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?

One of the things I’ve been struggling with in class this semester as we’ve explored liberation Christologies is the relationship between corporate justice and individual culpability. I was writing my paper to answer the question (ha!) “Who is Jesus in light of race relations in America?” The question of systemic and historic oppression of African-Americans informs part of my thinking on this issue. My commitment to the reconciling Christ who calls us all, oppressor and oppressed alike to account for the ways we have failed in our love for God and neighbor informs another part.

Part of my exploration involved Jeremiah Wright who comes from the same stock as James Cone, the father of black liberation theology. I wanted to spend some time thinking about how Cone’s message sounds to people today. As we’ve heard in the past few weeks, people don’t really like what Wright has to say.

One side of me, the part that has rebuilt houses in all-black sections of Katrina, worked with students in segregated schools in Alabama, left grad school a month before a cross burning and who has black friends who are followed around grocery stores, can hear exactly where the militancy of Wright (and early Cone) are coming from. While I do think some of his comment, e.g. the US created AIDS to wipe out minorities, is unjustified and inflammatory, I mostly think Wright is prophetic much in the style of Amos and Hosea. These brothers also got in trouble for prophesying against their country.

I also seem to be in the minority with my discontent around Barack Obama’s reaction to Wright, especially his church sermons. It is this rhetoric that Obama spoke against in his race speech. Obama describes Wright’s “incendiary language” as widening the racial divide in our country, views which “denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation.” Wright is said to have a “profoundly distorted view of this country.” While race is an issue that cannot be ignored and continues to be a central issue for Americans, the United State’s progression in affirming constitutional freedoms is a sign that racism is not endemic but rather something we can overcome, moving “beyond some of our old racial wounds.” I’m not sure O is being honest about how far we have not come.

The people we read this semester who most adequately speak to who Jesus is in this mess are Shawn Copeland and Rowan Williams.  For Copeland there is less clarity regarding centralized community identity than for Wright or Cone. In the opening paragraphs of the essay we read she talks about experiencing her own privilege as a black, educated woman in light of a homeless black woman picking through garbage outside her window. Copeland presents a well-spring of competing identities: female, black, financially well-off, educated, academic, housed. Instead of naming self-referencing communities of color, Copeland asks, “What sort of Christological reflection is needed in our situation? What can it mean to tell the woman who searches my garbage that God in Jesus is also alienated, a stranger, a despised ‘other’?”

Copeland goes on to speak about the “way of Jesus,” the complication women bring to the Gospel, the lived experience of being always at “the disposal of the cross.” The way of Jesus is to love “concretely” the outcast as Jesus did. Yet she also speaks from the double oppression of black and female. How this is lived out is not entirely in self-determination or communal identity as Other but in the cross of Jesus where humiliation and brutalization are made known in our discipleship to the crucified one. The resurrection of Jesus is our grafted-ness into the initiated kingdom in the present realities of oppression which confront us. Christology is very much something which takes hold of us, something to which we are to avail ourselves.

To me this sounds so much like Williams in Resurrection. I’ve written about this before if you want a refresher on the thesis of the book. The pure victim provided by Christ puts our histories into perspective because we have each condemned the lamb of God. At the same time we encounter a Jesus who resurrects our past.  One contemporary example of how this plays out is the plausibility of “black racism.” Denying black racism “carries overtones of the idea that the victimized group is intrinsically incapable of the kind of violence from which it is suffering” (11). Just as domestic violence against women exists in the white community so to does it exist in black and Latino communities. Just as this violence stands outside the iteration of Jesus’ life for white people, so to it stands outside the discipling of blacks and Latinos. Racism is evil “not because its victims are good, but because its victims are human” (11).

In a similar way, Copeland speaks of the God of the oppressed who calls us to the banquet table in full recognition of the suffering Other and the suffering Self. It is this recognition that puts us at the disposal of the reign of God, not simply because our identity as members of an oppressed community. Jesus resurrection is the point at which this transformation begins.

Time for the second trimester edition of “TTDTYAP” subtitled “Because you certainly would never have children if you knew.”

