It’s the Friday before Good Friday, so that means I should be running around in a circle panicking about everything. Instead, I’ve been googling “benefits of collagen” because a friend said that sort of thing might make my joints hurt less. I definitely can’t get up to seven takes today, but I might be able to do one or two. UPDATE: I Got To Seven!
One
Apparently there is a lot of frantic tweeting going on over on that app because the author of the blog Slow To Write, tweeted something about “disciplining” his baby. Then he clarified that what he was talking about was sleep training. I am absolutely not going to weigh in on the subject except to say, to all you bloggers and content providers out there, take it from me, don’t post in too much detail about your children.
I learned that lesson the hard way. I once thoughtlessly tossed up some funny anecdote about my children doing a heaping measure of dishes while I was splayed flat on the couch with morning sickness some fifteen or a hundred years ago. I hadn’t counted the cost of someone who hated me for betraying my sex by getting happily married and having a lot of babies deciding to publicly threaten me. She came right at me online and explained on her blog that she planned to alert Child Protective Services. In fact, she went up and down the whole internet calling me a breeder and likening me to Andrea Yates. This, you will not be surprised to learn, became the moment my children were given blog names, which turned out to be slightly cooler than their real names.
One reason not to discuss children online—which is too bad because it’s such an important subject—is the preponderance of people who hate children and sane ways of raising them. Also, there’s not enough time in a tweet or a blog post to provide full context. You may have something very reasonable in your mind, but no one will read it that way. Again, I am saying this from experience. I wanted to join in the fray on a lot of points that were important to me, but “the fray” turned out to be less a marketplace of interesting ideas and more a place where anyone can turn you in for any reason.
As the children have gotten older, I’ve relaxed a good deal and said more about how we “did” things than how we were doing them in the moment. But the minute I have grandchildren it’s all locking down again.
Two
Check out this depressing story:
Last year, after completing the ministry’s new mandatory sexuality training, the Mundells, who are both 42, said they raised concerns with their supervisors, the human resources department, and other Cru leaders, including the director of theological development, Keith Johnson. Each time, they said, their concerns were dismissed. The Mundells questioned whether it is Scriptural for Cru to allow staff to adopt LGBT identity labels—including identifying as “gay Christian” or using a person’s preferred pronouns—and to refer to same-sex attraction as a “disordering of sexual desire,” not sin. “We know that Cru’s position on biblical sexuality is an area of deep concern for you,” the email from the HR department said. “It is important that you realize you can hold your views and continue to serve with Cru as long as they don’t conflict with our statement of faith or our missionary vows.”
I saw this the first time it came around when the couple were profiled in World. I always wonder what other layers of cultural or interpersonal conflict lurk under the surface. Was this the real issue, I wonder? But then I go back to all my notes and Revoice and think, well, probably. The thing that discourages me is that Cru’s “position on biblical sexuality” is not an area of deep concern for Cru. In fact, their position is not “biblical,” and the circumstance of someone who has invested a life and career to build up the organization and serve young people raising an alarm should give serious pause, even to an HR department. For that person to be summarily dismissed is not a good look, Cru. You might want to climb down, if only for appearances.
Three
This piece on the Trad Wife phenomenon is really good:
One problem is that a cottage core aesthetic is nothing like “traditional” life. The way our ancestors actually lived (not just snipping some Rosemary from your kitchen garden in pearls and heels and then making money off of an Instagram reel about how magical it is to be a Tradwife with a garden) was very hard. The Instagram tradwife aesthetic reminds me of Marie Antoinette prancing around the fake little farm village made for her at the opulent palace of Versailles. She loved to wear a little shepherdess’ dress and carried a charming basket over her arm to collect eggs. (Her servants would, of course, clean the eggs before Marie Antoinette showed up so that when she put them in her basket they wouldn’t be dirty. Perish the thought!) It’s a form of dress up. Which is fine! Dressing up is fun. But it’s not, well, aspirational. No one has to or needs to. The tradwife aesthetic is disconnected from reality. Actual farming is hard work. Milking goats at the crack of dawn might sound a little bit magical and there’s days where it’s fun, but it can also be horrible when the morning is freezing and the goat kicks a dirty hoof in the milk bucket ruining the milk. ASK ME HOW I KNOW. If you really want a traditional life you’ll be dealing with a lot of livestock poop and you will ruin your nicest sundress from Ivy City Co (no shade, I have two of their dresses and they’re great, but they’re for church, not farm life). There is much that’s admirable and human about reconnecting with the land and I am for it. But there’s nothing glamorous about farming. If there is, you’re playacting, not living “traditionally.”
Four
Speaking of Trad Life, on Tuesday we landed on Psalm 45 in Morning Prayer, which occupies an especially warm place in my sad, bitter heart for the simple reason that many of the women in my seminary deeply disapproved of it. They wouldn’t say it when it came around. Here it is, just to refresh your memory:
Eructavit cor meum
1 My heart overflows with a noble song; *
I will sing my words to the King; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
2 You are fairer than the children of men; *
full of grace are your lips, because God has blessed you for ever.
3 Gird your sword upon your thigh, most mighty one, *
according to your honor and majesty.
4 In your majesty be victorious; ride out for the sake of truth, to bear witness to righteousness, *
and your right hand shall show you marvelous things.
5 Your arrows are very sharp in the heart of the King’s enemies, *
and the peoples shall be subdued under you.
6 Your throne, O God, endures for ever; *
the scepter of your kingdom is a righteous scepter.
7 You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; *
therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.
8 All your garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia; *
out of the ivory palaces, stringed instruments have made you glad.
9 Kings’ daughters are among your honorable women; *
at your right hand stands the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought with many colors.
10 Hearken, O daughter, and consider; incline your ear; *
forget your own people, and your father’s house.
11 So shall the King have pleasure in your beauty; *
since he is your Lord, honor him.
12 And the daughter of Tyre shall bring you gifts; *
the rich also among the peoples shall seek your favor.
13 The King’s daughter is all glorious within the palace; *
her clothing is of wrought gold.
14 She shall be brought to the king in embroidered raiment; *
the virgins who are her companions shall bring her to you.
15 With joy and gladness shall they bring her, *
and shall enter into the King’s palace.
16 Instead of your fathers, you shall have sons, *
whom you shall make princes in all the land.
17 I will make your Name to be remembered from one generation to another; *
therefore the peoples shall praise you, world without end.
I’m surprised it didn’t have a trigger warning, even back in the day. The line they particularly objected to was “So shall the King have pleasure in your beauty; since he is your Lord, honor him.” At the time I couldn’t help but chuckle, but now it strikes me as utterly hilarious.
Five
Matt just sent me this, seems on point:
Six
Facebook has taken the trouble to inform me that a year ago I was working through She Deserves Better in a post called Please Revere My Imago Dei. I said this:
Setting aside the mangling of the Biblical witness—it is just not true that the Bible calls for hierarchies to be dismantled as a way to “revere” the imago Dei in each other**—Gregoire is naive to think that egalitarianism, as such, can exist or ever has existed. There is no such thing. All one does, should one succeed in tearing down the biblically established hierarchy, is replace a true and good order with one that is dysfunctional and unnatural. If a man is not the head of his wife, then she is the head of him. However hard they try to be “equal” they will not be. One will rule the other even while lying to herself, to her husband, and to the world by saying she is not, in fact, a ruler and judge over him.
At the time I was hung up on the hierarchy bit, but after listening to the Maybe God Worships Me sermon, I feel I might have missed something all those months ago. What does “revere” even mean in that sentence?
In the 79 Prayer book, we used to be admonished to “respect the dignity of every human person” which was probably as far as I would have ever been willing to go in the direction of reverence. I looked up the 2019 baptismal service just now, and I’m charmed to see that instead of all that sort of thing, the congregation prays that the baptismal candidates will “…as living members of the Body of Christ…grow up in every way into him who is the head.” So much for dismantling hierarchies or fussing about the precious imago dei.
Seven
I must rush along to do many things which means I might just be able to finish Hunt Gather Parent. I’m about halfway through. Absurdly, I cannot help but refer to the book, when muttering to myself, as Eat Pray Love instead of by its rightful name. The two books, I imagine, do not resemble each other in the least, although I don’t know, having never read Eat Pray Love. So far, I’m liking Hunt Gather Parent pretty well. I do have a heap of qualifications, as I expected, but I really like how she describes a child escalating into a tantrum and the various ways to de-escalate the little tyrant. I’m allowed to say that because none of my children are little, though all of them are still tyrannical.
Anyway, have a nice day!
In honor of the King, I slather on my beard a mixture of myhrr, cassia, aloes and olive oil.
Asking your children to serve you by washing dishes was clearly a violation of the Good Moms of America by-laws. As we all know, an American mother exists only to toil for her children, giving them as many of this world's goods and as much leisure time as she possibly can lest the little darlings be traumatized.