Giving Thanks for the Letter ‘M’: Moving On, Movies, Men, and Miracles

I apologize for the lack of posts in recent weeks. Hopefully you’re still reading. 

I also apologize for the monster length of this post. I think it’s the result of weeks of pent-up, unpenned  (bad writing pun) tension.  I’ve barely had the stretch of two uncluttered hours to put pen to paper, let alone fingers to keyboard.

 And that’s because things are changing quickly in my life. Again.

 Just in time for the anniversary of my father’s slow demise, I’m once again off to start—or restart–my life.

 I think the shift started with the tectonic influence of my mother, a.k.a. Mara, who has been voicing for months now her complaints about my job at the restaurant: its hours, its lack of weekends, the way that my bosses have made unrighteous overusage of my helper-caregiver nature during times of economic distress (“Abbie, can you handle serving the entire restaurant on a Sunday night by yourself? We don’t have the money to hire another server right now.” “Uh, sure, I guess.”  ::Cue the anxiety attack::).  It hasn’t made living at home pleasant, and going to work is even less so.

Ruth can limbo really, really well when she has a stick to knock her head on. And a white tiger-print dress helps, too.

So I made up my mind to allow myself to start looking at other jobs. That was step one, which I took around the time of my last post. Then I made myself stay up later so I could apply for other jobs online—and this step happened about two weeks ago.  This week, I fell into the we’ll-call-you/interview-you-soon-so-stay-tuned stage, which Is like playing limbo without any stick to tell you how far to bend while you try to continue on with your regularly scheduled days.

And on the night of the 19^th, or really, the early morning of the 20^th, I decided to simply quit; to allow myself to just have-it-up-to-here with the hassle of working on back-pay (still no paycheck: this is week two), having no weekends (and hence, almost no dating), working heavy shifts by myself, and being responsible for far more restaurant-running than I was ever contracted to be. 

I wasn’t at work when I decided this; I was actually out with one of my old gal pals in the middle of a screaming, writhing, hysterical crowd of well over 200 people crammed into a movie theatre (out of a full 1200 or so total in the whole building). At midnight.  Awaiting the second coming–of the next installment of the  Twilight Saga¹, not Jesus Christ. But for all the anticipation in the air, you might have thought that we’d gathered there for that.

And I knew, while I was sitting there between groups of babbling fifteenish-year-old  and forty-something women, that I was being BAD. Very bad.

I’d not only worked a full double-shift at the restaurant earlier that day, but I knew I was going to have to work the double-shift the next day, which was a Friday, and to top it off, would be a night when live musicians were coming to the restaurant. I should have been home, sleeping under the fog of sedatives, preparing myself mentally for the coming equivalent of waitressing hell—handling six or seven tables at once, managing chef s’ delays, pacifying upset customers, and making bad tips in spite of how hard I try to make everyone happy—but instead, I was out watching a teenage girl’s epic love drama unfurl itself on the big screen in the wee hours of the morning.

And I couldn’t really regret it; I couldn’t even regret going out for a drink beforehand.  And I felt actually sort of mad that I was going to have to sacrifice a lot the next day in terms of sleeplessness and exhaustion to pay for one night of fun with a friend for the first time in nearly a month of working six and seven days a week—no weekends.  I was seething over the loss of autonomy. I was angry—truly angry—about being caged in a lifestyle that wouldn’t suit a hamster.  It was that anger, I think, that sharpened my focus and brought me to the conclusion that my vocation had to change.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) tries to connect with her reflection in a dream sequence that forces her to face facts about herself in "New Moon." Edward (Rob) stands beside her looking pretty as a dream in a period coat.

And as I watched the film, I relearned some things about myself. Ultimately, I remembered that I had no one to be angry at except for myself. As Edward Cullen commented, it was Romeo who “destroyed his own happiness” in his personal tragedy; he had no one else to blame. I decided that I didn’t want to be a tragic literary cliché—so I needed to quit acting like one.

And I was grateful for the emo soundtrack, the dark, depressive facials of Kristen Stewart’s Bella, the self-deprecating sadness of Robert Pattinson’s Edward, the spunky, no-nonsense attitude and protective friendship of Ashley Greene’s Alice, and the quick-draw tempers of the werewolves. It felt like one massive cathartic experience.  As an audience, we collectively sighed, cried, gasped, laughed, raged, cringed, and felt that curious relief of knowing that, in spite of the strange and unfulfilling ending of this particular book (New Moon is book two of the saga), the ultimate ending for all involved will be happy. 

This seems counter-intuitive, but I love it when movies wake us up to the world of real life.  I love it when they remind us of our part in the God-authored stories we inhabit, stories that are complex, difficult, and sometimes frightening, but that God promises us will at least end well.  I guess the experience restored my faith a little.

So, when my gal pal and I walked out of the theatre at 2:30 AM, only to discover that her car’s battery was dead, we felt no real sense of panic. She called AAA, we returned to the bar from whence we’d started our evening to await our rescue, and we re-encountered the bartender who had flirted so assiduously with me some hours before.   We talked to him and discovered that, lo and behold, he was not only a neighbor of mine, but that he was competent with jumper cables.   He had us safely on our way by 3 AM. Since it was a chance meeting in the first place that led to our deeper acquaintance with him, I felt like we’d experienced nothing short of a miracle in his act of chivalrous assistance.

Ah, real-world heroes.  They’re better than vampire-heroes anyday (sort of).  At least, they deserve a nice kiss on the cheek, if not a bite or two (no biting, I promise).  What a nice ending to our Twilight Night!

So, now I’m off on another adventure of sorts. I’m going back on the job market, this time looking for a position that has a little upward mobility, maybe benefits, and most of all, God’s stamp of direction.  When all of the counselors in my life tell me that it’s time to move on from somewhere, I take that as God’s voice acting through the people he’s entrusted to care about me.  My allotted stint at the restaurant is over, and in good time.  I’ll have my days free to actively pursue other job opportunities, to visit much-neglected friends, and to also have the requisite downtime required to handle the heavy emotional turmoil of the holiday season caused by my bereavement.  November 13^th marked the anniversary of my dad’s “death sentence”–the day when the doctors told him there was nothing left to do but wait for his body to give in to the cancer.  The rest of this holiday season is going to be a landmine of emotional memory triggers from my father’s death, which means I’m going to be doing some heavy grief work in the days to come on top of my job-searching.  Wish me luck.

-Ruth

Notes (Skippable unless you’re a Twihard):

1. “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” beat the opening-weekend records for the Harry Potter films, and it even killed the all-time opening-night record previously held by “The Dark Knight.” This just proves that women are a powerful economic group. Current stats have the audience for the films as being 80% female, 50% of whom are under the age of eighteen, with the other 50% being made up of twenty-somethings and Twimoms. http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/new-moon-wolfs-down-1407m-opening-weekend-ap  The movie is now the #1 film in the world for this whole year.  Yeah.  I know.          Crazy.  Incidentally, this opening weekend take now makes Robert Pattinson the most bankable actor in the world at the moment. He can have any director, part, script, woman, etc. that he wants. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1230021/Robert-Pattinson-hot-property-Twilight-sequel-New-Moon-breaks-box-office-records.html  If he were anyone else, he would have a head that’s too big to fit in the studio door, but he’s too humble for all that. Like the polite little British boy he is, Rob Pattinson wrote a thank-you note to fans on Twitter on Monday after hearing the news (using the official Twilight Saga account this time, http://twitter.com/Twilight, and not Peter Facinelli’s page), sweetly tweeting,

“Thank you for making NEW MOON #1. It’s very exciting to be a part of something embraced by so many people. . . I hope you are looking forward to ECLIPSE as much as I am.

Just FYI, Rob, here is a paraphrase of what I gathered from the other fans:

Honey, you’re welcome. The movie was awesome. You are awesome. We’re looking forward to the next one, but hope you’ll have some down time to recover and work on other stuff (::cough:: “Bel Ami,” ::cough:: “Unbound Captives” ::cough::). Go home to your family in London on holiday and bask in the afterglow of your fame for a bit. We all think you deserve it.

 

 

Taylor Lautner is so obviously thinking, "I wish I was Rob Pattinson. I wish I was Rob Pattinson! I wish! I wish!" (photo credit: LATimes)

 

 

A Quickie (But not the fun kind. ::shakes finger at you for thinking that way::)

God is teaching me to put my foot down.   How do I know?  He’s letting me get run RAGGED.  I’m ten pounds lighter than I was in August.  I look like I haven’t slept in months and haven’t done my hair in ages.  Reason why?

All I have time for right now is a quickie.

A quickie lunch between shifts.

A quickie shower before I throw myself in bed at night.

