Category Archives: Feminism

Lent Day 14: Stained Glass Jesus

Posted on 6 March 2012 | 4 comments

Come to me all who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

I went to my seminary, Anderson University School of Theology, for chapel today, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that one of my good friends, Pastor Joy May Sherman, was preaching (speaking, whatever). Her message was about denial and how we don’t understand denial in the same ways that Jesus meant denial. Essentially her message was about the fact that we consider giving something up for Lent an expression of denial, but that Jesus wants us to give ourselves up, constantly, all day every day.

Her words took me back to the time when I was in seminary and I fasted, eating and drinking only fruit juice and water for the whole six-ish weeks from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Those weeks were long and grueling, and I felt as if I had really practiced the discipline of denial. I had given up ________, but Jesus asks for us to give up ourselves, our own “selfish ambitions.” Do I do that? I try, but do I really want, as Joy put it in her sermon, a discipleship in which still allows me to hold on to my own goals? I am not sure. I think I try to put aside those things which are of myself, while focusing on God’s will for my life, while trying to take up the life God has for me, while attempting to carry my cross. But if I look deep inside myself, I think I still sling to a lot of things that are of my own ambitions and not necessarily of God. Something to work on, I guess. One more thing.

Me, Kimberly Majeski, Joy Sherman

I hadn’t anticipated all the feelings that being back in the seminary building, and more specifically the chapel, would bring out of me. I had forgotten how being with women who love God so deeply can feel. I was a bit nervous, I’ll confess, because I have been so vocal about my sexuality as of late. I thought I might go, see my friends, and it would be awkward. Usually, this is more my own paranoia than anything else. Nonetheless, I felt a great sense of relief and welcome when Kimberly and Joy embraced me as they had in those years past, when I was back there hiding (not so effectively) behind the vestments in the church closet.

I don’t know how I have functioned for the past few years, being so angry at God, being so angry for so many things. I won’t say that anything supernatural like a tsunami of love and grace splashed over me when I entered Miller Chapel, but a small sprinkling of where I was in my relationship with God when I was in seminary came back to me. I was, in those 60 minutes, so thankful for the healing that God provides. So thankful. I felt at peace.

Seminary was one of the happiest, but most complicated periods of my spiritual development. I was deeply in love with God. Deeply enamored with Jesus. And deeply guided by the Holy Spirit. I was deeply hidden in the closet, but I knew who I was in Christ. I could speak tangibly of my call. I was so caught up in all of the world of seminary, that I can’t remember much of the day to day experiences of those three years. I went to school and chapel (as we all did), and then I went to work at Pizza King. I was exhausted, but I was exhilarated. It was a beautiful three years.

On my way home, I listened to Jennifer Knapp, my go-to girl for moments when I have experienced God in a new or meaningful way. The first song that came on in the shuffle was “Refine Me.” Knapp writes: “I come into this place, burning to receive your peace. I come with my own chains for wars I fought for my own selfish gains. You’re my God and my father. I’ve accepted your son, but my soul feels so empty now. What have I become? Lord, come with your fire, burn my desires, refine me. Lord, my will has deceived me, please come and free me, refine me.” What a beautiful way to end a blessed day.

Jennifer Knapp in Lafayette Square, Indianapolis

Me With No Hair and a Tan Watching Jennifer Knapp

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Posted in Christianity, Feminism, GLBT, Grace, Hair, Lent, Queer, Relationships, Religion, Spirituality

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New ‘Do, Decent Breakfast, and Some Thoughts About Sexuality Which Really Have Nothing to Do With Lent

Posted on 5 March 2012 | 2 comments

I want so badly to let my hair grow out, so I can give myself dreadlocks. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. When my hair reaches a certain length, I find myself just wanting to rip it out by the roots or to shave my head down soft like a baby’s bottom and slick, too. Today was the day when I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got out the clippers and gave myself a wide Mohawk with a DA in the back. It’s weird and different from my usual self-inflicted trim. Before I went crazy about my hair, I made myself a delicious Spring Break breakfast, which I intend to do every day before I go to school to work on grading.

