards we (i.e., Mormons) do, and so they might be comparing her book to a wider spectrum of books. Where, when you compare it to other, decent, clean books . . . I admit it. I just don't get comments like that. Since when do Mormons have any kind of monopoly on virtue, in the first place? And since when is literary judgment also a moral judgment? Can't you simply not like something? Anyway, there were other things, but I'll limit it to that for now.
The other instance was a sacrament talk given this morning. I should say up front that the speaker was a good, honest, upright young man who probably would be appalled to know that I took his earnest words so wrongly. Anyway, the speaker in question is heading out on a mission for the LDS church this week, and had been asked to give a talk on the priesthood. My thought is, if you have a topic like that and you're speaking to the entire conversation, find a way to make it relevant to everyone. Instead, he talked about he importance of being worthy to hold the priesthood (and where does that place me, as a woman, when I can't hold the priesthood and am clearly not part of the "we" he speaks of?). He brought in several examples of how to live worthily--all good examples (like President Hinckley's "Be-Attitudes")--but I was a little frustrated by the fact that he didn't acknowledge that such attributes were just as useful for women to develop. (He also brought up scouting--and, while I know the program does a lot of good things, it is *not* synonymous with church doctrine). When he finally did bring up women in this talk, it was basically in the context of, men need good wives to be better. And when women honor the priesthood, it makes men want to try harder. All of which are probably true, but I was frustrated by the take-away idea that the primary reason why women should be virtuous is to make life easier for men. I don't think that's true AT ALL. (And quite possibly, this is not at all what the speaker intended me to take away.) It's true that good women can inspire their husbands; but it's equally true that good men can inspire their wives--I've seen that in my own marriage. And it seems to me that the primary reason we (men AND women) should honor the priesthood is because God asks us to do so and because it will bring us closer to him. Although we should do what we can to aid others on their spiritual journeys, ultimately, we're primarily responsible for our *own* souls. My primary motivation for being good should not be to make my husband better. That, to me, seems a trivialization of my own individual worth before God.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
On writing
So, my sister has more or less convinced me to go to this Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference this summer. She's gone for several years and loves it. And I've been feeling the need lately to plug into the more creative side to my brain. It's kind of sad, really--in high school I was very much into creative and expressive writing--I wrote a novella in junior high and a full fledged novel in HS (which I rewrote the summer after I graduated and which was several hundred single spaced pages long). Since then, though, my creative writing efforts have been sporadic. I took a personal essay writing class and a short story class in college, and loved both--and then I became an academician.
I feel strangely conflicted about the idea of getting back to creative writing: what if I'm no good at it? That never bothered me in high school (probably because by high school standards I was reasonably good), but my standards are much higher now and I'm not sure I could bear not meeting them. What if it turns out that the only writing I'm really good at is academic writing? (Although having weathered through a couple of rejections there I'm not entirely sure about that either). I'm also just a little annoyed at becoming a cliche--how many English professors are there who are aspiring writers? A majority, I would think. And, I'm a little intimidated. By what? I'm not exactly sure. Writing 300 pages doesn't daunt me (a dissertation will do that). Possibly this has to do with the fear of failure mentioned earlier. But yes, intimidated by good writers--writers whose skills are vastly superior to mine.
But, I think it will be good for me. I think it will be good for my soul to get back to creative writing; and I think it will be good for me to tackle something that I'm not good at, or very comfortable with. And if all else fails, I can always blame my sister . . .
I feel strangely conflicted about the idea of getting back to creative writing: what if I'm no good at it? That never bothered me in high school (probably because by high school standards I was reasonably good), but my standards are much higher now and I'm not sure I could bear not meeting them. What if it turns out that the only writing I'm really good at is academic writing? (Although having weathered through a couple of rejections there I'm not entirely sure about that either). I'm also just a little annoyed at becoming a cliche--how many English professors are there who are aspiring writers? A majority, I would think. And, I'm a little intimidated. By what? I'm not exactly sure. Writing 300 pages doesn't daunt me (a dissertation will do that). Possibly this has to do with the fear of failure mentioned earlier. But yes, intimidated by good writers--writers whose skills are vastly superior to mine.
But, I think it will be good for me. I think it will be good for my soul to get back to creative writing; and I think it will be good for me to tackle something that I'm not good at, or very comfortable with. And if all else fails, I can always blame my sister . . .
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Grace and Grief
For the last several days I've been thinking about miracles. Two posts over at Segullah, here and here, tell moving stories about miracles in daily lives--and about one miracle that wasn't as expected (involving the death of a beloved son). Yesterday, in one of those odd confluences (that are probably less coincidence than tender mercies), we talked about some of the miracles of Christ. I was overwhelmed initially reading the lesson about the love and grace of those individual miracles; I was also moved by the teacher, who spoke of losing her daughter and the miracles that surrounded that death (specifically, that she was able to do what was necessary). The message I took away from all of these stories was this: God is always with us, but that does not always mean that he will protect us from the things we fear (pain, heartache, death). (This talk, given almost ten years ago by Lance Wickman, expresses that sentiment so well: "but if not . . ."; but if God does not protect us, we will still have faith, we will still move forward.)
In some ways, perhaps all this thinking was preparing me for something I would, frankly, just as well not have gone through. Last night, I experienced some signs that I might be miscarrying (a gush of clear fluid, bleeding). At 15+ weeks, this was not a good sign. Our faithful neighbor came over and helped my husband give me a blessing: among other things, my husband promised me that I would be safe, that God loved me. And I felt that love--I think it helped carry me through what followed. We also talked briefly, after the blessing, about grace--about how we, as Mormons, don't often talk about grace enough. But last night, in that blessing, I felt the touch of grace, of God.
Not too long afterward, we found ourselves in the ER. After some time of uncertainty and waiting, one of the techs took us for an ultrasound, where we saw confirmed what we had already suspected: no fetal movement; almost no amniotic fluid. Still, it was a wrench, that moment when I had to finally give up on the hope I almost didn't realize I was still clinging too. (My husband had very pointedly *not* mentioned the baby in his blessing; he said afterward that he felt that he couldn't.) The nurse told us afterward that the baby had probably died some days earlier, that the body was already starting to deteriorate when we came in. In other words, there is nothing we could have done.
I know miscarriages are nothing new; I know many women have them--some women have many of them. Still, this was my first; being wheeled into the bright operating room was disorienting and frightening. But we survived. We came home to a night of little sleep, and in the morning the sight of my children's faces--my two healthy children--reminded me again that I*am* loved, that God is aware of me, even if that awareness does not protect me as I had hoped. Thus this day, and this post-a curious sense of grace commingled with grief.
(I realize this is quite personal, but few enough people read this blog as to make it almost private--and this needed to be recorded while it was still fresh).
In some ways, perhaps all this thinking was preparing me for something I would, frankly, just as well not have gone through. Last night, I experienced some signs that I might be miscarrying (a gush of clear fluid, bleeding). At 15+ weeks, this was not a good sign. Our faithful neighbor came over and helped my husband give me a blessing: among other things, my husband promised me that I would be safe, that God loved me. And I felt that love--I think it helped carry me through what followed. We also talked briefly, after the blessing, about grace--about how we, as Mormons, don't often talk about grace enough. But last night, in that blessing, I felt the touch of grace, of God.
Not too long afterward, we found ourselves in the ER. After some time of uncertainty and waiting, one of the techs took us for an ultrasound, where we saw confirmed what we had already suspected: no fetal movement; almost no amniotic fluid. Still, it was a wrench, that moment when I had to finally give up on the hope I almost didn't realize I was still clinging too. (My husband had very pointedly *not* mentioned the baby in his blessing; he said afterward that he felt that he couldn't.) The nurse told us afterward that the baby had probably died some days earlier, that the body was already starting to deteriorate when we came in. In other words, there is nothing we could have done.
I know miscarriages are nothing new; I know many women have them--some women have many of them. Still, this was my first; being wheeled into the bright operating room was disorienting and frightening. But we survived. We came home to a night of little sleep, and in the morning the sight of my children's faces--my two healthy children--reminded me again that I*am* loved, that God is aware of me, even if that awareness does not protect me as I had hoped. Thus this day, and this post-a curious sense of grace commingled with grief.
(I realize this is quite personal, but few enough people read this blog as to make it almost private--and this needed to be recorded while it was still fresh).
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The flaws of romantic love
I'm over at Segullah again today, talking about the kind of powerful sisterly love that can exist between good friends. The post originally started out as a critique of romantic love--can you tell I'm just a little sour by Valentine's Day?--but it shifted to a more positive direction.
But I still have some thoughts on romantic love that I wanted to get out there before I lose them. And I don't need to be as articulate here as I do on Segullah (not nearly as many readers; although I daresay those readers are just as discerning!).
I spent most of high school and college hating Valentine's Day--it seemed like just one more day when I was reminded of my romantic inadequacies. I don't think I had a boyfriend for Valentine's day until the month before Dan and I got engaged. When we were dating, of course, Valentine's suddenly seemed like a fun idea--an excuse to get out and do something special for one another. It didn't hurt that I suddenly had a passport to inclusion in the romantic ideal.
I should note before I get much farther that my issue isn't with romance itself--after all, I enjoyed being courted, and I still enjoy a good chick flick or romantic novel. My problem is with our tendency in society to glamorize romance as an end in and of itself. To do so, I think, overlooks the fact that true love between couples entails much more than romance. C. S. Lewis talks somewhere (I tried and failed to find the quote) about how romantic love is a powerful emotion, but it's impossible to sustain--and those who enter marriage believing that this romantic high characterizes real love are bound to disappointment. Slowly, something deeper and more enduring replaces those initial exalted feelings. And honestly? I'm glad they do. When I look back on the year and a half that my husband and I were dating, most of what I remember are the discomforts of the drama, the uncertainty (and of course, uncertainty is a key part of the romantic tension that draws us to the romantic story), and the roller coaster highs and lows. To be honest, I'm often surprised that Dan still wanted to marry me when I remember the emotional basketcase that I was for much of our courtship.
Romance overlooks the idea that love is work. In the article by Patricia Holland that I quote in the Segullah post, she quotes author Eric Fromm: “Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object—and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it.” This, I think is one of the dangers inherent in romantic love--first, the idea that you only have to find the right object (I'm not a believer in soul mates--although obviously I think some people are more compatible than others); second, the idea that real love shouldn't entail work. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
One of the most eloquent passages I know on the idea of deep, committed marital love comes in George Eliot's Middlemarch (which in many ways reads like a primer on marital love, showing the spectrum from relationships founded on the illusion of romantic love, to the more enduring relationships between flawed human beings). Towards the end of the novel, one of the characters finds himself socially disgraced when some misdeed in his past comes to light. His wife, according to the social dictates of the time, has to share in his disgrace. But movingly, when she finds out, she comes home and, rather than reproaching her husband, she goes quietly upstairs and removes the frivolous bonnet she'd been wearing out visiting, and replaces it with a quieter, simpler one, symbolic of her acceptance of the situation. She'd married her husband in prosperity, but she'd married the man and not the position, and when he lost his position, she was still willing to stand by him. That, I've always thought, is what real love should look like.
The final issue I have with romantic love is that it sets most of us up for disappointment, somehow conveying the idea that if your relationship doesn't look like this, then there must be something wrong. But truth be told, neither Dan nor I are much for romantic gestures; I'd rather he didn't spend the money on the flowers (I don't mind them other times of the year, but I'd rather save the $30 at V-day); and I can't imagine Dan reciting a poem to me to save his life (well, maybe to save his life). Instead, our "romantic" gestures are much more mundane and domestic: he gets up with the kids in the morning to buy me an extra forty minutes of sleep; I try to keep things somewhat organized around the house so that our domestic routines are smoother. Not the stuff that romantic songs are made of, but they do make our lives richer.
