The Spider Prey Paradigm Shift

As a kid, I was immensely allergic to mosquito bites. The Hives of Wrath reached the point that my mother was once wrongly suspected of abusing me.



Suffice it to say that I grew up loathing them. For a kid in a family of campers, mosquitoes were the Enemy. This massive monstrosity in Manitoba no doubt would have sent me into hysterics:



In my mind, a flyswatter was actually a mosquito-squisher. It was justification to me that the world hated them as much as I did. Or more - because, despite how much I despised them, I was rarely able to kill them myself.

During my teenaged years, when my skeeter-hunting skills (e.g. height, eyesight, and reflexes) should have been at their peak, I once enlisted my grandmother to take down a mosquito in the bathroom because I couldn't bring myself to bare my flesh in the shower knowing that that sucker was out there.

Even then the irony of that scene did not escape me.



Just the same, it was her attack model that I attempted to replicate years later. One fateful day, I was alone in my apartment and a sizeable mosquito happened along, hovering near the ceiling.

I knew it was only a matter of time. It was either me or that mosquito - and I wasn't keen on letting it be me.

I put on my big girl panties and wielded a rolled-up magazine, dreading what I would have to do as soon as it flew within reach. I tried in vain to talk myself into a murderous rage. That blood-sucking beast was going down. I had to believe it. I took a breath and raised my weapon.

Suddenly, a stealthy spider that must have been waiting in its super-secret Spider Cave in the corner of the ceiling launched outward and snatched the mosquito mid-air.

One wrestling mass, together they plummeted down to the ledge below, where I had an art print and some handouts I'd recently received.



I don't usually keep crucifixes or images of Christ on the cross - I think this may be the only one I've ever had, certainly the only one I've ever placed somewhere readily visible. And now it was serving as the backdrop to the scene unfolding before me.



Once it ascended to the center of Jesus' body, the spider turned the mosquito corpse over and over to embalm it and secure it there.



Of course I could appreciate the natural, biological drive for a spider to kill a mosquito, and I don't hold it responsible for any malicious act.

But you've got to admit that this spider looks vaguely villainous:



And it could have carried off its kill anywhere. Really, it could have. But instead, it had an acute sense of biblical irony.



I learned at an early age that "spiders are the farmer's friend" and that we were to permit them to live in our home, or else release them to the wild. I was a really big fan of spiders when I made the connection that they killed mosquitoes (see above illustration of childhood), and by college I was nominated resident Spider Liberator.

But this experience was by no means a matter of sympathizing with the poor little once-living creature that served as another living creature's food and sustenance. That lesson is a story for another day.

Rather, I was filled with a bizarre and personally unprecedented reverence for the mosquito as an innocent.

Yes, I understood that its death served a delicious purpose for the spider that was brazen enough to catch it mid-air. (P.S., I'd never seen one do that before, but I guess it beats the presumably painstaking process of web-weaving.) But witnessing this entire interaction - and remembering what I had set out to do - rendered me stunned.

Perhaps not for the first time, but the first with such impact, I realized the power I held as a human; realized my inability to comprehend the consequences of the actions I was physically capable of doing. I remembered that the people who actively killed Jesus were people nonetheless; that the people who actively do any harm are people nonethless. I envisioned countless victims of violence in cases in which the offenders had somehow justified their actions: genocide, hate crimes, revenge, retributive human justice.

This experience did not mysteriously transform me into a perfectly harmless being incapable of inflicting pain or making errors in judgment. But something happened that day that forever altered my perspective on the human impulse to judge, to speculate, to assign value, to take fate into one's own hands.

And I just can't erase the image from my mind - a creature whose species has only caused me discomfort and taken my very blood from my veins, hanging lifelessly on a cross alongside the savior of my soul.

Open Doors

One winter night during my first year of undergrad, I began to walk home from the shopping center, exasperated with the wind and cold and a few petty things that had happened while I was out.

The last utter annoyance was the way cars had twice barreled through the crosswalk just ahead of me, despite my usually successful New Yorker's "Pedestrian's Rights" mentality. I didn't so much as feel validated in my aggravation, muttering to myself with my scarf wrapped around my mouth, as I just savored the warmth of my breath remaining around my covered lips, but venting still felt good.

As I passed the bus stop, a bus picked up the one waiting passenger and left. Immediately, another bus pulled up to me and the doors opened. I explained to the driver that I wasn't waiting for the bus, but he asked if I was headed for the college and offered me a free ride. I hadn't planned on it, I didn't mean to wait for it, but there it was.

I gave him the Are-You-For-Real eyebrow, but, feeling calm and reassured, found my feet climbing the steps. He said he was going in that direction anyway, so we would both get where we needed to go and I could avoid the cold.

When I thanked him, he told me, "Don't thank me. Thank Him," and pointed above him. "He's given me so much," he said. "It's good to pass it on."

Without my prompting, he drove past the main entrance to the college and stopped at the bottom of the hill at the half-hidden entrance near the dining hall. I went straight to dinner and never enjoyed a bowl of campus soup more than I did that night.