Two Soft-Fried Eggs, Bacon, Strawberries, and Chai Tea with Raw Honey

Hair From Two Ways

And a Cat Who Judges Me

Note: Now for a bit more of a serious subject. This is not complete, but is just a seed for a longer, more well-developed essay.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about spirituality and sexuality, as I usually do. These two areas are important to me and intrinsically part and parcel of one another for me. In my life, they cannot be separated, nor can the soul and the body. I’m not going to get all theoretical in this post, but I do want to mention a couple of things I’ve been thinking about. I’ve heard many GLBT folks say that they knew who they were from a very young, but they just couldn’t tell anyone, they didn’t have words for it, or they were shamed into not talking about it. I’m not sure I fall into any of these categories, at least not until much later in my adolescence.

I’m not saying I couldn’t tell something wasn’t the same in me as it was in everyone else. I knew that pretty much from the get-go. But then again, I didn’t know it, too. I knew how I felt, but I didn’t know it was gay. I knew who I loved, but I didn’t have a framework for recognizing same-sex desire then, I don’t think. Looking back, I can name it for what it is. I can see how much in love I was with some of my friends. I can name my fifth and sixth grade English teacher as one of my first teacher-crushes. (Since then I’ve fallen in and out of love with too many teachers/professors to think about! Ha!) I can call my love, my desire what it is. Now. Could I then? I don’t think so, but I could feel it.

My Brother and I Digging in the Front Yard of Our New House

When I was in grade school, I knew I loved some of my friends. I knew I loved them much more or much differently than they loved me. I would share my toys, and I am pretty selfish. I would color pictures for them. I would take cookies for lunch with the sole intention of sharing them. I got jealous when they would spend time with other friends. I was heartbroken when I wasn’t invited to their slumber parties. I was devastated when one particular friend got a boyfriend and stopped playing with me on recess. I was crushed when I got in trouble for kissing another friend in kindergarten Sunday School. (Of course, the very next year, I got in trouble for kissing a boy at school. Maybe my problem wasn’t lesbianism, it was showing the kissing kind of affection!) Every adult message was telling me that the way I felt about my girl friends was wrong. Did I understand then? No. I knew my parents encouraged me to choose my own clothes, toys, books, and activities when I was at home, and I didn’t quite understand why I had to wear dresses to school sometimes when I preferred my jeans and t-shirts and tromping around in the woods. I suppose it was to make me seem more normal in the grand scheme of things, but then what’s up with this school picture? I was a butch little kid.

Somewhere Around Third or Fourth Grade

By the time I got to middle school, I was determined to be “normal,” even though I had a crew cut and relied on my FARTS University t-shirt, which I wore under most everything, to get me through the days. I think maybe why I like teaching middle school so much is because I felt so lost through most of it. I had one particular friend who was, for all intents and purposes, my “girlfriend.” I loved her, and I would keep on loving her through high school when we both had boyfriends, even becoming quite jealous when she got married and moved halfway around the world.

I had to wear this shirt under my other shirts, because it was "inappropriate."

I “went with” one boy all through middle school and into my freshman year. He was incredibly abusive and manipulative, leaving huge physical and emotional scars on my body. But I stayed with him because I had the intrinsic desire to be like what I thought everyone else was like, to be like what I thought I should. Everyone else had opposite sex significant others. Everyone else was making out in their family friends’ basement. Right, right? Eventually, during one of these “let’s play hide-n-seek so we can go lock our naked selves in your basement bedroom and make out” make out session, he forced me into having sex with him when I was just 13-years old, and I became one of many girls he date raped, or just straight up raped. The killing part of this was that he was two-years younger than I was. So much for being normal.

Looking back, I know now that my classmates weren’t all dating people of the opposite sex. I know that many of them were doing the same thing I was, putting on airs to make it through Blackford County Schools. Many of them didn’t date at all! There wasn’t room for people like us in that place at that time, so we played the game. It wasn’t that there wasn’t language for who we are. There was: fags, faggots, sissies, butches, dykes, unnatural, sinners, queers, homos, queerbates, gaywads, ACDC, swing both ways, and all sorts of other language that served to normalize us. Apparently, The Crying Game and Boy George made no impact on the small minds of Blackford residents. It wasn’t that we couldn’t talk about it, but we certainly couldn’t fathom our sexualities as positive, healthy expressions of love. And, of course, why would anyone bring on that ridicule by naming who they are?