Now, I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from celebrating Valentine's Day (if they so choose--our few experiences with over-priced meals on the day itself have kind of turned us off it), only saying that there's more to life than romantic love. And more to love (I suppose I should have clarified in the beginning that I mean eros when I talk of love--not philia, storge or even agape--none of these have quite the same issues of commercial distortion) than just romance.
But I still have some thoughts on romantic love that I wanted to get out there before I lose them. And I don't need to be as articulate here as I do on Segullah (not nearly as many readers; although I daresay those readers are just as discerning!).
I spent most of high school and college hating Valentine's Day--it seemed like just one more day when I was reminded of my romantic inadequacies. I don't think I had a boyfriend for Valentine's day until the month before Dan and I got engaged. When we were dating, of course, Valentine's suddenly seemed like a fun idea--an excuse to get out and do something special for one another. It didn't hurt that I suddenly had a passport to inclusion in the romantic ideal.
I should note before I get much farther that my issue isn't with romance itself--after all, I enjoyed being courted, and I still enjoy a good chick flick or romantic novel. My problem is with our tendency in society to glamorize romance as an end in and of itself. To do so, I think, overlooks the fact that true love between couples entails much more than romance. C. S. Lewis talks somewhere (I tried and failed to find the quote) about how romantic love is a powerful emotion, but it's impossible to sustain--and those who enter marriage believing that this romantic high characterizes real love are bound to disappointment. Slowly, something deeper and more enduring replaces those initial exalted feelings. And honestly? I'm glad they do. When I look back on the year and a half that my husband and I were dating, most of what I remember are the discomforts of the drama, the uncertainty (and of course, uncertainty is a key part of the romantic tension that draws us to the romantic story), and the roller coaster highs and lows. To be honest, I'm often surprised that Dan still wanted to marry me when I remember the emotional basketcase that I was for much of our courtship.
Romance overlooks the idea that love is work. In the article by Patricia Holland that I quote in the Segullah post, she quotes author Eric Fromm: “Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object—and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it.” This, I think is one of the dangers inherent in romantic love--first, the idea that you only have to find the right object (I'm not a believer in soul mates--although obviously I think some people are more compatible than others); second, the idea that real love shouldn't entail work. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
One of the most eloquent passages I know on the idea of deep, committed marital love comes in George Eliot's Middlemarch (which in many ways reads like a primer on marital love, showing the spectrum from relationships founded on the illusion of romantic love, to the more enduring relationships between flawed human beings). Towards the end of the novel, one of the characters finds himself socially disgraced when some misdeed in his past comes to light. His wife, according to the social dictates of the time, has to share in his disgrace. But movingly, when she finds out, she comes home and, rather than reproaching her husband, she goes quietly upstairs and removes the frivolous bonnet she'd been wearing out visiting, and replaces it with a quieter, simpler one, symbolic of her acceptance of the situation. She'd married her husband in prosperity, but she'd married the man and not the position, and when he lost his position, she was still willing to stand by him. That, I've always thought, is what real love should look like.
The final issue I have with romantic love is that it sets most of us up for disappointment, somehow conveying the idea that if your relationship doesn't look like this, then there must be something wrong. But truth be told, neither Dan nor I are much for romantic gestures; I'd rather he didn't spend the money on the flowers (I don't mind them other times of the year, but I'd rather save the $30 at V-day); and I can't imagine Dan reciting a poem to me to save his life (well, maybe to save his life). Instead, our "romantic" gestures are much more mundane and domestic: he gets up with the kids in the morning to buy me an extra forty minutes of sleep; I try to keep things somewhat organized around the house so that our domestic routines are smoother. Not the stuff that romantic songs are made of, but they do make our lives richer.
Now, I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from celebrating Valentine's Day (if they so choose--our few experiences with over-priced meals on the day itself have kind of turned us off it), only saying that there's more to life than romantic love. And more to love (I suppose I should have clarified in the beginning that I mean eros when I talk of love--not philia, storge or even agape--none of these have quite the same issues of commercial distortion) than just romance.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
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