I called my mother since she had recently had a number of similar experiences - random acts of kindness - in the midst of her father's illness, and I almost cried as I told her.

It's the same feeling as receiving a visit or a note from a friend, or sharing a mutual embrace, or seeing a student I've never met smile at me in passing and wondering if they've confused me with someone they do know or if they just felt like smiling. It's cheesy or corny or whatever cynicism and too-coolness makes us think about it, but it's the kind of thing that lifts us before we hit bottom.

Good things come back to us. They even come to us when we aren't sure that we deserve them. Look for them and you'll see.


Some of you may remember this story from January 2007, years before AmenAbility was even a twinkle in my eye, but I wanted to tell it again. I will also refer back to it in an upcoming post and decided that this was simplest.

Prove You Are Human!

Does anyone else find it somewhat ironic that our computers (human-programmed, but electronic droid machines nonetheless) are demanding that we prove our humanity?

I've had some fun with this. I've noticed that many bloggers and commenters enjoy providing creative definitions for the "word verifications" that test their human status in order to post replies. They often take it to the next level and use the usually imaginary word in a sentence. What a great way to have fun with something that is otherwise tedious!

For example, the zany people reading Cake Wrecks never cease to amuse:

W V - snetasa = a magic word to keep from sneezing at the wrong moment. (ilze)

WV - imast -- virtual ship spar? (Di)

WV: upses -- the direction in which Smeagol/Gollum moves in order to increase his altitude. (ClaireBear)

WV: foripi. I need to stop laughing foripi my pants. (elissa)

Then when I opened an account with BlogHer.com, I discovered that the art of the captcha code in other cyber spheres is even trickier. (And, speaking as a "word person," much less entertaining.)



Oh, they'll tell you how to do it.



But they aren't giving up the answers! That would be cheating your Humanity Test.




All those math teachers who told us that we would need math in the "real world" beyond school... Who knew they'd be right?

Of course, there was another recent occasion when the bots and I battled... and the bots won.

I mistyped my email username, but apparently my error was still someone else's email username, and the system did its thing and asked me why the heck my username and password didn't match up. It had me retype the password.

Several times.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong again. I was baffled. Finally, I had the option to answer my security question.



At which point I realized that either someone in Russia had broken into my email account, or I had done something stupid.

Thank you, Google droid. My humanity owes you one.

Roman Catholic: The Entertainment Factor

by C.M. Schott, contributor

Whenever something more-than-natural is afoot in film and TV—and often even when it isn’t—the protagonists turn Catholic. I had this realization brought home to me recently when, during an episode of Heroes, of all things, Peter Patrelli found himself in St. Patrick’s Cathedral trying (not quite in vain) to strike a bargain with Jesus.

This scene led me to think of so many situations in film, TV, literature, and music when the “je ne sais quoi” of Roman Catholicism seemed irresistible to artists: there are fallen-away Catholic characters like Sydney in The Pretender (remember that series?) and Grissom in CSI; sci-fi is rife with religious metaphor—even the “Gridlock” episode of Doctor Who features heavily Christological (if not Catholic) themes; and the explanation for all things Supernatural and Buffy always comes around to some (usually distorted) echo of Catholic dogma. And for that matter, can we forget the Jewish-born, irreligious Paul Simon with his “crayon rosary” and the poet’s crooked rhyme reading, “Holy holy is his sacrament”?

I think, before we pronounce a knee-jerk condemnation of the travesty that mainstream art usually makes of Catholic doctrine, it’s worth asking what exactly attracts even atheists to the Church when they deal with things greater than man—to the Church specifically, not just to theism or even to Christianity in general. The answers, I think, are not just positive but even hopeful, despite all appearances.

The obvious answer, which leads us into the more meaningful one, is that Catholics still do creepy.

Exhibit A: exorcism.



Exhibit B: well, do we really need an exhibit B? Let’s face it: Catholicism is second only to Voodoo when it comes to believing in things that go bump in the night. And despite whatever bad feelings remain toward Catholics from our brother Protestants or from mainstream entertainment at large, Catholicism is just more socially acceptable than Voodoo. More than that, it is somehow at once eerily foreign and deeply familiar, as a little of Catholicism runs in the veins of every social element with roots in the Middle Ages and beyond. The Catholic faith is an open playing field for entertaining situations that butt man up against anything that is bigger than himself.

Of course, sometimes that “bigger-than-man” opponent is nothing more than a corrupt hierarchy. We do have to admit that the Church plays no second fiddle when it comes to being a long-lived institution that has, at times, suffered legendary bouts with corruption, greed, and all the most human institutional failings. It provides a rather broad target for iconoclastic artists. See in this category: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kingdom of Heaven (or for that matter practically any crusade movie), and perhaps most of all The Da Vinci Code.

