And the Women and the People

7 Takes on Peace and Patriarchy

It sure is Friday.

One

We celebrated Fauxgiving this week because more than the usual allotment of family was in town and it seemed meet and right so to do. I caught this great candid of my kids who were trying to arrange themselves at the festal board. I’m not sure why one child has his mouth open, but perhaps he was about to say something fascinating and clever.

A delicious time was had by all. The best part about it—and the last two weeks really—is that Matt has taken the kitchen as his own place. He already does most of the cooking, but I have kept the bally thing as my domain, even while I don’t cook and don’t even shop that much. My main task has been to get my offspring, born of my own body, to clean up after themselves. This has gone as well as any of you might expect—not well at all. They all know how to cook and walk away. They can’t remember to come back and remediate the aftermath of their culinary brilliance. At least not by me reminding them.

Their father, on the other hand, speaks but a word and they dig deep and find they can fit the washing their own dishes in between their intellectual pursuits. To have this Sisyphean chore lifted from my stooping shoulders has absolutely revolutionized my life. This, for those of you who are terrified of the boogeyman Patriarchy, behold—there is nothing to be afraid of. And no, you can’t take it and call it egalitarian because it’s not.

Two

Very happy to see that the person making vile threats against Jewish students at Cornell was apprehended and arrested. It was a student, despite the hopes of the university that it would not be. Would that the violence and disorder of the day would be caused by only one person who is safely locked up and not lots and lots of people who harbor these kinds of sentiments in their bosoms.

This morning’s psalm—Psalm 9 if you’re following along in the Morning Prayer lections—ended on a peculiar and brilliant note: