Christian Community: Let's get Messy!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be a Christian. For many years now I have been embarrassed to be associated with Christians. I hide that fact of my life for as long as I can when I meet new people. This has been a huge struggle for me causing me to question my faith: am I really an unbeliever, what is so embarrassing, etc. It hasn’t helped any that I’ve felt seriously dry in my faith. I have had no desire to search for Christ or change who I am. In the past few months, I’ve really begun to think about this and have begun to understand a little more about what embarrasses me. I am hurt by and deeply troubled with the state of Christianity in America (I am sure the church is screwy worldwide, but I can only speak for my little corner of it here in the good ole US of A). With September 11th, Christianity became completely enmeshed with politics. Republican and Christian became confused and many of us became even further alienated from our beliefs. I am embarrassed to be associated with people who are hateful, angry, hurtful. Who are so focused on revenge that they cannot see love; who are so confused about right and wrong that they believe consuming more crap and spending more money is an appropriate response to acts of war. Ask someone what the first thing that comes to mind is when you say “Christian”. You will get answers (I would provide answers) like: angry, hateful, judgmental, shallow, etc. And I cannot say that is untrue.

All of this has led me to a real crisis of faith. Which was strange to me because I’ve never struggled with unbelief. I’ve never questioned who Christ was or that He came to save us from our sins. I’ve always believed fervently, passionately that Christ’s love for us would ultimately save us and that we would be restored and made whole in the eternal life. I’ve just lost sight of what that means here on earth. Which is a sad shame.

On a separate track (I thought), I’ve been thinking a lot about what it meant to care for the earth and to be good stewards of the blessings of this earth. And this has led me deep into crunchiness (I use only baking soda, vinegar and peroxide to clean house and my body; I try to line dry our clothes; we recycle; we ride our bikes when we can, we cloth diaper, yada, yada, yada). And all of this is nice and good and I do believe it is part of responsible stewardship. But I was missing the mark. These acts had become a sort of salvation by works for me. I was proud of these things; I allowed myself to be self-righteous (and consequently ungracious). All the while I am praying that God would start a revolution in my heart and that I could begin to feel passionately about my Lord again. Then God sent me to Cornerstone.

This year has blessed my heart and my spirit in ways I could not imagine. I attended a lecture called “Ordinary Radicals” by Shane Claiborne (look him and his community, The Simple Way up or check out his book, An Irresistible Revolution and check it out for yourself). This young man is on fire for our Lord Christ. And it is hard to resist it. Because, unlike with other magnetic leaders, it is easy to see the Gracious Spirit of Christ bursting out of every pore! He and his friends started in much the same place as myself, questioning the state of the church around them, disillusioned and broken hearted. And instead of whining (oh-so-guilty over here!), they began studying and learning about who Christ is (not who the church is) and decided to re-imagine the Church. Which ended up looking an awful lot like the early church.

So, my brothers and sisters out there in internet-land, I encourage you to embark on this journey with us. Forget your ideas of the church as you know it and open your bible to the book of Acts. Ask yourself what it would look like to take God at His word and obey? To forget hoarding your earthly treasures and start sharing them? Because you love your neighbor! Ask yourself how your gifts (all of your gifts: spiritual, mental, monetary, physical) can bless the church of God?

I’ve been asking myself some of these questions (and it is TOUGH!) and I have gotten SO EXCITED about some of the possibilities. Maybe instead of worrying about paying lot’s of money into the health insurance machine against the off-chance that you might get ill, we could start a health-care coop for our community. We could pay for the needs of our brothers and sisters and only ask for help when we needed it. What does it look like to sell my possessions and give that money to the poor? What about the things I might need to keep, how can I still share them? I’m thinking about my sewing machine and serger (integral parts of my art making and housekeeping, right?). Maybe I can share them by teaching others to sew and modify their own clothes. Maybe I can make baby slings and kids clothes for families in need.