A quickie email check, and no time for checking out matches on eHarmony, which is too slow in processing and loading, too disorganized, and costs too much.

A quickie scrabbling of notes to my friends between dental, dermatological, and lunch appointments on my day off, notes which make it into the mailbox late  (but get to Hanover College on time because HC’s mailroom still loves me, and loves my girls, too).

A quickie chat with a long-distance girl friend on the phone (10 minutes, 15 seconds–a record by girl standards). (“You okay, hon?” “How’s life?” “Um, hum/Oh, no. That’s good/bad.”  ”Hope things get better for you/me both.” “Love you.”  ”Take care. Bye.”)

A quickie Halloween night spent with the girls after I run home from work, grab my things, and show up two hours late to the party before I run home, shower, and try to get ready for more work.

A quickie emotional breakdown following a triple-accident in the kitchen, customer’s dining table, and the dishwasher, shut off by a nice  quick-dissolving dose of a sublingual anxiolytic that makes it so that the anxiety attack only lasts one minute and thirty seconds before I can get right back to work. Mascara smudged?  Yep.  Still shaking? Sure was.  Appetizers late? Yes.  Serving the meal on time, at least? Hell, yes.  I can do waitressing, I’m just understaffed!

A quickie dream sequence. Yep, the whole thing was done and over with in a minute or less, and I woke up feeling like that’s about how long I’d slept.  Oh, and I dreamt about being exhausted and not having time to sleep. That was nice, too.

I also had time for a quickie at Careerbuilder.com–because working six-and-seven-days a week is not working for me, for my private life, or for my physical or emotional health.

I’m off to catch up on my first day off in three weeks.

Love you all!

 

-Ruth

 

 

P.S.  I’m not complaining. I’m trying to do something about it, really. And I know I’m not alone. Every single one of my college-educated, recent-grad friends are in sucky jobs right now and have very little time for themselves. I just happen to be one of the most overworked of the overworked, with the exception of one person from that age group whom I don’t personally know, but who will make for a nice graphic in this post, and is also in the middle of his own quarter-life crisis:

An outtake from the new, epic Vanity Fair photo shoot. Poor guy. I know exactly (sort of) how he feels. At least it doesn’t look like his hair is falling out from the stress (mine is!).

“I’m trying not to drown.” -Robert Pattinson,  on the overworked, exhausted craziness that is his life, in an interview in the new December issue of Vanity Fair magazine (photos by Bruce Weber–check ‘em out at VF.com)

“I haven’t seen anyone I know for like a year,” Pattinson told Brian Truitt of USA Weekend. “I’ve got to see what remains of the wreckage of my life.”

RPattz has reportedly only had a grand total of one week off all year, so I know I should stop complaining.  The poor guy sounds exhausted in these interviews. Reading the soundbites was like getting served a hot plate of perspective–I suppose I should dig in.  Life could always be more hectic, exhausting, lonesome, and littered with aggressive paparazzi. At least there’s no one there to take pictures of me on my bad days while I’m rushing around trying to get everything done.

Aside from the nice visuals and the great quotes he provides, I also decided to tag  Rob here because, let’s face it, that’s how you wind up getting new viewers stumbling onto your blog page from their relentless Google searches.

 

Naomi: Sweet to Bitter and Back Again

I know this post took forever for me to write, and I know I said I’d put it up a week ago. Well, it was practically ready a week ago. But I wasn’t.  Reason why?  It deals with my issues at home. And the readers who live there. (*cough* <Mom> *cough* <Don’t hate me> *sniffle*).

So, after some careful editing and some prayer, here it goes.

 

I keep coming back to the book of Ruth, not because it’s the title inspiration for this blog, but because it’s one of those precious, tiny, self-contained books in the Old Testament that tells a personal story, and tells it with as much humanity and honesty as ancient Hasidic storytelling will allow.  It doesn’t just report events; it reports life-altering shifts and personal upsets that happened to its characters.  Since my life is in transition right now, the realism just speaks to me.  Especially as it pertains to the process of grief, and how it affects the grieving as they move into a new territory of living.

In Ruth’s tale, the big life-change for Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi, is described briefly, but not subtly, through a series of notations made by Naomi herself and others regarding her altered state as a new widow.  I see so much of my mother here, and it helps me to understand her as we walk through this process together. I’ll show you what I mean.

Take, for example, what Naomi says to Orpah and Ruth (her daughters-in-law, who are also newly widowed), and what it reveals about Naomi’s sudden loss of self-worth, and her resignation to her fate. It’s truly sad.

 ”Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons-  would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has gone out against me!” (Ruth 1:11-13)

Naomi insists here that she’s essentially worthless to her daughters-in-law now, since  she has nothing more to offer in terms of children, husbands, or relationships, and, therefore, in this time period, no way to provide for the young women through these connections.  In my own era, my mother isn’t so much concerned about the fact that she can’t provide for me; it’s simply that she knows that, now that I’m grown, she doesn’t need to—and so she feels useless.  I know this only because she says things to me like, “You don’t need me anymore,” and I know it bothers her.  She’s looking for a role. It’s almost as if she’s asking, wondering, If I’m not needed as a mother, and I’m no longer a wife, what am I now?

Now, I’ve read a lot of works on widowhood, most sent to me by kindly-meaning people who wanted me to pass the book, pamphlet, or article onto my mother, who frankly has little desire to read more depressing material about other women who share her situation.  But all of those works deal in a united fashion with one big issue, and it’s the hardest one a widow ever faces: the loss of identity that comes with losing one’s husband–the other half of the “item” presented to the world.  My mom’s trying to figure out her identity now, and I’m trying to figure out mine in relation to hers.  And it’s rough, confusing work.  I feel like a teenager all over again in some ways, because I miss being mothered but I can’t stand being hovered over.  And I’ve also done some mothering lately myself, and feel like I’m ready to take on the role soon (God, husband, and uterus willing).  Mom doesn’t know how to manage my weird moods and standoffishness, and I don’t know how to act differently.  So we’re both in a weird place, identity-wise.

In the Book of Ruth, Naomi deals with her loss of identity by adopting another one.  The identity she adopts baffles today’s commentators who would wish to encourage Naomi to adopt a cheerfully desperate, youthful identity—to get her “groove back,” or re-enter the marriage market.  But rather than get a Benjamite boob-job and some kosher collagen filler, Naomi does what most widows of a certain age tend to do: she takes on an identity that is actually older than her years.

How the heck do I glean this from a few short sentences in the Good Book?  Easy.  It’s obvious that Naomi lets herself go a little—understandably—just by the way that people respond to her. We can tell that her appearance is markedly haggard when she and Ruth finally re-enter Naomi’s home town of Bethlehem since the author of Ruth reports, “the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, ‘Can this be Naomi”’(Ruth 1: 19)?

Apparently, Naomi really looked awful.  No one can blame her for this, though, really.  I’ve seen first-hand in my own mirror the way that grieving can swiftly age your appearance (drops in weight can create prominent bone structure under the skin, or in older women, exacerbates sagging skin; lack of sleep deepens dark circles and gives a hollow look to the eyes, and constant despair carves a drawn look around the mouth, etc.).  People always notice, and, in sympathy, remark on the changes.  When I returned to campus after my dad died this winter, a dear friend told me sweetly, “Honey, you look like hell.”  My mom’s friends have been kinder, but she’s noticed the changes in herself clearly enough without the comments.

Naomi’s response to her neighbors’ commentary is almost caustic, and it is also as dramatic as Jewish culture allows.  Rather than acknowledge her previous identity, she practices name-swapping, which was a huge deal in Old Testament times:

 ”Don’t call me Naomi (my sweet, pleasant one),” she told them. “Call me Mara (bitter), because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” (v. 20-21)

This name-swap reflects Naomi’s altered attitude, and it’s one that I understand completely.  After a great tragedy befalls you, there is almost a natural, instinctive tendency to adapt not only a bitter, hardened outlook on life, but also a terrible sense of fatalism.

There is a natural kind of logic that flows from the way that the helpless feelings that come out of the experience of loss inevitably become the habitual attitude of the mind.  Fatalism becomes one’s instinct; victim-status, one’s mindset.  The world seems wrong, hostile, and inevitably out-to-get-you.  God seems either to be wanton in his malice or simply uncaring. Either way, a grieving person will feel helpless against powers greater than himself that seem to conspire to create misery.  Simply put, when it rains, it pours, and there is nary an umbrella in sight. The griever finds ample evidence that “the LORD has afflicted [her]” and there is nothing to be done about it.  Naomi represents this death-spiral of thought very well in her own words. The idea she essentially expresses is, I’ll live afflicted, and I’ll die afflicted. It’s a truly fatal way of thinking, hence the attached -ism.