This use of the Church I feel to be (if saddening) a generally pedestrian anti-institutionalism, often having less to do with the Church itself than with the modern individualist taste for conspiracy theory. It must serve as a reminder to us, as members of the Church, to be always on our guard against corruption and the corrosive influence of power and human greed; it reminds us that we must present more than just our personal incarnations of Christianity to the world but rather we must represent the whole Church in our lives; but I don’t find much in this anti-institutionalism that has to do with the souls of its advocates.

What interests me is when the “bigger-than-man” opponent is indeed supernatural. We could go back further than Dracula, no doubt, to find instances of the ritual and beliefs of Catholicism being brought to bear as weapons against preternatural evil, but why bother? Here we have it in spades: Dracula, the menace-cum-seducer, is powerless before the Eucharist. In the same way, the demons in TV’s Supernatural are subject to the ritual of exorcism, and in that old Schwarzenegger movie End of Days, where he is of course single-handedly responsible for staving off the apocalypse, the scene they showed in all the previews was our hero on his knees in a Catholic church (to be interrupted by a dragon-Satan bursting through the floor, but more on that later).



When the evil moving about is not manmade but is an arm of the devil himself, the storehouse for solutions is inevitably the Catholic Church. And I believe it’s not just because of the ancient, mysterious ritual that surrounds Church proceedings, but rather, I think it is because Catholicism still admits to something many “religious people” have sidelined in favor of more appeasing and pragmatic approaches to spirituality: we still believe in ultimates. Ultimate truth and ultimate falsehood, ultimate evil (whence the interest from cinema), but most importantly, ultimate good. All these, working actively in today’s world just as they did in the days of the Bible. We may believe in possession, but we also believe in miracles. Grappling with the devil we have the angels.

That’s what entertainment so often lacks: why its demons, ghosts, and monsters leave us always a little dissatisfied, a little unconvinced, a little sheepish at how cheesy it all is. When our salvation rests on the success of a human being—whether unlikely hero or dashing heartthrob, whether played by Keanu Reeves or Sarah Michelle Geller—salvation always seems to fall short. At the very least, it’s temporary, at best lasting until the next sequel. Without the real ultimate good—let’s go ahead and say aloud the word “God”—the ultimate evil will never ring true, and victory will always feel incomplete. There’s just something woefully inadequate (or, worse, comically ridiculous) about arming the Governator with a grenade-launcher and thinking he could conceivably win out over the powers of darkness. Without God, the devil is a dragon to be charged at, or a cheat snatching at models and action figures; without heaven, hell is just an uncomfortable place to lodge somebody for the duration of a two-part episode. The sham is exciting enough, but it always leaves us wanting more than it could give.

Yet, that is exactly why I see such hope in art today. People seem to find it easier to believe in evil than in good, yet isn’t the draw of a compelling demon or vampire at least in part the secret desire for its salvation? If the good-versus-evil shadowplay of media leaves its consumers dissatisfied, might it not lead them to question what it is they really wanted in the first place? And what they really want (as much as even Christians would often like to deny it these days) is Christ. And he may be more politically correct in a church where “Jesus is your friend,” but he is all we could ever want when he is not only a friend but a lord, flanked by his angels and riding the clouds of heaven to harrow hell. When the world abandoned the hierarchy it lost something of the hero as well.

Popular movies and books and music appeal to the romantic in us, even if it is only to try and quash romance with cynicism. It is the romantic that wants happy endings without corniness and wants evil punished without gray areas. That’s why I think Catholicism always shows up in these movies: it is a romantic religion in which there are weapons to fight against what goes bump in the night (the things children recognize naturally and are only convinced don’t exist by a self-confident and jaded adult culture). It is a faith which promises a dawn without shadow. And at the same time it is a religion hard-as-nails (nine-inch nails, in fact) in which there are no excuses for not at least trying to be a hero. All roads can lead to God, and that is why when I look at entertainment these days I take more pleasure—even joy—than I take offense.

Unfortunately, of course, even if all roads can lead to God, it doesn’t mean they do. When Schwarzenegger’s kneeling plea for help is answered by the thunderous entrance of a monster, when the promise of the first seasons of Supernatural falls flat because it turns out that God is on vacation, all that potential I feel building in the set-up disappears in a puff of cynical cinema-smoke. I don’t know if there is room in the film world for a dogmatically correct Dracula, or in the TV world for a theologically sound Buffy or True Blood. I half doubt it (for what would those shows be if everybody kept their clothes on?).

But there is room for ultimate good alongside ultimate evil—Lewis and Tolkien (and their immensely successful recent film renditions) have proven that. And perhaps there is a role for entertainment in salvation, even if it serves aesthetics ahead of religion: if what people see reminds them that they really do want someone to save them—if it touches that deep-seeded desire for something that is both more real and more epic than CGI demons and their grubby gladiatorial opponents—then people of faith must declare the name of the savior. Art is already pointing its consumers upward, however inadvertently: let us stand along the roadside to open the gate, direct them toward heaven, and—pardon the expression—evangelize the hell out of them.


