District 9, the sci-fi thriller named the "must-see movie of the summer" by Entertainment Weekly, has been out since August 14. Since my husband and I have two toddlers in our home, it is rare that we go on a movie date. We both love the sci-fi genre, and I relish any film with intelligent social commentary. Preachy can still be fun! Hence, we made the time to catch this hip new flick over the weekend.
I will spare you the background details and usual lead-up info that you'll find in the many professional reviews of this film. Here's the aforementioned Entertainment Weekly review in case you're interested: http://popwatch.ew.com/2009/08/06/this-weeks-cover-d9/
Two facts I will throw out there are the modest $30 million budget and the age of the director, Neill Blomkamp: 29 years old! How's that for hitting those pre-30 milestones?? Way to go Mr. Blomkamp!
I will cut right to the chase by immediately commending the choice of setting for the film: Johannesburg, South Africa. If the objective is sharp social commentary involving racial and tribal loyalties and conflict, it's hard to beat this locale.
Many of us have spent some time contemplating religious, racial and ethnic conflict over the course of our lives. That is, if we contemplate at all... It's a little difficult to miss out on that particular "current issue", if you know what I mean. I'd almost feel obtuse if I started naming wars, instances of ethnic cleansing, and regional conflicts we have witnessed throughout our lifetimes no matter what our age. Think of how many a vampire could list! Anyway...
The absolute genius of this film, for me, was the aggressive and brutally honest analysis of how we, as humans, cling to our tribal, racial and ethnic origins to our own detriment as a species. I like to think of this film as a bus stop. If you see the film and make an attempt to absorb its message, you are waiting for a bus that you may or may not board. These days, there are more and more buses being added to the line and and there are also a lot of people trying to slit the bus tires. Where will the bus take you? To a place of mercy, compassion and acceptance of differences. A place of generosity. A place that has dethroned Fear as the monarch, and replaced him with Openness.
Here's a quick rundown of the plot and protagonists, and yes, this is a spoiler so if you plan to go, stop reading here and come back after you've seen it, or just skip over this paragraph:
A giant spaceship hovers over Johannesburg for several months and the aliens within make no appearance. A government agency called MNU is created to deal with the aliens, and human representatives finally board the ship. The aliens are sickly, starving, and confused. They are put into a refugee camp very close to the city of Johannesburg. How these aliens became stranded on Earth above South Africa remains a mystery, and eventually the creatures come to be called "Prawns" by the humans. South Africans, Whites and Nigerians sell to and barter with the aliens, whose favorite and most affordable form of nourishment is canned cat food. The aliens do have weapons, but nowhere near enough to be able to take on the humans, so for the most part they stay within their camp and eat their cat food. Eventually, their marginalization, extremely unfair bargaining power and poor living conditions push the Prawns to small criminal acts in order to obtain better food, essentials such as shoes, and more importantly electronic equipment to try and fix their mother ship. As a result of these increasing criminal acts, the Prawns come to be called terrorists and plans are made by MNU to relocate the Prawns to a new refugee camp 100 kilometers from Johannesburg. The project manager of the relocation project is the son-in-law of the head of MNU. His name is Wikus. He is filled with a sinister zeal which motivates him to evict the Prawns with the characteristic hatred we have seen so many times in real life stories related to ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses and torture. His zeal is purposefully portrayed as the product of fear and naivete and his character is depicted as more of a puppet than an evil commander. His foil is a Prawn who is called by the name of Christopher Johnson. Johnson has been working with his son and another Prawn to create a fluid that will allow the Prawns to fix their mother ship and return to their home planet. During the eviction process, Wikus clumsily confiscates this fluid, and in his violent gesture he accidentally ingests some of it. The rest of the fluid is transported to MNU headquarters. Wikus' ingestion of the fluid makes him sick and begins the biological process of transformation into a Prawn. He grows pincers in the place of one of his hands. MNU then tries to use him as a valuable resource to kill the other Prawns with their own weapons, since only Prawns can activate their weapons by using their pincers. When Wikus realizes that MNU in no way intends to save him, but only wishes to harvest his new ability to kill Prawns, he escapes back to Christopher Johnson's laboratory and hideout. The audience then discovers that not only Wikus' father-in-law and other family members, but also his own wife, are deceiving him and have written him off as dead. The rest of the action follows as you might imagine, with a lot of bumps and starts in the initial attempt of these two characters to cooperate in somehow retrieving the fluid for the ship and finding the method to transform Wikus back into a human. Wikus goes through a dramatic character evolution in that he ends up fighting against the South Africans, the Nigerians and the Whites to allow Christopher Johnson to escape in the mother ship with his son. Wikus had to literally become one of the creatures that he had hated in order to understand and cooperate with them, to the benefit of both the humans and the aliens.
The social commentary is not subtle, but the story and the effects render this film sublime. There is an obvious social movement underway across the globe that encourages riddance of tribal, religious and racial loyalties in favor of diplomacy and human rights. Hence, my bus metaphor. I could call it the "Peace Train", and that is a good song! But I don't want to get confused with any holy rollers! Do you think you would get on the bus if you had the opportunity? Have you thought about what it would mean to you and what sorts of fears or protectionism cause you to cling so passionately to your own tribal, cultural or ethnic origins when faced with an opposing group? It's a radical bus, and there may even be some flowers painted on it. I can't quite envision it yet because it's so far away from actualization.
Every group wants to point a finger at every other group. This is one thing I have noticed. "We only want peace. They are the aggressors. They have always staked claim to what is ours. They don't belong here and we do. Their philosophy is so alien to ours that we could never have a mutual understanding". If we want to start tallying up numbers of actual terrorists and which groups they belong to, perhaps there is a clear majority group at present. That said, throughout history, the majority group of terrorists has changed from age to age. There are ethnic groups on this planet, myriad Native American tribes being one example, that have been completely destroyed due to lack of tolerance, lack of respect and lack of mercy. This is a human flaw. This flaw is not a characteristic of one religious or racial group in particular. This sort of talk may inflame certain people, especially those who hold a special claim to a pure line of ethnic blood. That is their view, and they are free to hold it. There are very few of those sorts of people where I am from. Sadly, much of our American fabric has been built on creating a majority that has weeded out diversity due to fear and ignorance. I am speaking of diversity of religion, diversity of race, and diversity of ethnicity. Does it matter which majority is the one that fears and commits violent acts against another group? Is any majority with this attitude in the right?
