What’s your thing?

I have to say, I think it’s pretty great the way little kids really get into certain things. Jacob has this friend from college whose daughter, who I think is maybe 3, is all about Spiderman. I’ve seen quite a few pictures where she is dressed as Spiderman. I’m guessing she’s also got Spiderman sheets, watches a cartoon about Spidey, probably looks for Spiderman in magazines and at the book store. Other kids get into certain sports or teams, certain kinds of music, or some other kind of genre. While I know we have no control over it, J and I have discussed what kinds of things we think would be great for T-bop to have as her childhood obsession. Here are the top 10 (Jacob contributed to this list but did not assign a rank):

10. Dinosaurs
9. Michael Jordan
8. Any form of dance that involves significant hip movement
7. Noah’s Ark
6. Djembe or any other type of drumming
5. Ceili dancing. Irish set dancing, not so much the girls with their hands glued to their sides and the fake hair.
4. Anything that involves a cape
3. The Farm, i.e. farm animals, tractors, etc.
2. Church. This may seem strange, but I was really into singing the Mass and giving Eucharist to my congregation of stuffed animals as a kid. “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you!”
1. Break dancing/ Hip hop

There are other things that, while not necessarily regarding them as caustic, we could do without. These include:

10. Sponge Bob/Thomas the Train/Insert Cartoon Character Name Here
9. Latin. Not that I think this is likely.
8. Any form of dance that fosters ultra competitiveness and body shaping
7. Soccer. I don’t really have beef with soccer except that it seems like everyone plays soccer which means it’s going to be a lot more competitive later on in life, i.e. a lot harder to enjoy as time goes on.
6. Clarinet
5. Rock climbing. It’s just a really dangerous sport. The better you get, the greater the chance you will die.
4. Penguins
3. American Girl dolls/books
2. Disney Princess. If she wants to play a Russian princess escaping from Moscow or if she really gets in to Esther, that would be fine. But let’s leave Belle and Ariel at the door. I’ve already got enough drama.
1. Barbie. Duh.

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taking your home ecology to the next level

I was chatting with my dad the other day about a sermon at his church on faith and care of creation. I think by now we’ve all heard something about aligning our proper worship with proper care of what God has created. This includes the planet we’ve been placed on to tend and keep, a planet that houses the activity of the kingdom of God taking place in the church. But what if you’re already recycling, using cloth grocery bags, and have switched your light bulbs? Let’s say that composting your own manure is taking it a bit too far but you want to go to the next level. Here are some ideas:

1) Stop buying plastic bags and tupperware. And start washing and reusing those you already have. It’s very simple and saves a ton of plastic. Lehman’s, one of our favorite stores, has a great device to help you dry out those bags. Hold on to all your yogurt containers and use those for restoring food.

2) Buy local in summer, coastal in winter. If you don’t have time to can for the whole winter, a second-best practice is to commit to buying local produce in the summer and produce available on your coast in the winter. That means eliminating food that comes from China and Chile. In the summer farmer’s markets and even the grocery store make eating within 100 miles of your home very easy. In the winter (except in Oregon and California, maybe Florida), this can get dicey. But eating from those more plentiful winter States will help to lower your carbon footprint a bit. Simply in Season can get you started thinking about recipes for each time of year.

3) Weigh your trash. This can be a huge wake up call on how much your family puts in the landfill. It can also be a great game to play, seeing how much you can get your numbers down over time through better recycling, composting, and reuse.

4) Commit to line drying once a week or once a month. It may be daunting to think about dragging your laundry outside every time you do the wash, but even once a month or once a week is a great help to reducing carbon emissions.

5) Visit a local farm and/or garden. A lot more kids than you could ever imagine think eggs are made in the back of a grocery store. Taking a trip to a farm or garden reminds kids of where food comes from and all the effort and reward that comes from growing things from and on the land.

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Zizioulas on personhood (and some sex)

I’m thinking a bit today of a recent series of theology posts floating out there that deal with the relationship between sexuality and humanness. I’m a bit behind the curve but here we go….

Background: It’s basically fisticuffs between Rowan Williams who argues that sexual differentiation is not a definitive feature of human beings and JPII/Barth who think it is. Crude, yes, but we’re trying to sum this up for the sake of getting on our own way. If you want to follow up on the rest of the conversation you can find a good starting place at Faith and Theology.

