Category Archives: Reading

Two Year Old Parties. Greek Church. Running.

Posted on 29 June 2009 | 2 comments

This weekend was full of excitement and nostalgia. Friday got it off to a bang with a practice test for the comps, workshopping with Sarah and Elizabeth, and a dinner with reading at Kellie’s. The vegetarian jambalaya was fantastic!

On Saturday, we went to Izzy’s second birthday party, which was a celebration of all the things she loves: balls, Dora and Diego, rubber-duckies, shoes, and pizza!

We bought her a game that goes with the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I read the book out loud to some of the people at the party. I know they loved it despite their protests when I started to read it for a second time. We also bought her a million (exaggeration) little rubber toys for the tub. Ducks. Fish. Frogs. They all spit water from their little puckered mouths. And, we got her a football, small enough to fit her hands, but big enough to really throw. She got a bunch of other stuff from other people.

Her presents from my brother and from Alex were the best; they got her pink high-top Chucks and a little, ruffly sun dress, respectively. Who knew boys could shop so well for little girls. I think it may be because both of them secretly want children of their own! They both deserve the best in life, so I know they will find it. I have never met two more amazing single guys! She also got a HUGE rubber-ducky from some other friends. It was pretty sweet except it was a little creepy because it looks like it is staring at you no matter where you point its head. I would still love it if I was Iz.

Back to the party. We ate lots of pizza. I ate mostly cheese pizza. And, we broke a piñata that was shaped like a shoe. Of course, Abs made the best cakes: Dora with a waterfall and mountains, a baseball, rubber-ducky cupcakes, and shoe-shaped cookies. I got a bit of a sugar overload as I over0indulged. Since I haven’t been eating much sugar lately, I think it made me pretty sick, but it was good cake!

*

On Sunday, my family and I went to Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Indianapolis. The priest, Fr. Dean, who spoke reminded me of the priest in South Bend when I was little. He was fun, funny, relevant, and poignant. He reminded the Greeks who are founding this parish that they needed to work hard to get it started, but he also reminded them that their work is sanctified. He, like the last priest that spoke, was from Detroit. I can say that if I lived in Detroit, I would have my choice of parishes to attend, not like here in Muncie, where I have to drive to Indy to go to the Orthodox Church.

My uncle asked me if I was ready to be baptized in the Orthodox faith. I didn’t have to think about it. I am ready.

He said, “I would be your god-father,” which is funny coming from an older, completely bald guy who isn’t much taller than I am.

“Of course,” I said, “who else would I ask? Of course, I want you to be my god-father!”

He beamed. To put this in perspective, Reader, I should ask if you have ever seen The Princess Bride. You know the little bald guy, who is friends with Andre the Giant? That is my Uncle George, complete with the lisp. He will be my god-father.

My questions about this are: 1) Do I have to take classes? 2) Do I get to choose my own baptismal name? 3) Do I have to kiss the priest’s hand when I take communion? 4) What are the differences between Orthodox and other theologies? 5) How does this all work? I have so many questions because I don’t want to sign up for something I don’t believe in simply because I am ethnically Greek.

I love the way the Greek church smells. The incense is a pleasing fragrance to the Lord, I am sure. In the small, bare chapel where Holy Apostles has its services, I can transport myself back to the beginning of the Christian centuries and imagine myself worshipping with the early believers. With all of the sacramentalism and ritual, I picture Peter and Paul attempting to meld together their Jewish heritage with this new covenant, and trying to work the Eucharist into their already established Jewish customs.

What results is a seemingly over-the-top representation of Christ to the people, which can, at times, be a little off-putting. However, with the liturgy taking place in such a small, archaic chapel with wooden pews and only two icons in the room, I can imagine how Peter and Paul wrestled with retaining the liturgy and their Jewish customs while transferring their new beliefs to everyday people.