In Turn Mourning into Dancing, the remarkable theologian Henri Nouwen (yes, I know I already made literary-love to him in my post on the nature of time; just deal with my new author-crush, okay?) pays close attention the way that fatalism affects the bereaved.¹  In his typical spot-on realism, Nouwen explains how fatalism can bury those who are grieving inside their own coffins of pain and disappointment:

One of the most insidious aspects of fatalism has to do with how it leads us to resist healing. We become hostage to a discouragement that insists that nothing more can be done. Fatalism reinforces our tenacious grasp on the old. We become stubbornly unwilling to consider anything outside our narrow experience. Fatalism can lead to depression, despair, even suicide. (50)

I’m lucky that it’s not a normal part of my nature to be a pessimist, because fatalism is something I have to fight every day as a result of my grief.  I can usually beat it, put on a brave face, and meet the world and its challenges.  But for my mom, my Naomi, the task is more challenging.

“God must hate me,” I’ve heard her say, regarding our recent loss, financial burdens, or sudden need for home repairs.  “I’ve never been strong,” she’ll say, by way of argument or explanation whenever I challenge her to challenge herself to get past a new stage of grief or to fight a symptom of it.  I won’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me and worry me.  But I know it’s ultimately an attitude that she’ll either move away from, or that God will help her alter.  Either way, I have to hope—no, to be certain—that it will change.  How do I know that?

Because in the Christian spirit, faith always wins. And faith is the opposite of fatalism.  Or so says Nouwen, anyway.  I’d like to post Nouwen’s spiel on faith versus fatalism here, just because it explains in simple terms exactly how the two attitudes work in opposite directions in the life of a grieving person:

[F]aith looks very different from fatalism. It is its radical opposite. Rather than displaying passive resignation, faith leads us to hopeful willingness. A person of faith is willing to let new things happen and shoulder responsibilities that arise from unheard of possibilities. Trust in God allows us to live with active expectation, not cynicisim. When we view life as a gift . . . given to us by a loving God, and not wrestled by us from an impersonal fate [or, I would add, an uncaring god-figure], we remember that at the heart of reality rests the love of God itself. This mean that faith creates in us a willingness to let God’s will be done. (51)

Faith therefore means that a grieving person can feel free to trust God and can therefore take on an attitude of hopefulness.  And hope—the best anti-depressant in the world—restores our feeling of rightness in the world, gives us back a childlike sense of provision and protectedness, revives our youthful verve, and yes, even allows us to be vulnerable when we once were terrified of our unbearable and all-encompassing weakness.  But that’s just my experience. Nouwen describes hope’s gifts more beautifully when he writes, “Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God’s guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness” (60).

As you can imagine, hope like this is wildly liberating. It offers honey when the world hands you vinegar. It makes you feel like you could handle anything, and it reassures you that you’re not alone.  It even gives you back your old identity, with a newer, sweeter assurance, and it returns you to the land of your birth, to the roots of your faith, and to the passion you once had for your faith when it was new.  Best of all, hope, the child of faith, is unstoppable once it’s been given birth.

I think the inevitability of faith’s (and hope’s) victory is the reason why the author of Ruth perspicaciously refuses to use Naomi’s self-proclaimed new name as a reference to her character in the book.  Right after Naomi introduces herself as Mara in verse 21 (in the quote from Ruth 1 posted above), we read in verse 22, “So Naomi returned . . . (NIV)”

Yes. Yes, eventually, she did. 

And Ruth got married, and they all lived happily ever after . . . .until the next invading tribe swept through Israel while it was half-hazardly protected by its judges (because it wouldn’t have a king until Saul came along and sucked and tried to kill Ruth’s great-grandson, David, who was a better warrior and king—until he got himself into trouble with a chick named Bathsheba, and…)

Yeah. We just gotta have faith, people. That’s all I’m saying.

Let God fix the mess.

 

 

 

 

Annddd (cue the clear forewarning of a ham-handed segue here) . . . speaking of signs of God’s faithfulness:

Oscar Wilde’s work never looked so fine.  Ever.

Do you remember Wilde’s gothic novella-parable, The Picture of Dorian Gray (often mistitled The Portrait of Dorian Gray), the story about the young man whose beautiful face is captured by a mysterious painter, who from that moment on never ages, despite the dissipation and wickedness of his lifestyle? You don’t?  That’s because you don’t read (quality literature, I mean. It’s clear that you read this blog).  That’s why I am so excited that a film of this story is finally being introduced to this generation of moviegoers.  It’s a story that can’t be told enough in our times: a dire warning of the price of the selfish consumption we indulge in within our culture.

So here comes the movie to warn us all. And, lo, behold! The beautiful face of Mr. Gray now belongs to Ben Barnes, of Prince Caspian fame, the English-major/singer-turned-freakin’gorgeous-actor whom I admire very much, and not just for his dark good looks.  I cannot wait to see this movie.  Bonus feature: it co-stars the unforgettable Colin Firth (That’s right, girls: it’s Mr. Darcy!!!).  

Behold, ze trailer of picture perfection. 

 

I am sad, though. The IMDB.com infopage on this movie says it’s not slotted to come to the USA theatres, but will only become available to us folks across the “Pond” when it’s released on DVD sometime next fall.

Whaaaa? That’s.  So.  Sad.

What can we do? Ruth’s got an idea.  She’ll write a letter where it’s got its best chance of being read.  This being Ruth’s only blog, here it goes:

 

My Dear  and Darling Mr. Ben Barnes,

I’ve read that you occasionally google yourself. And so I’m hoping that, if you should ever find this blog, you might—please, please, please—campaign to bring your Dorian Gray to theatres here in the US.  Pull whatever strings you have to, even if it means supplicat-texting your old neighbor, who is the simultaneous-bitch-and-master of Summit Entertainment Group.² If he’s able to hook you up to Summit’s U.S. distributor, I will certainly do some word-of-mouth advertising, Facebooking, blogging, and book-dropping in my English major circles to raise the ticket sales for your film.  And I’ll be very, very grateful to you for the gift of seeing you in period costume on a twenty-foot screen. Very, very, very grateful.  So grateful that I might just . . .well . . . mmm . . . Nevermind. I wouldn’t want to sully my portrait, or yours. Much.  I’m sure you know what I mean by that.

Affectionately and much affectedly yours,

Ruth

 

 

I can already see some readers rolling their eyes at me for writing that. But you should already know that I’m shameless, silly, and joking (sort of; I’m kidding in that you-know- it-could-never-happen kind of way).

But I’m also an eternal optimist.   Thank God.

 

 

 

 

Notes:

1. Nouwen, Henri. Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001.
2. Weird biographical side-note of cosmos-twisting kismet proportions:  Ben Barnes was apparently raised down the street from Robert Pattinson in Barnes, London, and they crossed paths pretty often when they were kids (well, when Rob was a kid, and Ben was a tweenager. Whatevah. The coincidence is awesome). Both Ben and Rob were in the “final four” in Summit’s lineup to play Edward Cullen in Twilight, but Ben was dubbed “too old” for the part (at 26, he was, sadly), so Rob (then barely 21) cradle-robbed the role.  But, oh, the smallness of the world and the pool which spawned these beautiful male leads! I almost want to buy a house in that neighborhood and partake of its magical properties/property by drinking the local water from Barn Elms, breathing the air (fog? It’s western London…), walking barefoot on the grass and rolling in the dirt on the Commons, and then seeing if I have unrealistically gorgeous babies as a result. The place really must be magical, even if it’s unhealthily close to one of the bends of the polluted Thames.

 

If I Could Put Time in a Blog Post

It’s been awhile since I’ve written.  Sorry. I promised weeks ago that I’d put up a post about Naomi, rather than Ruth. I promise it’s coming by the end of the weekend.  It just took a lot of time, reading, and reflection to put together. Not to mention the fact that it’s a delicate subject (since it’s about my mom, sort of, and widowhood in general).  I have devoted a lot of non-existent spare time to the little essay, and I hope you enjoy it and feel thoughts provoked by it when it comes.  Soon.

On the topic of “soon” and “when” and well, “time,” I’d like to make a few observations.  Maybe you’ll find these fit your experiences.