I won’t say that growing up was particularly difficult for me, like I am sure it was with many of my friends and like it is for many kids now. I felt a sense of security in myself and my identity as a jock, artist, and nerd. I just threw myself into one of my acceptable identities, and I always have been confident in who I am. Perhaps, too, some of the security I felt in playing a part in the “Blackford County Play” was because I couldn’t feel free to say who I was, and by not naming it, I could pretend that wasn’t who I was. Besides I had a really for real romantic relationship with a boy, a young man, a beautiful soul of a man. He was a really for real high school sweetheart, who is a subject for a way different essay than this one. So I had a thick, thick closet door to keep me safe. In the same way the closet door kept me safe, it also stifled me until I finally came out. Slowly. Inch by inch.

Softball. I played catcher, and if you don't laugh at that, it's because you don't get it.

And as I came out, I quickly learned that the most spiritual people in my life would have the strongest opinion about who I was becoming I was revealing to them. And, it even more quickly became evident that who I was revealing did not jive with who they thought I was, or should be. Never in my life have I had more Scripture thrust at me like a serrated and rusty knife than from the years of 21 to 23. I look back, and I think that Jesus must have been embarrassed. I know I was ashamed for the people who were beating me with a book I had previously loved, pouring so many teenaged years into studying it and getting to know my God. The God who had been my God through all of it and who still remains my first love.

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Posted in Christianity, Cooking, Family, Feminism, Food, GLBT, Goals, Grace, Hair, Lent, Mental Health, Politics, Queer, Relationships, Religion, School, Spirituality, Teaching, Writing

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Running a Trail-Half. Grading. Grant. Periods, period.

Posted on 24 September 2011 | 1 comment

I am totally stoked—though my other half just said her usual, “Okay”—to be running my first trail half-marathon next Sunday, October 2. As usual, I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, but since I’m not vain nor afraid of coming in last, I’ll do what I always do when I run by just putting one foot in front of the other until I cross the finish line. There really is no time-limit for this guy: it’s starts at 8:05 and ends at 4:30, so I should be in tip-top shape for finishing before they pull the plug. Since the marathoners and all the other races use the same trail, they keep it open for six and half hours, which means I might finish about the same time and in the same location as the fastest marathoners. Weird. But, I will finish. I mean, I am slow, but not that slow. If it’s anything like the Mounds, I may not even come in last. If the terrain is the same/similar as the Mounds, I should be able to finish in 3:30 to 3:45. The real reason I am so excited is that I hope this will boost my confidence for the marathon in a few short weeks. I still have about six long runs with the longest falling in two more weeks: twenty miles! I plan to run to my parents house to have them drive me back home. I suppose first I should focus on the ten-mile run tomorrow morning, eh?

I had to have silver lining this evening by signing up for the trail run, because I spent 6.5 hours at school today, grading, grading, grading. After I run in the morning, I’ll go back and grade some more. I finished all of the middle school objective tests, but I still need to grade their essays. Tomorrow I will finish my high school reflections, essays, objective tests, and anything else that needs to be caught up for them. I plan to get up at around 6 to run so I can get all my grading finished before spending the afternoon with my brother to work on our application for this grant.

We’re applying for grants to go on a two-week long tour of the midwest and the east coast to watch minor league baseball games. Apparently, the grant is aimed toward enabling teachers to plan their dream trip, a trip they’d never be able to do without the grant. We knocked around several different trips (Caribbean, New Orleans, Pacific Northwest, cross-country road trip) and decided on driving to 6 different minor league ball parks. We’ll watch the games, and my brother will take photographs while I interview people about their memories of baseball and their preference for minor league games. For some reason, my head thinks we’ve already won the grant, because I feel like we’re headed out for the trip already. I’m so excited. Okay?

What I am not excited about is living with another woman who has a regular period. I had gotten used to Bec’s non-schedule and was enjoying skipping a month now and again, but E has strong hormones, apparently, because now I am in sync with her. Sad day. I wondered why I’d been so grumpy, craving weird foods, and feeling fat all week long. Now I know.

I’m not a very good feminist, because if I was I’d revel in my period as some sign of mutual femaleness shared around the world. I’d celebrate my ability to procreate and honor my uterus with monthly praise. But, I don’t. Ever since the damn thing started when I was in eighth grade, I’ve wanted it to end. When I was younger, I wanted it to end because of sports and the occasional pregnancy scare. Now I just want it to end because it mocks me with my childlessness every month. Mother Nature is an unrelenting tease: you’re not pregnant, and you never will be. I say to her, “You can stop now, MN. I’m over it.”  She just laughs back every 28 to 30 days with her own little curse.