C.M. Schott likes blockbusters probably more than she should, and likes serious cinema “less than half as well as it deserves.” She is a student of literature but moonlights as a movie fan, music enthusiast, and (as of this post) a freelance blogger.


* Photos link to online sources. All rights reserved; no infringement is intended. AmenAbility.blogspot.com is a not-for-profit blog.

'N Syncretism: The Boy Band of Religion

I'm increasingly interested in interfaith work, improving relations between groups of differing beliefs and traditions, and encouraging peace and collaborative efforts. (The environmental justice movement is a prime example of people seeking and discovering "common ground." Check out GreenFaith, Interfaith Partners for the Environment, based in New Jersey.)

But from discussion of interfaith collaboration often sprouts mention of syncretism.

Religious syncretism is the blending of different beliefs and practices into one new Assimilation Beast. The Melting Pot Model, if you will, rather than the Salad Bowl Model, which is my ideal edible analogy for religious peace - as well as for America, the context in which this imagery is more commonly used.



Syncretism has occurred countless times throughout history between all different traditions. It can be an element of exploration or inclusion of new ideas. It can be a result of cultural conquest - not necessarily even a reflection of strength in numbers and "majority rules," but of otherwise dominant, more "persuasive" culture.

Sometimes peace-seekers commend blending, perhaps the way that Boyzone wants the world to "turn out coffee-colored people by the score." Some appreciate the diversity and long for less nominal, homogeneous unity.

Sometimes people are "accused" of syncretism as an offense. In Shalom, Salaam, Peace, a great interfaith book for dialogue between the Abrahamic religions, Allison Stokes speaks of a minister who was thus accused and nearly lost his position in the church.

Judgment of that particular case is beyond the scope of my own ability and authority.

But here is what I think about syncretism:

It's the boy band of religion.

It seems like a good idea (at least to somebody), so they mastermind a group. Someone coaches them until they not only sound eerily harmonious but nearly indistinguishable from one another. Most of their music is in a major key and their lyrics never develop far beyond trite declarations of love. Cue cultic following and media attention.

Then the member bios come out, and you wonder who drew the short stick to get stuck with a favorite color that none of them actually like. Unable to morph into one cohesive entity, they have no choice but to exploit the individuality of the members. They follow unwritten laws like the Power Ranger Principle - that if they're a team whose members just happen to be differently empowered, brightly colored beasts, they will drum up a lot of interest. The Army Wives series and the Barbie company are similarly adept at this strategy.


(I had this realization thanks to an image on Tickets For Two.)


(Meanwhile - Mattel, can we talk?)

Anyway, after they've used their combined powers to defeat Lord Zedd, they suffer a schism. They annul their collaborative union and go their separate ways, and somebody works through rehab and somebody comes out of the closet and somebody goes on to make a solo album and somebody marries a fan-girl and even though no one remembers the last one's name they seem to recall that his favorite color was yellow and he liked liturgical dance.

In light of all that, or in spite of it, I have a theory.

I believe that every human alive or having lived has something to teach someone else - something significant, and often intensely personal for either teacher or taught. Or both.

I believe that interfaith and intercultural peace rest not in syncretism, but rather in learning itself. Learning just one thing from every other person one encounters. Learning one fact, one practice, one habit, one truth, one hope, one idea, one question that either transforms or informs one's perspective, if even just to fortify a view already held. Not necessarily taking up what is learned. Just learning it; respecting the person who taught it.

We need not all practice alike, believe alike, live alike. Some amount of influence and assimilation may happen, but it need not be forced.

In the film Chocolat, Père Henri preaches: "I think we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do - by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include."

But I don't think that entails syncretism: I think that would mean denying authenticity, denying ourselves the ability to believe in a way that Père Henri's message does not encourage. I think it is not about creating a single world religion that denies, resists, and excludes different expressions of spirituality. Rather, it is embracing, creating, and including others however we can, knowing that we may not understand them or agree with them perfectly well, and still accepting that as a foundation on which to build peace.

This is my personal interfaith creed: I believe I will learn something transformative or informative from every person with whom I share a conversation, and from many more with whom I may never speak.

Perhaps someone someday will prove it wrong.

But if that becomes the case, then I imagine that I will have much more to mull over than the basic idea that I had been wrong about this philosophy.

I'm Dominican (The Thomas Aquinas Tango)

Apparently the Creativity Monster took hold of me during my church history studies this week, and this is the result.

I'm sorry that the Serious Posts thing didn't last extraordinarily long, but I hope you can forgive me since, really, this song from the "Scrubs" musical (the only episode of the show I've seen - thank you, YouTube and Curtis) is entirely wonderful on its own and worth every moment of allegedly wasted time.

Besides, for those of you studying Thomas Aquinas, the parody will be an upbeat review. Blame it on my high school science teachers who made up songs as teaching tools.

Now, imagine, if you will, Thomas Aquinas and I in an intense tango sequence. He's already dead, of course, but sort of alive in a studying-church-history kind of way. See, look how lively he is just thinking about dancing with me:



And in this case, pronounce "Augustine" as the British Au-GUS-tin, even though this usually doesn't matter because, as the prof says, he is sooo dead!