This is of interest to me because a by-product of being a person with a severe intellectual disability is a constant questioning of your humanity. Many people who experience disability in this way lack a sense of personhood and a lack of sexuality (marriage, family, children) is par for the course.

Hans Reinders Receiving the Gift of Friendship attempts to respond to the personhood of the disabled question. He suggests that John D. Zizioulas, a Greek Orthodox theologian, helps provide a way forward, claiming that true human being “entails that the freedom of the human creature is its most critical component.” But, unlike many other conceptions of personhood, this account is not constituted by intrinsic features. The only truly free act is the gift of being from the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “In other words, true freedom is grounded in the economy of grace that draws human beings into the communion of the triune God.”

Zizioulas develops this with an eye to Greek theater where the tragic hero disappears behind the mask of his theatrical role. In this role, the person does not participate in “being;” “it does not have ontological content.” Whereas things are real to the extent that they participate in ontological necessity, “personhood individualizes human beings under the aspect of their illusory freedom.” Taking this further into the Trinitarian realm, God the Father alone is free from ontological necessity. He begets the Son and bring forth the Spirit. Our creation is gift, one that no actualized or potential capacity can nullify.

What I found in Zizioulas (at least Reinders rendering thereof) is the begetting and begetted-ness of the Trinity. When I first read Rowan’s quote my response to “why is human sexuality so important” was “kids. duh.” Zizioulas reminds us of Jesus role as a begeter, an originator, not in the creepy Dan Brown way, but by the ordering of the Trinity, a relationality that is implicitly productive. And while I too am leery of a base mimicry of Jesus, I do think it’s fair to say that our God-imagedness leads to our ability to be productive. Sex/uality allows us to be givers of the gift freely given in that this act has the potential to result in children. While this act is implicated in sin, it isn’t negated.

I think there are broader implications for sex in practice implicit in this logic, namely that the restriction of the potential of gift through the use of contraception is morally questionable, although I don’t think this argument necessarily ends with Humanae Vitae (although I suppose this could be the extention). At least it can be concluded that to label the participation in our God-imaged-ness of begetting a “mistake,” “an accident,” or “a failure” would be obscene.

In the end, what I’m imagining may be tautological in that sex does end up mattering for our humanness. It could be that the Catholics are right in the end: we are human because we are born of human ancestry. And to be born someone had to have sex, someone had to say yes, someone had to give the gift (almost) freely given in the same way the Trinity begets.

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high intensity baby. got one?

The sleep experiment was a complete and utter failure. T-Bop asserted herself in a way beyond even her usual high intensity self. I was amazed to find out that she can fall asleep standing up, crying at the rail of her crib. She would cry cry cry and then nod off, head popping back up to cry cry cry. Repeat for 40 minutes. 40 MINUTES! Now that is a strong will my friends, especially since she was fast asleep in my arm when I put her in said crib. I decided that perhaps I was distracting her from sleeping so I left. More crying ensued. And then she pooped her pants.

I actually did this twice in one day with the same end result coming to 2 hours of trying-to-get-down-to-nap. She never actually fell asleep on her own. Mama was ruined, babe was ruined. Two diapers were pretty gross. Scout developed a very quick aversion to the room where we sleep and for the next 4 days would cry and squirm any time we got near there. Awesome.

All that to say, we won’t be doing that again. Truth is, while we have a good reason to try and make a crib a viable sleep option for T, we feel a lot of pressure from family and friends to get baby out of the bed. We don’t live in a supportive sleep sharing community anymore so it’s been tough to feel affirmed in our decision. I keep hearing that T NEEDS to be able to self-soothe. But after seeing her run around the room exhausted for half an hour when rocking her for about one minute seems to do the trick, I wonder if all babies are really able to put themselves to sleep (at least at 9 months). Here are some of the things that I see in Scout that make me question this. Separately these things are fairly normal. Together? eh.

- You could put a hat on this child a hundred times and it would be ripped off and thrown on the floor a hundred times.

- Never, ever cuddles. Has never fallen asleep on my shoulder or in my arms without serious intervention.

- Fights sleep in the places where babies usually like to sleep: her tree swing, the stroller, car rides, being rocked in a chair, being held by mom.

- Wants to do it on her own. Won’t sit in the stroller, instead she wants to crawl her way there. Won’t let a spoon near her mouth, she would like to use her own hands. Doesn’t like a sippy cup, if mama drinks from a big glass, so will she.

-Forget lullabies. We’ve figured out that T goes to sleep best with the Slumdog Millionaire songtrack playing at the highest volume.

- Curious, always wants to know what’s going on. Wants to see what you’re making, what you’re doing, what is on the other side of whatever.

- No comfort objects and no serious attention to any particular toy/s.

If she were a little older, I would guess we we’re looking at an ADD diagnosis. Now, someone out there may be reading this and thinking, “her crazy lady, my kid is just as wild and she still manages to get to sleep by herself.” Hit me up with a comment if you are this parent and give me some advice.

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embracing the quotidian

It’s always refreshing to find an answer to your own question, even if it takes a dramatic life change to get there. I’m thinking specifically about the paucity of women in the theology bloggy world, a quandary raised during the “further up” blog days. Pre-baby days, I should add. Still in school (part-time) days. Still working in higher ed days.

Recently I was bumped from someone’s blogroll, someone who is a much more serious blogger and a much more serious theology blogger than myself. I was not entirely surprised by this. After all, you can only write about your baby’s excremental habits and sleep saga for so long before the Deleuzians and Barthians lose interest. The truth is, this blog has changed in the last nine months. My life is in enveloped in the ordinary habits of caring, feeding, being, putting to sleep, changing, and bathing. And unlike my time in L’Arche, I don’t have “personal time away from the community” to make sense of my new world.

In some ways, this new life is a kind of death. I’m not someone who longed for a baby, who had my sights set on a vocational place in the home. I did/do believe children are a gift and I did/do believe in making our bodies open to that gift in radical ways. But staying with Scout has been harder than I expected. There is no time for myself, no time for the things that build up in my head. Books are interrupted by my wonderfully curious daughter. GRE flashcards are disheveled and gnawed upon. I missed the opportunity to meet John Swinton because Scout was horribly ill. Halden is trying to read all of Dogmatics; I’ll be happy to get through The Royal Priesthood by the end of the month.

One book that has helped me to meditate on the experience of this season is Hans Reinders newest addition to the diability theology canon, Receiving the Gift of Friendship. One of my favorite quotes comes from the mother of severly disabled boy who reflects on what it meant to be his caregiver:

For many, many years, I was confined to the house; alone and without the support of relative or friends. My husband was at work all day and I was with Oliver and the other five children. This enforced seclusion was difficult for me; I had a restless, seeking spirit. Through Oliver I was held still. I was forced to embrace the silence and solitude where I could ‘prepare the way of the Lord.’ Sorrow opened my heart, and I ‘died.’ I underwent this ‘death’ unaware that it was a trial by fire from which I would arise renewed – more powerfully, more consciously alive.

I don’t think this experience is specific to those who care for the disabled. Anyone who is charged with the monotony of the stuff that makes up the church can relate to Mrs de Vinck. I suppose that’s where all the women in theology have gone. Most of us are out caring for babies, making meals for the parishoner who just had a child, visiting the home of the elderly member to administer the sacraments. (At least that’s what Amy Laura Hall says.)

The bloggy list of Michael Westmoreland-White appears to confirm this suspicion. Most of the women on the list (many fellow Duke grads of note) are very much “out there” doing theology: sisters of the Roman rite, pastors in the city. Those who seem to be of the more traditional, heady variety were professional students. This is probably why I’m interested in returning to theology in this way. I’ll have the space I desire and someone will be paying me to explore it.

Interestingly, I don’t expect the marginality of theology that pertains to the gritty stuff of parenting to end with three more letters to my name. I was recently told that a favorite female theologian was called a “cream puff” by a fellow (male) faculty member at a committee meeting. Ironically, she was on her way to an interview for a tenured position at Yale. Regardless, my expectations of being “taken seriously” are low.

So I am left to hope that in the midst of caring for my infant daughter the Holy Spirit will transform me through this encounter with virtue, that in the end I’ll be a better theologian for the wear. But now I have to go. Someone is biting my ankles.

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sleep.