The ceremony which initially seems to be too ornate and ostentatious is, in fact, the way the Word is related through the body of the priest to the body of God’s Church. The priest relates the Christian story in the same way each and every Sunday; the only things that change are the Biblical readings for week, working slowly through the entire Judeo-Christian story. Through the multiple kyrie eleisons and Lord, have mercys, I learn my salvation again and again. Isn’t that the point of church?

*

Today, I got up and walked the dogs, then I continued my new running program. It is going quite well. Hopefully, by the time school starts, I will be ready to run a 5K and not die halfway through. My goal is to run a 5K road race sometime in September or October. I hope to run a mini-marathon by next spring or early summer, then sometime around my next birthday (when I will turn 36), I would like to run a full-length marathon. I hope it happens. I really want to say I ran a marathon before I turn 40. That is really my goal. I hope it happens. I have no unrealistic expectations. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.

*

Now it is 1PM, and I have to study. This week is Early American literature, better than the Renaissance, but not as good as what is coming. I seem to prefer literature after the 1700s, the rest is just background!

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Posted in Food, Grace, Reading, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, Writing

Some Things Make No Sense

Posted on 4 June 2009 | 3 comments

Without wavering, I am pro-choice; however, I am in no way supportive of late-term abortion even though I know these abortions are only performed when two doctors agree that actually having the child will endanger the life of the mother. I think my inability to accept the late-term abortion lies in my struggle to believe that no doctor could tell there would be problems before the fetus is viable. Suddenly, at seven months there are problems enough to put the mother’s life in danger? And, I think my (probably unrealizable) desire to have a child interferes with my ability to be rational in this situation.

With that said, I am sad and disappointed at the death of Dr. Tiller. I am continually amazed at the way that people get so blind-sided by their agenda that they do things that seem to be completely incongruous with their agenda. For example, people who are pro-life killing someone because he did his job. What is even more sad to me is the fact that the anti-Tiller rhetoric has not stopped after his death. The man is dead, now, can we leave him alone? I am sure that the pro-life killer sees this as his mission in life, to stop Tiller from performing future abortions. Still this makes no sense to me. Of course, much of what the Christian right does makes no sense to me.

I am trying hard not to judge the killer, because he was obviously doing what he thought was right, just like Dr. Tiller was doing what he thought was right. In much the same way that Dr. Tiller had a family who loved and supported his work, I am sure his killer has a family that loves and supports him, too. These situations are the ones that cause me to consider some tough theological questions:

  • If God is good why is there such evil in the world?
  • If God is in control of all things, how do [They] let such things happen?
  • How can people rationalize killing a living breathing person, when they live their lives to protect the unborn?
  • Why do people act so irrationally?
  • How can I respond to such violent acts with a heart of grace and an attitude of mercy?

One of the other ideas I wrestle with is trying to understand how Christians ever expect to make an impact on this world when we can’t stop the arguing and fighting that goes on within our religion. I mean, Tiller was at church, serving as an usher, when he was killed! Of course, this internal conflict isn’t new; Paul and Barnabas, two of the first Christian theologians/missionaries split up over an even more insignificant conflict (Acts 15). I have often heard Christians complain about each other, and I have often complained about my conservative Christian friends/brothers and sisters in Christ. Why? Because my idea of what it means to be a Christian and how it looks to live that out doesn’t match theirs.

I will never understand the minds or the actions of conservative people, but I can do my part to recognize their role in the kingdom of heaven as it exists on earth. Maybe this rift is part of the already but not yet kingdom of God. We are already made one in Christ, but we cannot yet recognize our similarities and let them outweigh our differences. I may never pray the sinners’ prayer with someone. I will never go to a pro-life rally. I will never march against gay rights. And, I may never vote for a political candidate based on their commitment to Christian values, but I recognize that I need to give grace to those who do. Part of being a Christian, I suppose, is recognizing our differences and then realizing how God’s grace covers a multitude of sins. Mine and yours.