Lyrics below best read after this video:



"I'm Dominican"
Or, The Thomas Aquinas Tango

"I've had it up to here, so let me make it very clear,
Because I swear I'll never clue you in again.
Every time that you profess that I am Benedictine--"

"Yes?"

"For the last time, Kim, I'm Dominican!"

"Don't make a big to-do. I was simply testing you."

"Then why'd you say my accent sounds 'Cistercian'?"

"Tom, you know I know the truth."

"Well, I need a little proof.
So list all you've learnt about me in that class again."

"Uh. Let's see.
Your name is Thomas, 'last name' Aquinas.
You're a priest, a patron saint and - wait, I've got it - Franciscan..."

"Kim!"

"Ignatian...? Well, you must admit, you monks sure have a lot of sects."

"Tell me, what's my sainthood fame?"

"OK, I'm tired of this game.
Let's forget it. I give up. I guess you win again!
But it's not just me who gets mixed up
By all this strange monastic stuff."

"Sorry, even I know, he's Dominican."

"Did I die in Fossanova or in Michigan?
How long before I lived did Jesus fish for men?
Were my writings e'er inspired by Augustine?
Tell me, am I Benedictine or Dominican?"

"The thing is, students know dumb facts,
Like your birth just East-Southeast of Rome:
Year twelve twenty-five.
And that is why our brains are maxed,
And there's no room for things like doctrine or theology."

"Well, thank you for that glimpse into the minds of seminarians."

"Let's talk about your life and how you first became Dominican."

"Have you read some of my work?"

"Yeah, it made me go berserk...
But I liked the part 'bout proving God's existence."

"God's experienced like heat,
Not just wafers that you eat."

"I guess warmth would make sense to Dominicans.
...And Franciscans."

"Kim!"

"But you're Dominican!"

Sex Selection: No More Disappointments

Earlier in the semester in our Religion and the Social Process class, we discussed sexism, in the midst of which I came across this controversial article from The Guardian (UK), April 2010.

Although the procedure is limited to only certain countries, including the U.S., parents have the (expensive) ability to choose the sex of a future child. Interestingly, there is no remarkable sexist split, that one is preferred more frequently to another, as may be expected for any fathomable reason (for instance, because boys traditionally carry on a family name). Boys and girls are 'requested' at similar rates.



Reasons people choose such a procedure are varied: from preventing passing on an illness in the couple's genetics that is sex-specific, to already having had one or more children of one sex and wanting one of a different sex - guaranteed on the next try.




One mother with sons was "tired" of walking down a street and seeing pink dresses in windows and knowing that she didn't have a daughter to wear them. Would her maternal urges have been satiated were her sons to decide that they preferred to wear pink dresses as opposed to the presumably non-pink, non-dressy clothing that they had been given as growing boys?

If the twin girls she had due to this procedure eventually grew "tired" of tea parties and dress-up - perhaps beginnning to imitate their brothers or do other activities not widely considered "feminine," would Mom feel like it had been a wasted effort? Would she be simply content that she got to buy a few pink dresses while the girls were toddlers?

Would she learn to love her daughters as the individual beings they are, regardless of what they wear?

Regardless of the fact that they are female?




I realize it is perhaps unjust for me to raise even hypothetical questions in this accusatory light, and I intend these families no harm. But it hurts me as a daughter to think that my parents might love me because they already had a son, or because I allowed them to have one of each. It hurts to think not only that, if my parents had preferred one sex or the other, I could have disappointed them in my very birth, but also that we live in a world in which people aim to evade disappointment rather than overcome it. It hurts to imagine this as the foundation of any child's life.

Because I was born both a girl and seven years after my brother, neither of which I could control, my parents placed us in the two bedrooms of our old apartment while they slept on a pull-out couch. When I think of that time, I think most about the sacrifices that our parents made just for the sake of our privacy, a right that everyone does not even have, let alone as children. I'm sure it crossed their minds at some point that it would have been convenient in at least that circumstance to have had two children of the same sex and perhaps closer in age, but I also like to think that it did not make them regret having the son and daughter that they had.

I'm sure one of the aforementioned article's points of greatest impact is the stunning advances we're seeing in medicine, and not only the impact on personal health but the effect on autonomy.

But autonomy means you have a choice, and I think there's a far greater one implied than determining the sex of one's child. From my perspective, these are the questions that we face in light of sex-selection:

What are we communicating to children (and to others) about the relationship between parent and child?

What notion of the relationship between parent and child have we come to believe?

Are children accessories? Can we tailor them to our liking? Can we coordinate them with our lifestyles, our decor, our pets?




Are children singularly a parent's life decision?



Or do we acknowledge the impact that every child, every person has on countless people every day?

Do we acknowledge that each one of us is a part of a greater community, and not only an isolated being in a family?