At present, we have a President with an African father and Caucasian maternal ancestry. His election was a monumental step for this country and may I boldly say, speaks well for the future of me and my fellow bus riders.
Of course, attitudes of fear, vengeance and religious and tribal loyalties still run deep. A recent example of this is the statement of the White House following the "compassionate release" by the country of Scotland of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi so that this Libyan terrorist could go home and die in peace with family members in the final stages of an illness. The White House said it "deeply regrets" the release, recognizing the loss of the family members of the victims killed on Pan Am Flight 103. The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, strongly voiced his disappointment. "The interests of justice have not been served by this decision," he said in a statement. "There is simply no justification for releasing this convicted terrorist." Susan Cohen, the mother of one of the victims, was understandably more emotional in calling the release "vile" and in saying Scottish citizens should be ashamed of themselves and that the release had nothing to do with compassion, and everything to do with obtaining oil from Libya. If compassionate release were a policy created only for better oil diplomacy, then why did Jack Straw recently let the Great British Train Robber, Ronnie Briggs, go home to die with his family on the same basis? Compassionate release is part of the justice system in the UK, whether we Americans like it or not. In addition, no EU countries employ the death penalty. "An eye for an eye" is just not the trend of justice in most other Western nations.
Interestingly enough, "an eye for an eye" is still the trend in Middle Eastern countries. A personal friend of mine living in Saudi Arabia recently sent me a video of a young boy getting his hand severed off by a car running over it multiple times because he had stolen from a market. Is this because the populations of these countries are intrinsically more hateful and vengeful than the rest of us? Do they corner the market on harsh justice? More importantly, do we truly understand every link in the chain of events that led to the Pan Am Flight 103 terrorist bombing? Is it possible that the attackers were deprived and marginalized and abused by their own governments and other governments? Is it really for us to judge what should happen to this man's body, much less his soul?
I have an admission to make. I spent the night of September 11, 2001 alone in my apartment with a Muslim. I had moved to London from New York City days before, and this Lebanese young man was one of the first people to try to befriend me and welcome me to his city. He called me on the night of September 11, knowing that I was alone and could not reach my friends in NYC by phone. He came to my house and brought me food and candles, and we had our own vigil. We watched the television coverage of the event and cried. He was extremely emotionally distraught over the implications that this event would have for Muslims all over the world, and especially in Western countries. It was very meaningful to me that I spent that evening with a Muslim. I don't believe that it was a mistake. I believe that God was using that experience to teach me a lesson. I was learning not to react in hatred to a particular group or country.
Unlike Wikus in District 9, we don't need to ingest a chemical and go through a painful process of physical transformation to let go of our fear and hatred. We have the chance on our planet, right now, to begin true diplomacy with peoples and nations that have cultures and ethnic origins differing greatly from our own. We have the opportunity to base our policies on values such as human rights, mercy, and yes, compassion, rather than vengeance. There is a fine line between justice and vengeance. What do we as Americans, Christians, Jews or Muslims truly desire? Justice or vengeance? We have a long way to go to reach mutual understanding with those that we perceive to be our enemies. Unless we commence that journey, we may reach mutual doom sooner than we think.
I don't know if I'm on the bus yet, but I've made my way to the bus stop.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Nazarene and Prince Siddhartha
What are the subjects we have all been told to avoid at cocktail parties (or wine tastings, take your pick): religion and politics, right? Perhaps this explains the predominance of these subjects in the blogosphere. It’s difficult to choose the more inflammatory of the two. On the one hand, we have a group of angry conservatives who are extremely fired up right now about such topics as universal healthcare and the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate. On the other hand, mega churches are on the rise, Muslims are fighting for their beliefs and the preservation of their culture, Jews remain justifiably incredulous and outraged by Holocaust deniers and fundamentalist terrorists, and Buddhists just want us all to get along.
This post is purposefully anti-inflammatory. I believe that interfaith ministry and education could one day play a major role in the reintroduction of religious discussions into party circuits everywhere. Wouldn’t that be cool in a Star Trek sort of way? Klingons, Vulcans and Humans working together for the good of the Federation…
Until that future day dawns, I’d like to presently share some of my own spiritual inclinations and religious exploration.
I was raised in a Protestant family in a predominantly Christian part of the world. I grew up around a good number of Christian fundamentalists and also a fair share of Reformers whose beliefs were often referred to as “watered-down”. Fortunately, the Bible thumpers kept their distance for the most part and I was raised on run-of-the-mill Sunday school lessons. I knew a fair number of Reformed Jews as well, and had one Hindu friend. That sums up my religious education until reaching college.
The Eastern Philosophy course I took during the 1992 Summer Session was a true turning point in my life. I was fascinated by reading some of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and particularly the teachings of one Prince Siddhartha Gautama, more correctly referred to as Buddha. While I had always feared and disdained fundamentalist religion in any form, I had believed in the divinity of Christ since early childhood. The Eastern spiritual teachings I read in college echoed much of what I loved about the teachings of Jesus. I went through one short phase where I actually believed that Krishna and Jesus were one and the same. I wondered if Jesus and Buddha may not have both been divine incarnations sent to our planet in different geographical locations and historical periods. I was filled with joy to learn that people around the world, from all generations, had been striving towards similar spiritual goals and I truly felt less isolated in my spiritual search.
Obviously, Comparative Religion is its own rich subject matter and many a learned individual has written on the similarities between Buddha and Jesus. Here is a particularly informative and concise link to an interview with the religious scholar Marcus Borg on the subject: http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/interviews/int_19980217.shtml
Instead of an attempt to reinvent the wheel on a well documented scholarly subject, this post is a communication from my heart on what these two figures have imparted to me, and an affirmation of my belief that they hold valuable teachings for all of us.
My earliest remembered experiences of Jesus are saying my bedtime prayers at night, “thank you for my parents, thank you for my toys, thank you for Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny” and singing, “Jesus loves me this I know”. As a toddler, I thought it sounded like happy news and I believed it. When I found out that Santa, the Bunny and Tooth Fairy did not exist, I prayed, “Jesus, I still have you”. As my childhood progressed, I did read my Bible lessons and received confirmation as a Christian at the age of 13. I was then allowed to take Communion. One of my parents went through a revival phase during my early adolescence, so I also got to enjoy singing modern praise songs that included a full band and tambourines for all. On Sundays, we would sing songs to God for an hour and dancing was encouraged. Some people would be embarrassed by this, but I have to say that I truly enjoyed it! I did my fair share of Bible reading and usually I would skip straight to the words written in red in the New Testament. I contemplated those words and tried to get explanations to the parables. I prayed before taking tests in school and I found prayer to be a generally useful outlet to relax at bedtime, or in any time of crisis. I was a true believer. Some of my favorite verses were, “Seek and ye shall find” and “I can do anything through Christ who strengthens me”. I felt emboldened by my faith.