 

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Posted in Feminism, Goals, Grace, Relationships, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

Funk. Dissertation. Running. Vegan.

Posted on 21 September 2011 | Leave a comment

My funk has been clinging to me like the flesh to the pit of a peach for about six months now. I see no way out. I go through every day trying to fake happiness and trying to pretend like everything is okay, but I know some people see through it. It started in June when I was, theoretically, working on my dissertation and it clings on, even through today. I have tried all those things that one tries when prying the peach off the pit. I’ve pulled. I’ve pried. I’ve done everything short of pulling out a knife to scrape it off. It’s stuck here.

(Dont’ worry about me, though, because I am trying to use a combination of vitamins, Christian thought and prayer, Buddhist thought and meditation, and solid nutrition combined with exercise to get back into a good headspace. I will get the funk off if it kills me!)

The funk began when I realized I couldn’t write about my chosen topic for my dissertation, because it was too intensely personal. Who knew I couldn’t just whip off a couple hundred pages about spirituality, sexuality, and wholeness. As if being fragmented for so long would lend itself to writing about wholeness! I began this topic in earnest a year ago, but teaching middle school and high school does not lend itself to writing a dissertation. The students are so needy, and I have such a desire for them to learn well, that I pour my whole self into them and tend to leave nothing for myself.

Many of my professors might say that teaching will take care of itself, and that I would be wise to invest in myself for a change, but would they still say that if their own child sat in my class. Would they want their child’s teacher putting herself before their child? I can say with unwavering certainty, the answer is no. Each parent believes that his or her own precious darling deserves the best from a teacher, and I agree. If I had a child, would I want his or her education coming at the hands of a person who had spent the night before reading Foucault and food theory, rather than reading the chapters I had assigned their students to read, so s/he could lead a decent discussion or plan a thought-provoking activity? Um, no. I would want my child’s teacher to work hard to teach my child. So, needless to say, I don’t get much done in the way of dissertation work during the school year.

That being said, I am in the process of changing my dissertation topic, so I have to have a new proposal to my director here very shortly. Since I go home from school each night and work three to four more hours on lesson planning and grading, I want to know how it is that I thought I could get this proposal written? What was I thinking? In my head, I see how it works out. The topic is food in ethnic American novels. The chapters have to do with cultural (ethnic) discipline, spiritual discipline, an sexuality/gender discipline as it is evidenced through food and meals. I got the idea when, at my wits end, I received a package in the mail this summer from my friend Rachel. These two books were my birthday present: The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory and From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. I had already been considering a topic change and this idea had been ruminating for  a while (it had been a small part of the original dissertation topic), so the books seemed like some Divine confirmation of the change. As soon as I get a few minutes to myself, I plan to start writing my new proposal. I’ve been researching and I feel hopeful.

I have been sick for a few days with what I assume can only be allergies. I didn’t write about it because I was otherwise occupied, but over the summer I found out that I am allergic to pretty much everything inside and outside, except cedar trees and mold. I am very allergic to dust, insect stings, and ragweed. Probably the ragweed is my current nemesis, but I digress. The worst part about being sick is that I am training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on November 5, which is forty-four days away, and I haven’t been able to run for about a week. The last long run I did was 15 miles, and it went really well as I was able to finish close to my goal time. I am hoping that November 5 will be cold and dry. The colder, the better. Last years race started at 20 degrees, which would be ideal for a big girl like me! I was hoping to run it barefoot, but I am planning, instead, to run in my Vibram Five Fingers. I just want to finish the course this year, and after this one, I plan to try to get faster.

I suppose that running really helps with my level of stress, too, unless I am training for an event. When I have a training plan to follow, I stress about missed runs, I stress about not getting faster, and I stress about what I am eating. Am I getting enough protein? Am I getting enough carbs? Am I running too much or too little? Am I eating too much junk food? Will missing a week of runs make me not finish? Sometimes it seems like just another stressor, but then I go out and run, and I hear that Kshkshksh sound and all seems right with the world. My breathing is good, my legs feel strong, and my feet lightly touch the pavement with each repetition. And, I just feel good. I feel like the funk, the drudgery slip out of my flesh, just like the pit of the freestone peach. I feel freestoned.