Are children to be constructed to our liking, or do they serve some other purpose beyond satisfying parental instincts?

Of course, I understand the complexity of this entire issue extends far beyond all of this, so let me be clear:

I am not speaking to the classist privilege inherent to sex-selection.

I am not speaking to the selection made to spare a child a potential ailment.

I am not speaking to the debate as to whether this is all an example of humans "playing God."

I am not speaking to the extent that God might be involved in these parental longings and scientific procedures, or whether or not it is indeed God's will that Mr. and Mrs. Jonesing go out of their way to ensure the biological sex of their baby.

Each of these topics could fill a post in its own right.

Yet I find the fact that this article could declare as its subheading (facetiously or not) "No more disappointments" to be a far more potent and detrimental point. This is the stuff of our conscience and our consciousness, folks. This is not just ("just"?) a debate about elite privilege or universal free will. This is immensely internal.

Supporting sex selection (or any fetal-specifier, for that matter) as a means of parental satisfaction has serious implications for distorting the expression and experience of parental love.

It reshapes the image of humanity that we pass along to the generations for whom such science - and more - will be a reality for the entirety of their lives.

Instead of embracing the individuals entering the world, it tells them, "We constructed you. Don't disappoint us."

The Course Registration Song

On a lighter note: a song parody!

I realize recent posts in particular would suggest that AmenAbility has become something of a Serious Blog (or at least a Bloglet that may one day grow up to be Serious). But I'd hate to abandon the whimsical nature that got me through the initial transition to grad school and, let's face it, is getting me through these last few weeks of term.

So please allow me a moment to surrender to the whim and break out into parody. The vaguely serious stuff will be back soon enough.

ALSO, perhaps the best and most educational realization from writing this parody: The Chipmunk Song is a waltz. Who knew?

(Of course, I've just discovered the new rocked-out version, which is decidedly not a waltz.)

Lyrics below are best read after this video (or this one from Look Who's Talking Now, despite that it runs too short):



Spoken:

All right you Drewids! Ready to sing your song?
-I'll say we are!
-Yeah! Let's sing it now!
Okay, Simon Peter?
-Okay!
Okay, Theodor Geisel?
-Okay!
Okay, John Calvin? Calvin? CALVIN!
-OKAY!

Registration time is near:
Time for stress yet time for cheer.
Can't believe Fall's almost done.
Five terms still after this one.
What to plan for Jan and spring?
Wish I could take everything!
Course list is now up to read...
Watch us cause a stampede!

Okay, fellas, get ready. That was very good, Simon Peter.
-Naturally.
Very good, Theodor Geisel.
-[laughter/nonsensical words]
Ah, Calvin, you were a little flat, watch it. Ah, Calvin. Calvin. CALVIN!
-OKAY!

Want Bib Lit: it speaks to me.
I don't! That's all Greek to me.
Course list is now up to read-
Which courses do I need?
What to plan for Jan and spring?
Think I'll take everything!

Very good, boys.
-Let's sing it again!
-Yeah, let's sing it again!
No, that's enough, let's not overdo it.
-What do you mean overdo it?
-We want to sing it again!
Now wait a minute, boys...
-Why can't we sing it again?
Calvin, cut that out... Theodor, just a minute. Simon, will you cut that out? Boys...!



Note: Simon Peter, Theodor Geisel, and John Calvin are not real Drew Theological students' names but are actually pseudonyms and in this context reflect little to nothing about the historical figures with which they might be associated.

How to Fail in an Emergency

This is one of the most embarrassing and humbling of my life experiences that I also believe to be worth sharing. Embarrassing because of my thoughts and actions at the time. Worth sharing, I hope, in spite of them.

One day, while I was working as a porter for a cleaning company in New York City and canvasing the sidewalk for trash, a drunkard called out to me.

"Hey, wanna go out with me?"

He was sprawled out on the steps leading up to 2 Penn Plaza. Positioned between Madison Square Garden, the taxi stop, and the entrance to Penn Station, he was in just about everyone's path. Six empty beer bottles accompanied him in disarray.



His lips bulged around crooked teeth. His short hair was tousled; his clothing smeared with the grime of the City That Never Sleeps. Travelers, entertainment seekers, and business employees bustled around us.

When I realized he'd addressed me, I mumbled, "Uh. No, thanks," and went back to sweeping up cigarette butts and ticket stubs.

"C'mon, go to dinner with me. Just once or twice."

I imagined my acquaintance picking out something tasty from a dumpster around the corner. I imagined him falling over himself here on the steps. But I didn't imagine what he did next.

He raised his arm and sort of chuckled. "My hand is bleeding."

"Oh, my gosh!" I cried, surely seeming hysterical compared to his far-too-casual demeanor. His hand was absolutely covered in blood, a painful sight no matter what the size of the actual wound. "Are you okay? How did that happen?" I was genuinely startled and sympathetic. But I closed none of the distance between us.

"I got beat up."