In high school, in college, and certainly in adulthood, I learned of the many horrible atrocities committed throughout history in the name of Jesus. I learned about the evangelicals who smeared his name through their public displays of extramarital affairs, drug use, narcissism and many other things most of us would consider vices. I learned about the hatred of many Christians towards homosexuals. I met some homosexual Christians who were able to teach me a lot about unconditional love and what a truly radical approach Jesus did have to ancient Jewish law and Old Testament beliefs and practices. I met many other Jews and Muslims and heard their perspectives on Jesus and how he was perceived by those from other faiths. I met Buddhists who claimed to respect the teachings of Jesus and viewed him as a brother to Buddha.
With time, and with the pressures of work and then child-rearing, faith took a back seat in my life. I recently experienced what could be called a spiritual revival after some Jewish friends recommended that I read and listen to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, a revered Buddhist teacher. I then remembered that my father had given me the book, “Living Buddha, Living Christ” during my early adult years. Thich Nhat Hanh is a blessed soul who reignited my faith in the Divine and who re-energized my life. I then re-read the now classic, “Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying” by Sogyal Rinpoche. I re-read the Bhagavad Gita and I started reading the Bible again. I signed up for daily scripture through e-mail.
After searching online, I found meditation classes that were offered in my area through the Kadampa Buddhist Center, an affiliate of the worldwide New Kadampa Tradition. I read The Meditation Handbook written by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. For months, I meditated daily. I saw dramatic changes in my life, and with every new Buddhist teaching, I was able to make a new connection with Jesus. I finally started to understand some of those mysterious parables! So inspired was I by my newfound Buddhist meditation practice that I attended an actual Buddhist retreat at a temple in Glen Spey, New York.
My visit to that Buddhist temple, as ironic as it may sound, finally convinced me that although I do have immense respect for Buddha, Jesus is my true spiritual master. After a day spent in that temple, singing, praying and listening to the teachings of peaceful Buddhist monks, I walked away feeling oddly empty. I am not referring to the blissful emptiness that Buddhists wish to achieve. I felt emotionally flat to the point of slight physical discomfort. Nothing felt right to me. I wandered out of the temple and away from the common dining tent where I was meant to enjoy dinner. I got into my car and experienced slight nausea. I couldn’t understand these feelings because during my time in the temple, I had been inspired by the beautiful statue of Buddha Shakyamuni and the other Buddhist deities. I had particularly enjoyed the singing and was pleased with myself at having committed many of the prayers to memory before the retreat. When I started my car and the radio came on, I heard a Phil Collins song, beginning to end: “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away”. I listened to each word while driving, as if transfixed. Tears poured down my face. For the first time in many years, I felt the presence of the one that I only know to call Jesus Christ. I felt that he was singing directly to me. I went back to my hotel, after picking up a giant cheeseburger and a bottle of wine, and packed up my belongings. I decided to skip the remainder of the retreat and I drove home that night. Since that time, when I meditate, I try to clear my mind first, and then I try to invite Jesus to sit with me for a little while. I have also asked him to answer my questions in dreams which I believe he has done.
As a quick aside, I’d like to point out that at two other times in my life I felt that Jesus was singing directly to me in a pop song. The first time was after experiencing guilt following an encounter with some Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists. The song was, “I Love You Just the Way You Are”. You know, the one that makes you sing, “Don’t go changin’!” The second musical message was the Stevie Wonder song, “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” after recovering from an illness and while going through a divorce. As with the Phil Collins song, I immediately felt a spiritual presence and the tears flowed freely!
All in all, I feel that my spiritual progression over the past few years has been healing and transformative. I have experienced peaks and valleys, lulls and spurts. I now have a stronger sense of spiritual identity than I ever have, as I believe that our childhood religious beliefs are, on balance, more imposed than they are realized.
I will continue to read, contemplate and benefit from the teachings of Buddha for the remainder of my life, so long as I retain my mental faculties. From Buddha, I think we can learn to gain mastery over anger, jealousy, obsessions, and many other forms of harmful attachments. Buddha can peacefully guide us to realize our interconnectedness and our collective progression on this Earth as a group of souls.
Jesus will always be the one to whom I say, “Jesus, I still have you”. When I die, I will hopefully hold the hand of one of my loved ones and also feel the presence of Jesus leading me into the mystery that lies beyond our physical lives. Jesus offers to all of us the unique lesson of Grace and of strength perfected through weakness. Like Buddha, Jesus has a unique approach to illness. He said of many an illness that the purpose was not to destroy the body but to glorify God. When the apostle Paul asked Jesus for healing, Jesus did not heal him but answered instead, “My Grace is sufficient for you, for strength is perfected in weakness”. Jesus had a prostitute as a close friend and confidante. Jesus spoke to many women in his day and showed love and acceptance to a myriad of “sinners”. He was called out by the religious leaders of his day for his disdain of the law. He was said to have healed on the Sabbath. He asked one man to come and follow him, quite controversially on the day that this man was to bury his father. He said, “Let the dead bury their own dead”. Unlike Buddha, Jesus was reported to have shown anger on several occasions. He once cursed a fig tree because it had no fruit on it at the time. He once turned tables upside down in the temple in a fit of anger because he believed that God’s sacred place was not an appropriate venue for business transactions. Similarly to Buddha, Jesus was a radical when placed in the historical context of his generation. Perhaps his most radical quote was, “Before Abraham was, I am”.
While I respect and admire any person attempting to follow a spiritual path, I identify with the voice of that radical, Jesus of Nazareth. I may not go to a church for a while. I do drink. I do swear, on occasion, and I have always loved to dance. I don’t have much use for Christian fundamentalism, or any religious fundamentalism for that matter. What I know that I know that I know, is that as Jesus says, “my sheep hear my voice” and I can proudly yell BAAAAA from my rooftop tonight or any night! Good night! And G-d Bless!
