Reason Breeds Insanity

The other morning when Bec and I were walking the dogs, we found two puppies from the wrong side of the tracks. I say they are from the wrong side of the tracks because they are both pit bulls, and for some reason a small group of fucktards have made the whole world hate pit bulls. I decided to keep one of them and named her Celie from The Color Purple, which as you may know is my favorite book. I also think, much like Celie was a discarded woman in the book, my dog was discarded. At any rate neither dog was much wanted by their previous owners because they were freezing cold, shivering, and huddled together somewhere near the dam at McCullough Park. We rescued them both, and then farmed one out. My friend Cristin took Puppy X—she never decided on a name—and kept him for a few days. However, her landlord, who once said she could have the puppy, changed his mind and told her that he would terminate her lease if she didn’t get rid of the dog. So, we now have two puppies again. Frustrating for us, heart wrenching for her. I hope that we can find a good home for the baby, but if not, we will have to call Action for Animals to see if they can take him, or at least help us find a home for him. Four dogs is one too many.

Church was good on Sunday. David didn’t give a sermon. I call what he does giving a sermon, because he doesn’t really preach, he sort of give away whatever knowledge he has acquired throughout his studying. It is really quite nice. If he did preach, however, on Sunday he did what Black or Southern preacher describe like this, “I quit preachin’ and started meddlin’.” He encouraged each of us to find someone that we knew needed help, or that had been heavy on our hearts, and to go do something about it. He actually put his ego aside, a thing few preachers can ever do, because they like to hear their own voices, and commanded us (as closely as Dave commands) to go be the kingdom of God. Basically, I think he wanted to say, “Stop sitting there, and go do something.” I think he is right. Too frequently we think that our hour or two hours on Sunday morning makes us into the Christians we should be, when we should be living the life we learn on Sundays, everyday. More eloquently put: “Stop sitting there, and go do something!”

Bec and I weren’t able to actually do something that day, but Dave and I did have a good conversation about trying to teach some people in the community to make shoes. Basically, I am trying to find a good pattern for shoes, so that we can make a few pairs, and then teach the skill to others so that we can live a child-labor free life as a Christian community in Muncie. Another idea we knocked around were also recycled, silk-screened t-shirts and I thought maybe some type of free clothing exchange would be cool. Essentially, what I see happening in the really near future is us, as Christian or simply as humans, needing to rely on each other in order to make it in this chaotic, greed-filled world. I think that we are going to need a lot more community, and a lot less individuality, in order to survive. I envision a world where we all live in multiple-family homes and share common meals and struggle together, because I don’t think until we do all those things, it’s going to get any better than it is right now. I think that is what it is to see God’s kingdom here, on earth. It is us being that kingdom, and making the world into that restored creation. Right now, we are doing a piss poor job of it, though.

Finally, since I apparently only write when I need to or when I am scolded, I need to mention school. School is going fine, and we got our feedback today from our conference presentations. I did well, so I was quite pleased. I had a few things I could work on, so I will try to polish those up before I actually present at another conference. My assistantship is slowly plodding along, and I have learned that I am not very good at transcribing things. It takes me forever to get one interview finished, but I am trying to saw through the log jam, as one of my professors said today. It’s nice to learn that professors have some of the same struggles we have only on a different level. It’s encouraging to know I could arm wrestle with a prof for the procrastinator’s award. I think I would win, but I would let her have the silver medal. So, life here is good. I look forward. Here are some animal pictures to thrill your souls.

Kermit, the Kermudgeon [sic]

First, read this amazing piece of news that I found on a friend’s blog. Then let it roll around in your mind for a second. What do you think is wrong with their hypothesis? If you can’t figure it out, I will be more than happy to tell you. Instead of blaming the rich bastards that run our country, the greedy assholes who own the oil companies, and the fuckwit car companies who apparently can’t make an environmentally friendly car to save their lives, we blame, yet again, fat people for ruining the environment and driving up the cost of oil! Really, I’m a fat kid and I walk or ride my bike everywhere or ride the city bus, unless there are more than two people in the car. Besides that I am vegan, so no extra petroleum use or greenhouses gases coming from this fat kid! I can also think of quite a few skinny little bitches that I know who drive everywhere alone in their own cars, consume more than their fair share of calories, and do nothing to try to reduce their carbon footprints.

My question about this whole thing is: can we STOP blaming people and stop pointing fingers long enough to realize we ALL need to change the way we live in order to make the world better? If we all stopped driving to places we could walk or ride our bikes to, then we wouldn’t need to worry if it was the fat kids who fucked it all up! We could worry instead, how to carpool to save gas, how to eat meals together so we didn’t have so many left overs that we never eat (incidentally, I eat left overs like nobody’s business now), and we could make real changes in our lifestyles! It takes a whole gallon of petroleum to make 18 plastic grocery bags, so think about that the next time you forget your cloth bags!

I got several books about liberation theology at the library today. I am contemplating not watching TV for the summer, because I find that (1) I waste a ton of time watching Mariska Hargitay solve the same crimes over and over again, (2) I am not really stimulated by much on television except South Park, The Simpsons, or Lil’ Bush anyway, (3) I need to read more because I realize that is the only way to write better and to increase my vocabulary, and (4) I need to find other things to do, so that when gas prices exceed minimum wage, I will still have ways to entertain myself! Basically, I just want to try to revert back to childhood this summer. I used to spend the whole summer reading, gardening, playing, and dreaming. I don’t do so much dreaming anymore. I need to. For my soul. My soul hurts, and it needs to heal slowly and softly like raindrops fill a puddle.