It’s been a wild two weeks around these parts. Old Scout came down with her first sickness last Monday and has been in steady infectious mode ever since. Snot is flowing, coughs are hacking, ears (both) are infected.

Probably not the best time to start a new sleep arrangement, yet I attempted.

My inspiration came on several fronts. First, we are taking the baby to Ireland in August (yes, we know this could be a huge mistake). While co-sleeping is great in our very controlled, double-mattress home environment, we can’t risk putting T in a harmful sleep situation. Second, T is over 20 lbs and 29 in tall, a little much for me to be carting around to put to sleep every night. And every nap. And sometimes in the middle of the night. Third, I was bolstered (egged on?) by our new pediatrician. “You know,” she says, “she knows exactly what she’s doing.” 

What is she doing, you may ask? Nothing horrible, just unable to go to sleep on her own. Ever. This is nothing new. Old T-Bop has always been high maintenance when it comes to sleep. It is for this reason that c0-sleeping has worked great. To this day, except when teething or growth spurting, babe sleeps through the night next to me. She takes two, 1-2 hour naps a day. But she won’t stay in bed alone for more than hour past her 7 pm bedtime. She always needs help getting into the second hour of her nap. No self soothing is happening.

Our other big problem is roaming. When she was swaddled or immobile Scout would simply lie there. We could pat her or I could nurse her back to sleep. Now that she’s on the move, her curiosity takes over. She can be so tired that she’s about to crack but the allure of the bookshelf, the paint on the wall, the blanket, the closet is too much. And she’s off.

I’m not entirely sure where we go from here. We’ve taken the first step and bought our first crib. We also did our first crying in the crib session (like I said, not so wise when ill). I was there the whole time, in sight but not interacting. Baby literally fell asleep standing at the rail, refusing to lie down. Eventually, 20 minutes later, she buckled and sat for another 20 minutes nodding off and then perking back up. She never laid down on her own. Eventually I took her out and rocked her to sleep and put her back in. She slept for 40 whimpering minutes and our day was basically in ruins.

Jake and I are going to talk over our plan but we both feel stuck. T isn’t a tiny baby anymore. But she is a baby. We believe that her cries are signs of distress that need a response – but not all the time. We know she needs to be safe when she sleeps, but how do we transition into new sleeping patterns without me losing my mind? It’s even harder to do this when everything is going so well! She sleeps 10 hours a night without waking! She takes long naps! She’s well rested! It stinks to mess with (relative success). But we know some things have to change.

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9 months

A day in my life…

I like to start off by unrolling some toilet paper

Sometimes I’m willing to eat pears in my oatmeal for breakfast

Next I like to play my drums

Then my grandpa comes home and reads me a story

I like to open and close my drawer after I empty it out

If it’s hot out, I go in my baby pool

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the role of experience in theology

One of the primary questions in the canon of disability studies is, who speaks for those with disabilities? The main opinion on this subject is that those of us who currently don’t experience disability, “the temporarily able bodied,” should not speak for those experiencing disability. Only those who are deaf can speak for the deaf; only those in wheelchairs can speak for those who cannot walk. Behind this is the idea that without the experience you cannot begin to give inhabit the personhood of those who do have that particular experience. Trying to do so actually results in the violence of presenting an “abelist persepective,” robbing the other of his or her voice.

I have respect for this perspective, one developed from liberation theology, but I also wonder how far we can take the assertion. In terms of disability theology, we are left with the question, who speaks for those with profound intellectual disability, men and women who have no developed sense of personhood? Does no one speak for them? But really this is just the tip of the ice berg. Under this logic, can anyone speak at all?

I became even more aware of this issue when I noted my own reticence to speak to someone close to me, someone whose moral formation is extremely important to me about in vitro fertilization. (I’m happy to talk about this at another point, but not in this post. Mother Jones has a great article about frozen embryos – to the tune of 1/2 million Amy Laura Hall also has a nice piece on this issue.) My hesitancy sprang from the fact that I have no idea what it’s like to deal with the pain of infertility. I got pregnant without even trying. I carried, without complications, to term and enjoy a healthy baby girl. Who am I to judge what lengths women will go to to have a child who is genetically their own?

But this is where experience becomes tricky. Now that I do have a baby, am I more equipped to say that this experience has only reinforced my sense that having a biological child is something I could have lived without? Am I more qualifid to say that it has confirmed my belief that you become a parent when you welcome a child into your life, regardless of by birth or adoption? Am I more authoritative in saying that we live in a culture that is cultish towards perfect babies?