1. When I’m focusing on what to do next, making a schedule for my day, and trying to stick to it, tons of things seem to get in the way and I almost never get my whole list done.  I’m beginning to think that this is God’s way of telling me to get over my own plans and to learn that life is full of constant interruptions.  A book I’m reading by ex-priest Henri Nouwen reinforces this thought, since Nouwen recalls the words of a fellow priest who once told him that he suffered constant interruption in his clerical duties, only to discover that God’s purpose was actually in the interruptions, not the tasks set before him.   I can’t remember the page number, or the actual quote, but that little gem is from Nouwen’s Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times.  Lovely book (the MLA on my copy—Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001).
2.  God, the master of manipulation, appears to be capable of walling off sections of time for himself in my life, whether I ask him to or not.   My current hours at work mean that I come home late at night, often after covering for another server, and that I have less and less time to spend with the larger world that runs on a diurnal schedule.  I’ve missed more phone calls than I can name, but I never feel good about returning them at 11:30 p.m. .  As a result, I’m not dating much or arranging to have many dates. I am, however, reconnecting with my girl friends, who are all now working, by coincidence, in the food industry, and are keeping similar hours to mine.  I’m also spending a lot of time alone at night, thinking. Apparently, God wants me to spend some time in silence and solitude.  That’s not a bad thing.  Nouwen writes that, spiritually speaking, the combination of silence and solitude are the “twin agents of good,” since they are where God’s love “is realized” (76). This makes sense because silence and solitude are where we can understand God’s love for us as individuals, and rely on it as our source of strength and sense of self, rather than on the corrupted forms of it offered in our culture.  I think God is saving me from my own neediness by making himself my sole (soul) companion. Aside from the cats, of course.
3. The former two observations lead me to think that God, who exists outside of time by most theological theories, sees time differently than we, who are inside of it, do. If, to God, time is more than merely chronos, or the passage of intervals marked by the clock and by scheduling, then is it supposed to be seen, as the New Testament apostles called it, as kairos, or moments of opportunity?  I’d like to hope so, because I’m not doing so well with the whole scheduling thing.

As always, leave a response concerning your theories. I love to hear from you.

Cats are good nighttime companions until they catch colds and get clingy. Poor little Delilah has the sniffles.

 

Random Musings: Often the Best Kind

It was a random day today: I wasn’t supposed to go to work, but I got called in anyway because of an emergency with our head server.  I managed to settle back in just in time to meet my mom somewhere for supper, and my writing circle for coffee, so I never got around to a nice, tight, organized blog post today.

But  . . . I did call back a date and gave honest feedback (because that became my policy after writing  the post “Throwing Like a Girl…”), gave my cats their flea medication, and did some laundry.  Oh, and earlier this week, I took my car in for maintenance and was able to offer my opinion on the state of my air filter, back tires, and struts. My poor daddy would have been proud of my knowledge, although I figure that’s  just the result of a daddy’s-girl’s habit of spending time with her dad while he was working on the family cars.  Maybe it’s also what happens when someone you love dies; you take in a portion of them for yourself to help fill the hole.  I have a little of his knowledge.  I have his chin and his ankles. I noticed, on my brother’s twenty-fifth birthday this month, that my brother is developing the same star-shaped fanning of smile lines around his eyes that my father had.  He also has Dad’s hands–broad-palmed, tough-tendoned, with untapered fingers.  Heck, he even chews a little on the skin around this thumbnails like Dad used to. Random, I know. But I noticed.  It’s in these little details that Dad still lives for us.  The rest of him is too far away to feel with any comforting immediacy (much like God himself these days.  Seriously.  Where is his influence in the world right now?).

I also read my friend’s writings today, and I watched some of the boob-tube for the first time this week. I just saw a preview for “Jennifer’s Body,” Megan Fox’s new horror-thriller-alien-porn-film.  And then I switched to Animal Planet.  This random bit of poetry, which sounds a little like some of Tao Lin’s work, is what happened:

Wonder if Megan Fox feels

like those rare flatbellied lizards on TV

that are jumping and showing their

rainbow tummies

to fill their bellies with flies?

  

 

Update: Where’d Ruth Go?

Dearest Readers and Fellow Bloggers,

I’ve been on a mini-hiatus from all-things-Internet (except for email, which I put on the same level as my cellphone in terms of communication) for the week.  Why? Because I’m trying to sort several things out at once.

For one thing, I’m considering quitting eHarmony. Not just because of the money (seriously, it’s like $30 per month, and that’s their best deal), but because of the fact that, frankly, it just feels too strange for me to keep sifting through pictures and 300-word profiles like I’m shopping in a catalogue.  I have heard of people finding Mr. Right in this fashion, but quite frankly, I’m thinking it’s the wrong way for me to go about it. Mom found her Mr. Right only when she gave up and told God to do the scouting and the matching for her.  God is more efficient, and he’s usually cheaper (although he sometimes incurs some charges for processing and shipping; more on that in later posts about why God gives and takes away).

Why all this thinking about God and matchmaking?  Why even think, at age twenty-two, so seriously about marriage?  For several reasons, actually, and I’ll be honest about them all:

1. I held a baby tonight to give a mom a reprieve.  It not only earned me a nice tip, but I think my ovaries were screaming at me from all the cuteness.  The girl was cornsilk-haired and had a sanpaku gaze (yin, not yang).  So. Adorable.
2.  Said baby not only approached me and put her hands on my child-bearing hips in a clear demand to get picked up, but she fell asleep while I was holding her.  Babies don’t do that stuff to perfect strangers unless God tells them to. Seriously. They don’t.  I therefore conclude that God’s telling me to be a mommy, and to start preparing emotionally and intellectually for the task.
3. (I know my brother reads this blog, so I’d like to apologize for number 3 in advance). I think I like sex.  I can’t say for certain, of course, what with my intacta status, but all my hormones are fully functioning. As is my imagination. I’ve deduced that I am not called to singleness because of this; if I am so called, then God is meaner than I thought.  And not just to me.  I feel sorry for whatever guy might miss out if I removed myself from the sex-kitten pool.  I say that in all humility, and not just with full knowledge of what I look like naked…
4. I think I have some things to offer in terms of my companionability, too.  I’ve been through a lot, and not much scares me anymore, let alone the rough patches of marriage. How many other girls  their early twenties can say that they’d already nursed someone who was going through a devastating illness?  Been the emotional support for someone who was facing the prospect of their own death? Learned to cook, clean, sew, and run a household?  Learned to budget?  Learned to laugh at the stupid little things and decide when to make their own fun during the dry spells and economic downturns?

And that’s about it for my reasons, but I think they’re good ones. You might think I’m full of it. If so, please comment.

So, now you know where I’ve been: off in my own world, contemplating marriage. Forgive me for my absence.

For my next trick, I’ll be forcing myself to write about an uncomfortable subject:  Naomi.  That’s right; she’s an important character study in the book of Ruth, too, and my own Naomi is a lot like her. I’ll let FB know when I update! 

Thanks for reading.  I mean it.

 

Love,

Ruth

 

P.S.

In addition to avoiding the computer for contemplative purposes, I was also avoiding looking at this until it officially came out today (presented by the actors themselves at the MTV VMAs, no less), and it made my otherwise very long night spent carrying trays and cleaning out soy sauce bottles much more interesting:

Twilighters, enjoy.  I know I did.  It looks better than the book, but I may just be saying that because I thought New Moon was Meyer’s second-weakest of the quadrilogy (Breaking Dawn being the worst because of the stretches in character and the way SM treats Edward like a caricature of himself).  Chris Weitz (the New Moon director) is made of WIN.  Just look at those gorgeous fursploding werewolves!  The vampy smackdowns!  It makes my geeky self very happy.  Can’t wait for 11-20, and apparently, neither can the aliens. Check out these crop circles:

New Moon Crop Circle/Maze, located in Utah. Because there's nothing better to do in Utah than worship RPattz and TLaut.

Full article here:

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/09/field-dreams-09-utah-corn-maze-pays-homage-twilight

 

God Catches the Stuff that Slips between the Cracks

God, like the sneaky manipulator he is, has been working overtime lately to force me to recapture things that I’ve shoved aside/thought lost/let lazily slide during college and during the small stint I spent in emotional hell during my father’s illness:

1. My Spanish speaking skills. I’m using them all the time at work now, and so I’m having to review my AP Spanish verb charts and vocabulary during my downtime.  I can’t tell you how much more smoothly communication goes with our kitchen staff when I can just say what needs to be said in Spanish.

2. My instrumental skills.  My boss has recently discovered that I used to play flute (back before I fell in love with show choir), and has employed me to tutor his middle school-aged daughter with her own burgeoning flautist skills.  I’m having to pick up the rusty old thing and use my music theory knowledge all over again just to keep up with the kid.  I was never very good to start with, to be honest, so it’s a challenge.

3. My correspondence skills.  With no time to actually talk to people during decent living hours, I’m now emailling, texting, blogging, and Facebooking on those nights when I don’t come home exhausted from work.  This week, God also gave me laryngitis, or at least allowed me to get it, which means I really can’t talk to people.

4. My love for certain books. I’ve recently picked up one of Francine Rivers’ best series, The Mark of the Lion. I read these babies in high school, but they’re speaking to me again now, as is the scriptural wisdom imparted in the context of the story.  I also had the weird desire to reread Lord of the Rings  the other day (I’m due; I try to reread them every seven years). 

Ruth has picked up LotR again. Elijah Wood is just as confused as to why she's done so as Ruth is, but he sure looks cute when he's quizzical.

Not sure what that’s about.  Maybe it’s because one of my girlfriends got to talking about Viggo Mortensen (Where the heck did he go?  He was completely BAMF as Aragorn. Has he gone back to his poetry?)  and Elijah Wood (Frodo, now an independent film producer/recording label owner–and almost thirty years old. I know. I can’t believe it either).  Whatever the cause, the book is back by my bedside.

5. My vision. I finally went to the eye doctor after–oh, two years?  No idea, really.  But I’m way overdue, and I’ve gotten blinder in my dominant eye.  It’s time for new contact lenses before I have a car accident.  I should also probably have that freckle on my cornea looked at before it turns into cancer. . . although I almost don’t care if I get cancer; both parents had it by age fifty, so I figure I’m kinda screwed either way.

But with all of this revisiting of lost skills and interests, I’m also finding that I’m running low on time outside of work.  My mother (poor Naomi) rarely sees me until late at night; my dating life has dropped off considerably because of my weird (weekendless) waitressing schedule; and with school starting up again for most of my friends, my social life has taken another nosedive; also, I’m having trouble getting the physical energy to attend dance classes at night and to head to church in the early morning before my Sunday lunch shift.  Being sick doesn’t help much, either. I feel like sleeping all day long on my days off.

As a result, almost all of my energies are funnelling into my housework, my bookshelf, my bed, my computer, or–usually–the restaurant and the folks inside of it.

I have to wonder now whether God is returning me to my old studies and interests for a purpose (why? what?) and if he’s intentionally walling me in socially for some reason (again, why?). 

If he’s refining me, he’s choosing an interesting way to do it.  I’m not sure I like it.  I’m afraid–very afraid–that this is the path one goes down to become and old maid.

I hope God knows what he’s doing; that’s all I can say.

 

Christians Are Bad at Sex (Or at Least, Handling it): Part 2

Sorry for the wait, folks.  I’ve been working at the restaurant and fighting off being sick (which means sleeping a lot, rather than staying up late and writing). Thanks for your patience. Without further ado, here is the second half of the essay.

 

How Christians Can Get Better at Sex (Or, at Least, at Handling It)

When they’re out in the world, Christians would do well to remember Jesus’ advice to his disciples, which was in the last post, but here as a reminder:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.  Be on your guard against men.” (Matt. 10:16-17)

 When it comes to sex, too many Christians are “doves “who completely lack the “shrewd” predatory knowledge of the “snakes “of this world. Knowing too little about sin, sex, and evil, as well as the tendency to create well-intentioned-but –impossible rules to safeguard against sin, can trip up a genuinely God-chasing Christian in some potentially devastating ways. 

Innocents Mired in Ignorance: How the Doves Get Bitten by Serpents

The first danger, of course, comes about from lack of knowledge about sex in general—a gap of ignorance that usually plagues the sheltered, homeschooled Christian. When the world intrudes on the happy-puppy bubble of the sheltered Christian, that Christian suddenly faces a sexual situation for which he or she had no preparation or defense.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to define common sexual terms to an over-sheltered Christian gal-pal of mine who stood in the middle of a conversation and blindly (deafly?) didn’t even realize what she was laughing about while she tried to fit in.  If she’d been solicited for a “blowjob” in high school, I think she might have thought someone wanted her to inflate a balloon animal. 

Funny?  Yes. Tragic and dangerous as Hell?  Ohmybunnies, yes.  This girl needed to learn the ways of the serpents and fast—and that meant she needed to study some Parseltongue (yes, that is a Harry Potter reference; it refers to the language of snakes). 

Herpetologists-turned-Ophidiophobes: Hiding From the World and from Sexuality

On the other end of the scale, we have those Christians who have seen and heard enough of our sex-saturated culture to decide that they would like to find ways to shut themselves out of it completely–and away from all the serpents hidden in the grass.  These are our paranoid law-makers in the purity movement, those like Leslie Ludy , who, after being scarred in the battlefield of the early high school dating game, pulled herself out of public school in order to keep her virginity intact. She now counsels girls not to even kiss a man until they’re at the altar.1    Others, like Joshua Harris, counsel against close contact, being alone with one’s love interest, and even hand-holding.

Holding hands is really evil. See these sea otters? Totally going to Hell for their lusty thoughts as they float along.

A good idea? You decide.  All I’ll say is, it’s not exactly biblical.  The bride in the Song of Solomon sure mentions kissing prior to the wedding, even complaining that she’s upset that they can’t respectably steal kisses in public until they’re married (Ch. 8, v. 1).  Apparently, it’s natural for lovers on the edge of commitment to have that kind of longing; there is no judgment against it from a “God-voice” in the text. 

 Again, I have to wonder what all of this phobic treatment of sexuality does for their future intimate relationships.  I will say that it certainly doesn’t help Christians to have a great influence in the modern dating world, since many of these Christians retreat from that as well, preferring small Christian circles of “courtship” where these rules are adhered to and accepted.

 

Modest vs. Maddeningly Frumpy

Another side-effect of this movement involves a big emphasis on modesty. Now, I am a fan of modesty on principle, just because I know how visual men are.  I don’t do miniskirts and I try to keep my pitiful cleavage hidden, just so I don’t tempt some poor soul into some really dirty thinking. Also, I don’t want to look like a whore.  Just sayin’.

However, take a good concept like modesty, give it over to the paranoid-Christians, and it becomes a kind of law-enforced frumpery.  In an attempt to deter the sexual instinct, Christian women (and men) begin looking less like pretty, innocent doves and more like drab pigeons.  Or like Puritans.  (Heck, not even like Puritans–those men wore really tight pants back in the day, and the women actually defined the shape of their waists with stays and aprons.)

Some of you might think this is a silly point to bring up, since a shapeless wardrobe and a lack of cosmetic sense isn’t spiritually dangerous.  But I think this kind of hyper-modesty is a symptom of a nasty trend of scripture-twisting that is as risky as it is ugly.

A lot of Christians justify their drapery (sorry, I won’t call that stuff clothing) and their rules against makeup based on 1 Timothy 2, in which Paul tells little Timmy about his hopes that their little communities of the followers of the Way (early Christianity) would “live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (v. 3).  One of his suggestions/desires Paul lists to this end is one about modesty:

“I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.” (v. 9-10, NIV)

Paranoid Christians take this to mean that we shouldn’t wear clothing that shows the shapes of our bodies (it’s too sinful, even if skin is covered), and that makeup, ear piercings, or anything that would alter our so-called “natural” appearance should never be worn, since it can be distracting to the opposite sex.

But 1 Peter 3:3 clarifies what’s really meant here:

“Your adornment must not be MERELY external–braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses …” (emph. added) 

In other words, it’s not the adornment that is the issue; it’s the lack of internal beauty to back it up that the apostles wanted to warn us against.

Makeup is evil. Here is Ruth, dragging herself, and maybe some men, down to Hell because she cannot resist eyeliner and lipgloss.

Adornment is never explicitly frowned upon in scripture, and is often given to the most important women in the Good Book, including the beautiful Sarah (Abraham’s wife), Rebekah (wife of Isaac, see Gen. 24),  Esther, Abigail (David’s first wife, whose beauty kept him from killing a man in a fit of fury), the Shulamite bride in Song of Solomon, Israel’s female incarnation in the famous metaphor (Isaiah 16), and even the bride of Christ described in the Book of Revelation.   As for cosmetics, we know that Esther underwent months of beauty treatment in the Persian palaces and used cosmetics in her bid to win the heart of the king and save her people.  Heck, even Moses and Joseph would have worn guyliner in Egypt, both as a symbol of their status and as cosmetic enhancements. God appreciates and celebrates beauty, and doesn’t condemn those who do the same.

Moreover, God designed both men and women to be visually stimulated, men especially so.  When godly single women decide to dress themselves hyper-modestly, it often sends men the message that they are sexually unavailable, and often makes them look unattractive as well.   These mistaken impressions make it hard for these women to compete in the current dating market—and they get unfairly passed over.  Men who underemphasize the importance of a well-maintained appearance and gentlemanly wardrobe likewise get passed over by women seeking an attractive mate.  This issue, created by an over-emphasis on modest dressing and anti-sexuality, has even been covered in an article by Boundless Webzine’s Candace Watters, entitled “Not Enough Beauty.”  In this piece, Watters admits, “knowing that men have to fight their sin nature … is not justification for women to neglect their outward appearance.”2  I’ve talked to a lot of Christian women who use this excuse as a reason not to lose weight, wear more tailored garments, or put on makeup, and I’ve also heard it from some men who claim they want a woman to “love them for who they are,” rather than for their biceps.  As a result, I now have a sneaking suspicion that many Christians are really just using the whole modesty issue as justification to get away with not trying very hard, and that’s bad stewardship of our bodies.

So you see, ugliness really is a problem in Christian churches—it’s not just my pet peeve.  Worse, in their attempt to shut down those naughty sexual instincts by dressing themselves in the modern tailor’s equivalent of flour sacks, paranoid Christians not only fly in the face of biology, stewardship, and even God’s taste, they condemn the sacred connection between the sensual and the aesthetic.

Their attempts at severing of that connection is a great poverty, and not what God intended for us.  Not to mention, unsexy to the detriment of relationship potential. eHarmony is full of nice Christian guys who are not sexy at aaallll. And it frustrates the heck out of a girl like me who is saving sex for marriage and would like to have it with a Christian man who turns me on. Too much to ask?  Apparently, yes. If I don’t stop being matched to twenty-something-aged men already gone soft in the gut who wear elastic waist pants with pleating on the trouser-leg, I’m going to get desperate and ask God to strike me blind so I can get married off to the first Christian man on my match list who has a nice voice.

And . . . that’s enough for my rant on ignorance and prudery.   I want to close this discussion with some considerations that are more elementally vital to the topic of Christian sexual ethics. 

First, I think we can all agree that the act of sex is intended to be sacred.  But does that necessarily mean that it is something to be feared, or something to be respected and revered?  I would contend that Christians who treat sexuality as something that is dirty or frightening or wrong in-and-of itself are going against the way God would have us treat his gift for us.  Sex, with all its emotion-altering, pleasure-giving, and generative power, should not be treated lightly, but neither should it be treated like Satan’s dark secret.  For Heaven’s sake (literally) educate your kids and yourselves on the subject; don’t avoid it like the plague.

Second, concerning our flesh, we as Christians need to decide whether our bodies are inherently evil as a result of the Fall, or if our bodies still hold good instincts and beautiful desires that have been merely flawed, turned awry, or “bent” as C.S. Lewis calls it in his novel, Out of the Silent Planet.  Reread the first few chapters in Genesis for yourself tonight, and see what you make of it.

Finally, I’d like to close with a scripture that is often overlooked, but may help us to better understand how God views our struggles with the flesh:

 “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” (Ps. 103:13-14)

This is a reminder that we shouldn’t judge ourselves more harshly than God does.  The occasional lust is just a sign that we are still dust, and hormone-ridden little dust bunnies at that.  Take those urges and pursue marriage–which is a God-honoring use of those feelings.  And if you’re married, go have fun messing around with your spouse. That’s God-honoring, too.  Hooray for sex!

 

 

 

 

 

References:

1. Ludy, Leslie. Authentic Beauty. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2003.  45-62.
2. Watters, Candace. “Boundless Answers: Not Enough Beauty.” Boundless Webzine. <http://www.boundless.org/2005/answers/a0001400.cfm>.

 

 

Notes:

 

In 1997’s extremely popular Christian pop-culture-forming book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, author Joshua Harris argues that Christians

“have to understand purity as a pursuit of righteousness. When we view it merely as a line, what keeps us from going as close as we can to the edge?  If sex is the line, what’s the difference between holding someone’s hand and making out with that person?  If kissing is the line, what’s the difference between a goodnight peck and fifteen minutes of passionate lip-lock?”

He concludes that the only way to keep ourselves pure is to “flee as far and as fast as [we] can from sin and compromise” (91).   This leads him to give all kinds of advice on how couples should behave—extending laws of nearly no-contact—in his follow-up book, Say Hello to Courtship.  Harris steps into legalism here and begins to ignore important things like intention in one’s behavior in a relationship. Is it sinful to express affection and longing to your fiancée?  I argue that it isn’t—that it’s a natural and necessary stoking of the fire that will be lit in a passionate marriage; Josh argues that it is  simply because such behavior can tease one’s beloved with the prospect of sex that can’t be righteously be fulfilled yet.  Please note, dear readers, that even Harris admits to having trouble keeping his eyes from lusting after his fiancée.  I giggled when he admitted it with a terrible sense of shame, like it was something Satanic.   I think God might have chuckled a bit and wished he’d included a verse in the Bible that told over-anxious gits who desire to foreswear all natural desires to just get over themselves.  I’m sure God wouldn’t tell them to follow the other alternatives: to join the Gnostics or the Buddhists, who view flesh as either entirely evil or as an illusion, respectively.

 

Christians Are Bad at Sex (Or at Least, at Handling It): Part the First

*Warning: This will be a two-part rant. Please comment and argue as you see fit!*

Christians are bad at sex.

I’m not referring to technique. I’m talking about how Christians are handling the issue.

Let me pull a pastor’s trick and tell you a story to illustrate what I mean.

I once danced with a nice, shy, college-aged Christian-homeschooled young man.  The dance called for close contact because it was a tango.  But he, with much stuttering over a rigid explanation, opened his “frame” and held me out and away from  his body in something closer to a waltz pose.  You could have fit far more than a Bible between us—heck, you could have fit the last two Harry Potter novels in there.

As a result, it was difficult for me, as a female “follow” partner, to dance with him. The communication between our bodies was essentially severed but for his hands—trained strictly on my shoulder blades and upper arms. The center of gravity that was supposed to be created by the mutual lean-in of both partners had shifted outward into something almost centripetal as we went into a loose orbit. When we stepped our way precariously around the room, I felt like I was in constant danger of tripping him, falling backward and looking silly, or worse, actually getting injured.

And while I’d done my homework and had read all the sexual purity literature that he had—and therefore knew directly where he was coming from theologically—I wanted to shake him for the way he was acting: Like I had the plague of sin all over me.  Like he didn’t trust himself enough to control himself.  Like there was something unholy in the slight buzz of curiosity that you always get when you dance with a stranger. Like Jesus himself was going to throw a fit on the floor if we danced the tango like our teacher instructed us to.

So I did something rather awful, and I’ll confess it to you now (and offer him a belated apology, if he reads this).  I teasingly told him that, even if we danced chest-to-chest, he still wouldn’t be actually touching me. I might have mentioned that I was wearing a padded bra as a kind of barrier.  He turned a brilliant shade of red, and I tried not to laugh at his show of innocence.  It was like I was talking to a giggling tweenager, not a twenty-something man.  It made me feel like a wordly Jezebel, a Herodias, and a conniving, dangerous little Delilah all at the same time.  But when I laughed, I felt God laughing with me, and I knew I wasn’t being evil, even if I was being a bit of a snit. I was on the verge of making an important point (which I’ll get to in the next section).

Ruth performed a live tango with her college ballroom partner last fall. They were too focused on not screwing up the choreography to even think about screwing . . . um, around.

In spite of my attempts at humor, he still refused to dance closer. We fumbled about awkwardly until the song ended and I was free at last to find a male “lead” who would dance with me without giving into any dance-inappropriate hang-ups.  I felt instantly relieved when I slid into close-embrace with a man who wasn’t scared stiff (bad pun, I know, but I’m keeping it) by my sinful girly parts.  As I relaxed in the arms of my new male lead –practically melted in them, really—and allowed myself to work over the steps with confidence, I realized that my mind was letting go of a surprising amount of angry tension.

I danced awhile in deep thought. Why was I angry?  I knew I wasn’t upset with the young man.  I quite liked him, really.  It wasn’t him, no, I just hated how he’d seemed so shaken, how it made me feel, how it made him seem . . .

Yes, I was mad at his fear.

To be specific, I was mad at the spirit of fear that I’d felt erupting from his pores.  I was angry that someone had taught him that risking sensuality was worse than risking putting someone in danger of personal injury.  I was even more upset that this boy—no, man—and a man of an age when he should be pursuing marriage—was so scared of my sexuality that he could hardly hold a discussion with me.  I was angry that the weight of his own church-conditioned anxiety was such that he was rendered inconsiderate as a dance partner (without meaning to), incapable of leading the moves (as a result of the distance between us), and insubordinate to the dance instructor’s directions (because a tango involves some tangling of limb from time to time as a rule).  Far from being a good example or making a statement about purity, he was simply, conspicuously, hard to dance with.  I danced with him anyway, though, because I understood him.

I wanted to understand better, though. I tried to imagine how young Christians raised to this degree of sexual paranoia by their parents ever manage to lower their guard and achieve real intimacy with a future spouse.  I wondered if their innocence goes hand-in-hand with the kind of ignorance that led a super-Christian girl I know to get herself pregnant on her honeymoon just because she didn’t know how to properly use the Pill and didn’t openly communicate with her mother or husband on this blush-worthy topic.  It was sheer stupidity, coupled with naiveté, on her part, and I blame the situation entirely on the cloistered lifestyle she’d been brought up in that reinforced the idea that sexuality—and especially its aspects of contraceptives and family planning—was too sinful a topic to broach.

I think that’s why we need to be wary of the flip side of pursuing sexual purity, especially if we go at it (bad pun again) like a Pharisee.  One can feel so much pride in one’s attempts at innocence that that pride overcomes one’s intelligence and thwarts God’s biological design for humankind.    When that happens, I can’t imagine Jesus applauding us.  I think he does a massive face-palm maneuver and shakes his head at us.

The Law vs. the Lawgiver’s Intentions

Let’s talk about the Pharisees and their pride in following all the rules.

I’m going to ask for a show of hands, here. How many of you remember the story about Jesus out in the grain (possibly corn) field, hand-picking from the crop with his hungry disciples on a (gasp!) Sabbath day (in Luke 6, Matthew 12, and Mark 2)?  Do you remember how snippy the Pharisees got with him?  Anyone?

I’ll relate the incident as it appears in Mark 2: 23-28, just to refresh your memory:

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (NIV)

Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary can give us a few reasons why Jesus retained his righteousness in this instance (hint: it wasn’t because he was God and could therefore bend his law if he chose [which God wouldn’t], it was because he was also a man):

Mt. 2:23-28–The Sabbath is a sacred and Divine institution; a privilege and benefit, not a task and drudgery. God never designed it to be a burden to us, therefore we must not make it so to ourselves. The sabbath was instituted for the good of mankind, as living in society, having many wants and troubles, preparing for a state of happiness or misery. Man was not made for the sabbath, as if his keeping it could be of service to God, nor was he commanded to keep its outward observances to his real hurt. Every observance respecting it is to be interpreted by the rule of mercy.

In the case of sexual purity, I have a strange feeling that God’s rules about guarding our eyes and not lusting after our non-spouses aren’t meant to be a burden to us, either.   Those rules, like the Sabbath, are God-instituted in order to keep our marriages sacred, our families intact, our society at peace, and our relationship to God unsullied by illicit affairs that become gods to us and entangle us in devastating sin (King David learned this lesson with Bathsheba, an affair that just went from bad to worse to worser still).

One glance at our biology will tell you that man not only wasn’t made for the Sabbath, he also wasn’t made for rules about sexual purity (although some might argue based on the bond-creating “cuddle” hormones released during sex that we are made for the monogamous sexual pairing of marriage).  But God made these rules for us in order to help protect us from the spiritual danger of our own, often indiscriminate, sexual hunger.

That being said, I think we need to look very closely at what sort of thing actually constitutes sexual sin, rather than following a set of well-intentioned but rather heavy and dangerously impossible rules for dating and relationships, like those delineated in popular sexual purity literature.

But how, exactly, do we figure out what is God’s definition of sexual sin, and what is simply just breaking a human set of rules?

The best place to start is , well, with God’s starting place for judging all of mankind: the heart (1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 139:23-24).

Christ reasserts that the heart is the starting point for defining sexual sin when he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28, NIV).

Intention, intention, intention—that’s what paves the road to Hell.  Bad intent was why Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife: because she was clearly trying to seduce him, and Joseph knew it (Gen. 39-40).

But what about our good intentions? Is the old (non-scriptural) proverb true regarding those? Do they also pave the road to Hell?

I highly doubt it. I was not trying to seduce my partner, just trying to dance!  And he, of course, was too concerned about his future wife’s feelings to be seduced by me, in any case.  If we went on intention alone to judge both sides, tangoing properly in close-embrace position wasn’t going to send us to Hell or ruin our future sex lives with our spouses.  If we’d stopped to consider it, we’d both have realized that the paranoid distance between really was unnecessary for holiness, just like the Pharisees would have realized that picking a few handfuls of grain to fill an empty belly (or thirteen bellies) on the Sabbath wasn’t an act committed to dishonor God.  The Pharisees, caught up in the power of their rule making and ruled by spiritual paranoia, could only see evil behind some innocent snacking.

Knowledge, Wisdom, and Power

I bordered on redundancy in the last paragraph with my use of two forms of the word “paranoid,” but that’s becasue I think “paranoid” is a good word to describe a lot of young Christians who have joined the Joshua Harris/Elisabeth Elliot/Eric-and-Leslie Ludy purity party these days.  And while there’s nothing ever wrong with being careful, some of the extremes taken in the current purity movement to keep people from any form of intimacy before marriage goes beyond the the call of innocence and leaves some of its followers in a perilous realm of ignorance about sexuality, its charms, its God-given uses, and its worldly abuses.

I can see some hackles going up over this one. Some of you may be thinking what I hope you’re not thinking.  But let me churn out some scripture that will point you to where I’m actually going with this.

In Matthew chapter ten, when Jesus sent out the Twelve, he told them:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.  Be on your guard against men. . .” (vv. 16-17, NIV)

He then goes on to tell them all of the dangers they will face as proclaimers of the gospel, including all of the evil things that can be done, will be done, and might be done against them.

“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child . . .”  (v. 21 ff).

The list of awful warnings that follows is very long, but you get the idea. Jesus educated his followers about what people can and might do so that they weren’t caught off guard.  They could be as “shrewd” (cunning, in some translations) as the predatory serpents of the world without actually engaging in their vices, like doves flying above the earthly masses.

Jesus wanted them to know what was out there. But sometimes, God’s people don’t know what’s going on, and they get caught in snares of ignorance.  The prophet Hosea called out the priests of his day who encouraged ignorance of God, his laws, and his blessings, in his day, proclaiming with the voice of God in Hosea chapter four:

“My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests;  because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.” (v. 6, NIV)

Hosea goes on to explain that this lack of knowledge of God’s law led to the Jews to seek other gods for answers, and to give themselves over to sins they didn’t even know were sinful (4:10-14).  Here, ignorance of sin leads to spiritual danger.

The reverse extreme can also happen, though.  I can’t tell you how many times an exasperated Jesus would say something along the lines of “Don’t you know the scripture . . . ?”  to a Pharisee who was so caught up in making his own oppressive laws against sinning that he became ignorant of the real intent behind God’s law.  You remember how this went in the incident with the grain-picking on the Sabbath.  Jesus wasn’t about to be lectured to.  I can just imagine the eye-roll he barely managed to hide from those tassel-wearing nitpickers.

What makes Christians “bad” in the area of sex is the combination of both kinds of dangerous ignorance—of knowing too little of sin and evil, and of creating well-intentioned-but-impossible rules that defy God’s objective–a combination which, sadly, stands as common practice in today’s purity-ring wearing Christian subculture.

* * *To be continued!* * *

 

Ruth in the Field

Well, folks, prophesy fulfills itself, especially when you post it in a blog that you’ve invited God and everybody to read (Seriously. God gets tagged as a category on these posts!).

In a post from earlier this summer, I wrote about my lack-of-a-job situation and about the time a waitressing position (almost) fell in my lap.  Then I got all English-major-y and quoted from Jane Eyre. I think I selected some passages about Jane’s humility in accepting a “pud” job, reasoned that I shouldn’t be too proud to take such a position, and mused, in a self-comforting way, that my career-focused skills “will keep” until a later, more economically fruitful time.

Well, I now have a job. ::Gasp!:: And, as chance would have it, it’s in no way related to my English major, my publishing experience, or my little forays into journalism.

Instead, it’s drawing on the experiences I’ve had that I thought were worthless.  In three days  at my new gig (two spent training, one spent working), I’ve drawn on my multi-colored backgrounds in stagecraft, group psychology, ballroom dancing, opera, improvisational comedy, Spanish (language), Chinese (language and culture), coquetry, Google-searching, touch-screen technology, child care, advertising consultation, and even my short story writing to learn the ropes of this job, to navigate those ropes without getting too tangled up, and  to endear myself to my fellow restaurant staff members.

That’s right, readers. I am a waitress (PC term: server) in the entertainment dining industry.  I’m at a restaurant not three miles from my home, working for a family of dreamers that I adore, and having an exhausting, hilarious time.

God, himself a fan of family-run businesses, is matchless in his irony.  He really surprised me on this one, but then again, his ways are higher than my ways and his thoughts are much, much higher than my thoughts.

Some of you may be wondering why I call this a God-given thing. Allow me to explain.