I was glad to know that one of my professors has the same sorts of existential dilemmas that I have about being an academic. Namely, the dilemma is looking around and seeing all sorts of people doing amazing things for the world, and turning that same gaze back on myself and realizing that in the grand scheme of things, most of what I do doesn’t change the world and doesn’t mean much. I can write until I am blue in the face, but my words don’t write social wrongs. I can pull myself out of that introspective cluster-fuck by realizing that without former scholars, I wouldn’t be where I am today, and that my ability to teach well is, in and of itself, a gift that I am obliged to share with others. My role as a teacher-scholar is to help other people learn so that they can, in turn, impact the world in ways that I am not. I still tend to get a bit myopic about perceivably wasting my life writing and reading when I could be out “doing” something. I just have to keep reminding myself: I am but one cog in the wheel. From each according to her ability, to each according to his need.

Here is my dilemma: I want to be more like Jesus, but I am having a hard time doing it. I know, I know, story of my life. I just am having a hard time taming that dastardly little bastard that lives in my mouth. James was right when he wrote, “So the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. […] The tongue is set among our members staining the whole body , setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. […] but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison” (3:5-8, really read 3:1-12). See, I have this thing I do where I talk about people, trying to “work things out” or “vent” or whatever, but it ends up just being gossip. I am not sure how to stop doing this. I am thinking about taking a week long vow of silence at some time during the summer, which for those of you who know me, would be as close to death in life as I could possibly come. This is all prompted by some things that happen yesterday. This person that I consider a friend, well, a friend I hold at a distance anyway, decided to tell some of my other friend that I was bragging about my grades. That is simply not true. I don’t talk about grades unless I am asked, and even then, I am not necessarily pleased to talk about them. I also think grades are fascist and they don’t mean much to me, so I unless I completely lost my senses, I didn’t “shove the grades” in this person’s face. However, what I did do was talk about this friend with another friend, saying that I couldn’t trust, etc. So really, what I did was the exact thing this person did to me, only I felt justifies in doing it because I was “venting.” Seriously, we can just rationalize anything can’t we?!? I mean, I know I can, but my damned tongue just won’t do what I tell it to. See another justification. I told it to talk. I didn’t even balk at it. I can say that woman is not who I want to be. James continues: “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My [friends], these things ought not be so!” (3:10). From my same mouth come blessing and cursing. I bless God everyday, and then I curse people from the same mouth. Sometimes I do this within minutes. It’s really schizophrenic, this disjunction of the tongue. I need to work on it. I do. Daily. Sometimes are just really bad. Yesterday was one of those days. Today is going to be better.

The Message, which I almost never use because it seems to make less sense to me than most other translations, says in Mark that Jesus “taught by using stories, many stories.” We all learn better when hear other people’s stories. I think this singular phenomenon may be why memoirs are so popular now—people learn better when they learn from stories, not from someone telling them what to do. Self-help books have their place, usually in the garbage can in my opinion, but memoirs and creative nonfiction, I think, have a distinct place, not the garbage can, because they feed readers’ need to other people’s stories. We need to hear how other people deal with stuff. Jesus knew that. He knew that people need stories that relate to their lives in order to learn how to function, especially because he was trying to teach them how to live in a whole new way. Of course the new way is the way they should have been going all along. The basic message of Christianity is not much different from the basic message of Judaism: forgiveness, grace, mercy, love, peace, kindness, compassion, and hospitality. Essentially the message is the same: you are created in the image of God; act like it. Perform your identity in Christ. I would go a little bit further with this whole idea of performativity, and if I were writing this for a literature journal instead of a blog, I might talk about Judith Butler, and say that the way we act is much of who we are. But this is a blog, so I won’t. I will say, though, that her whole argument is that we perform our gender. People perceive our genders based on teh way we perform them, or act them out. Wouldn’t it be great if people could look at how we act and immediately perceive our Christianity? My point merely is that our stories should be shared for the better good, to help others realize that we are doing in the world, and to help others make better choices than we have made. Our stories are the evidence we have for the world of our identities in Christ. We act like Christians, we act otherworldly, and we are perceived as Christians, our stories evidence this. Frequently, my stories evidence how far I have to go in performing my Christianity. Sometimes, sadly, I don’t look the least bit Christian. Too often. Mark continues to write: “With many stories like these, he presented his message to them, fitting the stories to their experience and maturity. He was never without a story when he spoke.” Jesus’ stories always fit his specific audience: he was acutely aware of the rhetorical triangle. And he was like one of those guys at the bar, or like a woman in a retirement home, he always had a story. His stories, however, had a point, and made sense. I do think, though, that people may have thought he was a bit like the barfly or the demented person, because his stories sometimes didn’t make sense, so much so that he had to go “over everything, sorting out the tangles, untying the knots” with his disciples. I wonder if they ever felt like he had gone crazy? Well, I know they were confused sometimes, but I wonder if Jesus ever started a story and then Peter and the others looked at each other like “oh, no, here he goes again, telling that story.” I want to tell stories that change lives. I want to be like Jesus.

Switch gears. Today is the first day of summer school. I never thought I would take summer school again. But here I am. Class starts in an hour, and I am not sure I want to go through with it. I am not sure I can. I really enjoyed the past week of doing nothing school related, reading things for pleasure, sewing, plating, mowing, fixing things, and spending time with all the pets. I keep telling myself that it’s only for five weeks, and I can do anything for five weeks (25 days). I am looking forward to reading some theoretical books, and I am excited about reading books for the book club, but I am not so excited about writing. I do know that I will learn tons of valuable information and techniques in this class, but I also know that I am one of the worst writers in the program, so it may be a bit painful. Regardless, it starts in an hour.

Switch gears again. The party at our house was a great success. I had fun, and so did a few of my friends, so that is really all that matters. I just wish that more people would get involved. I mean, if you can’t go to a party, what can you go to? I guess it is a busy time of year. Also, it was Mother’s Day weekend, and lots of people were Mothering.