I must have subconsciously decided that what he needed first and foremost was to get cleaned up. I looked around at the nearby buildings, trying to remember the way to the nearest public restroom. I imagined myself sneaking him into our employee bathroom in the industrial depths of Penn Plaza. Then I imagined my supervisor's response to that bright idea, and the proverbial light bulb flickered and died.

I chased after a co-worker just a bit down the block. As the two of us tried, as usual, to work through our slight language barrier, I told him about the bleeding man on the steps and asked what we should do. He said something dismissive, perhaps frustrated with either the problem I'd posed to him or trying to communicate with such a frantic and monolingual mess.

By the time I spotted another co-worker, the premises' security staff were walking across the plaza toward the man, who by this point had slumped over a bit more onto the sidewalk. I was utterly relieved that someone had alerted security, and even more so when the police and an ambulance arrived, but also utterly ashamed - ashamed that I hadn't thought to call an official of any kind. Ashamed that I saw a bleeding man and my instinct said, "Clean him," rather than, "Heal him." Ashamed that I saw him as dirty before I'd even seen the wound.

After that event, I promised myself that I'd do whatever the conscious part of me could to react better in any sort of medical predicament. I've tried to remember that it's only in these experiences that we can learn how to respond to them.

And I've been listening for that voice of utmost wisdom beyond my humble understanding - the one that knows what it is to smear mud and spit on a blind man's eyes to restore his vision (John 9:6-34). The one that commends "clean," sure, but most actively seeks to "heal." The one that would have embraced the opportunity to share a meal with the man on the steps.

Spiritual Complacency and Fear

Homily delivered at Kidlington Methodist Church, England, in November 2008, based upon 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 and Matthew 25:14-30.

Granted, this was only the second homily I've ever delivered, and I still haven't studied sermonizing, so please try to forgive it its trespasses, but do feel absolutely welcome to offer criticism.

All images used (in blog post form only) link to their sources; no infringement intended. Please note: I do not necessarily agree with or affirm the content of the sites to which I have linked.

The hymn All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord, cited below, had been sung earlier in the service. Also cited: The Screwtape Letters (novel) and V for Vendetta (film).

Why yes, Don Feder, I did refer positively to what you considered the "most explicitly anti-Christian movie to date" during a Christian worship service. But look on the bright side. At least Avatar (2009) hadn't come out yet.

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"Rise and Shine: Spiritual Complacency and Fear"

Wake up!

It's time to get ready! Brush your teeth. What do you mean your shirt and trousers are in that war zone? Find them! Hurry!

Have you done your homework?

Sound familiar? The parents, children, and university students are nodding.

In preparing and rousing the Thessalonians, Paul wrote:

"You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled" (1 Thess. 5.5-6).

Paul founded the Christian church of Thessalonica on his second missionary journey, and he was eager to know how the people were progressing in their new faith. One of their concerns was the second coming of Jesus, the Parousia, but Paul did not aim to overwhelm them with doctrine. Rather, 1 Thessalonians was primarily meant to encourage them. He even ended this section not only urging them to support one another, but commending them for having done so.

So on a topic that sometimes gets a bad rap in our present world – Judgment Day, the End Times, the Apocalypse – Paul wrote to tell them that the second coming was actually an inspiration and a comfort, a stimulus for Christians to serve God, an incentive to live holy lives. Paul blesses them:

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5.23).

He warns them that "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thess. 5.2), but tells them that this will not surprise them because they are not of the darkness, but children of light. He adds:

"Since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet" (1 Thess. 5.8).

Such imagery gives us strength and hope; it reinforces to us that our faith will fortify us, that God will save us from peril. Yet there is temptation, even in a Christian life, to sleep, to fall into spiritual lethargy; to assume that our relationship with God is fine if we go through the motions. In his novel, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis shares with us the advice from a senior devil to a junior devil. The senior devil once says, 'Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep’ (Lewis, 40). The inaction and lethargy of God's people is where sin can thrive.

Matthew 25 tells of Jesus' Parable of the Talents, though for now I would venture to call it the Parable of the Timid Servant. A master, before going away, leaves talents – a unit of money – with each of three servants: to one, five talents; to another three talents; and to the last, one talent, each according to his ability. Now that isn't to say that the last servant is given nothing of value -

A single talent weighed in at 33 kg, or 73 lbs. For a visual reference, think of your average 10-year-old, or, barring that, 33 1kg packages of Miracle-Gro. We're speaking in terms of great potential all around. And for those of you inclined to maths, that means 165 packages of Miracle-Gro to your first servant there. That's a lot of plants.

So servants #1 and 2 each invest what they have and double it. But the third servant is paralyzed in fear of his master's return – so afraid of wrath and blame or even his own humble failure that he refrains from acting at all except to bury the talent in the ground (which may have worked more in his favor if the talent actually had been Miracle-Gro). When their master returns, he invites the first two servants to partake in the joy of their master, but he goes so far as to call the last servant "wicked." Clearly he is not being blamed simply for poor financial planning; his error was inaction, burying all he had away from the light.