Those familiar with my personal theories on theology know that I believe that the best, highest, and most artfully-arranged comedy to be found can only come from God.   Seriously. Read the gospels and look for Jesus’s wit.  He’s hella funny, but his kind of humor is extremely sophisticated and layered.  Many times, his witticisms go way over the heads of us modern readers who don’t understand how first-century Jews would have understood and responded to his jokes. But there are some jokes that Jesus uttered that we can understand better at the second millenium than the first-centurians could.  One of my favorite ones of those comes from the last chapter of the Gospel of John, when the resurrected Jesus gets peppered with questions about when he’ll be back for the final reckoning.  The disciples all hope they’ll live to see it, but Peter, being a consummate pragmatist, looks at the youngest disciple, John, and asks Jesus if Johnny-the-Kid will live to see the Second Coming.  I can picture Jesus smiling to himself when he responds,

“If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” (Jn 21:22).

John, of course, grew to become the visionary prophet who eventually got to write the entire book of Revelation concerning Christ’s return.  Jesus kept John alive, though aged, weak, and in exile on an island, so that Johnny could get a good glimpse of the upcoming epic spiritual party before he shuffled off his mortal coil to await the actual show with the rest of us.

Funny?  Yup.  Jesus is a real crack-up who knows an inside joke when he foresees one.

But Satan, like any beautiful and self-absorbed bimbo, remains in the narrow but omni-present realm of low-brow comedy, also known as the gutter.  His jokes are simple, flat, tasteless, and usually found on Comedy Central.

The comedy–heck, the divine irony–of my particular job search is too complex for a punchline and avoids reference to sexuality or any scatological themes.  Hence, it’s too high a form of wit to be anything but God-granted-and-delivered.

Here’s the story, laid out for laughability:

I’d just gotten a lump of disappointment stuck in my throat in the form of the fourth turn-down/brush off from the publishing company I’d been pining after for a job all year. I’d flunked the editing test (not surprising since, let’s face it, a slight acquaintance in college with, and a six-hour study session of, the Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t compete with the several years of experience that the other candidates had under their belts).  They told me to try back again in six months and keep a lookout for other positions at the company that weren’t involved in the copy-editing process.  I thanked them and went out for a strawberry daiquiri with my mother at the local Mexican restaurant. Not to drown in my woes, mind you.  Just to get my feet under me and a sense of hopeful, glass-half-full (literally) optimism.

As we got out of the car, I noticed that the new Asian steakhouse/sushi joint was open for business. It had been under construction for the past several weeks. I wondered if they were hiring.  I decided, on some wild impulse, to inquire within and see.  Turns out, yes, they were, and would I like an application?  Sure thing.

After a quick interview the next morning in which I outlined my very skimpy serving qualifications (“Do you have any experience working in a restaurant?” “No, but I’m experienced with customer service because of this one job I had filling work orders for property maintenance.  Oh, and I’m comfortable around people.  Children included.  I was a substitute teacher and a nanny, see?  I’m also used to public speaking and acting chipper even when I don’t feel like it. And I had a lemonade stand, once, too.”), I was asked if I could report for training on Saturday. I reflected on my interview interaction with the manager, who I’ll call Mr. X, and I decided that I liked Mr. X’s personality and felt like he was a warm and hardworking person; his wife, who had fluttered around during the interview session and occasionally added her two cents, had a maternal presence and no fear of her husband, just a lot of respect that went beyond the usual Asian norm for the marital relationship.   With these thoughts in my mind, I committed myself to the job and, with that,  to the young couple that is attempting to build a life for themselves around their baby restaurant.

And just like that, after three months of looking, someone took a chance on me and hired me.  And all because I was willing to take a chance on them.  That it happened to be a waitressing position made good on the change of heart that I had when I met Donna (see July 16 post).  And, of course, it’s as far away from anything English as it could possibly be.  Not the language; not even the food.  However, it was right under my nose:  just three miles away from my house, and right next to the place where I was going to sip the blended nectar of my woes.

God sure is a laugh-riot.

It’s been three days, and nearly twenty-three hours of work and training on my tired feet, and I’m not sorry for it yet.   I think it’s because I finally have a kind of calling.

I’ve come to like my employers as people, and I’ve even met their super-supportive family, whose members flew across the country and the world to help staff and finance the business.  Mr. X himself works two jobs: full-time restaurant manager/chef, and schoolbus driver.  Our head waiter, Ricky, told me that Mr. X sleeps maybe three hours a night.  Mrs. X does all the accounting and hostessing and will even cover tables as needed. She’s the fast-fluttering, uncatchable butterfly of the restaurant, and just as beautiful, as only women from Asia can be in their delicate way.  Mr. and Mrs. X have two children, who are often at the restaurant after school and in the mornings, as their age dictates, but they are quiet, shy, and often serious, even in their silliness. Mr. X’s brother, a cheerful Hongkongesian named Felix, just flew back to the Pacific Northwest after working full-time as the head chef at the hibachi from opening night onward.  Mr. X’s mother, who I’ll call Grandma X, is still helping out when and where she can, even though her tiny vocabulary of English limits her.

Inside all of this mountain of effort to keep the restaurant running are its miners, the cooks and servers.

Our sushi chef is an artist, and works full-time, with no nights off. The under-chef is learning from Mr. X  how to take Felix’s place in the front as head chef someday. In the meantime, our under-chef and the assistant cook help us servers do the dishes and get orders out to us as fast as they can.  The majority of them are Mexican and appreciate it when I clarify a complicated order by peppering it with details in Spanish.  My fellow servers include head-waiter Ricky, his wife Hillary, and a third girl named Kayla who only comes in on weekends (I think).  Ricky trained me, and is an unstoppable force when he’s got several tables to see to.  Charismatic, physically strong, and underserved by life, Ricky is barely twenty, if that, but is already a father.  But he and Hillary are trying to offset the upset of their late-teenage pregnancy by balancing their work schedules so that someone is home for their little girl. They both work like crazy–and do it with a kind of pride.  They know it’s what’s keeping them both from falling out of the bottom of the middle class, and they’re holding onto their respectability like it’s sacred.  I admire them for trying to make a good life for themselves and their daughter.

I think you can tell that I like them all immensely.

And wonder of wonders, they’re starting to like me back.  Ricky, of course, liked me after the first time I astutely anticipated his orders and bussed a slew of tables without complaint.  The cooks decided that they liked me as soon as they found out that I spoke Spanish well enough to compliment their work.  The X’s children decided that they liked me the minute they caught me dancing in the kitchen before the restaurant opened for dinner and I teased them for spying.  Mrs. X decided she liked me when she saw how often I smiled at customers, how carefully I took Ricky’s orders, and how hard I tried just in general. (“You have a great work attitude! Good job!” she told me Saturday.)  Mr. X was won over mostly by his wife–I think–in my favor, but he told me just yesterday that he was observing Ricky and me from his spot at the grill and noticed that I “move like the girl from that movie Enchanted. What’s her name? Amy Adams.  You have a little dancing walk!”  Mrs. X chimed in, “And cute [read: expressive, Caucasian] eyes!”  Even Grandma X smiled at me yesterday when I thanked her for her assistance with bussing a table in her native Cantonese, then followed that up with a question in Mandarin, which is more comfortable for me, and easy enough for her to understand.  She told me she’ll teach me more Cantonese, which I think means that she wants to keep me.

So I’m where I feel like I’m supposed to be, or at least where I belong, right now.

Only trouble is, these people all keep bringing me food. Again, God is the ultimate comedian:  by making sure that my fears about going hungry are laid to rest, he sends me to a place where all the people want to do is stuff my face.

Addendum (added after the original post in a slap-happy moment):

Here’s more proof that God wants me to be happy.  Hugh Jackman (my fav actor and all-around performer, who is an amazing family man and just generally awesomely talented to boot) will be in a movie next year with Robert Pattinson (my fav eye candy and a constant source of comic relief.  Seriously, the stuff that man says!).   The movie will be called “Unbound Captives” and also stars Rachel Weisz, a wonderful, darling, adorable actress in her own right.  In addition to this wonderful news . . .

Oh hai! How you been? Still goooorgeous, I see.

Oh, the hugging is difficult. The Man-Love is too handsome to look at.

This delightful moment of starry-eyed reunion and recognition, in which both HughJax and RPattz seemed to both be thinking– Oh, hai, you! We’re going to be in a movie together, and I remember you from that karaoke bar in Japan where we sang together, and the plane ride back to LA, and then the Oscars!–was captured at the Teen Choice Awards this weekend and reported on some online newsreels frequented by girls who care about the Twilight franchise. It seriously made me very happy, just because they both look so darn cute and excited to see each other.   I think a few of my readers will enjoy this, too.  Let me know–leave a comment!