This post is purposefully anti-inflammatory. I believe that interfaith ministry and education could one day play a major role in the reintroduction of religious discussions into party circuits everywhere. Wouldn’t that be cool in a Star Trek sort of way? Klingons, Vulcans and Humans working together for the good of the Federation…
Until that future day dawns, I’d like to presently share some of my own spiritual inclinations and religious exploration.
I was raised in a Protestant family in a predominantly Christian part of the world. I grew up around a good number of Christian fundamentalists and also a fair share of Reformers whose beliefs were often referred to as “watered-down”. Fortunately, the Bible thumpers kept their distance for the most part and I was raised on run-of-the-mill Sunday school lessons. I knew a fair number of Reformed Jews as well, and had one Hindu friend. That sums up my religious education until reaching college.
The Eastern Philosophy course I took during the 1992 Summer Session was a true turning point in my life. I was fascinated by reading some of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and particularly the teachings of one Prince Siddhartha Gautama, more correctly referred to as Buddha. While I had always feared and disdained fundamentalist religion in any form, I had believed in the divinity of Christ since early childhood. The Eastern spiritual teachings I read in college echoed much of what I loved about the teachings of Jesus. I went through one short phase where I actually believed that Krishna and Jesus were one and the same. I wondered if Jesus and Buddha may not have both been divine incarnations sent to our planet in different geographical locations and historical periods. I was filled with joy to learn that people around the world, from all generations, had been striving towards similar spiritual goals and I truly felt less isolated in my spiritual search.
Obviously, Comparative Religion is its own rich subject matter and many a learned individual has written on the similarities between Buddha and Jesus. Here is a particularly informative and concise link to an interview with the religious scholar Marcus Borg on the subject: http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/interviews/int_19980217.shtml
Instead of an attempt to reinvent the wheel on a well documented scholarly subject, this post is a communication from my heart on what these two figures have imparted to me, and an affirmation of my belief that they hold valuable teachings for all of us.
My earliest remembered experiences of Jesus are saying my bedtime prayers at night, “thank you for my parents, thank you for my toys, thank you for Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny” and singing, “Jesus loves me this I know”. As a toddler, I thought it sounded like happy news and I believed it. When I found out that Santa, the Bunny and Tooth Fairy did not exist, I prayed, “Jesus, I still have you”. As my childhood progressed, I did read my Bible lessons and received confirmation as a Christian at the age of 13. I was then allowed to take Communion. One of my parents went through a revival phase during my early adolescence, so I also got to enjoy singing modern praise songs that included a full band and tambourines for all. On Sundays, we would sing songs to God for an hour and dancing was encouraged. Some people would be embarrassed by this, but I have to say that I truly enjoyed it! I did my fair share of Bible reading and usually I would skip straight to the words written in red in the New Testament. I contemplated those words and tried to get explanations to the parables. I prayed before taking tests in school and I found prayer to be a generally useful outlet to relax at bedtime, or in any time of crisis. I was a true believer. Some of my favorite verses were, “Seek and ye shall find” and “I can do anything through Christ who strengthens me”. I felt emboldened by my faith.
In high school, in college, and certainly in adulthood, I learned of the many horrible atrocities committed throughout history in the name of Jesus. I learned about the evangelicals who smeared his name through their public displays of extramarital affairs, drug use, narcissism and many other things most of us would consider vices. I learned about the hatred of many Christians towards homosexuals. I met some homosexual Christians who were able to teach me a lot about unconditional love and what a truly radical approach Jesus did have to ancient Jewish law and Old Testament beliefs and practices. I met many other Jews and Muslims and heard their perspectives on Jesus and how he was perceived by those from other faiths. I met Buddhists who claimed to respect the teachings of Jesus and viewed him as a brother to Buddha.
With time, and with the pressures of work and then child-rearing, faith took a back seat in my life. I recently experienced what could be called a spiritual revival after some Jewish friends recommended that I read and listen to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, a revered Buddhist teacher. I then remembered that my father had given me the book, “Living Buddha, Living Christ” during my early adult years. Thich Nhat Hanh is a blessed soul who reignited my faith in the Divine and who re-energized my life. I then re-read the now classic, “Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying” by Sogyal Rinpoche. I re-read the Bhagavad Gita and I started reading the Bible again. I signed up for daily scripture through e-mail.
After searching online, I found meditation classes that were offered in my area through the Kadampa Buddhist Center, an affiliate of the worldwide New Kadampa Tradition. I read The Meditation Handbook written by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. For months, I meditated daily. I saw dramatic changes in my life, and with every new Buddhist teaching, I was able to make a new connection with Jesus. I finally started to understand some of those mysterious parables! So inspired was I by my newfound Buddhist meditation practice that I attended an actual Buddhist retreat at a temple in Glen Spey, New York.
My visit to that Buddhist temple, as ironic as it may sound, finally convinced me that although I do have immense respect for Buddha, Jesus is my true spiritual master. After a day spent in that temple, singing, praying and listening to the teachings of peaceful Buddhist monks, I walked away feeling oddly empty. I am not referring to the blissful emptiness that Buddhists wish to achieve. I felt emotionally flat to the point of slight physical discomfort. Nothing felt right to me. I wandered out of the temple and away from the common dining tent where I was meant to enjoy dinner. I got into my car and experienced slight nausea. I couldn’t understand these feelings because during my time in the temple, I had been inspired by the beautiful statue of Buddha Shakyamuni and the other Buddhist deities. I had particularly enjoyed the singing and was pleased with myself at having committed many of the prayers to memory before the retreat. When I started my car and the radio came on, I heard a Phil Collins song, beginning to end: “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away”. I listened to each word while driving, as if transfixed. Tears poured down my face. For the first time in many years, I felt the presence of the one that I only know to call Jesus Christ. I felt that he was singing directly to me. I went back to my hotel, after picking up a giant cheeseburger and a bottle of wine, and packed up my belongings. I decided to skip the remainder of the retreat and I drove home that night. Since that time, when I meditate, I try to clear my mind first, and then I try to invite Jesus to sit with me for a little while. I have also asked him to answer my questions in dreams which I believe he has done.
As a quick aside, I’d like to point out that at two other times in my life I felt that Jesus was singing directly to me in a pop song. The first time was after experiencing guilt following an encounter with some Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists. The song was, “I Love You Just the Way You Are”. You know, the one that makes you sing, “Don’t go changin’!” The second musical message was the Stevie Wonder song, “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” after recovering from an illness and while going through a divorce. As with the Phil Collins song, I immediately felt a spiritual presence and the tears flowed freely!