God is not a conniving thief or malicious slave master wishing us despair and harm, but God's works and timing and demands are often unexpected; they often surprise us. God wants you, the entirety and whole of you – all you've been given and all you can do with it. When your soul enters heaven; when Jesus comes again; but also right now, in this moment, on this day. God wants you.


Remember, remember, the 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Day, just recently. Many of you may be well familiar with the story and film, "V for Vendetta." If you don't know it, suffice it to say that there is a beautiful line in the film delivered in a scene of courage, desperation and trial.


Evey (Natalie Portman) reads a moving letter in V for Vendetta (2006).

The speaker says: "I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tottle Brook and she used to tell me that God was in the rain."

I myself vividly remember once walking with a friend through a light rainstorm in New York. The conversation turned to the extent that we minded the weather, and I expressed a vague feeling of it's-nice-but-I-don't-exactly-want-it-on-me. She was more optimistic about it than I, looking up for a moment to let the droplets seek refuge in the curves of her face. "'God is in the rain,'" she quoted.

Of course, we also once traipsed through the storm of the century that eventually flooded numerous towns in the area. Taking our typical route to church, we crossed a bridge over what was usually the most modest of streams and water was absolutely gushing below in great currents.

By the time we arrived, we were so drenched with God that at first I was reluctant to let my waterlogged shoes squeak down the aisle, let alone sit my soaked soul on the pew. That week, Sunday best was not a viable option. We were both layered in the most waterproof clothing we owned. Already two of my umbrellas had become casualties of other recent storms, and I had none to bring with me. We were dripping wet, and we were late for Mass. Two things I, as a Protestant, was not ready to see how the Roman Catholic Church would tolerate.

But no one so much as frowned at us. We attended the service, recognizing no one but joining in worship and the passing of the peace with people who'd had to journey through that same storm. Whether they came on foot or by car, many of them probably knew what it was to look out the window that day in a moment of "maybe we can catch the next one...?" and found themselves on the way there nonetheless.

Perhaps like the third servant, I too was so distracted by my own fear of being shunned for arriving in such horrendous shape that I never even thought about what it really took for each person to arrive there; what it meant that, whether out of obligation or personal will, they were able to do everything necessary to get there, and so had we. Maybe the point was not that we were soaking wet, that we had "weather on us" – but that, God being in all things and guiding our paths, we were so full of Spirit in that moment that we could wring it out, fill a bucket to share and still have plenty remaining.

Living a Christian life does not mean only believing that God's Spirit exists any more than living on Earth means believing in the concept of rain – that it comes from time to time and that, in some form or another, it will come again. To be a Christian, a child of light, is to let God drench you with the Holy Spirit inside and out, so that even if Jesus is not physically present on the earth, everything that his life, death and resurrection meant is still represented here in each one of us and all the greater in a fortified Christian community.

"He bids us build each other up" or, should we say, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing" (1 Thess. 5.11) – "And, gathered into one, to our high calling's glorious hope, we hand in hand go on. The gift which He on one bestows, we all delight to prove. The grace through every vessel flows, in purest streams of love" (All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord, Charles Wesley, 1747).

You have the ability to invest time, resources, money, skills, talents – and the decisions about these things are important; they shouldn't be taken lightly and are best managed under God's direction. But looking further, what else might this parable mean for Christians, for children of light? What if we put ourselves in the place of that last servant, who also received something very valuable? What if we were to bury Truth, or our Christianity, our very spirituality, our relationship with Creator and Redeemer? Whether we are afraid of God, society, persecution, failure... none of these fears validate hiding our faith in God, our hope in Christ, our strength in the Spirit. If none of these things permeate our daily lives, we may as well bury our heads in the sand, too.

Should we not declare: "Lord, you have been our refuge; from one generation to another, before the mountains were born, or the earth and the world were brought to be; from eternity to eternity you are God" (Psalm 90.1-2)? Should we not find solace in the immensity and magnitude of our God? Should we not invest each bit of the dust from which we're made and bring something greater than ourselves to the world? "Our years pass away like a sigh" (Psalm 90.9) – should we not call upon our Lord: "Teach us so to number our days; that we may apply our hearts to wisdom" (Psalm 90.12)?

You have the power to demonstrate what it means to follow Christ; to exemplify that he lived and died that we might be better people and more complete souls; that Christ will come again and that, in trusting him, we do not need to fear; that the Day of the Lord will be beautiful: not merely a day to be judged but a day to witness justice. God will set all right.

But until that day, God is calling us to live as the children of light. We must not hold back in fear or complacency. Rise and shine. Let God surprise you with what you can do – with the Christian you can be – through the One who strengthens you (Phil. 4:13).

Revelation

Inspired by part of a class assignment, here is another reflection prompt for you. Simply meditate on it, write it down, or discuss it with a friend or a group:

Reflect on a time that someone else saw something in you that you did not see. Did this revelation surprise you, and why? How did it affect your perception of yourself, of others, or of life? How did you respond?