We’re rolling into week 24ish and discovering all sorts of new things.

1. Urinating blood may mean absolutely nothing. Of course it could mean bladder cancer or kidney stones. But if you’re me, it means that the baby is CRUSHING YOUR KIDNEYS. Yes, you heard that right. The pressure is so intense that kidneys can’t handle it. On the ultrasound emergency ultrasound at midnight my poor ks looked like little black pancakes. The good news is that, as your uterus moves up, the pressure will release off your lower organs. Then it starts to put pressure on your lungs so you can’t breathe. Awesome.

2. Babies are parasitic. Two things I learned, one from my nurse M-i-L and one from Kolmes, a biologist who stopped me in the hall yesterday to give me the scoop on a paper he wrote about prenatal environmental toxicology. Nurse Cindy told me that babies get the first round of food to hit your stomach. You get whatever is left over. I encourage you to use this to your advantage. “This cookie is for the babe. THIS cookie is for me.” Kolmes told me that if you don’t get enough calcium your vampire baby will simply suck it out of your bones. It was much more technical than that, but you get the drift.

3. Don’t touch anything that’s not made of sand, metal or wood. So Kolmes finds out I’m pregnant and the following conversation ensues:

“Do you use Teflon?”

“No, stainless steel.”

“Good. Have you thrown away your Nalgenes? Did you see the new BCP report?”

“Yes, I’ve been drinking out of a Mason jar. Plastic has always freaked me out.”

“Good. Watch out for baby bottles and formula lining too. Are you eating organic? Pesticides cause birth defects.”

“Yes, have for a long time.”

His advice was to avoid anything that didn’t directly fall from the creative hand of God. This may be impossible to do (have you seen how much organic mattresses cost!?) but we’re doing our best to avoid environmental factors that contribute to birth defect. You can read Kolmes’ full text in some upcoming edition of the Journal of Catholic Social Teaching (it’s currently under review). Or see the equally unnerving Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber.

4. Potentially the baby will kick you in the bladder. All the time.

5. Another fun avoidance of everyday things entry: it’s recommended you stand no less than 4 feet from a microwave that is microwaving.

6. As Lisa pointed out, ultrasound dates get less accurate as time goes on. But, with your first child, it’s better to plan on being pregnant a week longer than you expect. I’ve read that most first babies born to white women come at 41 weeks and 1 day. If you care about having an intervention-less childbirth, make sure you talk about this reality with your OB or midwife upfront. They recently tried to induce my friend Andi before she even hit 40 weeks. Sheesh. Our plan is to simply forget our Estimated Due Date (EDD). This is surprisingly easy to do. We just tell people, “sometime in August.”

I could hardly believe my luck that my gender indication thirst has been quenched by, of all sources, the NYtimes.

Check out this blog from health writer Parker-Pope on the relationship of heavy eaters and the birth of boys. Now I just have to wonder, did I skip breakfast on December 1?

Boy or Girl? The Answer May Depend on Mom’s Eating Habits

How much a mother eats at the time of conception may influence whether she gives birth to a boy or a girl, a new report shows.

The sex of a child may depend on a mother’s eating habits. (Paul Hilton for The New York Times)

The report, from researchers at Oxford and the University of Exeter in England, is said to be the first evidence that a child’s sex is associated with a mother’s diet. Although sex is genetically determined by whether sperm from the father supplies an X or Y chromosome, it appears that a mother’s body can favor the successful development of a male or female embryo.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, shows a link between higher energy intake around the time of conception and the birth of sons. The difference is not huge, but it may be enough to help explain the falling birthrate of boys in industrialized countries, including the United States and Britain.

The reason food intake may influence the development of one sex of infant rather than another isn’t fully understood. However, in vitro fertilization studies show that high levels of glucose encourage the growth of male embryos while inhibiting female embryos.

It may be that male embryos are less viable in women who regularly limit food intake, such as skipping breakfast, which is known to depress glucose levels. A low glucose level may be interpreted by the body as indicating poor environmental conditions and low food availability, the researchers said.