All in all, I feel that my spiritual progression over the past few years has been healing and transformative. I have experienced peaks and valleys, lulls and spurts. I now have a stronger sense of spiritual identity than I ever have, as I believe that our childhood religious beliefs are, on balance, more imposed than they are realized.
I will continue to read, contemplate and benefit from the teachings of Buddha for the remainder of my life, so long as I retain my mental faculties. From Buddha, I think we can learn to gain mastery over anger, jealousy, obsessions, and many other forms of harmful attachments. Buddha can peacefully guide us to realize our interconnectedness and our collective progression on this Earth as a group of souls.
Jesus will always be the one to whom I say, “Jesus, I still have you”. When I die, I will hopefully hold the hand of one of my loved ones and also feel the presence of Jesus leading me into the mystery that lies beyond our physical lives. Jesus offers to all of us the unique lesson of Grace and of strength perfected through weakness. Like Buddha, Jesus has a unique approach to illness. He said of many an illness that the purpose was not to destroy the body but to glorify God. When the apostle Paul asked Jesus for healing, Jesus did not heal him but answered instead, “My Grace is sufficient for you, for strength is perfected in weakness”. Jesus had a prostitute as a close friend and confidante. Jesus spoke to many women in his day and showed love and acceptance to a myriad of “sinners”. He was called out by the religious leaders of his day for his disdain of the law. He was said to have healed on the Sabbath. He asked one man to come and follow him, quite controversially on the day that this man was to bury his father. He said, “Let the dead bury their own dead”. Unlike Buddha, Jesus was reported to have shown anger on several occasions. He once cursed a fig tree because it had no fruit on it at the time. He once turned tables upside down in the temple in a fit of anger because he believed that God’s sacred place was not an appropriate venue for business transactions. Similarly to Buddha, Jesus was a radical when placed in the historical context of his generation. Perhaps his most radical quote was, “Before Abraham was, I am”.
While I respect and admire any person attempting to follow a spiritual path, I identify with the voice of that radical, Jesus of Nazareth. I may not go to a church for a while. I do drink. I do swear, on occasion, and I have always loved to dance. I don’t have much use for Christian fundamentalism, or any religious fundamentalism for that matter. What I know that I know that I know, is that as Jesus says, “my sheep hear my voice” and I can proudly yell BAAAAA from my rooftop tonight or any night! Good night! And G-d Bless!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Confessions of a Transplanted Hillbilly
Have you ever had a window seat on a domestic flight? Did you happen to look down at some point once you reached cruising altitude? You know where this is going, don't you? I'm from an area that is frequently labeled "Fly-Over Country".
I do remember thinking that those airplanes looked really, really tiny when I'd see them flying above as a child. My home town is located in the Southwest corner of the Show-Me State. Joplin, Missouri is proud to be the capital of the four-state region, sharing its fancified services with residents of neighboring towns in Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas. Although I have not possessed a Missouri address or driver's license in nearly fifteen years, I still qualify as a transplanted hillbilly. You might say, "But Missouri is flat!" The Ozarks are not flat, and those hills are my cultural roots!
Sometimes it's fun to recollect the moments of my life spent in Paris, London and New York City, where my hillbilly origins managed to illuminate the cosmopolitan shadow of city life.
My baptism by fire into the realm of mundane city dwellers occurred at the tender age of 15, in a city no less glamorous than Paris! And that's the one in France, not Texas. I spent a month living with a French family in the chichi 7th Arrondissement. Oui, dans le septieme. The family was descended from nobility, no less. I remember glimpsing the French mother for the first time at the airport sporting a short spiky do, a black leather mini-dress and a pure-bred dog on a leash. I knew then that I would have to muster some chutzpah to survive those four weeks. Surprisingly, we hillbillies don't have a corresponding term for chutzpah!
Among the more notable initiation experiences of that month was my introduction to my host sister's pimp boyfriend. Apparently French nobles tend to rebel as teenagers. This preppy young man in his early 20's told me that he could get a high price for me due to my exotic Amercian hairstyle and a darker skin color than he had seen on many blondes. I think that was a polite way of telling me that Redneck women were a rarity in Paris. It is of course possible that he was not really a pimp and this was a fun ruse to play on the hillbilly freshman! My first foreign exchange experience was also my initial exposure to the subway. The very first time I rode the Paris metro I fell down when the train started moving. I didn't realize people were supposed to hold on to the bars! I was so proud to learn to balance on two feet without holding on by the end of the month. I think it changed my life forever! Another eye-opener was the plate of raw meat that arrived when I ordered Steak Tartare for the very first time. No one explained that the dish would not be cooked--my host family quite enjoyed my shocked reaction! I ate it. I eat tartare of various kinds to this day. Tripe was the one thing I would not try. I am sure there are hillbillies who enjoy pig and cow intestines but I will never be one of them. The sheer volume of wine that I was offered and gleefully consumed as a minor made each humiliating experience well worth the effort.
My next foreign exchange experience occurred at the age of 17 on a different continent. Luckily my host family in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, were much friendlier than my first Parisian acquaintances. Also a French family hailing from Paris, these folks were better able to relate to a country girl from the USA. They taught me to sing the French national anthem at the top of my lungs and are still some of my most loyal friends. I smoked my first cigarette in Abidjan, and some French expatriate boys tried unsuccessfully to teach me how to dance the Swing. My glaring hillbilly habit on this trip was a constant effort to capture the local African population on film. I took home photos of some very angry Ivorian children who must have wondered why in the hell I was gawking and acting like a novice paparazzi. These photos were published in my high school newspaper. Hillbillies back in the 1980's did not cotton to politically correct behavior, much to my sincere regret.
During college, graduate and law school I was able to continue my sophisticate initiation process in Paris and then in NYC. It's hard to say if the initiation ultimately failed or succeeded. From a culinary standpoint, I'd have to say I will now eat almost any type of seafood raw, including sea snails and live oysters. Ironically, I ate crawdads for the first time in France and not in the backwoods of my childhood. Foie gras never grossed me out and I apologize to every member of PETA for this fault. Some of the more enlightening conversations I had during these years included answering questions like, "What do people talk about in places like Missouri? Farming?", "Do you know anyone in the Ku Klux Klan?", and "Did any of your cousins marry each other?" These questions are actual quotes, and not jokes. I will not name those who asked the questions but let's just say that they were either East Coast educated collegiates who became curious after a few drinks, or French people who had been influenced by television coverage they had seen of an American wedding inside of a Wal-Mart. I truly did see this French television feature on American redneck culture, and I have to say that it was investigative journalism at its best! I honestly saw a Wal-Mart bride, but not while living in Missouri.