I grew up in a church that devalued experience over Scripture (primarily) and tradition. It has taken me years to see how important experience is for good theological practice. Experience creates spaces for empathy, allow us to de-otherize, puts us in the path of application. At the same time, experience is slippery because it tricks us into thinking that we can speak from a position of authority simply because we’ve been there. In truth, experience are implicated in sin and can deeply cloud our judgement and can make us act in ways that are morally problematic.

I’m not sure how to resolve this tension. Can we properly empathize without having the experience at hand? Is experience essential to our being able to speak morally?

I guess the most suscinct example of this is when Catholic priests provide marital or premarital counseling. Is their authority and training enough for them to provide the kind of formation needed for a healthy marriage? Or is it crazy for a celibate man to try to give this kind of advice?

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the church saga

Before we moved back to Virginia, I posted my lament about leaving our beloved Portland Mennonite Church and my lack of enthusiasm for trying to find a new church home. It’s been just about as awful as I expected.

We started off going to my parents church, just until we had settled in. I grew up in that church but it hasn’t been my church home for a while. We tried out the Mennonite church about 30 minutes from us, the closest one in the MCUSA in our area. We figured that was pretty much the most likely place we would end up. Then weird things started happening. We met a few people who were very much a part of the military establishment, one person who was enlisted. Then someone at church made a comment about how she thought Mennonites needed to rethink their position on war. We tried to talk about this with the pastor, but he’s part time and lives almost 2 hours from the church. Something has come up every time we’ve tried to meet.

The other problem, something we haven’t had to deal with before, is that the church isn’t local. It’s membership covers over 100 miles and almost no one lives near us. With the baby not liking being in the car, this makes connecting with others difficult. Church becomes just something you do on Sunday. And while we know that anyone can go to whatever church they want, warmongering or not, we don’t feel like we can even enter into conversations about militarism and faith if we only interface during a Sunday service.

So we kept looking. The next Anabaptist option is the Manassas Church of the Brethren. It’s right down the road from us, and while we don’t feel that connected to the service, it’s close by and in the peace church tradition. We pull up on Sunday into the parking lot inbetween two cars: the first has a license plate holder reading “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the other “My son is in the United States Army.” Huh? While we have no idea where the church qua church is on the issue of pacifism, it’s pretty clear a few of it’s members are confused about the Anabaptist position on bearing the sword. Once again we’ll be attempting to get in touch with church leadership to sort out what’s going on.

There’s another church in the area that’s part of the Conservative Mennonite Conference. I don’t know much about them except that they are a group of 100 or so churches who formed a new conference after deciding not to join the Amish church. I also know that they don’t allow women to exercise leadership. Now, I don’t want to get into a debate about this. Suffices to say that I can’t be a part of a church that doesn’t recognize and utilize the teaching and preaching gifts of women in the congregation, especially as someone who seems to have these gifts.

The church saga as it is unfolding has been helpful in one respect. It’s helped us figure out what’s important to us. I’ve never church shopped or hopped before. And while I hate it, I now know that I need to be in a church where women can be in leadership (granted, I knew that before). I am beginning to see more and more the gift of having a church that is local and accessible, an even more important factor as I am now part of the stay at home mom set. I think it’s important that we’re in a church where there are a lot of opportunities for interaction and conversation, especially in a church where people are confused about war. We’re not sure how all this will pan out. Regardless, I think we’re both realizing that we may not love our church, for me for the first time in my life. It’s a sad reality but one that I’m hoping to come to terms with, even as we seek to be challenged and to challenge others.

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so you think you’re an original….

Mothers Day is also the day that the Social Security Administration releases the new list of most popular baby names for the previous annum. Jacob and Emma are the most popular names in the United States. I always enjoy typing in the names of friends’ babies, especially when two friends give their baby the same name. Here are a few, the first number being it’s place in the 2007, the second its rank in 2008.

Liam: 89 to 75

Chloe: 16 to 10

Ella: 21 to 19

Aiden: 27 to 16

Magdalena: 864 to 903 (interesting!)

Tennyson: “is not in the top 1000 names for the last 9 years”

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