*

I got a volunteer job writing reviews for a Christian blogging site. I will be receiving a free new-publication book once a month, and, in return, I have to write a 500 word review of that book. My first one, A People’s History of Christianity by Diana Butler Bass, should be arriving shortly. I get three weeks to read it and post a review. I am excited about this opportunity because it has nothing to do with school and is an opportunity for me to read new theological/spiritual books and write about them purely for the enjoyment of doing so. I miss being immersed in the Church. Would I ever go back to working in a church? Yes, in a heartbeat.

*

The purging is going well. I am finding that the hardest things to stay away from are refined sugars and caffeine. I have never realized how hard it is to make food without white sugar, and to keep from drinking caffeinated beverages. I made a huge pitcher of sun tea the other day and forgot that green tea has caffeine in it. I was up until about one in the morning trying to fall asleep!

I am proud to say that I have had no alcohol for the past (almost) three weeks, and I don’t really have the desire for any. Obviously, I really enjoy trying new beers and new drinks, but I can definitely live without them!

I have been reading my bible, but I had to play catch up the other afternoon, because I forgot to read for a couple of days. I took a quilt out on the grass and relaxed in the sunshine while I read. That couple of hours was the most fulfilling afternoon I have had in a while.

Along with all of this purging, I have been thinking about running and much I miss it. I have been walking about 3-5 miles a day, but it is no substitute for running so I have decided to start running again when I get back from vacation. I hope to be able to run all year without getting sick so much over the winter. I think if I maintain my healthy diet, I will be able to achieve this goal. Sometimes I think the food we eat actually makes us sick, but that is for another blog.

*

I have been considering taking a Nazarite vow until I am finished with my PhD. While we are on vacation, I will be putting my brother’s hair into dreadlocks. He said that one of the people on the website where he bought his dread-kit decided to put his hair in dreads as part of a Nazarite vow. I respect that commitment. I know that commitment is part of Rastafarianism, which I also respect and am intrigued by because so much of Rasta theology seems right on. I especially like the part where we smoke ganjah as the healing of the nation! I tend to think that if everyone sat around smoking ganjah, or at least hookah, we’d have far fewer problems in this world.

So, I am thinking of taking this Christian, Nazarite vow on my birthday this year, my 35th birthday. I would cut my hair and then let it grow until I finish my PhD. I would abstain from alcohol, caffeine, meat, and sugars until I finish. That would be almost two years, and I didn’t even make it for a whole year the last time. The big plus is the commitment and the fact that I would read through the Bible two whole times during my vow. I am still thinking about it, but it seems like something that draws my spirit.

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Posted in Beer, Feminism, Food, Grace, Literature, Politics, Reading, Relationships, Religion, School

Brides. Purging. Studying.

Posted on 26 May 2009 | 1 comment

I was talking with my pastor before church started on Sunday, and he shared with me an anecdote:

“Do you really believe the church is the bride of Christ?”

“Yes.”

“If you talked about my wife, the way you talk about the Church, I’d kick your ass.”

While this (possibly) wasn’t directed at me, I still felt its sting. If I really believe that the Church is the bride of Christ, why do I talk about it the way I do? I certainly wouldn’t talk about a friends’ wife the way I talk about the Church.

*

It’s been a week since I started trying to rid my body of some of the toxins, and the same length of time since I renewed an old commitment to read my Bible everyday. I find it is easier when I have a plan.

I have been able to take away all caffeine now, doing away with the morning green tea. I have found that I can make some amazing smoothies for breakfast; they are more practical and easy to transport. My favorite one is an apple, a banana, milk, honey, wheat germ, cinnamon, and ice. Another good one is carrots, celery, banana, apple, honey, wheat germ, cranberry-grape juice, and ice; although, it is a little grassy, so if you don’t like “greeny-tasting things” I wouldn’t try it.

I have had only minimal refined sugars, because I had a small piece of cake at a friend’s 80th birthday party, and another piece of cake at my parent’s house on Memorial Day (I didn’t have icing on that one, though). The only extra sugar I have been getting is two tablespoons of honey in my smoothie in the morning. I find that it doesn’t make me feel like other sugar, though, with that high/low feeling like crap by 10 in the morning. Not drinking alcohol the night before is probably helping with that.

I am trying hard to eat healthy food, too. I have been eating fresh vegetables, fruits, and grains while cutting back on the amount of meat and cheese I eat.I have to say that I feel pretty good.

I have also been walking about four miles each day, give or take. I am hoping that Bec and I will start taking evening bike-rides this week. I am going to pump up the tires on her bike today in order to encourage us to ride tonight. We did get up this morning to walk the dogs, which is a good step!

I have read the first seven chapters of Genesis, Ezra, Matthew, and Acts. I think this is a strange way to go about reading the Bible in a year, but I am just following the plan, hoping it will all make sense at the end. I can see some interesting threads by putting four books up against each other that I would never have thought about together. I can see hope/despair, light/dark, oppression/jubilation, and holy/unholy as large ideas that emerge when I think about the four texts together. I am sure there are more, but those are the ones that come readily to mind.

Doing both of these things together is helping me to think positive. I think very soon, my colleagues may think I am a Jesus freak. I am not sure that would be a bad thing.

*

I am growing weary of studying already, and I haven’t really done much of it. The time that Elizabeth and I are spending on Fridays seems to be the most valuable, because I think talking through my ideas using texts that I already know well is more helpful than reading a bunch of texts I have never read before and then trying to see how they fit into the grand scheme of things.

I hope my anthologies come in today because, once I have them, I can start studying specific texts instead of broad sweeps of time periods. Until they come in, though, I am trying to get my mind around the period designations so I don’t accidentally use two books from the same period to answer a question that needs texts from multiple periods. I could see myself doing that in a pinch.

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Posted in Grace, Literature, Reading, Religion, School

Reading. Baking. Flying. Grace.

Posted on 22 April 2009 | 1 comment

Tonight is our annual graduate student creative writing reading, Penscape. Wow! That is a mouthful. Anyway. I am reading along with nine or ten of my colleagues. It will be good. It has to be good. Each of us were asked to read for ten to twelve minutes. I am reading three flash nonfiction pieces, a letter, and a poem. Sort of a mixed bag. I hope people read somethings we all haven’t already read or heard. I always hate it when that happens. You workshop with people and then you get to hear all those same pieces again. I mean, it is pretty cool to see how they revised, but it isn’t cool if it is the same piece you already read.

Two nights ago I spent about four hours baking. One of my professor’s kids is severely allergic to everything. By everything I mean eggs, dairy, and nuts, so I had fun making many snacks that she could partake in. We are also having punch. You know that Hawaiian Punch, Ginger Ale, Sherbet fiasco that they serve at every gathering everywhere until people are old enough to drink beer. That’s the punch! I think there will be some coffee too.

I think the baking runs in the genes, because my mom is baking her fool head off this afternoon. One of her friends asked her to make cookies to use as the favors for her wedding. My mom is making 150 chocolate chip cookies and 150 peanut butter cookies. Right now.

Tomorrow we leave to go to Minneapolis for Andy and Claire’s wedding. Not only do I get to leave Muncie for a few days, I get to spend it with people I don’t see very frequently. I don’t like to fly. I will never fly on United again. It is official: they are charging fat people more for their seats.

I am working on some new writing. Trying to write an essay about grace is hard. Really. Hard. I am going to ask people to post their most grace-filled moments as responses on a special post here. Maybe I will tell them they can send them by email, too. But I want this essay to reflect all types of faiths and non-faiths and the way they exhibit grace. I know what grace should look like in a Christian ethic. I wonder what it looks like in the secular world for people who don’t share my beliefs. I mean I know some stories, but I hope that people will share theirs.

Also, my dissertation has taken on new form. I hope to write about the preaching woman, the food-serving woman, and the way they both implement a certain morality or ethic of grace and redemption in slave-narratives. Every time I articulate my ideas they become more concrete. which makes me happy. Now to press on and find the “so-what” in that, Lauren.

Flexibility. Ah.

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Posted in Beer, CNF, Dissertation, Feminism, Food, Grace, Literature, Reading, Religion, School, Writing

Up Again So Soon … Still Recovering in Twelve Steps

Posted on 27 March 2009 | 3 comments

I am awake. It is 2:23 AM. I am watching King of the Hill. I love my life. I think I will stay up for another hour and a half so I can watch Roseanne. Then I will go to bed and sleep until noon … which never happened. I didn’t sleep until noon. I slept until 6 then slept again from 8 to 11. And, I am still recuperating from that little overnight shenanigan in twelve steps. These twelve steps would not be followed if Izzy lived with me. 🙂

  1. I admitted that I am powerless over sleep deprivation—my life had become unmanageable. I couldn’t remember anything about what I was doing or saying.
  2. I came to believe that beer could restore me to sanity. Beer can always restore.
  3. I decided to turn my will and my life over to multiple helpings of that specific elixir, choosing hops, yeast, and malt over the newly discovered bliss of Aquavit.
  4. I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. I was weary and worn. I decided to drink.
  5. I admitted to the bottom of the first pint the exact nature of my wrongs: I stayed up for far too long. I admitted my desire for sleep to the bottom of another pint and another and another and another and another and another, and then I admitted these wrongs to all those around me. Loudly and slurred. I am shleeeppyyy, I said before I slipped into unconsciousness.
  6. I was ready to have my sleep restored to me. I wanted my sleep to be restored to me.
  7. I humbly asked the bartender to facilitate my eventual sleep—I put my insomnia in his hands.
  8. I made a list of all the beers which had harmed me, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. I made quick amends to the beers I loved and was kept from injury by two angels—one flaxen, one titian, both Southern—who escorted me home.
  10. Once I was safe, I continued to take personal inventory of my level of alertness, to reassess my evening consumption, and to hope for the veil of sleep.
  11. I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand [Them], praying only for knowledge of [Their] will for me and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I tried to carry this message to insomniacs, and to practice these principles in all my affairs. I especially thanked my caretakers and nursed my bumpy head.

Seriously, I have been so busy, I haven’t even been able to write here. I continue to feel guilty but simultaneously fulfilled with my level activity. I feel guilty because I cannot make last minute plans with people. I am simply to busy to squeeze people into the schedule.

A friend of mine and I were supposed to get together today, but she had to go to South Bend. She asked me earlier in the week if we could get together another time in the week, and after I checked my calendar, I had to write to her to say that there simply were no other days we could meet. I literally had a school function, studying, or some other thing going on every single day.

Several days in the past three weks I have had twelve or thirteen hour long days, and the day that sparked the twelve-step list was a 20 hour day: I got up at 6AM and worked until 2AM the next morning. Really.

I am fulfilled because I have never been happier with the work I am doing. My assistantship with all of its oddities is the best one I have had. My courses are plodding along well, and I am continually challenged by my directed reading and the Morrison class. Ideas for my dissertation are ruminating nicely inside my too full head, and I am sated by the information with which I am gorging my hungry mind. Jasbir Puar, I will understand your writing one day.

In my spare time, I learned that my neighborhood grocery store should be receiving six-packs of glass bottles of Faygo, but that if I want to order a 24-pack of cans of Faygo, it will cost $15 to get it delivered to my house. This would, of course, be a moot point if my neighborhood grocery would just carry Rock-n-Rye Cream Cola. Not diet. I despise Diet Cola. If I wanted zero calories, I would just drink water.

My brother and I are going to Nashville this weekend for a little break, so I hope to be able to access this site to report on our activities. I am sure we will haev fun. I know for sure we are going to Jungle Jim’s in Cincinnati on the way home, and we are going to the Apple store to get his new computer. I am excited to be away for a bit.

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Posted in Beer, Insomnia, Literature, Reading, Relationships, School, Writing