Fortunately for me, no one ever physically attacked me for my ignorance upon first arriving in NYC as a grad student. I did, however, have one notable clash at a late-night party. I will readily admit that the majority of southerners and midwesterners are Christian, and Protestant at that. The Catholics and Jews do quite well, but we WASPS have them fairly well outnumbered where I am from. One young man decided to take this up with me, again after having consumed a few glasses of cheap wine at some dude's apartment in the East Village. "There were no Jews where you grew up. How could you know anything about Jewish culture or history?" I answered, "Well, actually, a decent number of my neighborhood friends were Jewish and I visited the town synagogue for field trips. We learned about Jewish holidays in my grade school. The class below me had a Jewish homecoming queen. What's your point?" The guy literally pushed me outside into the hallway of the apartment building and told me that I was a racist hick and should shut up or someone might knock me out. This is not an exaggeration.
I doubt that the young man referenced in the paragraph above possessed entirely accurate knowledge of my childhood religious education, but he may have picked up on some of my politically incorrect hubris which was later uncovered during my year working as a lawyer in London. My casual boyfriend at the time was Jewish, hailing from Israel by way of Tunisia. He had both an American and an Israeli passport and liked to travel as an Israeli. It just so happened at the time that my younger sister was dating a Tunisian Muslim. My sister and her Muslim boyfriend were living in Paris while I was in London. Somehow we decided that it would be fun to spend Christmas with our Jewish and Muslim casual boyfriends in a rented house in the French countryside. My hillbilly Mom met us there and we also invited some French Catholics up for one night. This already sounds like the beginning of a bad comedy or a B horror movie, right? My sister and I said to each other, "at least they can talk about their common Tunisian background". Needless to say, it wasn't a perfectly comfortable Christmas. In the end, we skipped the midnight mass at the village cathedral because Avi and Chiheb had nearly managed to burn down the rented house. They got along quite well, but their point of bonding was getting a good fire going in the fireplace. They decided that adding some cooking oil to the already burning logs would be a good idea. We had to open every window in the house to be able to breathe, and since they made me miss church on Christmas and couldn't have cared less themselves, I had no desire to speak to either of them for the remainder of the evening. Later on, Avi had a good time grilling my French friends on the racist and classist structures inherent in French culture. Good times were had by all. That's what happens when two hillbilly sisters try to plan a religious summit. I suppose we should stick to our barbecue and church pot lucks!
In all seriousness, Fly-Over Country is little known and very misunderstood by many people living on the Coasts. Those of us who come from this area of the country are quite genetically diverse as compared to many of our East Coast peers, contrary to popular belief. The pioneers who went West upon reaching American soil did tend to shed their languages and cultures of origin more quickly than those who simply dropped their bags in New York. Irish, Italian, German, English, Polish... it didn't really matter if they could all rely upon each other to build communities in a far-flung land that had taken tremendous courage and strength to reach. My grandmother did actually travel in a covered wagon at one point. I do have Native American ancestry on both sides of my family. People do talk about going to pow wows on weekends where I am from. I can proudly say that one of my direct ancestors, coincidentally from France, fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union. The education range in my family varies widely, with two of my grandparents having gone to college, and probably at least half of my family possessing degrees beyond a B.A. or a B.S. It is true that my family members who stayed in Fly-Over Country are Republicans for the most part. It is true that we eat food such as biscuits and gravy, which I cannot ever seem to find in New York. It is also true that we don't really like it when people refer to our home of origin as Fly-Over Country. We'd prefer that the city sophisticates visit places such as the Ozarks themselves before making any cultural, much less genetic judgments! We could all stand to be a little more polite and a little less politically correct.
Yeeee-ha!! God Bless the USA.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Who enlisted in the "Mommy Wars"?
Have any of you heard or seen the term "Mommy Wars" lately? It was bandied about quite a bit several years ago. There are surely some folks who still resort to this term in describing relations between stay-at-home mothers and those who choose to, or who must work outside of the home. Leslie Morgan Steiner published the book, "Mommy Wars" in 2006. Here is the top news story link to the term "Mommy Wars", dating all the way back to 1998: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/mommywars/mommy.htm
I have always been bothered by the term and by the media's depiction of this supposedly intense conflict between two categories of women. Who really likes to be labeled or categorized in this way?
Before I had children I dabbled in academia for four years and then worked as a corporate lawyer for five years. I worked with a lot of mothers and probably slightly more single or childless women. I definitely heard a lot of negative talk about stay-at-home moms, certainly from the ivory tower mavens that instructed me in my Ph.D. program, and even more so from the senior associates and female law partners in the firms.
I heard disparaging remarks about non-working mothers even as a child. I remember my father commenting on the lack of ambition of women who choose to stay home to raise their children. It was even common to hear derisive language used to describe teachers, and this from many of the adults in my life. How many times did I hear the phrase, "If you can do, do. If you can't do, teach". You may say to yourself, "She grew up around some judgmental people!" That's most likely an accurate assessment. From a very young age I had the impression that when I reached womanhood, child-rearing and the pursuit of a lofty career were to be achieved simultaneously, or my life would be judged a failure. I took this advice to heart and during my early adult life, I simply assumed that through hard work and adept dating maneuvers, I would be able to achieve both goals. Older and distant female relatives were pointed out to me, those with children and thriving careers, and those who had only one or the other. Of course, there were the many mass media pictures painted for me as well. "Little girl, don't you want to be Superwoman when you grow up? You can look like one of Charlie's Angels and be the lady described in that Whitney Houston song, "I'm Every Woman"... you can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan".
Now I have children. My one and two year old boys are my sole occupation at the present time. How did I come to this lifestyle choice? Through illness. I developed Bell's Palsy during my first pregnancy, and was soon after diagnosed with Lyme Disease, which I was told may or may not have triggered the facial paralysis. I can honestly say that had I not experienced this traumatic health issue at the end of my first pregnancy, I would never have stayed at home to raise my boys. No matter how much I may have wanted to, my mental programming would have rejected such a decision. The drastic change in my appearance following my illness had such a negative effect on my confidence that I felt unable to return to law firm life in New York City. There are a lot of stereotypes about NYC women. Ugly is probably not one of the more common stereotypes. There are also a lot of stereotypes about New York lawyers. Tough and shrewd are common ones, but faltering confidence is generally not associated with top law school graduates. For the first time in my life, I was truly at a loss for the type of persona I should adopt. I felt like an actor with my part suddenly ripped away from me. I knew there were so many understudies just waiting to step into my former childless city lawyer life. Someone else would be getting e-mails from friends that said, "Watch out! Your life is starting to sound a lot like 'Sex in the City'!"
After almost three years raising baby boys, and an incomplete recovery from my illness, I have had a lot of time to rethink my ideas about career and mothering. I have had time to remember the many times that I made judgmental comments about women who were having difficulty balancing family and career. I made these comments simply because the struggles I saw were so rare! Many women do not have the desire, and possibly not the strength or confidence to honestly describe their experience for the benefit of younger, childless peers. I said things to fit in, and also to boost my own confidence in my future ability to do it all.
At present, I feel a lot of compassion for both stay-at-home parents and for working parents. I could never have estimated the emotional and physical changes brought about by parenthood. Experience is truly the only teacher. It is absolutely impossible to judge parenthood from the outside, never having experienced it. I don't care if you have been a nanny for ten years, or if you have 50 nieces and nephews. You just can't speak if you are not speaking from experience. To all of you people who told me that before I had kids, here's to you! Right you were.
There are many aspects of full-time parenting that I have passionately loved. There are also many sad and anxious moments I have spent thinking about what I could be accomplishing in my former profession. My decision to stay home was never meant to be a permanent one, and I have a strong belief and desire motivating me to return to work. I feel that my physical condition has improved, and more importantly, I have learned to cope with it emotionally. I also wish from my heart to use my education and skill set to benefit individuals outside of my family. Part of the reason I wish to do this is to set an example for my sons. I think that stay-at-home parents set a wonderful example in selflessness and dedication. My opinion with respect to stay-at-home parents with higher education differs slightly. If nothing else, those of us with higher education can always volunteer or reach out to the world in meaningful ways once we feel ready to do so, even if that means once the children enter high school! Higher education is a blessing and a gift and I do feel strongly that it confers a duty on those who have achieved it. Paying back student loans is only a small part of that duty!
My personal feelings on educated parents aside, I do not have any judgmental inclinations or emotions toward any person who chooses to dedicate his or her life entirely to raising children and providing a stable and healthy home environment. I say "his or her" because I am meeting increasing numbers of stay-at-home dads. I love those guys! Having fathers as well as mothers to chat with makes the park feel so much more like the office! The cultural lessons on equality and gender neutral career choices still dominate my brain, so carefully programmed during the glorious Reagan years! Isn't contradiction awesome?
I love and respect career women with children more than I ever have. I have a greater sense of the strength that lies behind the facade. I also feel immense tenderness and awe for those who have set aside their egos, material and personal ambitions to devote their lives to their children. For those who cannot put food on the table without two full-time jobs and inexpensive daycare, I feel sincere compassion and I know that I could never understand that life until living it. I wish that other options were available to those who are constantly physically and emotionally exhausted. There is nothing I could ever say or write that would make me anything but enviable or despicable to those people, in spite of my illness. I didn't have to wait tables at a 24 hour diner to feed my kids. That could have been my situation. I thank God that it was not. I hope that God will show me a way to lend strength and support to parents in every situation, for the remainder of my life. I am thankful for the lessons I have learned these past three years.
And I do wonder... are there really women consciously fighting a Mommy War? I don't think so.
I have always been bothered by the term and by the media's depiction of this supposedly intense conflict between two categories of women. Who really likes to be labeled or categorized in this way?
Before I had children I dabbled in academia for four years and then worked as a corporate lawyer for five years. I worked with a lot of mothers and probably slightly more single or childless women. I definitely heard a lot of negative talk about stay-at-home moms, certainly from the ivory tower mavens that instructed me in my Ph.D. program, and even more so from the senior associates and female law partners in the firms.
I heard disparaging remarks about non-working mothers even as a child. I remember my father commenting on the lack of ambition of women who choose to stay home to raise their children. It was even common to hear derisive language used to describe teachers, and this from many of the adults in my life. How many times did I hear the phrase, "If you can do, do. If you can't do, teach". You may say to yourself, "She grew up around some judgmental people!" That's most likely an accurate assessment. From a very young age I had the impression that when I reached womanhood, child-rearing and the pursuit of a lofty career were to be achieved simultaneously, or my life would be judged a failure. I took this advice to heart and during my early adult life, I simply assumed that through hard work and adept dating maneuvers, I would be able to achieve both goals. Older and distant female relatives were pointed out to me, those with children and thriving careers, and those who had only one or the other. Of course, there were the many mass media pictures painted for me as well. "Little girl, don't you want to be Superwoman when you grow up? You can look like one of Charlie's Angels and be the lady described in that Whitney Houston song, "I'm Every Woman"... you can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan".
Now I have children. My one and two year old boys are my sole occupation at the present time. How did I come to this lifestyle choice? Through illness. I developed Bell's Palsy during my first pregnancy, and was soon after diagnosed with Lyme Disease, which I was told may or may not have triggered the facial paralysis. I can honestly say that had I not experienced this traumatic health issue at the end of my first pregnancy, I would never have stayed at home to raise my boys. No matter how much I may have wanted to, my mental programming would have rejected such a decision. The drastic change in my appearance following my illness had such a negative effect on my confidence that I felt unable to return to law firm life in New York City. There are a lot of stereotypes about NYC women. Ugly is probably not one of the more common stereotypes. There are also a lot of stereotypes about New York lawyers. Tough and shrewd are common ones, but faltering confidence is generally not associated with top law school graduates. For the first time in my life, I was truly at a loss for the type of persona I should adopt. I felt like an actor with my part suddenly ripped away from me. I knew there were so many understudies just waiting to step into my former childless city lawyer life. Someone else would be getting e-mails from friends that said, "Watch out! Your life is starting to sound a lot like 'Sex in the City'!"
After almost three years raising baby boys, and an incomplete recovery from my illness, I have had a lot of time to rethink my ideas about career and mothering. I have had time to remember the many times that I made judgmental comments about women who were having difficulty balancing family and career. I made these comments simply because the struggles I saw were so rare! Many women do not have the desire, and possibly not the strength or confidence to honestly describe their experience for the benefit of younger, childless peers. I said things to fit in, and also to boost my own confidence in my future ability to do it all.
At present, I feel a lot of compassion for both stay-at-home parents and for working parents. I could never have estimated the emotional and physical changes brought about by parenthood. Experience is truly the only teacher. It is absolutely impossible to judge parenthood from the outside, never having experienced it. I don't care if you have been a nanny for ten years, or if you have 50 nieces and nephews. You just can't speak if you are not speaking from experience. To all of you people who told me that before I had kids, here's to you! Right you were.
There are many aspects of full-time parenting that I have passionately loved. There are also many sad and anxious moments I have spent thinking about what I could be accomplishing in my former profession. My decision to stay home was never meant to be a permanent one, and I have a strong belief and desire motivating me to return to work. I feel that my physical condition has improved, and more importantly, I have learned to cope with it emotionally. I also wish from my heart to use my education and skill set to benefit individuals outside of my family. Part of the reason I wish to do this is to set an example for my sons. I think that stay-at-home parents set a wonderful example in selflessness and dedication. My opinion with respect to stay-at-home parents with higher education differs slightly. If nothing else, those of us with higher education can always volunteer or reach out to the world in meaningful ways once we feel ready to do so, even if that means once the children enter high school! Higher education is a blessing and a gift and I do feel strongly that it confers a duty on those who have achieved it. Paying back student loans is only a small part of that duty!
My personal feelings on educated parents aside, I do not have any judgmental inclinations or emotions toward any person who chooses to dedicate his or her life entirely to raising children and providing a stable and healthy home environment. I say "his or her" because I am meeting increasing numbers of stay-at-home dads. I love those guys! Having fathers as well as mothers to chat with makes the park feel so much more like the office! The cultural lessons on equality and gender neutral career choices still dominate my brain, so carefully programmed during the glorious Reagan years! Isn't contradiction awesome?
I love and respect career women with children more than I ever have. I have a greater sense of the strength that lies behind the facade. I also feel immense tenderness and awe for those who have set aside their egos, material and personal ambitions to devote their lives to their children. For those who cannot put food on the table without two full-time jobs and inexpensive daycare, I feel sincere compassion and I know that I could never understand that life until living it. I wish that other options were available to those who are constantly physically and emotionally exhausted. There is nothing I could ever say or write that would make me anything but enviable or despicable to those people, in spite of my illness. I didn't have to wait tables at a 24 hour diner to feed my kids. That could have been my situation. I thank God that it was not. I hope that God will show me a way to lend strength and support to parents in every situation, for the remainder of my life. I am thankful for the lessons I have learned these past three years.
And I do wonder... are there really women consciously fighting a Mommy War? I don't think so.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Twirting and Facecheating?
Since the advent of e-mail, texting, IM and social networking sites, people have been moaning and fretting over the possibility of increased flirting, emotional affairs and - gasp! - sexual escapades.
Does this reaction stem from an actual upswing in cheating, or from a suddenly more public and accessible forum for tendencies and behaviors that have always existed? In other words, do you really think you or people you know are more likely to flirt and cheat now than they would be in an environment free of electronic media? I do not! I would not! And neither would the people I know. At least not anymore than we would were we living in say, the 18th century.
The indiscretions of public figures have fueled this critical commentary over the use of electronic media for social purposes. Mark Sanford is an obvious recent example. Perhaps a story thrown in from a friend of a friend who claims that his cousin left his wife for a woman he met on MySpace may have added to the uproar. This is great fodder for psychologists, journalists, and all who peddle social commentary. You have undoubtedly seen evidence of this chatter from your own sources, but if not, here's a frivolous little link for you: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31616617/ns/today_relationships/ There is even a hyperlink on this page entitled "Text message flirting do's and don'ts". Really?? Come on...
Are we, as a culture, truly so obsessed with policing our verbal interactions that it has come to this level of pettiness? Does this sort of attitude reflect on how comfortable we feel with ourselves? Is it another example of self-consciousness taken to extremes? I think so. How often do we say something casually that we later re-examine? I know I do it a lot! Before computers ever existed, people said, "I put my foot in my mouth". We have always been self-conscious to a certain extent in our communication with one another, but I see no reason to amplify that tendency just because texts, e-mails and online posts are "print media". I have heard people say, "Once it's in print you can't take it back!" Oh, really? Then how do so many contracts end up in court? How are divorces possible? How do teenagers break up through a text message and get back together the next day on Facebook? Why is literature the subject of interpretation and open discussion for centuries after it is published? It is true that in a legal sense a written contract is of more weight than a verbal one, but is a wink or a slap on the bum more casual than "xoxo" in a text message? I think not. That's the real point I'm driving at. Spoken words and physical touch hold much more sway over sexual behavior than written media ever could. Why obsess over the do's and don'ts of electronic communication anymore than we would over our daily physical interactions?
If people with poor impulse control want to cheat, they are going to find a way to do it, with or without a Blackberry or Iphone. Are any of you fans of the show "Mad Men"? The content of that show is 50% extramarital affairs and it is set in the 1960's. I actually admire the show's realism in its depiction of marital angst and the human tendency to seek out greener pasture. Most people aren't proud of this type of behavior, but hey, it goes back to the Bible! David and Bathsheba? And how many wives did Solomon have? Anyhoo...
I fear that obsessing over and policing casual interaction between ourselves, whether it be physical or electronic, is more likely to lead to cheating than is having a neutral attitude about it all. After all, doesn't temptation start in the mind? People become tempted to sin when they find themselves thinking overly much about a certain activity or person. Let's keep the neurosis to a minimum, shall we? So you spent a little too long talking to your opposite sex co-worker about his personal life at lunch. So what? Let it go and stop thinking about making out with him! Bonding happens. Maybe you e-mailed your ex about a personal problem you knew they would understand. Again, so what? Do we really need to live our lives in such a rigid way, fearing that at every turn lies a carnal temptation? This type of attitude plagues a lot of people who suffer from religious dysfunction. Ironically, they are the ones who always end up cheating! Does Ted Haggard ring a bell?
Just for fun, and to close, have a look at this list of evangelist sexual scandals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_televangelist_scandals
Now how much do you really feel like reigning in your Facebook activity? Wanna spend some more time examining your texting etiquette? Just try not to get too worked up about it.
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