How can we as Christ’s bride, His lovers, share that amazing gift? And let’s not allow ourselves the escape of thinking about "charity" or “ministry.” Ministry implies otherness. We condescend to minister to others in order to keep ourselves at a distance from their real messes. Let’s just care for each other. Love one another, our neighbors, as we love ourselves. Maybe that means that every time I buy something for myself, I need to spend an equal amount on a neighbor in need. I just spent $432 on a new bike. That’s a lot of money for a needy neighbor! Let’s get radical about this revolutionary love that Christ brought for us!

Good homemaking and the Feminist Me

A while back I stumbled across this blog post about the proverbial woman. She is a woman I have generally disliked, associating her with flower print dresses with white socks and general niceness. I am a cranky person; I do not mix well with nice. And I am a feminist (so take that flower-dress lady)! But this post was by somebody whose writing I respect, who appears to have a strong, clear head on her shoulders and sound theology. So, I started thinking and reflecting on myself and what does it mean to me to be a mother, wife and feminist (can those things coexist in a christian culture?).

For the past year or so I have been itching to move out of our little house. It’s tiny, we both need work spaces and we all like to have a little quiet space. We also have a lot of junk that is homeless. It’s crowded and cluttered (did I mention small?) and it just doesn’t feel homey. One day on a walk to the coffee house, I passed the perfect “grow into” home for us. 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 floors, 2 car garage, basement, hard wood floors, a porch, urban living, great neighborhood, blah, blah, blah. $289,000.00. I started lusting. I started praying, “God if you wanted us to have that house, you could make it happen!” And one day as I was walking past the same house for the hundredth time (in two weeks!) I realized that I was so completely spoiled. We have a good home. By our standards, we live pretty luxuriously. The problem was not with our house but within me. I realized that I had no respect for my house. It was not home because I had not made it home.

I grew up in a family that divided all household chores. Everyone took a turn at everything; we lived communally. My husband did not. My expectations of married life (clearly stated BEFORE marriage) were that dh would learn to do chores and that we would divide them (except the cooking because, honestly, I like my food!). This is not my reality. My reality is that my husband has no interest in anything domestic. I really do think that he could live with stuff piled high in columns around him so long as he could reach the computer, toilet and food! And his movies, of course! But I do enjoy domestic life. Not just the nostalgic domesticity (canning, crafting, etc) but day-to-day maintenance of a home. I enjoy a tidy well-organized home (without clutter and without homeless STUFF). That said, there is no place for the enjoyment of homemaking within a feminist spectrum. So, I find myself beginning to feel ashamed of admitting that I enjoy keeping house; that it challenges me and that it blesses my family. And I believe those to be good things.

Where does this get me? I’m not sure. I’ve been feeling God working in my heart a lot as I consider the enormous blessings of our lives. And I am forced to admit that I have been neglectful of those blessing. No, I have been contemptuous of those blessings, allowing myself to slip into a model of “gimme, gimme. gimme.” So, I am trying to struggle through reconciling respect for and stewardship of the gifts in our life and the ideals I thought I carried. I think my ideals are in the process of being overthrown.

Who am I?

I was posed this question on an online community that I participate in. It led to this introspection, something that has been on my mind a lot recently as I struggle to understand what the different strands of my heritage mean to me.

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Who am I? When I look in the mirror I see me. I see my faults (bags under my eyes, dry skin, eyes a little crooked, teeth a little yellow and so on all the way down to my toes) and I see some nice things (strength, some sort of beauty, intelligence). Describing myself in terms of community, race and culture has always been difficult for me. I am a broken follower of Christ; I am a mother, wife, sister, daughter. I am crunchy, intelligent, passionate. I am an artist and a teacher. I am very active in communities for each of these parts of me.

Racially, bureaucratically I am caucasian, but I’ve never really understood what this means. Culturally I have never fully identified with American whiteness with mixed white roots reaching way back. Only one of my grandparents is American-born and only one of her parents is American-born with the typical haberdashery background. I was raised by a Scot who grew up with a Yoruba tribe in Nigeria. From Nigeria he was uprooted and transplanted into New Orleans in the early '60's. I was also raised by a Welsh-American who is culturally more French than American. Neither of my parents is comfortable with their own American cultural history often disparaging of it, always awkward in it.

My parents straddled two cultural worlds in their childhoods as did I. We were dirt poor, often eating beans for months and spending weeks using the toilets at the library, pool and friends houses. I am well educated by learned parents. I was homeschooled back when it was very uncool and usually meant you were a freaky christian. We were culturally middle class in education and speech but we lived in a very poor, very urban environment. I learned to identify guns from the gunshots and estimate how close they were. I learned to hit the floor when they were too close. And few of my middle class white friends were allowed to play at my house. We were the only white family on our street. I learned to speak essentially in two different languages: one for my middle class white friends and one for my neighborhood friends. And as a child, I was allowed to speak "black" but in junior high that was no longer acceptable to anyone. I was white and should stay in that box. This was exceedingly painful. I didn't understand that rejection and I still struggle with it.

I am fiercely proud of my cultural heritage. I cringe when people comment on ds's "Irish red hair" when he is most definitely Scottish! I loved living in France and connecting with my mother's friends, family and culture. I am eager to speak to other Nigerians to learn about my father's home country and people. I am proud that my white Scottish grandparents were so embraced and respected by the tribe they lived with that they were made a part of the Yoruba family. My grandparents were Yoruba, my father is Yoruba, I am Yoruba. But this also confuses me. Race is so divisive here that I also feel deep shame over this history. I feel that I cannot acknowledge my own African history because that is only viable if your skin is dark brown. I cannot recall my childhood days without being perceived as patronizing and ultimately racist.

Thinking through this has been painful for me, much more so than I thought it would be. The different strands of my cultural heritage have left me feeling wounded, confused and sometimes bitter. I often feel rejected by all the parts of my cultural whole: I am not Scottish, I am not French, I am not Yoruba, I am not middle class, I am not poor. I do not fit any of the boxes but I partially fit them all. I do not know where that leaves me.

Parenting and expectations

I've been thinking a lot about the expectations that we set for our children. I am wondering if as a general rule we set them too low. Let me give a bit of background by saying that I associate myself most strongly with the "attachment" style of parenting (AP). I believe in creating a strong relational bond with a child from infancy and in gentle discipline with the focus on grace and mercy over punishment. That said, I also believe that as parents it is our God given responsibility to our children to guide, instruct, set and enforce boundaries. So, what does that mean in practical terms? I'm still working this out. I hope to constantly be working this out because, whatever else, parenting should be flexible and responsive. Attachment parenting is pretty darn easy through infancy. You sling the baby, nurse the baby, sleep with baby and respond to the baby. You're good. But as your child moves into toddlerhood, they begin to test those boundaries. That's good and normal. I've been trying to reconcile myself with what sometimes appear to be conflicting theories regarding parenting. How can one be gentle but strict about enforcing the boundaries? Because I do believe that a child needs that consistent response to the testing of the waters and I sometimes think that attachment parenting and gentle discipline theories are short on the practical application. How does one find the balance between being responsive to the child's needs and guiding the child? My problem with absolute child-led parenting is that a child is a child. Which is part of the argument behind AP, age-appropriate responses and expectations. Which leads me to my present quandary.

We've begun potty training (another issue just in that: potty learning vs potty training?!?!? Is no one familiar with the idea that training is not always negative? Is training not a way of teaching one's mind and body through intense application? I don't get it.). At any rate, we've begun potty training by means of elimination communication (EC) techniques and routine. D is just now 17 months old and by general sentiment he is either too young or too old to learn to eliminate in the potty. But he is. And he is very proud of himself for doing so. And this is where my question stems from: do we set our expectations for our children too low? By most AP standards (not EC) I'm not following the child's lead with this and am therefore undermining him. But, if I had waited for him to show "readiness signs" for pottying, we may never have begun this process. So here we are with a very proud little boy who has begun to ask to use the potty one week into potty learning. I realized that my expectations of him were definitely too low. As I think of child-led parenting practices, I wonder if low expectations are often at the root. We don't really expect our children to obey when we set a rule so we become wishy-washy on the enforcement of the rule. This seems to me a major difference between my more mainstream friends and their discipline approach and my more AP friends.