I’ve been vegan for a bit over a year now (off-and-on vegetarian/vegan for close to 20 years), and I love it most of the time. I’m not one of those vegans who pretends that now I have some grand moral compass that disallows me to experience cravings for particular foods. I have had a serious pork craving for about three weeks now. I fantasize about chowing down on some big ol’ QL’s pulled pork BBQ sandwich on white bread with some hot sauce. I fantasize about making some ribs on the grill with my own hot orange BBQ sauce. I fantasize about slicing into a huge oven-baked pork chop and dipping it into Heinz 57 on the way up to my mouth for a seriously decadent treat. I say all that to make it sound less horrible when I tell you that I ate 3/4 of a cheese, mushroom, and spinach frozen pizza last night. I followed it up with ice cream. It was my first intentional non-vegan moment (not counting in WI on vacation where there is no food without cheese) in more than a year. And, while my body enjoyed it, my conscience did not. I had dreams about dairy cattle, their babies, and veal farms. I thought about calling up some local dairies and asking if they sell their calves to veal farms, so I could make a conscientious choice to steer clear of the whole nasty dairy farm back-story that no one ever wants to talk about.

Peace, yo.

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Posted in Buddhism, Children, Christianity, Dissertation, Feminism, Food, Goals, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Egg Nog Waffles. Hookah Initiation. Joseph.

Posted on 22 December 2010 | Leave a comment

Let’s begin with Joseph. For some reason, whenever I hear of a meditation on Joseph of the Christmas story variety, I get a little pissed. In my mind, I wonder what else could possibly be said about a man who had so little to do withe actual Christmas story. As Sojourner Truth points outs about Jesus, “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him” (Ain’t I a Woman). For as little as Joseph appears to play a role in Christmas, the gospel of Matthew does spend the better portion of the first chapter giving Joseph’s lineage. I assume that means that even though Jesus isn’t technically Joseph’s son, Joseph is still important in the life of Jesus and in the eschatological timeline of the Christian church.

Despite my reluctance to recognize Joseph as someone worthy of lengthy discussions at Christmastime, and despite my desire to scream, “Can’t just one Christian holiday be about how God used a WOMAN?!?”, I have to admit that God sometimes goes to extreme measures to get me off my high horse. This time, though, a simple article did the trick. And, what’s even better is I found this short meditation by accident, via Twitter. Frank Viola writes in Remember Joseph: Rethinking Righteousness, “Today, I’d like to give Joseph his due. By my lights, Joseph was one of the most righteous men who ever lived.” That’s a pretty powerful statement. More righteous than Noah? More righteous than Job? More righteous than (fill in any person who is described in Jewish Scripture as blameless or righteous)? Really.

Viola continues by explaining Joseph’s righteousness like this, “I’m sure Joseph’s blood boiled when he heard that the woman who was betrothed to him in marriage was pregnant . . . and not by him. But because he was a righteous man, he showed mercy. He treated her as if he were in her own shoes and was guilty of what he had assumed she did.” Um, yeah. How many of us would’ve done what Joseph did? How many of us would stand beside someone who was in Mary’s shoes? Think about it really hard. Would you? Would I? Could we do it without patting ourselves on our backs or privately commenting that we are just doing it because that’s what a good Christian would do? Can we live as Viola describes Joseph? He writes “It is to react like Jesus, living void of self-righteousness.” This is the part of this meditation I loved. Viola reminds us to be vigilant in our dealings with others, because our own character is really what God is testing and proving. This holiday season can I behave this way? Can I live void of self-righteousness?

*

I initiated my hookah today. I used molasses tobacco, and spent about half an hour listening to Christmas music, contemplating life, and smoking shisha. I love being Greek, and I need to go to Greece sometime in order to experience where I come from. THe only drawback to going there is that I’m afraid I won’t want to come back!

*

I took the dogs for about a two-mile walk this morning, and when I got home I realized the reason I love breaks and summer is the ability to live slowly. I got up at 7:30 AM. walked the dogs around 8 AM, and made breakfast around 9 AM. This is the way my life is supposed to go. Slow, easy mornings. Now it’s noon and I have already exercised, made food from scratch, done laundry, relaxed, socialized via Twitter and Facebook, and written more than I have on any day since school started. Come to me summer, and don’t fail me Winter Break! On break, it’s all about the victuals.

Delicious vegan Egg Nog Waffles (substitute ground flax seed and water for the eggs) I made for breakfast! Yummy.

And the delicious dish I am calling Penne and Faux Sho Cheese that I made for lunch.

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Posted in Christmas, Feminism, Food, Relationships, Religion, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing