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This past week I started to read the new book of essays edited by Brian Brock and John Swinton called Theology, Disability and the New Genetics. It’s a great volume with a wide variety of perspectives on the theology of disability. The authors are a man with a disability, a theologian whose son has Down Syndrome, a pastoral counselor, a special counsel to the Dutch embassy and several doctors. And Amy Laura Hall. Of course.
One of the most interesting chapters was called Aren’t We all Eugenicists Anyway? written by Mary Mahowald who is emerita professor of obstetrics at U of Chi. Her essay is about the different ways we attempt to control and channel our children and whether every instance of eugenics is bad. We all know bad eugenics – when Nazi’s attempted to create a perfect race by eradicating those they considered “less desirable,” the Jews. But eugenics, which simply means “good generation” happens all the time in much more socially accepted ways. The abortion of the disabled is one very obvious way eugenics is exhibited in our country. And with the rate of babies aborted with Down Syndrome at 90%, I would say very acceptable.
But what about prenatal vitamins, avoidance of certain foods and alcohol? These things are done so that we will have a “healthy child” instead of a “child with a disability” such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, mercury poisoning or spina bifida. We make judgments about the kind of children we want by avoiding these outcomes. Then there are the ways we aim for positive outcomes. Baby Einstein “in the womb” educational tapes are all over the place. You can even attempt early language skills in utero. My eugenics happens with fish oil. I started taking 4 g of fish oil a day after reading a study about the developmental benefits on baby brains discovered by Australian scientists. Hand-eye coordination improved, instances of ADD/ADHD were lower and early vocabulary increased.
I take fish oil (and plan to breastfeed for at least a year) because I think it will help our baby be smart and able to hit a T-ball with above-average accuracy. I am making my desire for this particular type of child known through my supplements. At the same time I would not be disappointed with a child who did have ADD or spina bifida. I also think there is something disturbing about trying to teach your child French cognates in the womb.
I am somewhat of an ethical contradiction on this matter and I’m hoping this book will help me to sort out some of the complications around these choices and help us to answer the question why do we choose as we do?
What does it mean to want a child without a particular struggle? God has put many people in our lives with Down Syndrome, FAS and CP that have wonderful, flourishing lives. We don’t doubt that while there would be difficulties for us in having a child with a disability (as if there were not with all children) that there would also be great joy and wonder. But do our actions speak something else? Are we betraying our unwillingness (subconscious perhaps) to welcome a child with a disability? Or is there something “irresponsible” about not doing your best to promote fetal health and to give your child the best opportunities? Is not taking these steps inviting unnecessary suffering on a child? And what constitutes “health” and “suffering,” necessary or otherwise?
Ultimately I wonder, how can we love and accept our disabled brothers and sisters without reservation while at the same time wishing they were not as they are by avoiding bringing others like them into the world?
I don’t have any firm answers to any of these questions. Maybe the answer is that you do your best (within reason) to prepare your child to be developmentally competent in the world. At the same time, you prepare yourself to welcome whatever gift the Lord presents.
“Within reason?” “Developmentally competent?” Doesn’t this sound wrong and strange to anyone else? If you have insight, do send it my way. Sometime soon I’ll share about the chapter by Hans Reinder which I just started. He will probably have something helpful to say. And I have a theology crush on him.
Everyone always asks me if I think The Babe is a boy or a girl. My response: “statistically the chances are higher it’s a girl.” The person then says, “No. Do you FEEL like it’s a boy or a girl?”
I’m not sure what this means. My ovulation timeframe, acupuncturist and conception eating habits would learn towards a girl but who the heck knows. I just don’t have a strong sense of intuition about things of this sort. Although ask me what you should do with your life and it’s a totally different story. Just ask my friends who now work at Uganda Christian University.
I feel a bit like a stick in the mud that I can’t play along with sexing the baby game. It’s even worse that I’m truly uninterested. The science of anything related to The Babe (organogensis, embryology, surgery in utero, etc) I find fascinating. The actual baby sex, not so much.
So it was to my delight when my sister in law Missy had a vivid dream about baby. In this dream I had a dark-haired girl and we named her Celilo (suh-li-lo), a name we have/are seriously considering). She said it was so vivid that she woke up in a sweat thinking she’d missed the big event.
I thought this was great! If you have any intuition about baby you would lend us, send it our way.
I am prefacing this post with a confession. I am come from a family of Narnia purists. I think my father latched on to these stories in college because imagination and wonder turned out to be the perfect antidote to his fundamentalist upbringing. Fundamentalism and its sister Piety tend to strip the imagination, forcing you into line view rules and statutes. Narnia taught us that there are rules and statutes but that these honor the King and the King is a Lion who roars over the whole creation that is His.
I knew the Disney version of Narnia would be disappointing. This isn’t because I think most books shouldn’t be made into films. It certainly has proved entertaining and I have no qualms getting into other people’s imagination of Narnia. My own imagined world is so deeply fixed after 28 years that even the flash and dance of Disney isn’t enough to uproot it (note: my children will never see these movies for this very reason).
What I found disappointing in the first movie was the Candyland sweetness of Narnia. It was a little too surupy for me. Caspian does a lot to bring back the darkness of Lewis’ medieval story-shaped fantasy but that’s about where my praise ends.
One of the enduring themes of the Christian life and of the Chronicles is our inability to see God yet we are asked to trust and follow, against logic, against reason. In Caspian it seemed like the person who wasn’t trusted was faithful Lucy. It felt a bit like the lesson was “believe your little sister” and less “believe in Aslan.”
Also, there were so many Hollywood additions and it felt like too much liberty was taken with the story. For instance, the entire “storming the castle” scene – not in the book. And don’t get me started on Susan the Smoocher. Ay yi yi.
The problem for Americans and their lapdog movie creators is that Narnia is not Hogwarts. The Chronicles don’t jump from battle to battle, from mischief to mischief. There’s no snogging Cho at the dance because it plays into our romantic instincts. Lewis spends pages and pages of the relatively short Caspian giving you descriptions of ruins, islands, centaurs and castles. There is one battle scene lasting one chapter which is punctuated by Lucy’s meeting with the Great Lion in a quiet glade. And good English girls would never ever act like Susan did. Lewis was a gentleman’s gentleman (for better or worse). The irony is that Prince Caspian is short enough that every detail of Lewis’ story could have been preserved.
The problem for Hollywood is that the purpose of the Chronicles is simply that we would love Aslan better by the end of the story. The plot of the books is to tell that story well. We are being formed to fear the treason of the dwarves, to long for the virtue of Reepicheep, to yearn for the faith of Lucy, to denounce the pride of Miraz. The problem for us is that Disney finds all of this utterly boring. It’s not something you can make a ride out of for your amusement parks, sell on T-shirts or put on a lunchbox.
But this also means that the real Narnia remains untouched for you (and is available in just over 500 pages).
We had a great time at Portland Mennonite Church retreat this weekend. Nine of us became members, five of whom are in our church small group. Only two had a Mennonite background (or were “ethnic Mennonites” as I like to say).
I love that Mennonites are completely fine nurturing Anabaptist stereotypes. We even rebaptized a former Catholic this weekend which I thought was hilarious. There were lots of opportunities for Mennonite jokes. Here was my favorite:
Q: What’s the difference between kissing a Mennonite and kissing a Pentecostal?
A: Tongues.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!! I will probably tell that joke a hundred more times before I die.
One of my favorite activities was a weekend long contest to see what Ben and Jerry’s would name a flavor of ice cream to honor the 483rd Anniversary of Anabaptism (when George Blaurock was baptized upon confession of faith by Conrad Grebel). Silas, a Duke grad (!) and philosophy prof came up with something brilliant.
“The Schleitheim Confection” – A consensus of seven flavors for the seven articles of the confession:
1) Baptism – double dunked chocolate peanuts
2) Communion – grape wafer crumble
3) Separation for the world – Mars bar crumble
4) Reputable pastor – teddy grahams
5) Do not take the oath – red, white and blue candy corn
6) Do not take up the sword – Dove bar crumble
7) The Ban – a separate bag of rainbow sprinkles which can be added to the ice cream if you feel they are ready to be restored to fellowship.
I laughed so hard I almost cried.
So the question for you, fearless blog readers: if your ecclesial tradition were to have a representative ice cream flavor, what would it be?
(Thanks to Tim Bobosky for his amazing picture of our church witnessing baptism in the ocean. Tim’s looking for a job using his photography and journalism skills. Let me know if you have any leads.)
We knew the loan industry was experiencing some weirdness when we had our car loan rejected by three banks. At first, I was scared out of my mind. Had my credit been hacked? Was my identity now the possession of a computer saavy 13 years old in the United Arab Emirates? A quick check and it turns out that I am one of the few Americans who can claim a near faultless credit score. So what was up?
I know now that the housing market was imploding and the sub-prime lending industry had basically bottomed out. I have to say, keeping up with financial news like this is not my favorite part of social justice work. I am basically a theoretical socialist who benefits from the capitalist system. I am the worst of all things. Ignoring economic realities is a major part of keeping people like me naive and happy.
This is why I was so pleased to find out that this week’s This American Life explains in detail the sub-prime mortgage crisis. They start at the top with the international money pool and take you all the way down to the homeowners who lost everything. It is a truly remarkable and eye-opening hour. It’s also suprisingly entertaining.
I always have a difficult time convincing my students that being in the know about economic and political realities like these is the most important aspect of understanding systemic injustices of racism and poverty. There is nothing less sexy than the Farm Bill and getting my students to pay attention to this massively important piece of legislation was difficult. Getting them to think about the impacts of mortgage economy on the world’s poorest – yeah right.
But it is important and I’m going to keep pushing. This is because I believe in original sin and that there is no place to tap into the root of evil in our world than to observe the ethics behind our world-wide lending scheme. The TAL program is particularly helpful in pointing the finger at greed, good old fashioned greed.
At church this Sunday we officially become Mennonites. Wish us the best.
I have to admit something: I am pretty scared of health professionals in hospital childbirthing practices. I realize this every time we go to a prenatal appointment. I always seem to offend our midwife (or so I imagine) by making snarky comments about Kaiser, our evil health care provider or bringing up things like how I am convinced that the doctors are going to get me and make me have a c-section.
Maybe this fear is unjustified. But there are at least three of you who are reading this who had babies this year and were induced and/or brought in for emergency c-section. There are three more of you who were scared into considering one of these procedures, told that “everyone takes painkillers” or that “if this baby doesn’t come out right now we’re going to operate.”
I know, I know. In the end you just want a healthy baby. But I also don’t want to be detached from my labor or to see my baby from one side of a curtain as she’s whisked away to post-op. And I don’t think those things need to be mutually exclusive. Safety and whole birth should be able to happen together somewhere.
Unfortunately that somewhere may be my living room, my bed, a birthing center or a bathtub and The Kaiser God has spaken no to that possibility. The tough part is the letting go without feeling like you’re giving in. It’s a tough balance and one I’m not sure how to walk gracefully.
I’m trying to do everything I can to make sure that this baby comes out like God intended – with as little medical intervention as possible. We’re trying our best to aid that process. I’ll be sitting on an exercise ball for the last two months to line up the baby. We have our acupuncturist on call to help with induction. I’m ready to walk up and down Mt Tabor until I fall over. I’m also trying to read a lot of positive birth stories, go to prenatal yoga class regularly, strengthen my pelvic floor muscles and above all remember that this is what my body was created to do. But still, I have no idea what will happen.
In light of my frequently bad prenatal experiences I was ever so grateful to find that Erica (birth #2 impending) has written something about her last week of waiting. I hope I will come to the same calm resolution sometime in the next three months….
I’ve started to wonder: what exactly is Baby Flo-Bix going to look like? The problem for our imaginations is that Jacob and I were completely different looking babies. Here’s J:
Jacob came out of the womb wearing lederhosen and grasping a sausage in each hand. He’s a round Arian child. He’s smiling so big in this picture because in the background someone is playing the Austrian national anthem. And look at that forehead.
Then there’s me:
I look like I’ve been kidnapped from the Iroquois.
What if I have a baby that looks like a tiny kraut-eater? What if Jacob has a kid with black hair who looks like a brown berry? What on earth is my body coming up with out of this disparate gene pool?