The data is based on a study of 740 first-time pregnant mothers in Britain who didn’t know the sex of their fetus. They provided records of their eating habits before and during the early stages of pregnancy, and researchers analyzed the data based on estimated calorie intake at the time of conception. Among women who ate the most, 56 percent had sons, compared with 45 percent among women who ate the least. As well as consuming more calories, women who had sons were more likely to have eaten a higher quantity and wider range of nutrients, including potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12. There was also a strong correlation between women eating breakfast cereals and producing sons.

The data are limited by the fact that they are based on self-reported food intake, which can be unreliable. However, the consistency of the trend offers an explanation for the small but consistent decline in the proportion of boys born in industrialized countries over the last 40 years, where even though women in general appear to be consuming more, eating habits have changed.

In the United States, for instance, the proportion of adults eating breakfast fell from 86 percent to 75 percent between 1965 and 1991. And although women may be eating more overall, a nutrient-poor diet could be less favorable to a male embryo. Glucose levels may also fluctuate in women who are dieting and trying to lose weight prior to pregnancy. In animals, more sons are produced when a mother ranks high in the group or has plentiful food resources.

One of my favorite new pregnancy things is predicting the baby’s gender through old wives tales. Here are the few that would point to Baby Flo-Bix being an XX:

• You had morning sickness early in pregnancy
• Your baby’s heart rate is at least 140 beats per minute
• You are craving sweets
• You are craving fruit
• You are moodier than usual during pregnancy
• Your face breaks out more than usual
• You refuse to eat the heel of a loaf of bread
• Your pillow faces south when you sleep
• Your urine is a dull yellow color
• You hang your wedding ring over your belly and it moves from side to side
• You add your age at the time of conception and the number for the month you conceived and the sum is an odd number

Hmm…. Interesting. Another predictor was my acupuncturist who told me that in Chinese medicine you can tell the sex based on which pulse (left or right wrist) is stronger. Both my acupuncturists told me independently that they thought the Flo-Bix was a girl.

We’re still not dying to find out but we do think it is is funny to see all this speculation. My favorite is when people are SURE it’s one gender or another. Like Jacob’s family and my co-worker Laura KNOW this baby is a boy. Intuition, I guess. As for me, I don’t have a hunch, an inkling, a guided dream, a feeling. I got nothing.

But that’s fine by me. I know some people like to know so that they can name the baby and it makes them feel closer. I have a different feeling about this. While we’re super excited for our new friend, we’re also cherishing the moments we have left for just the two of us. I have said countless times lying in the bed after the snooze has been hit, “Enjoy this moment, because we have very few of these left.” I really love time with my husband and in some ways I will mourn our life together. Actually, I probably won’t have time to mourn. And I’ll be too tired to remember anything before Aug 21. But right now I’m just enjoying every second we’ve got. There will be time for baby soon enough.

In case you hadn’t run across this blog, I wanted to point you to Stuff White People Like. The list includes “study abroad,” “juno,” “gentrification,” “irony” and “gifted children.” Some of the entries are more thoughtful than others but almost call attention to what sociologists call the construction of whiteness. Coming off our gender conversation, I think this is a great example of how formation of other aspects of self are taken for granted.

Reading the comments (there are usually hundreds per entry) it’s interesting to note how offended people are by the very idea of the blog. Lots of people call it racist and ask if it would be fair to drudge up other racial stereotypes (”Jews love money!” “Black people love rap!”). I’m always intrigued by this kind of equality rhetoric. I don’t have a lot of room for equality per say in my social construction. Power is always an object that prohibits making comparisons between Jews Love Money and Stuff White People Like. This power differential has historically been used as a tool of oppression by white people.

Naming the construction of whiteness (see Thandeka for a brilliant exposition on the topic) is actually a deconstruction/unmasking of the power to use our socially construed selves to invalidate otherness. White people like to think we’re the only ones who aren’t formed as such.

So, White People, if you’re looking to pull off the wool from your eyes, take a look at SWPL. We’ve been found out.