Today when I was discussing this idea with some mommy friends of mine, they pointed out that I've been looking at this whole problem from a very human perspective. God does not always define grace and mercy in the way we want it to be. Sometimes, grace and mercy are allowing the full consequences of something to come down on us. In this way, in His infinite mercy, He teaches us about ourselves. I have certainly been taught much about my own broken self this way. I needed this gentle reminder that my parenting role model is to be my Heavenly Papa first and foremost.

Beauty and that elusive, oh-so perfect body

I find myself sometimes watching other women, usually young and generally childless. I watch the way their clothes hang on their bodies and notice that when they move nothing jiggles. No arm fat hangs down and there is nothing like cellulite or softness anywhere near their stomachs or hips. I lust. I envy. I chide myself. My mind rapidly runs from the top of my head down to my toes, carefully and brutally taking inventory of my faults. My hair is brittle and frizzy but remains dreadfully straight, almost stringy, my teeth are yellow and crooked, my nose is pointy, one eye is higher than the other, my arms are fat, my breasts hang low and are too large, my stomach bulges and rolls and squishes, my hips are too wide, my bottom too flat, my thighs are lumpy yet soft, my calves are hairy, my feet are dry. No one else has these problems. When I look, they look good. I can only see perfection through my green lens.

I do not visit the gym. This is a source of guilt. I do not work out. I sometimes eat ice cream or chocolate cake or even oreo cookies. But I walk a lot, almost everyday, I tell myself. And I cook most of our food from scratch and it is mostly organic and is all natural. And I am very active. I whisper to myself: I dance, I chase my baby, I garden. Oh yeah, and I'm still nursing a lot. Doesn't that count? But it is never enough. The thin girls win. I can never again have that pre-pubescent child's body. My body is that of a woman and I cannot revel in that. I cannot enjoy the fact that my body grew a child. My body delivered this child with no assistance. My body nourishes this child. I cannot celebrate my body's strength. I cannot celebrate my womanliness. I cannot find it sexy. There is something very wrong with my mind. My body is strong and healthy but my mind tells me this is not true. My mind sees faults and ugliness. My mind is wrong but I cannot make it know that.

But isn't this what every women thinks? Who was it who told us that we cannot be women? Why do we give them this power? Why do we continue to give them this power even when we recognize this problem? Why do we beat ourselves up trying to turn back our bodies to our childhood days... and why do we accept that a child's body is sexier than a woman's body? There is something very sick about that.

Breastfeeding discrimination

I just came across this blog about a daycare center in Ohio called CityKids. Now, this just p*sses me off in a big way. Am I crazy or does charging an extra $50/wk for "handling" the oh-so-hazardous and complicated breastmilk seem like a scam. Seriously, you keep it in the fridge or freezer. You stick it hot water. You feed it to the baby. Unlike formula which you must measure out the formula, mix it with water, heat it up (unless it's premixed then you have to refrigerate it and then heat it up), and NOW you can feed the baby. And, according to the above link, day cares have to then sterilise everything that the formula came into contact with: bottles, nipples, etc. Just a few extra steps. Plus the American Academy of Pediatricians is now recommending reverse osmosis filtered water ONLY for formula. Whatever, my point is it is not that complicated or demanding to store and heat a bottle of breastmilk.

So many women struggle to establish their nursing relationships in the first place. Then they have to go back to work and fight to keep their supply up while pumping in storage closets or bathrooms while their child is in daycare. All of this to just do what is normal and right for their children. And then some paranoid ass comes along and decides crap like this. Honestly I don't even have words for how stupid this is and how angry it makes me. What is WRONG with our cultural that feeding our children the way God designed it and intended it is so freaking hard! I get so sick of this underlying attitude that somehow feeding our children with the milk that is made FOR them and only them is creepy.

I could go on and on and on about this but at the risk of a burst blood vessel, I will stop here. Please, dear reader, even if you don't read the link at least take the time to consider what your own attitudes are towards breastfeeding.

Magical play and wild days

It's been rather snowy and cold here this week so we've been a little stir crazy. My sister in law sent me this site and it's full of fun ideas. It's helpful just to be reminded that childhood itself is magic. Sometimes I get frustrated being cooped up doing the same old things over and over and over (Mr Brown Can Moo, Can You?)! There are some simple silly ideas here, reminding me why unschooling and free play are so important to me.